a story with more than one meaning; when characters/events represent something else.

ex: Animal Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution, and the animals represent different sections of Russian society.

Allegories allow authors to put forth a point of view, how he might wish the world to be. They make a piece multidimensional.

Allegory

Appears to be contradictory, but may have some truth. Can be used to illustrate an idea that is contrary to accepted views.

Often used to make the reader think in a different way about something.

Paradox

An understatement - conveying less than what you mean.

Can heighten the impact of a dramatic moment.

Meiosis

A rhetorical device, an allusion to the part instead of the whole.

ex: 'the wave' in the sense of 'the sea'
'keel' for 'ship'
'a hand' or 'a head' for 'a man'

Intention is to minimize the whole; can dehumanize a person, or can emphasise a part.

Synedoche

Words to convey the opposite of what you mean, or actions that have the opposite effect of what is intended. Can be humorous.

Irony

A strong pause within a line.

Purpose: If all the pauses in the sense of the poem were to occur at the line breaks, this could become dull; moving the pauses so they occur within the line creates a musical interest.

Caesura

The carryover, in poetry, of one sentence/thought into another line.

ex: I think that I will never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.

Purpose: makes the poem varied and pleasing to the eye/ear. Disrupts the senses & creates different expectations. Also forces to fit meter/rhyme scheme.

The opposite of enjambment is end-stopped line.

Enjambement

A metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break, or if it contains a complete phrase.

Then say not man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault;
Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measur’d to his state and place,
His time a moment, and a point his space.
--Alexander Pope

The opposite of end-stopped is enjambment.

End stopped line

Poetry where the line endings rhyme.

End rhyme

Rhyme that occurs within the lines rather than at the end.

Internal rhyme

Words that look as if they would rhyme. This occurs thanks to the Great Vowel Shift (change in pronunciation)of the 1400s.

ex: ear/bear, forth/worth.

Purpose: in more modern times, poets used eye rhyme to display familiarity with the written word (as poetry is read, not performed).

Eye rhyme

The repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in "all mammals named Sam are clammy."

An element of half-rhyme, consonance is popular in modern rap/hip-hop, creating a tongue-twister effect.

Consonance

A semi-colon indicates a pause in the rhythm of the poem but denotes a connectedness of thought between the two respective phrases.

Replaces the conjunctions: and, but.

Semicolon

are rather ambiguous. in prose, the information inside is an aside - less important than the rest. but in poetry, it can add, change tone, or even be a visual reference.

Parentheses

when a thing is called not by its name but by the name of something else associated in meaning to that thing or concept.

ex: Wall Street = American financial section; Hollywood = American film industry

Purpose: to make an analogy by replacing noun with associated feeling/idea word.

Metonymy

(Synecdoche and metalepsis are considered specific types of metonymy)