This a list of the literary terms defined in the body of Literary Lessons from The Lord of the Rings and in a Simple Dictionary of Literary Terms in the Appendices.
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Alexandrine
Allegory
Alliteration
Alliterative meter
Allusion
Alter-ego
Anachronism
Anapest or anapestic foot
Antagonist
Aphorism
Archaic
Assonance
Atmosphere
Ballad
Beast fable
Blank verse
“Bob and wheel” meter
Caesura
Catalogue
Catalyst
Catharsis
Characterization
Circular plot form
Cliffhanger
Closed couplets
Comic-relief
Conceit
Conflict
Couplet
Cross-rhyme
Dactyl or dactylic foot
Diction
Dimeter
Dramatic dialogue
Dynamic character
Elegy
End-stopped
Enjambment
Epic
Epic conventions
Epic simile
Epithet
Eucatastrophe
Euphemism
Exposition
Fantasy
Foil
Folk epics
Foot
Foreshadowing
Flashback
Flat characters
Frame
Frame tale
Free verse
Genre
Gnomic sayings
Haiku
Hexameter
Hymn meter
Iamb
Imagery
In medias res
Internal rhyme
Invocation
Irony
Kenning
Lays
Leit-motif
Limerick
Limited omniscient third person point of view
Linear plot form
Literary conventions
Literary criticism
Literary epic
Long measure
“Lost” word
Magnum opus
Metaphor
Meter
Monometer
Near rhyme
Omniscient narrator point of view
Open couplet
Oral traditions
Pastoral poetry
Pathos
Personification
Poetic diction
Pentameter
Person
Persona
Personification
Plot
Point of view
Propaganda
Prose
Protagonist
Quatrains
Refrain
Rhyme scheme
Rhyming couplet
Round characters
Sarcasm
Scansion
Science fiction
Septameter
Setting
Simile
Situational irony
Slant rhyme
Sonnet
Spenserian stanza
Spondee or spondaic foot
Stanza
Static character
Structure of poetry
Symbol
Tetrameter
Theme
Tone
Traditional British ballad
Trimeter
Trisyllabic assonances
Trochee or trochaic foot
Tushery
Two-dimensional character
Ubi sunt poetry
Understatement
Verisimilitude
“Willing suspension of disbelief”
Word play
© 2003 by Amelia Harper. All rights reserved.