Literary Terms - F

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A short narrative in prose or verse which points a moral, using featuring non-human creatures or inanimate things

When stress patterns are thrown backwards in a line of verse so that it falls on the first syllables of the feet

Term for the late medieval legend about a man who sold his soul to the Devil

An extra unstressed syllable at the end of a line of verse. Common in blank verse, e.g 'That solvenly will spit on all things fair // The coward's castle, and the sluggard's cradle'

Language which uses figures of speech; for example, metaphor, simile, alliteration. Must be distinguished from literal language

A term probably derived from cinema, and which is now used to describe any scene or episode in a play, novel, story or poem which is inserted to show events that happened at an earlier time

A cursing match in verse, especially between two poets who hurl abuse at each other, an ancestor of the rap battle

A group of syllables forming a metrical unit; a unit of rhythm. Examples include dactyl, choree, bacchius, anapest. Measured in terms of syllable variation, long and short syllables, stressed and unstressed

The technique of arranging events in a narrative in such a way that later events are prepared for or shadowed forth beforehand

A short introductory piece to a book

Term which refers to the writer's 1) sense - what is actually said; 2) feeling - the writer's emotional attitude towards it; 3) the allegorical meaning; 4) intention - the writer's purpose

The 'invisible wall' dividing a theatre audience from a performance. The term itself is metaphorical

A poem with no regular meter or line length and depends on natural speech rhythms and stressed and unstressed syllables.

When someone deliberately tries to pass off a piece of writing as being by someone else, or as something else

Anti-novel