The UVic Writer's Guide

Narrative Genres

Genres: An Introduction
Aubade
Ballad
Burlesque
Comedy
Drama
Dramatic Lyric
Dramatic Monologue
Elegy
Epic
Epigram
Fable
High Burlesque: Mock Epic (Mock Heroic); Parody
Low Burlesque: Travesty (Hudibrastic Poem); Lampoon
Lyric
Melodrama
Novel
Ode
Pastoral
Problem Play
Romance
Satire
Short Story
Sonnet
Tragedy
Tragicomedy

[ General Literary Terms ] [ Narrative Genres ] [ Rhetorical Language ] [ Poetic Tools ]

Rhetorical Language

Figures Of Speech Or Rhetorical Figures (Schemes)

Rhetoric And Figurative Language
Apostrophe
Chiasmus
Rhetorical Question
Zeugma

Figures Of Thought (Tropes)

Conceit
Hyperbole And Understatement
Metaphor
Metonymy And Synechdoche
Oxymoron
Personification (Prosopopeia)
Simile
Symbol

Poetic Tools

Alliteration
Assonance and Consonance
Blank Verse
Free Verse
Heroic Couplet
Meter
Onomatopoeia
Rhyme
Stanza
Versification

[ General Literary Terms ] [ Narrative Genres ] [ Rhetorical Language ] [ Poetic Tools ]

General Literary Terms

Allegory
Ambiguity
Aphorism
Archetype

Bathos
Bombast

Canon
Character and Characterization
Chorus
Connotation and Denotation

Discourse

Epithet
Euphemism

Hamartia ("error" or "flaw")
Humour

Imagery
Indeterminacy
Intertext, intertextuality
Irony

Malapropism
Magic realism
Metadrama, metafiction
Motif
Myth

Narrator

Oxymoron

Paradox
Pathos
Persona
Plot
Poetic Justice
Point of Vew
Protagonist
Pun

Realism

Self-reflexive
Sign
Soliloquy
Stock Characters
Stock Situations
Stream-of-Consciousness Narration
Sympathy and Empathy

Theme
Tone
Voice

Wit

"Creative" Definitions

[ Narrative Genres ] [ General Literary Terms ] [ Rhetorical Language ] [ Poetic Tools ]