Romeo+and+Juliet+literary+terms


 * __Allusion: __**a reference in a work of literature to a character, place, or situation from another work of literature, music or art.


 * __Aside: __** a character’s comment that is heard by the audience but not by other characters


 * __Blank Verse: __** poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter

(A beautiful woman, for example, is discussed as a rose or as marble statue.)
 * __Conceit: __** a fanciful image, an elaborate metaphor in which a writer describes a person or idea by use of an analogy which often seems farfetched and even startling.

traits of another character in a play. Usually, the foil contrasts with the other character, and the contrast serves to emphasize the other character’s traits.
 * __Dramatic Foil: __** a character who highlights or brings out the personality


 * __Dramatic Irony: __** refers to the contrast between what a character knows and what the reader or audience knows.


 * __Foreshadowing __****: **<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> the use of clues by an author to prepare readers for events that will happen later in a story.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Imagery: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> collection of sense images (a picture in words) appealing to the five senses.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Irony: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a contrast between what is expected and what actually occurs.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Monologue: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a lengthy speech addressed to other characters, rather than to the audience.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Oxymoron: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a self-contradictory combination or words (jumbo shrimp, old news, soft rock).


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Personification __**__<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">: __<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a figure of speech in which a quality, idea, or non-human being is represented as having human traits.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Prologue: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> serves as an introduction, or program, to the play. It directs our attention to the important part which fate plays in the lives of the two young lovers.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Pun: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a joke or play on words with several meanings, or on words that sound alike but have different meanings.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Situational Irony: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a contrast between what a reader expects and what actually happens.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Soliloquy: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a long speech spoken by a character that is alone on stage; a speech revealing the personal thoughts and emotions of a particular character.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Theme: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> the main idea of a story, novel, poem, or play, usually expressed as a general statement about life.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Tragedy: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a drama (or by extension any work of literature) that relates to the downfall of a person of high status. Tragedy tends to be serious. It celebrates the courage and dignity of a tragic hero in the face of inevitable doom. Sometimes that doom is made inevitable by a tragic flaw in the hero.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Tragic Flaw: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a personal weakness that brings about the fall of a character in a tragedy.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Tragic Hero: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> a character in a play who is “well liked” by the audience but whose doom is inevitable.


 * __<span style="color: #333399; font-family: 'Constantia','serif';">Verbal Irony: __**<span style="font-family: 'Constantia','serif';"> occurs when someone says one thing but means another.