Acrostic – Where the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message.
Allegory – Something symbolic, an allegory can often be a story that represents larger things, like the tortoise and the hare.
Alliteration – Words beginning with same letter sounds to create a notably emphasis on words "dark dreary dreams".
Allusion – Referring to something well known, nowadays that could be a celebrity but it could be anything that fits the context of the poem (Shakespeare will make very old allusions we don't understand).
Ambiguity/Ambiguous – A word or idea meaning more than one thing to provoke thought.
Analogy – Compare something unfamiliar with something familiar to help people understand.
Anaphora – The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of lines, creating rhetorical emphasis on that phrase.
Anthropomorphism – The technique of ascribing human-like qualities to things which aren't actually human.
Assonance – Like alliteration, the sound of assonance come from within the word rather than the start "Fearful tears of misery" (emphasis on the e-a-s sounds).
Asyndeton – The omission of conjunctions between clauses.
Bathos – A descent in literature in which a poet or writer–striving too hard to be passionate or elevated–falls into trivial or stupid imagery, phrasing, or ideas. Some authors and poets use bathos intentionally for humorous effect.
Blank Verse – Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Cacophony – Harsh sounds in order to make a discordant sound. "dark knuckles wrapping across bricks" (often Ks, Ts, Cks).
Caesura – A caesura is a break of meaning and rhythm within a line.
Cliché – Something which is used a great amount and becomes expected or even cheesy, "raining cats and dogs".
Colloquial – Language that is used in speech with an informal meaning; 'chill', 'out of this world', 'take a rain check'.
Connotation – The associations with a word e.g. Rose – Love and Passion.
Consonance – Consonant sounds at the end of words "wet set of regrets".
Contrast – Closely placed ideas which are opposites or very different. 'He had cold eyes but a warm heart'.
Dehumanisation – Depriving a person or group of positive human qualities
Denotation – The literal definition of something without reading to deeply into it.
Dialect – The version of a language spoken by particular people in a particular area, such as Scots.
Dissonance – A discordant combination of sounds; the clash, spew and slow pang of grinding waves against the quay.
Dramatic Monologue – A poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events.
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English GCSE AQA: Comprehensive Analysis of the Power and Conflict Poems
Non-FictionI decided to make a book on all the Power and Conflict poems for the English GCSE exams. NOTE: This book's analyses are very long and wordy due to much information from different sources. Although they are segmented, some may not find too much comfo...
