Lit Terms 1-5

Allegory- The term loosely describes any writing in verse or prose that has double meaning. This narrative acts as an extended metaphor in which persons, abstract ideas, events represent not only themselves on the literal level, but they also stand for something else in the symbolic level. 

Elegy-  Refers to any poem written in elegiac (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines)

Ellipsis- Ellipsis refers to the artful omission of a word implied by a previous clause.

       EX; "The America solders killed eight civilians, and the French eight." The writer of the sentence has left out the word soldiers after French, and the word civilians after eight. However, both words are implied by the previous clause, so a reader has no trouble following the author's thought.

Surrealism- An artistic movement doing away with the restrictions of realism and verisimilitude that might be imposed on an artist. In this movement, the artist sought to do away with conscious control and instead respond to the irrational urges of the subconscious mind. From this results the hallucinatory, bizarre often nightmarish quality of surrealistic paintings and writing. 

Meter- A recognized though varying pattern of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress. Compositions written in meter are said to be in verse.