Literary terms and techniques

Drama terms

An aside is something a character in a play says to the audience that the other characters on stage are not intended to hear.

Language techniques

The witches' "Double, double toil and trouble" (Macbeth 4.1) repeats the 't' sound at the start of 'toil' and 'trouble'.

Narrative and structure

An allegory is a story, play, poem or picture in which the characters and events represent particular moral, religious or political qualities or ideas.

Poetic form and metre

Blank verse is poetry that does not rhyme but follows a regular meter, most commonly iambic pentameter.

Drama terms

Dramatic irony is the situation in which the audience of a play knows something that the characters do not know; the RSC says the significance of a character's words or actions is clear to the audience but unknown to the character speaking them.

Language techniques

Bitesize advises students to use a quote to back up a point, to say what the writer has done, how and why, and what effect it has on the reader, and not to waste time explaining what a literary device means.

Narrative and structure

Bitesize describes the narrative of Animal Farm as cyclical or circular, circling round to end as it began with the animals oppressed by a cruel leader; Cambridge says cyclical events happen in a particular order and are often repeated.

Poetic form and metre

A caesura is a pause within a line of poetry, shown by punctuation or sometimes a line break.

Drama terms

A foil is someone or something that makes another's qualities more noticeable by being very different from them.

Language techniques

The RSC defines antithesis as two opposites put together, for example hot and cold or light and dark, and gives Macbeth 1.1 "When the battle's lost and won" and "Fair is foul, and foul is fair".