Glossary of literary terms

allegory: The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.

alliteration: The repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables.

allusion: The act of alluding; indirect reference

hyperbole: A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect.

metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison.

onomatopeia: The formation or use of words such as buzz or murmur that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

personification: A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form.

simile: A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as.

understatement/litote: A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.

oxymoron: A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined.

irony: A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect.

pun: A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.

analogy: Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/analogy