| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Allegory | A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. |
| Alliteration | The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. "Fetched fresh." |
| Allusion | A figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, myth, or work of art, either directly or by implication. |
| Antagonist | A character or force against which another character struggles. |
| Assonance | The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." |
| Character | An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. |
| Characterization | The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques typically utilize their speech, dress, manner, and actions. |
| Climax | The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. |
| Complication | An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. |
| Conflict | A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. It may occur within a character as well as between characters. |
| Connotation | The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. |
| Convention | A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. |
| Denotation | The dictionary meaning of a word. |
| Denouement | The resolution of the plot of a literary work. All the loose ends are tied up. |
| Dialogue | The conversation of characters in a literary work. |
| Dialect | Writing which shows a variety of a spoken language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. |
| Diction | The selection of words in a literary work. |
| Exposition | The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. |
| Fable | A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. |
| Falling action | In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution. |
| Fiction | An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. |
| Figurative language | A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole, simile and metaphor. |
| Flashback | An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action. |
| Foil | A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story. |
| Foreshadowing | Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story. |
| Hyperbole | A figure of speech involving exaggeration. |
| Image | A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. |
| Imagery | The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. |
| Inciting Incident | The point in a plot which introduces the conflict and begins the rising action. |
| Verbal irony | When characters say the opposite of what they mean. |
| Situational Irony | When the opposite of what is expected occurs. |
| Dramatic Irony | When a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters. |
| Literal language | A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. |
| Metaphor | A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. ex. "My love is a red, red rose," |
| Metonymy | A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." |
| Narrator | The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. |
| Onomatopoeia | The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. |
| Parable | A brief story that teaches a lesson often ethical or spiritual. Examples include "The Prodigal Son," from the New Testament. |
| Parody | A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation. |
| Personification | The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. |
| Plot | The unified structure of incidents in a literary work. |
| Point of View | The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. |
| Protagonist | The main character of a literary work. |
| Recognition | The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. |
| Resolution | The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story. |
| Reversal | The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. |
| Rising action | A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax. |
| Satire | A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. |
| Setting | The time and place of a literary work that establish its context. |
| Simile | A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose." |
| Style | The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques. |
| Subject | What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme. |
| Subplot | A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot. |
| Symbol | An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself. |
| Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand." |
| Syntax | The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. |
| Tale | A story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without detailed descriptions of character. |
| Theme | The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. |
| Tone | The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work. |
| Understatement | A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means. |
| Limited Omniscient | Point of view in which the narrator to knows some things about the characters but not everything. |
| Omniscient | Point of view in which the narrator knows everything about the characters, in which the narrator knows everything about the characters |
| Objective | Point of view in which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader, like a camera. |
| First Person | Point of view in which the narrator is a character or an observer. |
| Static | A character who does not change is _______. |
| Dynamic | A character who changes is _______. |
Combine with other sets
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