1.
allegory: a story with underlying symbols that really represent something else
2.
alliteration: the use of a repeated consonant sound, usually at the beginning of a series of words
3.
allusion: a reference to something or someone, usually literary
4.
anachronism: placing a person or object in an inappropriate historical situation
5.
analogy: comparing something to something else
6.
anecdote: a short narrative, story, or tale
7.
antagonist: the major character opposing the protagonist, usually the villain
8.
anthropomorphism: assigning human attributes to nonhuman things
9.
anti-hero: a protagonist with villainous qualities
10.
antithesis: pairing of opposites to make a point
11.
apostrophe: a speaker's direct address to either a nonhuman entity or an absent human
12.
assonance: repetition of vowel sounds
13.
balance: indicates harmony and implies the unity of smaller ideas into a larger, demonstrates duality or points out opposites
14.
ballad: narrative poem, usually with a tragicomic tone
15.
blank verse: poetry features unrhymed iambic pentameter
16.
characterization: describes the characters' personalities and how personality develops throughout the narrative
17.
climax: the high point of the story, things occur to alter forever the story's main progression
18.
concrete poetry: forms its words into pictures on the page
19.
consonance: repetition of consonant sounds
20.
couplet: two consecutive rhyming lines in a poem
21.
denouement: known as the conclusion, gives the story closure
22.
diction: word choice
23.
dynamic: character undergoes some kind of personality alteration
24.
elegy: honors someone dead
25.
exposition: known as the introduction, this part of the story gives basic background on characters, plot, and setting
26.
extended metaphor: known as a conceit, whose initial comparison is developed more fully in the text
27.
fable: a story that has a moral, usually involving animals as the main characters
28.
falling action: known as the reversal, speeds the story to its end
29.
figurative language: language characterized by figures of speech and elaborate expression
30.
flat: character has little development at all
31.
foil: character whose function is to emphasize the personality traits of some other character
32.
free verse: poetry has no rhyme scheme or meter
33.
heroic couplets: a couplet that follows an iambic pentameter rhythm
34.
hyperbole: a deliberate exaggeration
35.
iambic pentameter: a poetic meter that is made up of five stressed syllables each followed by an unstressed syllable
36.
imagery: description that appeals to the senses
37.
indirect metaphor: a comparison made, but the object is not mentioned by name
38.
irony: an expression of meaning that is the opposite of the literal meaning, three categories: verbal, situational, dramatic
39.
metaphor: comparison without using the words like or as
40.
meter: the rhythm of a poem
41.
metonymy: a larger whole--usually an abstract--is represented by one of its parts
42.
mood: the emotional atmosphere of a story
43.
narrative: a literary representation of an event or a story--the text itself
44.
ode: praises someone or something still in existence
45.
onomatopoeia: a word intended to simulate the actual sound of the thing or action it describes
46.
oxymoron: a phrase in which the words are contradictory
47.
parable: a story that has a moral, used in the Bible
48.
paradox: a seeming contradiction with a greater truth
49.
parallelism: two or more items share a similar construction of treatment in a literary work, two categories: grammatical and thematic
50.
parody: a literary work in which the style of an author is imitated for comic effect or ridicule
51.
pastoral: a work that deals with the lives of the people, especially shepherds, in a the country or in nature
52.
pathos: something that evokes a feeling of pity or sympathy
53.
personification: assigning human attributes to something nonhuman
54.
perspective: the place from which the narrator or character sees things
55.
plot: the action of the story, the sequence of events that creates a cause/effect pattern
56.
point of view: the perceptive from which a story is presented to a reader
57.
protagonist: the main character, usually the hero
58.
repetition: repeats a word, phrase, sentence, stanza, symbol, image or idea to place emphasis on that item
59.
rhetorical question: a question used to emphasize a point, requires no response
60.
rhyme: when two or more words sound the same except for their initial letter
61.
rhyme scheme: the pattern of a poem's rhyme
62.
rising action: known as the complication, this part of the story develops conflict
63.
round: character is fully developed with a complex personality
64.
satire: ridicule of a subject, humorous and intended to point out something about a serious object
65.
setting: time and place in which the literary work occurs
66.
simile: comparison using the words like or as
67.
sonnet: has fourteen lines of iambic pentameter and features a specific rhyme scheme
68.
sprung rhythm: poetry features a variety of set meters and complex rhyme scheme
69.
stanza: the divisions on a poem
70.
static: character remains unchanged throughout the story
71.
style: the author's unique manner of expression, the author's voice
72.
symbolism: one thing in a literary work stands for another
73.
synecdoche: related to metonymy, usually occurs when a part represents a specific, tangible whole rather than an abstract
74.
syntax: the phrasing, the way words are put together in a sentence
75.
thematic parallel: what is paralleled in a work is a pair of similar situations or ideas
76.
theme: an idea of observation set forth by the story as a universal truth
77.
theme: the main idea of a piece of literature
78.
tone: style or manner of expression, displays the attitude of its narrator
79.
tragic hero: the protagonist of a tragedy
