Literary Terminology
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Created by:
gabbywabby15 on September 2, 2010
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89 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 imagery | the formation of images by using the 5 senses |
| Olfactory | imagery that uses smell |
| Tactile | imagery that uses touch |
| Visual | imagery that uses sight |
| auditory | imagery that uses hearing |
| gustatory | imagery that uses taste |
| kinesthetic | imagery that uses movement |
| organic | imagery that uses internal feelings |
| tone | a particular style or manner, as of writing or speech; mood |
| diction | word choice |
| denotation | definition |
| connotation | implied meaning |
| archaic | language of the past; antiquated |
| colloquialism | conversational language |
| dialect | regional variety of a language |
| Euphemism | the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt. |
| speaker | a person who speaks |
| narrator | recites the details/events of the story |
| audience | who the story is intended to be heard by/read by |
| setting | time and place |
| conflict | tension in a story. clash of ideas/elements/forces |
| flashback | to return to a past event |
| frame narrative | a secondary story or stories embedded in the main story |
| direct characterization | author says what the character's personality is like |
| indirect characterization | character's personality is revealed by character's thoughts/actions/words |
| foil | one that serves as a contrast to another |
| theme | subject; topic of discourse |
| repetition | repeating words/ideas |
| allusion | a passing or casual reference; an incidental mention of something, either directly or by implication |
| ambiguity | capable of being understood in more than one way |
| archetype | original pattern or model of all things and the same type |
| verbal irony | what is said is not what is meant |
| situational irony | what is expected to occur does not occur; the opposite happens |
| dramatic irony | the audience knows something that the characters do not know |
| juxtaposition | an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, esp. for comparison or contrast. |
| pun | a word suggests two interpretations |
| metaphor | word/idea is used in place of another |
| simile | uses like or as to make a comparison |
| syntax | the way in which words are put together to form phrases, clauses or sentences |
| symbolism | the practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character |
| traditional symbolism | symbols present in particular cultures |
| soliloquoy | talking to oneself |
| figurative language | speech or writing that departs from literal meaning in order to achieve a special effect or meaning, speech or writing employing figures of speech |
| hyperbole | exaggeration |
| understatement | opposite of exaggeration |
| metonymy | one idea that represents the whole |
| personification | nonliving things human characteristics |
| anthropomorphism | animal with human characteristics |
| parallelism | structure means using the same pattern of words to show that two or more ideas have the same level of importance |
| chiasmus | reversal of order |
| litotes | that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary, as in "not bad at all." |
| alliteration | repetition of the first letter in a word |
| assonance | repetition of vowel sounds |
| consonance | repetition of consonant sounds |
| apostrophe | addressing an absent person or inanimate object |
| satire | biting wit, irony or sarcasm used to expose vice or folly |
| paradox | contradictory statement |
| stanza | paragraph in a poem |
| point of view | the position of the narrator in relation to the story, as indicated by the narrator's outlook from which the events are depicted and by the attitude toward the characters |
| 1st person | written from the narrator's point of view using pronouns such as me, I, we and our |
| 2nd person | uses pronouns such as you |
| 3rd person | uses pronouns like he, she, it, they |
| omniscient | having infinite awareness and insight about all the characters in a story |
| SOC | narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes |
| exact rhyme | identical sounding |
| slant rhyme | consonance on final consonants |
| rhyme scheme | pattern of rhyme |
| enjambment | breaking at the end of a line between 2 verses |
| meter | measure |
| iamb | metrical foot |
| iambic pentameter | poetry that has 10 syllables per line |
| couplet | 2 lines of rhyming poetry |
| tercet | 3 lines of poetry |
| quatrain | 4 lines of poetry |
| blank verse | meter no rhyme |
| free verse | no meter or rhyme |
| sonnet | 14 lines iambic pentameter |
| volta | shift in a sonnet |
| italian sonnet | octave + sestet. abba |
| elizabethan sonnet | sonnet that shakespeare used with rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg |
| blazon | emphasizing body parts |
| bildungsroman | development of a character through education |
| tragedy | disastrous ending |
| comedy | happy ending |
| gothic | 12th-16th century |
| pastoral | deals with shepherds and rural life |
| elegy | expressing grief for a dead person |
| lyric | having the form and musical quality of a song, and esp. the character of a songlike outpouring of the poet's own thoughts and feelings, as distinguished from epic and dramatic poetry |
| aside | heard by audience but not by author actor's on stage |
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