Literary Terms
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tiaanicolee on August 16, 2011
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68 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Characters | the people or animals in a story |
| Protagonist | the main character, who must overcome obstacles and resolve the conflict |
| Antagonist | the character that the main character (protagonist) struggles against. |
| Dynamic character | A character who changes throughout the story |
| Static character | a character that does not change from the beginning of the story to the end |
| Flat character | this character seems to possess only one or two personality traits - little or no background is revealed |
| Round character | this character is fully developed - the writer reveals good and bad traits as well as background |
| Figurative Language | Writing or speech that is used to create vivid impressions by setting up comparisons between dissimilar things, [examples are metaphor, simile, and personification. |
| Metaphor | a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity |
| Personification | A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes |
| Simile | a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with 'like' or 'as') |
| Hyperbole | a figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion, make a point, or evoke humor |
| Suspense | excited anticipation of an approaching climax |
| Imagery | Description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) |
| Symbols | anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture |
| Foil | anything that serves by contrast to call attention to another thing's good qualities |
| Audience | a gathering of spectators or listeners at a (usually public) performance |
| Tragic Flaw | the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall |
| Allusion | a reference to another work of literature, person, or event |
| Foreshadowing | the act of providing vague advance indications |
| Connotation | the implied or associative meaning of a word |
| Denotation | the most direct or specific meaning of a word or expression |
| Diction | the manner in which something is expressed in words |
| Theme | a unifying idea that is a recurrent element in a literary or artistic work |
| Paradox | a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. |
| Setting | time and place |
| Archaic Language | Words and phrases that were used regularly in a language, but are now less common;Such words and phrases are often used deliberately to refer to earlier times |
| Apostrophe | a figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or imaginary person, or some abstraction |
| Dramatic Plot | first establishes the setting and conflict then following rising through climac and concludes |
| Exposition | an account that sets forth the meaning or intent of a writing or discourse |
| Rising Action | events leading up to the climax |
| Climax | Most exciting moment of the story; turning point |
| Falling Action | a direct result of the climax, leading to a solution to the conflict |
| Resolution | the final unraveling or solution of the plot |
| Irony | incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs |
| Situational Irony | an outcome that turns out to be very different from what was expected |
| Dramatic Irony | (theater) irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play |
| Verbal Irony | occurs when what is said contradicts what is meant or thought |
| Genre | a major category or type of literature |
| Poetry | A kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery designed to appeal to our emotions and imagination. |
| Drama | A story written to be performed by actors |
| Memoir | an account of the author's personal experiences |
| Tone | the quality of something (an act or a piece of writing) that reveals the attitudes and presuppositions of the author |
| Catharsis | An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety |
| Aesthetics | means the study of the emotions and the mind in relation to their sense of beauty in literature and other fine arts, but separately from moral, social, political, practical, or economic considerations |
| Stanza | a fixed number of lines of verse forming a unit of a poem |
| Couplet | a stanza consisting of two successive lines of verse |
| Quatrain | a stanza of four lines |
| Octave | a rhythmic group of eight lines of verse |
| Conflict | opposition in a work of drama or fiction between characters or forces (especially an opposition that motivates the development of the plot) |
| Man vs. Man | When the conflict is between TWO CHARACTERS; external. |
| Man vs. Himself | a character has trouble making a decision about a problem or a struggle |
| Man vs. Society | the main conflict is against a community or whole way of life |
| Man vs. Nature | conflict with forces of nature. It tests the limits of a person's strength and will to livel. |
| Repitition | sounds, words, phrases, lines or stanzaz are repeated for emphasis |
| Alliteration | use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable in a line of verse |
| Allegory | an expressive style that uses fictional characters and events to describe some subject by suggestive resemblances |
| Point of View | the perspective from which a story is told |
| First Person POV | told from the narrator's point of view, using "I" |
| Third Person POV | Point of view in which the narrator is outside of the story - an observer |
| Limited Narrator | a narrator who presents the story as it is seen and understood by a single character and restricts information to what is seen, heard, thought, or felt by that one character |
| Omniscient Narrator | a narrator who is able to know, see, and tell all, including the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters |
| Ambiguity | The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage. |
| Meter | A regular pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables in a line or lines of poetry |
| Foot | A foot is the basis of meter: that is, the regular unit of rhythm which, when repeated, makes up a verse |
| Free verse | unrhymed verse without a consistent metrical pattern |
| Flashback | a transition (in literary or theatrical works or films) to an earlier event or scene that interrupts the normal chronological development of the story |
| Assonance | the repetition of similar vowels in the stressed syllables of successive words |
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