- Alliteration: The repition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually beginning of a word or stressed syllables: "descending dew drops"; luscious lemons." Alliteration is based on the sounds of letters rather than the spelling of words for example, "keen" and "car" alliterate, but "car" and "cite" do not. Used sparingly, alliteration can intensify ideas by emphasizing key words, but when used too self-consciously it can be distracting, even ridiculous.
- Allusion: A brief reference to a person, place, event or idea in history or literature. Allusions conjure up biblical authority, scenes from Shakespear's plays, historic figures, wars, great love stories and everything else that might benrich an author's work.
- Ambiguity: Allow for two or more simultaneous interperations of a word or phase action or situation, all of which can be supported by the context of a work. Deliberate ambiguity can contribute to the effectiveness and richness of a work. However, unintentional ambiguity obscures meaning and can confuse.
- Antagonist: The character, force or collection of forces that opposes the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story.
- Antihero: A protagonist that has the opposite traits of the traditional hero. When they learn, they learn that the world is devoid of God and absolute values.
- Apostrophe: An address to an absent person or soemthing that is inable to comprehend. They often provide oppurtunity for thoughts to be aloud.
- Assonance: Repition of internal vowels. It is a strong means of emphasizing words.
- Catharsis: Describes the release of pity and fear by an audience at the end of a tragedy. Aristole has discussed it's importance through poetry. Meaning "purgation". The audience faces the misfortunes of the protagonist, which elicit pity and compassion. The audience also confronts the failure of the protagionist, thus receiving a frightening reminder of human limitations and failures of the protagonist. These negative emotions are purged because of the tragic protagonist's suffering is an affirmation of human values, rather than a denial.
- Character: (Characterization): A being presented in dramatic or narravtive work, and the characterization is the process which a writer makes that character seem real to the audience.
- Cliché: An idea or expression that has become tired and trite from overuse, it's freshness and clarity have worn off. They often anesthetize readers and are usually a sign of poor writing.
- Colloquial: Refers to a type of informal casual, conversational language.
- Controlling Metaphor: Runs throughout an entire work and determines form or nature.
- Dialogue: The verbal exchanges between characters. Enhance the reality of the characters.
- Dramatic Irony: Difference between the characters perception of truth and the readers.
- End Rhyme: Same sounds occuring at the end of lines.
- Enjambment: (poetry) a line ends, but continues to the next without pause.
- Flat character: Embodies one or two traits that can be a breif summary. Are accessible to readers. Embody stereotypes.
- Foreshadowing: Verbal and dramatic hints as to what will come later in the story.
- Hamartia: Error that brings about misfortune for the protagonist. May be internal weakness or a mistake of the character because of external control.
- Hero/Heroine: (Another name is protagonist): the central character for which the audiences empathy is targeted.
- Iambic Pentameter: A metrical pattern used in poetry which consists of five iambic feet per line. (An iamb, or iambic foot, consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable).
- Internal Rhyme: Reptitions of sounds occuring within a line.
- Irony: Device that uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal reality different from what appears to be true.
- Metaphor: Makes comparisson between to unlike things. Life is a "breif candle" (Macbeth). Can transform anything to anything. An implied metaphor is more subtle; the terms being compared are not specifically explained.
- Metonymy: Something is substituted for something else closely related to it. "The silver screen," can be the movies.
- Narrator: The voice of the person telling the story. Typically the first-person represents the point of view of only one character. The reader is restricted by this characters interpretation of events.
- Omniscient Narrator: An all knowing narrator through time and place as no human being in life. Can tell the feelings of characters as well as actions.
- Onomatopoeia: The use of words in which the sense is suggested by the sound of the word.
- Oxymoron: A condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used together, as in "sweet sorrow," or "original copy."
- Paradox: Statements seems to contradict then turns out to make sense. Useful in poetry because it grasps the attention of the reader.
- Parody: A humorous imitation of another, usually serious, work. It can take any fixed or open form, because parodists imitate the tone, language and shape of the original form in order to deflate the subject matter, making the original work seem absurd.
- Persona: A mask created by, but distinct from the writer to tell the story or poem (is not a character).
- Personification: A form of metaphor in which human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things. Personification offers the writer a way to give the world life and motion by assigning familiar human behaviours and emotions to animals, inanimate objects and abstract ideas.
- Point of View: Refers to who tells a story and how it is told. Shaped by authors point of view.
- Point of view category 1: Third person, does not participate in the action they speak of; omniscent.
- Point of view category 2: First person/second person.
- Protagonist: Engages readers empathy and interest.
- Rhyme: Similar or identical sound in the accented syllables of two or more word.
- Rhythm: Regualar repetition of a beat or stress. In poetry the rhythm may be so regular that it can be measured. In prose the rise and fall on emphasis and accent are less regular.
- Round characters: More complex than flat characters, some internal conflicts will be typical to real people. Are described by showing (events and conversation with other characters) and telling (evaluates the character for the reader).
- Satire: The literary art of ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it. The object of satire is usually some human frailty; people; institutions, ideas and things are all fair game for satirists. Satire evokes attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn or indignation toward its faulty subject in the hope of somehow improving it. See also Irony and Parody.
- Situational Irony: Incongruity between what is expected to happen and what actually happens due to forces beyond human control or comprehension.
- Static character: Remains the same throughout the entire story, and knowledge of them does not grow.
- Style: The distinctive and unique manner in which a writer arranges words to achieve particular effects. Style essentially combines the idea to be expressed with the individuality of the author. These arrangements include individual word chocies as well as matter such as the length of sentences, their structure, tone and the use of irony.
- Synecdoche: Part of something is used to signify the whole. e.g. ten ships can be called "ten sails."
- Tone: The authors implicit attitude toward the reader or the people, places and events in a work as revealed by the elements of the authors style. Tone may be characterized as serious, ironic, sad or happy, private or public.
- Tragic Irony: Dramatic Irony found in tragedies.
- Unreliable Narrator: Their interpretataion of events is different from the authors.
- Verbal Irony: A figure of speech that occurs when a person says one thing but means another.
Literary Terms