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Lit Terms

Terms in this set (39)

ALLUSION.
A passing reference to historical or fictional characters, places, or events, or to other works that the writer assumes the reader will recognize.
ANALOGY.
A comparison of similar things, often for the purpose of using something familiar to explain something unfamiliar.
ANTAGONIST.
Usually, the character in fiction or drama who stands in direct opposition to or in conflict with the central character. may be a group of people, some force in nature, or some aspect of the central character's personality or psyche.
ANTIHERO.
A central character, or protagonist, who lacks traditional heroic qualities and virtues (such as idealism, courage, and steadfastness). may be comic, antisocial, inept, or even pathetic, while retaining the sympathy of the reader.
ARCHETYPE.
A pattern or model of an action (such as lamenting the dead), a character type (rebellious youth), or an image (paradise as a garden) that recurs consistently enough in life and literature to be considered universal.
ATMOSPHERE.
The pervasive mood or tone of a literary work— gloom, foreboding, joyful expectation—often created and sustained by the author's treatment of landscape or setting and use of symbolism.
BILDUNGSROMAN.
A German word that, translated literally, means "development novel." The term is applied to a novel that traces the early education of its hero from youth to experience.
CARICATURE.
Descriptive writing that exaggerates specific features of appearance or personality, usually for comic effect; also, a character developed in such a manner. sometimes labeled by their names, such as Lydia Languish.
COMPLICATION.
An entangling of affairs early in the development of the plot of a play or narrative that must be unraveled in the resolution at the end.
CONTEXT.
The part of a work of literature that precedes or follows a given word, phrase, or passage.
DENOUEMENT
(RESOLUTION). Literally, unraveling, as of a knot. During the falling action, the final unwinding or resolving of the conflicts and complications in the plot of fiction or drama.
DICTION.
Word choice. Judged on clarity and appropriateness.
DRAMATIC IRONY
Involves the audience's being aware of a character's real situation before the character is. A situation in a play or other fiction in which a character unwittingly makes a remark that the audience is intended to understand as ironic, or in contradiction to the full truth.
EPIPHANY.
A moment of revelation or profound insight.
FLASHBACK.
In fiction and film, a way of presenting scenes or incidents that took place before the opening scene.
EXPOSITION
(rising action). In drama or other fiction, the immediate or gradual revelation to the audience of the setting, relationship between characters, and other background information needed for understanding the plot. That part of a dramatic plot that leads through a series of events of increasing interest and power to the climax, or turning point. The rising action begins with an inciting moment, an action or event that sets a conflict of opposing forces into motion, and moves through complication, an entangling of the affairs of the characters in conflict, toward the climax, the major crisis that brings about a change in the fortunes of the protagonist.
FOIL.
Usually, a character who, by contrast, points out the qualities or characteristics of another character. For example, a foolish character sets a wise character's wisdom in a stronger light.
FORESHADOWING.
In literature, the technique of giving hints or clues that suggest or prepare for events that occur later in a work. A somber, forbidding atmosphere can foreshadow impending tragedy. Seemingly incidental occurrences can prefigure a climactic event. Foreshadowing creates suspense, prepares the reader for what happens next, and makes final outcomes seem inevitable.
FORM.
The organizing principle that shapes a work of literature.
IMAGE/RY.
Language referring to something that can be perceived through one or more of the senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, the sense of motion, or the sense of heat or cold. An image may simply name something; it may describe it. It may be a metaphor, simile, or personification. An image can also be a symbol. Imagery appeals to the senses of taste, smell, hearing, and touch, and to internal feelings, as well as to the sense of sight. It evokes a complex of emotional suggestions and communicates mood, tone, and meaning. It can be both figurative and literal.
INFERENCE.
A general conclusion drawn from particulars. For example, understanding literary characters usually involves inferring what kind of people they are or what their moods are from the particular details of what they do and say and of what others say about them.
INTERIOR
MONOLOGUE (stream of consciousness). The presentation to the reader of the flow of a character's inner emotional experience, or stream of consciousness, at a particular moment. Masters of technique have managed to capture the swirl of associations and images that characterizes human consciousness.
VERBAL IRONY
a figure of speech in which there is a contrast between what is said and what is actually meant.
SITUATIONAL IRONY
refers to the contrast between what is intended or expected and what actually occurs.
LOCAL COLOR
The use in writing of the physical setting, dialect, customs, and attitudes that typify a particular region.
MOOD.
The prevailing emotional attitude in a literary work or in part of a work, for example, regret, hopefulness, bitterness. often used interchangeably with tone, although the attempt has been made to define mood as the author's attitude toward the subject or theme and tone as the author's attitude toward the reader. This distinction is most evident in works of satire
MOTIF.
In literature, a recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation that appears in various works or throughout the same work. When applied to several different works, it refers to a recurrent theme, such as the carpe diem theme—the idea that life is short, time is fleeting, and one must make the most of the present moment. When applied to a single work, it (sometimes leitmotif) refers to any repetition that tends to unify the work by bringing to mind its earlier occurrences and the impressions that surround them. An example is the periodic striking of clocks in Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway.
MOTIVATION.
The psychological and moral impulses and external circumstances that cause a literary character to act, think, or feel a certain way.
OMNISCIENT POINT OF VIEW
Here the narrator, standing outside the story, assumes a godlike persona, moving about freely in time and space, revealing the thoughts and motives of all the characters, knowing the present, past, and future, and (sometimes) commenting on or interpreting the actions of the characters. This narrator may report incidents the characters have not witnessed themselves and may make clear the theme of the story in whatever ways he or she desires.
LIMITED OMNISCIENT POINT OF VIEW
Focuses on the thoughts of a single character and presents the other characters only externally. This more restricted approach surrenders the privileges of seeing and knowing everything and typically follows one character throughout the story, presenting only those incidents in which that character is involved.
OBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW
An even more restricted type of third-person limited omniscience that prohibits any subjective commentary by the author. the author avoiding entering the minds of any characters.
PARODY.
A composition that ridicules another composition by imitating and exaggerating aspects of its content, structure, and style, accomplishing in words what the caricature achieves in drawing.
PROTAGONIST.
The principal and central character of a novel, short story, play, or other literary work.
SATIRE.
A term used to describe any form of literature that blends ironic humor and wit with criticism for the purpose of ridiculing folly, vice, stupidity—the whole range of human foibles and frailties—in individuals and institutions. It differs from invective, direct denunciation or name-calling, and mere insult in the sharp wit of its presentation.
STRUCTURE.
The design or arrangement of the parts of a work of literature to form a unified whole; the planned framework or "architecture" of a literary work.
SYNTAX.
The arrangement and grammatical relation of words, phrases, and clauses in sentences; the ordering of words into phrases, clauses and sentences.
THEME.
In literature, the central or dominating idea, the "message," implicit in a work. It is an abstract concept indirectly expressed through recurrent images, actions, characters, and symbols, and must be inferred by the reader or spectator. a comment, observation, or insight about the subject.
TONE.
The reflection in a work of the author's attitude toward his or her subject, characters, and readers.
VERISIMILITUDE
(realism). Generally, accuracy in the portrayal of life or reality. The appearance of truth, actuality, or reality; what seems to be true in fiction.
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