English 10H Literary Terms
Terms
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- Abstract
- Having to do w/ concepts or qualities that cannot be directly seen or touched, such as love, justice, truth, beauty, and liberty.
- Allegory
- A story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas
- Alliteration
- Repetition of the same/similar constant sounds
- Allusion
- Refrence to something from some branch of culture.
- Analogy
- A comparison made between two things to show how they are alike
- Anecdote
- a brief story told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something
- Antagonist
- The opponent who struggles against the hero/protaganist. The villian
- Apostrophe
- A technique by which a writer addresses something that is dead or absent.
- Assonance
- The repetitition of vowel sounds
- Audience
- The people whom the writer is directing his words too
- Autobiography
- An account of a writer's own life.
- Ballad
- A song or poem that tells a story
- Biography
- An account of someone's life by someone else.
- Blank Verse poetry
- Poetry written w/ unrhymed iambic pentameter
- Cadence
- The natural rise and fall of a language as it is normally spoken
- Caesura
- A pause or break within a line of poetry
- Character
- An individual in a story/play
- Static Character
- A character that does not change much during the story
- Dynamic Character
- a character that changes a lot as a result of the story
- Flat Character
- A 1-dimensional character who has only 1 or two personality traits
- Round Character
- A multi-dimensional character who is complex just like real people.
- Cliché
- A word or phrase that has become lifeless because of overuse
- Climax
- The point in a story that creates the greatest intensity.
- Colloquialism
- Expressions that are appropriate for conversation but not for formal writing.
- Concrete
- Having to do w/ objects or qualities that can be percieved by the senses
- Conflict
- The Struggle between opposing forces in a story
- Connotation
- the emotional overtones that have been attached to a phrase in addition to its strict dictionary def.
- Consonance
- the repetition of the same constant sounds on accented syllables
- Couplet
- Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry
- Denotation
- The basic dictionary meaning of a word w/o its associated meanings.
- Denouement
- The conclusion or unraveling of a story
- Dialect
- The way of speaking that is characteristic to a certain people or place.
- Diction
- a speaker/writer's choice of words
- Elegy
- A poem of mourning
- Epic
- A long narrative poem which recounts the deeds of a heroic character
- Euphemism
- A agreeable or less offensive subtitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept
- Exposition
- That part of a plot where the reader is given important background info on the characters. usually the prob. and setting.
- Fable
- a short story told in prose or poetry that teaches a moral
- Figure of Speech
- A device used to produce figurative language often comparing dissimilar things.
- Flashback
- A scene that interrupts the normal chronological sequence to depict something that happened earlier
- Foot
- A metrical unit of poetry
- Foreshadowing
- The use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in the plot
- Free Verse
- no restriction in poetry
- Hyperbole
- gross exageration for effect
- Iamb
- a metrical foot in poetry that has a unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.
- Iambic Pentameter
- A line of poetry that contains 5 iambic feet
- Imagery
- the use of language to evoke a pic of a person, a thing, a place, or an experince.