Literary Terms
Terms
Terms
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- point of view
- the perspective from which the story is told
- fiction
- literature that tells about imaginary people, places or events
- fable
- a brief, fictitious story that teaches a lesson about life
- act
- a major unit of action in a play.
- flashback
- a scene in a work of fiction that interrupts the action to show events that happened earlier. Flashbacks usually provide background information about a character.
- character
- each person, animal, or imaginary creature in a work of literature.
- conflict
- the struggle between opposing forces
- antagonist
- the character or force that opposes the main character
- narrator
- the teller of a story
- opinion
- a statement that expresses a person's feelings
- mood
- a feeling that a literary work conveys
- autobiography
- the true story of a person's life written by that person
- symbol
- a person, place or object that stands for something other than itself
- fact
- a statement that can be proved
- climax
- the point of greatest interest in the plot of a story or play
- nonfiction
- writing that tells about real people, places or events
- theme
- the message about life or human nature that is conveyed by a work of literature.
- drama
- a form of literature meant to be performed
- scene
- the section of a play that presents events that occur in one setting
- simile
- the comparison of two things using the words like or as
- genre
- a category of literature
- prose
- Ordinary speech or writing, as distinguished from verse or poetry
- essay
- a short work of non-fiction that deals with one subject
- metaphor
- the comparison of two things not using the words like or as
- irony
- A contrast between the way things seem and the way they actually are.
- foreshadowing
- a hint about an event that will occur later in the story
- suspense
- the feeling of growing tension or excitement in a story
- protagonist
- the leading character about whom the reader is most concerned
- biography
- the true story of a person's life written by a different person
- personification
- the giving of human qualities to an animal, object or idea
- imagery
- words and phrases that apply to the reader's senses
- dialogue
- the words that characters speak aloud
- plot
- a series of events in a story
- setting
- the time and place of the action