Lit. Terms
Terms
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- plot
- the series of events that make up a story
- conflict
- a struggle or clash between opposing characters or forces
- catharsis
- an emotional release which brings about renewal of the self or welcome relief
- monologue
- an extended speech given by one speaker
- antagonist
- an obstacle to the protagonist or character who is involved in the most important conflict with the protagonist
- diction
- a writer's or speaker's choice of words
- hubris
- arrogance; excessive self-pride and self-confidence, especially in reference to Greek tragic heroes whose pride led them to ignore warnings from the gods and thus invite catastrophe
- climax
- the most significant and exciting moement in a plot, a turning point when the outcome is decided one way or another
- epithet
- an adjective or other descriptive phrase that is regularly used to characterize a person, place or thing
- rhythm
- a musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables or by the repetition of other sound patterns
- setting
- the time and place of a story or play
- direct characterization
- the author explains directly what the character is like
- juxtaposition
- the arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in simliar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development
- imagery
- language that appeals to any of the senses
- rising action
- the portion of a story or play in which conflict intensifies, leading to the climax
- character
- a person in a story
- onomatoepoeia
- the use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning
- symbol
- a person, place, thing or event that stands for itself and for something beyond itself
- flat
- a character that; having only one or two traits, is easily described and one-dimensional (like a cardboard figure)
- theme
- the central idea of a literary work
- archetype
- an orginal model or type after which other similar things are patterned; a prototype
- prose
- literary expression not marked by rhyme or metrical regularity
- flashback
- a scene in a movie, play, short story, novel or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to "flash backward" and tell what happened at an earlier time
- rhyme
- generally, sounds repeated through stressed syllables
- comedy
- a story that ends happily
- drama
- a story that is written to be acted out in front of an audience
- tone
- the author's attitude twoard his or her subject, character or audience
- exact rhyme
- repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words that are close together in a poem
- first person narrator
- one of the characters tells the story ("I")
- couplet
- two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme
- third person omniscient
- the narrator knows everything about the characters and various situations
- round
- a realistic character that has many character traits; fully developed; three-dimensional
- personification
- a metaphor in which a non-human thing or quality is talked about as if it were human
- soliloquy
- an unusually long speech in which a character on stage along expresses his or her thoughts
- exposition
- the first part of a fictional story; the part in which characters, setting and their conflict are usually introduced
- allusion
- a reference to a statement, person, place, event or thing well known from literature, history, religion, pop culture, etc.
- narrator
- one who tells a story
- resolution
- the final part of the story where problems/conflicts are resolved and the story is "closed"
- characterization
- the process of revealing the personality of a character in a story
- fiction
- a literary work portraying imaginary characters and events
- blank verse
- poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter
- internal
- person vs. self
- paradox
- a statement that appears contradictory but which my be shown to contain a truth
- foil
- a character that is used to contrast another character
- assonance
- the repetition of similar vowel sounds enclosed in different consonant sounds
- homeric simile
- a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things except that the comparion is extended and explains heroic and epic events in terms of everyday happenings
- irony
- a contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality
- sonnet
- a fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in iambic pentameter, that has a set rhyme scheme
- nonfiction
- prose writing that deals with real people, events and places
- dynamic
- a character who changes in some important way as a result of what happens in the story. change may involve some new knowledge or a different way of behaving or feeling
- tragedy
- a play, novel or other narrative depicting serious events in which the main character comes to an unhappy end
- connotation
- all the meanings, associations or emotions that a word suggests
- essay
- a short peiece of nonfiction prose that examines a single subject
- indirect characterization
- the author shows what the character is like by presenting the character's speech, appearance, inner thoughts and feelings, what others think or say about the character, actions
- drama
- a story that is written to be acted out in front of an audience
- suspense
- feeling of growing uncertainty about the outcome of events (what will "happen next")
- science fiction
- fiction of a highly imaginative or fantastic kind, generally involving some actual or projected scientific phenomenon
- novel
- a long fictional story which uses all the elements of storytelling (plot, character, setting, point of view, theme)
- falling action
- the point in a story or play following the climax in which the intensity of the action or conflict diminishes and leads to the resolution or denouement
- foreshadowing
- clues which hint at events to come in a play or story
- internal rhyme
- rhyme inside (within) a line of poetry, rather than at the end of the line
- poetry
- a kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery designed to appeal to our emotions and imaginations
- dialogue
- lines of a conversation or speech included in a literary work
- metaphor
- a figure of speech that ompares two unlike things in which one thing becomes another thing (or is another thing) without the use of the words like, as, than, or resembles
- mood
- atmosphere; feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage
- situational irony
- the outcome of events or the state of affairs is the opposite of what one would expect
- dramatic irony
- the reader perceives something significant that the character misses
- external
- person vs. person; person vs. society; person vs. nature/environment
- rhyme scheme
- the pattern of rhymes in a poem (AB, AB, CD, CD, etc.)
- genre
- a kind of type of literature
- slant/half/approximate rhyme
- words that do repeat some sounds but do not have the exact chiming sounds
- satire
- writing which ridicules society, a group, a social institution, etc., in order to reveal a weakness
- denotation
- the literal, dictionary definition of a word
- denouement
- the final part of the story where problems/conflicts are not necessarily resolved
- simile
- a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, using a term such as like, as, resembles, or than
- eye rhyme
- words creating visual alikeness without sounding at all alike
- iambic pentameter
- a line of poetry that contains five iambs (units which consist of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one
- epic
- a long story told in poetry relating deeds of a larger-than-life hero who emobodies the values of his society (two types: war & journey)
- protagonist
- the main character, the one who "drives the action"
- alliteration
- the repetition of the same consonant sounds in words that are close together, or teh repetition of consonant sounds that are very similar
- local color
- writing which presents the mannerisms, dress, speech and customs of a particular geographical region
- meter
- a basically regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry
- verbal irony
- words imply the opposite of what they literally mean (sarcasm)
- myth
- story involving fantasy to express ideas about life that cannot be expressed easily in realistic terms
- pun
- a play on the multiple meanings of a word, or two words that sound alike but have different meanings
- third person limited
- the narrator (not a character) focuses on thoughts and feelings of one of the characters
- initial/inciting incident
- the point in a story, play, etc. when conflict is introduced or initiated
- extended metaphor
- a metaphor that is extended or developed, over several lines of writing or throughout an entire poem
- aside
- words spoken by a character in a play to the audience or to another character (words, which supposedly, are not overheard by the others on stage)
- point of view
- the vantage point from which the writer has chosen to tell the story
- consonance
- the repetition of the same consonant sounds before and after changing vowel sounds
- static
- a character who remains the same or changes very little from beginning to end