Literary Terms
Terms
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- Point of view
- The perspective from which the story is told.
- Conflict
- The struggle between opposing forces.
- Fiction
- Literature that tells about imaginary people, places or events.
- Fact
- A statement that can be proved.
- Theme
- The message about life or human nature that is conveyed by a work of literature.
- Essay
- A short work of non-fiction that deals with one subject.
- Symbol
- A person, place or object that stands for something other than itself.
- Foreshadowing
- A hint about an event that will occur later in the story.
- Act
- A major unit of action in a play.
- Drama
- A form of literature meant to be performed.
- Prose
- Ordinary speech or writing, as distinguished from verse or poetry.
- Personification
- The giving of human qualities to an animal, object or idea.
- Setting
- The time and place of the action.
- Mood
- A feeling that a literary work conveys.
- Opinion
- A statement that expresses a person's feelings.
- Biography
- The true story of a person's life written by a different person.
- Irony
- A contrast between the way things seem and the way they actually are.
- Suspense
- The feeling of growing tension or excitement in a story.
- Fable
- A brief, fictitious story that teaches a lesson about life.
- Dialogue
- The words that characters speak aloud.
- Protagonist
- The leading character about whom the reader is most concerned.
- Metaphor
- The comparison of two things not using the words like or as.
- Scene
- The section of a play that presents events that occur in one setting.
- Narrator
- The teller of a story.
- Nonfiction
- Writing that tells about real people, places or events.
- Character
- Each person, animal, or imaginary creature in a work of literature.
- Plot
- A series of events in a story.
- Simile
- The comparison of two things using the words like or as.
- Antagonist
- The character or force that opposes the main character.
- Climax
- The point of greatest interest in the plot of a story or play.
- Autobiography
- The true story of a person's life written by that person.
- Imagery
- Words and phrases that apply to the reader's senses.
- 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.
- Genre
- A category of literature.