literary vocabulary
Terms
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- falling action
- all action that takes place after the climax.
- conflict
- the struggle between charachters and other characters, forces of nature, or outside forces beyond their control, internal conflict within a character who struggles with moral choices and matters of conscience.
- assonance
- the repetition of vowel sounds in two or more words that do not rhyme.
- foil
- a charachter who, through contrast, reveals the characteristics of another character.
- consonance
- the repetition of a consonance at the end of two or more words.
- denounement
- the falling action or final revelations in the plot.
- sensory imagery
- language that evokes images and triggers memories in the reader of the five senses: sight sound tounch taste and smell
- epithet
- an inscription on a tomb or gravestone
- ellipsis
- three periods (...) that signify the omission of one or more words.
- onomatopoeia
- a figure of speech that uses words to imitate sound
- alliteration
- the repetition of initial consonant or vowel sounds in two or more successive or nearby words.
- epic
- a long narrative poem about the adventures of gods or a hero.
- rising action
- the path of the plot leading to the climax
- climax
- the high point in the plot, after which there is falling action. May coincide with crisis.
- antagonist
- a character, institution, group,or force that is in conflict with the protagonist.
- essay
- a short nonfiction work about a specific subject, essays may be narrative, persuasive, descriptive, expository, or argumentative.
- myth
- a fictional tale about gods or heros, allusions to Greek, Romans, Norse, and Celtic myths are common in english literature
- personification
- a figure of speech that attributes human qualities to an inanimate object
- rhyme
- words with identical sounds but different spellings
- allusion
- a reference to a well known person, place, event, work of art, myth, or religion.
- archetypes
- primordial images and symbols that occur in literature, myth, religion, and folklore.
- metaphor
- a figure of speech in which one thing is said to be another thing
- repetition
- a poetic device that uses the repetition of words, sounds, phrases, or sentences
- analogy
- a comparison of two things that are somewhat alike.
- extended metephor
- a metaphor that is elaboratedon and developed in several phases or sentences.
- pun
- a play on words
- couplet
- a pair of rhyming lines in the same meter.
- figurative language
- the use of figures of speech to express ideas.
- simile
- a figure of speech that compares two things that are not alike, using the words like as or then
- protagonist
- the main charachter
- hyperbole
- a figure of speech that uses exaggeration.
- poetic devices
- words with harmonious sounds including assonance, consonance, alliteration, repetition, and rhyme
- irony
- the opposite of what is expected, a reality different from apperance