Literary Terms

Allegory: a tale in prose or verse in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities; a story that uses symbols to make a point

Alliteration: the repetition of similar initial sounds, usually consonants, in a group of words

Allusion: a reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects a reader to recognize

Ambiguity: something uncertain as to interpretation

Anachronism: something that shows up in the wrong place or the wrong time

Analogy: a comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them

Analysis: a method in which a work or idea is separated into its parts, and those parts given rigorous and detailed scrutiny

Anaphora: a device or repetition in which a word or words are repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences

Anecdote: a very short story used to illustrate a point

Antagonist: a person or force opposing the protagonist in a drama or narrative

Antithesis: a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness

Aphorism: a terse, pointed statement expressing some wise or clever observation about life

Apologia: a defense or justification for some doctrine, piece of writing, cause, or action; also apology

Apostrophe: a figure of speech in which an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something inanimate or nonhuman is addressed directly

Argument(ation): the process of convincing a reader by proving either the truth or the falsity of an idea or proposition; also, the thesis or proposition itself

Assumption: the act of supposing, or taking for granted that a thing is true

Audience: the intended listener or listeners

Characterization: the means by which a writer reveals a character’s personality

Chiasmus: a reversal in the order off words so that the second half of a statement balances the first half in inverted word order

Circumlocution: a roundabout or evasive speech or writing, in which many words are used but a few would have served

Classicism: art, literature, and music reflecting the principles of ancient Greece and Rome: tradition, reason, clarity, order, and balance

Cliché: a phrase or situation overused within society

Climax: the decisive point in a narrative or drama; the pint of greatest intensity or interest at which plot question is answered or resolved

Colloquialism: folksy speech, slang words or phrases usually used in informal conversation

Comedy: originally a nondramatic literary piece of work that was marked by a happy ending; now a term to describe a ludicrous, farcical, or amusing event designed provide enjoyment or produce smiles and laughter

Conflict: struggle or problem in a story causing tension

Connotation: implicit meaning, going beyond dictionary definition

Contrast: a rhetorical device by which one element (idea or object) is thrown into opposition to another for the sake of emphasis or clarity

Denotation: plain dictionary definition

Denouement (pronounced day-new-mahn): loose ends tied up in a story after the climax, closure, and conclusion

Dialect: the language of a particular district, class or group of persons; the sounds, grammar, and diction employed by people distinguished from others

Dialectics: formal debates usually over the nature of truth

Dichotomy: split or break between two opposing things

Diction: the style of speaking or writing as reflected in the choice and use of words

Didactic: having to do with the transmission of information; education

Dogmatic: rigid in beliefs and principles

Elegy: a mournful, melancholy poem, especially a funeral song or lament for the dead, sometimes contains general reflections on death, often with a rural or pastoral setting

Epic: a long narrative poem unified by a hero who reflects the customs, mores, and aspirations of his nation of race as he makes his way through legendary and historic exploits, usually over a long period of time (definition bordering on circumlocution)

Epigram: witty aphorism

Epitaph: any brief inscription in prose or verse on a tombstone; a short formal poem of commemoration often a credo written by the person who wishes it to be on his tombstone

Epithet: a short, descriptive name or phrase that  may insult someone’s character, characteristics

Euphemism: the use of an indirect, mild or vague word or expression for one thought to be coarse, offensive, or blunt

Evocative (evocation): a calling forth of memories and sensations; the suggestion or production through artistry and imagination of a sense of reality

Exposition: beginning of a story that sets forth facts, ideas, and/or characters, in a detailed explanation

Expressionism: movement in art, literature, and music consisting of unrealistic   representation of an inner idea or feeling(s)

Fable: a short, simple story, usually with animals as characters, designed to teach a moral truth

Fallacy: from Latin word “to deceive”, a false or misleading notion, belief, or argument; any kind of erroneous reasoning that makes arguments unsound

Falling Action: part of the narrative or drama after the climax

Farce: a boisterous comedy involving ludicrous action and dialogue

Figurative Language: apt and imaginative language characterized by figures of speech (such as metaphor and simile)

Flashback: a narrative device that flashes back to prior events

Foil: a person or thing that, by contrast, makes another seem better or more prominent

Folk Tale: story passed on by word of mouth

Foreshadowing: in fiction and drama, a device to prepare the reader for the outcome of the action; “planning” to make the outcome convincing, though not to give it away

Free Verse: verse without conventional metrical pattern, with irregular pattern or no rhyme

Genre: a category or class of artistic endeavor having a particular form, technique, or content

Gothic Tale: a style in literature characterized by gloomy settings, violent or grotesque action, and a mood of decay, degeneration, and decadence

Hyperbole: an exaggerated statement often used as a figure of speech or to prove a point

Imagery: figures of speech or vivid description, conveying images through any of the senses

Implication: a meaning or understanding that is to be arrive at by the reader but that is not fully and explicitly stated by the author

Incongruity: the deliberate joining of opposites or of elements that are not appropriate to each other

Inference: a judgment or conclusion based on evidence presented; the forming of an opinion which possesses some degree of probability according to facts already available

Irony: a contrast or incongruity between what is said and what is meant, or what is expected to happen and what actually happens, or what is thought to be happening and what is actually happening

Interior Monologue: a form of writing which represents the inner thoughts of a character; the recording of the internal, emotional experience(s) of an individual; generally the reader is given the impression of overhearing the interior monologue

Inversion: words out of order for emphasis

Juxtaposition: the intentional placement of a word, phrase, sentences of paragraph to contrast with another nearby

Lyric: a poem having musical form and quality; a short outburst of the author’s innermost thoughts and feelings

Magic(al) Realism: a genre developed in Latin America which juxtaposes the everyday  with the marvelous or magical

Metaphor(extended, controlling, and mixed): an analogy that compare two different things imaginatively

Extended: a metaphor that is extended or developed as far as the writer wants to take it

Controlling: a metaphor that runs throughout the piece of work

    Mixed: a metaphor that ineffectively blends two or more analogies

Metonymy: literally “name changing” a device of figurative language in which the name of an attribute or associated thing is substituted for the usual name of a thing

Mode of Discourse: argument (persuasion), narration, description, and exposition

Modernism: literary movement characterized by stylistic experimentation, rejection of tradition, interest in symbolism and psychology

Monologue: an extended speech by a character in a play, short story, novel, or narrative poem

Mood: the predominating atmosphere evoked by a literary piece

Motif: a recurring feature (name, image, or phrase) in a piece of literature

Myth: a story, often about immortals, and sometimes connected with religious rituals, that attempts to give meaning to the mysteries of the world

Narrative: a story or description of events

Narrator: one who narrates, or tells, a story

Naturalism: extreme form of realism

Novelette/Novella: short story; short prose narrative, often satirical

Omniscient Point of View: knowing all things, usually the third person

Onomatopoeia: use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its meaning

Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which two contradicting words or phrases are combined to produce a rhetorical effect by means of a concise paradox

Pacing: rate of movement; tempo

Parable: a story designed to convey some religious principle, moral lesson, or general truth

Paradox: a statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really containing a possible truth; an opinion contrary to generally accepted ideas

Parallelism: the principle in sentence structure that states elements of equal function should have equal form

Parody: an imitation of mimicking of a composition or of the style of a well-known artist

Pathos: the ability in literature to call forth feelings of pity, compassion, and/or sadness

Pedantry: a display of learning for its own sake

Personification: a figure of speech attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract ideas

Plot: a plan or scheme to accomplish a purpose

Poignant: eliciting sorrow or sentiment

Point of View: the attitude unifying any oral or written argumentation; in description, the physical point from which the observer views what he is describing

Postmodernism: literature characterized by experimentation, irony, nontraditional forms, multiple meanings, playfulness and a blurred boundary between real and imaginary

Prose: the ordinary form of spoken and written language; language that does not have a regular rhyme pattern

Protagonist: the central character in a work of fiction; opposes antagonist

Pun: play on words; the humorous use of a word emphasizing different meanings or applications

Purpose: the intended result wished by an author

Realism: writing about the ordinary aspects of life in a straightforward manner to reflect life as it actually is

Refrain: a phrase or verse recurring at intervals in a poem or song; chorus

Requiem:  any chant, dirge, hymn, or musical service for the dead

Resolution: point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out; denouement

Restatement: idea repeated for emphasis

Rhetoric: use of language, both written and verbal in order to persuade

Rhetorical Question: question suggesting its own answer or not requiring an answer; used in argument or persuasion

Rising Action: plot build up, caused by conflict and complications, advancement towards climax

Romanticism: movement in western culture beginning in the eighteenth and peaking in the nineteenth century as a revolt against Classicism; imagination was valued over reason and fact

Satire: ridicules or condemns the weakness and wrong doings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general

Scansion: the analysis of verse in terms of meter

Setting: the time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur

Simile: a figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific word of comparison

Soliloquy: an extended speech, usually in a drama, delivered by a character alone on stage

Spiritual: a folk song, usually on a religious theme

Speaker: a narrator, the one speaking

Stereotype: cliché; a simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story

Stream of Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images, as the character experiences them

Structure: the planned framework of a literary selection; its apparent organization

Style:  the manner of putting thoughts into words; a characteristic way of writing or speaking

Subordination: the couching of less important ideas in less important  structures of language

Surrealism: a style in literature and painting that stresses the subconscious or the nonrational aspects of man’s existence characterized by the juxtaposition of the bizarre and the banal

Suspension of Disbelief: suspend not believing in order to enjoy it

Symbol: something which stands for something else, yet has a meaning of its own

Synesthesia: the use of one sense to convey the experience of another sense

Synecdoche: another form of name changing, in which a part stands for the whole

Syntax: the arrangement and grammatical relations of words in a sentence

Theme:  main idea of the story; its message(s)

Thesis: a proposition for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or disproved; the main idea

Tone: the devices used to create the mood and atmosphere of a literary work; the author’s perceived point of view

Tongue in Cheek: a type of humor in which the speaker feigns seriousness; a.k.a. “dry” or “dead pan”

Tragedy: in literature: any composition with a somber theme carried to a disastrous conclusion; a fatal event; protagonist usually is heroic but tragically (fatally) flawed

Understatement: opposite of hyperbole; saying less than you mean for emphasis

Vernacular: everyday speech

Voice: The textual features, such as diction and sentence structures, that convey a writer’s or speaker’s persona

Zeitgeist: the feeling of a particular era in history