| A | B |
|---|
| aim | a writer's purpose, or goal |
| allusion | a rhetorical technique in which reference is made to a person, event, object, or work from history or literature. |
| character | a person (or sometimes an animal) who figures in the action of a literary work. |
| dialect | a version of a language spoken by the people of a particular place, time, or social group. |
| fable | a brief story, often with animal characters, told to express a moral |
| fairy tale | a story that deals with mischievous spirits and other supernatural occurrences, often in medieval settings |
| folk song | a traditional or composed song typically made up of stanzas, a refrain, and a simple melody |
| folk tale | a brief story passed by word of mouth from generation to generation. |
| foreshadowing | the act of presenting materials that hint events to occur later in the story |
| irony | the diffference between appearance and reality |
| irony of situation | irony in which an event occurs that violates the expectations of the characters, the reader, or the audience |
| legend | a story coming down from the past, often based on real events or characters from older times |
| moral | a practical or moral lesson, ususally relating to the principles of right and wrong, to be drawn from a story or other work of literature |
| motif | any element that recurs in one or more works of literature or art |
| myth | a story that explains objects or events in the natural world as resulting from the action of some supernatural force or entity, most often a god |
| parable | a very brief story told to teach a moral lesson |
| personification | a figure of speech in which an idea, animal, or thing is described as if it were a person |
| repetition | the writer's conscious reuse of sound, word, phrase, sentence or other element |
| suspension of disbelief | the act by which the reader willingly sets aside his or her skepticism in order to participate imaginatively in the work being read |
| symbol | a thing that stands for or represents both itself and something else |
