| A | B |
|---|
| farce | a light, dramatic composition characterized by broad satirical comedy and a highly improbable plot |
| figurative language | language that contains figures of speech such as similes and metaphors in order to create associations that are imaginative rather than literal |
| figures of speech | expressions such as similes, metaphors, and personifications that make imaginative, rather than literal, comparisons or associations |
| foil | a character who, by contrast, highlights the characteristics of another character |
| folklore | traditional stories, songs, dances, and customs that are preserved among a people |
| foot | the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables that makes up the basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry |
| foreshadowing | the use of a hint or clue to suggest a larger event that occurs later in the work |
| free verse | poetry that is written without a regular meter, usually without rhyme |
| genre | a type of literary work, such as a novel or poem; there are also subgenres, such as science fiction novel and sonnet |
| gothic | referring to a type of novel that emerged in the eighteenth century that uses mystery, suspense, and sensations and supernatural occurrences to evoke terror |
| hubris | the excessive pride or ambition that leads a tragic hero to disregard warnings of impending doom, eventually causing his or her downfall |
| humor | anything that causes laughter or amusement; up until the end of the Renaissance, humor meant a person's temperament |
| first-person narration/first-person point of view | a literary style in which the narrator tells the story from his/her point of view and refers to him/herself as "I"; narrator may be an active participant in the story or just an observer |
| formal | following established rules or conventions of writing |
| free indirect discourse/third-person limited point of view | a literary style in which the narrator conveys a character's inner thoughts while discussing these thoughts in the third person, using proper names and the third-person pronouns "he," "she," "it," and "they" |
| hamartia (tragic flaw) | a tragic or fatal character flaw that causes the downfall of a person of high status |
| hero/heroine | the principal character in a literary work or narrative |
| hypothetical | involving a hypothesis (an assumption granted for the sake of argument) |
| hyperbole | an overstatement or exaggeration |
| flashback | interruption in the present action of the plot to show events that happened at an earlier time |
| fantasy | imaginative fiction featuring especially strange settings and grotesque characters; things happen that cannot happen in real life |
