| A | B |
|---|
| aesthetics | theory of art and beauty |
| allegory | system of images that refers to a coherent hidden meaning |
| allusion | reference to some event, person, place, artistic work, etc |
| ambiguity | openness to different interpretations |
| canon | body of authentic and significant works |
| connotation | emotional implications and associations of a word |
| convention | established practice in a literary work |
| denotation | basic dictionary meaning of a word |
| diction | literary word choice |
| didactic | work designed to educate |
| discourse | language in actual use within a social context |
| figure of speech | an expression with a special emphasis due to its form or non-literal sense |
| form | structural properties which may be distinguished from the content of a text |
| genre | type, species, or class of composition |
| ideology | comprehensive world view |
| irony | inconsistency between a statement or an event and its context |
| metaphor | figure of speech in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or an expression which normally refers to some other thing, idea, or action |
| metonymy | figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it |
| mimesis | imitation (usually referring to some form of "reality") |
| mode | broad but identifiable literary method, mood, or manner (the satiric mode, the ironic mode, the didactic mode) |
| motif | recurrent image, word, phrase, object, or action |
| novel | extended realistic prose narrative |
| paradox | self-contradictory statement that challenges our habits of thought |
| point of view | position from which the events of a story seem to be observed and presented |
| prose | text not constructed according to a regular rhythmic pattern |
| sign | basic element of communication; includes signifier and signified |
| subjectivity | quality originating and existing in the mind of someone |
| symbol | something that is itself and stands for something else |
| syntax | the order of words in a statement |
| theme | abstract idea that can be derived from the text, either as a topic or induced from the treatment of the subject-matter |
| topos | convention specific to a certain genre |
| trope | figures of speech in which words are used in a sense that differs from their literal meaning |
