| A | B |
|---|
| allusion | a reference to a well-known fictional, mythological (Greek and Roman gods), or historical person, place, or event, outside the story |
| flat characters | an undeveloped, simple character that shows only one personality trait |
| inference | an arrived understanding or conclusion through deduction from evidence |
| thesis | a principal focused of an essay (one sentence that tells what the essay is all about) |
| paradox | a self-contradictory (you mean the opposite of what you are saying) that may state a truth |
| simile | a comparison between two things in which word of comparison such as "like" or "as" is used (used mainly in poetry) |
| climax | the crisis or "turning point" in a play or story |
| understatement | the representation of something as less than it really is for ironic effect |
| irony | a term for situations and for written and spoken observations that suggest some sort of incongruity or discrepancy (something is missing) between appearance an reality |
| pathos | a feeling or sympathetic pity; establishing and meeting the needs of your audience |
| juxtaposition | side by side place of sentences or ideas to bring about desired effect |
| assonance | the representation of similar stressed vowel souns within words and nearby sentences and words |
| protagonist | usually the central or leading character |
| denotation | the literal, straight frorward definition of aq word that comes closest to the actual for which the word stands for |
| foreshadowing | suggestions of what will come late in the story, novel, or play by means of hints or by showing events of a similar nature |
| motif | a recurring idea that is woven like a design into a fabric literary work |
| tragedy | a form of literature that depicts the downfall of the leading charater whose, despite its tradgic end, represents something significant. They are often known as "tradgic heros" |
| representation | the use of any element, such as a sound, work, clause, phrase or sentence, more than once |
| style | manner of writing rather than content (how rather than what is said); an author's characteristics and ways of writing, which determine by his choice of words sentences, and the relationship of the sentences to each |
| antagonist | the character or force in opposition to the protagonist |
| cliché | a strikingly worded expression that is worn out of two much use |
| situational irony | situations in which there is a discrepancy between what the reader expects or presumes to be appropriate and what actually occurs |
| sarcasm | a cutting remark written or spoken designed to make fun or hurt its object |
| abstraction | a term that is applied to ideas that are philosophical and emotional, not concrete or tangible, yet the idea comes from experience |
| diction | the word chosen and usuage in a work of literature |
| onomatopoeia | use of words that imitate the sounds they describe |
| point of view | the perspective of which a story or novel is told; a work of fiction may use a first person point of view told by one of the characters or it may be told from a third person point of view |
| flashback | dramatic device where the author interrupts the main action of a story to present an incident that occured at an earlier time |
| motive | the reasons, either revealed or hidden, for a character acting as he/she does |
| symbolism | something specific standing for a concept or an idea; a literary symbol, for example, may be qa thing or an action, and is so used that it becomes highly suggestive |
| allegory | a story in which a Character and their actions represent general truths about human conduct |
| analogy | exploring a topic by explaining it in terms of another seemingly unlike but more commonplace and less complicated - it explains a metaphor. |
| characterization | the sort of personality aq character displays - also the means by which the author reveals these characteristics |
| comparison | an examination designed to expose similarities between two objects or ideas. |
| conflict | a clash of apposing purpose, viewpoints, or forces in a story, novel, and especially in a play |
| ethos | establishing competence, confidence, character, and goodwill with an audience |
| hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration used to produce heightened dramatic affects or ironic effects |
| oxymoron | a figure of speech that infuses two contradictory or opposing ideas to make perfect sense |
| setting | the place and time of a story, poem, novel, or play |
| theme | the understanding of an idea or ideas of a literary work |
| apostrophe | The speaker is addressing an absent person, the dead, or an inanimate object |
| comparison | an examination designed to expose similarities between two things, or ideas |
| conflict | a clash of opposing purpose, viewpoints or forces in a story, a novel, and especially in a play; it causes tension or suspense and can be internal or external |
| contrast | a device where two objects or ideas are put in opposition to one another to show and emphasis the differences between them |
| humor | a conjunction of incongruous (opposite) situations or images in a surprising manner that evokes amusement or laughter; humor can range from lighthearted to harmless to critical and sarcastic - however, "pure humor" does not contain criticism but comes mainly from surprises |
| mood | (sometimes referred to as Atmosphere) the emotional atmosphere experienced by the reader of a literary work; the author provides the mood through choice of words, by the events in the literary work, or by the physical setting |
| persausion | type of writing (rhetoric) whose main purpose is to convince the audience to think, act, or feel a certain way; it involves appealing to reason (Logos), to emotion (pathos). and/or to a sense ethics (ethos) |
| plot | the structure of what occurs in the story (exposition, raising action, climax, falling action, resolution) |
| metaphor | a figure of speech that suggests an resemblance between two different things without using words of comparison (not using "like" or "as") |
| rhythm | the patterns of sounds and pauses that are a feature of poetry, prose (novels and short stories), and ordinary speech |
| alliteration | the repetition of the same constant sound at the beginning of words in a sentence or line of poetry - example: thundering thoughts wings wildly |
| ambiguity | either a faculty or unclear expression or a poetic device which deliberately uses a word or expression to indicate two or more distinct references, attitudes or feelings. |
| static character | a character who remains in his or her beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, personality |
| subjective | personal; closely connected to an author's feelings, attitudes, prejudices, and personal reactions. |
| synedoche | a form of metonymy (the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant; for example: suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing) in which a part is made to stand for the whole or a whole for the part - example- The U.S. won three gold metals. (instead of: The members of the U.S. boxing team won three gold medals.) |
| implicit | suggested or understood without being directly stated |
| imaginary | The words or phrases the summon up the picture in the mind |
| verbal irony | when the speaker means the opposite of what he or she literarily says |
| dramatic irony | a situation where a character, or narrator, unconsciously reveals to the character and to the audience or reader some knowledge contrary to the impressions he or she wishes to make - a situation in which the character, or narrator, acts and reacts in ignorance of some vital knowledge that other characters and the audience ot reader are aware of. |
| meter | the regular pattern of accented and unaccented syllable |
| lambic | style of poetic feet that has one unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable |
| lambic pentameter | most common in English verse - it is five (penta) feet (meter) of one unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable |
| blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameric |
| free verse | petry without a fixed meter |
| personification | giving human characteristics to inanimate objects or ideas |
| tone | the attitude of the author as it is revealed through his/her written words |
| satire | making a subject appeal ridiculous bu evoking attitudes of amusement, contempt, indignation, or scorn to "correct" human vice or folly |
| antithesis | strong contrast shown through the juxtaposition of opposing words, phrases, clauses, sentences, or ideas |
| aside | a remark made by one of the characters in the presence of others but assumed not to be heard by them (something said directly to the audience) |
| assertion | a statement that is debatable as opposed to fact - sometimes it is explicitly stated while sometimes it is implicit |
| concrete terms | terms that represent, or try to evoke images or experiences of specific tangible objects or entities - concrete terms are usually thought of as opposed tp abstractions or generalizations |
| connotation | the emotional associations that surround a word that goes beyond its narrow literal meaning - |
| dynamic characters | a character that grows and changes as a result of the plot - dynamic characters are usually pretagonists |
| figurative language | language that uses nonliteral figures of speech (such as a simile, hyperbole, and metaphor) to convey an idea in an imaginative way |
