| A | B |
|---|
| allusion | a reference to a person, place, poem, event, etc., which is not part of the story, that the author expects the reader will recognize. |
| conflict | the struggle that moves the action forward in a work of literature. |
| man versus man | a struggle where a character struggles against another character |
| man versus himself | a struggle where a character struggles against his/herself |
| man versus nature | a struggle where the character struggles against natrual forces |
| man versus society | a struggle where a character struggles against the controlling force in a community |
| figurative language | words and phrases that have meanings different from their usual ones in order to create a poetic and/or literary effect |
| flashback | a scene that interrupts the ongoing action in a story to show an event that happened earlier |
| foreshadowing | the use of hints or clues in a story to suggest what action is to come |
| frame narative or frame story | a story that has another story or stories within it |
| hero | the central character, usually one who posesses noble qualities such as self-sacrifice, courage, wisdom, etc |
| intrusive narrator | on omniscient narrator, who frequently interrupts the plot with comments on the story, characters, or life in general |
| irony | a perception of inconsistency, sometimes humorous, in which the significance and understanding of a statement is changed by its context |
| dramatic irony | the audience or reader knows more about a character's situation than the character does and know that the character's understanding is incorrect |
| structural irony | the use of a naive hero, whose incorrect preceptions differ from the reader's correct ones |
| verbal irony | a discrepancy between what is said and what is really meant |
| main character | the most important character in the work |
| metafiction | fiction that makes not attempt to disguise itself as factual; fiction that comments on its actually being fiction |
| metaphor | a comparason of two things that are basically dissimilar in which one is desribes in ters of the other |
| motivation | the reasons behind a character's actions |
| personification | a figure of speech in which an object, abstract idea, or animal is given human characteristics |
| plot | the pattern of events in a literary work; what happens in a story |
| repetition | repeating of a word or phrase for stylistic effect |
| sarcasm | the use of harsh words to deride and criticize. Sometimes, ___ is apparent only by the way something is said rather than the actual words that are used |
| satire | using homor to expose something or someone to ridicule |
| setting | when and where the short story, play, poem, or novel takes place |
| symbol | an object, person, or place that has a meaning in itself and that also stands for something larger than itself, usually an idea or concept; some concrete thing which represents an abstraction |
| Theme | the central or dominant idea behind the story; the most important aspect that emerges from how the book treats its subject |
| willing suspension of disbelief | a term coined by Coleridge; the deliberate putting aside of the audience's or reader's critical beliefs in order to accept the unreal word the author creates. |
