| A | B |
|---|
| Allegory | a narrative, either in verse or prose, in which characters, actions, and sometimes setting represent abstract concepts apart from the literal meaning. |
| Allusion | a brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art. |
| Analogy | a literal comparison between two items, situations, or ideas that are somewhat alike but unalike in most respects. |
| Antagonist | a character in a story or play who opposes the chief character or protagonist. |
| Atmosphere | the mood of a literary work. |
| Biography | an account of a person's life. |
| Characterization | the method an author uses to acquiant a reader with his or her character. |
| Climax | the decisive point in a story or play when the problem must be resolved in one way or the other. |
| Conflict | the struggle between two opposing forces |
| Denotation | the strict literal meaning of a word. |
| Denouement | the resolution of the plot. |
| Dialect | a speech characteristic to a particular region or class, differeing from the standard language in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical form. |
| Dialogue | the conversation between two or more people in a literary work. |
| Diction | the author's choice of words or phrases in a literary work. |
| Essay | a prose composition that represents a personal point of view. |
| Exposition | the beginning of a work of fiction or play, in which the author sets the atmosphere and tone, explains the setting, introduces the characters, and provides the reader with any other information needed in order to understand the plot. |
| Extended Metaphor | a figure of speech used throughout an entire work or a great part of it. |
| Falling Action | the resolution of a dramatic plot, which takes placcce after the climax. |
| Fiction | a type of literature drawn from the imagination of the author that describes imaginary people and happenings. |
| Figurative Language | language uses in a non-literal way to express a suitable relationship between essentially unlike things. |
| Flashback | an interruption of the narrative to show an episode that happened before a particular point in the story. |
| Foil | a character whose traits are the opposite of another character and who thus points out the strengths or weaknesses of the other character. |
| Foreshadowing | a hint given to the reader of what is to come. |
| Genre | a form or type of literary work. |
| Hero | the central character in a novel, short story, drama, or other works of fiction. |
| Historical Narrative | a nonfiction prose account of real people, places, and events. |
| Hyperbole | a figure of speech involving great exaggeration to create a desire effect. |
| Imagery | the sensory details that provide vividness in a literary anf tends to arouse emotions or feelings in a reader. |
| Inference | a reasonable conclusion about the behavior of a character or the meaning of an event taken from the limited information presented by the author. |
| Irony | the term used to describe a contrast between what appears to be and what really is. |
| Legend | a traditional anonymous story, sometimes of a national or folk hero, which has a basis in fact but which also includes imaginative material. |
| Local Color | the emphasis in fiction on dialect, dress, customs, and traditions of a particular region and on the effect that setting has on character development. |
| Metaphor | a figure of speech involving an implied or stated comparison w/o using like or as. |
| Paradox | a statement that seems to be self-contradictory but which has valid meaning. |
| Personification | a figure of speech in which an animal, object, or idea is described as having human form or characteristics. |
| Plot | a series of happening in a literary work. |
| Point of View | the author's choice of a narrator; the vantage point from which the actions and characters of a story are represented. |
| Protagonist | the leading character in a literary work. |
| Rising Action | the building of tension between opposing characters or forces toward a climax. |
| Satire | the technique that employs wit to ridicule a subject, usually some social institution with the intent of inspiring reform. |
| Setting | the time (of day, season, historical period) and place in which the action of a narrative occurs. |
| Short Story | a fairly short prose narrative that is carefully and tightly constructed. |
| Simile | a figure of speech involving a comparison between two basically unlike things that nontheless have something in common, using like or as. |
| Stereotype | a conventional opinion or belief. |
| Stream of Consciousness | the uneven and illogical flow of a character's thoughts, sensations, memories, and emotional and mental associations without any attempt at explanation. |
| Style | the distinctive handling of language by an author. |
| Symbol | an object or event used in a literary work to represent something other than itself, frequently an abstract idea or concept. |
| Theme | the underlying meaning of a literary work. A theme may be directly stated but more often is implied. |
| Tone | the author's attitude toward his or her subject matter or audience. |
| Suspense | is a feeling that an author creates in the minds of his or her audience (usually curiousity or worry). |
