Common Literary Terms

Common Literary Terms

1. Allegory: is a narrative in which the characters often stand for abstract concepts. An allegory generally teaches a lesson by means of an interesting story.

2. Alliteration: the repetition at close intervals of consonant sounds for a purpose. For example: wailing in the winter wind

3. Allusion: a reference to something in literature, history, mythology, religious texts, etc., considered common knowledge.

   • Ballad: a narrative poem that was originally meant to be sung. Ballads are generally about ordinary people who have unusual adventures, with a single tragic incident as the central focus. They contain dialogue and repetition, and imply more than they actually tell
     • Epigram: any witty, pointed saying. Originally an epigram meant an inscription, or epitaph usually in verse, on a tomb. Later it came to mean a short poem that compressed meaning and expression in the manner of an inscription.
       • Epigraph: a motto or quotation that appears at the beginning of a book, play, chapter, or poem. Occasionally, an epigraph shows the source for the title of a work. Because the epigraph usually relates to the theme of a piece of literature, it can give the reader insight into the work.
         • Epitaph: the inscription on a tombstone or monument in memory of the person or people buried there. Epitaph also refers to a brief literary piece that sums up the life of a dead person.
           • Imagery: words and phrases that create vivid experiences or a picture for the reader.
       • Irony: a contrast between appearance and actuality: * Verbal irony: a writer says one thing, but means something entirely different. * Situational irony: occurs when something happens that is entirely different from what is expected. * Dramatic irony: occurs when the reader knows information that the characters do not.
     • Literal: A word for word interpretation for what is written or said.

4. Ambiguity: Double or even multiple meaning.

   • Assonance: the repetition at close intervals of vowel sounds for a purpose. For example: mad as a hatter.
     • Catalog: a long list of anything; an inventory used to emphasize quantity or inclusiveness
       • Euphony: A succession of sweetly melodious sounds; the opposite of CACOPHONY. The term is applied to smoothly flowing POETRY or PROSE.
         • Exposition: background information at the beginning of the story, such as setting, characters and conflicts. In a short story the exposition appears in the opening paragraphs; in a novel the exposition is usually part of the first chapter.
           • Fable: a brief tale told to illustrate a moral.
             • Falling Action: events that lead to a resolution after the climax.
               • Figurative Language: language employing figures of speech; language that cannot be taken literally or only literally.
                 • Flashback: a scene, or an incident that happened before the beginning of a story, or at an earlier point in the narrative
                   • Foil: a character who provides a striking contrast to another character
                     • Foreshadowing: a writer’s use of hints or clues to indicate events that will occur later in the narrative.
                       • Hyperbole: an exaggeration for emphasis or humorous effect.
                         • Paradox: a statement or situation containing obvious contradictions, but is nevertheless true.
         • Mood: the feeling, or atmosphere, that a writer creates for the reader. Connotative words, sensory images, and figurative language contribute to the mood of a selection, as do the sound and rhythm of the language.
           • Motif: A unifying element in an artistic work, especially any recurrent image, symbol, theme, character type, subject or narrative detail.
       • Metonymy: a figure of speech that substitutes the name of a related object, person, or idea for the subject at hand.

5. Analogy: a point by point comparison between two dissimilar things for the purpose of clarifying the less familiar of the two things.

   • Antagonist: the character or force that opposes the protagonist. (It can be a character, an animal, a force, or a weakness of the character.)
     • Apostrophe: the device, usually in poetry, of calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place, thing, or personified abstraction either to begin a poem or to make a dramatic break in thought somewhere within the poem.
       • Cacophony: Harsh, clashing, or dissonant sounds, often produced by combinations of words that require a clipped, explosive delivery, or words that contain a number of plosive consonants such as b, d, g, k, p, and t; the opposite of EUPHONY
         • Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a comparison or analogy is made between two seemingly unlike things, as in the phrase “evening of life.”

6. Character: the vehicle (person, animal, creation) that moves the story forward. A character may be main or minor, depending on his or her role in the work of literature. While some characters are twodimensional, with one or two dominant traits, a fully developed character has a unique complex of traits. A) dynamic characters often change as the plot unfolds. B) static characters remain the same.

7. Characterization: refers to the techniques employed by writers to develop characters. 1) The writer may use physical description. 2) Dialogue spoken by the character and by other characters reveals character traits. 3) A character’s action may be a means of characterization. 4) The reactions of another character may also be revealing. 5) A character’s thoughts arid feelings are also a means of characterization.

8. Climax: the point at which the conflict of the story begins to reach a turning point and begins to be resolved

   • Narrator: the person from whose point of view events are conveyed. First person: the narrator is a character in the story, uses the pronoun “I.” The first person narrator does not have to be the main character in the story.  Third person: is indicated by the pronouns he, she and they. The third person narrator is not a participant in the action and thus maintains a certain distance from the characters. A) In third person omniscient point of view, the narrator is all-knowing about the thoughts and feelings of the characters. B) The third person limited point of view deals with a writer presenting events as experienced by only one character. This type of narrator does not have full knowledge of situations, past or future events. C) In third person objective the story conveys only the external details of the characters—never their thoughts or inner motivations.

9. Conceit: an elaborate figure of speech comparing two very dissimilar things.

10. Conflict: the struggle between two opposing forces that is the basis of the plot. 1) internal conflict character struggling with him/her self, 2) external conflicts – character struggling with forces outside of him/her self. For example. Nature, god, society, another person, technology, etc

11. Connotation: the associations, images, or impressions carried by a word, as opposed to the word’s literal meaning.

12. Consonance: the close repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after differing vowel sounds.

13. Convention: In general, an accepted way of doing things

14. Denotation: the precise, literal meaning of a word, without emotional associations or overtones

    • Diction: word choice
      • Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which two contradictory words or phrases are combined in a single expression, giving the effect of a condensed paradox: “wise fool,” “cruel kindness.”

15. Denouement: the final unraveling or outcome of the plot in drama or fiction during which the complications and conflicts of the plot are resolved.

    • Enjambment: the carrying of sense and grammatical structure in a poem beyond the end of one line, COUPLET, or STANZA and into the next.
      • Onomatopoeia. The formation or use of words. Such as: buzz, or cuckoo, whose meaning is suggested by the sound of the word itself. (boom, click, plop)