Common Literay Terms List #1

Question 1

Allegory

Answer 1

A narrative or description having a second meaning beneath the surface one. A story, fictional or nonfictional, in which characters, things, and events represent qualities or concepts. The interaction of these characters, things, events is meant to reveal an abstraction or a truth

Question 2

Alliteration

Answer 2

The repetition at close intervals of initial identical consonant sounds.

Question 3

Allusion

Answer 3

An indirect reference to something with which the reader is expected to be familiar. Allusions are usually literary, historical, biblical, or mythological

Question 4

Ambiguity

Answer 4

An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way.

Question 5

Anachronism

Answer 5

Assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence

Question 6

Analogy

Answer 6

A comparison to a directly parallel case.

Question 7

Anecdote

Answer 7

A brief recounting of a relevant episode. Often inserted into fictional/nonfictional texts as a way of developing a point or injecting humor

Question 8

Angst

Answer 8

A term used in existential criticism to describe both the individual and the collective anxiety-neurosis of the period following WW2.

Question 9

Annotation

Answer 9

Explanatory notes added to a text to explain, cite sources, or give bibliographic data

Question 10

Antithesis

Answer 10

A balancing of 2 opposite or contrasting words, phrases, or clauses

Question 11

Apostrophe

Answer 11

An address to the dead as if living; to the inanimate as if animate; to the absent as of present; to the unborn as if alive

Question 12

Archetype

Answer 12

Primordial images formed by repeated experiences in the lives of our ancestors, inherited in the collective unconscious of the human race and expressed in myths, religion, dreams, fantasies, and literature

Question 13

Aside

Answer 13

A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but it is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on the stage

Question 14

Assonance

Answer 14

Repetition of a vowel sound within 2 or more words in close proximity.

Question 15

Bandwagon

Answer 15

Trying to establish that something is true because everyone believes it is true

Question 16

Catharsis

Answer 16

The process by which an unhealthy emotional state produced by an imbalance of feelings is corrected and emotional health is restored

Question 17

Characterization

Answer 17

Method an author uses to develop characters in a work.

Question 18

Concrete language

Answer 18

Language that describes specific, observable things, people or places, rather than ideas or qualities

Question 19

Connotation

Answer 19

Rather than the dictionary definition, the associations associated by a word

Question 20

Consonance

Answer 20

Repetition of a consonant sound within 2 or more words in close proximity

Question 21

Deduction

Answer 21

A form of reasoning that begins with a generalization, then applies the generalization to a specific case or cases

Question 22

Diction

Answer 22

Word choice

Question 23

Didactic

Answer 23

Used to describe fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model or correct behavior or thinking

Question 24

Digression

Answer 24

A temporary departure from the main subject in speaking or writing

Question 25

Dramatic irony

Answer 25

When the reader is aware of an inconsistency between a character’s perception of a situation and the truth of that situation

Question 26

Elegy

Answer 26

A formal sustained poem lamenting the death of a particular person

Question 27

Emotional appeal

Answer 27

When a writer appeals to an audience’s emotions to excite and involve them in an argument

Question 28

Ennul

Answer 28

A persistent feeling of tiredness which often afflicts existential man, often manifesting as boredom

Question 29

Epigraph

Answer 29

A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of a theme

Question 30

Epiphany

Answer 30

A major character’s moment of realization