Lit Terms Flashcards
(26 cards)
Personification
A metaphor in which you describe an inanimate object, abstract thing, or non-human animal in human terms.
Ex: “The front door recognized the dog voice and opened…”
Allusion
A reference to something else.
Ex: “‘Who is gentle bear’”
Auditory imagery
A form of mental imagery that is used to organize and analyze sounds when there is no external auditory stimulus present.
Ex: “In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh…”
Hyperbole
A figure of speech in which an author or speaker purposely and obviously exaggerates to an extreme.
Ex: “It’s maybe a thousand years old…”
Metaphor
A common figure of speech that makes a comparison by directly relating one thing to another unrelated thing.
Ex: “’Maggie’s brain is like an elephant’s,…’”
Motif
A symbolic image or idea that appears frequently in a story.
Ex: “Five o’clock…Six, seven, eight o’clock…Nine o’clock…Nine-five”
Parallel structure
The repetition of a chosen grammatical pattern within a sentence.
Ex: “Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal
Substance”
Repetition
The repeating of a word or phrase.
Ex: “’Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…’”
Simile
A literary term where you use “like” or “as” to compare two different things and show a shared quality between them.
Ex: “When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor…”
Symbol
Any image or thing that stands for something else.
Ex: “After a few weeks of what she called “endless pestering” and what I called “repeated
badgering,” my mother bought me a pocket thesaurus, which provided me with s-free alternatives to
just about everything”
Tactile imagery
A mental image of how an object feels.
Ex: “In my crisp pink-and-white dress with scratchy lace at the neck…”
Visual imagery
Description that stimulates the eyes.
Ex: “As our mother sprinkled flour and rolled out small doughy circles for the steamed dumplings that would be our dinner that night…”
External conflict
A character struggling against another character, the natural world, or society.
Ex: David struggles against not conforming to the expectations society has for males of his age.
Internal conflict
The struggles occur within a character’s mind.
Ex: David struggles to win his ever-uphill battle against the letter s.
Protagonist
Another word for “main character.”
Ex: David is the individual recounting his own experience.
Antagonist
The opposite of the protagonist, or main character.
Ex: Waverly’s mother creates conflict with Waverly by endlessly showing her off and pressuring her to rapidly improve at a continuous rate.
Narrator
The voice of the person telling the story; not to be confused with the author’s voice.
Exposition
The part of a narrative that provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances. Includes what has gone on before, the relationships between characters, the development of a theme, and the introduction of a conflict.
Rising action
The part of the narrative plot where complications arise and create conflict for the protagonist.
Climax
The moment of greatest emotional tension in a narrative; usually the marking of the turning point.
Falling action
The part of the plot where the tensions diminish and the conflict begins to resolve.
Denouement
The conclusion of the plot’s conflicts and complications. Also known as the resolution. It means the loose ends are tied up.
Setting
The physical and social context in which the action of a story occurs. The major elements of the setting are the time, the place, and the social environment that frames the characters.
Theme
A literary work’s central meaning or dominant idea. A theme provides a unifying point but is NOT the actual subject of the story. A theme is not a topic or a message. A theme is the author’s commentary on a subject.
