lit terms Flashcards
The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage.
Ambiguity
The misplacing of any person, thing, custom or event outside its proper historical time.
Anachronism
A symbol, theme, setting, or character-type that recurs in different times and places in myth, literature, folklore, dreams, and rituals so frequently or prominently as to suggest that it embodies some essential element of ‘universal’ human experience.
Archetype
A direct or indirect reference to something which is presumably commonly known, such as an event, book, myth, place, or work of art.
Allusion
A specialized type of comparison that employs animal characteristics or language to describe something.
Animal Imagery
The most prominent of the characters who oppose the protagonist or heroine or hero in a dramatic or narrative work.
Antagonist
A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified abstraction, such as liberty or love.
Apostrophe
A short speech or remark spoken by a character in a drama, directed either to the audience or to another character, which by convention is supposed to be inaudible to the other characters on stage.
Aside
Attributes the qualities of a character in a description or commentary.
Direct Characterization
Inviting readers to infer a character’s qualities from characters’ actions, speech or appearance.
Indirect Characterization
A criticism or discussion by the act of using rhetorical means to provide commentary on issues in a society. This is often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace about a given problem and appealing to people’s sense of justice.
Social Commentary
The organization of conflict between characters in their world. The form of a play or film usually containing a beginning, middle and end. Also referred to as plot developments.
Dramatic Structure
A short, poetic nickname, often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase-attached to the normal name.
Epithet
Writing or speech that is not intended to carry literal meaning and is usually meant to be imaginative and vivid.
Figurative Language
A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character.
Foil Character
Using the same features, wording, setting, situation, or topic at both the beginning and end of a literary work.
Framing
The major category into which a literary work fits. The basic divisions of literature are prose, poetry, and drama.
Genre
A figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or overstatement.
Hyperbole
The sensory details or figurative language used to describe, arouse emotion, or represent abstractions.
Imagery
When facts or events are unknown to a character in a play or piece of fiction but known to the reader, audience, or other characters in the work.
Dramatic Irony
When events turn out the opposite of what was expected; when what the characters and readers think ought to happen is not what does happen.
Situational Irony
When the words literally state the opposite of the writer’s (or speaker’s) meaning.
Verbal Irony
The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development.
Juxtaposition
The opposition or contrast of ideas; the direct opposite.
Antithesis
A figure of speech wherein the author groups apparently contradictory terms.
Oxymoron
A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity.
Paradox
A form of understatement that involves making an affirmative point by denying its opposite.
Litotes
A figure of speech using implied comparison of seemingly unlike things or the substitution of one for the other, suggesting some similarity.
Metaphor
The prevailing atmosphere or emotional aura of a work.
Mood
A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula, which appears frequently in works of literature.
Motif
The speaker or voice of a literary work, i.e., who is doing the talking. Thus persona is the “I” of a narrative or the implied speaker of a lyric poem.
Persona
A figure of speech in which the author presents or describes concepts, animals, or inanimate objects by endowing them with human attributes or emotions. Personification is used to make these abstractions, animals, or objects appear more vivid to the reader.
Personification
Authority. It also includes something of charisma and individual character. It is whatever inspires trust in an audience.
Ethos
Emotion. A writer or speaker’s attempt to inspire an emotional reaction in an audience.
Pathos
Logic. A rhetorical or persuasive appeal to the audience’s logic and rationality
Logos
The structure in which the story is told.
Plot
Tells the story with the first person pronoun, “I”, and is a character in the story. This narrator can be the protagonist, a secondary character, or an observing character.
First Person POV
The narrator presents the feelings and thoughts of only one character, presenting only the actions of all the remaining characters.
Limited Third Person POV
An ‘all-knowing’ kind of narrator who has a full knowledge of the story’s events and of the motives and unspoken thoughts of the various characters.
Third Person Omniscient POV
The chief character in a play or story, who may also be opposed by an antagonist.
Protagonist
A work that targets human vices and follies or social institutions and conventions for reform or ridicule.
Satire
The time, place, physical details, and circumstances in which a situation occurs.
Setting
An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as.
Simile
A talking to oneself; the discourse of a person speaking to himself, whether alone or in the presence of others. It gives the illusion of being unspoken reflections.
Soliloquy
Generally, anything that represents itself and stands for something else.
Symbol
A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole or, occasionally, the whole is used to represent a part.
Synecdoche
When one kind of sensory stimulus evokes the subjective experience of another.
Synesthesia
The central idea or message of a work, the insight it offers into life.
Theme
Describes the author’s attitude toward his material, the audience, or both.
Tone
Typically an admirable character who appears as the focus in a tragic play, but one who is undone by a hamartia - a tragic mistake, misconception, or flaw.
Tragic Hero
An author’s way of conveying an opinion or judgement about a specific political time period.
Political Commentary
The opposition between two characters, between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on.
External Conflict
A protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies.
Internal conflict
