Literary Terms Flashcards
Fictional texts/ fiction
A fictional text does not deal with facts of the real world but it creates its own world or reality. The story it tells is an invented story. A piece of fiction can take different forms. The main types are narrative prose like short stories or novels and drama.
Fiction is the general term for invented stories.
It is now applied to novels, short stories and related genres
Narrative pose
Narrative prose is a fictional text which is told by a narrator and is written in prose, ie. writing that is formed by sentences in a continuous flow and is broken up only by paragraphs. Typical examples are novels and short stories.
Novel
A novel is a long and complex fictional narrative text often divided into chapters. A novel often includes a large number of characters, different settings and complex plot.
Short story
A fictional prose narrative that is too short to be published as a volume on its own. A short story normally focuses on a single event and setting with only one or two main characters.
Chapter
One of the sections a book is devided into
Narrator
The narrator is the voice or the character who tells the story and is part of the fictional world created by the author. There are three types of narrators: first-person narrator, third-person narrator and omniscient narrator.
Point of view
The perspective from which the narrator presents the story.
Drama/ Play
The sort of fiction designed to be presented in performance on stage
Stage directions
The stage directions are the playwright’s description of what the stage should look like and how the actors should perform the drama.
Act
A major division in a play. Each act may have one or more scenes.
Scene
A subdivision of an act in a play. A scene normally represents actions happening in one place at one time.
monologue
A long speech spoken by one character in a play
Poem
A poem is a piece of creative writing structured by lines, stanzas and rhythm.
Soliloquy
The monologue of a character who speaks his or her thoughts aloud when there is nobody else present.
Speaker
The lyrical I or the persona.
First person narrator in a poem.
