Literary Terms

Question 1

Sometimes referred to as a “B story” or a “C story” and so on, is a secondary plot that is auxiliary to the main plot.

Answer 1

Subplot

Question 2

someone other than the reader–a character within the fiction–to whom the story or “speech” is addressed.

Answer 2

Auditor

Question 3

in it’s original, primary meaning, refers to the writer’s or the speaker’s distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression.

Answer 3

Diction

Question 4

any event with a sad and unfortunate outcome, but the term also applies specifically in Western culture to a form of drama defined by Aristotle, characterized by seriousness and dignity and involving a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune.

Answer 4

Tragedy

Question 5

the repetition of leading vowels or consonant sounds in adjacent words as in “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers”.

Answer 5

Alliteration

Question 6

includes but is not limited to, alliteration with vowel sounds.

Answer 6

Assonance

Question 7

objects, characters, or other concrete representations of ideas, concepts, or other abstractions.

Answer 7

Symbols

Question 8

in poetry, the deliberate avoidance of assonance, i.e. patterns of repeated vowel sounds

Answer 8

Dissonance

Question 9

a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms.

Answer 9

Oxymoron

Question 10

a literary device in which an author drops subtle hints about plot developments to come later in the story.

Answer 10

Foreshadowing

Question 11

a “second self” created by the author and through whom the narrative is related.

Answer 11

Persona

Question 12

any recurring element in a story that has symbolic significance

Answer 12

Motif

Question 13

the mood or feeling of a literary work.

Answer 13

Tone

Question 14

the use of the five senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste), or any series of words that create a picture in your head.

Answer 14

Imagery

Question 15

a figure of speech that gives inanimate objects human traits and qualities.

Answer 15

Personification or Anthromorphism

Question 16

the study of the history of words - when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.

Answer 16

Etymology

Question 17

that against which the protagonist contends.

Answer 17

Antagonist

Question 18

the basic conflict is complicated by the introduction of related secondary conflicts, including various obstacles that frustrate the protagonist’s attempt to reach their goal.

Answer 18

Rising Action

Question 19

a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning.

Answer 19

Poetry

Question 20

a literary genre that is usually fictional narrative prose and tends to be more concise and to the point than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels.

Answer 20

Short Story

Question 21

the specific mode of friction represented in performance. it is derived from a Greek word meaning “action”.

Answer 21

Drama

Question 22

a term applies to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism.

Answer 22

Postmodernism

Question 23

the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun used in narration.

Answer 23

Point of View

Question 24

an entity within a story that tells the story to the reader.

Answer 24

Narrator

Question 25

a disembodied and takes no actions and has no physical form in or out of the story. However, being omniscient, it witnesses all events, even some that no characters witness.

Answer 25

Omniscient Narrator

Question 26

a literary device in which the credibility of the narrator is seriously compromised.

Answer 26

Unreliable Narrator

Question 27

the literal meaning of the word.

Answer 27

Denotation

Question 28

the suggestive meaning of a word.

Answer 28

Connotation

Question 29

a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry.

Answer 29

Rhyme

Question 30

language that directly Compares seemingly unrelated subjects.

Answer 30

Metaphor

Question 31

a comparison of two unlike things typically marked by use of “like”, “as”, “than”, or “resembles”.

Answer 31

Simile

Question 32

a figure of speech in which one refers covertly or indirectly to an object or circumstance that has occurred or existed in an external context.

Answer 32

Allusion

Question 33

when the reader has grown sympathetic of the poet.

Answer 33

Poetic Situation

Question 34

an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached

Answer 34

Flashback

Question 35

the feeling of uncertainty and interest about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience’s perceptions in a dramatic work.

Answer 35

Suspense

Question 36

contains elements of contrast, but it usually refers to a situation in a play where a character, whose knowledge is limited, says, does or encounters something of greater significance than he or she knows.

Answer 36

Dramatic Irony

Question 37

the interpretation of a story or text with its proposed environment in mind.

Answer 37

Cultural Context

Question 38

a character who emphasizes the traits of the main character.

Answer 38

Foil

Question 39

the way an author develops a series of events in a text

Answer 39

Plot

Question 40

the environment in which a story or event takes place. setting can include specific information about time and place (e.g. Boston, Massachusetts, in 1809) or can simply be descriptive (e.g. a lonely farmhouse on a dark night).

Answer 40

Setting