Literary Terms Vocab #1 Flashcards
Alliteration
the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Allusion
an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference.
Antagonist
a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary.
Antithesis
a figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposites of, or strongly contrasted with, each other.
Apostrophe
A writer or a speaker, using an apostrophe, detaches himself from the reality and addresses an imaginary character in his speech.
Archetype
a reference to a concept, a person or an object that has served as a prototype of its kind and is the original idea that has come to be used over and over again.
Assonance
refers to repetition of sounds produced by vowels within a sentence or phrase.
Conflict
expressing a resistance the protagonist of the story finds in achieving his aims or dreams.
Connotation
associations people make with words that go beyond the literal or dictionary definition.
Consonance
repetition of sounds in quick succession produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase.
Denotation
refers to the use of the dictionary definition or literal meaning of a word.
Detail
an item of information that supports an idea or concept.
Dialect
a particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group.
Dialogue
a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange.
Diction
the distinctive tone or tenor of an author’s writings.
Direct characterization
the process by which the personality of a fictitious character is revealed by the use of descriptive adjectives, phrases, or epithets.
Epic simile
a detailed comparison in the form of a simile that is many lines in length.
Epiphany
that moment in the story where a character achieves realization, awareness or a feeling of knowledge after which events are seen through the prism of this new light in the story.
Euphemism
a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
Extended metaphor
when an author exploits a single metaphor or analogy at length through multiple linked vehicles, tenors, and grounds throughout a poem or story.
Flashback
wherein the author depicts the occurrence of specific events to the reader, which have taken place before the present time the narration is following, or events that have happened before the events that are currently unfolding in the story.
Foil
another character in a story who contrasts with the main character, usually to highlight one of their attributes.
Foreshadowing
refers to the use of indicative word or phrases and hints that set the stage for a story to unfold and give the reader a hint of something that is going to happen.
Hyperbole
exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
Idiom
a phrase or a fixed expression that has a figurative, or sometimes literal, meaning.
Imagery
the author uses words and phrases to create “mental images” for the reader.
Indirect characterization
the process by which the personality of a fictitious character is revealed through the character’s speech, actions, appearance, etc.
Irony
refers to playing around with words such that the meaning implied by a sentence or word is actually different from the literal meaning.
Juxtaposition
the author places a person, concept, place, idea or theme parallel to another.
Limited narrator
the narrator only knows the thoughts and feelings of one character.
Metaphor
refers to a meaning or identity ascribed to one subject by way of another.
Meter
a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet.
Metonymy
refers to the practice of not using the formal word for an object or subject and instead referring to it by using another word that is intricately linked to the formal name or word.
Mood
refers to a definitive stance the author adopts in shaping a specific emotional perspective towards the subject of the literary work.
Motif
any element, subject, idea or concept that is constantly present through the entire body of literature.
Omniscient narrator
in which the narrator is a character in the story, but also knows the thoughts and feelings of all the other characters.
Onomatopoeia
refers to words whose very sound is very close to the sound they are meant to depict.
Oxymoron
allows the author to use contradictory, contrasting concepts placed together in a manner that actually ends up making sense in a strange, and slightly complex manner.
Paradox
refers to the use of concepts or ideas that are contradictory to one another, yet, when placed together hold significant value on several levels.
Personification
refers to the practice of attaching human traits and characteristics with inanimate objects, phenomena and animals.
Plot
refers to the sequence of events and happenings that make up a story.
Point of view (first, second, third person)
techniques are the first person, wherein the story is told by the narrator from his or her standpoint and the third person wherein the narrator does not figure in the events of the story and tells the story by referring to all characters and places in the third person with third person pronouns and proper nouns.
Protagonist
the main character in a story
Pun
wherein a word is used in a manner to suggest two or more possible meanings.
Rhetorical shift
a movement in a piece from one point or idea to another.
Rhyme
created by using words that produce the same, or similar sounds.
Rhythm
recurrence of similar sounds in prose and poetry, creating a musical, gentle effect.
Sarcasm
the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.
Satire
refers to the practice of making fun of a human weakness or character flaw.
Setting
used to identify and establish the time, place and mood of the events of the story.
Simile
referring to the practice of drawing parallels or comparisons between two unrelated and dissimilar things, people, beings, places and concepts using “like” or “as”.
Style
reveals both the writer’s personality and voice, but it also shows how he or she perceives the audience.
Suspense
the intense feeling that an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome of certain events.
Symbolism
a figure of speech where an object, person, or situation has another meaning other than its literal meaning.
Synecdoche
uses a part of something to refer to the whole.
Theme
links all aspects of the literary work with one another and is basically the main subject.
Tone
the perspective or attitude that the author adopts with regards to a specific character, place or development.
Understatement
refers to the practice of drawing attention to a fact that is already obvious and noticeable.
Quatrain
a stanza of four lines, often rhyming in an ABAB pattern.
Refrain
a line or set of lines at the end of a stanza or section of a longer poem or song–these lines repeat at regular intervals in other stanzas or sections of the same work.
Sestina
consists of six stanzas with six lines each, followed by a three-line stanza at the very end, known as an envoi.
Tercet
a poetic triplet is a tercet in which all three lines follow the same rhyme.
Villanelle
a fixed form poem consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, and also follows a specific rhyme scheme using only two different sounds.
Caesura
a pause in a line of poetry that is formed by the rhythms of natural speech rather than by metrics.
Blank Verse
a poem with no rhyme but does have iambic pentameter.
Free Verse
a poetic style that lacks a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
Sonnet
14 lines in iambic pentameter with rhymes arranged according to a fixed scheme.
