Literature Terms Flashcards
Characterisation
Characterization refers to the way an author develops the fictional people who populate a novel—you know, characters? In other words, characterization is how an author helps us get to know all of the characters in a book. An author might develop a character through dialogue (the words a character speaks), through action (what he or she does), through narration about the character, through the character’s relationship to others, or through his or her changes over time.
Diction
Generally speaking, diction is just word choice. Which words is the author using, and what’s their effect?
Should you call your crush “sweetie,” “dearest,” “darling,” “beloved,” “boo,” “sugar pie,” or “Hey, you”? It makes a difference. Trust us.
See, diction creates tone, and tone is one of the most important aspects up for discussion in literature. So when your teacher asks, what’s the tone of this novel? Just ask yourself: what words are being used?
Tone
Our voices can be playful, dour, cynical, or optimistic. The same thing goes for authors, and that’s where tone comes in. Tone is an author’s attitude—the emotions and feelings conveyed by the work of literature.
But don’t confuse tone with style. Tone refers to attitude, while style refers to the techniques the author uses in writing. One book can be optimistic in tone and another pessimistic, but they could both be written in a stream-of-consciousness style. Or one book may be written in a sparse style and another in a rich, lush style, but they both could be nostalgic in tone.
How do writers create tone? With diction. We promise, Shmoopers—it’s really that simple. When trying to figure out the tone of a text, just ask yourself what kind of words the author is using, and that’s your answer.
Does the author say,
Marla leapt down the stairs, two at a time, flew into the living room, threw open the window, and basked in the glory of the freshly fallen snow.
or,
Then Marla plodded downstairs to the living room, where she reluctantly opened the window to find that the sticky, freezing white stuff was falling from the sky for the first time that year. Ugh.
Well, which is it? The exact same thing happens in each of these sentences, but they have wildly different tones. Go figure. Lucky for you, every Shmoop literature learning guide has a section on tone to help you learn to suss it out for yourself.
Syntax
Syntax has nothing to do with sins or taxes. What a cryin’ shame, right?
When it comes to syntax, it’s all about sentence structure—how words and phrases relate to each other.
Some texts have syntax similar to that of everyday spoken English (like the sentences you’re reading right now). Other stuff has crazier syntax, which makes it hard to see how things fit together at all. Like this, the first sentence of John Milton’s Paradise Lost:
Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aide to my adventurous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
Wait. What? That’s an awful lot of yammering just to get some muses to sing a little ditty. Also, that whole thing’s a sentence? Yowza. But hey, Milton was famous for his slithering syntax, the longer the better.
But we digress.
Sure, syntax can refer to the order of words in a sentence, like Yoda-speak from the Star Wars movies: “A very important concept in literature, syntax is!” But, more figuratively, it can refer to the organization of ideas or topics in a poem, as in, “Why did the poet go from talking about his mother to a description of an ostrich?”
See, talking syntax can be just as fun as talking sin and taxes. Maybe more so.
Setting
Setting is where a story all goes down. Sounds simple enough, but there’s a lot of ground to cover when thinking about setting.
The setting can include
the geographical location, which can range from an entire country to one single room.
when it all goes down (i.e., the time or period in which the action takes place). We’re talking an era in history, a season of the year, or even the time of day.
the general environment of the characters: religious, mental, moral, social, and emotional conditions.
Whew. That’s a little deeper than the “This book takes place in France” that we’re used to, huh? Take a look at our description of setting in A Game of Thrones for one idea of how to think critically about setting.
You might also hear people talking about macro- and micro-settings. The macro (big picture) is something like “St. Louis in the 1930s,” while the micro (not-so-big picture) is “a small second-story apartment.”
And when you’re thinking about setting, remember—just as nothing happens in a vacuum (hence, the setting), the setting can’t exist without a story behind it. Here are some questions Shmoop likes to consider when thinking about setting:
What is the effect on the story of using this particular location?
Are there two settings that comment on each other?
Is the setting an allusion to something else?
How do the characters respond to their environments?
Does the setting change at all?
Conflict
Any fan of reality television knows all about conflict. Whether in a novel, a play or the latest episode of Survivor, conflict is what drives the plot and fuels the action.
How do authors build conflict in literature? Well, in lots of different ways. Conflict can occur between two characters, like the struggle between Victor Frankenstein and the Monster in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. Often these scenarios will play out as a struggle between protagonist and antagonist.
Or a character can be in conflict with an external force like nature or society in general. Macbeth, for example, seems to be struggling against time. J.D. Salinger’s oh-so-alienated protagonist Holden Caulfield is in conflict with society in The Catcher in the Rye. In Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck bumps up against the rules and order of the antebellum South.
Conflict can be internal, too. Lots of novels are interested in their protagonist’s inner struggles, such as those of Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita or Henry Fleming in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.
Needless to say, a novel or play can have many different kinds of conflict propelling the plot, some subtler than others. As we here at Shmoop like to say, the more conflict the better.
Theme
A theme is a central idea in a work of literature. It’s everywhere (cue creepy music), but it’s never explicitly stated. For example, you might say, “This book is about death,” but the author probably wouldn’t—at least not in the book itself. So death is a theme.
Themes help us reflect on big, hulking, abstract ideas like love, youth, progress, and religion. Once we’ve got the themes under our belt, it’s time to figure out what the author is saying about that theme. The theme is the abstract idea, but the author probably has an opinion on it, right? And all the other aspects of a book—from the characters to the style to the plot—can help us pinpoint just what that opinion is.
There should be more than one theme in any given book—Shmoop usually suggests at least 8 or 10. Think you can find more? We do, too.
Imagery
Imagery is all of the pictures and sensations a piece of writing conjures up in your noggin. Imagery is the key to literature—especially poetry. If you’re reading a description that engages any one of your five senses, you’re reading imagery, folks.
Shmoop loves imagery so much we that dedicate entire sections of our learning guides to it. Check out our discussions of imagery in J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and Emily Dickinson’s poem “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –”.
Figurative Language
This is just a fancy term for words that mean more than meets the eye. Figurative language uses figures of speech like similes and metaphors to build meaning beyond the literal. Think of figurative language as words that have more than one level of meaning.
We often use figurative language in our everyday speech without even realizing it. When we say “it’s raining cats and dogs,” we don’t literally mean that felines and canines are falling from the sky. It’s a metaphor for a major downpour. Here are a few other examples:
She runs like the wind. I smell a rat. America is a melting pot. How could she marry a snake like that? My head is spinning. My love is a red, red rose. This classroom is like a circus. Shmoop warms my heart. Get the picture? Hey, that's one, too.
Check out figurative language in John Keats’s poem “When I have fears that I may cease to be,” Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” and Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”
Metaphor
Anyone who’s ever sat in an English classroom knows that metaphors are everywhere, and all-important. Where would literary history be without lines like “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”? Or the declaration that “all the world’s a stage”? Or the rhetorical conundrum of “Who in the rainbow can show the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?”
Metaphor, it’s safe to say, is the bread and butter of literature. But, um, have you ever really thought about what a metaphor is? And, more importantly, how metaphors work?
A metaphor is a kind of word magic that—presto change-o, alakazam—changes black hats into rabbits and scarves into doves. With a wave of the wand, metaphors compare two different things; metaphors describe one object as another. It’s almost as if the object becomes what it is being compared to, at least, in a figurative way.
“You’re a toad!” is a metaphor—although not a very nice one. So is “you’re a star!” and that one’s a little kinder. Metaphors are different from similes because metaphors leave out the words “like” or “as.” For example, a simile would be, “You’re like a toad” or “You’re like a star.” (Although, technically speaking, similes are a type of metaphor.)
Pop music gives us lots of easy examples. Like, “I am the Walrus” or “she’s buying a stairway to heaven.” Uh, last time we checked, there was no stairway going up to the sky, and even if there were, it certainly wouldn’t be for sale. We hope. So that one has to be a metaphor, right? (In fact it is, and a rather complex one at that.)
A metaphor has two parts: a tenor and a vehicle. The tenor is the subject of the metaphor. That is, what you’re trying to describe as something else. The vehicle is what you use to transform the subject into something else. Again, that cool presto change-o trick.
I’m king of the world!
The tenor is “I” (Leonardo DiCaprio)
The vehicle is “king”
See? Metaphors really open up the meaning of a phrase. They give us a new and exciting and creative way to say or see something. (That’s why authors like them so much, we think.)
Because they are a kind of figurative language, there are a ton of different kinds of metaphors.
Technically speaking, similes are metaphors, too, they just use “like” or “as.” Personification is a kind of metaphor that compares something to people. And then there are the fancypants metaphors like metonymy and synecdoche. Memorizing your metaphors can go a long way in opening up literature for you, so get crackin’, Shmoopers.
And in the meantime, remember our favorite metaphor of all:
Love is a battlefield.
Simile
Similes make Shmoop smile like somethin’ else.
That’s a simile, albeit not a very good one. A simile is a figure of speech that makes use of the adverbs “like” or “as” to make a comparison or analogy. In that sense, it’s a very specific kind of metaphor, but for the most part, we can think of it as its own separate beast.
Similes have been around forever. Greek poet guy Homer used them in his writing all the time, the longer the better. Check out our section on the Homeric simile (a.k.a. a heroic simile) in our learning guide on the Odyssey.
Can you find similes in non-ancient lit? Um, of course. William Shakespeare is probably Homer’s heir to the simile throne, but poets and prosers today are still vying for the title. Plus, the things abound in pop music lyrics. She’s like the wind, anyone?
Seriously, Shmoopers, similes are about as common as a cold. See what we did there?
Symbol
A symbol is something that represents something else. We know—super helpful, right?
Want more clarity? Okay, how about this: a symbol is a word, an image, or anything that somehow represents a larger idea. In other words, what you see is not just what you get. Symbols are more than meets the eye. They’re loaded with meaning.
Example? In America, eagles are a symbol of freedom. In punk rock, the safety pin is a symbol of rebellion. In Western literature, the apple is often a symbol for sin. See how that works?
But when talking about symbols, it’s also important to remember that the symbol is still itself, in addition to what it symbolizes. So when you see an apple in a book and immediately think of sin, don’t forget that it’s also just an apple. And someone’s probably going to eat it. Or at least bake it into a pie.
Symbols carry great power in literature. In fact, we here at Shmoop set aside entire sections of our literature and poetry learning guides just to discuss them.
To see the Shmoop analysis gnomes in action, check out holes in, um, Holes or the birthmark in, uh, The Birthmark. Hmm, we’re sensing a pattern here…
Dialogue
You got this, Shmoopers. This term just refers to words exchanged between characters in a novel or a play.
“Seriously? That’s it?”
“Yep, that’s it.”
Plot
A simple word for a simple idea. What happens in the story?
Plot refers to the events, scenes, and actions that make up a narrative in a work of literature. Need we say more? Nah, we didn’t think so.
Narrator
The narrator is the one who tells the story—kind of like a guide leading you through a novel or short story. A narrator can have a limited point-of-view, as with first-person narrators, or they can have total omniscience. Narrators can be unreliable or trustworthy. They can be close to the action or as far away as possible. It all depends.
In many ways, narrators (even third-person ones) become characters in their own right. Some of our favorite narrators include Watson in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the witty, snarky voice of Jane Austen’s novels, and the kooky narrator of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Who are your faves?
First-Person Narration
When the story you’re reading is from the point-of-view of a character in the novel (often the protagonist), you’re reading first-person narration. First-person narrators make frequent use of the pronoun “I,” because, you know, they’re talking about themselves, or at the very least what’s going on around them. This style of narration gives us insight into a character’s thoughts and feelings. Lucky us.
If you’re looking for some of the more famous first-person narrators in all of literature, look no further than Scout in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, or that lovable hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
First-person narration sounds nice and simple, right? You’ve got an “I” and he’s doing some talking. Moving on. But there are actually a ton of different ways that first-person narration can play out. Examples? Oh, we’ve got those in spades:
There’s the interior monologue of the Underground Man in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground.
There’s the dramatic monologue of Jean-Baptiste in Albert Camus’s The Fall.
There’s even the strange, plural first-person narration in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.”
Oh, and speaking of Faulkner, he had three (count ‘em!) first-person narrators in The Sound and the Fury, who trade off telling their stories. Then he even tosses a third-person narrator our way at the end, just for kicks.
Faulkner was a sneaky guy, and he found his way around the limitations of first-person narration. But there are other tricks authors use, too, like, say, a peripheral narrator.
A peripheral narrator is a first-person narrator who’s not the main character. She gets to give us the lowdown on the juicy dealings of the true protagonists and antagonists, all while watching from a safe distance. Think Nick Carraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
But we can get even further removed than Nick, if we really want to. The narrator of Joseph Conrad’s most famous novel, Heart of Darkness is telling us a story he heard from a guy named Marlow, who’s telling the story of yet another guy named Kurtz. You might have heard of him. He dead.
See, not so simple after all, huh? It’s important to remember that the first-person narrative style can open up a lot of doors for the author, but it slams some other doors right in his face. On the one hand, he can give the readers VIP access into his character’s thoughts and feelings, and that’s just what we hungry readers are craving, right? But on the other hand, he can’t just zoom out and suddenly see things going on in multiple places at once, like a third-person narrator can.
It’s also super important to remember that when a first-person is narrating the story, they’re somehow involved in the whole shebang. They’re part of the action. They’ve got something at stake. Unfortunately, this means that they’re not always the most trustworthy of folks. They’re not always interested in full disclosure.
When we can’t trust our narrator, we call them unreliable, and we don’t just mean that they bail on plans. Although frankly, if Nick Carraway didn’t show up to our Roaring ’20s party, we’d be pretty peeved. For a classic example of an unreliable narrator, take a look at our take on Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Or really any of Poe’s narrators for that matter. They were notoriously flaky.
Third-Person Narration
You’ll find third-person narration in stories where a detached person (someone who isn’t directly involved in the action) tells you everything that goes down. A third-person narrator can sometimes be omniscient, when they have a bird’s-eye-view of all the goings on. Or they can be limited, and stick closely to the perspectives of just one or two characters.
The bonus of having a third-person narrator is that we readers aren’t trapped inside one character’s head. We might gain access to the thoughts and feelings of other characters, and we might get to see what goes down in two different places at the same time. It’s a nice dose of perspective that allows us readers to evaluate what’s going on with as little bias as possible.
But there are drawbacks, too. For one thing, it can be tougher to sympathize with characters when an author is using third-person narration (particularly when it’s omniscient), because the narration is so detached from what’s going on in the hearts and minds of the folks on the ground. Hey, sometimes we want a little bias, okay?
Omniscience
A word usually used in relation to narrators, omniscience means all-knowingness. If a narrator is omniscient, he or she has the god-like ability to see and know everything going on in the world of the novel, the lucky duck. Omniscience is often a feature of third-person narration, which makes sense, because it would be awfully hard for a first-person narrator to read the minds of the characters around her.
Want to see an omniscient narrator in all their awesome, knowledgey glory? Meet the narrator of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. He knows what’s up.
Character
Characters are the fictional people that populate the world of whatever book you’re reading. Here are a few of our favorites:
Boo Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird
The Monster from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Sula Pearce from Toni Morrison’s Sula
Salamanca Tree Hiddle from Walk Two Moons
Mercutio from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
What about you? What are some of your favorite characters? And how are they developed? Check out our page on characterization for some ideas.
Flat Character
We have E.M. Forster to thank for this term. He coined it to refer to characters who are one-dimensional, who lack emotional depth, and who don’t change much over the course of the story. In other words, they’re as flat as that bottle of Coke you left on your windowsill last week.
If you’re already writing these guys off as boring, they’re anything but. They do awesome things like help move the plot along, provide comic relief, or act as the big bad. In general, they make the other guys look round (and that’s a good thing).
What’s that? You want an example? Check out our analysis of Luzhin in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. That’s as flat as flat gets.
Analogy
A:B::C:D
A is to B as C is to D.
A and B are related in the same way (and direction) that C and D are related.
Analogies:SAT::MySpace:Internet
If you took the SAT before 2005, you might remember that nasty little analogies section, where you’d have to fill out things like
esoteric word:overly intellectual word::nonsense obscurity:____________
That comparison is an analogy—it’s a metaphorical way of evaluating a relationship between two things.
