Litterary Terms Flashcards
The fallacy of wrongly evaluating a literary work by emphasizing only its emotional impact.
Affective fallacy
A narrative whose characters, symbols, and situations represent elements outside the text. For example, the character “Christian” in the allegory pilgrims progress represents the Everyman who is a Christian.
Allegory
An indirect reference to some literary or historical figure or event. For example the line in TS Eliot’s love song of j Alfred prufrock. “No I am not prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be”
Allusion
A literary device in which an author uses words with more than one meaning, deliberately leaves the reader uncertain.
Ambiguity
A comparison of two things on the basis of their similarity.
Analogy
A competitor or opponent of the main character (protagonist) in a work of literature.
Antagonist
A protagonist in a modern literary work who has none of the noble qualities associated with a traditional hero.
Antihero
A direct emotional address to an absent character or quality as if it were present.
Apostrophe
An image or character representative of some greater, more common element that recurs constantly and variously in literature.
Archetype
A term used to describe writing that is strikingly different from the dominant writing that is strikingly different from the dominant writing of the age-in its form, style, content, and attitude.
Avant garde
A type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
Bildungsroman
A person created by an author for use in a work of fiction, poetry, or drama.
Character
A phrase so overused that it has lost its original punch (for example,
“beating a dead horse”)
Cliche
A point at which the events in a play or story reach their crisis, where the
maximum emotional reaction of the reader is created. This might also be
the turning point in which an important decision is made.
Climax
A closing section of some literary works, occurring after the main action
has been resolved.
Coda
A term used in speech but not acceptable in formal writing
Colloquialism
A debate or conversation among characters—e.g., Tom and Gatsby.
Colloquy
A part of a plot in which the conflict among the characters or
forces is engaged.
Complication
A metaphor extended to great lengths in a poem or literary work (for
example, “the Flea”).
Conceit
A struggle among opposing forces or characters in fiction, poetry, or
drama.
Conflict
Implications of words or sentences, beyond their literal, or denotative,
meanings.
Connotation
Literal meaning of a word or sentences.
Denotation
The final action of a plot, in which the conflict is resolved; the outcome.
Denouement
Literally, “God from a machine”-the improbable intervention of an outside
force that arbitrarily resolves a conflict
Deus ex machina
Conversation between two people in fiction, drama, or poetry.
Dialogue
The use of words; word choice that is accurate and appropriate to the
subject.
Diction
A term used to describe the effect of words of a character in a play or
novel that have more significance than they appear to have.
Dramatic irony
A sharp, witty saying, such as Oscar Wilde’s “I can resist everything but
temptation.”
Epigram
A short inscription at the start of a literary work.
Epigraph
A concluding portion of a literary work, occurring after the main action
has been completed.
Epilogue
A descriptive word or phrase pointing out a specific quality-as when
Shakespeare is referred to as “the Bard.” This term can be used ironically to
describe terms of contempt
Epithet
Literally, “attempt”-any short piece of nonfiction prose that makes specific
points and statements about a limited topic
Essay
A word or phrase substituting indirect for direct statement (for example,
“passed away” in place of “died”).
Euphemism
A portion of a narrative or dramatic work that establishes the tone, setting,
and basic situation.
Exposition
A short tale that presents a specific moral and whose characters are often animals.
Fable
A work that takes place in a world that does not exist.
Fantasy
Language that deliberately departs from everyday phrasing, with
dramatic and imagistic effects that move the reader into a fresh
mode of perception
Figurative language
A person or thing that contrasts with and so emphasizes and enhances the
qualities of another
Foil
In a plot, an indication of something yet to happen.
Foreshadowing
A distinct kind of writing, such as mystery, gothic, farce, or black comedy.
Genre
Novels, often historical, in which weird, grotesque activity takes
place; Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is an example of gothic fiction
Gothic fiction
The central character of a literary work; he or she often has great
virtues and faults, and his or her trials and successes form the main
action of the plot.
Hero/heroine
Deliberately overstated, exaggerated figurative language, used either for
comic or great emotional effect
Hyperbole
A false belief or perception.
Illusion
A concrete expression of something perceived by the senses, using simile,
metaphor, and figurative language.
Image/imagism/imagery
An effect associated with statements or situations in which something said
or done is at odds with how things truly are.
Irony
The fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting
effect; e.g., the juxtaposition of these two images reveals a startling
insight.
Juxtaposition
Ironical, deliberately understated figurative language, used either for
comic or great emotional effect.
Litotes
A contemporary form of fiction in which an author makes process of
writing fiction part of his or her subject
Metafiction
An implicit comparison of an object or feeling with another unlike it—e.g.,
“under a blood red sky.”
Metaphor
The emotional tone or outlook an author brings to a subject.
Mood/atmosphere
A distinctive feature or prominent idea in an artistic or literary composition.
Example: His latest novel has a nautical motif
Motif
Ancient stories of unknown origin involving the supernatural: myths have
provided cultures and writers with interpretations of the world’s events
Myth
A story that consists of an account of a sequence of events.
Narrative
Literature in which the author attempts to present the world in a realistic
and often harsh and hopeless way
Naturalism
A long fictional narrative that represents human events, characters, and actions.
Novel
A short novel or tale.
Novella
A speaker or implied speaker of a work of fiction who can tell the
story, shift into the minds of one or more characters, be in various
places, and comment on the meaning of what is happening in the
story.
Omniscient narrator
Narrative or linguistic devices that keep literary works moving and
interesting
Pacing
A story illustrating a moral, in which every detail parallels the moral
situation.
Parable
A statement that seems contradictory but actually points out a truth (for
example, Wordsworth’s “The Child is the father of the Man”).
Paradox
A literary work that deliberately makes fun of another literary work or of a
social situation.
Parody
The mask through which a writer gives expression to his or her own
feelings or participates in the action of a story, poem, or play
Persona
A literary strategy giving nonhuman things human characteristics
or attitudes, as in Aesop’s fables or Keat’s poem “To Autum.”
Personification
The sequence of events in a story, poem, or play; the events build upon
each other toward a convincing conclusion.
Plot
The angle from which a writer tells a story. Point of view can
either be omniscient, limited, or through the eyes of one or more
characters.
Point of view
Any form of writing that does not have the rhythmic patterns of metrical
verse or free verse. Good prose is characterized by tightness, specificity,
and a sense of style.
Prose
The leading character; the protagonist engages the main concern of readers
or audience.
Protagonist
A statement putting forth a great truth (e.g., the biblical proverb “Go to the
ant, thou sluggard; consider his ways and be wise”).
Proverb
An approach to writing that emphasizes recording everyday experience
Realism
The action of repeating words and phrases that have already been said or written for emphasis or literary effect.
Repetition
The dramatic action occurring after the climax of a play, before the events
themselves are played out
Resolution
The study and practice of language in action-presenting ideas and opinions
in the most effective way
Rhetoric
Any work of fiction that takes place in an extravagant world remote from
everyday life.
Romance
A powerful literary movement beginning in the late eighteenth century; it
shook off classical forms and attitudes, embracing instead the power,
promise, and political dignity of the imaginative individual
Romanticism
A literary work using wit, irony, anger, and parody to criticize human
foibles and social institutions
Satire
Fantasy in which scientific facts and advances fuel the plot
Science fiction
The background of a literary work-the time, the place, the era, the
geography, and the overall culture.
Setting
A brief fictional narrative.
Short story
A comparison of two things via the word “like” or “as.”
Simile
The contrast between what a character wants and what he or she receives,
arising not from the character’s faults but from other circumstances.
Situational irony
Widely believed and oversimplified attitudes toward a person, an issue, and so on.
Stereotype
Writing that attempts to imitate and follow a character’s thought
process.
Stream of consciousness
The property of writing that gives form, expression, and individuality to the
content
Style
The person, place, idea, situation, or thing with which some piece of literature
most immediately concerns itself
Subject
Significant communication, especially in dialogue, that gives motivation for the
words being said.
Subtext
Significant communication, especially in dialogue, that gives motivation for the
words being said.
Subtext
Art that values and expresses the unconscious imagination by altering what is
commonly seen as reality.
Surrealism
Those literary qualities that leave a reader breathlessly awaiting further
developments with no clear idea of what those developments will be
Suspense
Something that represents something else, the way a flag represents a country or a
rose may stand for love-implying not only another physical thing but an
associated meaning
Symbol
A summary of the main points of a plot.
Synopsis
The arrangement of words to form sentences.
Syntax
The main idea of a literary work created by its treatment of its immediate subject.
Theme
The expression of a writer’s attitudes toward a subject; the mood the author has
chosen for a piece
Tone
The discrepancy between things as they are stated and as they really are.
Verbal irony
Originally a word that meant “intelligence,” “wit” now refers to a facility for
quick, deft writing that usually employs humor to make its point.
Wit
A figure of speech in which an object or person is not mentioned directly but
suggested by an object associated with it, as when a reference to “the
white house” means “the president.”
Metonymy
Something that represents something else, the way a flag represents a country or a
rose may stand for love-implying not only another physical thing but an
associated meaning
Synedoche
