AP English Literature and Composition
Hilltop High School
Mrs. Demangos
Atmosphere

 Effect of physical environment
 Also called Mood
 The emotional feelings inspired by a work. The
term is borrowed from meteorology to describe the
dominant mood of a selection as it is created by:
• diction,
• dialogue,
• setting,
• description
Atmosphere

 Often the opening scene in
a play or novel establishes
an atmosphere
appropriate to the theme
of the entire work.
The opening of
Shakespeare's Hamlet
creates a brooding
atmosphere of unease.
Atmosphere

 Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher establishes
an atmosphere of gloom and emotional decay.
Tone

 The author’s or speaker’s attitude
 The author’s implicit attitude toward the reader
or the people, places, and events in a work as
revealed by the elements of the author’s style.
 Tone may be characterized as serious or ironic,
sad or happy, private or public, angry or
affectionate, bitter or nostalgic, or any other
attitudes and feelings that human beings
experience.
Tone

 By looking carefully at the choices an author
makes (in characters, incidents, setting; in the
work's stylistic choices and diction, etc.), careful
readers often can isolate the tone of a work and
sometimes infer from it the underlying attitudes
that control and color the story or poem as a
whole.
Tone
 To illustrate the difference, two different
novelists might write stories about capitalism.

Author #1 creates a tale in
which an impoverished but
hard-working young lad pulls
himself out of the slums when
he applies himself to his
education, and he becomes a
wealthy, contented middleclass citizen who leaves his
past behind him, never looking
back at that awful human
cesspool from which he rose.
Author #2 creates a tale in
which a dirty street-rat skulks
his way out of the slums by
abandoning his family and
going off to college, and he
greedily hoards his money in a
gated community and ignores
the suffering of his former
"equals," whom he leaves
behind in his selfish desire to
get ahead.
Tone
 To illustrate the difference, two different
novelists might write stories about capitalism.

Author #1 and author #2 basically present the same
plotline. While the first author's writing creates a tale of
optimism and hope, the second author shapes the same
tale into a story of bitterness and cynicism.
Tone
 To illustrate the difference, two different
novelists might write stories about capitalism.

The difference is in their respective tones--the way they
convey their attitudes about particular characters and
subject-matter.
• Note that in poetry, tone is often called voice.
Conflict

 Interplay of opposing forces
 The opposition between:
1. two characters (such as a protagonist and an
antagonist),
2. between two large groups of people,
3. between the protagonist and a larger problem
such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores,
and so on.
Conflict is the engine
that drives a plot.
Internal Conflict

 Conflict may also be completely internal, such as
the protagonist struggling with his psychological
tendencies (drug addiction, self-destructive
behavior, and so on).
William Faulkner famously
claimed that the most important
literature deals with the subject of
"the human heart in conflict with
itself."
Internal Conflict

 Narratives driven by internal struggles include:
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale
Heart," in which the protagonist ends
up struggling with his own guilt after
committing a murder.
Internal Conflict

Daniel Scott Keyes'
"Flowers for Algernon," in
which the hero struggles
with the loss of his own
intelligence to congenital
mental retardation.
External Conflict

 Examples of narratives driven mainly by conflicts
between the protagonist and nature include:
Jack London's
"To Build a
Fire“
(in which the
Californian
struggles to
save himself
from freezing to
death in Alaska)
Stephen Crane's
"The Open Boat"
(in which
shipwrecked
men in a lifeboat
struggle to stay
alive and get to
shore).
External Conflict

 Examples of narratives driven by conflicts between
a protagonist and an antagonist include Mallory's
Le Morte D'arthur, in which King Arthur faces off
against his evil son Mordred, each representing
civilization and barbarism respectively.
Conflict

 In complex works of literature,
multiple conflicts may occur at
once. For instance, in
Shakespeare's Othello, one level of
conflict is the unseen struggle
between Othello and the
machinations of Iago, who seeks to
destroy him. Another level of
conflict is Othello's struggle with
his own jealous insecurities and his
suspicions that Desdemona is
cheating on him.
Comic Relief

 Lightens narrative
 A humorous scene or incident that
alleviates tension in an otherwise
serious work.
 In many instances these moments
enhance the thematic significance of
the story in addition to providing
laughter.
Comic Relief

 When Hamlet jokes with the
gravediggers we laugh, but
something hauntingly
serious about the humor
also intensifies our more
serious emotions.
Complication

 Plot reversals
An intensification of the conflict in a story or
play. Complication builds up, accumulates,
and develops the primary or central conflict
in a literary work.
Deus Ex Machina

 Contrived ending
 from Greek theos apo mechanes: An unrealistic or
unexpected intervention to rescue the protagonists or
resolve the story's conflict. The term means "The god
out of the machine," and it refers to stage machinery.
 A classical Greek actor, portraying one of the Greek
gods in a play, might be lowered out of the sky onto
the stage and then use his divine powers to solve all
the mortals' problems. The term is a negative one,
and it often implies a lack of skill on the part of the
writer.
Deus Ex Machina

 In a modern example of deus ex
machina, a writer might reach a
climactic moment in which a
band of pioneers were attacked
by bandits. A cavalry brigade's
unexpected arrival to drive away
the marauding bandits at the
conclusion, with no previous
hint of the cavalry's existence,
would be a deus ex machina
conclusion.
Deus Ex Machina

 Such endings mean that heroes are unable to solve their
own problems in a pleasing manner, and they must be
"rescued" by the writer himself through improbable
means.
 In some genres, the deus ex machina ending is
actually a positive and expected trait. In various
vitae, or Saint's Lives, divine intervention is one of
the normal climactic moments of the narrative to
bring about the rescue of a saint or to cause a mass
conversion among conventional pagan characters.
See vita.
Epiphany

 Sudden awareness
 Christian thinkers used this term to signify
a manifestation of God's presence in the
world. It has since become in modern
fiction and poetry the standard term for the
sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary
object or scene.
 In particular, the epiphany is a revelation
of such power and insight that it alters the
entire world-view of the thinker who
experiences it.
Epiphany

 (In this sense, it is similar to
what a scientist might call a
"paradigm shift.")
 Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
takes place on the Feast of the
Epiphany, and the theme of
revelation is prevalent in the
work.
Flashback

 Device to supply background
 A method of narration in which present
action is temporarily interrupted so that the
reader can witness past events--usually in
the form of a character's memories, dreams,
narration, or even authorial commentary
(such as saying, "But back when King
Arthur had been a child. . . ."). Flashback
allows an author to fill in the reader about a
place or a character, or it can be used to
delay important details until just before a
dramatic moment.
Foreshadowing

 Hints at coming events
 Suggesting, hinting,
indicating, or showing what
will occur later in a narrative.
 Foreshadowing often
provides hints about what
will happen next.
Foreshadowing

 For instance, a movie director might
show a clip in which two parents
discuss their son's leukemia. The
camera briefly changes shots to do an
extended close-up of a dying plant in
the garden outside, or one of the
parents might mention that another
relative died on the same date. The
perceptive audience sees the dying
plant, or hears the reference to the
date of death, and realizes this detail
foreshadows the child's death later in
the movie.
Foreshadowing

 Often this foreshadowing
takes the form of a noteworthy
coincidence or appears in a
verbal echo of dialogue.
 Other examples of
foreshadowing include the
conversation and action of the
three witches in Shakespeare's
Macbeth.
Stream of Consciousness

 Thoughts and feelings recorded as they occur
 Writing in which a character's perceptions,
thoughts, and memories are presented in an
apparently random form, without regard for
logical sequence, chronology, or syntax.
 Often such writing makes no distinction between
various levels of reality--such as dreams,
memories, imaginative thoughts or real sensory
perception.
William James coined the phrase "stream of
consciousness" in his Principles of Psychology (1890). The
technique has been used by several authors and poets:
Katherine Anne Porter, Dorothy Richardson, James
Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner.
Theme

 Central idea
 The central meaning or dominant idea in a
literary work. A theme provides a unifying point
around which the plot, characters, setting, point
of view, symbols, and other elements of a work
are organized.
Theme

 It is important not to mistake the theme for the
actual subject of the work; the theme refers to the
abstract concept that is made concrete through
the images, characterization, and action of the
text.
 A theme is the author's way of communicating
and sharing ideas, perceptions, and feelings with
readers, and it may be directly stated in the
book, or it may only be implied.
Motif

 Often-repeated idea or theme
 A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type
of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal
formula, which appears frequently in works of
literature.
Plot

 Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action
 The structure and relationship of actions and
events in a work of fiction. In order for a plot to
begin, some sort of catalyst is necessary. While
the temporal order of events in the work
constitutes the "story," we are speaking of plot
rather than story as soon as we look at how these
events relate to one another and how they are
rendered and organized so as to achieve their
particular effects.
Climax
Introduction of
characters, setting, Ask:
background Rising What
Action
information
does
information;
the writer give
opening scene
the reader at the
beginning of the
story?
Exposition
Narrative Hook
Falling Action
Cinderella lives
with her Resolution
evil
stepmother and
stepsisters and is
treated poorly.
Ask:
What
event drew
Climax
you most as a
reader?
The Narrative Hook is
Rising Action
the point of conflict. It
is the struggle between
opposing forces that
drives the story.
Exposition
Narrative Hook
Falling
Action
The prince will
be choosing
a
bride at the upcoming ball.
However, Cinderella has
nothing to wear to the ball and
she is not allowed to attend the
Resolution
ball.
Climax
The main character
Rising Action
faces a series of
conflicts. Characters
are developed and
complications
increase.
Exposition
Ask:
What types of conflict are
present in the story?
External? Internal?
Falling Action
As the step-family prepares for the
ball, Cinderella wishes she could
Resolution
go. Her fairy godmother comes to
her aid and makes it possible for
her to attend, but she must leave at
midnight. She dances with the
Narrativeprince
Hook
and it’s a magic moment.
Climax
Rising Action
At midnight Cinderella must leave
the ball so she flees from the palace
and
loses her glass slipper on the
Exposition
steps. The prince is distraught at
losing his love and is determined to
find her. Narrative Hook
The climax is most
often considered the
mostFalling
exciting
or
Action
suspenseful part of
the story.
Resolution
Climax
The falling action deals with
Rising right
Action after
events which occur
the climax when the character
begins to solve the problem.
These events are usually the
after-effects of the climax.
The prince uses the slipper to find
Cinderella.
He goes from house to
Exposition
house trying the slipper on every
female in the land, searching for the
slipper’s perfect fit. The slipper does
Narrative Hook
not fit the stepmother or the
stepsisters.
Falling Action
The conflict
decreases. Resolution
Often the time of
greatest overall
tension.
The conflict comes to an
Climax
end, or the problem
and/or mystery is
There is usually a release
solved.
Falling
Action
Rising Action
of dramatic tension and
In this stage all patterns
anxiety (also known as
of events accomplish
catharsis).
artistic or emotional
effect.
Cinderella tries the
slipper and it fits.
Exposition and the
Cinderella
Prince are reunited,
marry, and live happily
ever after. Narrative Hook
Resolution
Note that, while it is most common for events to unfold
chronologically or ab ovo (in which the first event
happens first, the second event happens second, and so
on), many stories structure the plot in such a way that
the reader encounters happenings out of order.
A common technique along this line is to "begin" the
story in the middle of the action, a technique called
beginning in medias res (Latin for "in the middle[s] of
things").
Some narratives involve several short episodic plots
occurring one after the other (like chivalric romances),
or they may involve multiple subplots taking place
simultaneously with the main plot (as in many of
Shakespeare's plays).
Denouement

 Resolution, outcome replicating thought
 A French word meaning "unknotting" or "unwinding,"
denouement refers to the outcome or result of a
complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath
or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages
of the plot. It is the unraveling of the main dramatic
complications in a play, novel or other work of
literature.
Denouement

 This resolution usually takes place in the final
chapter or scene, after the climax is over. Usually
the denouement ends as quickly as the writer can
arrange it--for it occurs only after all the conflicts
have been resolved.
Sources

 http://www.ohio.edu/people/hartleyg/ref/fiction
/fiction_terms.html
George Hartley’s Glossary of Fiction Terms
 http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_A.html
Literary Terms and Definitions, Dr. L. Kip Wheeler