LITERARY TERMINOLOGY
Allegory- a story in which characters, setting and events stand for certain people, events or concepts
Alliteration- a repetition of consonant sounds in words. Ex: flirt and flutter
Allusion- a reference to a statement, person, place or thing that is known from literature, history, religion, myth, etc
Assonance- a repetition of vowel sounds. Ex: silence and slow time
CharacterStatic- doesn’t change much
Dynamic- changes as a result of a story’s events
Flat- one or two traits
Round- 3D, solid, realistic
Conflict- struggle between opposing characters
External- character struggles against an outside force
Internal- struggles with characters mind of opposing needs, desires, and emotions
Description- a kind of writing that is intended to create a mood/emotion or to re-create a person, place, thing, event or
experience
Dialect- a way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people
Diction- writer or speakers choice of words (style)
Drama- play
Epic- a long narrative poem that relates the great deeds of a larger-than-life hero who embodies the values of a particular
society
Epithet- name/title we associate with someone’s name. Ex: Honest Abe
Essay- short piece of nonfiction that explains, gives information, defines or clarifies an idea
Exposition- writing that explains, gives information, defines or clarifies an idea
Fable- brief story that teaches a lesson or moral
Flashback- a scene in a story that interrupts the present action of the plot to go back and tell what happened at an earlier
time
Foreshadowing- the use of clues to hint at certain events that will occur later in the plot
Imagery- language that appeals to the senses
Irony- discrepancy or contrast between expectation and reality. Ex: raining on your wedding day
Metaphor- figure of speech that compares two unlike things with out using like, as, than or resembles
Meter- pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables u / u / u / u /
Narration- a kind of writing or speaking that tells a story
Nonfiction- prose writing that deals with real people, places and events
Novel- a long fictional story
Onomatopoeia- the use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests the meaning. Ex: buzz, smack, crash, boom
Personification- giving human qualities to something inhuman
Persuasion- a kind of writing that aims to convince the reader to think or act a certain way
Plot- series of related events that make up a story
1) Exposition  2) rising action  3) climax  4) falling action  5) resolution
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2
4
1
5
Point of view- the advantage point from which the writer has chosen to tell the story
Omniscient- (all knowing) the person telling the story knows everything there is to know about the characters,
their problems, past, present, and future, and what characters think
Third person unlimited- narrator focuses on the thoughts and feelings of just one character. We, the readers, feel
we are experiencing the story through this one character
First person- one of the characters is actually telling the story, using the pronoun I. We get to know the narrator
well, but we can only know what this person knows and observes
Pun- play on word(s) or two words that sound alike but have different meanings (humor)
Satire- the kind of writing that ridicules something in order to reveal weakness
Setting- the time and place where a story occurs
Short story- a short fictional prose narrative that usually makes up about 10-20 book pages
Simile- compares two unlike things using like, as, resembles, than
Soliloquy- an unusually long speech in which a character on stage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud
Sonnet- fourteen line lyrical poem usually written in iambic pentameter, which has one of several rhyme schemes
Speaker- voice talking in a poem
Stanza- a group of words in a poem (like a paragraph in a book)
Symbol- a person, place, thing or event that stands for itself and for something beyond itself
Theme- center idea of a work of literature, an idea the author wishes to convey about the subject, not directly stated, not
the subject. Ex: love is more powerful than family loyalty
Tone- an attitude a writer takes toward the audience, subject, or character, conveyed through writer’s choice of words and
detail
Tragedy- main character comes to an unhappy ending
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