KMH
LITERARY TERMINOLOGY
RCSHS
Part of Speech: adjective – this
word will be used to describe
Definition:
1. Considered apart from
concrete existence
2. Difficult to understand
3. Qualities that cannot be
perceived with the five
senses.
Examples:
Calling something pleasant
or pleasing is abstract, while
calling something yellow or
sour is concrete.
The word in use:
“The more horrifying this world
becomes, the more are
becomes abstract.”
- Ellen Key
Synonyms: complex, indefinite,
unreal
Antonyms: actual, concrete,
physical, real
Part of Speech: adjective – this
word will be used to describe
Definition:
1. Of, relating to, or dealing
with the beautiful
2. Pleasing in appearance
Examples:
The new browser is much more than an
aesthetic overhaul.
Also, human conscience has its
aesthetic component: our taste for
"poetic" justice, the idea of symmetry.
Jones has become famous for creating a
modern dance aesthetic that addresses
major moral and social questions.
Part of Speech: noun– this word The word in use:
“I like to work with the same people when I
will be used as an idea
can, and you want to get people with
the same interests that you have, and
Definition:
the same aesthetic.”
3. a principle of taste or style
-Spike Lee
adopted by a particular
Synonyms: artistic, creative,
person, group, or culture
gorgeous, pleasing
Antonyms: displeasing, ugly
Part of Speech: noun– this word Examples:
"There are obvious layers of allegory [in
will be used as an idea or
the movie Avatar]. The Pandora woods
thing
Definition:
1.
2.
is a lot like the Amazon rainforest (the
movie stops in its tracks for a heavy
ecological speech or two), and the
attempt to get the Na'vi to 'cooperate'
carries overtones of the U.S.
involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan."
(Owen Gleiberman, review of Avatar.
Entertainment Weekly, Dec. 30, 2009)
a poem, play, picture, etc, in which
the apparent meaning of the
characters and events is used to
symbolize a deeper moral or
spiritual meaning
Synonyms: fable, moral,
The rhetorical strategy of
extending a metaphor through an
symbolic tale
entire narrative so that objects,
Antonyms: fact, non-fiction,
persons, and actions in the text
truth
are equated with meanings that
lie outside the text.
Part of Speech: noun– this word Examples:
will be used as an idea or
"a peck of pickled peppers”
thing
“around the rock the ragged
rascal ran”
Definition:
1.
2.
the use of the same consonant or
of a vowel, not necessarily the
same vowel SOUND at the
beginning of each word or each
stressed syllable in a line of verse
The repetition of an initial
consonant sound
Part of Speech: noun– this word Examples:
will be used as an idea or
"I was not born in a manger. I
thing
was actually born on Krypton
and sent here by my father,
Jor-el, to save the Planet
Definition:
Earth."
1. a reference that recalls
(Senator Barack Obama,
another work, another time
speech at a fund-raiser for
in history, another famous
Catholic charities, October 16,
person, and so forth
2008)
2. An indirect reference to a
"I violated the Noah rule:
person, place, event, or
predicting rain doesn't count;
literary work with which the
building arks does."
author believes the reader
-Warren Buffett
will be familiar
Part of Speech: noun– this word
will be used as an idea or
thing
Definition:
1. A short account (or
narrative) of an interesting
or amusing incident, often
intended to illustrate or
support some point.
Synonyms: story, tale, narration
Part of Speech: noun– this word Examples:
will be used as an idea or
"If you want my final opinion
thing
on the mystery of life and all
that, I can give it to you in a
nutshell. The universe is like a
Definition:
safe to which there is a
1. a form of reasoning in which
combination. But the
a similarity between two or
combination is locked up in
more things is inferred from
the safe."
a known similarity between
(Peter De Vries, Let Me Count
them in other respects
the Ways. Little Brown, 1965)
2. a similarity between like
the analogy between the
features of two things, on
heart and a pump.
which a comparison may be
based
Antonyms: disagreement,
Synonyms: likeness,
dissimilarity, unlikeness
comparison, parallel
Part of Speech: noun– this word
will be used as an idea or
thing
Definition:
1. the separating of any material
or abstract entity into its
constituent elements
2. this process as a method of
studying the nature of
something or of determining
its essential features and their
relations (in Ms. Hedrick’s
words – to break something
into smaller parts and discuss
how these parts affect the
whole)
RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
A form of close reading that
employs the principles of rhetoric to
examine the interactions between a
text, an author, and an audience.
Rhetorical analysis may be applied
to virtually any text or image--a
speech, an essay, an advertisement,
a poem, a photograph, a web page,
even a bumper sticker. When
applied to a literary work, rhetorical
analysis regards the work not as an
aesthetic object but as an artistically
structured instrument for
communication. As Edward P.J.
Corbett has observed, rhetorical
analysis "is more interested in a
literary work for what it does than
for what it is."
Part of Speech: noun– this word EXAMPLES:
will be used as an idea or
thing
Definition:
a critical (careful, exact
evaluation and judgment expressing or involving an
analysis of the merits and
faults of a work of literature
or art.) or explanatory note or
body of notes added to a
text.
Synonyms: commentary,
explanation, interpretation,
observations
Antonyms: blank
Ideas for Annotating A Text
Underline, star, highlight, box, circle whatever words, phrases, or
sentences that catch your attention.
Write brief comments in the margins
•observations about what is being said or done
•what you are reminded of (people, feelings, places, moods)
•questions you have
•ideas that occur to you
•things that you agree or disagree with
•any connections you are making
•summary comments
•identify themes being developed
•any literary devices being used
alliteration
oxymoron
allusion
paradox
ambiguity
parallel
construction
archetypes
pattern
assonance
personification
characterization
prose
denotation/connot rhetorical question
ation
diction
rhyme
epic poetry
setting
euphemism
simile
first person point of soliloquy
view
foreshadowing
stream of
consciousness
free verse
style-formal,
informal
hyperbole
symbolism
imagery
synesthesia
interior monologue syntax
irony-dramatic,
verbal, situational
third person limited
lyric poetry
third person
omniscient
metaphor
time shifts
meter repetition
tone
narrative poetry
tragedy
naturalistic detail
understatement
onomatopoeia
Part of Speech: noun– this word
will be used as an idea or
thing
Definition:
An original model or pattern
from which other later copies
are made, especially a
character, an action, or
situation that seems to
represent common patterns
of human life
Synonyms: model, pattern,
classic exemplar, standard
Antonyms: atypical
Archetypes
Carl Jung first applied the term
archetype to literature. He recognized
that there were universal patterns in all
stories and mythologies regardless of
culture or historical period
and hypothesized that part of the
human mind contained a collective
unconscious shared by all members of
the human species, a sort of universal,
primal memory. Joseph Campbell
took Jung’s ideas and applied them to
world mythologies. In
A Hero with a Thousand Faces,
among other works, he refined the
concept of hero and the hero’s
journey— George Lucas used Campbell’s
writings to formulate the Star Wars
saga. Recognizing archetypal patterns
inliterature brings patterns we all
unconsciously respond to in similar
ways to a conscious level.
applied to:
Archetypes can be expressed
in
An image
A theme
A symbol
An idea
A character type
A plot pattern
Myths
Dreams
Literature
Religions
Fantasies
Folklore
The term archetype can be
Part of Speech: noun– this word
will be used as an idea or
thing
Definition:
(2) the careful, sustained
(1) Reading a piece of literature
interpretation of a brief
carefully, bit by bit, in order
passage of text. Such a
to analyze the significance of
reading places great emphasis
every individual word, image, on the particular over the
and artistic ornament.
general, paying close
attention to individual words,
syntax, and the order in which
sentences and ideas unfold as
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