Literary Terms for Eng. 12/Dye
Name:______________________ Period:______
Directions: Use your textbook’s “Literary Handbook” to define the words below. Use a dictionary or literary
devices.net for any terms that you cannot find in your textbook.
General terms You may know many of these terms already, which is great! Use this list as a reminder of terms
to use in your class writing assignments. Keep it for the entire school year.
1. setting
2. structure
3. speaker
4. subject
5. voice
6. tone
7. plot
a. exposition
b. conflict
c. rising action
d. climax
e. falling action
f. resolution
8. symbolism
9. theme
a. stated versus implied
10. parallelism
Anglo-Saxon Period / Beowulf
11. epic poem
a. epic hero
12. alliteration
13. assonance
14. kenning
15. figurative language
a. analogy
b. simile
c. metaphor
d. allegory
16. allusion (not illusion)
Middle Ages / Canterbury Tales
17. frame story
18. characterization
a. direct
b. indirect
19. irony
a. verbal
b. situational
c. dramatic
20. paradox
21. personification
22. aphorism
23. vernacular
24. elegy versus eulogy
Renaissance / Shakespeare
25. theatre
a. tragic hero
b. tragic flaw
c. internal vs. external conflict
d. soliloquy versus aside
e. comic relief
f. epiphany
g. motif
h. foil
26. sonnet
a. rhyme scheme
b. scansion
c. foot
d. meter
e. iambic pentameter
f. stanza
g. couplet
h. quatrain
Enlightenment / Swift & Johnson
27. satire
a. mock
b. hyperbole
c. sarcasm
d. understatement vs. overstatement
e. connotation
28. parody
29. mock-epic
30. rhetoric
Romanticism / Frankenstein
31. atmosphere
32. rhythm versus rhyme
33. imagery
34. Gothic novel
35. free verse vs. blank verse
36. enjambment
Modernism / 1984
37. dialect
38. propaganda
39. Totalitarianism
40. Utopian versus Dystopian novel
Examples of Literary Terms from a movie of your choice.
Directions: Write or type on your own paper. Answers must be written with complete sentences. Record
examples of each term from your movie. Example: Setting - The setting of The Power of One is South Africa
during and after WWII, under the Afrikaner rule of apartheid.
1. Setting –
2. structure
3. speaker
4. subject
5. tone
6. characterization
a. direct
b. indirect
7. plot
a. exposition
b. conflict
c. rising action
d. climax
e. falling action
f. resolution
8. internal conflict
9. tragic flaw
10. propaganda
11. aphorism
12. epiphany
13. symbolism or motif (bonus!)
14. comic relief
15. allusion
16. foil
17. sarcasm or parody (bonus!)
18. irony
19. propaganda
20. theme
a. stated
b. implied