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Literary Terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Alliteration | The repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds in words that are very close together |
| Allusion | A reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, or science |
| Atmosphere | The overall mood or emotion of a work of literature |
| Autobiography | The story of a person's life, written or told by that person |
| Biography | The story of a real person's life, written or told by another person |
| Character | A person or animal who takes part in action of a story, play, or other literary work |
| Conflict | A struggle or clash between opposing characters or opposing forces |
| Connotation | The feelings and associations that a word suggests |
| Denotation | The literal, dictionary definition of a word |
| Description | The kind of writing that creates a clear image of something, usually by using the details that appeal to one or more of the senses |
| Dialect | A way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people |
| Dialogue | A conversation between two or more characters |
| Drama | A story written to be acted for an audience |
| Essay | A short piece of nonfiction prose that examines a single subject |
| Fable | A brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral or gives a practical lesson about how to get along in life |
| Fiction | A prose account that is made up rather than true |
| Figure of Speech | A word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of something else and is not literally true |
| Flashback | An interruption in the action of a plot to tell what happened at an earlier time |
| Folk Tale | A story with no known author that originally was passed on from one generation to another by word of mouth |
| Foreshadowing | The use of clues to suggest events that will happen later in the plot |
| Free Verse | Poetry without a regular meter or a rhyme scheme |
| Imagery | Language that appeals to the senses |
| Irony | In general, a contrast between expectation and reality |
| Main Idea | The most important idea expressed in a paragraph or in an entire essay |
| Metamorphosis | A marvelous change from one shape to another one |
| Metaphor | An imaginative comparison between two unlike things in which one thing is said to another thing |
| Mood | The overall emotion created by a work of literature |
| Myth | A story that explains something about the world that typically involves gods and other superhuman beings |
| Nonfiction | Prose writing that deals with real people events, and places, without changing any facts |
| Novel | A Fictional story that is usually more than one hundred book pages long |
| Onomatopeia | The use of words whose sounds echo their sense |
| Personification | A figure of speech in which a nonliving thing or quality is talked about as if it were human or alive |
| Plot | The series of related events that make up a story: introduction, conflict, complications, climax, and the resolution |
| Poetry | A kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery designed to appeal to emotion and imagination |
| Point of View | The vantage point from which a story is told |
| Refrain | A group of words repeated at intervals in a poem, song, or speech |
| Rhyme | The repetition of accented accented vowel sounds following them in words close together in a poem |
| Rhythm | A musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables or by the repetition of certain other sound patterns |
| Short Story | A fictional prose narrative that is usually ten to twenty book pages |
| Simile | A comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, than or resembles |
| Speaker | The voice talking in a poem |
| Stanza | In a poem a group of consecutive lines that forms a single unit |
| Symbol | A person, place, a thing, or an event that has its own meaning ans stands for something beyond itself as well |
| Tall Tale | A exaggerated, fanciful story that gets "taller and taller," more and more far-fetched, the more is told and retold |
| Theme | The truth about life revealed in a work of literature |
| Tone | The attitude that a writer takes toward the audience, a subject, or a character |
Created by:
lukek833
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