Download literary terms

Handbook of literary terms (collected from various sources)
Alliteration: Repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.
Although alliteration most often consists of sounds that begin words, it may also involve sound that
occur within words.
Allusion: reference to a statement, person, place, event, or thing that is known from literature, history,
religion, myth, politics, sports, science, or the arts.
Anachronism: Event or detail that is inappropriate for the time period.
Analogy: Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike.
Anecdote: Very brief account of a particular incident.
Aside: In a play, words spoken by a character directly to the audience or to another character but not
overheard by others onstage.
Assonance: Repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different constant sounds in words that are
close together.
Atmosphere: Mood or feeling in a work of literature.
Author: The writer of a literary work.
Autobiography: An account by a writer of his or her own life.
Ballad: Song or song-like poem that tells a story.
Biography: An account of a person's life written or told by another person.
Blank verse: Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Character: Individual in a story, poem or play.
Comedy: In general, a story that ends happily.
Conflict: Struggle or clash between opposing characters, forces, or emotions.
Connotations: All the meanings, associations, or emotions that a word suggests.
Couplet: Two consecutive lines of poetry that form a unit, often emphasized by rhythm or rhyme.
Description: Type of writing intended to create a mood or an emotion or to re-create an person, a place,
a thing, an event, or an experience.
Dialect: Way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people.
Dialogue: Conversation between tow or more characters.
Diction: Writer's or speakers choice of words.
Didactic literature: Writing that aims primarily to teach.
Drama: Story that is written to be acted for an audience.
Epic: Long narrative poem that relates the great deeds of a larger-than-life hero who embodies the
values of a particular society.
Essay: Short piece of nonfiction that examines a single subject from a limited point of view.
Exposition: Type of writing that explains, gives information, or clarifies an idea.
Fable: Brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral, or practical lesson about life.
Figure of speech: word of phrase that describes one thing in terms of another and that is not meant to
be understood on a literal level. Always involves some sort or imaginative comparison between
seemingly unlike things. (See simile, metaphor, personification)
Flashback: Scene in a movie , play, short story, novel, or narrative poem that interrupts the present
action of the plot to show events that happened at an earlier time.
Foil: character who serves as a contrast to another character.
Folk tale: Anonymous traditional story originally passed down orally from generation to generation.
Foreshadowing: The use of clues to hint at events that will occur later in the plot.
Free verse: Poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
Haiku: Japanese verse form consisting of three lines and usually seventeen syllables (five in the first
line, seven in the second, and five in the third).
Hyperbole: Figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion or create a comic effect.
Also called overstatement.
Iambic pentameter: Line of poetry made up of five iambs. An iamb consists of an unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable.
Idiom: Expressing peculiar to a particular language that means something different from the literal
meaning of the words.
Imagery: Language that appeals to the senses.
Inversion: Reversal of the normal word order in a sentence.
Irony: Contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality.
Lyric Poetry: Poetry that expresses a speaker's emotions or thought and does not tell a story.
Magic realism: Style of fiction, commonly associated with contemporary Latin American writers, in
which fantasy and reality are casually combined, producing humorous and thought-provoking results.
Metaphor: Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without using a
connective word such as like, as, than, or resembles.
Meter: A generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.
Iambic: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
Anapestic: two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
Dactylic: one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
Spondaic: Two stressed syllables, used for emphasis.
Mood: See atmosphere.
Myth: Traditional story that is rooted in a particular culture, is basically religious, and usually serves to
explain a belief, a ritual, or a mysterious natural phenomenon.
Narration: Type of writing that tells about a series of related event.
Nonfiction: Writing that deals with real people, things , events, and places.
Novel: Long fictional prose narrative, usually of more than fifty thousand words.
Onomatopoeia: Use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning. In poetry, onomatopoeia
reinforces meaning and creates evocative and musical sound effects.
Parable: Brief story that teaches a lesson about life.
Paradox: A statement or a situation that seems to be a contradiction but that reveals a truth.
Parallelism: Repetition of words, phrases, or sentences that have the same grammatical structure or that
state a similar idea.
Parody: Imitation of a work of literature, art or music for amusement or satirical purposes.
Personification: Type of metaphor in with a nonhuman thing or quality is talked abut as it it were
human.
Persuasion: Type of writing designed to change the way a reader or listener thinks or acts.
Plot: Series of related events that make up a story or drama.
Poetry: Type of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery to appeal to the
reader's emotions and imagination.
Point of view: Vantage point from which the writer tells a story.
Protagonist: Main character in fiction or drama.
Pun: Play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alike but have different
meanings.
Refrain: Repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines.
Rhyme: Repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words that are close
together in a poem.
Rhythm: Musical quality in language, produced by repetition.
Satire: Type of writing that ridicules human weakness, vice, or folly in order to bring about social
reform.
Setting: Time and place of a story or play.
Simile: Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things by using a
connective word such as like, as, than, or resembles.
Soliloquy: Long speech in which a character who is alone on stage expresses private thoughts or
feelings.
Sonnet: Fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in iambic pentameter.
Speaker: The voice that is talking to us in a poem.
Stanza: Group of consecutive lines that for a single unit in a poem.
Suspense: The uncertainty or anxiety we feel about what is going to happen next in a story.
Tall tale: An outrageously exaggerated and obviously unbelievable humorous story.
Theme: The central idea or insight revealed by a work of literature. The theme is not the same as a
work's subject. The theme is the message the writer wishes us to discover about that subject.
Tone: The attitude a writes takes toward the reader, a subject, or a character.
Tragedy: Play, novel or other narrative, depicting serious and important events, in which the main
character comes to an unhappy end.