Batesville High School English Department Literary Terminology, Grades 9-10

Literary Terminology Flashcards for Grades 9-10

Allegory

A story with two or more levels of meaning: a literal level and one or more symbolic levels.

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds.

Allusion

Reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art.

Analogy

Comparison between two or more things that are similar in some ways but unlike in other ways.

Anecdote

Brief story told to entertain or to make a point.

Antagonist

A character or force in conflict with a main character or protagonist.

Anthropomorphism

Interpretation of what is not human in terms of human characteristics; humanization.

Aphorism

A short pointed statement that expresses a wise observation about human experience.

Apostrophe

Figure of speech that directly expresses an absent or imaginary person or abstraction.

Archetype

A type of character, detail, image, or situation that appears in literature throughout history.

Argument

Writing or speech that attempts to convince the reader to adopt a particular opinion or course of action.

Author's Purpose

An author's main reason for writing (e.g., to inform, entertain, or persuade).

Aside

A character's comment, in a play, that is directed to the audience or another character.

Assonance

Repetition of same or similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds.

Ballad

A short musical narrative song or poem that usually recounts a single exciting or dramatic episode.

Blank Verse

Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter lines.

Broad Generalization

A statement mostly based on limited knowledge about a large group of things, places, or people.

Characterization

The act of creating and developing a character.

Colloquialism

Informal speech that people use in everyday language.

Conflict

Internal or external struggle (man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. fate).

Connotation

The non-literal, implied, suggested meaning of a word.

Consonance

Repetition of consonant sounds before and after different vowels.

Context

Set of facts or circumstances surrounding an event or a situation in a piece of literature.

Denotation

Strict literal dictionary definition of a word.

Diction

A writer's choice of words.

Epic

A long narrative poem about the deeds of gods and heroes.

Euphemism

A mild word substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

Fable

A short tale to tell a moral lesson, often with animals or inanimate objects as characters.

Fallacy

Erroneous reasoning that renders arguments logically unsound.

Free Verse

Poetry not written in a regular pattern or meter or rhyme.

Figurative Language

A phrase that stands for something other than its literal meaning, used for descriptive effect.

Flashback

An account of an event that happened before a story began.

Foil

A character who provides a strong contrast to another character.

Foreshadowing

Hint of things to come.

Genre

Category of literary work characterized by a particular form or style.

Hubris

Excessive pride or vaulting ambition.

Hyperbole

Figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion.

Idiom

A saying that takes on special meaning, different from the actual words that make it up.

Imagery

Descriptive or figurative language used to create “word pictures” for the reader.

In Medias Res

In the middle of things.

Irony

Contradiction between what a character thinks and what the reader audience knows to be true; when the actual outcome of a situation is the opposite of someone's expecation; words used to suggest the opposite of what is meant.

Juxtaposition

An act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.

Memoir

An account of one’s personal life or experiences.

Metaphor

Comparison between two objects without using like or as.

Meter

Rhythmical pattern determined by the number and types of stresses, or beats in each line.

Monologue

A speech by one character, unlike a soliloquy, that is addressed to another character or characters.

Mood/Atmosphere

The feeling created by a literary work or passage.

Motif

Recurring subject, theme, idea, etc.

Myth

Fictional tale that describes the actions of gods and heroes, or explains the causes of natural phenomena.

Narrative

Story told in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama.

Narrator

Speaker or character who tells the story.

Onomatopoeia

Use of words that imitate sounds.

Oversimplification

Description of something in a way that does not include all the facts or details (and that causes misunderstanding).

Oxymoron

Combination of contradictory terms or words.

Paradox

Statement that seems to say two opposite things, but that may be true.

Parallelism

Two or more words, phrases, or clauses, that are similar in length and grammatical form.

Personification

Animal, object, etc. given human qualities or characteristics.

Plot

Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution/denouement.

Point of View

Perspective from which the story is told.

Prose

The ordinary form of spoken or written language without metrical structure.

Protagonist

Main character or hero of story.

Pun

Play on words involving two words that sound alike or have different meanings.

Rhetoric

Persuasive writing.

Sarcasm

Caustic language that is meant to hurt or ridicule someone or something.

Satire

A writing that exposes and ridicules the flaws of people in society.

Setting

Time and place in which the action of the story occurs.

Simile

Comparison of two unlike things using like or as.

Sonnet

14 line poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter.

Symbolism

A symbol is an object, person, place etc. that means more than what it is.

Soliloquy

A long speech delivered by a character, alone on stage.

Style

The choices an author makes when writing such as diction, syntax, and other literary devices.

Syntax

Sentence structure.

Testimonial

Formal statement testifying to someone or something’s character.

Tragedy

A work of literature that tells of a catastrophe or great misfortune.

Theme

Central message of a work.

Tone

Reflection of a writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject of literary work.

Tragic Flaw

Hero’s weakness which causes a downfall.

Tragic Hero

Main character who experiences a downfall.

Understatement

A writer or speaker deliberately makes the situation less important or serious than it is.

Voice

Author’s distinctive use of language to convey their personality

Flat Character

A character with one or two defining traits.

Round Character

A complex character with multiple traits.

Dynamic Character

A character who undergoes significant change.

Static Character

A character that remains the same throughout the story.