Odyssey Terms - English Honors 9th Grade

15 terms, Futagaki

Archetype

A universal, reoccurring symbol, character type, plot pattern, or setting that appears across literature several times

Deus ex machina

A new character or event suddenly shows up to solve a seemingly hopeless situation

Dramatic Irony

When the audience or the reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know

Epic

Long story told in elevated language (usually poetry), which relates the great deeds of a larger-than-life hero who embodies the values of a particular society

External Conflict

A conflict involving a character struggling against an outside force

Flashback

Scene in a movie, play, short story, novel, or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to flash backward and tell what happened at an earlier time.

Foreshadowing

The use of clues to hint at events that will occur later in a plot

Hubris

The excessive pride or overconfidence that typically results in a character making foolish actions that ultimately bring about their defeat

Hamartia

The tragic flaw or error that reverses a protagonist’s fortune from good to bad

Internal Conflict

A conflict involving a struggle between opposing needs, desires, or emotions within a single person’s mind

Metaphor

Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, in which one thing becomes another thing without the use of the words like, as, than, or resembles

Personification

Kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human

Similie

Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as, like, as, resembles, or than.

Theme

The central idea, message, or insight of a work of literature. It is what an author wishes to reveal about a subject such as a universal truth or concept.

In medias res

A literacy technique where a narrative begins in the midst of the action of a crucial event, rather than at the chronological start.