Lit terminology

Allegory

A literary or visual form in which characters, events or images represent or symbolize ideas.

Alliteration

Repetition of an identical consonant sound at the beginning of stressed words, usually close together.

Allusion

An indirect reference to an event, person, place, or another work that gives additional layers of meaning.

Antithesis

Expressing contrasting ideas by balancing words of opposite meaning in a line or sentence.

Caricature

An exaggerated representation of a character, often for comic and satiric purposes.

Colloquial

Everyday speech and language, as opposed to a literary or formal register.

Connotation

An association suggested by a word, useful when discussing diction.

Consonance

Where the final consonants are the same in two or more words close together.

Context

The circumstances or background in which an event takes place, or a part of a text that clarifies its meaning.

Contradiction

Stating or implying the opposite of what has been said.

Diction

The writer’s choice and arrangement of words or distinctive vocabulary.

Foreshadowing

An indication of something that will happen in the future, used to hint at plot developments.

Genre

A specific type or kind of literature.

Hyperbole

A deliberate exaggeration for various effects, often used in comedic or tragic contexts.

Imagery

The mental pictures created by language that appeal to the senses.

Irony

A gap or mismatch between what is said and what is intended.

Metafiction

Fiction that draws attention to the writing process itself.

Metaphor

A comparison between two unlike things that are seen as alike in some aspect.

Mood

The emotional response created in the reader's mind by elements in literature.

Motif

A recurrent element in a narrative that has symbolic significance.

Omniscient

A 'third person' narrator who knows the minds of all characters and can see any event.

Onomatopoeia

The use of words that imitate sounds associated with them.

Oxymoron

Where two seemingly contradictory words are joined, suggesting something complex.

Paradox

An apparently contradictory statement that contains a truth upon investigation.

Parody

A comic imitation of another work, often for ridiculing effect.

Personification

Attributing human feelings or actions to inanimate objects.

Plot

The events of a narrative arranged in a chosen order for effect.

Point of view

The angle from which a narrative is told, reflecting who is seeing and speaking.

Protagonist

The main character in a work.

Satire

Exposing and ridiculing human follies in a society to provoke change or entertain.

Setting

The context and location in which a work of literature takes place.

Simile

A comparison made explicit with 'as' or 'like'.

Story

The events of a narrative in the chronological order in which they happened.

Stream of consciousness

The representation of a character’s thought processes as a random stream of thoughts.

Style

The distinctive linguistic traits in an author’s work that includes theme and diction.

Subtext

Ideas or feelings not directly expressed in the text but existing underneath.

Symbol

Objects that represent a wider, abstract significance.

Syntax

The grammatical structure of words in a sentence.

Theme

Central ideas or issues in a work, often abstract.

Tone

The attitude and emotions conveyed by the writer through aspects of language.