Literacy Terms

Allegory

Allegory

A story, fictional or nonfiction, in which characters, things and events represent qualities or concepts.

The interaction of these characters, things events is meant to reveal an abstraction or a truth.

These characters may be symbolic of these ideas referred to.

Alliteration

the repetition at close intervals of initial identical consonant sounds.

Or, vowels sounds in successive words or syllables that repeat.

Allusion

An indirect reference to something (usually a literary text) with which the reader is expected to be familiar. Allusions are usually literary, historical, Biblical, or mythological.

Ambiguity

the quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness.

Antithesis

a figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposites of, or strongly contrasted with, each other. Example: "Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins."

Archetype

An image, character, story, symbol, situation, or pattern that recurs throughout literature consistently enough to be considered a universal concept or situation. Some common examples are the hero, the journey, the damsel in distress, the mentor, the villain, light and dark, death and rebirth, etc.

Colloquialism

use of slang or informal language- includes regional dialect

Connotation

Rather than the dictionary definition, the associations associated by a word. Implied meaning rather than literal meaning or denotation

Denotation

the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests

Didactic

a term used to describe fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model or correct behavior or thinking.

Epiphany

a major character's moment of realization or awareness

Euphemism

The use of a word or phrase that is less direct but is also considered less distasteful or less offensive than another.

For example: "He is at rest" instead of "He is dead." Also consider

"Technicolor yawn" for "vomiting."

Foil

A character whose traits are opposite of another and who thus points up the strengths and weakness of the other character

Indirect Characterization

an author implies a character’s personality through what the character says or does, how the character looks or dresses, the character’s inner thoughts and feelings and what others say about the character.

Style

the choices in diction, tone, and syntax that a writer makes. In combination they create a work's manner of expression. Style is thought to be conscious and unconscious and may be altered to suit specific occasions. Style is often habitual and evolves over time.

Syntax

in grammar, the arrangement of words as elements in a sentence to show their relationship

Direct Characterization

the author tells us directly what the character is like

Dynamic Character

A character who changes over the course of the work

Flat Character

A character constructed around a single idea or quality; a flat character is immediately recognizable.

Incongruity

a surprising contrast occurring through situation, image, allusion, character, diction, anachronism, etc.

Juxtaposition

the placement of two or more things side by side in order to bring out their differences.

Motif

a frequently recurrent character, incident, or concept in literature

Paradox

a statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity.

Who is the best boyfriend

A Troy

B Troy

C Troy

D Troy

Answer - All the above/ te quiero mi amor