Literary device vocab

Allusion

A reference in literature to a familiar person, place, or thing drawn from history, mythology, the Bible, or other famous works of literature. Allusions allow writers to bring up complex ideas simply and easily.

Atmosphere

A feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage. It is influenced by the setting, tone, and events

Setting

The time and place of the action in a story. The importance of setting varies in different stories

Conflict

Disagreement or struggle between opposing forces, such as different ideas, needs, or goals

Different types of conflict

Character vs. Self (internal conflict)

External Conflicts 

-Character vs. Man 

-Character vs. Society 

-Character vs. Nature 

-Character vs. Technology 

-Character vs. Supernatural 

-Character vs. Fate

Deus ex machina

DAn unexpected thing or person saving a seemingly hopeless situation 

Dialect

The technique of capturing the way English is spoken in different regions, or by people of different nationalities or social classes

Dictation

A writer’s or speaker’s choice of words in prose or poetry. 

Foil

Used in the literary sense of a noun, foil means a character whose qualities contrast with another character. It’s typically seen in the protagonist to highlight their differences with another character. 

Hyperbole

Exaggerated statements/claims that are not meant to be taken literally. An example of a hyperbole can be “I’m dying of laughter, I’ve told you this a million times!

Personification

A literary device that gives human qualities, emotions, or actions to inanimate objects, animals, or abstract ideas

Smilie

A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid

Metaphor

A figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things to suggest a resemblance, without using "like" or "as"

Imagery/Sensory details

sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch

 Senses, sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch

Rhetoric

The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, and the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.

Irony

Verbal irony- saying one thing but meaning another. For example “I totally can't wait for this next class” when you have a class you hate.

Situational irony-when a situation turns out differently than expected. For example  a police officer getting arrested or a lawyer having to get a lawyer to go to court.

Dramatic Irony-When the reader/audience knows something the character doesn't For example in Blue Mountain State  the audience knows that everyone secretly hates sammy but he has no idea.

Motif

A motif is a recurring image or symbol in a story.

Theme

The theme is the point of the story, the main message or takeaway that the reader should understand.O

Onomatopoeia

An onomatopoeia is a word that represents a sound, or the word form of a sound.

Oxymoron

A figure of speech that combines two opposing or contradictory ideas.

Paradox

A statement that seems to be contradictory, but actually presents a truth.

Point of view

refers to the perspective from which a story is narrated. It determines who is telling the story and how the author communicates the narrative to the reader. There are various types of point of view, including:

• First-person: The narrator is a character in the story, using "I" or "we".

  1

• Second-person: The narrator addresses the reader directly as "you".

  1

• Third-person: The narrator is outside the story, using "he," "she," or "they".

Plot

Main events of a play, book or movie that is devised and presented by the writer as someone a sequence

Symbol/symbolism

The use of things that are used to represent other things beyond their meaning

Mood

Mood refers to the emotional aspect that the writer wishes to evoke in the reader through a story. The mood portrayed in writing may be sad, happy, angry, harsh, ominous. It's how the author wants the reader to feel when they read their writing. 

Tone

Tone is the writer's attitude toward how his or her subject, characters, or audience. A writer's tone may be described as formal, informal, friendly, distant, personal, pompous, or humorous.

Dynamic character

A character who goes through important a internal change

Static character

A character that does not go through a important internal change

Idioms

A group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words.

Allegory

A more complex narrative that conveys hidden meanings through symbolic figures and has both a surface story and a deeper symbolic message

Fable

short story that conveys a moral lesson, often featuring animals as characters

Indirect characterization

a literary technique where an author reveals a character's traits through their actions, thoughts, dialogue, and interactions with others, rather than explicitly stating them.

Direct characterization

when the author tells the reader something about a character outright