Lit and Performance Prose Terms

Only prose terms

Allegory

When the entire story is symbolic. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a good example of this - the entire story is an allegory for political events of the time.

Allusion

An indirect reference to an event, person, place, another work of literature, etc. that gives additional layers of meaning to a text or enlarges its frame of reference.

Antithesis

Expressing contrasting ideas by balancing words of opposite meaning and idea in a line or sentence, for rhetorical impact

Caricature

An exaggerated representation of a character, often emphasizing physical or vocal features, usually for comic and satiric purposes.

Colloquial

An adjective to describe everyday/casual speech and language, as opposed to a more literary or formal register.

connotation

An association suggested by a particular word, as opposed to the word’s literal dictionary definition

Context i

The circumstances, background or environment in which an event (or text) takes place, or an idea is set, and in terms of which it can be understood.

Context ii

The part of a text that surrounds a word or passage and determines or clarifies its meaning.

contradiction

Stating or implying the opposite of what has been said or suggested.

Diction

The writer’s choice and arrangement of words or distinctive vocabulary (its effectiveness and precision)

Foreshadowing

An indication of something that will happen in the future, often used as a literary device to allude to future plot developments.

Genre

A specific type or kind of literature.

Hyperbole

A deliberate exaggeration for various effects – comic, tragic, etc.

Imagery

sensory experiences created by language.

Irony

A gap or mismatch between what is said and what is intended. Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony

Metafiction

Fiction that draws attention to the fact that it is fiction or a construct of the author, and to the writing process itself. The author may break the reader out of the fictional frame and comment on what they are doing in their writing, or offer the reader a choice of endings, etc

Metaphor

A comparison between two unlike things that are seen as alike in some aspect, without the use of the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. It can facilitate understanding of an abstract concept (for example, ‘life is a journey’) or open up the imagination by creating a striking visual and sensory link between things not normally associated together.

Mood

Describes the emotional response created in the mind of the reader or audience by elements in the text.

Motif

Recurrent element in a narrative or drama (such as an image, idea, or spoken phrase) that has symbolic significance and can contribute, through cumulative effect, to a theme.

Omniscient

An “all-knowing” narrator who can see into the minds of any character and see any event, place, time, from the ‘outside.’ It is the most common and flexible narrative method.

Onomatopoeia

The use of words that imitate or suggest the sounds associated with them, such as “murmur” or “buzz.”

Oxymoron

The joining together of two contradictory words

Paradox

An apparently contradictory statement, which, on investigation, is found to contain a truth.

Parody

 A comic imitation of another work, for deliberately comic, ridiculous or satiric effect. It is actively critical of the original work.

Personification

Where human feelings, sensations, and/or actions are attributed to an inanimate object.

Plot

The events of a narrative in the order the writer has chosen to arrange them in, to show cause-and-effect, or for artistic and emotional effect.

Point of view

The angle from which a narrative is told, reflecting who is seeing and speaking. Sometimes the point-of-view of a text shifts.

Protagonist

Main character in a work. Their actions and choices shape the plot.

Satire

Exposing and ridiculing of human follies in a society, sometimes with the aim to reform, sometimes predominantly to deflate. May be gentle, comic, biting or bitter, or a combination.

Setting

Context and location in which a work of literature takes place: it involves the physical place, time, and social environment.

Simile

Where a comparison between two things is made explicit using the words ‘as’ or ‘like’. Can make descriptions vivid and unusual.

Story

The events of a narrative in the chronological order in which they actually happened, not in terms of being deliberately patterned and arranged.

Stream of consciousness

The representation of a character’s (or first person narrator’s) thought processes: their feelings, sensations, memories, etc. as a random stream of thoughts.

Style

The distinctive linguistic traits in an author’s work. It concerns theme, diction (emotional, abstract, poetic), sentence construction, imagery, sound, etc.

Subtext

 Ideas, feelings, thoughts not dealt with directly in the text (drama especially), but existing underneath. Characters don’t always express their real thoughts.

Symbol

Physical objects that represent an abstract idea

Syntax

The grammatical structure of words in a sentence. The normal order of words or grammatical structures can be slightly displaced to create a particular effect.

Theme

Central ideas or issues in a work, often abstract (for example, racial injustice). Can also refer to an argument raised or pursued in a text, like a thesis.

Tone

 How the writing conveys the attitude and emotions of the writer towards their subjects, through aspects of language like diction, syntax, and connotation.