lit terms

Allegory

A story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people, events, or abstract ideas.

Alliteration

The repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.

Allusion

An indirect reference to someone or something known from history, literature, religion, or culture.

Ambiguity

Deliberately suggesting two or more conflicting meanings in a work.

Analogy

A comparison made between two things to show how they are alike.

Anaphora

Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row.

Anastrophe

Inversion of the usual order of the parts of a sentence for rhythm or emphasis.

Anecdote

A brief story told to illustrate a point or serve as example.

Antagonist

An opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero or protagonist.

Antimetabole

Repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse order.

Antithesis

Balancing contrasting words, phrases, or ideas, often through grammatical structure.

Antihero

A central character who lacks traditional heroic qualities.

Anthropomorphism

Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object.

Aphorism

A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life.

Apostrophe

Calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person or idea.

Apposition

Placing two or more coordinate elements side by side, with the latter explaining the first.

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds.

Asyndeton

Using commas without conjunctions to separate a series of words.

Balance

Constructing a sentence so that both halves are about the same length and importance.

Characterization

The process by which a writer reveals the personality of a character.

Direct Characterization

The author directly tells what a character is like.

Indirect Characterization

The author reveals a character's traits through actions, speech, thoughts, and effects on others.

Static Character

A character who does not change much throughout the story.

Dynamic Character

A character who changes in an important way as a result of the story's action.

Flat Character

A character that has only one or two personality traits.

Round Character

A character with complex personalities and dimensions.

Chiasmus

A rhetorical balance in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but the parts are reversed.

Cliché

A word or phrase that has become lifeless due to overuse.

Colloquialism

A word or phrase in everyday use that is inappropriate for formal situations.

Comedy

A story that ends with a happy resolution of the conflicts faced by the main character.

Conceit

An elaborate metaphor that compares two startlingly different things.

Confessional Poetry

Poetry that uses intimate material from the poet's life.

Conflict

The struggle between opposing forces or characters in a story.

External Conflict

Conflict between two people, between a person and nature, or between a person and society.

Internal Conflict

A conflict that occurs within a person's mind.

Connotation

The associations and emotional overtones attached to a word or phrase.

Couplet

Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.

Dialect

A way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain social group or geographic area.

Diction

A speaker or writer's choice of words.

Didactic

A form of writing that teaches a specific lesson or moral.

Elegy

A poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died.

Epigraph

A quotation at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme.

Epistrophe

Repetition of the same expression at the end of two or more lines.

Epithet

An adjective applied to a person or thing to emphasize a characteristic quality.

Essay

A short piece of nonfiction prose discussing some aspect of a subject.

Argumentation

A form of discourse using logic, ethics, and emotional appeals to convince readers.

Persuasion

Relies more on emotional appeals than on facts.

Description

A form of discourse creating mood or emotion through language.

Exposition

One of the four major forms of discourse explaining or 'setting forth' something.

Narrative

The form of discourse that tells about a series of events.

Flashback

A scene that interrupts the chronological sequence of events to depict something from the past.

Foil

A character who contrasts with another character.

Foreshadowing

Hints and clues suggesting what will happen later in a plot.

Free Verse

Poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech that uses exaggerated statements or claims.

Imagery

Use of language to evoke a picture or concrete sensation of a person, place, or experience.

Irony

A discrepancy between appearances and reality.

Verbal Irony

When someone says one thing but means another.

Situational Irony

When there is a discrepancy between what one expects to happen and what really happens.

Dramatic Irony

When the audience knows something that the character does not.

Juxtaposition

Placing normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases next to one another for effect.

Litotes

A form of understatement emphasizing a positive by negating its opposite.

Local Color

Emphasis on a particular setting including customs, clothing, and dialect.

Loose Sentence

A sentence with the main clause first, followed by dependent units.

Lyric Poem

A poem expressing personal feelings or thoughts, not telling a story.

Metaphor

A figure of speech making a comparison between two unlike things.

Implied Metaphor

A metaphor that does not explicitly state the terms of the comparison.

Extended Metaphor

A metaphor developed as far as the writer wants.

Dead Metaphor

A metaphor that has lost its vividness due to overuse.

Mixed Metaphor

A confusing mixture of metaphors.

Metonymy

Referring to a person, place, or thing by something closely associated with it.

Mood

The atmosphere created by a writer's diction and details.

Motif

A recurring image or idea throughout a work.

Motivation

The reasons for a character's behavior.

Onomatopoeia

The use of words whose sounds echo their sense.

Oxymoron

A figure of speech combining contradictory terms.

Parable

A short story teaching a moral or lesson.

Paradox

A statement that appears self-contradictory but reveals truth.

Parallelism

Repetition of words or phrases with similar grammatical structures.

Parody

A work that humorously imitates another work's style.

Periodic Sentence

A sentence placing the main idea at the end.

Personification

Attributing human feelings to an object or animal.

Plot

The series of related events in a story.

Exposition (Plot)

Introduces characters, situation, and setting.

Rising Action

Complications in conflict and situations.

Climax

The point in a plot creating greatest intensity or suspense.

Resolution

The conclusion when most conflicts have been settled.

Point of View

The vantage point from which the story is told.

First Person Point of View

A character tells the story.

Third Person Point of View

An unknown narrator tells the story, focusing on one character's thoughts.

Omniscient Point of View

An all-knowing narrator tells the story, including thoughts of multiple characters.

Objective Point of View

A narrator who is impersonal and objective.

Polysyndeton

Using conjunctions with no commas to separate items in a series.

Protagonist

The central character in a story who drives the action.

Pun

A 'play on words' based on multiple meanings of a single word or similar-sounding words.

Quatrain

A poem consisting of four lines.

Refrain

A word, phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated in a poem.

Rhythm

The rise and fall of the voice produced by alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Rhetoric

Art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse.

Rhetorical Question

A question asked for effect, not requiring an answer.