Essential Literary Terms for High School English

A comprehensive vocabulary set of literary terms covering character development, author's craft, poetic devices, plot structure, and narration styles based on lecture notes.

Antagonist

A person who is presented as the main foe of the protagonist; a character that opposes another character and often conflicts with the protagonist.

Direct Characterization

Describes the character through their physical description, line of work, or passions and pursuits.

Flat Character

Two-dimensional characters that are relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work.

Indirect Characterization

The process of describing a character through that character's thoughts, actions, speech, and dialogue to guide the reader in making their own conclusions.

Protagonist

The leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text.

Round Character

Lifelike figures with complex, multifaceted personalities that possess depth and dimension, and often undergo personal development over the course of a story.

Static Character

A character who does not change during the course of the story.

Stock Character

A character in literature, theater, or film of a type quickly recognized and accepted by the reader and requiring no development by the writer, such as The Villain or The Sidekick.

Sympathetic Character

A fictional character in a story whom the writer expects the reader to identify with and care about, if not admire.

Unsympathetic Character

A person who is unpleasant and difficult to like.

Atmosphere

A feeling or emotion at a given place; the overall mood of a story, poem, etc.

Attitude

Refers to the perspective or tone of the writer they adopt in a certain work.

Connotation

An idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.

Diction

Linguistic choices a writer makes to effectively convey an idea, a point of view, or tell a story, helping establish a distinct voice and style.

Flashback

A scene in a movie, novel, etc., set in a time earlier than the main story.

Foreshadowing

A warning or indication of a future event; a literary device used to hint at events yet to come and to keep readers guessing.

Dramatic Irony

A form of irony wherein the audience knows what is happening (the whole story), but the characters do not.

Mood

A literary element that evokes certain feelings or vibes in readers through words and description.

Motif

A symbolic image or idea that appears frequently in a story, such as symbols, sounds, actions, ideas, or words, to strengthen the theme.

Prose

Written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure.

Purpose

The goal or aim of a piece of writing: to express oneself, to provide information, to persuade, or to create a literary work.

Satire

The art of making someone or something look ridiculous, raising laughter in order to embarrass, humble, or discredit its targets.

Situational Irony

Takes place when the opposite of what is expected actually happens.

Irony

An incongruity between appearance and reality, typically found in situational, verbal, and dramatic forms.

Stanza

A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse.

Style

The literary element describing the ways an author uses words—word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, and sentence arrangement—to establish mood, images, and meaning.

Theme

The subject of talk, a piece of writing, a person's thought, or exhibition; a topic.

Tone

An attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience, generally conveyed through word choice or pinpoint viewpoint.

Verbal Irony

A figure of speech where the speaker intends to be understood as meaning something that contrasts with the literal or usual meaning of what they say.

Alliteration

The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.

Allusion

An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect reference, oftentimes biblical or based on Greek mythology.

Analogy

Shows how two things are alike with the goal of explaining a specific point; it is more complex than a simile or metaphor because it explains rather than just shows.

Apostrophe

A poetic phrase or speech addressed to a subject that is not literally present, such as a dead person, an absent person, an inanimate object, or an abstract idea.

Cliché

A phrase or statement that lacks original thought, or is a common stereotype, typically overused.

Hyperbole

Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

Imagery

Part of figurative language whereby the author uses vivid images to describe a character, place, or event.

Juxtaposition

Occurs when an author places two things side by side as a way of highlighting their differences.

Metaphor

A thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract.

Onomatopoeia

The formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named.

Oxymoron

A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction, such as 'deafening silence'.

Paradox

A seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.

Parallel Structure

The use of successive verbal constructions in poetry or prose which correspond in grammatical structure, sound, meter, or meaning.

Personification

The attribution of human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.

Pun

A joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.

Repetition

The action of repeating something that has already been said or written.

Rhyme

The correspondence of two or more words with similar-sounding final syllables used to produce appealing sounds and unify a poem's form.

Simile

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

Symbolism

A word, object, action, character, or concept that stands for or suggests something else beyond its literal meaning.

Understatement

A statement that represents something as smaller, less intense, or less important than it really is.

Climax

The point of highest interest and emotional response; the decisive moment or turning point at which rising action is reversed to falling action.

Conflict

The opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the dramatic action in drama or fiction.

Denouement

The conclusion after the climax in which the complexities of the plot are unraveled and the conflict is finally resolved.

Exposition

Background information on the characters and setting explained at the beginning of a story, often containing details of events before the story began.

Falling Action

What happens near the end of a story after the climax and resolution of the major conflict.

Initial Incident

The event that sets the main character or characters on the journey that will occupy them throughout the narrative.

Plot

In a narrative, the sequence of events where each affects the next through the principle of cause-and-effect.

Rising Action

The bulk of the plot starting after the exposition and ending at the climax; events that build on the conflict and increase tension.

Setting

The place or type of surroundings where something is positioned or where an event takes place.

First Person

A point of view where the story is narrated by one character at a time, recognized by the use of 'I' or 'we'.

Third Person

A story told without using 'I' or 'we', where the voice appears akin to that of the author.

Third Person Omniscient

A narrator who knows all the thoughts and feelings of all characters and moves from character to character to interpret events through several voices.

Third Person Limited Omniscient

A type of narration when the narrator relates only their own thoughts, feelings, and knowledge about various situations and other characters.