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Drama Terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| allegory | a symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. It often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities |
| alliteration | the repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words |
| antagonist | a character or force against which another character struggles |
| aside | words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play |
| assonance | the repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or line of poetry or prose |
| catastrophe | the action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play |
| catharsis | the purging of the feelings of pity and fear that, according to Aristotle, occur in the audience of tragic drama. The audience experiences this at the end of the play, following the catastrophe |
| character | an imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. They may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change) |
| characterization | the means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of this are complex, writers typically reveal them through their speech, dress, manner, and actions |
| chorus | a group of characters in Greek tragedy (and in later forms of drama), who comment on the action of a play without participation in it |
| climax | the turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. It represents the point of greatest tension in the work |
| comedy | a type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better. Things work out happily in the end and it may be either romantic--characterized by a tone of tolerance and geniality--or satiric |
| comic relief | the use of comic scene to interrupt a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments. The comedy of scenes offering this typically parallels the tragic action that scenes interrupt. Lack in Greek tragedy, but occurs regularly in Shakespeare's tragedies |
| complication | an intensification of the conflict in a story or play. It builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work |
| conflict | a struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. It may occur within a character as well as between characters |
| connotation | the associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in this |
| convention | a customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. These are defining features of particular literary genres |
| denotation | the dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications |
| denouement | the resolution of the plot of a literary work |
| dialogue | the conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, it is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names |
| diction | the selection of words in a literary work. It forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. |
| dramatic monologue | a type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener. As readers, we over the speaker in this monologue |
| exposition | the first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided |
| fable | a brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. They typically include animals as characters |
| falling action | in the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it toward its denouement or resolution |
| figurative language | a form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words |
| flashback | an interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action |
| foil | a character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story |
| foot | a metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables |
| foreshadowing | hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story |
| fourth wall | the imaginary wall of the box theater setting, supposedly removed to allow the audience to see the action |
| gesture | the physical movement of a character during a play |
| hyperbole | a figure of speech involving exaggeration |
| iamb | an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one |
| imagery | the pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work |
| irony | a contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature |
| metaphor | a comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as |
| metonymy | a figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea |
| monologue | a speech by a single character without another character's response |
| narrator | the voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author |
| onomatopoeia | the use of words to imitate the sounds they describe |
| parody | a humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation |
| pathos | a quality of a play's action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character. It is always an aspect of tragedy, and may be present in a comedy as well |
| personification | the endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities |
| plot | the unified structure of incidents in a literary work |
| point of view | the angle of vision from which a story is narrated |
| props | articles or objects that appear on stage during a play |
| protagonist | the main character of a literary work |
| quatrain | a four-line stanza in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet |
| recognition | the point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is |
| resolution | the sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story |
| reversal | the point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist |
| rising action | a set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax |
| satire | a literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies |
| setting | the time and place of a literary work that establish its context |
| simile | a figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or though |
| soliloquy | a speech in a play that is meant to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on the stage. If there are no other characters present, the soliloquy represents the character thinking aloud |
| stage direction | a playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play |
| staging | the spectacle a play presents in performance, including the position of actors on stage, the scenic background, the props and costumes, and the lighting and sound effects |
| stanza | a division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another |
| style | the way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques |
| subplot | a subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot |
| symbol | an object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself |
| synecdoche | a figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole |
| syntax | the grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue |
| theme | the idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, an cast in the form of a generalization |
| tone | the implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work |
| tragedy | a type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the worse. In tragedy, catastrophe and suffering await many of the characters, especially the hero |
| tragic flaw | a weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero |
| tragic hero | a privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and fate, suffers a fall from glory into suffering |
| understatement | a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration |
| unities | the idea that a play should be limited to a specific time, place, and story line. The events of the plot should occur within a twenty-four hour period, should occur within a given geographic locale, and should tell a single story |
Created by:
cjung228
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