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literary terms
Question | Answer |
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Alliteration | -the repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds in words that are close together |
Allusion | -a reference to a statement, a person, a place,or an event from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, or science |
Atmosphere | -the overall mood or emotion of a work of literature |
Autobiography | -the story of a person's life, written or told by that person |
Biography | -the story of a real person's life, written or told by another person |
Character | -a person or animal who takes part in the action of a story, play, or other literary work |
Conflict | -a struggle or clash between opposing characters or opposing forces |
Connotation | -the feelings and associations that a word suggests |
Denotation | -the literal, dictionary definition of a word |
Description | -the kind of writing that creates a clear image of something, usually by using details that appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch |
Dialect | -a way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people |
Dialogue | -a conversation between two or more characters |
Drama | -a story written to be acted for an audience |
Essay | -a short piece of nonfiction prose that examines a single subject |
Fable | -a brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral or gives practical lesson about how to get along in life |
Fiction | -a prose account that is made up rather than true |
Figure of Speech | -a word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of something else and is not literally true. |
Flashback | -an interruption in the action of a plot to tell what happened at an earlier time |
Folk Tale | -a story with no known author that originally was passed on from one generation to the another by word of mouth |
Foreshadowing | -the use of clues to suggest events that will happen later in the plot |
Free Verse | -poetry without a regular meter or a rhyme scheme |
Imagery | -language that appeals to the senses |
Irony | -in general a contrast between expectation and reality |
Main Idea | -the most important idea expressed in a paragraph or in an entire essay |
Metamorphosis | -a marvelous change from one shape to the other |
Metaphor | -an imaginative comparison between two unlike things in which one thing is said to be another thing |
Mood | -the overall emotion created by a work of literature |
Motivation | -a person or animal that takes part in the action of a story, play, or other literary work |
Myth | -A story that explains something about the world and typically involves gods or other superhuman beings |
Nonfiction | -prose writing that deals with real people, events, and places without changing any facts. |
Novel | -a fictional story that is usually more than one hundred book pages long |
Onomatopoeia | -the use of words whose sounds echo their sense |
Personification | -a figure of speech in which a nonhuman or nonliving thing or quality is talked about as if it were human or alive |
Plot | -the series of related events that make up a story |
Poetry | -a kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery designed to appeal to emotion and imagination |
Point Of View | -the vantage point from which a story is told |
Refrain | -a group of words repeated at intervals in a poem, song, or speech |
Rhyme | -the repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words close together in a poem |
Rhythm | -a musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed or unstressed syllables or by the repetition of certain other sound patterns |
Setting | -the time and place in which the events of a work of literature take place |
Short Story | -a fictional prose narrative that is usually ten to twenty book pages long |
Simile | -a comparison between two unlike things using a word such as like, as, than, or resembles |
Speaker | -the voice talking in a poem |
Stanza | -in a poem a group of consecutive lines that form a single unit |
Suspense | -the uncertainty or anxiety you feel about what will happen next in a story |
Symbol | -a person, a place, a thing, or an event that has its own meaning and stands for something beyond itself as well |
Tall Tale | -an exaggerated, fanciful story that gets "taller and taller," more and more far fetched, the more it is told and retold. |
Theme | -the truth about life revealed in a work of literature |
Tone | -the attitude that a writer takes toward the audience, a subject, or a character |