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Literary Devices
Term | Definition |
---|---|
POINT OF VIEW | The perspective from which a story is told. |
CHARACTER | A person or animal in a story. |
CHARACTERIZATION | A description of the distinctive nature or features of someone or something. |
MOTIVATION | The reason(s) a character behaves in a certain way. |
SETTING | The time AND place during which a story is set |
TONE | The author’s attitude (feelings) toward his/her subject matter, characters, and audience. |
ATMOSPHERE | The physical surrounding that adds to the overall feeling of a story |
MOOD | The way a reader feels as he/she reads a story as described with one or two adjectives. |
CONFLICT | A struggle between opposing characters or opposing forces. |
SUSPENSE | The uncertainty or anxiety that a reader feels about what will happen next in the story. |
SYMBOLISM | A person, a place, a thing, or an event that has meaning in itself and stands for something beyond itself as well. |
MOTIF | Any element of a story that is repeated in different stories at different times. |
THEME | The overall message or truth about life in a piece of literature. |
FORESHADOWING | The use of clues or hints to suggest events that will occur later in the story. |
FLASHBACK | Interruption in the present action of a plot to show events that happened at an earlier time. |
SITUATIONAL IRONY | What happens is very different from what we expected would happen |
VERBAL IRONY | A contrast between what is said or written and what is really meant |
DRAMATIC IRONY | the reader/audience knows something the characters don’t know |
ALLUSION | A reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, the arts, history, religion, mythology, sports, |
SIMILE | A comparison of two things that are not alike using words such as “like” or “as.” |
METAPHOR | A comparison of two things that are not alike where one becomes the other. |
ALLITERATION | Repetition of the same beginning consonant sound of words that are close together. |
PERSONIFICATION | An object or animal is spoken about as if it had human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes. |
ONOMATOPOEIA | Words whose sounds imitate or suggest their meaning. |
IMAGERY | Language that appeals to the five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell. |
RHYME SCHEME VS. FREE VERSE | Rhymed poetry is identified by the pattern of the rhyming lines (based upon the last word in the line) and identified by LETTERS. Free verse poetry does not have a regular rhyme scheme and resembles prose |
HYPERBOLE | Overstating something for the purpose of creating a comic effect. |