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English
English Literary Elements/Devices
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Alliteration | The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words in a line of poetry. An example in Beowulf is: “Then Welthow went from warrior to warrior” |
| Allusion | A reference to a mythological, literary, or historical person, place, or thing. |
| Apostrophe | A form of personification in which the absent or dead are spoken to as if present and the inanimate, as if animate. |
| Charecteration | the creation or construction of a fictional character. |
| Direct Characterization | straightforward physical description, the narrator’s direct comments about the character’s nature |
| Indirect Characterization | a literary technique where the author reveals a character's personality and traits through their actions, dialogue, thoughts, and how other characters react to them, rather than directly stating those characteristics. |
| Protagonist | main character of the story |
| Antagonist | force or character working against the protagonist |
| Dynamic character | a character that changes in response to the actions through which he or she passes during a literary work. |
| Static character | a person or animal who changes very little over the course of a narrative. Things happen to these characters, but little happens in them. |
| Flat character | person or animal in whom the author emphasizes a single important trait. |
| Round character | a complex, fully-rounded personality (three-dimensional) |
| Foil | a character, who by contrast with the main character, serves to accentuate that character’s distinctive qualities or characteristics. |
| Conflict | describes the tension between opposing forces in a work of literature. The most common conflicts are: person vs. person, person vs. self, person vs. fate, person vs. nature and person vs. society. |
| External | a struggle against an outside force (person against person, nature, society) |
| Internal | a struggle between opposing needs, desires, or emotions within a character |
| Denotation | dictionary definition of a word |
| Connotation | feelings and attitudes associated with a word |
| Flashback | a scene that interrupts the action of a work to show a previous event. |
| Foreshadowing | a warning or indication of a future event. It is used as a literary device to tease readers about plot turns that will happen later in the story. |
| Hyperbole | A deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used for either serious or comic effect. Ex.: I could sleep for a year. |
| Imagery | words or phrases a writer uses to represent persons, objects, actions, feelings, and ideas descriptively by appealing to the senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. |
| Irony | the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. |
| Dramatic Irony | occurs when the reader or viewer knows something that a character(s) do not know. |
| Situational Irony | occurs when a character or reader expects one thing to happen but something else actually happens. |
| Verbal Irony | occurs when a speaker or narrator says one thing but means another. |
| Metaphor | A comparison of two unlike things not using like or as. |
| Mood | the feeling or atmosphere that a writer creates for the reader |
| Motif | a recurring word, phrase, image, object, idea, or action in a work of literature. Motifs function as unifying devices and often relate to one or more major themes. |
| Onomatopoeia | the use of words that imitate or mimic the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to. |
| Oxymoron | A form of paradox that combines a pair of opposite terms into a single unusual expression. |
| Paradox | Occurs when the elements of a statement contradict each other. Although the statement may appear illogical, impossible, or absurd, it turns out to have a coherent meaning that reveals a hidden truth. |
| Personification | a figurative language technique where an object or idea is given human characteristics or human actions |
| Plot Elements | the essential components that shape the structure and flow of a narrative. |
| Exposition | Background information of the story including setting |
| Setting | refers to the time and place in which the action of a literary work occurs |
| Initial Incident/Inciting Moment | first problem of the story; ends exposition and begins rising action |
| Rising Action | The events that lead up to the climax (often create suspense) |
| Climax | The point of no return for the protagonist; he/she must make a decision that cannot be taken back |
| Falling Action | Leads to the end of the story, answers question, begins to tie up loose ends |
| Resolution | the end of the story; often the point when the central conflict of the story is resolved |
| Point of view | The perspective from which a narrative is told. |
| 1st Person | narrator is a character in the story (I) |
| 3rd Person Limited | narrator is not a character in the story, but zooms in on the thoughts and feelings of one (or a very few) character(s) |
| 3rd Person Omniscient | narrator is not a character in the story but can tell us what all (or many) of the characters are thinking and feeling as well as what is happening in other places. |
| 3rd Person Objective | narrator is not a part of the story, but tells the story objectively (no opinions)--just reports as if they were facts (uses pronouns: they, it, he, she) |
| Pun | A play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings. Puns can have serious as well as humorous uses. |
| Rhyme | Words rhyme when the sounds of their accented vowels and all succeeding sounds are identical, as in amuse and confuse. For true rhyme, the consonants that precede the vowels must be different. |
| End rhyme | occurs at the end of lines |
| Internal rhyme | occurs within the line |
| Rhyme scheme | a pattern of end rhyme in a poem. It is charted by assigning a letter of the alphabet, beginning with a, to each line. Lines that rhyme are given the same letter. |
| Couplet | two successive lines of rhyming verse, often of the same meter. |
| Blank verse | unrhymed verse, usually referring to unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| Free verse | poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme, and uses irregular line lengths. |
| Narrative | a poem that tells a story or an account of a situation or event |
| Sonnet | a lyric poem of 14 lines, commonly written in iambic pentameter. The most common subject of a sonnet is love for a beautiful but unattainable woman. |
| Simile | A comparison of two different things or ideas through the use of the words like or as. Ex. Her teeth gleamed like pearls. |
| Style | The writer’s characteristic manner of employing language. |
| Suspense | the quality of literature that makes the reader or audience feel uncertain or tense about the outcome of events |
| Symbolism | the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. |
| Syntax | The arrangement of words and the order of grammatical elements in a sentence. |
| Theme | The central message of a literary work. The theme is the idea the author wishes to convey about the subject. It is expressed as a sentence or general statement about life or human nature. |
| Tone | The writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject, character, or audience, and it is conveyed through the author’s choice of diction, point of view, imagery, detail, and syntax.. Tone can be serious, humorous, sarcastic, indignant, objective, etc. |
| Understatement | a technique of creating emphasis by saying less than is actually or literally true. It is the opposite of a hyperbole or exaggeration and is also a device of irony and/or satire. |
Created by:
PRagu
Popular English Vocabulary sets