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Literary terms
Sol's lit terms
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Abstract | Not attached to anything specific or concrete |
| Active voice | Verb that is an action (as opposed to passive voice) Example: Jane sweeps the floor |
| Ad Hominenm | An argument attckking an individual's character rather than the issue |
| Aesthetic | relating to beauty or to a branch of philosophy concerned with art, beauty, and taste |
| Allegory | A narrative in which literal meaning corresponds directly with symbolic meaning. Example: Aniaml Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution (Napoleon= Stailn, Animal Farm= Russia, etc) |
| Alliteration | Repetition of similar consonant sounds in the beginning of words. |
| Allusion | A reference within a literary work to a historical or literary perosn, place or event. |
| Anachronism | The misplacement of a person, occurrence, custom or idea in time. Example: in Julius Caesar, a character mentions a watch. Watches did not exist in ancient Rome (they existed in the time of the author, Shakespeare). |
| Anadiplosis | Repetition of a word at the end of a phrase, sentence, etc. Which then begins the next phrase, clause, sentence, etc. Example: I ran to the store. The store had plenty of oranges for me. |
| Analogy | A comparison between two things that are otherwise unlike. Often analogies draw a comparison between something abstract and something more concerte or easier to visualize. Example: Trying to get a confession out of the suspect was like pulling teeth. |
| Anaphora | Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases and sentences. |
| Antagonist | The person or obstacle that gets in the way of the protagonist's accomplishment of his/her goal. |
| Anecdote | A brief narration of an event or person. Example: Aunt Joan loves to tell anecdotes of her childhood. |
| Antecedent | What noun the pronoun is replacing. Example: "I love reading. It makes me happy." The antecendent of "it" is "reading." |
| Antihero/Antiheroine | A protagonist who is not a good person. |
| Antimetabole | reversing the order of repeated words or phrases (example- All work and no play is as harmful to mental health as all play and no work). |
| Antithesis | Parallelism with contradictory ideas. Example: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. |
| Aporia | Expression of doubt (often feigned) by which a speaker appears uncertain as to what he should think, say, do. |
| Aposiopesis | A sudden breaking off of speech, usually due to excitement (either positive or negative). |
| Apostrophe | Directly addressing either a dead person or an inanimate object |
| Appeals | Methods authors use to gain favor in rhetoric, or an inanimate object. Pathos/emotional appeals: appeals to audience's feelings and sympathies. Logos/logical appeals: appeals to audience's brain/logical side. Ethos/ethical appeals: attempts to sway rea |
| Archetype | A theme, motif, symbol or stock character that holds a familiar place in culture's consciousness. Example: knight in shining armor, villain, the sidekick, the Garden of Eden. |
| Assonance | Repetition of similar vowel sounds in nearby words. |
| Asyndeton | The omission or conjunction in a series. Example: On my desk are pens, books, papers, exams. The omission of the conjunctin emphasizes quality. |
| Bathos | A sudden change from extreme lighthearted to extreme sentiment. |
| Bildungsroman | A novel about the education or psychological growth of the protagonist. |
| Caricature | The author's exaggeration or distortion of certain traits or characteristics of an individual. Charles Dickens' characters are often caricatures. |
| Cacophony | An arrangement of harsh-sounding words- kill, crack, create, danger, cupcake. |
| Catharsis | A cleansing or purification of one's emotions through art. |
| Chiasmus | 2 phrases in which the syntax is the same, but the placement of words is reversed. Example: "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life." |
| Climax | The moment of greatest intensity in a text, or the major turning point in the plot. |
| Cliche | Expressions that are used so frequently that they're not as powerful. Example: She decided to turn over a new leaf. |
| Colloquialism | An informal expression or slang, usually limited to a certain geographical area/culture. Example: Y'all vs you guys, soda vs pop, sneakers vs tennis shoes vs trainers. |
| Comic relief | A character whose actions are comedic and break up tension. |
| Conceit | A far-fetched metaphor/simile. |
| Conflict | The problem a character faces. Internal: problem within oneself. External: outside problem- another person or perhaps a thing. |
| Connotation | The emotional side of a word (implied meaning that it has). For example, trash and garbage have the same denotation (dictionary definition), but trash sounds more negative. Other ex: lie vs fib, essay vs paper, novel vs book, unattractive vs ugly. |
| Consonance | The repetition of consonants in a sequence of nearby words, especially at the end of stressed syllables or words when there is no similar repetition of vowel sounds (example- moth breath) |
| Denotation | The dictionary definition of a word. |
| Dues ex Machina | Literally "god in the machine." It's when a character is saved by a miraculously or improbably event. Stems from Greek idea that the gods would come in and rescue. |
| Diction | Specific word choice used in a piece of writing, often chosen for effect but also for correctness and clarity. |
| Didactic | Inteneded to instruct or to educate. |
| Ellipses | Figure of speech in which a word or short phrase is omitted, but easily understood from the context. Ex: Our national motto is E pluribus unum, which translates to "Out of many, one." |
| Epanalepsis | Repetition at the end of a clause of the word that appeared at the beginning of the clause. Example: Possessing what we were still unpossessed by/Possessed by what we now no more possessed. |
| Epigraph | A quotation placed at the beginning of a piece of literature or at the beginning or one of its chapters or scenes to provide reader with some ideas about the content or meaning to follow. |
| Epithet | An adjective or phrase that describes a prominent or distinguishing feature of a person or thing. |
| Epiphany | A sudden, powerful, and often spiritual or life-changing realization that a character reaches in an otherwise ordinary or everyday moment. |
| Epistolary | A type of narratio through letters (as in "Dear John" kind of letter, not "abc" kind of letters.) |
| Epistrophe | The repetition of the word or group of words at the end of successive phrases, clauses, verses or sentences. |
| Epizeuxis | Repetition of the same word without any other words between them. Example: "He! He stold my book!" |
| Euphemism | A nice way of saying something unpleasant. Example: Passed away instead of died. |
| Euphony | A pleasing arrangement of sounds. Swish, smooth, mushroom. |
| Eulogy | A formal statement of praise (usually said at funerals) |
| Foil | A character whose traits sharply contrast those of another. Their qualities stand out because of that sharp contrast. |
| Foreshadow | Deliberately presenting hints as to what will happen later in the story. |
| Hamartia | The tragic/fatal flaw of a tragic hero |
Created by:
hansol6073
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