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Literary Termology
Lit terms with definitions and examples
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Abstract | not attached to anything specific or concrete |
| active vioce | verb that is an action (as opposed to passive voice). EX: Jane sweeps the floor |
| ad hominem | an argument attacking an indicidual'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 EX: Animal Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution (Napolean= Stalin, Animal Farm= Russia) |
| Alliteration | Repetition of similar consonant sounds in the beginning of words |
| Allusion | reference within a literary work to a histroical or literary person, place or event |
| Anachronism | misplacement of a person, occurrence, custom or idea in time. EX: Julius Caesar, a charater mentions a watch. Watches did not exist in ancient Rome (they existed in the time of the author, Shakespeare) |
| anadiplosis | reopetition of a word at the end of a phrase, sentence, etc. which then begings the next phrase, clause, sentence, etc. EX: I ran to the store. The store had plenty of oranges of me. |
| analogy | comparison between two things that are otherwise unlike. Often analogies draw a comparison between something abstract and something more concreteor easier to visualize. EX: 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 phrase and stences |
| antagionist | the person of obstacle that gets in the way of the protagonist's accomplishment of his/her goal |
| anecdote | brief narration of an event of person EX: Aunt Joan loves to tell anecdotes of her childhood |
| antecedent | what noun the pronoun is replacing EX: "I love reading. It makes me happy" The antecendent of "it" is "reading." |
| Antihero/antiheroine | protagonist who is not a good person |
| antimetabole | revewsing the order of repeated words of phrases EX: All work and no play is as harmful to mental health as all play and no work. |
| antithesis | parallelism with contradictory ideas EXL 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 | sudden breaking off of speech, usually due to excitement (either + or -) |
| apostrophe | directly addressing either a dead person or an inanimate object |
| appeals | methods authors use to gain favor in rhetoric, or to establish tone |
| pathos/emotional appeals | appeals to audience's feelings and sympathies |
| Logoes/logical appeals | appeals to audience's brain/logical side |
| ethos/ethical appeals | attempts to sawy readers by creating a + impression of his/her character |
| Archetype | theme, motif, symbol or stock character that holds a familiar place in culture's consciousness EX: knight in shining armor, villian, the sidekick,the Garden of Eden |
| Assonance | repetition of similar vowel sounds in nearby words |
| asyndeton | the omission of conjunctions in a series. EX: on my desk are pens, books, papers, exams. The omission of the conjunction emphasizes quality |
| bathos | sudden change from extreme lighthearted to extreme sentiment |
| bildungsroman | novel about the education of 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 | cleansing of purification of one's emotions through art |
| chiasmus | two phrases in which the syntax is the same, but the placement of words is reversed. EX: "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 EX: she decided to turn over a new leaf |
| colloquialism | in formal expression or slang, usually limited to a certain geographical area/culture. EX: Y'all vs. you guys" |
| comic relief | character whose actions are comedic and break up tension |
| conceit | far-fetched metaphor/simile |
| conflict | problem a character faces |
| internal conflict | problem within oneself |
| external | outside problem- another person or perhaps a thing |
| connotation | the emotional side of a word (implied meaning that it has) EX: trash and garbage have the same denotation but trash sounds more - |
| consonance | repetition of consonants in a sequence of nearby words, esp. at the end of stressed syllables or words when there is no similar repetitioin of voewel sounds EX: 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 rescue |
Created by:
Adwean
Popular English Vocabulary sets