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Eng 3AP Lit terms
Literary Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ad hominem | Latin for to the man; a logical fallacy attacking the person instead of the argument |
| alliteration | repetition of beginning consonant sounds |
| allusion | figure of speech which makes a brief reference to a historical literary figure, event or object |
| anaphora | repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases for rhetorical or poetic effect |
| antagonist | character in a narrative or play who is in conflict with the main character; may not be a person; could be the same person as the main character |
| apostrophe | addressing someone or something usually not present as though present |
| archetype | a term used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and sometimes unconscious responses in all cultures |
| bildungsroman | a novel showing the development of its central character from childhood to maturity |
| connotation | the emotional implications that a word may carry |
| denotation | the dictionary definition of a word |
| diction | an author's choice of words |
| dramatic irony | irony in which the character uses words which mean one thing to them, but another to those who understand the situation better |
| exposition | the introductory material which sets the tone, gives the setting, introduces the characters, and supplies necessary facts |
| flat character | character who is not fully developed by an author |
| foil | character who provides a contrast to another character |
| foreshadowing | arrangement and presentation of events and information in such a way that prepare for later events in a work (knowing what's gonna happen before it does) |
| hyperbole | exxageration for effects and emphasis; overstatement |
| juxtaposition | the positioning of ideas or images side-by-side for emphasis or to show contrast |
| litotes | a type of meoisis in which an affirmative is expressed in the negative of the contrary |
| metonomy | substituting a word naming an object for another word closely associated with it |
| motif | a reoccuring concept or story element in literature |
| oxymoron | technique used to produce an effect by a seeming self-contradiction |
| paradox | a statement which contains seemingly contradictory elements or appears contrary to common sense |
| parallelism | the repetition of syntactical similarities in passages closely connected for rhetorical effect |
| pathos | deep emotion, passion, or suffering |
| personification | figure of speech in which inanimate objects are given qualities of speech and/or movement |
| polysyndeton | the repetition of a number of conjuntctions in close succession |
| protagonist | the main character in the story |
| round character | a fully developed character; character who is complex |
| satire | a piece of literature designed to ridicule the subject of the work |
| 1st person point-of-view | the narrator is a character in the story |
| 3rd person point-of-view | the narrator is not a character in the story |
| 2nd person point-of-view | narrator uses 'you' as the narrator telling the story |
| static character | character who is the same sort of person at the end as she was at the beginning |
| stereotype | characterization based on conscious or unconscious assupmtions that one aspects determintes what humans are like |
| syllogism | the underlying structure of deductive reasoning having a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion based on logic |
| synecdoche | a figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole, or the whole for the part |
| synesthesia | the perception or description of one kind of sense impression in words normally used to describe a different sense (sweet voice; velvety smile) |
| syntax | arrangement of words in a sentence |
| thesis | statement of the main idea in an essay |
| tone | expresses the author's attitude toward his or her subject |
| understatement | statement in which literal sense of what is said falls short of the magnitude of what is being talked about |
| verbal irony | a kind of irony in which words are used to suggest the opposite of their actual meaning |
| assonance | similarity or repetition of a vowel sound |
| catharsis | Aristotle's word for the pity and fear an audience experiences upon viewing the downfall of the hero |
| climax | the turning point or crisis in a play |
| deus ex machina | an unexpected, artifical, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot |
Created by:
susyq76
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