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Literary Terms

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Term
Definition
Alliteration   The repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds in words that are very close together  
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Allusion   A reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, or science  
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Atmosphere   The overall mood or emotion of a work of literature  
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Autobiography   The story of a person's life, written or told by that person  
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Biography   The story of a real person's life, written or told by another person  
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Character   A person or animal who takes part in action of a story, play, or other literary work  
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Conflict   A struggle or clash between opposing characters or opposing forces  
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Connotation   The feelings and associations that a word suggests  
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Denotation   The literal, dictionary definition of a word  
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Description   The kind of writing that creates a clear image of something, usually by using the details that appeal to one or more of the senses  
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Dialect   A way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people  
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Dialogue   A conversation between two or more characters  
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Drama   A story written to be acted for an audience  
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Essay   A short piece of nonfiction prose that examines a single subject  
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Fable   A brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral or gives a practical lesson about how to get along in life  
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Fiction   A prose account that is made up rather than true  
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Figure of Speech   A word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of something else and is not literally true  
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Flashback   An interruption in the action of a plot to tell what happened at an earlier time  
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Folk Tale   A story with no known author that originally was passed on from one generation to another by word of mouth  
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Foreshadowing   The use of clues to suggest events that will happen later in the plot  
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Free Verse   Poetry without a regular meter or a rhyme scheme  
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Imagery   Language that appeals to the senses  
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Irony   In general, a contrast between expectation and reality  
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Main Idea   The most important idea expressed in a paragraph or in an entire essay  
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Metamorphosis   A marvelous change from one shape to another one  
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Metaphor   An imaginative comparison between two unlike things in which one thing is said to another thing  
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Mood   The overall emotion created by a work of literature  
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Myth   A story that explains something about the world that typically involves gods and other superhuman beings  
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Nonfiction   Prose writing that deals with real people events, and places, without changing any facts  
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Novel   A Fictional story that is usually more than one hundred book pages long  
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Onomatopeia   The use of words whose sounds echo their sense  
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Personification   A figure of speech in which a nonliving thing or quality is talked about as if it were human or alive  
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Plot   The series of related events that make up a story: introduction, conflict, complications, climax, and the resolution  
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Poetry   A kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery designed to appeal to emotion and imagination  
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Point of View   The vantage point from which a story is told  
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Refrain   A group of words repeated at intervals in a poem, song, or speech  
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Rhyme   The repetition of accented accented vowel sounds following them in words close together in a poem  
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Rhythm   A musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables or by the repetition of certain other sound patterns  
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Short Story   A fictional prose narrative that is usually ten to twenty book pages  
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Simile   A comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, than or resembles  
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Speaker   The voice talking in a poem  
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Stanza   In a poem a group of consecutive lines that forms a single unit  
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Symbol   A person, place, a thing, or an event that has its own meaning ans stands for something beyond itself as well  
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Tall Tale   A exaggerated, fanciful story that gets "taller and taller," more and more far-fetched, the more is told and retold  
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Theme   The truth about life revealed in a work of literature  
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Tone   The attitude that a writer takes toward the audience, a subject, or a character  
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