Literary Terms Test: Practice with Our Quiz and Flashcards

Study Notes

Accent: in poetry, refers to the stressed (dominant) portion of a word, usually a syllable.
Alliteration: repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words used to create rhythm.
Allegory: a form of extended metaphor in which characters and/or story elements are used to convey symbolic meaning in addition to literal meaning.
Allusion: an indirect reference to another literary work or to a famous person, place, or event.

Alter Ego: a literary character or narrator who is a thinly disguised representation of the author, poet, or playwright.
Anachronism: placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong time period.
Anastrophe: a literary device wherein the order of the noun and the adjective in a sentence are switched (the noun comes before the adjective).
Anaphora: a type of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences.
Anastrophe: creates dramatic impact and lends weight to the description offered by the adjective.

Ad Hominem: an argument distorted by attacking the opponent's character to arouse emotions and prejudice.
Adage: a saying or proverb containing a truth based on experience and often couched in metaphorical language.
Analogy: a comparison between two different things or the relationship between them.
Anaphora: found in both verse and prose.

Antagonist: the character or thing that opposes the protagonist.
Antihero: a protagonist who lacks the noble qualities of a hero (such as morals, courage, grace, or intelligence, for instance).

Anti-climax: when the ending of the plot in poetry or prose is lackluster or unfulfilling or when an abrupt lapse from growing intensity to triviality in writing.
Anagnorisis: a critical moment of recognition or discovery, primarily used in reference to Greek tragedy.

Aestheticism: a point of view that art is self-sufficient and need not serve any other purpose than to be itself.
Ambiguity: a word, phrase, or statement that has more than one meaning (intentional or not).
Anthropomorphism: the object or animal is actually doing some human action (as opposed to personification when the object or animal just seems like it is doing something human).
Antimetabole: repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order.
Antithesis: compares two things, which are alike in several respects, for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea by showing how the "difficult" idea or object is related to the more familiar one.

Literary Terms Quiz