Literary Terms Study Guide

• Study notes on literary terms compiled and defined by the Sophomores of the Class of 2022.

Literary Terms

• Allegory is a story where people, things, and actions represent an idea or generalization about life, often with a strong moral or lesson.
• Allusion is a literary reference to a familiar person, place, thing, or event.
• Analogy is a comparison of two or more similar objects, suggesting that if they are alike in certain respects, they will probably be alike in other ways as well.
• Antagonist refers to the person or thing working against the protagonist, or hero, of the work.
• Autobiography is an author's account or story of her or his own life.
• Biography is the story of a person's life written by another person.
• Characterization is the method an author uses to reveal characters and their personalities.
• Comedy is a literature in which human errors or problems appear funny, and ends on a happy note.
• Conflict refers to the problem or struggle in a story that triggers the action.
  • Person vs. Person: A character confronts issues with others.
  • Person vs. Society: A character faces societal norms or institutions.
  • Person vs. Self: A character grapples with internal dilemmas.
  • Person vs. Nature: A character battles natural elements like heat, cold, or disasters.
  • Person vs. Fate (God): A character struggles against seemingly uncontrollable circumstances or destiny.
• Context is the set of facts or circumstances surrounding an event or a situation in a piece of literature.
• Dialogue is the conversation carried on by the characters in a literary work.
• Diction refers to an author's choice of words based on their correctness, clearness, or effectiveness.
• Colloquialism is an expression usually accepted in informal situations and certain locations.
• Jargon (Technical diction) is the specialized language used by a particular group, such as those who use computers.
• Profanity is language that shows disrespect for someone or something regarded as holy or sacred.
• Slang is the informal language used by a particular group of people among themselves and in fiction to lend color and feeling.
• Vulgarity is language that is generally considered crude, gross, and, at times, offensive, sometimes used in fiction to add realism.
• Didactic literature instructs or presents a moral or religious statement.
• Drama includes plays that are serious and often deals with the leading character's relationship to society
• Empathy involves putting yourself in someone else's place and imagining how that person must feel.
• Epic refers to a long narrative poem that tells of the deeds and adventures of a hero.
• Epitaph is a short poem or verse written in memory of someone.
• Epithet is a word or phrase used in place of a person's place and is a characteristic of that person.
• Essay is a piece of prose that expresses an individual's point of view, usually in a series of closely related paragraphs.
• Fable is a short fictional narrative that teaches a lesson, often involving animals that talk and act like people.
• Antithesis is an opposition, or contrast, of ideas.
• Hyperbole is an exaggeration or overstatement.
• Metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things in which no word of comparison (like or as) is used.
• Metonymy involves substituting one word for another related word.
• Personification is when the author speaks of or describes an animal, object, or idea as if it were human.
• Simile compares two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”.
• Understatement emphasizes an idea by talking about it in a restrained manner.
• Flashback returns to an earlier time to clarify someone in the present.
• Foil serves as a contrast or challenge to another character.
• Foreshadowing gives hints or clues about future events in the story.
• Genre refers to a category or type of literature based on its style, form, and content.
• Hubris, derived from the Greek word hybris, means “excessive pride” and is often the flaw that leads to the downfall of the tragic hero.
• Imagery uses words to create a certain picture in the reader's mind based on sensory details.
• Irony uses a word or phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or normal meaning, including dramatic, verbal, and situational irony.
• Memoir involves writing based on the writer's memory of a particular time, place, or incident; also known as reminiscence.
• Mood is the feeling a text arouses in the reader, such as happiness, peacefulness, or sadness.
• Moral is the particular value or lesson the author conveys, often phrased as “the moral of the story.”
• Motif is a recurring idea or theme in literature.
• Myth is a traditional story that justifies a practice, belief, or explains a natural phenomenon.
• Narrator refers to the person telling the story.
• Novel is a lengthy fictional story with a plot revealed through speech, action, and character thoughts.
• Novella is a prose work longer than a short story but shorter and less complex than a novel.
• Oxymoron is a combination of contradictory terms.
• Paradox is a statement that seems contrary to common sense but may be true.
• Plot is the action or sequence of events in a story, usually a series of related incidents.
• Exposition explains something and gives the background or situation surrounding the story in a play or novel.
• Climax is the most intense point in a story, built up by struggles or conflicts.
• Resolution or denouement solves the problem in a play or story after the climax, bringing the story to a satisfactory end.
• Point of View is the vantage point from which a story is told:
  • First-person: Story told by one of the characters.
  • Third-person: Story told by someone outside the story.
    • Omniscient: Narrator shares thoughts and feelings of all characters.
    • Limited omniscient: Narrator shares thoughts and feelings of one character.
    • Camera view: Storyteller records action without knowing characters' thoughts or feelings.
• Protagonist is the main character or hero of the story.
• Romance is a literary movement emphasizing imagination and emotions.
• Satire uses literary tone to make fun of human vice or weakness, intending to correct or change the subject of attack.
• Setting is the time and place where the action of a literary work occurs.
• Soliloquy is a speech delivered by a character alone on stage, representing the character's thoughts.
• Symbol is a person, place, thing, or event representing something else.
• Theme is the statement about life a writer is trying to convey, typically implied rather than directly stated.
• Tone is the feeling or effect created by a writer's use of words, such as serious, humorous, or satiric.
• Tragedy is a literary work where the hero is destroyed by a character flaw or forces beyond their control.