Literary and Poetry Terms

Plot

A series of events in a story

Inciting incident

Part in the story when the character encounter the central conflict

Denouncement

Occurs at the end of a story- wraps up loose ends

Conflict

A struggle between characters, forces, or emotions

Narrator

The person telling the story

Direct characterization

When a writer tells the audience what his characters are like

Indirect characterization

When a writer reveals the nature of his characters through their appearance, speech, actions, thoughts, and response of other characters

Protagonist

The central character in a story

Antagonist

The character or force,that comes into conflict with the main character

Dynamic

Characters who change in some important way as a result of the story's action

Static

characters who remain the same throughout the story

Round

Complex, three dimensional characters (resemble real people)

Stock

Characters who did our preconceived notions about a specific "type" and are found again and again in different literary text

Dialect

The form of language that belongs to a particular region of social group

Flashback

A conversation, an episode, or an event that happened before the beginning of a story that interrupts the chronological flow of the story

Foreshadowing

The use of clues to hint at what is going to happen later in the story

Symbol

A person, place, thing, or object that stands for something beyond itself

Suspense

The uncertainty of anxiety the audience feels about what is going to happen next in a story

Dramatic irony

Occurs when the audience know something the characters do not know

Setting

Provides the backdrop for the action giving the time, place, and mood or atmosphere

Comic relief

A scene inserted into a serious work that relieves the tension through comedy

Soliloquy

A speech made by a character alone on stage to self or to the audience

Monologue

A speech of performance given entirely by one person

Dialogue

Conversation between two characters

Foil

A character used to contrast another character

Comedy

A play that ends happily

Tragic flaw

Personal failing that leads to a hero's downfall

Epic

Long narrative poem about the adventures of a hero whose actions reflect the values of a nation

Prose

Ordinary language that is the way we speak containing no poetic features

Allusion

Makes a reference to person, event, object,work from history, or language using rhetorical language

Connotation

Emotional association or implication attracted to a word

Denotation

Literal meaning of a word (dictionary)

Alliteration

Repetition of consonant sounds in a row at the beginning of a word

Assonance

Similarity of vowel sounds and ends with different constant sounds

Consonance

Ending consonant sounds are same but not vowels (slant rhyme)

Imagery

Appeals to the five senses, descriptive words and phrases

Simile

Compare two unlike things using like or as

Metaphor

comparing two things without using like or as

Personification

Human qualities to idea, animal, inanimate things

Hyperbole

Exaggeration made for rhetorical effect

Idiom

Expression not meant to be taken literally

Onomonopia

Words or phrases that sound like what they refer

Oxymoron

Statement or word contradicting itself

Refrain

Group of lines repeated in a poem/song

Symbol

Object or thing standing much stronger than what it is

Elegy

Poem that laments the dead (honors)

Ballad

Narrative poem, four line stanzas, meant to be sung with a close relationship to music and tells a story

Tone

Authors attitude toward a subject

Mood

The emotion the reader feels after reading the poem

Sonnet

14 line poem that follows iambic pentameter