35 literary terms
Allusion
A brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to work of a art.
Metaphor
A comparison of two unlike things when no word or comparison (like, as) is used.
Simile
A direct comparison using like or as.
Personification
A literary device in which the author speaks of or describes an animal, object or idea as if it were a human.
Symbol
A person, place, thing, or event used to represent something else.
Idiom
A phrase or expression that means something different from what the words actually say.
Motif
A recurrent theme or central idea in a piece of literature.
Rising Action
A related series of incidents in a literary plot that build toward the point of greatest interest.
Theme
A statement about life a particular work is trying to get across to the reader.
Figure of Speech
A word or phrase that departs from everyday literal language for the sake of comparison, emphasis, clarity, or freshness.
Imagery
Language that evokes one or all of the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching.
Oxymoron
Putting two contradictory words together.
Dialect
Speech that reflects pronunciation,vocabulary, and grammar typical of a geological region.
Plot
The action or sequence of events in a story.
Tone
The attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, objective.
Analogy
The comparison of two pairs which have the same relationship.
Mood
The feeling a piece of literature creates in the reader.
Denotation
The literal meaning of a word, the dictionary meaning.
Protagonist
The main character or hero of a story.
Characterization
The method used by a writer to develop a character.
Antagonist
The person or thing working against the protagonist or hero of the work.
Resolution
The portion of the story in which the problem is solved.
Consonance
The repetition of consonant sounds,but not vowels.
Alliteration
The repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words.
Assonance
The repetition of vowel sounds but not consonant sounds as in consonance
Conflict
The struggle found in fiction.
Setting
The time and place in which the action of the literary work occurs.
Climax
The turning point, and usually the most intense point, in a story.
Onomatopoeia
The use of a word whose sound suggests it's meaning.
Foreshadowing
The use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in literature.
Point of view
The vantage point from which the story is told.
Hyperbole
An exaggeration or overstatement.
Connotation
An implied meaning of a word, opposite of denotation.
Flashback
An interruption of the chronological sequence looking back in time.
Irony
Using a word or phrase to mean he exact opposite of its literal or normal meaning.
