HMS 7-1 Literacy Terms (all)
Idiom
An expression peculiar to a particular language that means something different from the literal meaning of the words.
Myth
An unverifiable story based on a religious belief. The characters of myths are gods and goddesses, or the offspring of the mating of gods or godesses and humans. Some myths detail the creation of the earth, while others may be about love, adventure, trickery, or revenge. In all cases, it is the gods and goddesses who control events, while humans may be aided or victimized. It is said that the creation of myths were the method by which ancient, superstitious humans attempted to account for natural or historical phenomena.
Imagery
Conditions, including facts, social/historical background, time and place, etc., surrounding a given situation.
Antagonist
Counterpart to the main character and source of a story's main conflict. The person may not be "bad" or "evil" by any conventional moral standard, but he/she opposes the protagonist in a significant way. (Although it is technically a literary element, the term is only useful for identification, as part of a discussion or analysis of character; it cannot generally be analyzed by itself.)
Couplet
"A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming.
Resolution
"The part of a story or drama which occurs after the climax and which establishes a new norm, a new state of affairs-the way things are going to be from then on.
Rhyme Scheme
"The pattern of rhymed words in a stanza or generalized throughout a poem, expressed in alphabetic terms.
Flashback
"is action that interrupts to show an event that happened at an earlier time which is necessary to better understanding.
Haiku
A Japanese poetic form which originated in the sixteenth century. A haiku in its Japanese language form consists of three lines: five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven syllables in the second line. A haiku translated may not contain the same syllabication. Designed to capture a moment in time, the haiku creates images.
Epigraph
A brief quotation which appears at the beginning of a literary work.
Parable
A brief story, told or written in order to teach a moral lesson.
Fable
A brief tale designed to illustrate a moral lesson. Often the characters are animals as in the fables of Aesop.
allusion
A casual areference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature.
Analogy
A comparison made between two things to show how they are alike.
Irony
A contrast between expectation and reality.
Symbolism
A device in literature where an object represents an idea.
Novel
A fictional prose work of substantial length. The novel narrates the actions of characters who are entirely the invention of the author and who are placed in an imaginary setting. The fact that a so-called historical or biographical novel uses historically real characters in real geographical locations doing historically verifiable things does not alter the fictional quality of the work. Nor does it qualify a work labeled a novel by the author as a historical text.
Quatrain
A four-line stanza which may be rhymed or unrhymed. A heroic quatrain is a four line stanza rhymed abab.
Inference
A guess based on clues.
Inference
A judgement based on reasoning rather than on direct or explicit statement. A conclusion based on facts or circumstances.
Genre
A literary type or form. One example of genre is "drama" is a genre of literature. Within drama, genre include tragedy, comedy and other forms.
Parody
A literary work that imitates the style of another literary work. A parody can be simply amusing or it can be mocking in tone, such as a poem which exaggerates the use of alliteration in order to show the ridiculous effect of overuse of alliteration.
Sonnet
A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose ryhme scheme is fixed.
Stanza
A major subdivision in a poem. A stanza of two lines is called a couplet; a stanza of three lines is called a tercet; a stanza of four lines is called a quatrain.
Symbolism
A person, a place, a thing or an event that has meaning in itself and stands for something beyond itself as well.
Satire
A piece of literature designed to ridicule the subject of the work.
pun
A play on words similar in sound but different in meaning.
Pun
A play on words wherein a word is used to convey two meanings at the same time.
Concrete Poetry
A poem that visually resembles something found in the physical world. A poem about a wormy apple written so that the words form the shape of an apple, as in the following, is an example.
Narrative Poem
A poem which tells a story. Usually a long poem, sometimes even book length, the narrative may take the form of a plotless dialogue as in Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man."
Meter
A regular pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables in a line or lines of poetry.
motif
A reoccurring element, such as an event, a device, a refernce, appearing frequently in works of literature.
Short Story
A short fictional narrative. It is difficult to set forth the point at which a short story becomes a short novel (novelette), or the page number at which a novelette becomes a novel.
verbal irony
A speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words express. Often this sort of irony is plainly sarcastic in the eyes of the reader.
Saga
A story of the exploits of a hero, or the story of a family told through several generations. Stories of the exploits of Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett are sagas in the former sense.
Thesis
A subject for a composition or essay.
Coherent
Ideas stick together because they're arranged in an order that makes sense to the reader.
Anecdote
A very short tale told by a character in a literary work.
Soliloquy
In drama, a moment when a character is alone and speaks his or her thoughts aloud. In the line "To be, or not to be, that is the question:" which begins the famous soliloquy from Act 3, scene 1 of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" Hamlet questions whether or not life is worth living, and speaks of the reasons why he does not end his life.
Epic
In literature generally, a major work dealing with an important theme. "Gone with the Wind," a film set in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) and Civil War South, is considered an epic motion picture. In poetry, a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. John Milton's "Paradise Lost" is a book length epic poem consisting of twelve subdivisions called books. Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are epic poems, the former concerning the Greek invasion of Troy; the latter dealing with the Greek victory over the Trojans and the ten-year journey of Odysseus to reach his island home.
Conclusion
Also called the Resolution" the conclusion is the point in a drama to which the entire play has been leading. It is the logical outcome of everything that has come before it. The conclusion stems from the nature of the characters.
Stereotype
An author's method of treating a character so that the character is immediately identified with a group. A character may be associated with a group through accent, food choices, style of dress, or any readily identifiable group characteristic.
Rhyme
In poetry, a pattern of repeated sounds. The end rhyme is the rhyme is at the end of the line.
Irony
Irony takes many forms. In irony of situation, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Macbeth murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will achieve great happiness. Actually, Macbeth never knows another moment of peace, and finally is beheaded for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the mystery is solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as brilliant, while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.
Works Cited
List of different types of sources used in research.
Style
Many things enter into the style of a work: the author's use of figurative language, diction, sound effects and other literary devices.
synedoche
Part of an object that represents a whole; or whole representing a part, "twenty eyes watched our every move," "All hands on deck."
Exposition
Part of the story in which charters are introduced, Introduction
Rising Action
Part of the story in which suspense is built.
Bias
Prejudice written opinions.
antimetoble
Repition in reverse order,"One should eat to live, not live to eat." or: "You like it; it likes you."
epistrophe
Repitition of a concluding word or word endings, "He's learning fast, are you learning fast?"
Paraphrase
Restate every line in your own words.
paradox
Reveals a deeper truth through contradictions like "without laws, we can have no freedom."
dramatic irony
Scenario where the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not, and the caracter acts in a way that is grossly inappropriate or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows is in store.
Falling Action
Sometimes called the DENOUEMENT, this part of the story explores the consequences of the climax. The reader feels the tension in the story begin to ease.
Suspense
Suspense in fiction results primarily from two factors: the reader's identification with and concern for the welfare of a convincing and sympathetic character, and an anticipation of violence.
apostophe
The act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present, "Oh Death, be not proud,"
indirect characterization
The author describes a charters traits, the author doesn't exactly say the traits.
Foot
The basic unit of measurement in a line of poetry.
Resolution
The conclusion in a story.
Falling Action
The falling action is the series of events which take place after the climax.
Theme
The general idea or insight about life that a work of literature reveals.
3rd Person Limited PoV (Point of View)
The narrator focuses on the thoughts & feelings of only one character.
3rd Person Ominiscient PoV (Point of View)
The narrator knows everything about everyone & their problems.
Rising Action
The part of a drama which begins with the exposition and sets the stage for the climax. In a five-act play, the exposition provides information about the characters and the events which occurred before the action of the play began. A conflict often develops between the protagonist and an antagonist. The action reaches a high point and results in a climax, the turning point in the play.
Objective PoV (Point of View)
The point of view of someone who was unrelated to the event or story.
Alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds within close proximity, usually in consecutive words within the same sentence or line.
Catastrophe
The scene in a tragedy which includes the death or moral destruction of the protagonist.
Tragic flaw
The single characteristic (usually negative) or personality disorder which causes the downfall of the protagonist.
Autobiography
The story of a person's life written by himself or herself.
Biography
The story of a person's life written by someone other than the subject of the work.
imagery
The work of one who makes images or visible representation of objects
Free Verse
Unrhymed Poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us with many examples. Consider the following lines from "Song of Myself."
euphemism
Using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt painful or embarrassing one; "mgrandfather has gone to a better place" AKA grandpa's dead.
oxymoron
Using contradion that oddly makes sense on a depper lever. "Jumbo shrimp, sophisticated rednecks, original copies, upper floor."
Anthropomorphism
Where animals or inanimate objects are portrayed in a story as people, such as by walking, talking, or being given arms, legs, facial features, human locomotion or other anthropoid form. (This technique is often incorrectly called personification.)
Allegory
Where every aspect of a story is representative, usually symbolic, of something else, usually a larger abstract concept or important historical/geopolitical event.
Verbal irony
Where the meaning of a specific expression is, or is intended to be, the exact opposite of what the words literally mean. (Sarcasm is a tone of voice that often accompanies verbal irony, but they are not the same thing.)
external conflict
a conflict outside of the characters control
metaphor
a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity
verbal irony
a figure of speech in which what is said is the opposite of what is meant, A figure of speech that occurs when a person says one thing but means another.
simile
a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with 'like' or 'as')
internal conflict
a struggle which takes place in the protagonist's mind and through which the character reaches a new understanding or dynamic change
situational irony
accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate. Like a pick pocket getting his own pocket picked.
situational irony
an outcome that turns out to be very different from what was expected, the difference between what is expected to happen and what actually does, expect something but the opposite occurs
connotation
emotional and imaginative association surrounding a word.
hyperbole
extreme exxageration or over statement
setting
is the time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem take place
Round Character
major character in a work of fiction who encounters conflict and is changed by it.
Flat Character
minor characters in a work of fiction who do not undergo substantial change or growth in the course of a story.
idiom
refers to an expression or construction in one language that cannot be directly translated word for word into another language. "She's a bee in her bonnett."
denotation
strict dictionary meaning of a word.
direct characterization
the author exactly describes the characters traits. Ex. He is a Stalker
theme
the central message of story
diction
the choice ofa particular word as opposed to others.
Climax
the highest point of anything conceived of as growing or developing or unfolding
anaphora
the intentional repitition of beginning clauses in order to create an artistic effect "We shall not flad or fail We shall go on to the end We shall fight in France... We Shall .... We shall... We shall...."
symbolism
the use of one thing to stand for or represent another
dramatic irony
when the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters., when a reader is aware of something that a character isn't
