Literary Terms Vocabulary #1 1. Alliteration – the repetition of consonant sounds in a sequence of words used to highlight or emphasize key words, concepts and relationships 2. Assonance – The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work 3. Ballad – A poem that recounts a story – generally some dramatic episode – and that has been composed to be sung. 4. Blank Verse – Unrhymed iambic pentameter verse. 5. Consonance – repetition of a final consonant sound following different vowel sounds; not a true rhyme ex. Litter/letter, wade/wood 6. Couplet – two lines that rhyme with each other, often the last two rhyming lines 7. Epic – a long and formal narrative poem written in an elevated style that recounts the adventures of a hero of almost mythic proportions. 8. Free verse – poetry that lacks regular meter, does not rhyme, and uses irregular line lengths. 9. Haiku – A Japanese verse form consisting of three unrhymed lines that typically have lines of five, seven, and five syllables. 10. Lyric – A poem that expresses the emotions of the poet; categories of lyric poems include: odes, ballads, and sonnets. 11. Meter - The regular pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in poetry, which is usually defined by the kind of foot, like iambic, in combination with the number of feet per line, like pentameter. 12. Narrative poem – a poem that tells a story 13. Ode – an extended lyric poem characterized by exalted emotion and dignified style. 14. Quatrain – a four line stanza of a poem

15. Rhyme – The repetition of identical vowel sounds followed by a similar constant in the stressed syllables of two or more words. 16. Soliloquy – A monologue delivered by a character in a play while alone on stage that reveals inner thoughts 17. Sonnet – A fourteen line poem usually composed in iambic pentameter employing one of several rhyme schemes. There are three major types of sonnets: Italian (Petrarchan), English (Shakespearean), Spenserian 18. Stanza – a subdivision of a poem consiting of lines grouped together, often in recurring patterns of rhyme, line length, and meter.

Literary Terms Vocabulary #2 1. Antagonist – The character pitted against the protagonist. 2. Characterization – The author’s expression of a character’s personality through the use of action, dialogue, thought, or commentary by the author or another character. 3. Conflict – A confrontation or struggle between opposing characters or forces in the plot of a narrative work; kinds include person versus person, society, self, the divine, or nature. 4. Dynamic character – A character type that changes in response to circumstances and experiences. 5. First person point of view – Way in which story is narrated through character who refers to self as “I.” 6. Flat character – A stereotypical character that is defined by a single quality or idea. 7. Foil – A character that, by contrast with another character, serves to highlight the other character’s distinct qualities. 8. Protagonist – The most important or leading character in a work. 9. Round character – A character-type that is three-dimensional and exhibits the qualities of a real person. 10. Static character – A character type that does not change much over the course of the work. 11. Stream of consciousness – A literary technique that approximates the flow of thoughts and senses that pass through the mind each instant. 12. Third person point of view – Way in which story is told through a limited or omniscient narrator who stands outside the events that are being recounted. 13. Unreliable narrator – A narrator who does not or cannot understand the world around them, and whose judgments the reader mistrusts.

Literary Terms Vocabulary #3 1. Allusion – An indirect reference to a person, event, statement, or theme, found in literature, the other arts, history, myths, religion, or popular culture. 2. Archetype – The original model from which something is developed or made – images, figures, character types, settings, and story patterns that are universally shared by peoples across cultures. 3. Connotation – The associations evoked by a word beyond its denotation. 4. Denotation – A word’s literal and primary meaning. 5. Diction – A speaker’s or author’s word choice. 6. Flashback – A scene that interrupts the present action of narrative in order to depict some earlier event. 7. Foreshadowing – The technique of introducing into a narrative material that prepares the reader for future events. 8. Imagery – A word or groups of words in a literary work that appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. 9. Mood – Also known as atmosphere; refers to the general feeling created in the reader by the work at a given point. 10. Motif – A unifying element in literature; especially any recurrent image, symbols, theme, character type, subject, or narrative detail. 11. Setting – The combination of place, historical time and social context that provides the general background for the characters and plot of a literary work. 12. Symbolism – Use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or ideas. 13. Tone – The attitude of the author toward the reader and subject matter which generally pervades the entire work.

Literary Terms Vocabulary #4 1. Allegory – A story illustrating an idea or moral principal in which objects or people take on symbolic meaning. Ex. – George Orwell’s Animal Farm and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. 2. Autobiography – a narrative account typically written by an individual that purports to depict his or her life and character. 3. Biography – A connected narrative that tells a person’s life story. 4. Canon – Refers to the body of work attributed by scholars to a particular author or to those literary works that are privileged by a society. Ex. – To Kill a Mockingbird may be placed in the canon of great American literature, along with works by Mark Twain, William Faulkner and many others. Black Boy by Richard Wright may also be in that canon, but may also reside in the canon of great African American writers. 5. Drama – A serious literary work usually intended for performance before an audience. 6. Fable – a short, fictional tale told to convey a particular lesson or moral; fables that feature animals as the central characters are often referred to as beast fables. Ex. – Aesop’s Fables 7. Fiction – A genre of writing that relates imagined characters and events. Ex. – Lord of the Flies and The Lord of the Rings. 8. Genre – The classification of literary works based on their content, form, or technique; types include poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction. 9. Nonfiction – A genre of narrative prose that deals with fact and reality. 10. Poetry – A genre of literature that could be described as an imaginative response to experience and which reflects a keen awareness of language. 11. Prose – From the Latin for “straight forward”, it is the ordinary written or spoken expression that lacks deliberate metrical pattern. 12. Science fiction – A genre of writing grounded in scientific or pseudoscientific concepts that employ both realistic and fantastic elements in exploring the question of “what if?” Ex. – Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and 2001: Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

Literary Terms Vocabulary #5 1. Analogy – A similarity between like features of two distinct things on which a comparison may be based. Similes and metaphors are commonly used to create an analogy, however, an analogy may be more extensive then just a metaphor or simile alone. 2. Euphemism – A mild word or phrase that substitutes for another that is less desirable. For example, “kick the bucket” is a euphemism that describes the death of a person. Many organizations use the term “downsizing” for the distressing act of “firing” its employees. You may remember Squealer’s use of euphemism in chapter nine of Animal Farm when he announces the reduction of food to the animals of the farm: “For the time being, certainly, it had been found necessary to make a readjustment of rations (Squealer always spoke of it as a ‘readjustment,’ never as a ‘reduction’)” (77). 3. Figures of speech – Literary devices that involve unusual use of language, often to associate or compare distinct things. There are two general categories of figures of speech: rhetorical figures and tropes. 4. Hyperbole – A figure of speech that uses deliberate exaggeration to achieve an effect, also known as overstatement. For example, “During the week of finals, I had a million essays to grade.” 5. Metaphor – A figure of speech that associates two distinct things. He was a lion on the basketball court 6. Metonymy – A figure of speech in which one thing is represented by another that is commonly and often physically associated with it. Examples: Let me give you a hand. (“hand” refers to the help); Bow down before the crown. (“crown” refers to the king/queen); Washington DC is at odds with Tehran. (The U.S. and Iranian capitals are referring to the governments of those countries). 7. Onomatopoeia – a word, which imitates the natural sounds of a thing. It creates a sound effect that mimics the thing described, making the description more expressive and interesting. The different sounds of animals such as meow, neigh, moo, are also considered as examples of onomatopoeia. A group of words reflecting different sounds of water are: plop, splash, gush, sprinkle, drizzle, drip. And words related to different sounds of wind, such as: swish, swoosh, whiff, whoosh, whizz, whisper.

8. Oxymoron – A figure of speech that juxtaposes two opposite or apparently contradictory words to present an emphatic and dramatic paradox for a rhetorical purpose or effect. See if you can find any examples in this passage from Romeo and Juliet: O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, A damnèd saint, an honorable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In moral paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace! (3.2.79-91) 9. Personification – A figure of speech that gives human qualities to abstract ideas, animals, and inanimate objects. Example from Romeo and Juliet: “When wellappareled April on the heel / Of limping winter treads.” 10. Simile – A figure of speech that compares two distinct things by using words such as like or as. Example from “The Scarlet Ibis”: “They named him William Armstrong which is like tying a big tail on a small kite.” 11. Synecdoche – A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole, For example using the word “sail” to refer to the whole ship; saying there’s a nice set of “:wheels” (car); all “hands” on deck (sailors); “boots” on the ground referring to soldiers. 12. Trope – One of the two major divisions of figures of speech, trope means to turn or twist (figuratively speaking) some word or phrase to make it mean something else. Metaphor, metonymy, personification, simile, and synecdoche are sometimes referred to as the principal tropes.

Literary Terms Vocabulary #6

1. Audience – The people for whom a piece of literature was written. 2. Dramatic irony – Involves a discrepancy between a character’s perception and what the reader or audience knows to be true. 3. Juxtaposition – The state of being placed or situated side by side for comparison or contrast. 4. Paradox – A statement that seems self-contradictory or nonsensical on the surface, but upon close examination may contain an underlying truth. 5. Parallelism – A rhetorical figure used in written and oral compositions used to accentuate or emphasize ideas or images by using grammatically similar constructions. 6. Repetition – The conscious and purposeful replication of words or phrases in order to make a point. 7. Rhetoric – The art of oral or written persuasion. 8. Sarcasm – Obvious, exaggerated verbal irony achieving effect by stating the opposite of what is meant. 9. Satire – A literary genre that uses irony, wit, and sometimes sarcasm to expose humanities vices and defects and provoke change or reform. 10. Situational irony – A type of irony that involves a discrepancy between expectation and reality. 11. Tragic irony – Type of dramatic irony marked by a sense of foreboding, the consequences of this ignorance are catastrophic, leading to the character’s tragic downfall. 12. Verbal irony – Involves a discrepancy between what a speaker or writer says and what he or she believes to be true.