LITERARY TERMS

Allegory – A literary work in which all or most of the characters, settings, and events
stand for ideas, qualities, or figures beyond themselves.

Allusion – A reference to a well-known character, place, or situation from history or from

music, art, or another work of literature.

Anecdote – A brief account of an interesting event.

Apostrophe – A figure of speech in which a speaker addresses an inanimate object, an

idea, or an absent person.

Autobiography – The story of a person’s life written by that person.

Characterization – The methods a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character. In

direct characterization, the writer makes explicit statements about a character. In indirect
characterization, the writer reveals a character through his or her words, thoughts, and
actions and through what other characters think and say about that character.

Couplet – Two consecutive, paired lines of rhymed verse usually forming a stanza.

Dialect – A variation of a language spoken within a particular region or class. Dialects

may differ from the standard form of a language in vocabulary, pronunciation, or
grammatical for.

Genre – A category or type of literature.

Gothic novel – A novel that has a gloomy, ominous setting and contains strong elements
of horror, mystery, and the supernatural.

Hyperbole – A figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion, to

make a point, or to evoke humor.

Iamb – A two-syllable metrical foot consisting of one unaccented syllable and one
accented syllable, as in the word divide.

Iambic pentameter – A poetic meter in which each line is composed of five feet
(pentameter), most of which are iambs.
Ex…”Tall, somber, grim, against the morning sky.”

Iambic tetrameter – A poetic meter in which each line is composed of four feet
(tetrameter), most of which are iambs.
Imagery – The “word pictures” that writers create to evoke an emotion response. In
creating effective images, writers use sensory details, or descriptions that appeal to one or
more of the five senses.

Irony – A contrast or discrepancy between appearance and reality.

Lyric Poem – A poem that expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts and feelings, usually
short and musical.

Myth – A traditional story that deals with goddesses, gods, heroes, and supernatural
forces. A myth may explain a belief, a custom, or a force of nature.

Narrator – The person who tells a story.

Omniscient Narrator – a narrator who is able to know, see, and tell all, including the inner
thoughts and feelings of the characters.

Narrative Poem – A poem that tells a story.

Oral tradition – Literature that passes by word of mouth from one generation to the next.

Oxymoron – A figure of speech in which opposite ideas are combined. Examples...”icy

hot”, “jumbo shrimp”, “wise fool”.

Plain style – A style of writing common among the Puritan settlers that focused on
communicating ideas as clearly as possible.

Point of view – The standpoint from which a story is told.

Rhyme – The repetition of the same stressed vowel sounds and any succeeding sounds in
two or more words.

Rhyme Scheme – The pattern that end rhymes form in a stanza or a poem.

Rhythm – The pattern of beats created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed
syllables, especially in poetry.

Romanticism – An artistic movement that began in Europe and valued imagination and
feeling over intellect and reason.

Simile – A figure of speech that uses like or as to compare seemingly unlike things.

Symbol – Any object, person, place, or experience that exists on a literal level but also
represents, or stands for, something else, usually something abstract.
Theme – The central message of a work of literature, often expressed as a general
statement about life.

Transcendentalism – A philosophical and literary movement whose followers believed

that basic truths could be reached only by “going beyond,” or transcending, reason and
reflecting on the world of the spirit and on one’s own deep and free intuition.
Transcendentalists believed that the individual could transform the world – not only
through writing, but also through utopian communities, antislavery activity, and other
social action.