Literary Terms 1
The character in a story who opposes the hero, or protagonist.
What is antagonist?
The struggle between opposing forces that provides the central action and interest in any literary plot.
What is conflict?
A person or a non-human with a personality in a literary work.
What is character?
The bare events in a story. It should not be confused with plot. Plot includes the meaning and purpose of the events and intentional arrangement by the author.
What is action?
The decisive moment and turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. This is the crucial part of the drama, the part which determines the outcome of the conflict. It represents the point of greatest tension or the breaking point.
What is climax?
An extended story which carries a deeper meaning below the surface. The story makes sense on a literal level but also conveys another more important meaning. The deeper meaning is usually spiritual, moral, or political.
What is allegory?
A comparison between two things, or pairs of things, to reveal their similarities. It is sometimes expressed as a simile.
What is an analogy?
A character who is presented in greater depth, interest, and detail.
What is a round character?
A character who is stereotypical and lacks interest.
What is a flat character?
A literary technique in which the author gives human characteristics to non-human objects.
What is anthropomorphism?
The way in which an author presents and defines characters.
What is characterization?
The close repetition of similar vowel sounds in successive or proximate words, usually in stressed syllables.
What is assonance?
A literary device which creates interest by the recurrence of initial consonant sounds of different words within the same sentence. It is used for emphasis as well as art.
A short, forceful instructive statement of truth.
What is aphorism?
A character who does not undergo any change.
What is a static character?
A literary device which consists of a pause or digression to address a person (distant or absent or deceased), an inanimate object, or an abstract idea.
What is apostrophe?
A character who undergoes some sort of transformation.
What is a dynamic character?
The two sub-categories of conflict.
What is external conflict and internal conflict?
The array of emotions and ideas suggested by a word in addition to its dictionary definition.
What is connotation?
A literary device which creates interest through a brief, indirect reference (not a quotation) to another literary work, usually for the purpose of associating the tone or theme of one work with another.
What is allusion?
Anything beyond the specific words of a literary work that may be relevant to the meaning of a literary work. It may be economic, religious, social, cultural, historical, literary, biographical, etc.
What is context?
From the French word meaning “unknotting.” The final outcome or unraveling of the main dramatic complications in a play, novel, or other work of literature. It is usually the final scene or chapter in which any necessary clarifications are made.
What is denouement?
Unrhymed poetry written in iambic pentameter (5 pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables…du-dum du-dum du-dum du-dum du-dum)
What is blank verse?
The author uses the literal or dictionary definition of a word in order to emphasize a specific important fact.
What is denotation?
What is man vs man, man vs self, man vs nature, man vs God, man vs technology, and man vs society.