Literary Terms-1
This occurs when a statement or situation means something different from (or the opposite of) what is expected.
Irony
The order of words in a sentence
syntax
Civil war, old news, awfully good, deafening silence.
Oxymoron
The highest point of intensity in a story.
climax
“Good food. Good cheer. Good times" and "We came, we saw, we conquered."
Anaphora
Making fun of a human practice with the aim of correcting behavior
satire
Boom, meow, boing, pitter-patter, zap!
Onomatopoeia
The duck said to the bartender, "Put it on my bill."
pun
A technique used in which a writer will plant clues or subtle indications about events that will happen later in the narrative.
Foreshadowing
Purposeful omission of conjunctions: "He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac."
Asyndeton
The implied attitude of the writer toward the subject or the audience.
Tone
I waited in line for a hundred years.
Hyperbole
A narration or description in which events, actions, characters, settings or objects represent specific abstractions or ideas.
Allegory
The insight about life that is revealed in a literary work.
Theme
A question asked merely for effect with no answer expected.
Rhetorical question
"You have to be cruel to be kind," "Less is more," and "You have to spend money to make money" are all examples of this.
Paradox
A recurring idea, object, concept, or structure that serves to unify a work.
Motif
Ten tired turtles on a tuttle-tuttle tree.
Alliteration
In drama, words spoken so that only the audience and/or certain character(s) can hear
Aside
“I wore a sweater, and a hat, and a scarf, and a pair of boots, and mittens.”
Polysyndeton
A character that by contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another.
Foil
A type of poem that does not have any regular, recurring pattern of rhythm or rhyme.
Free verse
Freedom weeps, wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps
Personification
A reference to a person, place, or other literary work: In the movie “Hook,” Peter Pan (Robin Williams) says, “What is this, some sort of the Lord of the Flies pre-school?”
Allusion
Substitution of a pleasant-sounding description for a more direct one
Euphemism