Terms : Hide Images
| 12406889366 | Archetype | A pattern or model of an action, a character type, or an image that recurs consistently enough in life and literature to be considered universal. Ex: the quest story, the wise old man, the witch, the seductress | 0 | |
| 12406889367 | Characterization | The method by which an author creates the appearance and personality of imaginary persons. The author may choose to tell the reader what a character is like through narration, show what a character is like through actions and dialogue, or have the character reveal him/herself through inner thoughts. | 1 | |
| 12406889368 | Confidant (male)/ Confidante (female) | Someone with whom the protagonist (main character) talks, enabling the audience or reader to become aware of the protagonist's motivation. Dori is Nemo's confidante in Finding Nemo. | 2 | |
| 12406889369 | Dystopia | An undesirable imaginary society. Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World. Oh, and The Hunger Games, The Divergent series, etc. | 3 | |
| 12406889370 | flat character | A character who can be summed up with one or two traits. | 4 | |
| 12406889371 | intrusive narrator | A storyteller who keeps interrupting the story to address the reader (Michael in the television series "The Office.") | 5 | |
| 12406889372 | Motif | A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation that appears throughout a work. Example: water in A Separate Peace, numbers in Life of Pi | 6 | |
| 12406889373 | Motivation | The psychological and moral impulses and external circumstances that cause a character to act, think, or feel a certain way. | 7 | |
| 12406889374 | Naïve narrator | The teller of the story is uncomprehending (a child or simple-minded adult) who tells a story without revealing its true implications. Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. Candide in Candide. | 8 | |
| 12406889375 | narrative voice | The attitude, personality or character of the storyteller or narrator (NOT the author) as it is revealed through dialogue or descriptive and narrative commentary. Ex: The narrator in Life of Pi happens to be the journalist. He comes to love Pi and learns from him. | 9 | |
| 12406889376 | point of view | The vantage point, or stance, from which a story is told; the eye and mind through which the action is perceived and filtered, sometimes called narrative perspective. | 10 | |
| 12406889377 | first person | the story is told by one of its characters, using the first person pronoun "I" which does not give the reader insight into other characters' motives or thoughts. | 11 | |
| 12406889378 | third person objective | the author limits him/herself to reporting what the characters say or do; he or she does not interpret their behavior or tell us their private thoughts or feelings. | 12 | |
| 12406889379 | third person omniscient | the author knows all (godlike) and is free to tell us anything, including what the characters are thinking or feeling and why they act as they do. | 13 | |
| 12406889380 | Third person limited omniscient | the author limits him/herself to a complete knowledge of one character in the story and tells us only what that one character feels, thinks, sees or hears. | 14 | |
| 12406889381 | Reliability | the extent to which a narrator can be trusted or believed. The closer the narrator is to the story, the more his or her judgment will be influenced by forces in the story. Ex: In Life of Pi, the Norwegian survival biscuits aren't really the "best in the world" or "amazingly good." His state of starvation makes it seem so. | 15 | |
| 12406889382 | round character | a character whose personality is complex, realistic, and many-sided | 16 | |
| 12406889383 | Subplot | a secondary series of events that are subordinate to the main story; a story within a story. | 17 | |
| 12406889384 | Suspense | a quality that makes the reader or audience uncertain or tense about the outcome of events. | 18 | |
| 12406889385 | suspension of disbelief | the demand made of an audience to provide some details with their imagination and to accept the limitations of reality and staging; also the acceptance of the incidents of a plot by a reader. Ex: The figure posing for photos at Disney with red shorts and big ears is not really Mickey Mouse. The people on stage during the musical Les Mis aren't really Cosette and Jean ValJean. | 19 | |
| 12406889386 | Symbol | anything that stands for or represents something else beyond itself -- the mockingbird in To Kill a Mockingbird | 20 | |
| 12406889387 | Theme | the statement made about life, human nature, or values in a work of literature | 21 | |
| 12406889388 | Utopia | a desirable imaginary society -- El Dorado in Candide | 22 | |
| 12412325463 | Ambiguity | A word, phrase or attitude that has double or even multiple meanings, resulting in multiple interpretations. | 23 | |
| 12412325464 | Colloquialisms | words or phrases that are used in everyday conversation or informal writing which are usually considered inappropriate for a formal essay. | 24 | |
| 12412325465 | Connotation | the range of further associations that a word or phrase suggests in addition to its straightforward dictionary meaning. | 25 | |
| 12412325466 | Convention | a device of style or subject matter so often used that it becomes a recognized means of expression. For example, a conventional lover cannot eat or sleep. An author who mocks the convention might create an overweight lover who sleeps a lot. | 26 | |
| 12412325467 | Denotation | the precise, literal meaning of a word, without emotional associations or overtones. | 27 | |
| 12412325468 | Dialect | the version of a language spoken by people of a particular region or social group. | 28 | |
| 12412325469 | Dialogue | The conversation of two or more people as represented in writing. | 29 | |
| 12412325470 | diatribe | violently bitter verbal attack. | 30 | |
| 12412325471 | Diction | the word choice (often a pattern of word choice) in a literary work that has a distinct effect on the text | 31 | |
| 12412325472 | digression | A portion of a written work that interrupts or pauses the development of the theme or plot. | 32 | |
| 12412325473 | Epigraph | the use of a quotation at the beginning of a work that hints at its theme. | 33 | |
| 12412325474 | Existentialism | a philosophical movement that focuses on the individual human being's experience of, recognition of, and triumph over the meaninglessness of existence. | 34 | |
| 12412325475 | Expressionism | presents life not as it appears on the surface, but as it is passionately felt to be by an author or character. | 35 | |
| 12412325476 | Feminism | the view that women are inherently equal to men and deserve equal rights and opportunities. | 36 | |
| 12412325477 | Flashback | a way of presenting scenes or incidents that took place before the opening scene. | 37 | |
| 12412325478 | hedonism | the pursuit of pleasure above all else. | 38 | |
| 12412325479 | Inference | a conclusion the reader can draw based upon details presented by the author. | 39 | |
| 12412325480 | Irony | in its broadest sense, the incongruity, or difference, between reality (what is) and appearance (what seems to be). | 40 | |
| 12412325481 | dramatic irony | a situation in which the audience knows more about a character's situation than the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character's expectations. | 41 | |
| 12412325482 | situational irony | the contrast between what is intended or expected and what actually occurs. | 42 | |
| 12412325483 | verbal irony | a contrast between what is said and what is actually meant. | 43 | |
| 12412325484 | Jargon | the special language of a profession or group. | 44 | |
| 12412325485 | Juxtaposition | the "side by side" comparison of two or more objects or ideals for the purpose of highlighting similarities or differences. | 45 | |
| 12412325486 | malapropism | the comic substitution of one word for another similar in sound, but different in meaning. Functions to make characters look ignorant or amusingly uneducated. "I would have her instructed in geometry that she might know of contagious countries." - The Rivals by Sheridan | 46 | |
| 12412325487 | narrative pace | the speed at which an author tells a story; the movement from one point or section to another. | 47 | |
| 12412325488 | Naturalism | style of writing that rejects idealized portrayals of life and attempts complete accuracy, disinterested objectivity, and frankness in depicting life as a brutal struggle for survival. | 48 | |
| 12412325489 | pseudonym | pen name, nom de plume, alias; a fictitious name assumed by a writer who wished to remain anonymous or who chooses not to use her/his real name professionally. | 49 | |
| 12412325490 | Realism | an author's use of accuracy in the portrayal of life or reality. | 50 | |
| 12412325491 | Sarcasm | harsh, cutting, personal remarks to or about someone, not necessarily ironic. | 51 | |
| 12412325492 | Satire | any form of literature that blends ironic humor and wit with criticism directed at a particular folly, vice or stupidity. Satire seeks to correct, improve, or reform through ridicule. | 52 | |
| 12412325493 | stream of consciousness | a technique that allows the reader to see the continuous, chaotic flow of half-formed and discontinuous thoughts, memories, sense impressions, random associations, images, feelings and re- flections that constitute a character's consciousness. | 53 | |
| 12412325494 | Surrealism | employs illogical, dreamlike images and events to suggest the unconscious. | 54 | |
| 12412325495 | Tone | the reflection in a work of the author's attitude toward his or her subject. Tone in writing is comparable to tone of voice in speech, and may be described as brusque, friendly, imperious, insinuating, teasing, etc. | 55 | |
| 12412325496 | Unity | the quality of oneness in a literary work, in which all parts are related by some principle or organization so that they form an organic whole, complete and independent in itself. | 56 | |
| 12412325497 | Wit | ingenuity in connecting amusingly incongruous ideas; intellect, humor. | 57 | |
| 12412325498 | Allusion | an indirect or passing reference to an event, person, place or artistic work that the author assumes the reader will understand. "Grading papers is the albatross around Mrs. Aupperlee's neck," which alludes to Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." | 58 | |
| 12412325499 | anachronism | an event, object, custom, person or thing that is out of its natural order of time. A clock strikes in Julius Caesar. | 59 | |
| 12412325500 | Analogy | a comparison of similar things, often to explain something unfamiliar with something familiar. (the branching of a river system is often explained using a tree and its branches.) | 60 | |
| 12412325501 | Aphorism | A terse statement of a principal or truth; a maxim. A proverb with particularly good phrasing. ("Life is long, reasoning difficult.") | 61 | |
| 12412325502 | Apostrophe | a rhetorical device in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person, or an inanimate object or abstraction. The poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn," whose audience is the urn. | 62 | |
| 12412325503 | Cliché | Any expression that has been used so often it has lost its freshness. (Sharp as a tack, the last straw, etc.) | 63 | |
| 12412325504 | Euphemism | the substitution of a mild term for one more offensive or hurtful. Example: "passed away" instead of "died" | 64 | |
| 12412325505 | figurative language | Figurative language - language that contains figures of speech, such as metaphor, simile, personification, etc. | 65 |
