Created for students at SLHS in my AP Literature and Composition class. This list does not include poetry terms ( I have made a separate list for these).
Terms : Hide Images
| story conveying a meaning other than the literal; abstract principles represented by characters or figures | ||
| repetition of initial consonant sounds | ||
| hero suddenly becomes aware of a situation or true character | ||
| repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of neighboring clauses for emphasis | ||
| word, phrase, or clause that a pronoun replaces | ||
| repetition of vowel sounds | ||
| novel tracing the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character usually from childhood to maturity. (i.e Tess of the d'Urbervilles) | ||
| emotional release of an audience at the end of a successful tragedy | ||
| informal speech | ||
| an elaborate, fanciful metaphor (esp. of a strained or far-fetched nature) | ||
| implied meaning of a word | ||
| repetition of consonant sounds within words | ||
| metaphor that dominates an entire work | ||
| literal meaning of a word; dictionary definition | ||
| literally "god out of a machine;" (sudden artificial or improbable resolution to a story, often implying a lack of skill on the part of the writer) | ||
| use of words in a literary work (usually described as informal, formal, colloquial or slang) | ||
| several lines in a poem or play in which a character delivers a speech explaining his/her feelings, actions, or motives | ||
| The contrast of one character with another character(usually the protagonist, to emphasize the other character's traits) | ||
| event or statement that suggests a future event | ||
| fatal flaw of a tragic hero | ||
| excessive pride that leads to a protagonist's downfall | ||
| exaggeration or overstatement (opposite of understatement) | ||
| implied meaning (opposite of explicit) | ||
| analogy that states one thing is another | ||
| a figure of speech in which a thing (or concept) is called by the name of something closely associated with it (i.e. "crown" for King) | ||
| impersonal view of events | ||
| a word that imitates the sound it describes | ||
| seemingly apparent contradiction which is actually accurate | ||
| repeated words, phrases, clauses, or grammatical structure used for effect | ||
| work idealizing the simple life of shepherds or of rural people | ||
| the reversal of fortune a character experiences | ||
| giving human qualities to nonhuman objects | ||
| main character | ||
| genre which ridicules flaws to advocate for change | ||
| a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with "like," "as," or "than." | ||
| word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level | ||
| metaphor in which a part is spoken of as the whole object ("wheels" for "car") | ||
| mixing of senses | ||
| word order | ||
| central idea of a work | ||
| weakness of an otherwise good or great individual that leads to his/her downfall | ||
| repetition of a word or phrase at end of successive clauses or sentences (opposite structure of anaphora) | ||
| commas used without conjunction for equal emphasis (x,y,z) | ||
| conjunctions used instead of commas (x and y and z) | ||
| repetition of a key word at the beginning and end of same sentence | ||
| recurring image, word, phrase, idea, action, object | ||
| independent clause comes at end of sentence | ||
| independent clause comes at beginning of sentence | ||
| understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite (not a bad day's work) | ||
| Reversed grammatical order and the same idea if not the same words (xyyx) (i.e. remember to forget and forget to remember) | ||
| soothing pleasant sounds. | ||
| a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas. | ||
| a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent person is directly addressed as though present. | ||
| the author's attitude toward a subject | ||
| placing two elements side by side to present a comparison or contrast | ||
| an expression in which two words that contradict each other are joined | ||
| the generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time | ||
| involving clever rogues or adventurers especially as in a type of fiction (The Invisible Man) | ||
| punctuation at the end of a line of poetry | ||
| the continuation of meaning, without pause or break, from one line of poetry to the next |
