Literary Elements – 9 Honors

1. Allegory – a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

2. Alliteration – repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound.

3. Allusion – a casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification.

4. Anecdote – short narrative account of an amusing, unusual, revealing, or interesting event.

5. Aside – words an actor speaks to the audience which other actors on the stage cannot hear.

6. Bias – a strong interest in something or ability to do something

7. Character – people, animals, or imaginary creatures that take part in the action of a story. There are main characters (the story centers on them) and minor characters, which interact with the main characters to help move the story along. o Dynamic character – change as a result of events. o Static character – characters that remain unchanged. o Flat character – A character constructed around one or two ideas or qualities; usually his or her persona can be summed up in a single sentence. o Round character – A complex, multidimensional character that seems like a real person and, like a real person, may display contradictory qualities. o Protagonist – the main character of a work of fiction. o Antagonist – the character that the protagonist struggles with. o Foil – A character that, by contrast, enhances or calls attention to another character.

8. Characterization – the way a writer develops a character’s personality and traits. o Direct – when a writer reveals the traits of a character o Indirect – other characters reveal about the traits of a character 9. Comedy – a story in which the main characters triumph over adversity.

10. Conflict – A struggle. o External conflict – when a character is pitted against an outside force, such as nature, a physical obstacle, or another character. o Internal conflict – one that occurs within a character’s own mind.

11. Connotation – attitudes and feelings associated with a word. 12. Denotation – literal or dictionary meaning of a word.

13. Dialect – form of language that is spoken in a particular geographic area or by a particular social or ethnic group.

14. Dialogue – written conversation between two or more characters in either fiction or nonfiction.

15. Diction – choice of words and a way of arranging words in sentences.

16. Figurative Language – language that cannot be understood in the literal sense.

17. Flashback – a conversation, an episode, or an event that happened before the beginning of the story.

18. Foreshadowing – a writer’s hints or clues to indicate events and situations that will occur later in the plot.

19. Genre – a type or category of literature or film marked by shared features.

20. Hyperbole – exaggeration or overstatement for emphasis or humorous effect.

21. Idiom/Idiomatic Expression – words used in informal writing and conversation that cannot be understood from the literal meanings of their words.

22. Imagery – descriptive words and phrases that re-create sensory experiences for the reader.

23. Irony – contrast between appearance and reality, usually reality is the opposite of what it seems. o Situational irony – the contrast between what a reader or character expects and what actually happens. o Dramatic irony – the reader or viewer knows something that a character does not. o Verbal irony – when someone knowingly exaggerates or says one thing and means another; also called sarcasm.

24. Metaphor – a direct comparison of two things.

25. Motif – a recurring subject or theme in a literary work.

26. Monologue – a prolonged speech delivered by a single character.

27. Mood – the feeling or atmosphere that the writer creates for the reader.

28. Onomatopoeia – the use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent.

29. Oxymoron (or paradox) – contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level.

30. Parallelism – the use of components in a sentence that are grammatically the same or similar in their construction, sound, meaning, or meter.

31. Personification – animals, ideas, or objects are given human characteristics.

32. Plot – the sequence of events in a story. o Exposition – where the structure of the plot begins. o Rising action – introduces complications and builds suspense in the story, occurs before climax. o Climax – the turning point in the story when the suspense reaches its peak and results in a change for the main character or protagonist. o Falling Action – occurs after the climax of the story and resolves the conflict. o Resolution (Denouement) – resolves or puts an end to the conflict or problem

33. Point of view – the way a story gets told and who tells it. o First-person – the narrator is a character in the story and speaks as “I.” o Second-person – usually used for instructions and uses pronoun “you.” o Third-person – the narrator seems to be someone standing outside the story. o Third-person omniscient – all-knowing, can see in the minds of more than one character. o Third-person limited – the narrator tells only what one character thinks, feels, and observes. o Unreliable narrator – a narrator, who describes the events in the story, but seems to make obvious mistakes or misinterpretations that may be apparent to a careful reader.

34. Prose – ordinary written or spoken language without deliberate rhyme; not poetry, drama, or song.

35. Pseudonym – alias or false name.

36. Pun – a joke that comes from a play on words.

37. Repetition – the same word or group of words is repeated at the beginnings of two or more successive clauses or lines.

38. Rhetorical Appeals – emotional, ethical, and logical appeals used to try to persuade an audience to agree with the writer or speaker. o Logos (Logical) – uses statistics, facts, experts, and evidence o Ethos (Ethical) – speaker establishes self as trustworthy and respectful of the audience o Pathos (Emotional) – appealing to the emotions of the audience

39. Satire – ideas or customs are ridiculed for the purpose of improving society.

40. Setting – time and place of the action of a story.

41. Short story – a story that can be read in one sitting that has one main conflict that involves the characters.

42. Simile – a comparison between two things using the words like or as.

43. Style – the particular way in which a piece of literature is written.

44. Suspense – the excitement or tension a reader feels as they become involved in a story.

45. Symbol – a person, place, activity, or an object that stands for something beyond itself.

46. Syntax – the order of words.

47. Theme – main idea of a work of literature.

48. Thesis – the main idea of an argument.

49. Tone – the attitude a writer takes toward a subject.

50. Tragedy – a dramatic play that tells the story of a main character who meets an untimely and unhappy death or downfall, often because of a specific character flaw or twist of fate.