Essay on Literary terms

Literary Terms

Alliteration – repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words or phrases

Antagonist – Someone or something presented in opposition to the protagonist

Assonance – The repetition of the same or similar vowels sounds, especially in stressed syllabus

Ballad –Another type of narrative poetry, uses repeated words and phrases, including a refrain

Cacophony – Words used that sound jarring or add a discordant effect

Climax – The point of the greatest tension or importance

Closed Form – Regular patterns of meter, rhyme, line length, and stanzaic divisions

Conflict – The struggle between opposing forces that emerges as the action develops

Connotation – Words used that imply a meaning, a word chosen for what it suggests

Couplet – A two-line stanza with rhyming lines of similar length and meter

Crisis – is a peak in the story’s action, a moment of considerable

Denotation – literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests

Epic – Poems that recount the accomplishments of heroic figures

Epiphany – A moment of illumination in which something hidden or not understood becomes immediately clear

Euphony – A word that sounds pleasing to the ear

Exposition – Presents the basic information readers need to understand; sets up scene, introduces the major characters, suggests major evens or conflicts to come; gives reader the information vital to their understanding of the plot that will unfold

Figurative Language – Enrich a story, subtly revealing information about characters and themes (Similes, metaphors, personifications)

Figures of Speech (Page 264, 600, 700-729, 1072)
Foreshadowing – Is the introduction early in a story of situations, events, characters, or objects that hint at things to come

Form – A literary works structure or shape, the way its part fit together to form a whole

Flashback – Moves out of sequence to examine an event or situation that occurred before the time in which the story’s action take place

Free verse – Abandons any semblance of standard poems by varying line length within a poem, dispensing with stanzaic divisions, breaking lines in unexpected places

Hyperbole – intended exaggeration

Imagery – Words and phrases that describe what is seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched

Imaginative Literature – Begins with a writers need to convey a personal vision to readers; is more likely, than any other types of writing to include words chosen not only because they communicate the writer’s ideas but also because they are memorable

Limited Omniscient Point of View – Common in third-person narrators, in that the story focuses on what a single character experiences. Events are limited to one character’s perspective

Metaphor – when an imaginative comparison between two unlike items does not include like or as

Narrative – Tells a story by presenting events in some logical or orderly way

Narrative Poetry – Recount stories that communicate a speaker’s mood, feelings, or state of mind

Omniscient Point of View – (All knowing) Narrators moving at will from one characters mind to another

Onomatopoeia – When the sound of a word echoes it’s meaning, as it does in common words such as

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Literary Terms Essay

Literary Terms Essay