Pre AP English I Literary Elements/Devices and Other Need to Know Terms Blue: Should already know well Yellow: Need to know for 1 st Grading Period Green: Need to know for 2 nd Grading Period Pink: Need to know for 3 rd Grading Period Absolutes: a word free from limitations or qualifications ( all, best, never, etc.) Abstractions: the act of considering something as a general quality or characteristic, apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances. Adage: a familiar proverb or wise saying. Argument Ad hominem: an argument attacking an individual s character rather than his or her position on an issue. Argument Ad misericordian: an argument appealing to the pity/mercy of the hearers. Allegory: A work with two levels of meaning a literal one and a symbolic one. In such a work, most of the characters, objects, settings, and events represent abstract qualities. Personification is often used in traditional allegories. As in a fable or a parable, the purpose of an allegory may be to convey truths about life, to teach religious or moral lessons, or to criticize social institutions. Alliteration: The practice of beginning several consecutive or neighboring words with the same sound. Allusion: A reference to a mythological, literary, or historical person, place, or thing. Anadiplosis: Rhetorical device where a word or phrase at the end of a sentence or phrase is repeated at the beginning of the next sentence or phrase. Analogy: Comparison between two different things or the relationship between them. Can explain something unfamiliar by associating it with or pointing out its similarity to something more familiar. Anaphora: The repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning or successive clauses. Anecdote: a brief narrative that focuses on a particularincident or event. Antagonist: The character who stands directly opposed to the protagonist. Antithesis: A direct juxtaposition of structurally parallel words, phrases, or clauses for the purpose of contrast. Aphorism: a concise statement that expresses succinctly a general truth or idea, often using rhyme or balance Apostrophe: A form of personification in which the absent or dead are spoken to as if present and the inanimate, as if animate. Archetype: A pattern in literature that is found in a variety of works from different cultures throughout the ages. An archetype can be a plot, a character, an image, or a setting. Argument: a statement of the meaning or main point of a literary work. Aside: a short speech directed to the audience, or another character, that is not heard by the other characters on stage. Assonance: The repetition of accented vowel sounds in a series of words.
Assertion: thesis, claim, or proposition. Asyndeton: A deliberate omission of conjunctions in a series of related clauses; it speeds the pace of the sentence. Ballad: type of narrative poem that tells a story and was originally meant to be sung or recited. Bathos: insincere or overly sentimental quality of writing/speech intended to invoke pity. Begging the question: a fallacy where one provides what is essentially the conclusion of the argument as a premise. Catharsis: Release of emotion (pity and fear) from the audience s perspective. Characterization: The way a writer creates and develops characters personalities: physical description; narrator s direct comments; and character s own thoughts, speech, and actions. Direct characterization: Author makes direct statements about a character's personality and tells what the character is like. Indirect characterization: The Author reveals information about a character and his personality through that character's thoughts, words, and actions, along with how other characters respond to that character, including what they think and say about him. Characters: Individual who participate in the action of a literary work. Flat: author chooses to emphasize a single important trait of a character. Round: author may present a complex, fully rounded personality. Static: character who changes little over the course of a narrative. Dynamic: character who undergoes important changes as the plot unfolds. Chiasmus: a statement consisting of two parallel parts in which the second part is structurally reversed ( susan walked in, and out rushed Mary ) Circular reasoning: a fallacy where one begins with the intended ending Cliché: an expression that has been overused. Conceit: a fanciful, particularly clever extended metaphor. Concrete Details: details that relate to or describe actual, specific things or events. Conflict: The tension between opposing forces in a work of literature and an essential element of the plot. Common conflicts: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. society. Connotation: The associations, suggestions, and emotional overtones attached to a word. Consonance: The repetition of a consonant sound within a series of words to produce a harmonious effect. Couplet: A rhymed pair of lines written in any rhythmic pattern. Denotation: The dictionary or literal meaning of a word. Dialect: A nonstandard subgroup of a language with its own vocabulary and grammatical features. Writers often use regional dialects or dialects that reveal a person s economic or social class. Dialogue: conversation between two or more people Diction: Word choice intended to convey a certain effect.
Dramatic unities: Time the play has to take place within a 24-hour period; Place the action of the play is set in one place; and Action The play contains one hero and one plot. Elegy: a formal poem presenting a meditation on death or another solemn theme. Ellipsis: The deliberate omission of a word or words that are readily implied by the context. Epanalepsis: Repetition at the end of a clause of the word that occurred at the beginning of the clause; it tends to make the sentence or clause in which it occurs stand apart from its surroundings. Epic: A long narrative poem on a serious subject, presented in an elevated or formal style. It traces the adventures (war and/or journey) of a great hero whose actions reflect the ideals and values of a nation or race. Epics address universal concerns, such as good and evil, life and death, and sin and redemption. Epigram: a brief, pithy, and often paradoxical saying. Epilogue: a short addition at the end of a literary work, often dealing with the future of the characters. Epithet: A brief phrase that points out traits associated with a particular person or thing. Epiphany: A sudden revelation of an underlying truth about a person or situation. Epistile: a direct or personal written or printed message addressed to a person or organization; a letter. Epistrophe: The repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends of a successive clauses; it sets up a pronounced rhythm. Ethos: The rhetorical appeal to ethics (right and wrong). Eulogy: a formal speech praising a person who has died. Euphemism: The use of a word of phrase that is less expressive or direct but considered less distasteful or offensive than another. Fable: a brief story that leads to a moral, often using animals as characters. Figurative Language: Language that communicates meanings beyond the literal meanings of words. Flashback: A scene that interrupts the action of a work to show a previous event. Foil: A character that provides a striking contrast to another character. By using a foil, a writer can call attention to certain traits possessed by a main character or simply enhance a character by contrast. Foreshadowing: The use of hints or clues in a narrative to suggest future actions. Hamartia: The tragic flaw that leads to the tragic hero s downfall. Hero: (1) Archetypal Hero the hero s life can clearly be divided into a series of well-marked adventures, which strongly suggest a ritualistic pattern. At birth, some attempt is made to kill him; however, he is spirited away and raised by foster parents. Upon reaching adulthood, he returns to his future kingdom, and after a victory of the king or a monster, marries a princess, becomes king, and reigns uneventfully until his death on a hill; (2) Epic Hero- an important figure from a history or legend, usually favored by or even partially descended from the gods, but aligned more closely with mortal/human figures. The epic hero participates in a journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in
his journey, gathers allies, and returns home significantly transformed by his journey. The epic hero is known for their courage, strength, loyalty, and intelligence; and (3) Tragic Hero the main character in a tragedy who makes an error (tragic flaw) in his or her actions that leads to his or her downfall. Hero s Journey: A pattern of narrative identified by Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person Historical Context: In literature, a theme, subject, event, person, or belief that is grounded in a particular time period. Homeric (Epic) Simile: A long, elaborate comparison between the hero or a god/goddess and something common or ordinary. Homily: a sermon, or a moralistic lecture. Hubris: Exaggerated pride or self-confidence, many times toward god(s). Hyperbole: A deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. Idiom: An accepted phrase or expression having a meaning different from the literal. Imagery: The words or phrases a writer uses to represent persons, objects, actions, feelings and ideas descriptively by appealing to the five senses. Imperatives: make commands, and contain and understood subject (you). Irony: Occurs in three types (1) Verbal Irony occurs when a speaker or narrator says one things while meaning the opposite; (2) Situational Irony occurs when a situation turns out differently from what one would normally expect though often the twist is oddly appropriate; and (3) Dramatic Irony occurs when a character or speaker says or does something that has different meanings from what he or she thinks it means, though the audience is and other characters understand the full implications of the speech or action. Juxtaposition: A poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, often creating an effect of surprise and wit. Litotes: a type of understatement in which an idea is expressed by negating its opposite (for example, describing a particularly horrific scene by saying, It was not a pretty picture. ) Logos: The rhetorical appeal to logic or reason. Loose (or cumulative) sentence: A sentence where the main clause is located at the beginning of the sentence, but continues with one or more subordinate clauses or other modifiers. Metonymy: A form of a metaphor in which the name of one object is substituted for that of another closely associated with it. Metaphor: The comparison of two unlike things not using like or as. Extended Metaphor: A metaphor developed at great length, occurring frequently in or throughout a work. Meter: Is the measured, patterned arrangement of syllables according to stress and length in a poem. Mood: The atmosphere or predominant emotion in a literary work. Motif: A recurring and dominant subject or idea.
Monologue: A single person speaking alone with or without an audience. Nihilism: a philosophy that rejections all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless. Non seguitur: an inference that does not follow logically from the premises. Ode: A complex lyric poem that develops a serious and dignified theme. Odes appeal to the imagination and intellect, and many commemorate events or praise people or elements of nature. Omniscient narrator: a narrator who is able to know, see, and tell all, including the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters. Onomatopoeia: The use of the words that mimic the sounds they describe. Oxymoron: A form of paradox that combines a pair of opposite terms into a single unusual expression. Parable: a simple story that illustrates a moral or religious lesson. Parallelism/Parallel Structure: A grammatical or structural similarity between sentences or parts of a sentence. It involves and arrangement of words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs so that elements of equal importance are equally developed and similarly phrased. Paradox: Occurs when the elements of a statement contradict each other though the statement may appear illogical, impossible, or absurd, it turns out to have a coherent meaning that reveals hidden truth. Parody: An imitation of another work, a type of literature, or a writer s style, usually for the purpose of poking fun. The purpose of parody may be to ridicule through broad humor, deploying such techniques as exaggeration or the use of inappropriate subject matter. Pathos: The rhetorical appeal to emotions. Periodic Sentence: A sentence which has its main clause at the end of the sentence. It forces the reader to retain information from the beginning of the sentence and often builds to a climactic statement with meaning unfolding slowly. Personification: A kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics. Point of View: The perspective from which a narrative is told. Polysemous: Words with two or more meanings; usually, multiple meanings of a word or words. Polysyndeton: The deliberate use of many conjunctions for special emphasis to highlight quantity or mass of detail or to create a flowing, continuous sentence pattern. Post hoc ergo propter hoc: sometimes called post hoc; a fallacy that states because one event followed another event, the first event caused the second event to occur. Plot: The sequence of events or actions in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem. Propaganda: Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one s cause or to damage an opposing cause. Propaganda often uses repetition, outgrouping, bandwagon, and name calling. Prose: All forms of written or spoken expression that are not in verse (a.k.a. poetry). Protagonist: The central character of a drama, novel, short story, or narrative poem
Pun: A play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings. Puns can have serious as well as humorous uses. Quatrain: A four-line stanza, or group of lines, in poetry written in a variety of meters and rhyme schemes. Repetition: The deliberate use of any element of language more than once sound, word, phrase, sentence, grammatical pattern, or rhythmical pattern. Reversal: Occurs when the opposite of what the hero intends is what happens. Rhetorical Question: A question that requires no answer. It is used to draw attention to a point and is generally stronger than a direct statement. Rhetorical Shift (or Turn): Change or movement in a piece resulting from an epiphany, realization, or insight gained by the speaker, \ a character, or the reader. Rhyme: The repetition of sounds in two or more words or phrases that appear close to each other in a poem. Internal Rhyme: Rhyme that occurs within a single line of poetry. End Rhyme: Rhyme that occurs at the ends of lines of poetry. Rhyme Scheme: The pattern of end rhymes. Rhythm: The varying speed, intensity, elevation, pitch, loudness, and expressiveness of speech, especially poetry. Sarcasm: The use of verbal irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it. Satire: A literary technique in which ideas, customs, behaviors, or institutions are ridiculed for the purpose of improving society. Satire may be gently witty, mildly abrasive, or bitterly critical, and it often involves the use of irony and exaggeration to force readers to see something in a critical light. Setting: The time and place in which events in a short story, novel, or narrative poem takes place. Simile: The comparison of two different things or ideas through the use of the words like or as. It is a definitely stated comparison in which the writer/poet says one thing is like another. Social Context: In literature, a topic (and, at times, a motif) which is found in and concerns society (no matter the time period or geological location). Soliloquy: A speech, in drama, in which a character speaks his or her thoughts aloud. Generally, the character is on stage alone, not speaking to other characters and perhaps not even consciously addressing an audience. Sonnet: A lyric poem of 14 lines, commonly written in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean, or Elizabethan, sonnet consists of three quatrains and a final couplet with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. Stanza: A group of two or more lines that form a unit in a poem. A stanza is comparable to a paragraph in prose. Style: The writer s characteristic manner of employing language (i.e. not what the author says, but how he or she says it). The author relies on diction, syntax, tone, figurative language, etc. to reveal style. Suspense: Quality of a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem that makes the reader or audience
uncertain or tense about the outcome of events. Syllogism: a three part deductive argument in which a conclusion is based on a major premise and a minor premise. Symbol: An object, person, place, or action that has both meaning in itself and that stands for something larger than itself, such as quality, attitude, belief, or value. Synecdoche: Form of a metaphor, a part of something is used to signify the whole. Syntax: The arrangement of words and the order of grammatical elements in a sentence. Synthesis: The composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole. Tautology: needless repetition which adds no meaning or understanding. ( widow women, free-gift ). Theme: The central message of a literary work. It is not the same as a motif or subject, which can be Expressed in a word or two (such as courage, survival, war, love, etc.). The theme is the idea the author wishes to convey about the motif or subject. It is expressed as a sentence or general statement about life or human nature (the universal message). A literary work may have move than one theme, and most themes are not directly stated but are implied. Thesis: A statement of purpose; the argument. In order to be complete, a thesis must (1) answer the given prompt, (2) briefly reveal claims that prove answer, and (3) explain the significance of answer (link to theme or the bigger picture). Tone: The writer s or speaker s attitude toward a subject, character, or audience, and it is conveyed through the author s choice of words and detail. Tragic Flaw: An error in judgment on the part of the hero that sets the tragic plot in motion. Tragedy: Characterize by protagonists who are highly renowned and prosperous, and whose reversal of fortune and fall from greatness are brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or flaw. Understatement: The opposite of hyperbole; a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is. Verbals: verbs used as other parts of speech. Gerund: a verb form that ends in ing and is used as a noun Participle: a verb form that usually ends in ed or ing and is used as an adjective Infinitive: a verb form that usually begins with to and can be used as a noun, adjective, or adverb Voice: Writer s unique use of language that allows a reader to hear a human personality in the writer s work. Can reveal much about the author s personality, beliefs, and attitudes.