Literary Terms

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Literary Terms
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Hyperbole

• A purposeful exaggeration or overstatement.
• Examples
• Ive been waiting forever.
• My bookbag weighs a ton!
• It was so hot outside that you could fry an egg
  on the sidewalk.

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Imagery

• Passages or words that stir feelings or memories
  through an appeal to the senses sight, sound,
  touch, taste, smell.
• Example The rainstorm had ended and the gray
  mist and clouds had been swept away in the night
  by the wind. The wind itself had ceased and a
  brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the
  moorland. Never, never had Mary dreamed of a sky
  so blue. In India skies were hot and blazing
  this was of a deep cool blue which almost seemed
  to sparkle like the waters of some lovely
  bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high
  in the arched blueness floated small clouds of
  snow-white fleece. The far-reaching world of the
  moor itself looked softly blue instead of gloomy
  purple-black or awful dreary gray. The Secret
  Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• SHOW dont tell!!!

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Irony

• The incongruity between expectation and
  actuality when the outcome of a set of
  circumstances is contrary to conventional
  expectations. (Three types Dramatic Irony,
  Situational Irony, Verbal Irony.)
• Examples

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Metaphor

• A figure of speech that makes an imaginative
  comparison between two unlike things. It differs
  from a simile in that it does not use like or
  as.
• Examples
• Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am
  the dream and the hope of the slave. Maya
  Angelou from Still I Rise
• I am a manila envelope. - Stephen Colbert

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Simile

• A verbal comparison in which a similarity is
  expressed often using like or as.
• Examples
• houses leaning together like conspirators
  -James Joyce
• How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!/How public --
  like a Frog -/To tell one's name -- the livelong
  June --/To an admiring Bog! I'm Nobody! Who
  are you? by Emily Dickinson

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Tone/Mood

• Mood (Atmosphere) (Ambience) The emotional
  content of a scene or setting, usually described
  in terms of feeling such as somber, gloomy,
  joyful, expectant Tone The attitude a writer
  conveys toward his or her subject and audience.
• Example This living hand, now warm and
  capable/Of earnest grasping, would, if it were
  cold/And in the icy silence of the tomb,/So haunt
  thy days and chill thy dreaming nights/That thou
  wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood/So in
  my veins red life might stream again./And thou be
  conscience-calmed see here it is /I hold it
  towards you.
• This Living Hand by Keats

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Personification

• Endowing an inanimate object or abstract concept
  with life or with human attributes or feelings.
• Example Let the rain kiss you/Let the rain beat
  upon your head with silver liquid drops/Let the
  rain sing you a lullaby/The rain makes still
  pools on the sidewalk/The rain makes running
  pools in the gutter/The rain plays a little sleep
  song on our roof at night/And I love the rain.
  April Rain Song by Langston Hughes

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Pun

• A play on words which are either identical in
  sound (homonyms) or similar in sound but are
  different in meaning. Puns have serious as well
  as comic literary uses.
• Examples
• A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
• In Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio,
  bleeding to death, says, ...Ask for me tomorrow
  and you shall find me a grave man.
• He had a photographic memory that was never
  developed.

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Setting

• The time and place in which a piece of literature
  occurs.
• Example Ours was the marsh country, down by the
  
• river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles
  of the sea. My first most vivid and broad
  impression of the identity of things, seems to me
  to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon
  towards evening. At such a time I found out for
  certain, that this bleak place overgrown with
  nettles was the churchyard and that Philip
  Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana
  wife of the above, were dead and buried and that
  Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and
  Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were
  also dead and buried and that the dark flat
  wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected
  with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered
  cattle feeding on it, was the marshes and that
  the low leaden line beyond, was the river and
  that the distant savage lair from which the wind
  was rushing, was the sea and that the small
  bundle of
• shivers growing afraid of it all and
  beginning to cry,was Pip. from Great
  Expectations by Charles Dickens

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Setting (continued)

• Note that imagery can also help to establish
  setting.
• Thus, literary techniques work in cooperation
  with one another to fulfill the authors purpose.

The Bronte House
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Symbol/Symbolism

• Something concrete that suggests or stands for an
  idea, quality, or concept larger than itself.
• Examples
• The lion is a symbol of courage
• a voyage or journey can symbolize life
• water suggests spirituality
• dryness the lack thereof

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Theme

• A central or dominant idea advanced by a literary
  work and revealed through plot, characters,
  setting, point of view, and symbols.
• Example In Shakepeares Romeo and Juliet, love,
  fate, parent-child conflict, and friendship are
  all themes.

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Alliteration

• Repetition of the same consonant sounds, usually
  at the beginning of words.
• Example Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
  peppers.

Credits Sharon, Lois, Bram's Mother Goose.
Illustrated by Maryann Kovalski. Boston, MA
Little Brown and Co., 1985.
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Assonance

• The repetition of internal vowel sounds usually
  close together for aesthetic or humorous effect.
  
• Examples
• Ivy as light and lively as the vine
• The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

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Character

• A person or thing e.g., a spirit, object, animal
  or natural force, presented as a person in a
  literary work. It is defined by ones actions and
  dialogue.

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Character, Contd

• Example John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen
  years old four years older than I, for I was but
  ten large and stout for his age, with a dingy
  and unwholesome skin thick lineaments in a
  spacious visage, heavy limbs and large
  extremities. He gorged himself habitually at
  table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim
  and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now
  to have been at school but his mama had taken
  him home for a month or two, on account of his
  delicate health. Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed
  that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes
  and sweetmeats sent him from home but the
  mothers heart turned from an opinion so harsh,
  and inclined rather to the more refined idea that
  Johns sallowness was owing to over-application
  and, perhaps, to pining after home.
• John had not much affection for his mother and
  sisters, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and
  punished me not two or three times in the week,
  nor once or twice in the day, but continually
  every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of
  flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There
  were moments when I was bewildered by the terror
  he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever
  against either his menaces or his inflictions
  the servants did not like to offend their young
  master by taking my part against him, and Mrs.
  Reed was blind and deaf on the subject she never
  saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he
  did both now and then in her very presence, more
  frequently, however, behind her back.
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

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Foreshadowing

• Intentional clues about what will happen later in
  a narrative or play.

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Genre

• A classification of literature drama, novel,
  short story, poem, etc.

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Plot

• The structure of a narrative. A series of
  causally related events or episodes that occur in
  a narrative or play.

Climax
Rising Action
Falling Action
conflict
Exposition
Resolution or Denouement
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Exposition

• In literature, the presentation of essential
  information regarding what has occurred prior to
  the beginning of the narrative.
• Example In the exposition to William
  Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, two servants of
  the house of Capulet discuss the feud between
  their master and the house of Montague, thereby
  letting the audience know that such a feud exists
  and that it will play an important role in
  influencing the plot.

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Rising Action

• The complication and development of the conflict
  leading to the climax of a plot.
• Example In the rising action for William
  Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, Romeo goes to the
  Capulet party and meets/falls in love with
  Juliet, which is a part of the major conflict.

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Conflict

• The antagonism between opposing characters or
  forces that causes tension or suspense in the
  plot.
• Conflict may be internal or external.
• Types of conflict include the protagonist vs. a
  person, nature, society, technology, and/or
  himself.

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Climax

• The point toward which the action of a plot
  builds as the conflicts become increasingly
  intense or complex the point at which the
  protagonist makes a conscious decision which
  enables him/her to resolve the primary conflict.

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Falling Action

• In classical dramatic structure, the part of a
  play after the climax, in which the consequences
  of the conflict are revealed. In literature, a
  series of events that takes place after the
  climax. The falling action of a drama leads to
  the conclusion.

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Resolution

• The conclusion of the conflict in a narrative or
  dramatic plot.

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Denouement

• Literally, the untying (French) the resolution
  of the conflict following the climax (or crisis)
  of a plot a statement or revelation of insight
  that the main character finally has.

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• THE END