characterization

the fictional or artistic presentation of a character--one who acts, appears, or is referred to in a literary work; the character’s combination of qualities, especially moral qualities, so that such terms as "good" and "bad," "strong" and "weak," often apply.

diction

an author’s choice of words.

imagery

any sensory detail or use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object.

metaphor and
simile

a metaphor is an implicit comparison or identification of one thing with another unlike itself without the use of a verbal signal. A simile is a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words like or as to draw the connection.

plot

the arrangement of the action, that is, an imagined event or series of events; an event may be verbal as well as physical, so that saying something or telling a story within the story may be an event.

point of view

the point from which people, events, and other details in a story are viewed.

setting

the time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play.

syntax

the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.

theme

(1) a generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work; (2) the statement a poem makes about its subject.

tone

the attitude a literary work takes toward its subject.

alliteration

the repetition of initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words— for example, "While I n odded, n early n apping" in Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven."

allusion

a reference—whether explicit or implicit, to history, the Bible, myth, literature, painting, music, and so on—that suggests the meaning or generalized implication of details in the story, poem, or play.

connotation /
denotation

connotation : what is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes. denotation: a direct and specific meaning.

flat v. round

flat: a fictional character, often but not always a minor character, who is relatively simple; who is presented as having few, though sometimes dominant, traits; and who thus does not change much in the course of a story. Round: complex characters, often major characters, who can grow and change and "surprise convincingly"—that is, act in a way that you did not expect from what had gone before but now accept as possible, even probable, and "realistic." (See characterization.).

foreshadowing

The introduction early in a story of verbal and dramatic hints that suggest what is to come later. (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press)

hyperbole

overstatement characterized by exaggerated language.

irony

a situation or statement characterized by a significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant.

meter

the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. This is determined by the kind of "foot" (iambic and dactylic, for example) and by the number of feet per line (five feet = pentameter, six feet = hexameter, for example).

narrator

the character who "tells" the story. (Persona is the voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share the values of the actual author.)

onomatopoeia

a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes; buzz is a good example.

personification

treating an abstraction as if it were a person by endowing it with humanlike qualities.

plot structure

exposition
that part of the structure the organization or arrangement of the various elements in a work that sets the scene, introduces and identifies characters, and establishes the situation at the beginning of a story. Additional exposition is often scattered throughout the work.

rising action
the second of the five parts of plot structure, in which events complicate the situation that existed at the beginning of a work, intensifying the conflict or introducing new conflict.

climax
also called the turning point, the third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing.

falling action
the fourth part of plot structure, in which the complications of the rising action are untangled.

conclusion
the fifth part of plot structure, the point at which the situation that was destabilized at the beginning of the story becomes stable once more.

protagonist
the main character in a work, who may be male or female, heroic or not heroic.

antagonist
neutral term for a character who opposes the leading male or female character.

rhyme scheme

the pattern of end rhymes in a poem, often noted by small letters, e.g., abab or abba, etc.

stanza

a section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing. Some distinguish between a stanza, a division marked by a single pattern of meter or rhyme, and a verse paragraph, a division governed by thought rather than sound pattern.

symbol

a person, place, thing, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time figuratively represents or “stands for” something else. Often the thing or idea represented is more abstract, general, non-or supernatural; the symbol, more concrete and particular.