Literary Terms

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Literary Terms
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Character

• Actors in a story people, animals, objects

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Conflict

• struggle between opposing forces in a story or
  play, usually resolved by the end of the work
• Man vs. self may occur within a character
  (internal)
• Man vs. man (external)
• Man vs. society (external)
• Man vs. nature (external)

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Dialogue

• lines spoken by a character in a play, essay,
  story, or novel.
• conversation that is often used to reveal
  characters and to advance the plot

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Setting

• Where the story takes place

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Plot

• The sequence of events in a story
• Exposition
• Rising Action
• Climax (major conflict)
• Falling action
• Resolution

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Mood

• The atmosphere of a literary work
• Purpose? Creates a certain emotion or feeling
  from the audience or reader how do you feel
  while reading a story about a murder?
• How the reader feels

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Tone

• The attitude of an author, as opposed to a
  narrator, toward the subject matter and/or
  audience.
• How the author feels

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Allusion

• a reference in a literary work to a person,
  place, or thing in history or another work of
  literature, often indirect or brief references to
  well-known characters or events
• Example Chocolate was her Achilles heel.
  This means that her weakness was her love of
  chocolate.  
• When she lost her job, she acted like a Scrooge,
  and refused to buy anything that wasnt
  necessary. Scrooge was an extremely stingy
  character from Charles Dickens, A Christmas
  Carol. 

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Foreshadowing

• Clues that an author gives you to help you figure
  out what is going to happen later in the story
  (use these clues to make inferences)

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Flashback

• A flashback is a narrative technique that allows
  a writer to present past events during current
  events, in order to provide background for the
  current narration

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Irony

• A person, situation, statement, or circumstance
  is not as it would actually seem. Many times it
  is the exact opposite of what it appears to be

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Verbal Irony

• Implies the opposite of what is said surface
  meaning what is said/ intended meaning what
  is really meant
• "The cake is as soft as concrete"
• The concept is as clear as mud"

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Cosmic Irony

• some sort of misfortune, end result of fate or
  chance
• The Titanic was promoted as being 100
  unsinkable but, in 1912 the ship sank on its
  maiden voyage.

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Situational Irony

• actions have an opposite effect than what was
  expected
• A man who is a traffic cop gets his license
  suspended for unpaid parking tickets.

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Dramatic Irony

• miscommunication in a book, play or film and the
  audience is smarter than the characters
• In Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare Romeo
  finds Juliet in a drugged state and he thinks she
  is dead. He kills himself. When Juliet wakes up
  she finds Romeo dead and kills herself.