Literary Elements

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A character, action, or situation that is a prototype, or pattern, of human life generally; a situation that occurs over and over again in literature, such as a quest, an initiation, or an attempt to overcome evil.

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Archetype

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A common archetypal setting is the desert, which is associated with spiritual sterility and barrenness because it is devoid of many amenities and personal comforts.

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Archetypal Setting

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Those that embody a certain kind of universal human experience

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Archetypal Characters

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People or animals who take part in the action of a literary work
Readers learn about characters from
What they say
What they do
What they think
What others say about them and
Through the author’s direct statements

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Characters

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The central character in a drama, novel, short story, or narrative poem.
To be believable, a character must reflect universal human characteristics.

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Protaganist

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The adversary of the protagonist.

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Antagonist

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A character in which an author chooses to emphasize a single important trait.

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Flat Character

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A character presented with a complex, fully-rounded personality (a three-dimensional character).

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Round Character

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A character that changes little over the course of a narrative. Things happen to these characters, but little happens in them.

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Static Character

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A character that changes in response to the actions through which he or she passes.

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Dynamic Character

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A writer uses this method when showing a character’s personality through his or her actions, thoughts, feelings, words, and appearance, or through another character’s observations and reactions.

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Indirect Characterization

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The author directly states a character’s traits. For example, “The twins didn’t have any problems. They weren’t great students, but they weren’t bad ones either.”

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Direct Characterization

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An event in which the central nature of something – a person, a situation, an object – is suddenly perceived; it is an intuitive grasp of reality in a quick flash of recognition in which something usually simple and commonplace is seen in a new light.

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Epiphany

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A character, usually minor, designed to highlight qualities of a major character.

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Foil

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A reason that explains a character’s thoughts, feelings, actions, or behavior.

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Motivation

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A flat character in a standard role with standard traits.

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Stock

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The facts, revealed by the author or speaker, that support the attitude or tone of a piece of poetry or prose.

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Details

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Word choice intended to convey a certain effect.

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Diction

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The dictionary definition of a word.

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Denotation

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The feelings and attitudes associated with a word.

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Connotation

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The speech of a particular region or group as it differs from those of a real or imaginary standard speech.

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Dialect

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The use of a word or phrase that is less expressive or direct but considered less distasteful or offensive than another.
For example, if a character is said to be “put to sleep,” when in fact they are murdered. “Put to sleep” is a euphemism for murder.

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Euphanism

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An accepted phrase or expression that has a meaning different than the literal meaning. For example, “Don’t pull my leg.”

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Idiom

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consists of the words or phrases a writer uses to represent persons, objects, actions, feelings, and ideas descriptively by appealing to the senses (sight, smell, sound, touch, taste)

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Imagery

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The atmosphere or predominant emotion in a literary work

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Mood

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The sequence of events or actions in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem.
Freytag’s Pyramid has the following elements of plot:
Exposition
Complication
Rising action
Climax
Falling action
Resolution

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Plot

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A person in opposition to another person (man vs. man)
A person opposing fate (man vs. fate)
An internal battle involving contradictory within a character (man vs. himself)
A person fighting against forces of nature (man vs. nature)
A person in opposition to some aspect of his or her society (man vs. society)

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Conflict

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A scene that interrupts the action of a work to show a previous event.

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Flashback

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The use of hints or clues in a narrative to suggest future action.

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Foreshadowing

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The quality of a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem that makes the reader or audience uncertain or tense about the outcome of events.

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Suspense

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The time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative take place.

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Setting

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The writer’s characteristic manner of employing language.

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Style

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The central message of a literary work. It is not the same as a subject, which can be expressed in a word or two: courage, survival, war, pride, etc. The theme is the idea the author wishes to convey about that subject.

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Theme

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The writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject, character, or audience, and it is conveyed primarily through the author’s choice of diction, imagery, figurative language, details, and syntax.

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Tone

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A reference to a mythological, literary, or historical person, place or thing.

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Allusion

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A form of personification in which the absent, or dead, are spoken to as if present, and the inanimate, as if animate.

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Apostrophe

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A form of metaphor. The name of one thing is applied to another thing with which it is loosely associated: e.g., “I love Shakespeare.”

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Metonymy

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A form of paradox that combines a pair of opposite terms into a single unusual expression: e.g., “sweet sorrow” or “cold fire.”

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Oxymoron

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occurs when the elements of a statement contradict each other. Although the statement may appear illogical, impossible, or absurd, it turns out to have a coherent truth: e.g., “Much madness is divinest sense” (Emily Dickinson).

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Paradox

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A recurring image, object, or ideal in a novel. A motif acts as a unifying device in literature and is often related to a novel’s theme.

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Motif

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The use of any object, person, place, or action that has a meaning in itself while standing for something larger than itself, such as a quality, attitude, belief, or value.

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Symbolism

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Man vs. man
Man vs. his environment
Man vs. himself

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Conflict