Literature Glossary Terms

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Oral Tradition

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Stories past down by word of mouth.

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Fiction

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Not real (type of prose)

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Fable

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A brief, often humorous narrative told to illustrate a moral.

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Parable

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A brief, usually allegorical narrative that teaches a moral.

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Tail

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Short narrative often with supernatural elements.

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Short Story

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Short, usually with one or two characters in one compelling action.

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Plot

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Actions, events, and situations that unfold in a narrative.

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Dramatic Situation

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The basic conflict that initiates a work or establishes a scene.

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Exposition

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The opening portion of a narrative or drama.

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Conflict

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The central struggle between two or more forces in a story.

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Complication

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The introduction of a significant development in the central conflict in a drama or narrative.

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Crisis

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In a drama when the crucial action, decision, or relization must be made.

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Climax

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The moment of greatest intensity in a story.

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Conclusion

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Shortly following the climax, the logical end or outcome of a unified plot.

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Protagonist

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Main character

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Antagonist

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Character or force that opposes the protagonist in a narrative poem or drama.

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Scene

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Represents a single dramatic action that builds to a climax.

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Suspense

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When the outcome of events are unclear.

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Foreshadowing

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May know what's going to happen before hand.

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Epiphany

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A moment of insight, discovery, or revelation by which a character's life is greatly altered.

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Flashback

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A scene relived in a character's memory.

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In media res

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When a story begins in what seems the middle of all the happenings without any insight of what happened before hand.

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Narrator

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Character, voice, that's telling the story

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Point of view

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Perception from which story is told.

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First person

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"I" story told by individual character.

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Second Person

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"You"

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Third Person

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he/she/they

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Third person omnicient

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he/she/they knows everything

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Editorial omniscience

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Character makes comments

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Impartial omniscience

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No comments

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Limited omniscience

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Know thoughts of a character

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Naive narrator

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Telling you the way things are but reader knows more.

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Unreliable narrator

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narrator talks a lot of BS.

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Interior monologue

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Character talks out loud.

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Character

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An imagined person who inhabits a story.

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Stock character

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Pre fabricated character (mad scientist)

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Motivation

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Sufficient reason to behave as they do.

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Flat character

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1 or 2 traits

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Round character

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Detailed, in depth

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Allusion

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A reference/association

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Sympathetic Character

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A character that you feel for/can relate with/to.

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Tone

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Writers attitude

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Style

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~Characteristics of writing
~Word choice
~Sentence structure

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Diction

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Word choice

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Dialect

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Words written the way they are spoken (y'all)

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Image

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Literal description of something using the senses

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Literal

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Actual, straight forward

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Metaphorical

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Comparisons to non-literal things, events, emotions, etc.

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Irony

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Discrepancy

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Verbal Irony

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Sarcasm

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Situational irony

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Watcher/reader knows whats going to happen

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Ironic point of view

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tone/meaning isn't the same as said.

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Theme

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A generally recurring subject or idea conspiciously evident in a literary work.

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Magic Realism

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Narrative in which the magical and the mundane are mixed in an overall context of realistic storytelling.

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Metaphorical

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what is conjured or suggested due to comparisons, figurative language

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Symbol

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A person place or thing in a narrative that suggests meanings beyond its literal sense.

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Allegory

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A narrative in verse or prose in which the literal events consisttently point to a parallel sequence of symbolic ideas.

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Symbolic act

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An action whose significance goes well beyond its literal meaning.