Literary Terms

English II H Literary Terms & Periods of American Literature

Literary Terms

Image: is a word or phrase in a literary text that appeals directly to the reader's taste, touch, hearing, sight, or smell. An image is thus any vivid or picturesque phrase that evokes a particular sensation in the reader's mind.

Imagery: the collection of images within a literary work. Used to evoke atmosphere, mood, tension. For example, images of crowded, steaming sidewalks flanking streets choked with lines of shimmering, smoking cars suggests oppressive heat and all the psychological tensions that go with it.

Symbol: something (often an object, emblem, or mark) that stands for or represents another thing (often a larger or abstract meaning)

Foil: a character that contrasts another character, often the protagonist, that therefore highlights certain qualities of the protagonist (or whoever the foil may be)

Allusion: an indirect reference to another work of literature or cultural marker

Characterization: the method used by a writer to develop a character. The method includes (1) showing the character's appearance, (2) displaying the character's actions, (3) revealing the character's thoughts, (4) letting the character speak, and (5) getting the reactions of others

Theme: main issue, implied idea or concern at stake in a verbal or visual work

Motif: a repeated image or symbolic pattern within a work

Setting: physical, historical, sociological environment or atmosphere presented in a cultural object

Mood: The climate of feeling in a literary work. The choice of setting, objects, details, images, and words all contribute towards creating a specific mood. For example, an author may create a mood of mystery around a character or setting but may treat that character or setting in an ironic, serious, or humorous tone

Plot: an author’s selection and arrangement of incidents in a story to shape the action and give the story a particular focus. Discussions of plot include not just what happens, but also how and why things happen the way they do.

Point of view: the vantage point from which the author presents action of the story. Who is telling the story? An all-knowing author? A voice limited to the views of one character? The voice and thoughts of one character? Does the author change point of view in the story? Why?

Point of view is often considered the technical aspect of fiction which leads the critic most readily into the problems and meanings of the story.

Omniscience: Omniscient narrators can report the thoughts and feelings of the characters, as well as their words and actions. The narrator of The Scarlet Letter is an omniscient narrator. Editorial omniscience refers to an intrusion by the narrator in order to evaluate a character for a reader, as when the narrator of The Scarlet Letter describes Hester’s relationship to the Puritan community.

Dialect: a type of informational diction. Dialects are spoken by definable groups of people from a particular geographic region, economic group, or social class. Writers use dialect to contrast and express differences in educational, class, social, and regional backgrounds of their characters.

Diction: use of language that marks it as either formal or informal, or specific to a particular social class or speaking/writing situation

Metaphor: figure of speech/implied comparison in which two unlike things are likened to each other or spoken of as if one thing were the other.

Simile: figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another using words such as “like,” “as,” or “appears,” “seems.”

Personification: a form of metaphor in which human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things. Personification offers the writer a way to give the world life and motion by assigning familiar human behaviors and emotions to animals, inanimate objects, and abstract ideas. For example, in Keats’s "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the speaker refers to the urn as an "unravished bride of quietness."

Paradox: a statement that initially appears to be contradictory but then, on closer inspection, turns out to make sense. For example, John Donne ends his sonnet "Death, Be Not Proud" with the paradoxical statement "Death, thou shalt die." To solve the paradox, it is necessary to discover the sense that underlies the statement. Paradox is useful in poetry because it arrests a reader’s attention by its seemingly stubborn refusal

Oxymoron: a condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used together, as in "sweet sorrow" or "original copy."

Hyperbole: a boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without in-tending to be literally true, as in the statement "He ate everything in the house." Hyperbole (also called overstatement) may be used for serious, comic, or ironic effect.me well.–John Milton.

Satire: the literary art of ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it. The object of satire is usually some human frailty; people, institutions, ideas, and things are all fair game for satirists. Satire evokes attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation toward its faulty subject in the hope of somehow improving it.

Parody: any humorous, satirical, or burlesque imitation, as of a person, event, etc.

Protagonist: the main character of a narrative; its central character who engages the reader’s interest and empathy.

Antagonist: The character, force, or collection of forces in fiction or drama that opposes the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story; an opponent of the protagonist.

Dialogue: verbal exchange between two or more characters that develops plot, character, action, etc.

Monologue: one character alone talking to the reader/audience/to himself. A monologue in a play is called a soliloquy and finds the character alone on the stage, often speaking about a decision, plan, or other internal conflict.

Foreshadowing: The introduction early in a story of verbal and dramatic hints that suggest what is to come later.

Climax: the moment of greatest emotional tension in a narrative, usually marking a turning point in the plot at which the rising action reverses to become the falling action.


Periods of American Literature

Puritanism:

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Enlightenment:

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Romanticism:

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Transcendentalism:

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Realism/Regionalism:

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Naturalism:

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Modernism:

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