Literature Terms
Narrator
The voice that tells the story. The narrator may or may not be a character in the story.
Symbol/Symbolism
A symbol is the use of a concrete object to represent an abstract idea. A person,object, or situation represents a feeling or situation. For example: A dove represents peace.
Symbolism: How an author uses symbols.
Symbol: Examples
Red: immorality; the life principle, blood, passion, emotion, danger
Black : death, or evil; black hens or black cats in witchcraft
Weeds : evil (hemlock, pigweed, etc), wildness/outcasts of society
Character
A character is a person or an animal in the story.
Character Traits
Character Traits--Words that describe the personality of the character
Examples: Cautious, bold, crafty, honest, ignorant, scared, are all words that could be used as character traits.
Characterization
Characterization--how an author tells the reader about a character's traits.
Examples of Characterization
Which is direct? Which is indirect?
How to Support Your Character Trait Ideas
If you say a character is fearful, you need to support that with proof from the book.
Ex.
Setting
The setting includes all the details of the time and place where the story happens.
It includes the country, state, region, community, neighborhood, building, institution, or home.
Details such as dialect, clothing, customs, and modes of transportation are often used to establish setting.
The setting gives the story context and helps to create a mood, or feeling.
Motif
A motif is a recurring object, concept, or
structure in a work of literature. An author may use an object, a color or an emotion as a motif to enhance the story she is trying to tell.
Protagonist
Antagonist
Do you know your Antagonists?
Plot
Plot is the sequence of events. The first event causes the second, the second causes the third, and so forth.
PLOTLINE
Exposition
Resolution
Rising Action
Climax
Falling Action
Conflict Introduced
Exposition
The Exposition is the introduction. It is the part of the work that introduces the characters, setting, and basic situation.
Rising Action
Rising Action--The rising action is all the problems that come after the exposition.
Climax
The Climax is the point of greatest emotional intensity, interest, or suspense in the plot of a narrative. The climax typically comes at the turning point in a story or drama.
Falling Action
Falling Action is the action that typically follows the climax and reveals its results.
Resolution
The Resolution reveals what happens in the end.
Conflict
Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces in a story or play. There are two types of conflict that exist in literature.
External Conflict
External conflict exists when a character struggles against some outside force, such as another character, nature, society, or fate.
Character vs. Character
Character vs. Nature
External Conflict Examples
Hester's Husband vs. Baby's Dad
Batman vs. Joker
Internal Conflict
Internal conflict exists within the mind of a character who is torn between different courses of action.
Character vs. Himself or Herself
Internal Conflict Example
Hester's Baby's Dad
Go on the platform of shame-face shame
Step down from a high place--no more respect or high place in society.
Wouldn't feel guilty anymore
Take responsibility for the baby.
Be with Hester?
Hide his guilt
Feel guilty for life.
Keeps respect
No platform of shame
Keeps position.
Doesn't take responsibilty for baby.
Doesn't help Hester.
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is the author’s use of clues to hint at what might happen later in the story. Writers use foreshadowing to build their readers’ expectations and to create suspense. This is used to help readers prepare for what is to come.
Can you think of an element of foreshadowing?
Suspense
Suspense is the growing interest and excitement readers experience while awaiting a climax or resolution in a work of literature. It is a feeling of anxious uncertainty about the outcome of events. Writers create suspense by raising questions in the minds of their readers.
Theme
Theme: the central message, concern, or purpose.
Themes can usually be expressed as general statements about people or life.
The theme may be stated directly or we may have to figure it out by thinking about what the book or poem makes us understand about people or life.
Fiction and Nonfiction
Fiction: Literature that tells about imaginary characters and events.
Nonfiction: Literature that tells about real characters and events
Diction
Don’t say ‘goin’ – say ‘going’, Don’t say ‘wanna’ – say ‘want to’
Denotation
The denotation of a word is its dictionary meaning, independent of other associations that the word may have.
Connotation
The connotation of a word is the set of ideas associated with it in addition to its explicit meaning. The connotation of a word can be personal, based on individual experiences. More often, cultural connotations – those recognizable by most people in a group – determine a writer’s word choices.
Denotation versus Connotation
Some examples –
Cheap is “low in cost” (denotation) but “stingy” or “poorly made” are the connotations of cheap
Let’s use the word HOT
The denotation (or dictionary definition – remember d in denotation = dictionary) of HOT is: having a temperature higher than that of a human body.
However, when you say “Man! He/She is hot!”, are you saying “Man! He is having a temperature higher than that of a human body!”? No!!
You are saying the CONNOTATION of HOT – which could mean a variety of things – man he/she is cute, attractive, beautiful, and many other meanings – those come from personal experiences and cultural meanings, etc.
Imagery
Imagery is words or phrases that appeal to one or more of the five senses. Writers use imagery to describe how their subjects look, sound, feel, taste, and smell.
MOOD
Mood, or atmosphere, is the feeling the reading creates in the reader.
Writers create moods through imagery, dialogue, setting, and plot.
Sometimes the mood stays the same. Other times, it changes.
Moods can be negative, neutral, or positive. See the list of mood words.
Flashback
A flashback is a literary device in which an earlier episode, conversation, or event is inserted into the sequence of events. Often flashbacks are presented as a memory of the narrator or of another character.
The movie Titanic is told almost entirely in a flashback.
What are some other films that contain flashback to help tell stories?
Holes
Willy Wonka
Think of some more…
Flashback continued…
Point of View
Point of View is the perspective, or vantage point, from which a story is told. It is the relationship of the narrator to the story.
First-person is told by a character who uses the first-person pronoun “I”.
Third-person limited point of view is the point of view where the narrator uses third-person pronouns such as “he” and “she” to refer to the characters.
Style
Style is the distinctive way in which an author uses language.
Word choice, phrasing, sentence length, tone, dialogue, purpose, and attitude toward the audience and subject can all contribute to an author’s writing style.
Tone
Tone is a reflection of a writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject of a poem, story, or other literary work. Tone may be communicated through words and details that express particular emotions and that evoke and emotional response from the reader.
For example, word choice or phrasing may seem to convey respect, anger, lightheartedness, or sarcasm.
Figures of Speech
A figure of speech is a specific device or kind of figurative language, such as hyperbole, metaphor, personification, simile, or understatement.
Figurative language is used for descriptive effect, often to imply ideas indirectly. It is not meant to be taken literally. Figurative language is used to state ideas in vivid and imaginative ways.
Metaphor
A Metaphor is a type of speech that compares or equates two or more things that have something in common. A metaphor does NOT use like or as.
Example: Life is a bowl
of cherries.
Simile
A Simile is another figure of speech that compares seemingly unlike things. Simile’s DO use the words like or as.
Example: Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard.
Oxymoron
An Oxymoron is a figure of speech that is a combination of seemingly contradictory words.
Examples: Same difference
Pretty ugly
Roaring silence
Personification
Personification is a figure of speech in which an animal, object, force of nature, or idea is given human qualities or characteristics.
Example: Tears began to fall from the dark clouds.
Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of sounds, most often consonant sounds, at the beginning of words. Alliteration gives emphasis to words.
Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
Dialogue
dialogue: conversation between two or more people in a book play or movie. Words in a dialogue are in quotation marks.
Motivation
Motivation: the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.