Literary Terms

NONFICTION Prose writing that deals with real people, things, events, and places. The most popular forms are biography and autobiography. Essays, newspaper stories, magazine articles, historical accounts, scientific reports, and even personal diaries and letters are also nonfiction.

Autobiography Account by a writer of his or her own life. “Typhoid Fever” (page 228) is a selection from a famous autobiography by Frank McCourt. “By Any Other Name” (page 139) by Santha Rama Rau is an example of a short autobiographical essay.

Biography BIOGRAPHY Account of a person’s life written or told by another person. A classic American biography is Carl Sandburg’s multivolume work about Abraham Lincoln. Today biographies of writers, actors, sports stars, and TV personalities are often bestsellers.

Memoir A first-person account of events in the author’s life. Memoirs, however, tend to emphasize subjects outside the writer’s personal life, such as significant historical events the writer has been a part of or has witnessed, or other people the writer has known.

Essay Short piece of nonfiction that examines a single subject from a limited point of view. Most essays can be classified as personal or formal. A personal essay (sometimes called informal) is generally subjective, revealing a great deal about the writer’s personality and feelings. Its tone is conversational, sometimes even humorous.

Expository essay Expository essays offer information about a topic, from explaining how a process works, to analyzing or commenting on a political or historical event, to reviewing a theatrical production.

Narrative essay A narrative essay is a short composition that relates a true story from either the first or the third-person point view.

Persuasive essay A persuasive essay promotes an opinion or position. Commonly, persuasive essays describe a situation and then offer reasons that the reader should believe or act in a certain way regarding the issue.

Lead The lead, or introduction, serves to pique the reader’s interest. It also often includes the thesis, or main idea, or the essay. Sometimes, though, a writer saves the thesis statement for the end o the work.

Body The body develops or attempts to prove the thesis with supporting details, such as facts, reasons, statistics, sensory details, examples, observations, and personal experiences. This part of the work might also include quotations from expert sources and graphics such as diagrams, graphs, and illustrations.

Conclusion The conclusion typically restates the thesis and provides the reader with a final or summarizing thought. It might also call on readers to accept a new idea or to take a specific action.

Author’s Purpose An author’s intent in writing a literary work. For example, the author may want to inform, entertain, persuade, tell a story, or express an opinion.

Thesis The main idea of a work of nonfiction. The thesis may be stated directly or implied.

Thesis Many works have ambiguous themes; that is, they have no clear single meaning but are open to a variety of interpretations, even opposing ones. Some themes are so commonly found in the literature of all cultures and all ages that they are called universal themes.

Thesis Although a few stories, poems, and plays have themes that are stated directly, most themes are implied. The reader must piece together all the clues the writer has provided to arrive at a discovery of the work’s total meaning. Two of the most important clues to consider are the way the main character has changed and the way the conflict has been resolved.

Word choice ?

Allusion Reference to a statement, a person, a place, an event, or a thing that is known from literature, history, religion, myth, politics, sports, science, or the arts.

Analogy Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike.

Atmosphere/Mood A story’s atmosphere or the feeling it evokes. Mood is often created by the story’s setting. A story set on a dreary moor where cold water seeps into the hero’s boots will probably convey a mood of suspense and uneasiness. A story set in a garden full of sunlight and the chirps of birds will probably create a mood of peace. Edgar Allan Poe’s bizarre setting of “The Masque of the Red Death” (page 495) creates a dizzying atmosphere of horror.

Conflict Struggle or clash between opposing characters, forces, or emotions. In an external conflict a character struggles against an outside force, which may be another character, society as a whole, or something in nature. An internal conflict is a struggle between opposing needs, desires, or emotions within a single character. Many works, especially longer ones, contain both internal and external conflicts, and an external conflict often leads to internal problems.

Description Type of writing intended to create a mood or an emotion or to re-create a person, a place, a thing, an event, or an experience. Description uses images that appeal to the senses, helping us imagine how a subject looks, sounds, smells, tastes, or feels. Description is used in fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry.

Motif A significant word, description, idea, or image that is repeated throughout a literary work and is related to its theme.

Narration Type of writing that tells about a series of related events. Narration can be long (an entire book) or short (a brief anecdote). Narration is most often found in fiction, drama, and narrative poetry (such as epics and ballads), but it also is used in nonfiction works (such as biographies and essays).

Parallelism Repetition of words, phrases, or sentences that have the same grammatical structure or that state a similar idea. Parallelism, or parallel structure, helps make lines rhythmic and memorable and heightens their emotional effect.

Supporting detail ?

Theme The central idea or insight about human life revealed by a work of literature. A theme is not the same as a work’s subject, which can usually be expressed in a word or two: old age, ambition, love. The theme is the revelation the writer wishes us to discover about that subject.

Theme There is no single correct way to express a theme, and sometimes a work has several themes. Many works have ambiguous themes; that is, they have no clear single meaning but are open to a variety of interpretations, even opposing ones. Some themes are so commonly found in the literature of all cultures and all ages that they are called universal themes.

Theme Although a few stories, poems, and plays have themes that are stated directly, most themes are implied. The reader must piece together all the clues the writer has provided to arrive at a discovery of the work’s total meaning. Two of the most important clues to consider are the way the main character has changed and the way the conflict has been resolved.

Voice The writer’s or speaker’s distinctive use of language in a text. Voice is created by a writer’s tone and diction, or choice of words. Some writers have such a distinctive voice that you can identify their works on the basis of voice alone. Frank McCourt creates a distinctive voice in his memoir about growing up in Ireland, “Typhoid Fever”