2. Literary Terms

3. Genre A category or type of literature based on style, form, and content

4. Setting: The time and place in which the action of a piece of literature takes place

5. Narrator The person who is telling the story

6. Point of view (This is NOT an opinion!) the vantage point from which the story is told (two types):

7. Two Types of Vantage Points 1) First person: story told by one of the characters.

8. 2) Third person: story told by someone outside the story

9. Plot The action or sequence of events in a story

10. Plot line/plot structure Graphic display of the action or events in a story (5 parts):

11. 1 ) Exposition- background info, explains situations/things that may be difficult to understand

12. 2 ) Rising action-the series of struggles that builds a story or play toward a climax

13. 3) Climax-usually the most intense point of a story

14. 4) Falling action-the part of a play/story that works out what happened in the climax

15. 5) Resolution-part of the play/story in which the problem is solved; meant to bring the story to a satisfactory end

16. Conflict The problem or struggle that triggers action in a story

17. Internal conflict - a person in conflict with themselves (person v. self). We see the character struggle with a decision.

18. External conflict – a person in conflict with an outside source (person v. person, person v. society, person v. nature, person v. fate)

19. Theme The statement about life that a writer is trying to get across in a piece of writing

20. CHARACTERIZATION is the method an author uses to reveal characters and their personalities

21. PROTAGONIST is the main character or hero of a piece of literature

22. ANTAGONIST is the person or thing working against the protagonist, or hero of the work.

23. Foreshadowing Giving hints or clues of what is to come later in a story.

24. Allusion A literary reference to a familiar person, place, thing, or event within a literary work.

25. Symbolism A person, place, thing, or event used to represent something else

26. Imagery Using words to create a certain picture in the reader’s mind; usually based on sensory detail

27. Figurative Language SIMILE is the comparison of two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”

28. Figurative Language METAPHOR is the comparison of two unlike things in which no word of comparison (as/like) is used

29. Figurative Language PERSONIFICATION is when an author describes an animal or object as if it were a person

30. Irony Using a word or phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or normal meaning (3 kinds):

31. Dramatic Irony- the audience/reader knows something the character doesn’t

32. Verbal Irony-the writer says one thing and means another

33. Situational Irony - when there is a difference between the purpose of a particular action and the result

34. MOOD: is the feeling a text arouses in the reader

35. TONE : is the overall feeling, or effect, created by the writer’s use of words