1. Literary Terms (from pppst.com)
We will be using these literary terms throughout the school year!

2. Character
A character is a person or an animal that takes part in the action of a literary work.

3. Antagonist
The Antagonist is a character or force in conflict with a main character, or protagonist. (basically, the bad guy)

4. Do you know your Antagonists?

5. Protagonist The Protagonist is the main character in a literary work
Usually the “good guy”

6. Do you know your protagonists?

7. Diction
Diction is the manner in which we express words; the wording used.

8. Denotation
The denotation of a word is its dictionary meaning, independent of other associations that the word may have.

9. 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.

10. Imagery
Imagery is words or phrases that appeal to one or more of the five senses.

11. MOOD
Mood, or atmosphere, is the feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage. Writer’s use many devices to create mood, including images, dialogue, setting, and plot. Often, a writer creates a mood at the beginning of a work and then sustains the mood throughout. Sometimes, however, the mood of the work changes dramatically.

12. Plot
Plot is the sequence of events. The first event causes the second, the second causes the third, and so forth.

13. PLOTLINE Climax Rising Action Falling Action Resolution Exposition
Conflict Introduced

14. Exposition
The Exposition is the introduction in a plot. It is the part of the work that introduces the characters, setting, and basic situation.

15. Rising Action
Rising Action is the part of the plot that begins to occur as soon as the conflict is introduced. The rising action adds complications to the conflict and increases reader interest.

16. 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.

17. Falling Action
Falling Action is the action that typically follows the climax and reveals its results.

18. Resolution
The Resolution is the part of the plot that concludes the falling action by revealing or suggesting the outcome of the conflict.

19. Conflict
Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces in a story or play. There are two types of conflict that exist in literature.

20. External Conflict
External conflict exists when a character struggles against some outside force.

21. Internal Conflict
Internal conflict exists within the mind of a character who is torn between different courses of action.

22. Flashback
A flashback is a literary device in which an earlier episode, conversation, or event is inserted into the sequence of events.

23. Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is the author’s use of clues to hint at what might happen later in the story.

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. Setting
The setting of a literary work is the time and place of the action.
The setting includes all the details of a place and time – the year, the time of day, even the weather. The place may be a specific 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.
In most stories, the setting serves as a backdrop – a context in which the characters interact. The setting of a story often helps to create a particular mood, or feeling.

27. 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.

28. Theme
The theme of a literary work is its central message, concern, or purpose.

29. Tone
Tone is a reflection of a writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject of a poem, story, or other literary work.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. Oxymoron
An Oxymoron is a figure of speech that is a combination of seemingly contradictory words.
Examples: Same difference
Pretty ugly
Roaring silence

33. 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.

34. 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