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Literary terms

• ‘Allegory: a story which has more than one level of meaning and has things or human characters which represent ideas. Allegories often teach a moral lesson.
• Allite’ration: the repetitionof a consonant sound in nearby words either at the beginning of the words or in a stressed syllable. For example “Peter Piper picked a peck og pickled pepper”.
• An’tagonist: a character who is in opposition to the protagonist in a play or a novel/short story.
• ‘Assonance: the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in nearby words especially in stressed syllables. For example “The early bird catches the worm”.
• ‘Character: a person in a story, film or play. A character may be ‘flat’, like a type built on a single idea, or ‘round’, complex and capable of developing and of surprising us the reader. The terms ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ can also be used to express this.
• ‘Climax: an important turning point or the most intense part or point in a story or play.
• Conno’tation: idea(s) suggested by a word beyond its basic meaning. The word “home”, for instance, could also suggest caring, protection, comfort and family.
• Deno’tation: the basic meaning of a word which you can find in a dictionary. Compare “Connotation”.
• Dys’topia: an imaginary state or society in which there is a lot of injustice, unacceptable conditions and suffering, often a post-apocalyptic society. It is the opposite of utopia.
• En’jambement: also called “run-on lines” and used in poetry or drama. In a run-on line, the sense of one line continues into the next without a pause. The opposite is called an end-stopped line.
• ‘Epilogue: a closing comment at the end of a story, film, play or programme. Compare “prologue”.
• E’piphany: the moment when something is suddenly revealed to or realized by a character in a story or a person in non-fiction.
• ‘Essay: a short piece of non-fiction writing on a specific subject that intends to discuss a point or express an opinion.
• ‘Ethos: a rhetorical term used about the mode of persuasion in which the speaker appeals to the audience’s trust by establishing their own authority or expertise concerning the subject.
• ‘Euphemism [‘ju:fәmizm]: the substitution of a harsh or unpleasant term with a milder or more polite phrase, e.g. ‘pass away’ instead of ‘die’.
• Fairy tale: usually a children’s story in which magical things happen and the characters endure trials before the happy ending. Often begins with the phrase “Once upon a time”.
• ‘Fantasy: a genre which mixes aspects from the real world with magical and supernatural elements, sometimes inspired by mythology.
• ‘Feature article: an article often written by an expert or a journalist to give readers more depth to an understanding of a certain topic. Feature articles are also intended to entertain and therefore the style often contains elements from fiction, e.g. figurative and poetic language.
• ‘Figurative language: Language which uses figures of speech such as images, metaphors, similes, and symbols.
• Flash back: a literary technique that interrupts the chronological order. It takes the reader back in time and gives information about events which took place earlier than the main story.
• Flash forward: a literary technique that interrupts the chronological order, it takes the reader forward in time and gives information about events which will take place later than the main story.
• Foreshadowing: a literary device in which hints or warnings are placed early in a text about something which will happen later.
• Free verse: verse that does not use a fixed, regular pattern of rhythm and does not rhyme.
• Genre: a particular type or style of literature. The best-known fictional genres are the novel, the short story, poetry and drama. Some well-known non-fictional genres are essay, article, speech, blog and column.
• ´Imagery: descriptive language that produces mental pictures and sense experiences in the minds of readers or listeners. The images may appeal to sight (visual imagery), sound, feeling, smell, taste and movement.
• In medias res: means “in the middle of things” in Latin. Used when a narrative starts in the middle of the action rather than with an introduction.
• Intertextu’ality: references in one text to other texts or elements in other texts. Direct quotations may be used, the names of places and characters as well as indirect hints.
• ‘Irony: a statement where the speaker’s intended meaning is different from what they explicitly say.
• ‘Logos: a rhetorical term used about the mode of persuasion in which the speaker appeals to logic and focuses on facts and figures in their text in order to influence the audience.
• ´Metaphor: a word or a phrase which denotes one idea, but is applied to another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them, for example “My love is a rose”.
• ‘Metre: the rhythmical pattern of a poem or speech in a play. The syllables of words are stressed or unstressed so that the pronunciation creates a certain sound pattern. For example “There was an old lady from Niger who smiled as she rode on a tiger.”
• Na’rrator: the person who tells the story, not necessarily the author. In fiction a narrator is a fictitious character, in non-fiction, it may be the author. Also see “point of view”.
• ‘Novel: a fictional prose text, a narrative, of some length which usually describes the development of one or several characters in a certain setting. The action of the novel is usually termed ‘plot’.
• ‘Pathos: a rhetorical term used about the mode of persuasion in which the speaker appeals to the audience’s emotions in order to create support for his or her view.
• Personification: figurative language where an inanimate object or a concept is spoken of as if it could act or think as a human being. For example “the city never sleeps”.
• Point of view: indicates how a story is told. It gives the perspective which the author has chosen to present characters, setting and events. In a first-person narrative, the personal pronoun I is used and the point of view is limited to what the first-person narrator knows and experiences. Therefore, the question will often be if the narrator is reliable or unreliable. In a third person narrative the pronouns he, she, it or they are used. There is a distinction between the omniscient point of view, where the narrator knows everything necessary about characters and events, and the limited point of view where the narrator is limited to what is experienced and known by a single character. Also see “narrator”.
• Post-co’lonial literature: literature from or about areas which used to be colonies, often rethinking the history of the people who have been subjected to colonialism/ the objects of colonialism.
• Pro’tagonist: the main character of a play or piece of prose fiction.
• Rhetorical question: a question asked by a speaker to appeal to the audience and to which no answer is expected.
• Rhyme: two or more words sound similar. Rhyme is particularly common in poetry and some drama. It may create a certain pattern to the text and attract the attention of the audience.
• Rhyming couplet: Two successive lines, usually in the same metre, linked by rhyme.
• Rhythm: see “metre”.
• Science fiction: Texts, often set in the future, about science and technology which show what effect new discoveries and scientific developments will have on the world in the future.
• Setting: the time and place in which the events of the story, drama or film takes place, the social background of the characters.
• Simile: a figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared using “like” or “as”, for example “My love is like a red, red rose.” (Robert Burns)
• Short story: a short piece of prose which can mostly be read in one sitting. It usually develops one central idea or episode. A short story has few characters, the time span is fairly short and the setting is established quickly. The main character often faces a problem or a conflict which needs to be solved.
• Stream of consciousness: a narrative technique where readers follow a continuous flow of thoughts as experienced by a character. This often continues throughout a short story or novel (e.g. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield).
• Style: the way in which a text is written, and the devices used by the writer to obtain a certain effect, e.g. figurative language, the choice of words, punctuation and grammar. A distinction is usually made between high/formal style and low/informal style. Quite often written language is more formal than spoken language, but even in written language there are different degrees of formality and linguistic complexity.
• ‘Symbol: an object, person, situation, or action that means something different from or more than what it actually is. A heart may be the symbol of love.
• Theme: a subject or topic in a piece of art; the idea which the plot or piece of art represents, e.g. fear, longing, hope.
• Tone: the writer’s or speaker’s attitude to their subject, audience or themselves. Almost all the elements of a text go into suggesting its tone: connotation, imagery, metaphor, irony and sentence structure.
• Tragedy: A tragedy deals with serious and important events which turn out disastrously for the protagonist.
• U’topia: a term generally used in literature to describe an ideal state, a perfect place or country. Utopia means ‘nowhere’ in Greek. The opposite of dystopia.