Literary Terms

1. Literary Terms Short Story and Novel

2. “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

3. Genre • A category or type of literature. • Epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, short story, letter, essay, journal, creative nonfiction, poetry are a few of the types of genre.

4. Conflict • A struggle between opposing forces. • There are two types of conflict that exist in literature.

5. Internal Conflict • A character in conflict with himself or herself. • Man vs. Himself

6. External Conflict • The main character struggles against some outside force, such as another character, nature, society, or fate. • Man vs. Man • Man vs. Nature • Man vs. Society • Man vs. Fate

7. Protagonist • The main character in a literary work.

8. Antagonist • A character or force in conflict with the main character. • Non-character entities can be antagonistic (settings or events) for example, Nature in Kon-Tiki.

9. Foil • A character who provides a contrast to another character. • Gaston and the Beast • Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy • Cady Heron and Regina George • Glinda the Good and The Wicked Witch of the West

10. Plot • The sequence of events in a literary work. • The first event causes the second, the second causes the third, and so forth. Like the links of a chain the events are interconnected. The plot usually begins with an exposition that introduces the setting, the characters, and the basic situation. This is introduced and developed. The conflict then increases by the addition of complications, rising action, until it reaches a high point of interest or suspense, the climax. The climax is followed by the falling action, action that is a result of the climax, the resolution ends the falling action and reveals how the story is resolved in the end.

11. Plot Development Climax Rising Action Falling Action Resolution Exposition Narrative Hook—point at which the reader becomes “hooked” and curious about what will happen next.

12. Exposition • Introduces the characters, setting, and basic situation. • The “introduction”

13. Rising Action • All the events leading up to the climax. • 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.

14. Climax • A high point of interest or suspense. • 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.

15. Falling Action • Events that follow the climax and lead to the resolution. • The action that typically follows the climax and reveals its results.

16. Resolution • The ending, in which a general insight or change is conveyed. • The resolution is the part of the plot that concludes the falling action by revealing or suggesting the outcome of the conflict. • It is also called the “denouncement” a French word for “unraveling the knot.”

17. “The Interlopers” by Saki (H. H. Munro)

18. Allegory A form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy. Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.

19. Mood/Atmosphere 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.

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

21. Character Types • Static character – a character who remains the same. • Dynamic character – a character who changes.

22. Character Types • Round character -a major character in a work of fiction who encounters conflict and is changed by it. Round characters tend to be more fully developed and described than flat, or minor characters.

23. Character Types • Flat Character - a literary character whose personality can be defined by one or two traits and does not change in the course of the story .

24. Characterization • The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character. • Direct characterization: the writer makes direct statements about a character’s personality. • Indirect characterization: the writer reveals a character’s personality through the character’s words and actions and through what other characters think and say about the character.

25. Fantasy Highly imaginative writing with elements not found in real life.

26. Flashback A flashback is a literary device in which an earlier episode, conversation, or event is inserted into the sequence of events. The flashback interrupts the present action of the plot to flash backward and tell what happened at an earlier time. Often flashbacks are presented as a memory of the narrator or of another character.

27. 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.

28. Irony • Contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality—between what is said and what is really meant, between what is expected to happen and what really does happen, or between what appears to be true and what is really true. There are three types of irony: • Verbal Irony • Situational Irony • Dramatic Irony

29. Three Types of Irony • Verbal Irony, occurs when writer or speaker says one thing, but really mans something completely different. • Situational Irony, occurs when there is a contrast between what would seem appropriate and what really happens or when there is a contradiction between what we expect to happen and what really does take place. • Dramatic Irony, occurs when the audience or the reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know.

30. Narrator • Person telling the story.

31. 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. Third-person omniscient point of view is the point of view where the narrator knows everything there is to know about the characters and their problems. This “all-knowing narrator can tell about the past, present and future. This narrator can also reveal what the characters are thinking. This narrator can also tell what is happening at other places.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. Symbol Person, place, thing, or event that stands for itself and for something beyond itself as well.

35. Theme The theme of a literary work is its central message, concern, or purpose. A theme can usually be expressed as a generalization, or general statement, about people or life. The theme may be stated directly by the writer although it is more often presented indirectly. When the theme is stated indirectly, the reader must figure out the theme by looking carefully at what the work reveals about the people or about life.