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| A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. (Ex. Young Goodman Brown: Faith, Old Traveler) |
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| The repetition of constant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. |
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| A character or force against which another character struggles. (Ex. Old Traveler, Nature, Husband, Society) |
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| A character or force against which another character struggles. (Ex. Old Traveler, Nature, Husband, Society) |
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| The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose. |
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| An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Different types include major or minor, and static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). |
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| The means by which writers present and reveal character. Complex and shown through speech, dress, manner, and actions. |
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| The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. (PEAK) |
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| An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. (RISE) |
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| A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. May occur within a character or between characters. (Ex. Nature vs. Humanity) |
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| The association called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. |
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| A customary feature of a literary work which define particular genres of novels, short stories, ballads or plays. |
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| The dictionary meaning of a word. Creates one side to the duality of a words meaning. |
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| The resolution of the plot of a literary work. This usually follows shortly after the climax. Could be a time of self reflection. (Ex. Gabriel in "The Dead": James Joyce) |
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| The conversation of characters in a literary work. Are used in fiction to illuminate characteristics of the characters. |
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| The selection of words in a literary work. Authors use this to reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. |
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| The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. Some short stories don't have this. |
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| A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. |
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| In the plot, the action following the climax of the work that moves it toward its denouement or resolution. |
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| An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry or drama. |
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| A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. |
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| An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of the action. |
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| A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a story. |
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| Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or story. |
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| A figure of speech involving exaggeration. |
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| A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. |
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| The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. (Lightness and Darkness in "The Dead": James Joyce) |
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| A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. Verbal irony is when he says the opposite of what he means. |
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| A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. |
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| A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as "like" or "as." |
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| A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. |
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| The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. |
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| The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. |
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| A brief story that teaches a lesson often ethical or spiritual. |
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| A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work. Could be sarcastic, playful. |
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| The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. |
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| The unified structure of incidents in a literary work. |
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| The angle of vision from which the story is narrated. |
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| The main character of a literary work. |
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| The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. |
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| The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a story. |
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| The point at which the actions of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. (Ex. "Open Boat": Stephen Crane) |
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| A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax. |
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| A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. |
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| The time and place of a literary work that establish its context. |
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| A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. |
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| The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develop ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques. |
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| What a story or play is about. (Historical context) |
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| A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexist with the main plot. |
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| An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself, such as a theme. |
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| A fiure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole |
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| The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. |
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| A story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without detailed descriptions of character. |
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| The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. |
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| The implied attitude of a writer toward subject and characters of a work. |
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| A figure of speech in which a writer says less that what he might means, the opposite of exaggeration. |
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