Fiction Vocab Test

Question 1

Allusion

Answer 1

A brief, often implicit and indirect reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text (e.g. The Bible, a myth, another literary work, painting, or a piece of music) or any imaginary or historical person, place, or thing.

Question 2

Ambiguity

Answer 2

When we are involved in interpretation—figuring out what different elements in a story “mean”—we are responding to a work’s ambiguity.

Question 3

Antagonist

Answer 3

A character or a nonhuman force that opposes, or is in conflict with, the protagonist.

Question 4

Antihero

Answer 4

A protagonist who is in one way or another the very opposite of a traditional hero. Instead of being courageous and determined, for instance, an antihero might be timid, hypersensitive, and indecisive to the point of paralysis.

Question 5

Archetype

Answer 5

A character, ritual, symbol, or plot pattern that recurs in the myth and literature of many cultures; examples include the scapegoat or trickster (character type), the rite of passage (ritual), and the quest or descent into the underworld (plot pattern).

Question 6

Characterization

Answer 6

The presentation or delineation of a fictional personage. Direct characterization or direct definition occurs when the narrator explicitly tells what a character is like.

Question 7

Climax

Answer 7

The third part of plot (see Freytag’s pyramid), the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing; also called turning point.

Question 8

Complication

Answer 8

In plot, an action or event that introduces a new conflict or intensifies the existing one, especially during the rising action phase of plot.

Question 9

Conflict

Answer 9

A struggle between opposing forces that sets the action in motion.

Question 10

Dénouement (French for “untying as of a knot)

Answer 10

A plot-related term used in three ways: (1) as a synonym for falling action, (2) as a synonym for conclusion or resolution, and (3) as the label for a phase following the conclusion in which any loose ends are tied up. See Freytag’s pyramid.

Question 11

Epiphany

Answer 11

A sudden moment of illumination or revelation of truth, often inspired by a seemingly simple or commonplace event.

Question 12

Exposition

Answer 12

The first phase or part of plot (see Freytag’s pyramid), which sets the scene, introduces and identifies characters, while establishing the situation at the beginning of a story. Additional information is often scattered throughout the work.

Question 13

Flashback

Answer 13

A plot-structuring device inserting a scene from the fictional past into the fictional present.

Question 14

Foreshadowing

Answer 14

A hint or clue about what will happen at a later moment in the plot.

Question 15

Hero/Heroine

Answer 15

A character in a literary work, especially the leading male/female character, who is especially virtuous, usually larger than life, sometimes almost godlike.

Question 16

An medias res (Latin for in the midst of things”)

Answer 16

Opening of the plot in the middle of the action, and then filling in past details by means of flashback.

Question 17

Image/Imagery

Answer 17

Broadly defined, imagery is any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object.

Question 18

Irony

Answer 18

A situation or statement characterized by a significant difference between what is expected and what actually happens, or between what is understood and what is meant.

Question 19

Metaphor

Answer 19

A general term for almost any figure of speech involving comparison; more commonly, a particular figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly—that is, without the use of a signal such as the word like or as—as in “Love is a rose, but you better not pick it”.

Question 20

Narrator

Answer 20

Someone who recounts a narrative or tells a story.

Question 21

Plot

Answer 21

The arrangement of the action. The five main parts or phases of plot are exposition, rising action, climax or turning point, falling action, and conclusion or resolution.

Question 22

Protagonist

Answer 22

The main character in a work, whether male or female, heroic or non-heroic.

Question 23

Rising action

Answer 23

The second of the five phases or parts of plot (see Freytag’s pyramid), in which events complicate the situation existing at the beginning of a work by intensifying the initial conflict or introducing a new one.

Question 24

Setting

Answer 24

The time and place of the action in a work of fiction.

Question 25

Stream of Consciousness

Answer 25

A type of third- or first-person narration that replicates the thought processes of a character without much or any intervention by a narrator.

Question 26

Symbol

Answer 26

A person, place, thing, or event that figuratively represents or stands for something else. Often the thing or idea represented is more abstract and general, and the symbol is more concrete and particular.

Question 27

Theme

Answer 27

1) Broadly and commonly, an idea explored in a literary work (e.g. “the value of all life”).

2) More narrowly, the insight about a topic communicated in a work (e.g. “All living things are equally precious”).

Question 28

Voice

Answer 28

The narrating instance, the verbal aspect of point of view, the acknowledged or unacknowledged source of a story’s words; the speaker; the “person” telling the story and that person’s particular qualities of insight, attitude, and verbal style.