Literary Terms Flashcards
(168 cards)
1
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writing which tells about imaginary characters and events (short stories, novels, etc.)
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FICTION
2
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writing which tells about real events. Examples of nonfiction literature are scientific publications, textbooks, articles in newspapers, biographies, documentary stories, etc.
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NON-FICTION
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GENRE
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a division or a type of literature
4
Q
a story written to be performed in the theatre; the script (the text) consists of a dialog and stage directions
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DRAMA
5
Q
Poems/verses are generally divided into lines and stanzas (several lines joint together), they often employ rhythm and rhyme.
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POETRY
6
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ordinary form of written language (neither drama, nor poetry). Thus, only this can be described as fiction - nonfiction.
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PROSE
7
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a drama in which the major character is overcome by some superior force or circumstance; excites terror or pity
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TRAGEDY
8
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a drama that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone and that usually contains a happy resolution of the thematic conflict.
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COMEDY
9
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– a play which is neither a tragedy, nor a comedy
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DRAMA
10
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a play, characterized by exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, and interpersonal conflicts; it makes you cry a lot in a happy way
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MELODRAMA
11
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light, humorous play that uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, and violent horseplay. Farce is generally regarded as intellectually and aesthetically inferior to comedy in its crude characterizations and implausible plots, but it has remained popular from ancient times to the present
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FARCE
12
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– a prosaic work which one should be able to read in one sitting (up to about 20 pages)
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SHORT STORY
13
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an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction
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NOVEL
14
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a short prose tale often characterized by moral teaching or satire; it is usually longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel
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NOVELLA
15
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- a piece of short prose fiction. The distinction between a noveletteand other literary forms is usually based upon word count, with a novelette being longer than a short story, but shorter than a novella.
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NOVELLETTE
16
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a form of nonfiction in which a person tells his or her own life story. Besides autobiographies we speak about autobiographical stories / novels, which are based on the writer’s experience, but are fiction works (e.g., “Caleb’s Brother” by James Baldwin).
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY
17
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a form of nonfiction in which a writer tells the life story of another person
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BIOGRAPHY
18
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is a form of nonfiction in which a writer tells stories about meeting famous people and his / her participation in important events.
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MEMOIRS
19
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a specific unity of features of language (writing) used for some definite purpose / in some definite situation
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FUNCTIONAL STYLE
20
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can be used in any situation and for any purpose. It applies everyday vocabulary, without stylistic devices or terminology, e.g.“This autumn the weather is changeable” or “Some students are lazy.”
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NEUTRAL STYLE
21
Q
STYLISTICALLY MARKED LANGUAGE is characterized by the usage of:
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- colloquial vocabulary or slang (e.g. Hey, guy, what are you sniffing here?)
- archaic and poetic words (e.g., His foes pursued him.)
- terminology (Attention deficit problem is more typical of male than of female students.)
- stylistic devices (He looked at the sad pale moon.)
It involves: conversational – literary (high-flown), scientific, business, mass-media functional styles.
22
Q
is characterized by usage of colloquial vocabulary or slang, e.g.He kicked the bucket (=died) last night.
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CONVERSATIONAL STYLE
23
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is characterized by usage of archaic and poetic words, e.g.Thou shalt not kill. (= You shouldn’t kill).
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HIGHLY-LITERARY / HIGHFLOWN STYLE
24
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are characterized by usage of terminology and clichés, e.g.Nokia, the largest cellphone maker in the world, said Thursday that it would cut 1,800 jobs as it tries to streamline operations and speed up delivery of new software and better Web services for its besieged smartphones. The job cuts, which amount to 3 percent of the core work force, came as Nokia, the leader in basic cellphones and smartphones, reported third-quarter earnings of €529 million, or $742 million, a figure that was much better than expected.
A
SCIENTIFIC, BUSINESS AND NEWSPAPER (MASS-MEDIA) STYLES
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manner in which most fiction (prose) is written. It combines neutral style with application of some stylistic devices, e.g.The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few.
COLLOQUIAL-LITERARY STYLE
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improper style, characterized by abuse of learned (scientific) and high-flown /archaic vocabulary, when the situation does not require it
POMPOVERBOSITY
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is composed orally and then passed from person to person by word of mouth. Main folklore literary genres are fables, fairy tales, myths and legends.
FOLKLORE (ORAL TRADITION)
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a brief story, usually with animal characters, that teaches a lesson or a moral. They may be folk (people’s) or literary. Aesop in Ancient Greece, Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani in Georgia, La Fontaine in France, Krilov in Russia, James Thurber in the US, Hoca Nasrettin (Nasreddin) in Turkey are famous for their fables.
FABLE
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stories that deal with magic and adventures. They also may be folk or literary.
Some folk fairy tales are known under the name of a person who wrote them down (Charlez Perrault, Brothers Grimm). Authors of famous literary fairy tales are Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde.
FAIRY TALES
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a fictional tale that explains the actions of gods or heroes or the origins of elements of nature.Myths are part of the oral tradition, such as the myth about Prometheus (Georgian version is Amirani). Some fiction has also been created based on folk myths (e.g., “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Longfellow) or imitating folk myths.
MYTH
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a widely told story about the past, one that may or may not have a foundation in fact.Every culture has its own legends - its familiar, traditional stories, e.g., the legend of how Tbilisi was founded or the legend about King Arthur and his knights of the round table.
LEGEND
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highly imaginative writing that contains a whole system of elements not found in real life.Many science fiction stories contain elements of fantasy. “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings”, for instance, are fantasies.
FANTASY
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a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation. While fables and fairy tales as literary genres contain allegories, allegory is not a literary genre, but a stylistic device.
ALLEGORY
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was first used by the psychologist William James in 1890 to refer to the unbroken flow of thought and awareness in the human mind. As a literary term, ‘stream of consciousness’ refers to any attempt by a writer to represent the conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions in the mind of a character. This technique takes the reader inside the narrating character’s mind, where he sees the world of the story through the thoughts and senses of the focal character.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
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At the beginning of the 20th century some authors developed a stream of consciousness technique. The term is borrowed from drama, where ‘monologue’ refers to the part in a play where an actor expresses his inner thoughts aloud to the audience. The interior monologue represents an attempt to transcribe a character’s thoughts, sensations and emotions. In order to faithfully represent the rhythm and flow of consciousness, the writer often disregards traditional grammar, punctuation, and logical connections. He does not interfere to guide the reader or to impose narrative order on the often confused, and confusing, mental processes.
INTERNAL MONOLOGUE
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IT refers to the showing of the Christ child to the Magi, and is used by Christian philosophers to signify a manifestation of the presence of God in the world. James Joyce adopted this term and used it to refer to remarkable moments of sudden insight, when a trivial gesture, external object or banal situation leads a character to a better understanding of himself and the reality surrounding him. Joyce believed that the writer’s main task was to record these special moments. IT has become the standard literary term to refer to the sudden revelation or self-realization which frequently occurs in modern poetry or fiction.
EPIPHANY
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the direction in the literary theory, developed in England at the end of the in the beginning of the 20th century, and which deals solely with the meaning of the texts of literary works.
PRACTICAL CRITICISM
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PRACTICAL CRITICISM IS BASED ON
LIBERAL HUMANISM, which sees the individual – the subject, as not determined and defined by social and economic circumstances, but as fundamentally free. We create ourselves, and our destiny, through the choices we make.
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it is primarily oriented towards the form of literature. While Practical Criticism focused on the individual meaning of individual texts, Formalism wanted to discover general laws (form), making literary texts. Originated in Russia in 1910s-1920s.
FORMALISM
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is a straightforward account of something, it tells us what actually happened.
FABULA
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the story in its whole complexity (manipulation of fabula), the story as it is actually told.
SYUZHET (PLOT)
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says that a literary text is a structure in which all the elements are interrelated and interdependent. There is nothing in a literary work that can be seen and studied in isolation. If Formalists focused on the elements, which distinguished literary texts from non-literature, for the Structuralists everything played a role in what a text was and did. Originated in Prague, Czech Republic, after 1925.
sSTRUCTURALISM.
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later type of structuralism, which employs the linguistic approach as its basic tool.
FRENCH STRUCTURALISM
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MARXIST CRITICISM
interested in issues of class and social exploitation and especially attentive to the cultural mechanisms (and their literary versions) that keep people unaware of their exploited status.
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LITERARY FEMINISM
calls attention to the pervasive male bias that we find throughout Western history. It has rediscovered forgotten or marginalized female writers and established a history of writing by women.
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AFRICAN-AMERICAN CRITICISM
has rediscovered forgotten or marginalized black writing. It has sought to establish a specially black tradition in writing that is not only thematically, but also stylistically different from writing by white Americans.
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NEW CRITICISM
is the type of literary criticism, which developed in Anglo-American world in the 1940s-1950s, which focuses solely on the form and content of textual information of literary texts.
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stylistic devices based on sentence structure; they deal with non-standard grammatical forms, some deviations from grammatical norms used by the author to emphasize some emotions, etc.
GRAMMATICAL STYLISTIC DEVICES
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is non-standard word order. Contrary to grammatical inversion (e.g., inversion used to form a question: He is a student. Is he a student?), stylistic inversion is used to emphasize some words, e.g. “About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar turned up to his ears, hurried across from the opposite side of the street. ” (From “After twenty years” by O.Henry). The normal order would be “He waited about twenty minutes…”
INVERSION
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is a question that does not require an answer. However, they say that rhetorical questions make the speech more interactive. That is why orators often use them.
RHETORICAL QUESTION
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is omission of some words in the sentence. Elliptical sentences are typical for informal conversation. Sometimes authors use ellipsis and just grammatical mistakes to stress that the speaker is not very educated or too excited to speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences, e.g. “It's an appointment made twenty years ago. Sounds a little funny to you, doesn't it? ” (From “After twenty years” by O.Henry). (It should normally be “It sounds a little funny…” This sentence is also an example of a rhetorical question.
ELLIPSIS
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the use, more than once, of any element of language - a sound, word, phrase, clause, or sentence
REPETITION
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repetition of a grammatical pattern, while the words are changed
PARALLELISM
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is repetition in reversed order: “He came back,… back came he”
CHIASMUS
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alliteration (repetition of consonants)
PHONETIC REPETITION
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(ASYNDETON
The repeated or the enumerated words (or clauses) can be joined without any conjunctions
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POLYSYNDETON
THE REPEATED OR THE ENUMERATED WORDS CAN BE JOINED with too many linking elements
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is a break in narration; the introductory words are usually separated from the rest of the story by commas or hyphens, e.g., “And then Cal Harkness, probably reasoning that further pursuance of the controversy would give a too decided personal flavor to the feud, suddenly disappeared from the relieved Cumberlands, baulking the avenging hand of Sam, the ultimate opposing Folwell.” (“Squaring the Circle” by O.Henry). It can also be an unfinished sentence: "'Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--'(“Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain).
APOSIOPESIS
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CLIMAX (OF A SENTENCE)
is three or more (almost) synonymous words, increasing in power,
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ANTITHESIS
is usage of two antonyms
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LITOTES
is double negation used for a positive feature
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DIALOG (DIALOGUE)
is two (or more) people speaking to each other. In theatre dialog is the words spoken by the actors.
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SOLILOQUY
is when a character speaks aloud to himself. The playwright uses soliloquy to convey directly to the audience the character’s motives, intentions and his innermost feelings and thoughts.
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usually printed in italics, tell how the actors should look, move, and speak. They also describe the setting and effects of sound and lighting.
STAGE DIRECTIONS
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an eight-line stanza
OCTAVE
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a seven-line stanza
HEPTASTICH
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a six-line stanza
SESTET
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a five-line stanza
CINQUAIN
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a four-line stanza
QUATRAIN
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a three-line stanza
TERCET
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a two-line stanza
COUPLET
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is a group of lines in a poem, considered as a unit
STANZA
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verse written in one-foot lines:
MONOMETER
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verse written in two-foot lines:
DIMETER
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verse written in three-foot lines:
TRIMETER
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verse written in four-foot lines
TETRAMETER
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verse written in five-foot lines:
PENTAMETER
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A six-foot line is called
HEXAMETER
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A line with seven feet
HEPTAMETER
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a foot with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in the word "begin"
IAMB
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a foot with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, as in the word "people"
TROCHEE
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: a foot with two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one, as in the phrase "on the sea"
ANAPEST
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: a foot with a stressed syllable followed by two stressed ones, as in the word "happiness"
DACTYL
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a foot with an unstressed syllable, one stressed syllable, and another unstressed syllable, as in "the.shimmering sunlight"
AMPHIBRACH
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a foot with a stressed syllable, one unstressed syllable, and another stressed syllable, as in "Jack and Jill"
AMPHIMACER
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a foot with two stressed syllables, as in the word "downtown"
SPONDEE
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a foot with two unstressed syllables, as in the last foot of the word "unevenly"
PIRHIC
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is poem’s rhythmical pattern (measurement, size)
METER
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poetry not written in a regular rhythmical pattern, or meter, usually also unrhymed.
FREE VERSE (French: VERS LIBRE)
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poetry written in unrhymed, but rhythmical (usually iambic pentameter) lines
BLANK VERSE
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a regular pattern of rhyming lines in a poem. To indicate the rhyme scheme of a poem, one uses lower case letters. Each rhyme is assigned a different letter, as follows: a,a,b,a (for “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost)
RHYME SCHEME
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the repetition of sounds at the end of different words. Many traditional poems contain end rhymes, or rhyming words at the ends of lines
RHYME
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the pattern of beats, or stresses, in spoken or written language. Poetic rhythm deals with notions of foot and meter
RHYTHM
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FLASHBACK
a section of a literary work that interrupts the sequence of events to relate an event from an earlier time
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FORESHADOWING
the use of clues that suggest events that have yet to happen
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a reference to a well-¬known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art. Understanding what a writer is say¬ing often depends on recognizing allusions. E.g., To tell a person that he isn’t a Shakespeare means s/he isn’t a great poet or playwright. Also, if Statue of Liberty is mentioned in a literary work, most probably the topic of the work deals with freedom
ALLUSION
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a genre of poetry which deals with feelings, thoughts and landscapes; in the ancient world, lyric poems were meant to be played to the lyre .
LYRIC POEM
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DRAMATIC POEM
a drama in verses or verses about heroes
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EPIC/NARRATIVE POEM
poetry which tells a story, often connected with history
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a lyric verse with 14 lines: Italian sonnet contains 2 quatrains (4-line stanza) + 2 tercets (3-line stanza). Shakespeare is especially famous for his sonnets containing 3 quatrains and an ending heroic couplet.
SONNET
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a songlike poem that tells a story, often one dealing with adventure and romance. Most ballads are written in four-to-six-¬line stanzas and have regular rhythms and rhyme schemes. A ballad often features a refrain - a regularly repeated line or group of lines. Originally, ballads were not written down. They were composed orally and then sung. As these early folk ballads passed from singer to singer, they often changed dramatically. As a result. folk ballads usually exist in many different forms. Many writers of the modern era have used the ballad form to create literary ballads - written imitations of folk ballads.
BALLAD
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– a concise poem dealing pointedly and often satirically with a single thought or event and often ending with an ingenious turn of thought; it often applies puns
EPIGRAM
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an inscription on a tombstone in memory of the one buried there or a brief poem commemorating a deceased person
EPITAPH
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a humorous, rhyming, five-line poem with a specific meter (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable) and rhyme scheme. Most limericks follow1he rhyme scheme aabba.
LIMERICK
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a Japanese lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons; Today, haiku are written in many languages, but most poets outside of Japan are concentrated in the English-speaking countries and in the Balkans. It is impossible to single out any current style or format or subject matter as definitive.
HAIKU
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– a phonetic stylistic device, applying the repetition of consonant sounds (more often in the beginning of the word). Authors, especially poets, use alliteration to create musical effects, to imitate some natural sounds (e.g., the sound of wind or rain) and to draw attention to certain words or ideas.
ALLITERATION
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a phonetic stylistic device, applying words that imitate sounds
ONOMATOPOEIA
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HUMOUR
causing a smile or laughter, being funny
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the use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning, e.g., a student couldn’t answer how much is 2+2, another student after this lesson calls him the best mathematician
IRONY
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an occasion in which the outcome is significantly different from what was expected or considered appropriate, for instance a man wanted to poison his enemy, but by mistake drank water from a wrong glass and poisoned himself
IRONY OF SITUATION
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a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter jibe or taunt (e.g., the famous Hamlet’s monologue “Poor Yorik” is about the jester who used to make people laugh, but now is dead)
SARCASM
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a stylistic device combining on one collocation two semantically incompatible words, e.g. to shout silently, to sleep with widely opened eyes, to crawl slowly, etc.
OXYMORON
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a stylistic device for the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words although its use may be grammatically or logically correct with only one of them in the given context (the two meanings shouldn’t normally be used in one sentence), e.g., “You are free to execute your laws, and your citizens, as you see fit”. Zeugma is, like pun, also a kind of play of words and is also often used for comic effect.
ZEUGMA
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a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. Two meanings of the same word are realized at the same time, and the word is repeated: “the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the waiter” (O.Henry, “Squaring the Circle”). Sometimes pun is based not on the same word, but on (almost) homonyms (e.g., in “The Importance of Being Ernest” by Oscar Wilde, the girl wants to get married to a man named Ernest, because she hopes he is an earnest man)
PUN
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stylistic device using an adjective indicating some quality or attribute (good or bad) which the speaker or writer (or the verdict of history) regards as characteristic of a person or thing (e.g., “Richard the Lion-Hearted”). Not any adjective/attribute may be regarded as an epithet, but only a colorful adjective / attribute, e.g., a rosy-fingered dawn. Majority of epithets, thus, are based on simile or metaphor (rosy-colored dawn, like a baby’s fingers in the example above), also on personification (a sleeping mountain).
EPITHET
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a stylistic device, describing a non-animate object as a living being, especially as a human (the wind was crying)
PERSONIFICATION
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is opposite to hyperbole, the object is described as too little (a girl so tiny she could sleep inside a flower)
UNDERSTATEMENT
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a stylistic devise, using exaggeration (a man as huge as a mountain)
HYPERBOLE
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a stylistic devise, using a part instead of the whole (The nose came in, looked around and went out. “The nose” stands for a person with a big nose). A synecdoche is a kind of metonymy.
SYNECHDOCHE
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a stylistic device, using a related word instead of the main one, e.g. He runs after each skirt. “Skirt” here stands for its typical owner (a woman, a girl). The relationship between the two words is not similarity.
METONYMY
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a story full of or characterized by humor; funny, amusing, comical
HUMOROUS STORY
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a story inwhich a detective, either an amateur or a professional, solves a crime or a series of crimes.
DETECTIVE STORY
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a story in which the protagonist or other major characters are consistently placed in dangerous situations; a thriller is an adventure story/movie which contains suspenseful adventures
ADVENTURE STORY
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a story telling about love
LOVE STORY
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a tale of international intrigue and adventure, a story of espionage
SPY STORY
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a story which concentrates attention not on what people do, but why they do so, what they feel and think
PSYCHOLOGICAL STORY
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a story dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component. This is a form of writing that is concerned with a world removed in some fundamental way from our own, whether in time, attitude or knowledge
SCIENCE FICTION STORY
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also called a Tall Tale –a normally folk tale containing hoaxes (deceptions); in America this notably a story told by hunters/fishers sitting round the fire which contains exaggeration
HOAX
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his/her POINT OF VIEWwhich may be visible in any type of narration, but in the first person narration it is usually open enough, while in the third person narration it is more often implicit (the conclusion may be made according to the ending)
AUTHOR'S POSITION
130
the narrator of a poetic (seldom, prosaic) work who does not participate in events of the plot, but whose image the reader can elicit due to his tastes, ideas, even facts of biography given in the text of the literary work. He may or may not be the same as the real author of the work, he may be totally fictitious, or partially coincide with the author
LYRICAL HERO
131
otherwise called stylistic devices/means are expression that uses language in a non-literal way or in a structured or unusual way or that employs sounds, to achieve a rhetorical effect.
FIGURES OF SPEECH
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If a stylistic device is based on a word (its meaning or origin), it is called.....Among them are neologisms, archaisms and antonomasia
a LEXICALSTYLISTIC DEVICE / MEANS.
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LEXICAL-GRAMMATICAL stylistic devices
are based on word meaning as well as the structure of a sentence. Among them are simile and metaphor.
134
a new word coined by the writer, e.g. “blog” is a new word, meaning a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer
NEOLOGISM
135
an old, obsolete word, used to stress that the action in the story takes place a long time ago or to make the narration high-flown (like in poetry), e.g., Old English “doth” for “does”, “thou” for “you”
ARCHAISM
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a) meaningful name (Becky Sharp in W.M.Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” has sharp wits) B) the use of a proper name to designate a member of a class (as a Solomon for a wise ruler, Don Juan for a woman-hunter); C) the use of an epithet or title in place of a proper name (as the Bard for Shakespeare, Your Majesty for king)
ANTONOMASIA
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a figure of speech that makes a direct comparison between two unlike subjects similar only by one feature using “like”, “as”, “as if”, etc. (“She is as beautiful as a rose”).
SIMILE
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a figure of speech in which something is described as though it were something else, it points out similarity by one feature of two otherwise unlike objects, but does not name it (Looking at a photo of a gardener’s family, one may say “There are so many roses in your garden”. Here “roses” stands for “beautiful daughters” and “garden” – for “family”.)
A metaphor is made up of three elements:
* the tenor, i.e. the subject under discussion (for example, a “daughter”)
* the vehicle, i.e. what the subject is compared to (for example, a “rose”)
* the ground, i.e. what the author believes the tenor and the vehicle have in common (for example, “beauty”).
METAPHOR
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an opening section of a story that gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information.
PROLOGUE
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a concluding section that rounds out the design of a literary work
EPILOGUE
141
sequence of events in a literary work, its contents
PLOT
142
the time and the place of the action in a literary work
SETTING
143
is an introduction that explains, informs, or presents information; exposition often involves setting
EXPOSITION
144
part which introduces the central conflict, this is the first event which is connected with the conflict
INCITING INCIDENT
145
high point of interest
SUSPENSE
146
the highest point of development of the plot, the most exciting moment
CLIMAX
147
the end of the central conflict
RESOLUTION
148
any events that occur after the resolution
DENOUEMENT
149
when describing a character directly, a writer simply states the character's traits, or characteristics
OPEN CHARACTERIZATION
150
when describing a character indirectly, a writer depends on the reader to draw conclusions about the character's traits. Sometimes the writer describes the character's appearance, actions, his / her belongings, actions, or speech
IMPLIED CHARACTERIZATION
151
participant of events in the literary work, PERSONAGE
CHARACTER
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main character
MAJOR CHARACTER
153
LESS MAIN CHARACTER
MINOR CHARACTER
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character which changes in the course of the work
DYNAMIC CHARACTER
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character which does not change in the course of the work
STATIC CHARACTER
156
character which is fully developed and exhibits many traits - often both faults and virtues; round characters are typical for large realistic works
ROUND CHARACTER
157
one-sided and often stereotypical character (only good or bad, funny or tragic, etc.); we often meet flat characters in Romantic works and short stories
FLAT CHARACTER
158
the main (usually positive) character in aliterary work, sometimes the term is used just for a major character
PROTAGONIST
159
a character or force in conflict with a main (usually positive) character, or protagonist; thus antagonist is normally a negative character, but sometimes the term is used for the character in conflict with the major character, whether positive or not.
ANTAGONIST
160
- in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod. Later, hero (male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self-sacrifice—that is, heroism—for some greater good of all humanity. This definition originally referred to martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.
HERO/HEROINE
161
central message of a literary work (what it is about)
THEME/TOPIC
162
central point the author wants to communicate (what the author wanted to teach us)
MAIN IDEA/MORAL
163
struggle between opposing forces
CONFLICT
164
conflict inside the character’s soul
INTERNAL CONFLICT
165
conflict between characters or between the character and society
EXTERNAL CONFLICT
166
the author tells the story himself / herself, s/he usually is also one of the characters)
FIRST PERSON NARRATION
167
we do not know who is telling the story; third-person narration is usually more objective, while first person narration is more subjective and permits the author to express directly his/her viewpoint
THIRD PERSON NARRATION
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the feeling (sad, cheerful, frightening, exciting, etc.) created in the reader by a literary work or passage
ATMOSPHERE/MOOD
