Quiz 1 Flashcards
Fable
A brief, often humorous narrative told to illustrate a moral. The characters are typically animals with human-like personality traits.
Parable
Brief, allegorical narrative that teaches a moral. Morals are implicit, open to multiple interpretations.
Tale
A short narrative without a complex plot, tends towards lesser-developed characters and linear plots.
Fairy tale/Folktale
Traditional short narrative, originally oral-based, usually features supernatural creatures.
Short Story
A prose narrative too brief to be published in a separate volume, a focused narrative.
Initiation Story
Also called “coming of age” story or a “rite of passage”
Protagonist
The main, or central character in a narrative.
Antagonist
Generally opposes the protagonist. It can be another character, society, a force of nature, or conflicting internal impulses.
Exposition
Opening portion of narratives, set a scene, introduces characters, discloses necessary background.
Conflict
The central struggle between two or more forces in a story, the basic material out of which plot is made.
Complication
The introduction of a significant development in the central conflict between characters.
Crisis
The point in a narrative when crucial action, decision, or realization must take place.
Climax
The moment of greatest intensity of a story, typically occurs towards the end of the work.
Conclusion
In plotting, the logical end or outcome of a unified plot.
Foreshadowing
An indication of events to come in a narrative.
Flashback
A scene recalled in a character’s memory.
Epiphany
A moment of profound insight or revelation by which the character’s life is greatly altered.
In media res
“In the midst of things”-narrative device of starting a story midway in the events it describes.
Moral
A paraphrasable message or lesson implied or directly stated in a literary work, commonly stated at the end of a fable.
Denouement
The “untying of the knot”. Also called the resolution
