Literary Elements Explained - A Comprehensive Guide

1. Literary Terms Fall Semester

2. Anecdote • A short written or oral account of an event in a real person’s life

3. Antagonist • A person or force that opposes the protagonist, or central character, in a story or drama

4. Climax • The turning point or emotional high point of a story or drama; the point of highest contention

5. Epic • A long narrative poem that recounts(tells) in formal language the exploits of a larger than life hero

6. Exemplum • A brief story used as an example to illustrate a moral point

7. Extended Metaphor • A metaphor that compares two unlike things in various ways throughout an entire paragraph, stanza, or selection

8. Frame Story A plot structure that includes the telling of a story within a story

9. Genre • A category or type of literature • Examples: Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama

10. Irony • A contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality • Types: Verbal, Dramatic and Situational

11. Legend • A tale that is based on history and handed down from one generation to the next

12. Kenning • A descriptive figure of speech that takes the place of a common noun • Example: in Beowulf, a battle is called a “storm of words”

13. Narrative • Writing that tells a story

14. Nonfiction • Literature that deals with real people, events, and experiences

15. Point of View • The relationship of the narrator to the story 1st person: narrator is telling...hint: “I” is used 3rd person limited: narrator tells the thoughts of one character 3rd person omniscient: narrator knows the feelings of all Little known---2nd person POV: writing that gives directions…hint: “you” is used

16. Protagonist • The central character in a story, drama, or dramatic poem whom most of the action revolves • Does the protagonist have to be “good”?

17. Romance • A term used to describe long narrative works about the exploits and love affairs of chivalric heroes

18. Satire • Literature that exposes to ridicule the vices or follies of people through the devices of exaggeration, understatement and irony

19. Setting • The time and place in which the events of a literary work occur

20. Style • The expressive qualities that distinguish an author’s work, including word choice (diction), sentence structure (syntax), and figures of speech

21. Theme • The main idea of a work expressed as a general statement about life

22. Tone • A refection of the writer's attitude toward the subject that is conveyed through diction, syntax, punctuation and figures of speech

23. Vernacular • Ordinary spoken language of people of a particular region • Example: “Y’all”—southern “loo”—used in England for bathroom