Literary Terms Plot Sequence of events in a

Literary Terms

Plot • Sequence of events in a story.

Climax • High point of interest in the story

Anachronism • Placing something in a time period/era where it does not belong.

Antihero • A protagonist who is particularly graceless, inept, stupid, or dishonest

Apology • A written or spoken defense (I’m sorry)

Archetype • A blocked off memory of our past or of pre-human experience; a type of struggle; a character to which a culture relates to without prior knowledge.

Conflict • Clash/Struggle between opposing forces • Man vs. Man • Man vs. Himself • Man vs. Nature • Man vs. Society

Catharsis • A moral or spiritual cleansing you receive when watching a protagonist overcome a great odds to survive.

Controlling Image/Motif • An image or theme that runs throughout the story/novel/work

Diction • Word choice; denotation – dictionary definition; connotation – all the emotions the word brings

Doppelganger • A mysterious twin or a double fighting against your good work. Someone who looks just like you!

Dystopia • A bad place. An imaginary world which was constructed to be perfect, yet it failed and became a very unpleasant place.

Utopia • A perfect world (…usually becomes a dystopia)

Epiphany • A sudden understanding or realization which prior to this was not thought of or understood

Euphemism • the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt.

Genre • A particular type or category of writing, music, art, etc.

Hamartia • It means an error, mistake, or misstep. The protagonist’s hamartia will cause his/her downfall.

Imagery • Descriptive details in a work that use figures of speech to explain people or things.

Theme/Moral • Theme – the ideas that the author wants the reader to take from the story. • Moral – the message/lesson to be learned

Mood/Atmosphere • The emotional feeling of the setting

Oxymoron • A self-contradictory combination of words

Synopsis • A summary of the main points in a story/essay

Ellipsis/Ellipse • The omission of one or more words

Paradox • A statement that seems to contradictory or absurd; however, it is found to be true!