Literary Terms and Definitions

The method of narration/vantage point from which a story is told.  (first person, third person, limited, omniscient) 

• Point of View 
• Figurative Language 
• Metaphor
• Alliteration 

Generally provides the time and place of a specific scene or chapter, the entire story, a play or a narrative poem. 

• Setting 
• Conflict 
• Motif 
• Dialect 

Refers to a person or an animal in a story, play or other literary work. 

• Character 
• Imagery 
• Connotation 
• Simile 

The general idea or insight about life that a work of literature reveals. 

• Theme 
• Flashback 
• Setting 
• Tone

An interruption in the present action of a plot to show events that happen at an earlier time. 

• Flashback 
• Setting 
• Irony 
• Allusion 

An imaginative comparison between two unlike things in which one thing is said to be the other thing. 

• Metaphor
• Mood
• Hyperbole 
• Point of View 

Repetition of consonant sounds generally at the beginning of words, or, within neighboring words in a sentence.  

• Alliteration 
• Dramatic Irony 
• Literary Elements 
• Soliloquy 

A conversation between two or more characters. 

• Dialogue 
• Plot 
• Setting 
• Idiom 

Provides a recurrent feeling, image, message or criterion throughout a piece of literature. 

• Motif 
• Dialect 
• Theme
• Point of View 

When a word or phrase of a line is repeated within the text; makes the reader consciously aware of a point being made by the author or character. 

• Repetition 
• Symbol/Symbolism 
• Imagery 
• Alliteration