Literary+Terms

** Literary Terms ** · Omniscient = all knowing · Third person limited = narrator focuses on thoughts and feelings of one character · First person = one of the characters using the pronoun “I” tells the story
 * 7th Grade **
 * Plot: ** the series of related events that make up a story
 * Exposition/Introduction ** : the part of the plot that tells the reader who the characters are and what their conflict is
 * Rising Action: ** the first half of the plot before the climax and including the conflict
 * Climax: ** the most exciting, emotional, and suspenseful moment in the story when the outcome is decided one way or another
 * Falling Action: ** the second half of the plot after the climax
 * Resolution/Denouement: ** the last part of the plot in which the characters’ problems are solved and the story ends
 * Metaphor: ** a comparison in which one thing is said to be another thing (Example: “The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas” or “America is great melting pot … ..”)
 * Simile: ** a comparison between two unlike things using a word such as “like” or “as” (Example: “My love is like a red, red, rose … ” or “I wandered lonely as a cloud … ”)
 * Figure of Speech: ** a word or phrase that describes on thing in terms of something else and is not literary true.
 * Idiom: ** a use of words peculiar to a specific language, which cannot be taken literally. (Example: “Spill the beans” actually means “to reveal a secret” and not to physically spill a can of beans)
 * Analogy: ** a comparison of two things which are alike in certain ways (Example: “MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken”—Lewis Black
 * Dynamic Character: ** a character who changes as a result of the story’s events
 * Static Character: ** a character who does not change much in the course of the story
 * Characterization: ** the process of revealing the personality of a character in a story
 * Setting: ** the time and place of a story
 * Theme: ** the main idea about the life revealed in a work of literature
 * Point of View: ** the vantage point from which a story is told
 * Irony: ** the difference between what is expected to happen and what actually does.
 * Personification: ** a figure of speech in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human (Example: “the soft gray hands of sheep”
 * Hyperbole: ** an exaggeration
 * Imagery: ** language that appeals to the senses