LITERARY TERMS10TH ACCEL. ENGLISH

MRS. LARKS

LITERARY TERMS

Allegory is a form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions that have meanings outside of the narrative. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance. The story has a literal meaning and a symbolic meanining.

Example: Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, or The Crucible

LITERARY TERMSAlliteration is the repetition of initial sounds.

Example: Lady lounges lazily

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds.

Example: Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geeks

Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, but not vowels.

Example: Dark deep dread crept in.

LITERARY TERMS

Allusion is a brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.

Example: Prospero in Night Circus is an allusion from The Tempest by William Shakespeare

LITERARY TERMS

Anaphora is the deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of two or more lines.

Example: Every day, every night, in every way, I am getting better and better

LITERARY TERMS

Analogy is a comparison between two things. Analogies function to describe or explain one thing by examining its similarities with another thing.

Example: Busy as a bee.

LITERARY TERMS

Metaphor compares two subjects without any connecting words such as “like” or “as”

Example: Love is a game that we often play.

LITERARY TERMS

Simile is a comparison between two things using the connecting words “like” or “as.”

Example: She is like a dainty flower.

LITERARY TERMS

Connotation is not the explicit meaning of the word, but rather the meaning that the word implies.

Example: Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Denotation of a word is its literal meaning in the dictionary.

LITERARY TERMS

Hyperbole is exaggeration or overstatement.

Example: I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.

Imagery is language that evokes one or all of the five senses: sight, sound, taste, smell or touch.

Example: It was dark and dim in the forest.

LITERARY TERMS

Personification is giving human qualities to animals or objects.

Example: The flag wavered in the wind of the unknown.