Search results
People also ask
What is the difference between literary elements and literary techniques?
What are literary terms?
What are literary elements & techniques?
What are literary elements?
Definitions and examples of 136 literary terms and devices. Instant PDF downloads. Refine any search. Find related themes, quotes, symbols, characters, and more.
- read full acrostic explanation with examples
Definitions and examples of 136 literary terms and devices....
- read full allegory explanation with examples
It's certainly possible, and not uncommon, for a writer of...
- read full alliteration explanation with examples
Alliteration Definition. What is alliteration? Here’s a...
- read full anadiplosis explanation with examples
Anadiplosis Definition. What is anadiplosis? Here’s a quick...
- read full analogy explanation with examples
Analogies can be broken down into two elements: the target...
- read full anaphora explanation with examples
Anaphora Definition. What is anaphora? Here’s a quick and...
- read full antagonist explanation with examples
Literary Terms Commonly Confused with Antagonist. There are...
- read full antanaclasis explanation with examples
Antanaclasis Definition. What is antanaclasis? Here’s a...
- read full anthropomorphism explanation with examples
Anthropomorphism Definition. What is anthropomorphism?...
- read full antimetabole explanation with examples
Antimetabole Definition. What is antimetabole? Here’s a...
- read full acrostic explanation with examples
Literary terms have the power to create serious, comedic, or whimsical moods via tools of persuasion, poeticism, and wordplay. When to use Literary Terms. This depends. The variety of uses for literary terms spans across genres and is remarkably wide-ranging based on the goals or needs of the writer. Below we have categorized this vast subject.
We will explore the difference between literary elements and literary techniques, and look at examples and definitions of several popular literary terms. We’ll also look at how these literary devices function in two popular works, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
- Parable
- Paradox
- Parallelism
- Parody
- Personification
- Plot
- Point of View
- Polysyndeton
- Prologue
- Prose
A short story devised to provide a moral or spiritual lesson, often using metaphor, simile, or symbolism to make the moral more accessible to the audience. Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan in the Bible explores the meaning of one of the Ten Commandments, to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” In the story, a traveler is beaten, robbed, and left fo...
A provocative statement that contradicts itself yet is typically true in some sense. In George Orwell’s 1984,two of the official slogans of the Party serve as stark examples of paradox: “WAR IS PEACE” and “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.” Although these statements appear to be patently false, they embody two of the twisted, elemental truths propagated by the P...
The repetition of similar grammatical structures within a sentence or passage, often for emphasis or to draw connections between objects. Great orators often employparallelism to make their ideas memorable. Consider the underlined phrases in this line from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which uses parallel structure to highlight...
In literature, an imitation of another literary work that mocks, critiques, or makes light of the original. “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls,” by Christopher Durang, is a one-act parody of The Glass Menagerie, caricaturing the overbearing Southern mother and exaggerating the idiosyncrasies of the other three characters.
A type of metaphor in which human attributes are assigned to inanimate objects or abstract ideas. Zora Neale Hurston uses personification throughout Their Eyes Were Watching Godto powerful effect, such as here, near the end of the novel, once Janie is home again and after Pheoby has left her: “The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the courth...
The sequence of major events of a narrative or dramatic work, usually consisting of five basic elements: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. The plotof most romantic comedies can be succinctly described as: two people meet, they fall in love, they experience some challenge and break up, they cross paths again, they re...
The perspective from which the events of a story are reported to the reader or audience. Point of view can limit or expand the reader’s access to information about the action of the story, as well as the internal lives of the characters. In novels, there are three basic types of point of view: first-person, third-person, and less commonly, second-p...
The repetition of conjunctions (and, but, for, etc.) to connect a series of words, clauses, or sentences. Polysyndeton may emphasize the relationships between the items in the series as well as add rhythm to a list when reciting. One of the most familiar examples of polysyndeton is the motto of the United States Postal Service. “Neither snow nor ra...
An introductory section of a piece of literature, especially of plays, that precedes the inciting action of the story. The prologue is often designed to explain background or reveal context to the audienceso they better understand the story that follows. In the prologue of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, Tom Wingfield, the protagonist, ad...
Any form of writing that does not observe the limiting features of verse, particularly line breaks. Prose is the most dominant form of both fiction (novels, short stories, plays) and nonfiction (essays, articles, speeches, emails). Keen readers of Shakespeare will notice that “low-born” characters nearly always speak in prose, while their high-born...
Browse through our list of literary devices and literary terms with definitions, examples, and usage tips. Explore each device in depth through literature.
Included below is a list of literary terms that can help you interpret, critique, and respond to a variety of different written works. This list is by no means comprehensive, but instead offers a primer to the language frequently used by scholars and students researching literary works.
Aug 17, 2021 · Literary elements are “big-picture” literary devices that extend throughout the entire work, such as setting, theme, mood, and allegory. Literary techniques are the literary devices that deal with individual words and sentences, such as euphemisms and alliteration.
