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| The term loosely describes any writing in verse or prose that has a double meaning. This narrative acts as an extended metaphor in which persons, abstract ideas, or events represent not only themselves on the literal level, but they also stand for something else on the symbolic level. An allegorical reading usually involves moral or spiritual concepts that may be more significant than the actual, literal events described in a narrative. Typically, an allegory involves the interaction of multiple symbols, which together create a moral, spiritual, or even political meaning. |
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| The repitition of consonant sounds at the beginning of two or more words. Used to add flow to a line or to emphasize that line. |
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| The character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends. |
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| In drama, a few words or a short passage spoken by one character to the audience while the other actors on stage pretend their characters cannot hear the speaker's words. It is a theatrical convention that the aside is not audible to other characters on stage. |
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| The repitition of vowel sounds in two or more words in a line. Used like alliteration to add flow to a line or to emphasize it. |
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| The "turning downward" of the plot in a classical tragedy. By tradition, the catastrophe occurs in the fourth act of the play after the climax. |
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| A group of singers or actors who stand alongside or off stage from the principal performers in a dramatic or musical performance. Singing or commenting on the deeds of the characters and interpreting the significance of the events within the play. |
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| A humorous scene, incident, character, or bit of dialogue occurring after some serious or tragic moment. Comic relief is deliberately designed to relieve emotional intensity and simultaneously heighten and highlight the seriousness or tragedy of the action. |
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| The opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on. Conflict may also be completely internal, such as the protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies. Conflict is the engine that drives a plot. |
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| A literary device that is used when a character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and feelings, those that are hidden throughout the course of the story line, through a poem or a speech. This speech, where only one character speaks, is recited while other characters are present onstage. This monologue often comes during a climactic moment in a work and often reveals hidden truths about a character, their history and their relationships. |
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| A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary. |
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| A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. |
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| Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative. Foreshadowing often provides hints about what will happen next. Used to keep the reader interested to find out what will happen later on. |
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| a literary term referring to how a person, situation, statement, or circumstance is not as it would actually seem. Many times it is the exact opposite of what it appears to be. There are many types of irony, the three most common being verbal irony, dramatic irony, and cosmic irony. Verbal irony occurs when either the speaker means something totally different than what he is saying or the audience realizes, because of their knowledge of the particular situation to which the speaker is referring, that the opposite of what a character is saying is true. Verbal irony also occurs when a character says something in jest that, in actuality, is true. Dramatic irony occurs when facts are not known to the characters in a work of literature but are known by the audience. Situational irony occurs when the reader/ audience expects one thing to happen and the opposite occurs. |
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| A type of figurative language in which a statement is made that says that one thing is something else but, literally, it is not. |
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| a figure of speech which substitutes one term with another that is being associated with the that term. A name transfer takes place to demonstrate an association of a whole to a part or how two things are associated in some way. Example: Referring to the movie making industry as "Hollywood". |
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| Monologue can be used to refer to a character speaking aloud to himself, or narrating an account to an audience with no other character on stage. |
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| The "voice" that speaks or tells a story. |
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| A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features. The humorist achieves parody by exaggerating certain traits common to the work, much as a caricaturist creates a humorous depiction of a person by magnifying and calling attention to the person's most noticeable features. The term parody is often used synonymously with the more general term spoof, which makes fun of the general traits of a genre rather than one particular work or author. Often the subject-matter of a parody is comically inappropriate, such as using the elaborate, formal diction of an epic to describe something trivial like washing socks or cleaning a dusty attic. |
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| A figure of speech where animals, ideas or inorganic objects are given human characteristics. |
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| The main character in a work, on whom the author focuses most of the narrative attention. |
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| The use of humor and wit with a critical attitude, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule for exposing or denouncing the frailties and faults of mankind’s activities and institutions, such as folly, stupidity, or vice. This usually involves both moral judgment and a desire to help improve a custom, belief, or tradition. Popular cartoons such as The Simpsons and televised comedies like The Daily Show make use of it in modern media. |
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| The general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which the action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs; the setting of an episode or scene within a work is the particular physical location in which it takes place. |
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| An analogy or comparison implied by using like or as, in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing. |
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| A monologue spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character believes himself to be alone. The technique frequently reveals a character's innermost thoughts, including his feelings, state of mind, motives or intentions. The soliloquy often provides necessary but otherwise inaccessible information to the audience. The dramatic convention is that whatever a character says in a soliloquy to the audience must be true, or at least true in the eyes of the character speaking. |
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| Sometimes abbreviated "s.d.," the term in drama refers to part of the printed text in a play that is not actually spoken by actors on stage, but which instead indicates actions or activity for the actors to engage in. |
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| A minor or subordinate secondary plot, which takes place simultaneously with a larger plot, usually involving the protagonist. The subplot often echoes or comments upon the direct plot either directly or obliquely. |
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| A rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part. For instance, a writer might state, "Twenty eyes watched our every move." Rather than implying that twenty disembodied eyes are swiveling to follow him as he walks by, she means that ten people watched the group's every move. |
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| A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work. The theme can take the form of a brief and meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life. |
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| the writer's attitude toward the material and/or readers. Tone may be playful, formal, intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene, depressed, etc. |
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