Westmont High School

Allegory

Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds (e.g. sea shells by the sea shore)

Anachronism:

Analogy

Archetype (universal symbol)

Fable: brief story, usually with animal characters that teaches a lesson or a moral (e.g., “The Tortoise and the Hare”)

Imagery

Irony: General name given to literary techniques that involve differences between appearance and reality, expectation and result, or meaning and intention

Dramatic Irony: contradiction between what a character thinks and what the reader or audience knows to be true.
Verbal Irony: words are used to suggest the opposite of what is meant.
Situational Irony: an event occurs that directly contradicts the expectation of the characters.

Local Color

Mood: atmosphere or feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage, often suggested by descriptive details (e.g. lighthearted or frightening)

Motif

Myth/mythology: fictional tale that explains the actions of gods or causes of natural phenomena.

Onomatopoeia: the use of words that imitate sounds (e.g., Whirr, thud, sizzle).

Parable: Short narrative designed to convey a moral truth. The people and events in the parable represent abstract truths.

Setting: Time and place of the action in a literary work.

Tone: writer’s attitude toward his or her audience and subject (e.g. formal, informal, serious, playful, bitter)

Tragedy: work of literature, especially a play, that results in a catastrophe for the main character. The cause of the tragedy can be a fatal flaw of the hero (e.g. the Odyssey) or some evil in society (e.g. Night). The purpose of tragedy is not only to arouse fear and pity in the audience, but also, in some cases, to convey a sense of grandeur and nobility of the human spirit.

Tragic Hero