Lit Terms #6

Simile: a figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific word of comparison

Soliloquy: an extended speech, usually in a drama, delivered by a character alone on stage

Spiritual: a folk song, usually on a religious theme

Speaker: a narrator, the one speaking

Stereotype: cliche; simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story

Stream of Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of the character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images, as the character experiences them

Structure: the planned framework of a literary selection; its apparent organization

Style: the manner of putting thoughts into words; a characteristic way of writing or speaking

Subordination: the couching of less important ideas in less important structures of language

Surrealism: a style of literature and painting that stresses the subconscious or nonrational aspects of man’s existence characterized by juxtaposition of the bizarre and the banal

Suspension of Disbelief: suspend not believing it in order to enjoy it

Symbol: something which stands for something else, yet has a meaning of its own

Synesthesia: the use of one sense to convey the experience of another sense

Synecdoche: another form of name changing, in which a part standing for a whole

Syntax: the arrangement and grammatical relations of words in a sentence

Theme: main idea of the story; its message(s)

Thesis: a proposition for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or disapproved; the main idea

Tone: the devices used to create the mood and atmosphere of a literary work; the author’s perceived point of view

Tongue in Cheek: a type of humor in which the speaker feigns seriousness, aka “dry” or “dead pan”

Tragedy: in literature, any composition with a somber theme carried to a disastrous conclusion, a fatal event; protagonist usually is heroic but tragically (fatally) flawed

Understatement: the opposite of hyperbole; saying less than you mean for emphasis

Vernacular: everyday speech

Voice: the textual features, such as diction and sentence structures, that convey a writer’s or speaker’s persona

Zeitgeist: the feeling of a particular ear in history