Literary Terms

Antagonist: A character which opposes the protagonist: a villain.

Characters: A person or persons in a literary work.

Climax: A moment of great or culminating intensity in a narrative or drama,

especially the conclusion of a crisis or a turning point in plot.

Comedic Relief: A humorous or farcical interlude in a serious literary work or

drama, especially a tragedy, intended to relieve the dramatic tension or heighten
the emotional impact by means of contrast.

Conclusion: The close or last part; the end or finish.

Conflict: The conflict in a work of fiction is the issue to be resolved in the story. It
usually occurs between two characters, the protagonist and the antagonist, or
between the protagonist and society or the protagonist and himself or herself.

Dilemma: A difficult choice between things that is equally unpleasant.

Dramatic Irony: The dramatic effect achieved by leading an audience to

understand an incongruity between a situation and the accompanying speeches,
while the characters in the play remain unaware of the incongruity.

Epiphany: The term used in Christian theology for a manifestation of God's

presence in the world.

Flashback: A literary or cinematic device in which an earlier event is inserted into

the normal chronological order of a narrative.

Foil: a character whose qualities or actions serve to emphasize those of the

protagonist (or of some other character) by providing a strong contrast with them.

Foreshadowing: A device used in literature to create expectation or to set up an

explanation of later developments.

Inciting incidents: An incident which incites; sets off a story.

Irony: The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to
their literal meaning.

Mood: The prevailing emotions of a work or of the author in his or her creation of
the work.

Moral: The lesson or principle contained in or taught by a fable, a story, or an

event.
Motif: A recurrent thematic element in an artistic or literary work.

Pathetic Fallacy: The attribution of human emotions or characteristics to

inanimate objects or to nature; for example, angry clouds; a cruel wind.

Plot: the pattern of events and situations in a narrative or dramatic work, as

selected and arranged both to emphasize relationships—usually of cause and effect
—between incidents and to elicit a particular kind of interest in the reader or
audience, such as surprise or suspense.

Protagonist: The main character in a drama or other literary work.

Denouement: The events following the climax of a drama or novel in which such a
resolution or clarification takes place.

Setting: The context and environment in which a situation is set; the background.

Suspense: Anxiety or apprehension resulting from an uncertain, undecided, or

mysterious situation.

Theme: a salient abstract idea that emerges from a literary work's treatment of its
subject‐matter; or a topic recurring in a number of literary works.

Tone: a very vague critical term usually designating the mood or atmosphere of a
work, although in some more restricted uses it refers to the author's attitude to the
reader.