11th Grade Literary Terms

Make sure you understand these! You will need them soon!!!

Allegory• A story with two or more

levels of meaning – an actual level (the boy went to the store) and the symbolic meaning (the boy represents every man’s inner child, and the store represents home).

Aphorism• A general observation or

truth about LIFE, and it’s often stated very plainly, and uses wit and wisdom.

• “Being in love is like sleeping in the middle of the freeway.”

• “So far as man thinks, he is free.”

Dialogue• A conversation between

characters.

• “Did you have to brush that off in the car?” he said, driving. He glanced down at his own pectorals, giving first the left, then the right, a quick survey.

Diction• A writer’s or speaker’s

word choice. • It can be formal, informal,

sarcastic, funny, simple, complex, common, complicated, symbolic or literal.

• Hate vs. Dislike • Like vs. Love

Epiphany• A sudden revelation or

flash of insight.• It’s the “a-ha” moment.

• Ms. Talley had an epiphany when the student who was absent 3rd period, later that day, said hello to her in the hallway. They were skipping!!

Foil

• A character who provides a contrast to another character in a story.

• Scar vs. Mufasa

• Scar vs. Simba

Imagery • The descriptive language

used in literature to create pictures in the reader’s mind.

• These pictures are created with words of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, or movement.

Irony• A contrast between what is

said and what is actually meant.

• Can also be a contrast between what you expect to happen, and what actually happens.

• “10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife”

• “Meeting the man of your dreams – and then meeting his beautiful wife.”

Local Color• When an author uses their

local surroundings to create details specific to that area.

• Descriptions of clothing, customs, manners, attitudes, and landscape.

• Can also reveal time

Narrative• A story that is told in

fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama.

Oxymoron• A figure of speech that

includes two opposing ideas.

• “act natural”• “jumbo shrimp”• “rich teacher” (ha ha)

Parallelism • The repetition of certain

words or phrases in a piece of literature.

• “What do we want of these men? What do we want of ourselves?”

• “I have a dream….. “• Used to emphasize ideas.

Round Character• A character in a story that

has many levels to them; is completely explained in the story; you know a lot about them.

• Cinderella would be a round character.

Flat Character

• A character in a story who is one-dimensional. You only know very little about them.

• Prince Charming would be a flat character.

Symbolism• When authors use

symbols in their work. • SYMBOLS: anything that

stands for or represents something else.

• Examples: a ship’s voyage can represent life (like a journey) or a skull can represent death.

Stream of Consciousness

• When an author writes as if the words are coming directly from their mind straight to paper. There is no format or order, and the events are presented spontaneously as they occur.

Style• A writer’s style includes

word choice, tone, formality, language, sentence length, and organization.

• Using two pages to describe a jungle (like in LOTF) or just saying “The jungle was thick and dark.”

Syntax• the orderly arrangement

of words into sentences to express ideas

• the standard word order and sentence structure of a language, as opposed to diction (the actual choice of words) or content (the meaning of individual words)