Literary and Rhetorical Elements for English 10 Honors

Allegory

• A story illustrating an idea or moral principle in which objects or people take on symbolic

  meaning.

• A connected narrative that tells a person’s life story.

• The classification of literary works based on their content, form, or technique; types include

  poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction.

• a short, fictional tale told to convey a particular lesson or moral; fables that feature

  animals as the central characters are often referred to as beast fables.

Alliteration

• A genre of literature that could be described as an imaginative response to experience

  and which reflects a keen awareness of language.

• A similarity between like features of two distinct things on which a comparison may be

  based. Similes and metaphors are commonly used to create an analogy, however, an analogy may be

  more extensive than just a metaphor or simile alone.

• the repetition of consonant sounds in a sequence of words used to highlight or

  emphasize key words, concepts and relationships

• A genre of writing that relates imagined characters and events.

Allusion

• A figure of speech in which one thing is represented by another that is commonly and

  often physically associated with it.

• An indirect reference to a person, event, statement, or theme, found in literature, the other

  arts, history, myths, religion, or popular culture.

• A unifying element in literature; especially any recurrent image, symbols, theme, character type,

  subject, or narrative detail.

• A brief story used to illustrate a point or claim.

Analogy

• A similarity between like features of two distinct things on which a comparison may be

  based. Similes and metaphors are commonly used to create an analogy, however, an analogy may be

  more extensive than just a metaphor or simile alone.

• A figure of speech that uses deliberate exaggeration to achieve an effect, also known as

  overstatement.

• a narrative account typically written by an individual that purports to depict his

  or her life and character.

• A compilation of sensory details that appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste,

  touch, hearing, and smell.

Anecdote

• Refers to the body of work attributed by scholars to a particular author or to those literary

  works that are privileged by a society.

• The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work.

• The author’s expression of a character’s personality through the use of action,

  dialogue, thought, or commentary by the author or another character.

• A brief story used to illustrate a point or claim.

Archetype

• A character that, by contrast with another character, serves to highlight the other character’s

  distinct qualities.

• The original model from which something is developed or made – images, figures,

  character types, settings, and story patterns that are universally shared by peoples across

  cultures.

• The people for whom a piece of literature was written.

• A serious literary work usually intended for performance before an audience.

Assonance

• The perspective from which a speaker or author conveys information or story.

• A figure of speech in which one thing is represented by another that is commonly and

  often physically associated with it.

• Way in which story is told through a limited or omniscient narrator

  who stands outside the events that are being recounted.

• The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work.

Audience

• The technique of introducing into a narrative material that prepares the reader for

  future events.

• The people for whom a piece of literature was written.

• The most important or leading character in a work.

• Literary devices that involve unusual use of language, often to associate or

  compare distinct things. There are two general categories of figures of speech: rhetorical figures and

  tropes.

Canon

• A mild word or phrase that substitutes for another that is less desirable.

• A character-type that is three-dimensional and exhibits the qualities of a

  real person.

• Refers to the body of work attributed by scholars to a particular author or to those literary

  works that are privileged by a society.

• The associations evoked by a word beyond its denotation.

Characterization

• The most important or leading character in a work.

• A genre of writing that relates imagined characters and events.

• speech that conveys the opposite of its literal meaning

• The author’s expression of a character’s personality through the use of action,

  dialogue, thought, or commentary by the author or another character.