Literary Terminology for Fiction, pt. 1

Any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object

• Imagery

• Antagonist

• Foil

• Genre

The mainly interpretive work written by readers of literary texts, especially professional ones.

• Genre

• Literary Criticism

• Fable

• Allusion

A character or nonhuman force that opposes or is in conflict with the protagonist.

• Foil

• Litotes

• Antagonist

• Antihero

A plot-structuring device whereby a scene from the fictional future is inserted into the fictional present or is dramatized out of order.

• Flashforward

• Flashback

• Conflict

• Genre

A form of understatement in which one negates the contrary of what one means. Examples include, "Not bad" and "a novelist of no small repute" and so on.

• Hyperbole

• Litotes

• Irony

• Diction

An ancient type of short fiction, in verse or prose, illustrating a moral or satirizing human beings.

• Allegory

• Allusion

• Fable

• Legend

A brief, often implicit and indirect reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text or any imaginary or historical person, place, or thing.

• Allegory

• Allusion

• Legend

• Fable

A general term for almost any figure of speech involving comparison; more commonly, a particualr figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly, without the signal. words "like" or "as." Love is a rose.

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Hyperbole

• Imagery

A protagonist who is in one way or another the very opposite of a traditional hero. Instead of being courageous and determined, for instance, he or she might be timid, hypersensitive, and indecisive.

• Foil

• Antagonist

• Antihero

• Allegory

A plot-structuring device whereby a scene from the fictional past is inserted into the fictional present or is dramatized out of order.

• Flashforward

• Flashback

• Foil

• Genre