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English 109H: Terms

[General Literary Terms]  [Specific Literary Terms]

General Literary Terms

Allegory
Alliteration
Allusion
Antagonist
Assonance
Atmosphere
Character
Comedy
Conflict
Decorum
Dialogue
Diction
Drama
Dramatic irony
Flashback
Frame tale
Genre
Hero, anti-hero
Image, imagery
Irony
Juxtaposition
Lyric poetry
Metaphor
Monologue
Motif
Narrator - omniscient, limited, intrusive
Narrative poetry
Parody
Persona
Personification
Plot
Point of view
Protagonist
Rhetoric
Satire
Setting
Situational irony
Stage business
Stock character
Symbol, symbolism
Theme
Tragedy
Verbal irony
Verisimilitude

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Terms with specific meanings for 18th-20th-century literature

Absurdism
Black humor
Colonialism
Comedy of Manners
Domestic Tragedy
Existentialism
Fantastic
Grotesque
Impressionism
Mechanization
Naturalism
Near-rhyme
Novel
Onomatopoeia
Post-colonialism
Problem play
Realism
Romanticism
Scientific Rationalism
Tragicomedy

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