[Up] [Home Page] [Course Descriptions & Schedule] [Study Basics]
![]()
English 109: Resources
[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
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
![]()
![]()
Western Oregon University
Copyright © 1998 Western Oregon University.
Direct suggestions, comments, and questions about this page to hardinc@wou.edu.