Literary Terms 7th Grade Honors Click Mouse to Advance Part C

Moral A lesson taught by a literary work

A reason that explains a character’s thought, feelings, actions, or speech. Characters are often motivated by needs, such as food and shelter. They are also motivated by feelings, such as fear, love, and pride.

A fictional tale that explains the actions of gods or heroes or the origins of elements of nature.

Narration Writingthattellsastory

Narrative A story The third pig builds a house of brick

Narrative Poem A story told in verse Folk image of a mounted highwayman

A speaker or a character who tells a story

Prose writing that presents and explains ideas or that tells about real people, places, objects, or events an almanac for the year 1474

A long work of fiction

Novella A fiction work that is longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel

Onomatopoeia The use of words to imitate sound Crash, buzz, screech, hiss, neigh, jingle, cluck

Oral Tradition The passing of songs, stories, and poems from generation to generation by word of mouth

oxymoron A figure of speech that links two opposite or contradictory words, to point out an idea or situation that seems contradictory or inconsistent but on closer inspection turns out to be somehow true

A type of figurative language in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics

Used in writing or speech that attempts to convince the reader or listener to adopt a particular opinion or course of action

A person who writes plays Playwright Shakespeare

The sequence of events in a story PLOT

Point of View The perspective, or vantage point, from which a story is told. First-person point of view is told by a character who uses the first-person pronoun “I.” There are two kinds of third-person point of view called limited and omniscient. The narrator uses third-person pronouns such as he and she. In stories told from the omniscient third-person point of view, the narrator knows and tells about what each character feels and thinks. In stories told from the limited third-person point of view, the narrator relates the inner thoughts and feelings of only one character, and everything is viewed from this character’s perspective.

The ordinary form of written language Prose