1. 11 th Grade Literary Terms Make sure you understand these! You will need them soon!!!

2. Allegory A story with two or more levels of meaning – an actual level (the boy went to the store) and the symbolic meaning (the boy represents every mans inner child, and the store represents home).

3. Aphorism A general observation or truth about LIFE, and its often stated very plainly, and uses wit and wisdom. Being in love is like sleeping in the middle of the freeway. So far as man thinks, he is free.

4. Dialogue A conversation between characters. Did you have to brush that off in the car ? he said, driving. He glanced down at his own pectorals, giving first the left, then the right, a quick survey.

5. Diction A writers or speakers word choice. It can be formal, informal, sarcastic, funny, simple, complex, common, complicated, symbolic or literal. Hate vs. Dislike Like vs. Love

6. Epiphany A sudden revelation or flash of insight. Its the a-ha moment. Ms. Talley had an epiphany when the student who was absent 3 rd period, later that day, said hello to her in the hallway. They were skipping!!

7. Foil A character who provides a contrast to another character in a story. Scar vs. Mufasa Scar vs. Simba

8. Imagery The descriptive language used in literature to create pictures in the readers mind. These pictures are created with words of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, or movement.

9. Irony A contrast between what is said and what is actually meant. Can also be a contrast between what you expect to happen, and what actually happens. 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife Meeting the man of your dreams – and then meeting his beautiful wife.

10. Local Color When an author uses their local surroundings to create details specific to that area. Descriptions of clothing, customs, manners, attitudes, and landscape. Can also reveal time

11. Narrative A story that is told in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama.

12. Oxymoron A figure of speech that includes two opposing ideas. act natural jumbo shrimp rich teacher (ha ha)

13. Parallelism The repetition of certain words or phrases in a piece of literature. What do we want of these men? What do we want of ourselves? I have a dream….. Used to emphasize ideas.

14. Round Character A character in a story that has many levels to them; is completely explained in the story; you know a lot about them. Cinderella would be a round character.

15. Flat Character A character in a story who is one-dimensional. You only know very little about them. Prince Charming would be a flat character.

16. Symbolism When authors use symbols in their work. SYMBOLS: anything that stands for or represents something else. Examples: a ships voyage can represent life (like a journey) or a skull can represent death.

17. Stream of Consciousness When an author writes as if the words are coming directly from their mind straight to paper. There is no format or order, and the events are presented spontaneously as they occur.

18. Style A writers style includes word choice, tone, formality, language, sentence length, and organization. Using two pages to describe a jungle (like in LOTF) or just saying The jungle was thick and dark.

19. Syntax the orderly arrangement of words into sentences to express ideas the standard word order and sentence structure of a language, as opposed to diction (the actual choice of words) or content (the meaning of individual words)