Glossary of Terms
Ninth Grade Literature
Alliteration – The repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close to one another.
Example: This lines contains a repetition of sounds “running a scattering of stepssidewise”
Allusion – Reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, history, religion, or some like thing.
Example: In the story “Helen on Eighty-Sixth Street” the author
makes allusions to Greek mythology.
Analogy – Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike in some respects.
Example: In The Odyssey, Homer makes an analogy when he
says that Scylla is like an open mouth waiting to eat the men.
Antagonist -- The character or force that opposes the main character in a narrative.
Example: In TheOdyssey the protagonist, or main character, is Achilles, and the antagonist is Hector.
Argument – A series of statements in a text designed to convince us of something.
Example: In the article “Heroes with Solid Feet’ Kirk Douglas gives the argument that little heroes are important in life.
Aside – Words that are spoken by a character in a play to the audience or to another character but
that are not supposed to be overheard by the others onstage.
Example: Shakespeare uses asides frequently in his plays to allow the characters to let the audience in on things the other characters should not know.
Atmosphere – The mood or feeling in a literary work.
Example: The mood in the following lines is one of happiness or joy.
We drink to your health
Lucky bridegroom!
Ballad – A song or songlike poem, often from the oral tradition, that tells a story.
Example: The “Ballad of Birmingham” is an example of a modern ballad telling a story.
Cause/effect – the relationship between an event and a second event, where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first
Example: In his “Letter to President Roosevelt” Einstein relates how the element uranium can be turned into something that can be a source of energy with the effect that a bomb can be made.
Character -- An individual in a story, play, or narrative poem.
Example: Gilgamesh is the main character in the poem The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Claim – The idea of opinion that a writer tries to prove or defend in an argument.
Example: In the article “Where I find My Heroes” the claim of the author is that everyday acts of heroism are often overlooked.
Climax -- The point of greatest emotional intensity or suspense in a plot, when the outcome of the conflict becomes known.
Example: The climax of “The Sniper” comes when the sniper shoots and kills his enemy.
Comedy – A story that ends happily.
Example: The drama Visitor from Forest Hills is a comedy.
Conflict – A struggle or clash between opposing characters, forces or emotions.
Example: There are many conflicts in The Odyssey, the main one is between Odysseus and the gods who are throwing up roadblocks in his attempt to get home.
Couplet – Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.
Example: In Shakespeare’s sonnet 73 the last two lines are a couplet.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
Dialogue -- A conversation between two or more people.
Example: “Who dropped that cabbage?” he thundered.
Brille stepped out of line. “I did,” he said meekly.
“All right,” said Hannetjie. “The whole Span goes three meals off.”
“But I told you I did it,” Brille protested.
Diction – A writer’s or speaker’s choice of words.
Example: In the poem “The Tropics in New York” the author says, “fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills/and dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies/ In benediction over nun-like hills” to help the reader picture what she is describing.
Drama – A story that is written to be acted out in front of an audience.
Example: The play Visitor from Forest Hills is an example of a drama.
Epic -- A long narrative poem that relates the great deeds of a larger-than-life hero who embodies the values of a particular society.
Example: The Epic ofGilgamesh is an epic.
Epithet – Adjective for descriptive phrase that is regularly used to characterize a person, place, or thing.
Example: Three famous examples come from The Odyssey: “wine-dark sea,” “rosy-fingered dawn,” and “the grey-eyed goddess Athena.”
Epiphany – In a literary work, a moment of sudden insight or revelation that a character experiences.
Example: In the story “The Cask of Amontillado” Edgar Allen Poe uses irony when he has the narrator say to his victim “your health is precious” because the reader knows the narrator is planning to murder the man.
Exposition – Type of writing that explains, gives information, defines or clarifies an idea.
Example: “The History Behind the Ballad” is a piece from a history book explaining a real event.
Fable – Very brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral, or a practical lesson.
Example: “The wolf and the Fox in the Well” by Jean de la Fountaine is a fable.
Figure of Speech – Word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of another and is not meant to be understood on a literal level.
Example: An epithet is an example of a kind of figure of speech.
Flashback -- A scene in a narrative work that interrupts the present action of the plot to “flash backward” and tell what happened at an earlier time.
Example: In book 9 of The Odyssey, Odysseus tells the Phaeacians the story of his wanderings; this lets the reader in on details of the story they did not get earlier.
Foil – Character who is used as a contrast to another character.
Example: In The Hound of the Baskervilles Watson is a foil for Holmes
Foreshadowing – Clues that hint at what is going to happen later in story.
Example:In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Poe uses foreshadowing when Montressor pulls a trowel from under his cloak to show Fortunato’s fate.
Genre – The category that a work of literature is classified under.
Example: The genre the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles belongs to is mystery fiction.
Hyperbole – A figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express a strong sentiment or create a comic effect.
Example: How much you loved her? More than any man
Can ever love. With her, what joy began!
Imagery – Language that appeals to the senses.
Example: The following lines from a Robert Browning poem let you see, hear, and smell what he does.
Then a mile of war sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match . . .
Inference – A guess based on observation and prior experience.
Example: When the soldier in “The Sniper” kills the woman in the street, he did so because he made an inference that she was revealing his position to the enemy.
In Media Res -- The technique of starting a story in the middle.
Example: The epic TheOdyssey begins in the middle of the story as the men return home from a long war.
Irony -- A contrast between what is expected and what occurs. There are three types of irony: verbal, situational, and dramatic
Example: In the short story “The Censors” the main character becomes a censor to prevent his writing from being censored, but in the end he “ naturally censored it without regret.”
Lyric Poem -- A poem that focuses on expressing private emotions or thoughts.
Example: The poem shows strong feelings from deep inside.
I hate and I love. And if you ask me how,
I do not know: I only feel it, and I’m torn in two.
Metaphor – A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things, without using the connective words like or as.
Example: These lines compare the sound of the guitar to someone sobbing.
The cry of the guitar / Begins.
Mood – The overall emotion created by a work of literature.
Example: A dark mood is set in this poem through the choice of words.
A stone from the depths that has witnessed the sea drying up
And a million white fish leaping in agony
Myth -- An anonymous, traditional story that explains a belief, a custom, or a mysterious natural phenomenon.
Example: The stories in TheOdyssey about the gods and monsters are myths.
Onomatopoeia -- The use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning.
Example: And bubbling seaweeds, as the waters go, Swish to and fro
Paraphrase -- A restatement of the text in your own words.
Example: The original text says “No speech could honor President Kennedy’s memory more than passing the civil rights bill as soon as possible.. He fought to pass this bill and we have talked long enough about it – for more than a hundred years. Now it’s time for the next chapter –
Personification -- A kind of figurative language in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human.
Example: The following lines give human characteristics to the wind.
The wind envies you as you laugh at the moon.
Plot – The series of related events that make up a narrative, such as a story, a novel, or an epic.
Example: The novel The Hound of the Baskervilles has a complex plot that leads to the final resolution of the story, the solving of the mystery.
Poetry – A type of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery to appeal to the reader’s emotions and imagination.
Example: “My Father is a Simple Man” is composed as poetry.
making equal rights the law. The paraphrase could say “Passing the civil rights bill would be the best way to honor the memory of President Kennedy.’
Point of View – Vantage point from which a writer tells a story.
Example: In the short story “The Cask of Amontillado” the story is told from the first person point of view; the main character explains what is happening.
Prose -- the ordinary form of spoken and written language whose unit is the sentence, rather than the line as it is in poetry.
Example: The short stories “The Cranes” and “The Sniper” along with the article “ Romeo and Juliet in Bosnia” are examples of prose.
Protagonist – The main character in a work of fiction, drama, or narrative poetry.
Example: In TheOdyssey the protagonist, or main character is Odysseus.
Resolution – The part of the plot that gives the outcome of the conflict or problem.
Example: In the Hound of the Baskervilles the resolution comes at the end when Holmes recounts for Sir Henry and Watson how he solved the case.
Rhyme – The repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words that are close together in a poem.
Example: There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.
Rhythm – The alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.
Example: The sky is just beyond the roof
So blue, so calm
A treetop just beyond the roof
Rocks its slow palm.
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Setting – The time and place of a story, play, or narrative poem.
Example: There is a clear setting indicated in the lines from this poem.
I come back to the home of my youth,
To the cup of sim-leaf juice at Quang Trach in the afternoon,
To the night by the sea, waiting for the boat sleepless, tense,
Misjudging how the wind changed course by the bank of pine trees,
feet trampling over the thorns and pebbles
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Simile -- A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things by using a connective word such as like or as.
Example: In the poem “The courage that My Mother had” contains a simile “That courage like a rock” that compares having courage to being like a rock.
Soliloquy– Long speech in which a character who is onstage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud.
Example: In the drama Romeo and Juliet there are several soliloquies, including Romeo’s at the very end of the play
Sonnet – A fourteen line lyric poem, usually written in a specific rhythm using a traditional theme.
Example: “Once by the Pacific” by Robert Frost is an example of a sonnet.
Speaker – The imaginary voice or person assumed by the author of a poem.
Example: The person speaking this poem seems to be a young woman.
My brother was not a camel driver
A coward, shallow-hearted like a beast.
His sword glittered like a pool
Under roaming night clouds.
Stanza – A group of lines in a poem that forms a single unit.
Example: In Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat there are many four line stanzas like this.
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou
Suspense – Uncertainty or anxiety the reader feels about what is going to happen next in a story.
Example: In the short story “The Cask of Amontillado” the author builds suspense by telling the reader from a first person view point so that the reader knows something awful is coming.
Symbol -- A person, place, thing, idea, or event that stands both for itself and for something beyond itself.
Example: In the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles the hound is a symbol of evil.
Theme -- The central idea or insight of a work of literature.
Example: The short story “The Piece of String” has a theme that states that one simple, innocent act may have terrible consequences.
Tone -- The attitude a writer takes toward the reader, a subject or character.
Example: The following lines give a tone of irritation toward someone.
Doesn’t he realize
That I am not
Like the swaying kelp
In the surf.
Tragedy – A piece of literature that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unhappy ending.
Example: The drama Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy
Voice – The writer’s or speaker’s distinctive use of language in a text.
Example: In “Jackie Robinson” the fact that it is written in first person gives it a clear voice.