A Glossary of Terms for Literary Analysis
Characters. Characters are imagined people. The author shows you what they are like through their actions, speech, thoughts, attitudes, and background. Sometimes a writer also includes physical characteristics or names or relationships to other people. All stories are about people (or personified things) who are going through some sort of conflict.
Figures of Speech. Figures of speech are lively or fresh expressions that vary the expected sequence or sense of words. Some common types of figurative language are the simile, the metaphor, an implied comparison, and personification. In poetry, sometimes an abstraction gets paired with a concrete thing: hot love, cold hate, etc.
Imagery. Images are words or groups of words that relate to any of the five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching (or any physical feeling). Most writers rely on visual imagery, perhaps too much.
Irony. Irony results from a reader’s sense of discrepancy. A simple kind of irony, sarcasm, occurs when you say one thing but mean the opposite: “I love scrubbing the floor.” In literature, an ironic situation sets up a contrast or incongruity.
Plot. Plot is the arrangement of the events of the story – what happens to whom, where, when, and why. Is it believable or not believable? Why? Stories tend to be either plot-driven or character-driven.
Point of View. Who is telling the story and why? This should be your first question. For 1st person, what’s in it for the narrator? In 3rd person, how close is the narrator? Do they know everything about other characters, or do they stick closely to a particular character(s) in a fictive world? Is the narrator biased or objective? Can you trust them? What is second person and why would someone use it?
Setting. Setting refers to the time and place of events and may include the season, the weather, and the people in the background. The setting often helps establish a literary work’s mood or atmosphere, which becomes the emotional climate a reader senses. Also, the setting can provide a large amount of context which might complicate a story otherwise. Settings, in a sense, can become a character when they add to the conflict of the narrative.
Symbols. Symbols are tangible objects, visible actions, or characteristics that hint at a meaning beyond themselves.
Theme. A theme is a work’s main idea or insight – the author’s observation about life, society, or human nature. Sometimes you can sum up a theme in a sentence (“Human beings cannot live without illusion”); other times, a theme may be implied, hard to discern, or one of several in a work.
Narrative Structure (two theories).
Theory 1: Freytag’s Pyramid
Freytag’s Pyramid is a theory that connects all stories. It suggests that all stories have five parts: Exposition, Rising Action (resulting from an inciting incident), Climax, Falling Action, and Denouement (a French term which does not mean “ending” but translates to “resolution”).
Theory 2: Green World versus Mad World
A narrative theory developed by Bill Black that states that every story concerns a character who is pulled out of their normal reality (Green World) for any reason into a different reality (Mad World). From this, every resulting story is essentially about the character’s attempts at returning to Green World.
Narrative Archetypes
These are the mechanism for a story: the overall structure, and reason, and form, and flow. This list (which is not necessarily comprehensive), includes: Ticking Time Bomb, A Day in the Life, Quest, Journey, An Onion Story, Coming of Age, Mosaic, Sidekick, and Blue Moon. Archetypes don’t often exist in a vacuum — a single story might contain multiple narrative archetypes.
The post A Glossary of Terms for Literary Analysis Characters. Characters are imagined people. appeared first on PapersSpot.
