LITERARY TERMS 3

• Exposition: writing or speech primarily intended to convey information or to explain; a detailed statement or explanation
• Expressionism: a technique of distorting objects and events in order to represent them as they are perceived by a character in a literary work
• Fable: a brief story illustrating human tendencies through animal characters
• Fallacy: any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound
• Falling Action: the consequences following the climax of a piece of literature; occurs before the denouement
• Farce: a form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter through highly exaggerated caricatures of people in improbable or silly situations; traits of farce include (1) physical bustle such as slapstick, (2) sexual misunderstandings and mix-ups, and (3) broad verbal humor such as puns
• Figurative Language: a deviation from what speakers of a language understand as the ordinary or standard use of words in order to achieve some special meaning or effect; similes and metaphors are the most popular forms
• Flashback: a method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary
• Foil: a character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character
• Folk Tale: stories passed along from one generation to the next by word-of-mouth rather than by a written text
• Foreshadowing: suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative
• Free Verse: poetry based on the natural rhythms of phrases and normal pauses rather than the artificial constraints of metrical feet
• Genre: a type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features 
• Gothic Tale: a type of romance wildly popular between 1760 up until the 1820s that has influenced the ghost story and horror story; the stories are designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural
• Hyperbole: the trope of exaggeration or overstatement (tropes are twisted meanings of words)
• Imagery: the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature
• Implication:  the relation that holds between two propositions, or classes of propositions, in virtue of which one is logically deducible from the other
• Incongruity: not harmonious in character; inconsonant; lacking harmony of parts
• Inference:  the process of arriving at some conclusion that, though it is not logically derivable from the assumed premises, possesses some degree of probability relative to the premises
• Irony: "saying one thing and meaning another"