LITERARY TERMS 6

• Simile: an analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as, in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing
• Soliloquy: a monologue spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character believes himself to be alone
• Spiritual: an autobiography (usually Christian) that focuses on an individual's spiritual growth
• Speaker: the narrative or elegiac voice in a poem (such as a sonnet, ode, or lyric) that speaks of his or her situation or feelings
• Stereotype: a character who is so ordinary or unoriginal that the character seems like an oversimplified representation of a type, gender, class, religious group, or occupation
• Stream of Consciousness: writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax
• Structure: the relationship or organization of the component parts of a work of art or literature
• Style: the author's words and the characteristic way that writer uses language to achieve certain effects
• Subordination: the act of placing in a lower rank or position
• Surrealism: in this movement, the artist sought to do away with conscious control and instead respond to the irrational urges of the subconscious mind
• Suspension of Disbelief:  temporarily and willingly setting aside our beliefs about reality in order to enjoy the make-believe of a play, a poem, film, or a story
• Symbol: a word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level
• Synaesthesia: it involves taking one type of sensory input (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) and comingling it with another separate sense in what seems an impossible way
• Synechdoche: a rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part
• Syntax:  the standard word order and sentence structure of a language
• Theme: a central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work
• Thesis: a proposition stated or put forward for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or to be maintained against objections
• Tone: the means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude or mood
• Tongue in Cheek: a figure of speech used to imply that a statement or other production is humorously or otherwise not seriously intended, and it should not be taken at face value
• Tragedy: a serious play in which the chief character, by some peculiarity of psychology, passes
  through a series of misfortunes leading to a final, devastating catastrophe
• Understatement: the opposite of exaggeration
• Vernacular: the everyday or common language of a geographic area or the native language of commoners in a country as opposed to a prestigious dead language maintained artificially in schools or in literary texts
• Voice:  the "voice" talking and narrating the story is not identical with the author
• Zeitgeist: the preferences, fashions, and trends that characterize the intangible essence of a specific historical period