Lit. terms figurative language
- 1. Literary Terms: Figurative Language and Author’s Craft
- 2. INFERENCE ● A conclusion reached by the reader, based on the available information in the text ● We can infer that the three bears were very trusting since they left their house open and their bowls of porridge out on the table.
- 3. Author’s Purpose ● Why did the author write the selection? What did the author hope to achieve? Does the author have an agenda, does he want to sell the reader something or persuade the reader to see things from his perspective?
- 4. Alliteration Repetition of consonant sounds (the same letter or sound) at the beginning of words. Ex: “The first time I walked/With a girl, I was twelve,/Cold, and weighted down/With two oranges in my jacket.” Gary Soto, “Oranges”
- 5. HYPERBOLE ● Use of extreme exaggeration ● For example, “My car is a million years old.” OR “I walked five-thousand miles to school.”
- 6. IMAGERY ● Words or phrases that create vivid images of one or more of the five senses
- 7. METAPHOR / SIMILE ● A comparison of two unlike things: ● Simile uses the words like or as- “Her cheeks were like red apples.” ● Metaphor omits the like or as- “Her cheeks were red apples.”
- 8. NARRATIVE / NARRATOR ● The narrative is the writing or speech that tells a story. ● The narrator is the person who actually tells the story.
- 9. ONOMATOPOEIA ● A word that imitates the sound it describes ● Ex: cuckoo, meow, honk, boom
- 10. PERSONIFICATION ● Giving human characteristics to a non-human subject ● “The cat grinned at me and began her wicked plan.” ● “The daisy lifted its face to the sun.”
- 11. RHYME RHYME: Repetition of words that have similar ending sounds; usually at the end of a line of poetry. RHYME SCHEME: A pattern of rhyming Often expressed with symbols: ab ab Roses are re
- 12. RHYME SCHEME A pattern of rhyming line endings in a poem; identified with symbolic letters Roses are red (a) Violets are blue (b) Sugar is sweet (c) And so are you (b) The rhyme scheme is abcb.
- 13. STANZA An arrangement of a certain number of lines, usually four or more, sometimes having a fixed length, meter, or rhyme scheme, forming a division of a poem. Here’s an analogy to help you remember: A stanza is to poetry what a paragraph is to prose.
- 14. STRONG NOUNS Ordinary/blah Strong house/home shack, mansion, hut, homestead, cabin toys board game, blocks, doll pile of garbage banana peels, coffee grounds, squashed toys, crumpled paper wads
- 15. Vivid Verbs - action! Instead of Say walked strolled, meandered, swaggered, shuffled looked glanced, peered, stared, peeked said barked, whispered, bellowed, relayed
- 16. THEME / THEME /THEME ● The theme of a literary work is the central message or idea of a text: a universal principle or truth that applies across situations. ● The theme of “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout” is NOT “take out the garbage”; it is better expressed with: “When we allow small issues to build, they become uncontrollable.”