English 12 IB Fiction vocabulary

1. Allegory: The term loosely describes any writing in verse or prose that has a double
meaning. This narrative acts as an extended metaphor in which persons, abstract ideas, or
events represent not only themselves on the literal level, but they also stand for
something else on the symbolic level. An allegorical reading usually involves moral or
spiritual concepts that may be more significant than the actual, literal events described in
a narrative. Typically, an allegory involves the interaction of multiple symbols, which
together create a moral, spiritual, or even political meaning.
2. Antagonist: the character or force against whom the protagonist struggles or contends.
3. Catastrophe: The "turning downward" of the plot in a classical tragedy.
4. Character: an imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Different designations:
a. Major/Minor, flat/round, stock, stereotypes, archetypes
b. Static: unchanging, and c. Dynamic: capable of change
5. Characterization: An author or poet's use of description, dialogue, dialect, and action to
create in the reader an emotional or intellectual reaction to a character or to make the
character more vivid and realistic
6. Direct and Indirect characterization: Direct is actual statements about character;
indirect uses the above.
7. Climax: The moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the crisis
reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved. It is also the peak of
emotional response from a reader or spectator and usually the turning point in the action.
8. Complication: an intensification of the conflict in a story or play.
9. Conflict: A struggle of opposing forces in a story or play.
10. Connotation: The associations called up by a word that go beyond its dictionary
meaning.
11. Convention: A common feature that has become traditional or expected within a
specific genre (category) of literature or film. For example, the wandering knight-errant
who travels from place to place, seeking adventure while suffering from the effects of
hunger and the elements, is a convention in medieval romances. It is a convention for an
English sonnet to have fourteen lines with a specific rhyme scheme, abab, cdcd, efef,
gg, and so on. The use of a chorus and the unities are dramatic conventions of Greek
tragedy, while, the aside, and the soliloquy are conventions in Elizabethan tragedy.
12. Denotation: The dictionary meaning of a word.
13. Denouement: A French word meaning "unknotting" or "unwinding," denouement
refers to the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath
or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot.
14. Dialogue: The lines spoken by a character or characters in a play, essay, story, or
novel aids characterization or advances plot.
15. Epiphany: a revelation of such power and insight that it alters the entire world-
view of the thinker who experiences it.
16. Exposition: The use of authorial discussion to explain or summarize background
material rather than revealing this information through gradual narrative detail.
17. Fable: A brief story illustrating human tendencies through animal characters.
18. Falling action: In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax that
moves it toward denouement.
19. Fiction: An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama, or an imagined
character, a fiction.
20. 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.
21. Foil: character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in
another character.
22. Foreshadowing: Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later
in a narrative.
23. Image: A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling or an idea.
24. Imagery: The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of
images, in a literary work. (light and dark; religious imagery, and so on)
25. Irony: Cicero referred to irony as "saying one thing and meaning another."
26. Verbal irony: (also called sarcasm) is a trope in which a speaker makes a
statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words
ostensibly express.
27. Literal: A literal passage, story, or text is one intended only (or primarily) as a
factual account of a real historical event rather than a metaphorical expression, an
allegorical expression of a larger symbolic truth, or a hypothetical example. The most
common mistake students make is confusing the terms true, factual, and literal. Some
things are true but not factual. Some things are meant literally but they are not factual.
And some things are presented factually that aren't true.
28. Metonymy: Using a vaguely suggestive, physical object to embody a more general
idea. The term metonym also applies to the object itself used to suggest that more
general idea. Some examples of metonymy are using the metonym crown in reference to
royalty or the entire royal family, or stating "the pen is mightier than the sword" to
suggest that the power of education and writing is more potent for changing the world
than military force. We use metonymy in everyday speech when we refer to the entire
movie-making industry as the L. A. suburb "Hollywood" or the advertising industry as the
street "Madison Avenue" (and when we refer to businessmen working there as "suits.")
29. Narrator: The "voice" that speaks or tells a story.
30. Novella: An extended fictional prose narrative that is longer than a short story, but
not quite as long as a novel. Example: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
31. Parable: A story or short narrative designed to reveal allegorically some religious
principle, moral lesson, psychological reality, or general truth.
32. Parody: A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a
particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features.
33. Plot: The structure and relationship of actions and events in a work of fiction. In
order for a plot to begin, some sort of catalyst is necessary. While the temporal order of
events in the work constitutes the "story," we are speaking of plot rather than story as
soon as we look at how these events relate to one another and how they are rendered and
organized so as to achieve their particular effects. Note that, while it is most common for
events to unfold chronologically or ab ovo (in which the first event happens first, the
second event happens second, and so on), many stories structure the plot in such a way
that the reader encounters happenings out of order. A common technique along this line is
to "begin" the story in the middle of the action, a technique called beginning in medias
res (Latin for "in the middle[s] of things"). Some narratives involve several short episodic
plots occurring one after the other (like chivalric romances), or they may involve multiple
subplots taking place simultaneously with the main plot (as in many of Shakespeare's
plays).
34. Point of view: First person central or first person peripheral uses I, we,
my ours etc.
35. Point of view: Third person limited, omniscient, cinematic/objectiveuses He
or She They their
36. Protagonist: The main character in a work, on whom the author focuses most of
the narrative attention.
37. Resolution: the denouement.
38. Reversal: Also called peripetela, Greek for "sudden change"): The sudden reversal
of fortune in a story, play, or any narrative in which there is an observable change in
direction. In tragedy, this is often a change from stability and happiness toward the
destruction or downfall of the protagonist.
39. Rising action: The action in a play before the climax.
40. Satire: An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing
humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or
social standards. Satire became an especially popular technique used during the
Enlightenment, in which it was believed that an artist could correct folly by using art as a
mirror to reflect society. When people viewed the satire and saw their faults magnified in a
distorted reflection, they could see how ridiculous their behavior was and then correct that
tendency in themselves. The tradition of satire continues today.
41. Setting: The general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which the
action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs; the setting of an episode or scene within a
work is the particular physical location in which it takes place.
42. Style: The author's words and the characteristic way that writer uses language to
achieve certain effects. An important part of interpreting and understanding fiction is
being attentive to the way the author uses words. What effects, for instance, do word
choice and sentence structure have on a story and its meaning? How does the author use
imagery, figurative devices, repetition, or allusion? In what ways does the style seem
appropriate or discordant with the work's subject and theme? Some common styles might
be labeled ornate, plain, emotive, scientific, or whatnot.
43. Subject: What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme.
Faulkners A Rose for Emily is about the decline of a particular way of life endemic to the
American South before the Civil War.
44. Subplot: A minor or subordinate secondary plot, often involving a
deuteragonist's (sidekicks, minor characters) struggles, which takes place
simultaneously with a larger plot, usually involving the protagonist. The subplot often
echoes or comments upon the direct plot either directly or obliquely. Sometimes two
opening subplots merge into a single storyline later in a play or narrative.
45. Synecdoche: A rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the
whole, or the whole of an object representing a part. For instance, a writer might state,
"Twenty eyes watched our every move."
46. Syntax: As David Smith puts it, "the orderly arrangement of words into sentences
to express ideas," i.e., the standard word order and sentence structure of a language, as
opposed to diction (the actual choice of words) or content (the meaning of individual
words). Standard English syntax prefers a Subject-Verb-Object pattern, but poets/writers
may tweak syntax to achieve rhetorical or poetic effects.
47. Tale: A story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without the
detailed descriptions of character.
48. Theme: A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary
work. The theme can take the form of a brief and meaningful insight or a comprehensive
vision of life.
49. Tone: The means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude or mood. By
looking carefully at the choices an author makes (in characters, incidents, setting; in the
work's stylistic choices and diction, etc.), careful readers often can isolate the tone of a
work and sometimes infer from it the underlying attitudes that control and color the story
Students should constantly add to their
or poem as a whole.
vocabulary of tone words.
50. Understatement : Meiosis, the opposite of exaggeration: "I was somewhat
worried when the psychopath ran toward me with a chainsaw." Litotes (especially
popular in Old English poetry) is a type of meiosis in which the writer uses a statement in
the negative to create the effect: "You know, Einstein is not a bad mathematician." (i.e.,
Einstein is a good mathematician.)