Essential Literary Terms and Devices for Analysis

Written on February 22, 2026 in English with a size of 3.17 KB

Literary Terms and Definitions

Trope: The creative use of language in literature.
Figurative language: Uses tropes and figures of speech to call attention to similarities, representations, and contradictions.
Simile: A comparison that utilizes connecting words (for example, "like" or "as").
Metaphor: Directly compares two things without using connecting words.
Novel: The modern world’s reinvention of a classical genre, the epic. However, the novel has moved away from epic traditions: instead of heroes with extraordinary powers, it features ordinary people facing conflicts and struggling to overcome them.

Biographical Context: Points to the relationship between the writer’s life and their work.
Linguistic Context: Relates to the language present in the novel as the author orchestrates a particular artistic effect.
Sociocultural Context: Suggests the intimate relationship between the work and what surrounds it, such as social conditions, culture, worldview, or history.

Othering / Binary / Marginalization: The process whereby something or someone is pushed to the edge of a group and accorded lesser importance. This is predominantly a social phenomenon by which a minority or sub-group is excluded and ignored.
Couplet: A structure of a poem where a stanza consists of two lines.
Synecdoche: A figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole or the whole stands for a part.
Metonymy: Consists of using one name or term as a substitute for another name or term associated with it.
Cosmopolitanism: A mindset characterized by openness to the world and its varied cultures.
Tone: An aspect of writing that reflects the writer’s attitude toward their subject matter.
Refraction: Literature's function to refract everyday social reality, showing another side of the world through imagination, creativity, and the exploration of possibilities.
Irony: The root sense of dissembling or hiding what is actually the case, not to deceive but to achieve rhetorical or artistic effects.

Plot devices: Techniques that the writer uses to creatively present the events in the story.
Flashback: A plot device in which the story moves away from current events to a time in the past.
Foreshadowing: A plot device that presents an image or scene giving the reader clues about events that will happen in the future.
Local color: Makes the story more believable, especially by providing particular details that are true to a specific locality.

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