LIT TERMS: LIST 3

1. Exposition: The use of authorial discussion to explain or summarize background material.  EX: Susan was angry when she left the house and climbed into her car outside.
2. Expressionism: Literary movement of the early 20th century  that represented external reality in a highly stylized and subjective manner, attempting to convey a psychological or spiritual reality rather than a record of actual events. EX: Murderer, the Hope of Woman.
3. Fable: A brief story illustrating human tendencies through animal characters. EX: The tortoise and the hare. 
4. Fallacy: An argument using false or invalid inference. EX: Red Herring, Either or, etc. 
5. Falling Action: The sequence of events that follow the climax and end in the resolution. EX: In "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone," by J.K. Rowling, the falling action occurs after the climax of Professor Snape's apparent hex upon Harry during the Quidditch match/
6. Farce: form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter through highly exaggerated caricatures of people in improbable or silly situation. EX: The Taming of the Shrewd by Shakespeare. 
7. Figurative Language: A deviation from what speakers of a language understand as the  standard use of words in order to achieve some special meaning. EX: Simile or metaphors. 
8. 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. EX:   "But back when King Arthur had been a child. . . .")
9. Foil: A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. EX: The angry hothead Hotspur in Henry IV, Part I, is the foil to the cool and calculating Prince Hal.
10. Folk Tale: stories passed along from one generation to the next by word-of-mouth rather than by a written text. EX: The sotry of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. 
11. Foreshadowing: Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative. EX: The conversation and action of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth.
12. Free Verse: Poetry based on the natural rhythms of phrases and normal pauses rather than the artificial constraints of metrical feet. EX: The translations of the Psalms. 
13. Genre: A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features. EX: Murder mysteries, dramas, etc.
14. 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. EX: Dracula.
15. Hyperbole:  The trope of exaggeration or overstatement. EX: "His thundering shout could split rocks."
16. Imagery: The "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. EX: "The fog comes in / on little cat feet."
17. Implication: Indirect suggestion: something that is implied or involved as a natural consequence of something else. 
18. Incongruity: strange because of not agreeing with what is usual or expected.
19. Inference: the act or process of reaching a conclusion about something from known facts or evidence
20. Irony: Saying one thing and meaning another. EX: The situation facing Oedipus in the play Oedipus Rex.