Craig White's Literature Courses

Terms / Themes

 

 


 

literary purposes, devices & genres 

 

terms index


thanks to
https://learningspecialistmaterials.blogspot.com/2013/12/literary-devices-free-handout-and-link.html

This brief, incomplete list provides prompts for discussions of literary techniques in multicultural literature:

 

 

Purposes

devices

genres

mimesis

 

Entertain & Educate

 

critical thinking

 

Empathy / Sympathy

 

inhabiting a superior mind (i.e. reader to author)

 

Classic, popular, & representative literature

 

Literary fiction

 

symbol

 

color code

 

creativity / invention

 

vicarious experience (relate to Empathy / Sympathy)

 

play (esp. intellectual but also empathy, adventure, etc.)

 

defamiliarization

 

dialogue of representative voices

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mimesis

 

      narrative

  

      dialogue

 

 

symbol

 

  genres 

 

 

characterization

 

stereotype

 

tropes

 

figures of speech / rhetoric

 

Metaphor / analogy

 

allusion

 

hyperbole

 

image

 

irony

 

metonymy

 

 

 

onomatopoeia

 

synaesthesia

 

 

 

wit & humor (theories of comedy)

 

deadpan

 

incongruity

 

slapstick

 

 

archetype

 

Byronic hero

 

fair lady / dark lady

 

trickster

 

doppelganger

 

(TV Tropes: Archetypal Character)

 

 

 

Poetic styles

 

free verse

 

formal / fixed verse

 

meter / prosody

 

 

 

 

Poetic devices

 

alliteration

 

assonance

 

 

double entendre

 

double language

 

intertextuality

 

magic realism

 

nostalgia

 

realism

 

Romanticism

 

Romantic rhetoric

 

sarcasm

 

spectacle

 

tone

 

verisimilitude

 

viewpoint / perspective

 

 

style

 

 

 

 

 

conventions = elements of genres

 

subject genres (genres)

 

Young Adult fiction

 

Mystery / Detective Story

 

Science Fiction / Speculative Fiction

 

fantasy

 

captivity narrative

 

gothic incl. doppelganger

 

melodrama

 

nonfiction / creative nonfiction

 

 

origin story

 

situation comedy

 

utopia

 

 

 

 

formal genres  (genres)

 

lyric poetry

 

drama / dialogue

 

fiction; novel

 

 

 

narrative genres

 

comedy

 

tragedy

  

romance

 

satire