Literary+terms

==**TONE**: Has anyone ever said to you, "Don't use that tone of voice with me?" Your tone can change the meaning of what you say. Tone can turn a statement like, " You're a big help!" into a genuine compliment or a cruel sarcastic remark.==

**PROTAGONIST**: The main character in a work, on whom the author focuses most of the attention.
==//**GENRE**//: A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features. The three broadest categories of //genre// include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general //genres// are often subdivided into more specific //subgenres//. For example: murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc.== ==**THEME**: A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work. it may be a single idea such as "progress" (in many Victorian works), "order and duty" (in many early Roman works), "seize-the-day" (in many late Roman works), or "jealousy" (in Shakespeare's //Othello//). A theme is the author's way of communicating and sharing ideas, perceptions, and feelings with readers, and it may be directly stated in the book, or it may only be implied.== ==**MOTIF **: A conspicuous recurring element, which appears frequently in works of literature. For instance, the " [|**loathly lady**]" who turns out to be a beautiful princess is a common motif in folklore, and the man fatally bewitched by a fairy lady is a common folkloric motif. In medieval Latin lyrics, the speaker frequently mourns the lost past by repeatedly asking, what happened to the good-old days? The motif of the " [|**beheading game**]" is common in Celtic myth Frequently, critics use the word //motif// interchangeably with **theme.== ==**FORESHADOWING**: Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative. Foreshadowing often provides hints about what will happen next. For instance, a movie director might show a clip in which two parents discuss their son's leukemia. The camera briefly changes shots to do an extended close-up of a dying plant in the garden outside, or one of the parents might mention that another relative died on the same date. The perceptive audience sees the dying plant, or hears the reference to the date of death, and realizes this detail foreshadows the child's death later in the movie.== ==**CONFLICT**: The opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on. Conflict may also be completely internal, such as the protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies (drug addiction, self-destructive behavior, and so on);==

**RISING ACTION**: The action in a play before the climax.
==**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.== ==//**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. It is the unraveling of the main dramatic complications in a play, novel or other work of literature.This resolution usually takes place in the final chapter or scene, after the climax is over. Usually the //denouement// ends as quickly as the writer can arrange it--for it occurs only after all the [|**conflicts**] have been resolved.== ==**SYMBOL**: A word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level. For instance, consider the stop sign. It is literally a metal octagon painted red with white streaks. However, everyone on American roads will be safer if we understand that this object also represents the act of coming to a complete stop--an idea hard to encompass briefly without some sort of symbolic substitute. In literature, symbols can be cultural, contextual, or personal. (==