English 10: Pre-Advanced Placement

Literary Analysis

allusion antagonist details diction

flashback foreshadowing imagery mood

motivation narration plot point of view prosody protagonist setting

shift or turn structure style suspense symbol theme tone websites

Allusion

Tired of trying to explain the creature to her students, Mrs. Goddard assumes the necessary guise for Medusa to illustrate her explanation….

is a reference to a mythological, literary, artistic, scientific, or historical person, place or thing: e.g., “He met his Waterloo.”

AntagonistIs a character, group of characters, or institution that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend. In other words, 'A person, or a group of people who oppose the main character, or the main characters. In the classic style of stories wherein the action consists of a hero fighting a villain/enemy the two can be regarded as protagonist and antagonist, respectively.• The antagonist may also represent a major threat or obstacle to

the main character by their/its very existence, without necessarily deliberately targeting him or her.

DetailsThe facts revealed by the author or speaker that support the attitude or tone in a piece of poetry or prose.“The dark night and fog on the moor only heightened Maggie’s sense of isolation and exile. Why had she run away? Now she was lost in this swampy morass with no true hope for rescue…”

Diction is word choice intended to convey a certain effect.

And maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate, that he seemed to fly along the forest-path, rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier, and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward, with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds; the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while, sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church-bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.

Hawthorne Young Goodman Brown

LEVELS OF DICTION:High or Formal Diction – usually contains language that creates an elevated tone….Neutral Diction – uses standard language and vocab. without elaborate words and includes contractions ….Informal or low Diction – is the language of everyday use. It is relaxed and conversational. Includes simple words, idioms, slang, jargon, etc….

Diction is word choice intended to convey a certain effect.

JIM: I didn’ know dey was so many un um. I hain’t hearn ‘bout non un um, skasely, but ole King Solermun.HUCK: That ain’t nothin’. King Louis Sixteenth got his head cut off in France long time ago; he had a little boy, the dolphin, that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there.JIM: Po’ little chap.HUCK: But some says he got out and got away, and come to America.JIM: Dat’s good! Bet he’ll be pooty lonesome – dey ain’ no kings here, is dey, Huck?HUCK: No.JIM: Den he can’t get no situation. What he goin’ to do?HUCK: Well, I don’t know. Some of the learns people how to talk French

TYPES OF DICTION:Slang - refers to a group of recently coined words often used in informal situations…Colloquial Expressions - are non standard, often regional, ways of using language appropriate to informal speech or writing…Jargon – consists of words and expressions characteristic of a particular trade, profession, or pursuit…Dialect – is a nonstandard subgroup of a language with its own vocabulary and grammatical features…Concrete Diction – consists of specific words that describe physical qualities or conditions…Abstract Diction - refers to language that denotes ideas, emotions, conditions, or concepts that are intangible…Denotation - is the exact, literal definition of a word independent of any emotional association or secondary meaningConnotation - is the implicit rather than explicit meaning of a word and consists of suggestions, associations, and emotional overtones attached to a word… Huckleberry

Finn by Mark Twain

Some said that the order in which The Beatles walked was to foreshadow the order of their deaths…

ImageryThe words or phrases a writer uses to represent persons, objects, actions, feelings, and ideas descriptively appealing to the senses.

Mood

The atmosphere or predominant emotion

in a literary work.

Motivation

A circumstance or set of circumstances that prompts a character to act in a certain way or that determines the outcome of a situation or

work.

Narration

Plot

Is a literary term defined as the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, how the reader views the story, or simply by coincidence. One is generally interested in how well this pattern of events accomplishes some artistic or emotional effect.

Point of viePoint of v

Point of ViewThe perspective from which a story is told…

PROSODYThe study of sound and rhythm.

Can our PROTAGONIST save the day???

in which events in a short story, novel, play or narrative poem take place.

StructureThe framework or organization of a literary selection.

The structure of fiction is usually determined by plot and by chapter

division; the structure of drama depends upon its division into acts

and scenes; the structure of an essay depends upon the organization of

ideas; the structure of poetry is determined by its rhyme scheme and

stanzaic form.

Style

It was quite obvious…

…they had no

style.

SUSPENCE is the quality of a short story, novel, play, narrative poem or movie that makes the reader or audience uncertain or tense about the outcome of events.

SymbolAny object, person, place, or action that has both a meaning in itself and that stands for something larger than itself, such as a quality, attitude, belief, or value:

e.g., the land turtle in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

suggests or reflects the toughness and resilience of the

migrant workers.

Syntax

It is not the same as subject, which can be expressed in a word or two: courage, survival, war, pride, etc.

The theme is the idea the author

wishes to convey about that subject. It

is expressed as a sentence or general statement about life

or human nature.

The central message of a literary work.

A literary work can have more than one theme, and most themes are not directly stated, but are implied. The reader must think about all the elements of the work and use them to make inferences, or reasonable guesses, as to which themes seem to be implied.

Theme

“Eat my shorts, man!”

Tone is the writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject, character, or audience, and it is conveyed through the author’s choice of words and detail.

Tone can be serious, humorous, sarcastic, indignant, objective, etc.