As our TED Translator volunteers translate TED Talks into 116 languages (and counting), they’re often challenged to translate English idioms into their language. Why add fuel to the fire? Idioms are those phrases that mean more than the sum of their words. Tone: the predominant feeling of a literary work.What does it mean to “have tomatoes on your eyes?” Find out below… Setting: the place or time in which a story occurs.
Satire: writing that mocks and/or criticizes people, institutions, and ideas. Point-of-view: the perspective through which the story is told at the basic grammatical level, first-person (“I” or “we”) or third-person (“he,” “she,” etc.) or rarely second-person (“you”).
#LEND ME YOUR EARS SYNONYM FREE#
Personification: a device in which something that is not a person takes on the qualities of personhood, such as consciousness, human embodiment, speech, or free will. Examples: Spaceballs is a parody of Star Wars that gently mocks its source material Weird Al Yankovic’s “Eat It,” by contrast, is a parody of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” that pokes fun at picky eaters and their parents rather than the original song.Parody: an imitation of a literary work or genre, usually humorous often but not always intended to mock the work or genre that it imitates. Novel: a long work of fiction, usually too long to read in one sitting. Narrator: the person supposedly “telling” the story. Example: “This city ( tenor ) is a powderkeg ( vehicle ), ready to blow up ( ground ).”.
“lend me your ears” for “give me your attention”). “life is like a box of chocolates”) and metonymy, in which the vehicle is something associated with the tenor rather than similar to it (e.g. Closely related are simile, in which the tenor and vehicle are compared using “like” or “as” (e.g. Metaphor: identifying one thing (the tenor ) as something else (the vehicle ) in order to point out a similarity ( ground ). Imagery: the use of language to bring out a sensory response in the reader. Genre: a conventional group that a literary work can be classified under, like “mystery,” “limerick,” or “love song.” He was annoying, to be sure, but he shouldn’t be too much trouble for her to handle.”
not using pronouns like “I” or “me” (also known as free indirect style). George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an allegory for the Soviet Union’s abandonment of revolutionary ideals some characters represent specific historical figures (Napoleon the pig = Joseph Stalin), and others represent more general groups or attitudes (Boxer the horse = workers betrayed by the regime).Īllusion: a reference, usually implied rather than stated, often to another literary work.Ĭonnotation: association called up by a word or phrase that go beyond its literal meaning the subtle difference between a word and its synonyms, or a phrase and its paraphrase.ĭeus ex machina: a force that intervenes unexpectedly to produce some effect in the plot Latin for “God from the machine.”Įxposition: the part of a story in which the setting and situation are explained.įiction: writing that is neither literally true nor meant to deceive in the words of literary critic Terry Eagleton, “a kind of writing in which you can neither lie, tell the truth, nor make a mistake” (from After Theory).įoreshadowing: a hint at what will happen later in the story.įrame narrative: the telling of a story within a story.įree indirect discourse: when the narrative point-of-view sees the world through the eyes of a character while remaining in the third person, i.e.
This is not intended to be exhaustive or authoritative, but rather a shared resource for terms that participants might or might not know. Below is a list of terms for discussing literary texts, with some examples.
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