Ms. Cavolt’sGuide to Literary Techniques

and Movements I

Dramatic IronyDefinition Examples

• A character, seeing only appearances, speaks or acts in ignorance of the reality of which the audience is aware.

• In Titanic, we know that the ocean liner is going to hit the iceberg and sink, but the passengers and crew cannot know this.

• Marie unknowingly ate her salad while the bomb under the table slowly ticked to zero.

Verbal IronyDefinition Example

• A character makes a comment that means something different to a listening character or to the audience. (The character may intentionally say the opposite of what he/she means.)

• After Doug tripped on the sidewalk, I yelled, “Smooth move Ex-lax!”

ThemeDefinition Example

• A theme is a broad idea in a story, or a message or lesson conveyed by a work. This message is usually about life, society, or human nature.

• Of Mice and Men- one of the most important things in life is to have somebody.

MotifDefinition Example

• A reoccurring element, such as a word, phrase, idea, image, action, character, or symbol, which appears frequently throughout a piece of literature for emphasis and unity.

In the movie The Sixth Sense, the director specifically uses the color red throughout the movie to emphasize when something supernatural is going on. The character Cole wears a

red sweater, a red balloon floats up toward the attic in the birthday party scene, Bruce Willis's character Malcolm jiggles a red doorknob several times, and you'll probably be able to find several more examples.

SatireDefinition Example

• Writing that comments humorously on human flaws, ideas, social customs, or institutions in order to change them.

• Political Cartoons• Fables

ParodyDefinition Example

• The humorous imitation of a particular writing style, often intended as a criticism.

• Politically correct fairy tales

• “Scary Movie”• “Vampires Suck”

EpiphanyDefinition Example

• A sudden, unexpected moment of insight.

• He looked at his mother and for the first time realized he needed help; he would go to rehab.

ExistentialismDefinition Example

• A 20th century movement in which the universe is seen as irrational and with no meaning; therefore, humans create who they are and their actions determine their role in the universe. (This often creates anxiety and anguish.)

Ms. Barton showed him how important college was, but he would have to work two jobs to afford it. However, there is financial aid. Which path to take? He felt sick just thinking about it, but he knew he must decide.

SymbolismDefinition Example

• Frequent use of words, places, characters, or objects that mean something beyond what they are on the literal level.

• In The Lord of the Flies, the conch represents order, civilization, and democracy.

RomanticismDefinition Example• A movement in the late 18th

century, which emphasizes emotion, imagination, intuition, freedom, personal experience, the beauty of nature, the exotic, and even the grotesque. The romantic movement rejects civilized corruption and projects a desire to return to a natural and primitive state away from an urban life.

“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.” -Edgar Allan Poe

Casper David Friedrich

ForeshadowingDefinition Example• A technique in which an

incident, behavior, conversation, or atmosphere prepares the reader for what will happen later.

• As she walked through the kitchen to the living room, the camera panned to the missing knife from the butcher’s block.