Glossary of Literary Terms

Pathetic Fallacy

The pathetic fallacy is a figure of speech in which the natural world (or some part of it) is treated as though it had human emotions.

 

Peripeteia

Peripeteia is a sudden change in a story which results in a negative reversal of circumstances. Peripeteia is also known as the turning point, the place in which the tragic protagonist’s fortune changes from good to bad.

 

Persona

Persona can refer to the characters in any dramatic or literary work.  But it has another special meaning in literary studies, where it refers to the voice of a particular kind of character—the character who is also the narrator within a literary work written from the first-person point of view.

 

Personification

Personification is a kind of metaphor in which you describe an inanimate object, abstract thing, or non-human animal in human terms.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s ideas, words, or thoughts as your own, without giving credit to the other person. When you give credit to the original author (by giving the person’s name, name of the article, and where it was posted or printed), you are citing the source.