Literary Terms and Concepts: Defining and Applying
This domain tests whether you can define a literary term precisely and then apply it to an unseen line or short extract. Typical questions ask you to identify a device, define it, and explain its effect, so a definition you cannot demonstrate in context earns little.
Three levels of terminology
- Figures of speech work locally: metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, personification, hyperbole, irony.
- Form and genre describe whole texts: sonnet, elegy, ode, tragedy, novella, essay, memoir.
- Narrative and structural devices describe arrangement: framing, foreshadowing, in medias res, epilogue, flashback.
Confusable pairs worth memorising
- Simile versus metaphor: a simile marks the comparison with like, as or than; a metaphor asserts identity without a marker.
- Metonymy versus synecdoche: metonymy substitutes something associated (crown for monarchy); synecdoche substitutes part for whole (hands for workers).
- Paradox versus oxymoron: a paradox is a self-contradictory statement that may resolve into sense; an oxymoron compresses the contradiction into a pair of words.
- Irony versus sarcasm: irony is a gap between statement and meaning, or expectation and outcome; sarcasm is ironic mockery intended to wound.
Worked example
'The pen is mightier than the sword.' There is no like or as, so it is not a simile. Pen and sword do not resemble writing and warfare; they are associated with them, so the trope is metonymy. The two halves balance opposed ideas, which is antithesis, and the whole compresses a general claim into a memorable formula, which is an epigram. Notice the answer pattern: name, define, quote the evidence, state the effect.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling every comparison a metaphor.
- Using symbolism as a catch-all instead of naming the actual device.
- Defining a term and never pointing to the words that prove it.
- Treating allegory as a synonym for symbol.