Context refers to the whole situation, background or environment relevant to a particular event. It also refers to the social, cultural, and historical circumstances and setting at which the author is writing. Therefore, context refers to the background information surrounding ...

In composition, the term purpose refers to a person’s reason for writing, such as to inform, entertain, explain, educate or persuade. In literature, purpose refers to the reasons/motives that make the author write a fictional work. It is the objective ...

Atmosphere/mood is the feeling that a story evokes. This is how you feel after reading a story. Atmosphere refers to the emotions invoked/applied in the reader as he/she reads a piece of writing. It is also the feeling, emotion, or ...

Tone is the attitude or feelings of a writer towards the subject matter or the audience. It is also the manner of writing about the subject, characters and theme by careful choice of words. Tone is expressed by diction, sentence ...

Audience is the number of people or particular group of people who watch, read or listen to the same thing. This could be the group of people who have gathered to watch or listen to something (a play, a concert, ...

     SUBJECT A subject or subject matter is a topic which acts as a foundation for a literary work. It is the subject which makes a writer write something, or what something is about. Subject is also the inspiration ...

Point of view is the narrator’s position in relation to the story being told. It refers to the angle an author uses to tell the reader about the happenings in a literary text. It is also the method the author ...

All prose texts contain characters. A character refers to the person, animal, or an object that the writer of a story or a play uses to advance the plot or theme. He/she is a fictional human being, animal or thing ...

Setting refers to the place, time and social environment in which a novel, novella, or short story is represented as happening. It is the historical period, geographical place and social-cultural context in which the events of a story occur. Setting ...

Plot is how a novella, short story or novel progresses. It is also the succession/order/sequence or arrangement of events in a story. Plot is a literary term used to describe the events that make up a story, or the main ...

Ambiguity is when a word, phrase, or statement contains more than one meaning. It occurs when something can have more than one interpretation, explanation or meaning. Ambiguity is when the meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence is uncertain.               Examples ...

Anaphora is a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences. It is a literary device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginning of neighbouring clauses. This deliberate ...

Analogy is a comparison between things, typically for the purpose of explaining or clarifying. It is a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is really different from it in order to show ...

Consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds within words of close proximity. It is the repeating of consonant sounds within neighbouring words, phrases, or sentences.             Example1   – Gatera Fabregas was tagged in Agnes’s ...

Assonance is the repetition of similar vowel sounds within nearby words,  lines, phrases, or sentences. It is the repetition of vowel sounds in adjacent words. Assonance takes place when two or more words, close to one another repeat the same ...

Alliteration refers to the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or neighbouring words. It is the repeating of the same consonant sounds at the beginning of words. This means that alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning ...

Foreshadowing is a technique in which a writer gives an advance hint or clue of what is to come later in the story. It often appears at the beginning of the story or chapter and helps the reader develop expectations ...

Flashforward (or prolepsis), is a literary device which reveals the events that will occur in the future. This means that it is an insertion of a later event into the chronological structure of a story. It is also a sudden ...

The flashback (analepsis) occurs when the writer breaks away from the current action of a story to recount events that happened earlier. It is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point. It is ...

An allusion is a figure of speech that is a reference to a well-known person, place, thing, idea or event. Each of these concepts can be of historical, cultural, literary, religious or political significance. The referred thing can be real ...