Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play.
An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. Ibsen's Nora is fictional, a "make-believe"
The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided.
A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work.
A character or force against which another character struggles.
The purging of the feelings of pity and fear that occur in the audience of tragic drama.
The audience experiences it at the end of the play, following the catastrophe.
The time and place of a literary work that establish its context.
The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work.
A playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play
A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words.
A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.
The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play.
The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work.
Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play
A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work.
The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is.
A group of characters in Greek tragedy (and in later forms of drama), who comment on the action of a play without participation in it.
The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning
An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself.
A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot.
The physical movement of a character during a play. It is used to reveal character, and may include facial expressions as well as movements of other parts of an actor's body.