Unit 2: Part 2 Literary Terms

A speech, or talk given to an audience, is one of the oldest means of communication, serving purposes like these: to persuade, entertain, or inform.

An eyewitness account is an oral or written narrative of events by someone who saw what happened.

One of the best ways of remembering the details in a primary source and understanding the relationships between them is by summarizing, or briefly restating the write.

• Psalms—sacred songs or lyric poems in praise of God.

• Sermons—speeches offering religious or moral instruction. The Sermon on the Mount contains the basic teachings of Christianity.

• Parables—simple stories from which a moral or religious lesson can be drawn. The most famous are in the New Testament.

To engage an audience, psalms may feature vivid figurative language including metaphors—comparisons of unlike things.

To help listeners understand, sermons may feature analogies—explanations comparing abstract relationships to familiar ones. To help listeners understand, sermons may feature analogies—explanations comparing abstract relationships to familiar ones.

Parables are narratives—stories illustrating a message.