Literary Conventions: 5 Examples of Literary Conventions

Literary conventions are the features of a literary work that define its genre. These elements can be tropes, arcs, clichés, or certain devices that help distinguish how your audience will classify your literary text. For instance, people interested in romance novels are often looking for a happy ending and unconditional love between the main love interests. Science fiction readers will expect to see subject matter dealing with aliens, creatures, space, robots, or futuristic technology. People who are reading a tragedy might expect some sort of betrayal or death to occur in the work.

Literary conventions help to categorize a text within its specific literary genre. A literary device is a figure of speech that heightens imagery or textual interpretation. Common literary devices include simile, personification, euphemism, flashback, alliteration, oxymorons, or hyperbole. While literary conventions can help set the tone and expectations for a work of literature, literary devices deal with the experience of the language and interpretation of the narrative. However, some devices, like soliloquy or foreshadowing, can help to categorize a genre like certain literary conventions.

There are a few literary conventions that can easily define the piece of text you’re reading, such as:

1. 1. Betrayal in tragedy: In many of Shakespeare’s plays—from tragedies like Hamlet, to Macbeth, to Julius Caesar—the main character’s trust is violated, which is revealed to the audience through dramatic irony. This usually leads to the main character’s demise.
2. 2. Weddings and engagements in comedies: Many modern-day and classic comedies end with a wedding as a way to restore our characters’ lives to equilibrium. Every Shakespearean comedy ends in at least one wedding, as do most of Jane Austen’s romances. Countless comedy films—including Runaway Bride and Bridesmaids—end in weddings.
3. 3. A Greek chorus: Many of the Greek tragedies contain a three-person chorus—made up of a few characters who are uninvolved in the plot—that provides background information and plot commentary through a series of direct asides to the audience. In modern film and literature, Greek choruses may add levity or self-awareness to a serious or tragic work.
4. 4. Deus ex machina: In literary terms, deus ex machina is a plot device used when a seemingly unsolvable conflict or impossible problem is solved by the sudden appearance of an unexpected person, object, or event. Deus ex machina does not have to refer to a literal machine—it can be the emergence of a new character, a surprising use of magic, or even the realization that “it was all just a dream.”
5. 5. Stock characters: Stock characters, also known as archetypal characters, provide clear signs of the kind of work that you might be reading. In detective stories, the curious “believer” character will often stumble down a rabbit hole, accompanied by their skeptical partner. In a hero’s tale, there might be a bumbling sidekick who helps to underscore the protagonist’s competency. In a romantic comedy, a romantic protagonist might end up with the “best friend” character who has been under their nose the entire time, in spite of pining for someone else the whole story.

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