1-20 Flashcards
allegory
a story in which people, things, and events have another meaning
- Bunyan’s Pilgrim Progress
- Spenser’s Faerie Queen
- Orwell’s Animal Farm
alliteration
the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally in the beginning of words
- “Gnus never know pneumonia”
allusion
a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work
- Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is an allusion to a poem by Langston Hughes
- T.S. Elliot: “To have squeezed the universe into a ball” in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” –> alluding to Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”
- In Hamlet, when Horatio says “ere the mightiest Julius fell” –> allusion to the death of Julius Caesar
ambiguity
multiple meanings a literary work may communicate, especially two meanings that are incompatible
antecedent
means “that which goes before,” especially the word, phrase, or clause to which a pronoun refers
- “the witches cast their spells” –> the antecedent of the pronoun “their” is the noun “witches”
apostrophe
direct address, to someone or something that is not present
- Keats’s “Bright star! would I were steadfast” is an apostrophe to a star
- “To Autumn” is an apostrophe to a personified season
asyndeton
the opposite of polysyndeton. a condensed from of expression in which elements usually joined by conjunctions are presented in a series without conjunctions
- Caesar’s “Vein, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered)
attitude
a speaker’s authors, or character’s feelings toward or opinion of a subject
- Hamlet’s attitude toward Ge is a mixture of affection and revulsion, changing from one to the other within a single scene
- Jane Austen’s attitude toward Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice combines aspect for his wit and intelligence with his disapproval of his failures to take sufficient responsibility for the rearing of all his daughters
blank verse
unrhymed iambic pentameter. blank verse is the meter of most Shakespeare plays
- Milton’s Paradise Lost
caesura
a pause or break within a line of verse (poetry only)
- Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”
clause
a group of words containing a subject and its verb that may or may not be a complete sentence
- “when you are old” (dependent clause) “you will be beautiful” (independent clause)
connotation
the implications of a word or phrase, as opposed to its exact meaning
- “house” and “home” denote a place one lives or lived, but the associations of the two words are different
convention
a device of style or subject matter so often used that it becomes a recognized means of expression
- a writer examining the literary love may be so enamored that he cannot eat or sleep and grows pale
cumulative sentence
aka loose sentence. a sentence in which the main clause appears near the beginning rather than partially or wholly at the end. opposite of periodic sentence.
- “he could sail for hours, searching the blanched grasses below him with his telescopic eyes, gaining height against the wind, descending in mile-long, gently declining swoops when he curved and rode back, never beating a wing”
denotation
the dictionary meaning of a word, as opposed to connotation
