American Literature Flashcards
Vocabulary
Local Color
Distinctive, sometimes pictures, characteristics or peculiarities of a place or period as represented in literature or drama or as observed in reality.
Personification
A comparison in which human qualities are given to it in an inanimate object or an animal.
Assonance
The repetition of vowels sounds.
Symbol
Something which has meaning in itself but also represents something beyond itself.
Apostrophe
Words addressed to an inanimate object as if it were alive or to an absent person as if he were present.
Simile
An expressed comparison of unlike things in which the words like, as, resembles, or similar to are used.
Imagery
The use of words that appeal to our senses(sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste).
Consonance
The repetition of final consonant sounds
Approximate Rhyme
Sound similarities that occur between words which are not true rhymes.
Refrain
A phrase or sentence, which is repeated at intervals, usually at the end of a stanza.
Rhyme
The correspondence of sounds.
Dialect
A variety of a language that is distinguished from other varieties of the same language by features of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others geographically or socially
Alliteration
An approximate rhyme in which beginning constant sounds are the same.
Metaphor
An implied comparison in which one thing is described in terms of another.
End Rhyme
The repetition of the accented or stressed vowel sound and all succeeding sounds in words which come at the end of lines
Onomatopoeia
Uses words which sound like what they mean(growl, hiss, pop).
Dialogue
Conversation between two or more persons.
Free verse
Verse that does not follow a fixed metrical pattern.
Tone
The writers or speaker’s attitude toward his subject. The Tone of a work may be formal, informal, ironic, sarcastic, somber, playful, solemn, light, condescending, intimate, or detached.
Allusion
A reference to mythology, history, literature, or the Bible.
Feminine rhyme
Rhyme involving two or more syllables.
Cacography
Bad handwriting or spelling.
Psuedonym
A fictitious name used especially by an author to conceal their Identity; Pen name.
Internal Rhyme
Rhyme that occurs within the line.
Plot
Main events of a play, novel, movie.
Satire
The use of Irony, sarcasm, ridicule or the like, to expose, denounce, or deride the folly or corruption of institutions, people, or social structures.
Masculine Rhyme
Rhyme involving only one syllable.
