American Literature Terms Flashcards
A prose account that is made up rather than true.
Fiction
A first person writing about an event.
Memoir
A traditional story about gods, ancestors, or heroes, told to explain the natural world or the customs and beliefs of a society.
Myth
A long fictional narrative written in prose, usually having many characters and a strong plot.
Novel
A fictional narrative written in prose, which is shorter than a novel and usually takes place in only one setting with a few number of characters.
Short Story
An exaggerated legend
Tall Tale
A fairly short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form
Ballad
Brief, musical poems that convey the speakers feelings.
Lyric Poem
The umbrella term used to refer to art expressed in writing.
Literature
A category used to classify literary works, usually by form, technique or content (e.g., prose, poetry, drama).
Genre
Any writing that is not poetry
Prose
A type of literature in which words are selected and strung together for their beauty, sound, and power.
Poetry
A piece of literature intended to be performed in front of an audience.
Drama
A person’s account of his or her own life.
Autobiography
A story about a person’s life written by another person.
Biography
A piece of prose writing, usually short, that deals with a subject in a limited way and expresses a particular point of view.
Essay
A brief story with a moral; often uses animals that act and speak like human beings
Fable
A story originally passed from one generation to another by word of mouth only. The characters are usually all good or all bad and in the end are rewarded or punished as they deserve.
Folktale
A narrative handed down from the past, containing historical elements and usually supernatural elements.
Legend
Parts of a story that are amusing. Humor can be created through sarcasm, word play, and irony.
Humor
A story in poetic form with characters, plot, and theme.
Narrative Poem
A 14 line poem with a set rhythm and scheme.
Sonnet
A character or force in conflict with the main character
Antagonist
A struggle between opposing forces. The conflict can be either internal or external.
Conflict
A series of related events in a story, each connected to the next.
Plot
the perspective from which a story is told
Point of View
Main character in the story
Protagonist
A scene that breaks into the story to show an earlier part of the action, fill in missing information, explain the characters actions, and advance the plot.
Flash back
A narrative device that hints at coming events; often builds suspense or anxiety in the reader.
Foreshadowing
A line of poetry that contains five iambic feet.
Iambic Pentameter
A word at the end of one line rhymes with a word at the end of another line
End Rhyme
A word inside a line rhymes with another word on the same line
Internal Rhyme
Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Blank Rhyme
A group of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
Foot
Poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme
Free Verse
The beat or rhythm of a poem, created by a patter of stressed or unstressed syllables.
Meter
A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem.
Refrain
Identical or very similar recurring final sounds in words usually at the end of lines of a poem.
Rhyme
The pattern of rhyming sounds at the end of lines in a poem
Rhyme Sceme
A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that create a beat.
Rhythm
A group of lines in a poem. Lines of poems are stanzas just like sentences are paragraphs.
Stanza
A single line of poetry or a stanza.
Verse
A reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art
Allusion
When the opposite of what is expected occurs.
Irony
The strong feeling created in a literary work.
Mood
The personality the writer presumes when telling the story.
Speaker
An authors distinctive way of writing. Style includes word choice, sentence length, structure, figures of speech, and tone.
Style
A feeling of tension or anticipation created in a work.
Suspense
A person, place, or object that represents an abstract idea.
Symbol
The works main idea- a general statement of life. Can usually be summed up in one sentence.
Theme
The writers attitude towards his or her subject matter.
Tone
The repeated use of phrases, clauses or sentences that are in similar structure.
Parallel Structure
Words that carry strong emotional overtones.
Loaded Words
A philosophical movement that began around 1840. It stressed individualism, intuition, nature, and self-reliance.
Transcendentalism
The ordinary language of people in a particular region.
Vemacular
