Book Flashcards
Attitude
The disposition toward or opinion of a subject by an author, speaker, or character.
Allusion
A reference in a work of lit. to something out side of that work, especially to a well known historical or literary event, person, work, mythology, artwork, or culture.
Details
Individual items or parts that make up a larger picture or story.
Devices of sound
The techniques of deploying the sounds of words. Include rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia.
Diction
Word choice. The words are also details.
Figurative language
Writing that uses figures of speech, including metaphor, irony, and simile. It uses words to mean something other than their literal meaning.
Imagery
Images created by a literary work. The sensory detail of a work. The figurative language of a work.m
Irony
A figure of speech in which the intended and actual meaning differ.
Metaphor
A comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term.
Narrative techniques
The methods involved in telling a story. Include point of view, manipulation of time, dialogue, or interior monologue.
Omniscient point of view
The narrator knows everything that is happening.
Point of view
Any of the vantage points from which a story is told.
Resources of language
A general phrase for the linguistic devices or techniques a writer can use. Includes diction, syntax, figurative language, and imagery.
Rhetorical techniques
Devises used in effective or persuasive language. Includes contrast, repetition, paradox, understatement, sarcasm, and rhetorical question.
Satire
Writing used to arose the reader’s disapproval of a subject. Uses comedy.
Setting
The background of a story. Includes the story’s location, time period, weather, e.c.t.
Simile
A directly expressed comparison. Uses the words “like,” “as,” or “than.”
Strategy
The a management of language for a specific effect.
Structure
The arrangement of materials within a work; the relationship of the parts of a work.
Style
The mode of expression through language.
Symbol
Something simultaneously itself and something else.
Syntax
The structure of a sentence/ the arrangement of words in a sentence. Includes length of the sentence, type of sentence, type of sentence complexity.
Theme
The main thought expressed throughout a work.
Tone
The manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude. The intonation of voice that conveys a certain meaning.
Allegory
A story in which the ppl, things, and events have an extended, often abstract meaning.
Ambiguity
Multiple meanings that a literary work may communicate.
Apostrophe
Direct address, usually to someone/something not present.
Connotation
The implication of a word or phrase or the emotions associated with it. Not its exact meaning.
Convention
A device of style so commonly used in the literary world that it becomes a recognized means of expression.
Denotation
The literal meaning of a word.
Didactic
Explicitly instructive.
Digression
The inclusion of material unrelated to the actual subject of a work.
Epigram
A pithy saying, often employing contrast. Can be a verse form.
Euphemism
A figure of speech utilizing indirection to avoid offensive bluntness.
Grotesque
Characterized by distortions or incongruities.
Hyperbole
Deliberate exaggeration or overstatement.
Jargon
The specialized language of a profession or group.
Literal
The precise, explicit meaning.
Lyrical
Song like, characterized by emotion,subjectivity, and imagination.
Oxymoron
A combination or juxtaposition of opposites.
Parable
A story designed to suggest a principle, illustrate a moral, or answer a question.
Paradox
A statement that seems to be self-contradictory but is, in fact, true.
Parody
A composition that imitates the style of another composition, normally done for comic effect.
Personification
Shows nonhuman ideas, objects, animals, or abstractions to have human characteristics.
Reliability
A quality of some fictional narrators in whose word the reader can never trust.
Rhetorical questions
Questions asked for effect, not in expectation of a reply.
Stereotype
A conventional pattern, expression, character, or idea.
Syllogism
A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them.
Thesis
The theme, meaning, or position that a writer endeavors to prove or support.
Alliteration
The repetition of similar or identical sounds at the beginning of words in a sentence.
Assonance
The repetition of vowel sounds in the middle of words in a sentence.
Ballad meter
A four lined stanza. Rhymed abcb. Lines 1 and 3 have four feet and lines 2 and 4 have three feet.
Blank verse
Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Dactyl
A metrical foot of three syllables. One accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables.n
End stopped
A line with a pause at the end.
Free verse
Poetry not written in traditional meter.
Heroic couplet
Two end stopped iambic pentameter lines. Rhymed aa bb cc.
Hexameter
A line containing six feet.
Iamb
A two syllable foot with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable.
Internal rhyme
A rhyme within the line of poetry.
Onomatopoeia
Words who sound suggests their actual meaning.
Pentameter
A line containing five feet. The most common line used in the English language.
Rhyme royal
A seven line stanza of iambic pentameter. Rhymed ababbcc.
English sonnet
Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Rhymed abab cdcd efef gg.
Shakespeare sonnet
An English sonnet
Italian sonnet
Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Rhymed abba abba cde cde.
Petrarchan
An Italian sonnet
Stanza
A repeated grouping of three or more lines, usually with the same meter or rhyme scheme.
Terza rims
A three lined stanza rhymed aba bcb cdc
Tetrameter
A line of four feet.
Antecedent
That which has gone before. Especially the word, phrase, or clause a pronoun refers to.
Clause
A group of words containing a subject and a verb that may or may not be a complete sentence.
Ellipsis
A phrase that omits some words that would be necessary for a complete construction, yet which is still understandable.
Imperative
The mood of a verb that gives an order.
Modify
To restrict or limit in meaning.
Parallel structure
A similar grammatical structure within a sentence or within a paragraph.
Periodic sentence
A sentence that becomes grammatically complete only at the end.
Syntax
The structure of a sentence.
