C terms Flashcards
A short pause within a line of poetry, often but not always signalled by punctuation. There are two pauses in the following: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary”
Caesura
When applied to an individual author, this means the sum total of works written by that author. When used generally, it means the range of words that a consensus of scholars, teachers, and readers of a particular time and culture consider “great” or “major”. This second sense of the word is a matter of debate since this in Europe and America has been largely dominated by white men. During the last several decades, this in the United States has expanded considerably to include more works by women and writers from various ethnic backgrounds
Canon
A limited third-person point of view, one tied to a single character throughout the story; this character often reveals his or her inner thoughts but is unable to read the thoughts of others
Centered consciousness
(1) : a fictional personage who acts, appears, or is referred to in work;
(2) : a combination of a person’s qualities, especially moral qualities, so that terms such as “good” and “bad”, “strong” and “weak”, often apply
Character
The fictional or artistic presentation of a fictional personage. A term like “that fictional being is good” can, then, be ambiguous–it may mean that the personage is virtuous or that he or she is well presented regardless of his or her characteristics or moral qualities
Characterization
Also called the turning point, the third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing
Climax
A level of language in a work that approximates the speech of ordinary people. The language used by characters in Toni Cade Bambara’s “Gorilla, My Love” is a good example
Colloquial diction
A broad category of dramatic works that are intended primarily to entertain and amuse an audience. These take many forms, but they share three basic characteristics: (1) the values that are expressed and that typically present the conflict within the play are social and determined by the general opinion of society (as opposed to being universal and beyond the control of humankind, as in tragedy); (2) characters in these are often defined primarily in terms of their society and their role in it; (3) these often end with a restoration of social order in which one or more characters take a proper social role
Comedy
The first step in the creation of any work of art, but especially used to indicate the first step in the creation of a dramatic character, whether for written text or performed play; the original idea, when the playwright first begins to construct (or even dream about) a plot, the characters, the structure, or a theme
Conception
The fifth part of the plot structure, the point at which the situation that was destabilized at the beginning of the story becomes stable once more
Conclusion
A struggle between opposing forces, such as between two people, between a person and something in nature or society, or even between two drives, impulses, or parts of the self
Conflict
What is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes
Connotation
Standard or traditional ways of saying things in literary works, employed to achieve certain expected effects
Conventions
Something that arises out of the difference between what a character aspires to and what so-called universal forces deal him or her; implying that a god or fate controls and toys with human actions, feelings, lives, outcomes
Cosmic irony
A broad and relatively indistinct term that implies a commonality of history and some cohesiveness of purpose within a group. One can speak of it from the south, or the city, or America, or rock and roll; at any one time, each human being belongs to a number of these things
Culture
