Chapter 6 Flashcards
Ballad
A story told or sung by music.
Comedy
A play intended to entertain and amuse the audience or reader.
Drama
A play usually consisting of 5 acts. Plays can be categorized based on authors intent: satire (ridicule), comedy, tragedy, etc.
Epic
A long poem reflecting the values of society.
An epic poem usually contains a protagonist and an antagonist.
Ex. The Iliad and the Odyssey
Essay
A work usually written by an opinionated expert with an authoritative tone.
Fable
A tale in which animals take on human characteristics. A fable is usually written to provide a moral lesson (didactic) or to illustrate a man’s shortcomings.
Ex. The Tortoise and the Hare
Farce
A light dramatic composition that usually uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, exaggerations and violence.
Generally regarded to a comedy
Legend
A story of traditional, enduring quality from earlier times.
Myth
Myths relate to deeds of extraordinary beings and speak to the common truth about life; myth critics usually focus on stages of a hero: miraculous birth, initiation, fight for community, death and resurrection.
Novel
Derived from novella, Italian for compact, realistic fiction. A novel is the longest example of fictional prose.
Paradoy
A literary work in which the style of an author (or genre) is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule.
Poem
A literary work containing rhythm including sonnet, ode, pastoral, villanelle.
Romance
An imaginative story concerning conflicts between heroes and villains written in popular language.
Satire
A work holding up human vices, folly, abuses, or shortcomings to ridicule, sometimes with intent to bring about improvement.
Short story
A short narrative story written to create an impact upon the reader.
Tragedy
A drama with a serious and dignified character in which the protagonist has a tragic flaw that brings about his downfall.
Allegory
a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
EX
Here are some examples of allegory in literature: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis is a religious allegory with Aslan as Christ and Edmund as Judas. Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser is a religious or moral allegory where characters represent virtues and vices
Alliteration
the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more words in a line of writing; often used for poetic effect. Alliteration is based on the sound not the spelling.
Example:
-Alice’s aunt ate apples and acorns around august.
-Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Allusion
Reference to a well-known person, place, object, event, or literary work or work of art.
The allusion does not give much detail about the reference-it does not describe things in detail. Rather, because these events are momentous-significant historically, culturally, or politically-the speaker or author expects that people in general would understand the allusion without explanation.
example: When your parents learn about your new plan to raise money, it’s going to sink like the Titanic. (allusion to a historical event)
- When you feel betrayed by a friend, you can say, “You too, Brutus?” (allusion to Julius Caesar-Brutus betrayed Caesar)
Anachronism
placing an event, person or object out of it chronological place.
For example, if a painter paints a portrait of Aristotle and shows him wearing a wrist watch, it would be an example of anachronism, as we all are aware that wristwatches did not exist during Aristotle’s time.
Analogy
an inference that two dissimilar things share common traits.
Green is to go as red is to stop.
You are as annoying as nails on a chalkboard.
Antagonist
a character or force in conflict with the main (protagonist) character.
Antithesis
a figure of speech in which a thought is balanced with a contrasting thought parallel arrangements of words and phrases.
Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens) “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
“Setting foot on the moon may be a small step for a man but a giant step for mankind.”
The use of contrasting ideas, “a small step” and “a giant step”, in the sentence above emphasizes the significance of one of the biggest landmarks of human history.
Apostrophe
When a person turns away from the audience and directly addresses an absent person or a personified quality.
Assonance
the repetition of of vowel sounds in nearby words.
“Men sell the wedding bells.”
“I feel depressed and restless.”
“Go and mow the lawn. “
Catharsis
the reader or audience feels compassion with the protagonist and experience a sense of relief when watching the protagonist overcome great odds to survive.
Character
- Static
- Dynamic
- Flat
- Round
a person in a story, poem, or play.
static character- a character who does not change throughout the story.
dynamic character- a character who changes in some way during the story.
flat character- exhibits few personality traits.
round character- complex characters in the story.
Climax
the moment of the greatest emotional tension or suspense in a story or novel.
Connotation
a hidden meaning of a word usually determined by the context in which the world is used. Words may have negative or positive connotations depending upon a person’s experiences.
example: thin= positive / skinny= negative
For instance, “Wall Street” literally means a street situated in Lower Manhattan but connotatively it refers to “wealth” and “power”.
A dog connotes shamelessness or an ugly face.
A dove implies peace or gentility.
Home suggests family, comfort and security.
Consonance
an example of near rhyme- the repetition of terminal consonant sounds often used by poets to create a rhyme.
Example: “As in guys she gently sways at ease.” Description: In the above line, the word ‘s’ is used repeatedly. This poetic line has been taken from the poem ‘The Silken Tent’ by Robert Frost.
Denouement
a french term that literally means “untying the knot,” used to describe the moment of climax resolution in a story.
Denotation
the literal dictionary meaning(s) of a word.
Eulogy
a speech or writing to praise or honor someone, most commonly spoken at a funeral.
Euphemism
a device where a direct, unpleasant expression is replaced by an indirect, pleasant phrase.
Example: “he has passes away,” is a euphemistic expression for “he is dead.”
