English Midterm Flashcards
a reference to another literary work or to a person, event, or thing; an indirect reference that assumes prior knowledge
Allusion
“a literary work holding up human vices and follies to
ridicule or scorn”
Satire
A pair of sequential lines that rhyme
Couplet
a period of intense spiritual examination and renewal in the life of colonial America” which was “[m]arked by charismatic preaching, enthusiastic conversion experiences, and intense controversy”
Great Awakening
a genre characterized by a general mood of decay, suspense, and terror; action that is dramatic and generally violent or otherwise disturbing; loves that
are destructively passionate; and landscapes that are grandiose, if gloomy or bleak”
Gothic
A genre in which the focus of the story is on the investigation of a
crime or mystery by a detective
Detective fiction
The most common meter in English – 5 sets of syllables that include an unstressed and then a stressed syllable (x /).
Iambic pentameter
Writing that describes or treats an inanimate object,
abstract idea, or non-human living thing as if it were
human
Personification
A genre in which an author tells their own life story.
Autobiography
A sad poem or song, especially remembering someone
who has died or something in the past
Elegy
Poetry that does not have a consistent/regular meter or
consistent rhyme scheme and does not follow a specific
poetic form
Free Verse
The formal term for the rhythm of poetry
Meter or Poetic meter
An autobiography focusing on the life, enslavement,
and eventual freedom of a formerly enslaved person
Slave narative
A stanza of poetry that is four lines long
Quatrain
a poetic meter in which for each set of four lines, the
first and third lines have four stresses, while the second and fourth have three stresses
Ballad Meter
