Finals-Terms Flashcards
A reference within a work of literature to something outside it.
Allusion
The protagonists’ opponent (whether a person, a force, or a situation).
Antagonist
A short, simple narrative song.
Ballad
Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Blank Verse
Representations of persons in literature.
Character
A pair of rhymed lines.
Couplet
A story consisting of action and dialogue designed for stage performance.
Drama
A poem consisting of a speech by a character (who is not the author) addressing an audience at a critical moment in his life.
Dramatic Monologue
Originally any poem of solemn meditation. Now it is a formal poem lamenting the death of a particular person or meditating on the subject of death itself.
Elegy
A long, stylized narrative poem celebrating the deeds of a national or ethnic hero.
Epic
The recurrence of consonant sounds at the beginning of nearby stressed syllables, as in “lively lads and lasses.”
Alliteration
The addressing of some nonpersonal (or absent) object as if it were able to reply (e.g.,”0death, where is thy sting?”).
Apostrophe
Broadly, the expression of one thing in terms of another. In stricter usage, it is the stated or implied equivalence of two things (e.g., “I am the bread of life”).
Metaphor
The giving of personal characteristics to something that is not a person.
Personification
A stated comparison of two things using a linking word or phrase (e.g., like,as, as if): “my luve is like a red, red rose.”
Simile
A figure of thought that contrasts appearance and reality.
Irony
The regular recurrence of accented syllables in a line of poetry.
Meter
A long, highly stylized lyric poem written in a complex stanza on a serious theme and often for a specific occasion.
Ode
A four-line stanza, one of the most common stanza forms in English poetry.
Quatrain
The attempt in fiction to create an illusion of actuality by the use of seemingly random detail or by the inclusion of the ordinary or unpleasant in life.
Realism
Identical sound in corresponding words or phrases.
Rhyme
A more or less regular recurrence of stressed syllables in written or spoken utterance.
Rhythm
A reaction against the cultural climate and values of neoclassicism. In literature romanticism stressed the importance of originality and therefore abhorred slavish imitation by one author of another and conformity to conventional social proprieties. It preferred the emotionally dynamic to the rationally controlled (denying the possibility of their coexistence).
Romanticism
Corrective ridicule in literature, or a work that is designed to correct an evil by means of ridicule.
Satire
A lyric poem of fourteen iambic-pentameter lines conventionally rhyming according to one of two patterns.
Sonnet
A narrative method de- signed to reproduce the mental process of a character, mingling conscious with half-conscious thoughts and sensations, past with present experi- ence, and rational and irrational associations, in an unbroken flow.
Stream of Consciousness
The attitude of a work toward its subject. Tone is the emotional view of the subject (indignation, awe, compassion, derision, etc.) the reader is meant to sharewiththeauthor
Tone
major pauses within lines
Caesura
is drama that ends happily
Comedy
a striking and, often, sustained figurative comparison.
Conceit
A story with a literal and an implied level of meaning. The implied level of meaning may suggest actual persons, places, events, and situations (as in historical allegory) or a set of ideas (as in conceptual allegory).
Allegory
Short, pithy sentence, a concise statement of a principle
Aphorism
is drama that ends unhappily
Tragedy
The chief or main character
Protagonist
Run on lines
Enjambment
are characteristically impersonal, compressed, dramatic (in use of dialogue and absence of transitions), ritualistic in effect (through the use of various devices and repetition), and simple in stanza form.
Folk Ballad
a metaphoric compound of two words, such as whalepath for sea.
Kenning
differs from the Petrarchan by the logical rather than physical basis of its comparison.
Metaphysical Conceit
A recurring or emerging idea in a work of literature.
Theme
A secondary story or stories embedded in the main story
Frame story
A narrative poem created in imitation of old folk poets writings
Literary Ballad
The practice of representing things by symbols
Symbolism
Any poem of solemn meditation
Elegiac poetry
Wandering minstrels
Scop
Traditionally a short, melodic; personally expressive poem; a poem that isn’t long, narrative, dramatic, (in sense of being written to be acted out), or exposition (written merely to convey information).
Lyrical Poetry
Artificially selected and refined language once considered essential to poetic expression
Diction
A detailed account of a persons life and accomplishments written by another person
Biography
A metaphor that extends throughout a stanza or an entire poem
Extended Metaphor
A phrase or sentence repeated as intervals throughout a poem often at the end of a stanza
Refrain
A literary form typically set in nonexistent realms, and often featuring supernatural beings
Fantasy
An outcome in a literary word in which good is rewarded and evil is punished, especially in ways that fit the intensity of the crime
Poetic justice
A story originating in oral tradition
Folktale
language that contains or uses figures of speech, especially metaphors.
Figurative Language
Linguistics. a variety of a language that is distinguished from other varieties of the same language by features of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others geographically or socially.
Dialect
to show or indicate beforehand;
Foreshadowing
the study of the rules for the formation of grammatical sentences in a language; the rules or patterns so studied
Syntax
