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