General Terms Flashcards
Anadiplosis
A literary technique where a word or phrase that is at the end of one clause is repeated at the or near the beginning of the next clause.
examples: Romeo and Juilet
It is the east and Juliet is the SUN.
Arise fair SUN, and kill the envious moon.
When you LOVE, LOVE with all you heart.
Anaphora
Words are repeated at the beginning of successive clauses.
Example: Anaphora with variation, London poem
IN EVERY CRY of every man
IN EVERY INFANT’S CRY of fear
IN EVERY voice, IN EVERY ban,
Antanaclasis
A word of phrase is repeated multiple times in a sentence but with different meanings every time it appears.
Example: Othello, Henry V
Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light.
To England will I steal, and there I steal.
Aphorismus
It is used to question whether a word is appropriate to use in a situation. Often part of a rhetorical question.
Example: Richard II
Can you even call it a summer day?]
How can you say to me I am a king?
Aporia
A speaker expresses uncertainty or doubt—often pretended uncertainty or doubt—about something, usually as a way of proving a point.
Example: Merchant of Venice, Browning poem
How do I love thee? let me count the ways
hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
Assonance
The same vowel sound repeats within a group of words.
Example:
I m(i)ght l(i)ke to take a fl(i)ght to an (i)sland in the sk(y)
Bildungsroman
A genre of a novel that shows a young protagonists growth from childhood to adulthood, immaturity to maturity, with focus on the trials and misfortunes that affect the characters growth.
Dorian Gray could be a subervsion of the genre, dorian does not learn from his mistakes or matures
Cacophony
A combination of words that create a harsh/unoleasnt soind usually due to use of percussive consonents (T,P, B, D, Gor K).
Example: Macbeth
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!”
Chiasmus
The grammar of one phrase is inverted in thenfollwing phrase, this leads to key concepts being reversed in the second phrase. It can use snyonyms and and contrasting concepts. The cinepts must ge related and the syntax must be in reversed order.
It is simmilar to antimetabole and many consider anitmetabole to be a type of chaismus. Antimetable reverses wirds and phrases while chiasmus focuses on conceots and grammertical structure.
Example: paradise lost
We (Walked) [tiredly]; (drowsily), we [ambled along] towards the hotel.
(Adam), [first of men], To [first of women], (Eve)
Cinquain
Historically it refers tk any stanza of five lines written in any sort of verse, some state thst certain types of verse, rhyme and stucrure are needed. Cinquains generally have straightforward rhyme schemes shch as ABAAB.
Example:
There was an Old Man in a boat, Who said, 'I'm afloat, I'm afloat!' When they said, 'No! you ain't!' He was ready to faint, That unhappy Old Man in a boat.
Climax
Sucessive words, phrases, clauses or sentences are araanged in ascending order of importance. Often builds anticipation or excitment.
Example:
Let a man acknowledge his obligations to (himself), his (family), his (country), and his (God).
I (came), I (saw), I (conquered)
Anticlimax
The oppisite of climax, often has a comedic effect.
There are two types of anticlimax.
Words are presented in decreasing keder of importance.
Waords are presented in increasing order of importance till there is a shift to the unimportant.
Example:
“He lost his (family), his (job), and his (house plants).”
“(the revival of a strong national consciousness), (the expansion of the Italian Empire), (and the running of the trains on time).”
Conssonance
The same consonant sojnd ks repeated withinna group of words. It is different thrn assonance as thus focuses on consonant sounds not vowel sounds.
Example:
Ti(ff)any’s o(ff)ensive remarks disturbed Je(ff)rey and the other sta(ff)-members.
Epistrophe
One or more words are repeated at the end of sucessive phrases, clauses or sentences
Example: “government (of the people), (by the people), (for the people).
Epizeuxis
A word or a phrase is repeated in immediate sucession with no intervening words.
Example: Hamlet
“Words, words, words”
Diacope
A word or phrase is repeated with a small number of intervening words.
Example:
“(Romeo), (Romeo), wherefore art thou (Romeo)?”
“He wore (prim) vested suits with neckties blocked (primly) againts collar buttons of his (primly) starched white suits.
Euphony
The combination of wards that sounds pleasant together. Often has short muffled sounds such as (L, M, N, F and R). Rhyme and ryhtmn call also create euphony.
Example: romeo and Juliet
“From Forth the FataL Loins of these two Foes a pair of star cross’d Lovers take their LiFe.
Hamartia
A tragic flaw or error that leads to a character’s downfall. It does not have to be an immoral flaw, it just has lead to a tragic outcome. The fharacter mist be a tragic gero/protagonist whise own actions lead to their downfall. Characters can have many different wualities that lead to hamartia.
Examples:
Hubris is often used as a fatal flaw in classical tragedies. Oedipus is an example, he ended up blinding himself after he realsied that he killed his father and married his mother. His hubris is believing he can eacaoe thr fact the oracles has set out for him. He also has thr tragic error born our of ignorance. Part of Aristotles views kn tragedy jn which there was a reversal of fortune caused by the protagonist own foae or error.
Hyperbole
Exaggeration for the sake of emphasis.
Example:
“My backpack weighs a ton”
In pride and prejudice Elizabeth says Darcy is the “ last man in the world whom imcouod be prevailed upon to marry”
Meter
Meter is a regular lattern of stressed and unstressed syllabels. The type and number of different feet (stress patterns) define that lines meter.
Example:
Trochees- stressed, unstressed
Iambs- unstressed, stress
Spondees - stressed, stressed
Dactyls - stressed, unstressed, unstressed
Anapests - unstressed, unstressed, stress
Metonymy
An object or conceot is reffered to not by its own name but by the name of something closely associated with it.
Example:
“Boots on the ground”
“From cradle to grave”
Parataxis
Words, phrases, clauses, or sentences are set next to eachother so eaxh is equally important.
Example:
“Hazy blue dusk scales the window
A lamp damgles like the neck of a woman.”
“I came, I saw, I conquered”
Polyptoton
The repition of words derived from the same root such as blood and bleed.
Example:
“ with eager (feeding) (food) doth choke the (feeder).”
“King of kings”
Refrain definition
A group of lined or a line ghat regularly repeat in a poem or a song. Usually at the end of anverse or stanza and is often used in ballads.
Example:
Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
(Water, wind, stone).
Wind carves stone,
stone’s a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
(Stone, wind, water).
Rising and falling action
Rising actiom ks the section of the plot leading up to the climax, tension stemming from a central conflict due to plot development.
Falling action is the phase of thr stiry after the climax in which the main conflicy is de-escelated and tension is dispelled.
Sibilance
A hissing sound is created within a group of words through the repetition of the s sounds. Does nlt need the letter S as it does not always make a hsiing soind snd other letters such as c can.
Example: Hamlet - ghost
(S)it down awhile;
And let u(s) on(c)e again a(ss)ial your ear(s),
(Th)at are (s)o (f)orti(f)ied again(s)t our (s)tory
What we have two night(s) (s)een.
Slant rhyme
A type of rhyme where two words located at the end of the line end in simmilar but not identical consonant sounds. It also incoudes words whise last syllables contain assonace or consonance.
Example:
“Things tend to aw(a)k[e]n
even through random communic(a)t[io]n.
Let us suddenl{y}
proclaim spring. And j{ee}r”Things tend to awaken
even through random communication.
Let us suddenly
proclaim spring. And jeer
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid (faces)
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century (houses).
Syndecdoche
A part of something is used to refer to its whole. A less comon part of syndedoche is when a whooe of something is used to refer to the part.
Example:
“The captain commannded 100 sails” is synedoche using a parrt to refer to the whole, sails for a ship.
“Mortals” is often used to refer to humans in loterature yet animals and lmants are also mortal, this is synedoche of the whole representing a part.
Villanelle
A poem of nineteen lines and follows a strict form that consists of 5 tercets (3 line stanzas) and subsequently one quatrain. They have an ABA and ABBA rhyme scheme for the tercets and quatrain respectively. The first and third line of thr first stanza function as repeating refrains.
Example:
I have lost my turtledove:
Isn’t that her gentle coo?
I will go and find my love.
Here you mourn your mated love;
Oh, God—I am mourning too:
I have lost my turtledove.
If you trust your faithful dove,
Trust my faith is just as true;
I will go and find my love.
Plaintively you speak your love;
All my speech is turned into
“I have lost my turtledove.”
Such a beauty was my dove,
Other beauties will not do;
I will go and find my love.
Death, again entreated of,
Take one who is offered you:
I have lost my turtledove;
I will go and find my love.
