groundwork Flashcards
Petrachen sonnet key features
- made up of an octave and sextet
- abbaabba cdecde (although the sestet can follow other rhyme-schemes, such as cdcdcd)
- marked shift in the progression of the argument after the octet
allusion
A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification.
archaism
A word, expression, spelling, or phrase that is out of date in the common speech of an era, but still deliberately used by a writer, poet, or playwright for artistic purposes.
delineation
an outline, depiction, or portrayal
aphorisms
short statements of truth
colloquial
- usage informal or everyday language in literature
- can be words, phrases, or aphorisms
banalities
meaningless comments
conceit
- an elaborate or unusual comparison
- especially using unlikely metaphors, simile, hyperbole, and contradiction
dialogue
- oral exchange involving two or more characters
- a literary work that consists mainly or entirely of the speech of two or more characters
enjambment
A line having no pause or end punctuation but having uninterrupted grammatical meaning continuing into the next line.
mock-heroic (mock-epic or heroi-comic)
- typically satires or parodies that mock common classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature
- could put a fool in the role of the hero or exaggerate the heroic qualities to such a point that they become absurd
motif
- conspicuous recurring element
- such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula
narrative
- A story, whether fictional or true, in prose or verse, related by a narrator or narrators
- At times a frame recounts the telling of another narrative or story that thus “frames” the inner or framed narrative.
objective or detached narrators
- acting as “camera eye”
- reveal nothing of characters’ thoughts and feelings, but report only actions, dialogue and behaviour.
unreliable narrator
- causes the reader to view the account of events with suspicion
- (in contrast to a reliable narrator, whose judgment and narration the readers may trust)
intrusive narrator
- third-person narrator
- occasionally disrupts his or her narrative to speak directly to the reader or audience in direct address
parody
Imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to (usually) make fun of those same features.
persona
- voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story
- may or may not share the values of the actual author
- also called implied author.
quatrain
verse stanza of four lines, often rhyming abab
volta
The turning point in a sonnet.
allegory
any writing in verse or prose that has a double meaning
alliteration
Repetition of consonant sounds in close proximity
ambiguity
Any wording, action, or symbol that can be read in divergent ways.
assonance
- repetition of vowel sounds within a short passage of verse or prose
- (when the repeated sounds are consonants, use either consonance or the more familiar term alliteration)
ballad
- a poem that tells a story
- usually (but not always) in four-line stanzas called quatrains
- enormously diverse form, and a ballad may have any one of hundreds of different rhyme schemes and meters
- ‘ballad’ typically refers to the relatively short lyrical poems produced by European poets starting around the 13th century
blank verse
- metre most frequently used by Shakespeare
- unrhymed iambic pentameter
iambic pentameter
- a line of verse with five metrical feet (five sets of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables)
- each metrical ‘foot’ consists of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable - AN IAMB
platitude
- a dull or commonplace remark made as if it were a new idea
- a trite saying or cliche
- has moral content but is overused
caesura or caesurae
A pause separating phrases within lines of poetry–an important part of poetic rhythm.
characterisation
The presentation or delineation of a fictional personage.
cliche
- a saying, image, or idea which has been used so much that it sounds terribly uncreative
- the word ‘cliche’ was originally French for the sound of a printing plate, which prints the same thing over and over
- synonyms include platitudes and banalities.
devices
- a technique a writer uses to produce a special effect in their writing
- EG. a flashback or an analogy.
diction
The choice of a particular word as opposed to others.
didactic
- having the character or manner of a teacher or instructor
- instructive or perceptive
dramatic irony
Involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know.
dramatic monologue
A poem in which a poetic speaker addresses either the reader or an internal listener at length.
dramatic tension
- growing sense of expectation or feeling that the story is building up towards something exciting happening
ellipses (various uses)
- indicate that part of a sentence or word has been omitted
- a word or phrase is left out, or omitted, from a sentence
- omit larger spans of time
free indirect discourse
- special type of third-person narration that slips in and out of characters’ consciousness
- the characters’ thoughts, feelings, and words are filtered through the third-person narrator
hyperbole
exaggeration or overstatement
imagery
A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the “mental pictures” that readers experience with a passage of literature.
irony
Cicero referred to it as “saying one thing and meaning another.”
metaphor
A comparison or analogy stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking.
monosyllabic
- a word with only one syllable
- a person who uses short, abrupt words in conversation.
internal narrator
- a character within the work telling the story to an equally fictional auditor or listener
- internal narrators are usually first- or second-person narrators
external narrator
A narrator who is not a character.
omniscient narrator
can describe the inner thoughts and feelings of multiple characters
limited narrator
can relate the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of only one character (the central consciousness)
octave
- verse form consisting of eight lines of iambic pentameter
- most commonly abba abba
- the first part of a Petrarchan sonnet, which ends with a contrasting sestet
pace
- the speed at which a story is told—not necessarily the speed at which the story takes place
- often depends on the importance of a moment to the storyline
paradox
- using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense
- common ones seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions
- eg. fair is foul and foul is fair
pathetic fallacy
- attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human
- a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent.
pathos
- signifies a scene or passage designed to evoke the feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow in a reader or viewer.
personification
A trope in which abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are given human character, traits, abilities, or reactions.
perspective
- how the characters view and process what’s happening within the story
- point of view focuses on the type of narrator used to tell the story whereas this focuses on how this narrator perceives what’s happening within the story
protagonist
- hero or central character in a play
- Derived from the ancient Greek term protagonistes, meaning “leading actor.”
- in traditional drama, they often engage in conflicts with an antagonist
pun
a play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning
repetition
- the repeating of a word or phrase
- used to add emphasis and stress in writing and speech
- it can be a key tool for authors and speakers in developing style, tone, and rhythm
rhetoric
- art of persuasive argument through writing or speech
- the art of eloquence and charismatic language
rhyme
when two or more words or phrases contain an identical or similar vowel-sound, and the consonant-sounds that follow are identical or similar (red and dead)
feminine rhyme
occurs when two syllables are rhymed (‘mother | brother’)
half-rhyme
occurs when the final consonants are the same but the preceding vowels are not. (‘love | have’)
eye rhyme
- occurs when two syllables look the same but are pronounced differently ‘kind | wind’
- although sometimes changes in pronunciation have made what were formerly perfect rhymes become this
rime rhyme
- occurs when the same combination of sounds is used in each element of the rhyme, but where the two identical sounding words have different senses (‘maid | made’)
- this was in the medieval period regarded as a particularly perfect form of rhyme
leonine rhyme
occurs when the syllable immediately preceding the caesura rhymes with the syllable at the end of the line
rhythm
- a term designating the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse or prose
- different lines of verse can have the same metre but a different rhythm
- might differ by having a greater or lesser number of unstressed syllables intervening between the stressed syllables
satire
- “the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices.”
- the “or” in the definition is key - most are humorous, ironic, and exaggerated, but they only have to be one of these things to count as satire
setting
time and place of the action in a work of fiction
spacial setting
refers to the place or places in which action unfolds
temporal setting
the period in time in which action unfolds (thus the same as plot time)
general setting
the general time and place in which all the action unfolds
particular settings
- times and places in which individual episodes or scenes take place
- both general and specific settings include the cultural, economic, manufactured, natural, political, religious, social and temporal environment of a text, including everything that the characters know and own.
simile
- figure of speech involving a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ to draw the connection
- “My love is like a red, red rose.”
soliloquy
- a monologue uttered by a character alone onstage that provides insight into his or her thoughts
- common in plays from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century and is generally associated with Shakespeare’s works
- discarded by modern dramatists (instead focusing on realistic depictions)
sonnet
- earliest usage: ‘a short poem, often on the subject of love.’
- now almost always used to denote a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter
- two main forms of Sonnet: shakespearean and petrachen
Shakespearean sonnet
- rhymes abab cdcd efef gg
- three quatrains can be linked together in argument in a variety of ways, but often there is a ‘volta’ or turn in the course of the argument after the second quatrain
- the final couplet often provides an opportunity to sum up the argument of the poem with an epigram
epigram
a witty saying expressing a single thought or observation
vestigial/ly
very small remnant of something that was once greater or more noticeable
staging
- process of selecting, designing, adapting to, or modifying the performance space for a play or film
- stage set is usually indicated by the playwright, but the degree of detail and specificity of this rendering vary from one playwright to another and from one literary period to another
stance
- can be defined as the attitude that the writer has towards the topic of his or her message
- the stance that you take will greatly determine the tone of your message and the words that you choose
direct characterisation
occurs when the narrator explicitly tells what a character is like
stream of consciousness
- type of third- or first-person narration that replicates the thought processes of a character without much or any intervention by a narrator
- originally coined by the nineteenth-century American psychologist William James to describe the workings of the human mind and only later adopted to describe the type of narration that seeks to replicate this process
- technique is often associated with the influence of early psychologists like Freud
suspense
- state of mental uncertainty, anxiety, of being undecided, or of being doubtful
- anticipation of the outcome of a plot or of the solution to an uncertainty, puzzle, or mystery, particularly as it affects a character for whom one has sympathy
symbolism
- person, place, thing, or event that figuratively represents or stands for something else
- often the thing or idea represented is more abstract and general, and the symbol is more concrete and particular
traditional symbol
- recurs frequently in (and beyond) literature, making it immediately recognizable to those who belong to a given culture
- In Western literature and culture, for example, the rose and snake traditionally symbolize love and evil respectively
syntax
- a set of rules in a language
- dictates how words from different parts of speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought
theme
central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work
tragic hero
- type of character in a tragedy, usually the protagonist
- typically have heroic traits that earn them the sympathy of the audience, but also have flaws or make mistakes that ultimately lead to their own downfall
- eg. Shakespeare’s Macbeth: his fierce ambition, which makes him a compelling character, also leads directly to the tragedy of his death.
machiavellian
cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics (revenge tragedy)
indirect characterisation or indirect presentation
occurs when the narrative reveals a character’s trait/s implicitly, through his or her speech, behaviour, thoughts, appearance, and so on
an epigraph
a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme.
