Honors 12 Common Literary Terms List #1 Flashcards
Allegory
A narrative or description having a second meaning beneath the surface one. A story, fictional or nonfiction in which characters things and events represent qualities or concepts. The interaction of these characters, things, events is meant to reveal an obstruction or a truth. These characters, etc. maybe symbolic of the ideas referred to.
Alliteration
The repetition at close intervals of initial identical consonant sounds. Or, vowel sounds in successive words or syllables that repeat.
Allusion
And indirect reference to something (usually a literary text) with which the reader is expected to be familiar. Allusions are usually literary, historical, medical, or mythological.
Ambiguity
An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way. Also, the manner of expression of such an event or situation may be ambiguous. Artful language may be ambiguous.Unintentional ambiguity is usually vegan us.
Anachronism
Assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence, e.g. the watch Merlyn wore in The Once and Future King.
Analogy
And analogy is a comparison to a directly parallel case. When a writer uses an analogy, he or she argues that a claim reasonable for one case is reasonable for the analogous case.
Anecdote
A brief recounting of a relevant episode. Anecdotes or often inserted into fictional or nonfictional texts as a way of developing a point or injecting humor.
Angst
A term used in existential criticism to describe both the individual and the collective anxiety-neurosis of the period following the Second World War. This feeling of anxiety, dread, or anguish is notably present in the works of writers like Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.
Annotation
Explanatory notes added to a text to explain, cite sources, or give bibliographic data(by the author or student).
Antithesis
A balancing of two opposite or contrasting words, phrases, or clauses.
Apostrophe
An address to the dead as if living; to the inanimate as if animate; to the absent as if present; to the unborn as if alive. Examples: “O Julius Caesar thou are mighty yet; thy spirit walks abroad,” or “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll.”
Archetype
A term borrowed by psychologist Carl Jung who described archetypes as “primordial images” formed by repeated experiences in the lives of our ancestors, inherited in the “collective unconscious” of the human race and expressed in myths, religion, dreams, fantasies, and literature. These “images” of character, plot pattern, symbols recur in literature and evoke profound emotional responses in the reader because they resonate with an image already existing in our unconscious mind, e.g. death, rebirth.
Aside
A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on stage.
Assonance
Repetition of a vowel sound within two or more words in close proximity. “Fake” and “lake” denote rhyme; “lake” and “fate” demonstrate assonance.
Bandwagon
Trying to establish that something is true because everyone believes it is true.
Catharsis
The process by which an unhealthy emotional state produced by an imbalance of feeling is this corrected and emotional health is restored.
Characterization
The method an author uses to develop characters in a work. In direct characterization, the author straightforwardly states the characters traits. With indirect characterization, those traits or implied through what the character says, it does, how the character dresses, interacts with other characters , etc.
Concrete language
Language that describes specific, observable things, people or places, rather than ideas or qualities.
Connotation
Rather than the dictionary definition, the associations associated by a word. Implied meaning rather than literal meaning or denotation.
Consonance
Repetition of a consonant sound with two or more words in close proximity.
Deduction
A form of reasoning that begins with a generalization, then applies the generalization to a specific case or cases.
Diction
Word choice, particularly as an element of style. Different types and arrangement of words have significant effects on meaning. an essay written academic diction, for example, would be much less colorful, but perhaps more precise, than street slang.
Didactic
A term used to describe fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model or a correct behavior or thinking.
Digression
A temporary departure from the main subject in speaking or writing.
