Honors 12 Common Literary Terms List #1

Question 1

Allegory

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Alliteration

Answer 2

The repetition at close intervals of initial identical consonant sounds. Or, vowel sounds in successive words or syllables that repeat.

Question 3

Allusion

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

Ambiguity

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

Anachronism

Answer 5

Assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence, e.g. the watch Merlyn wore in The Once and Future King.

Question 6

Analogy

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

Anecdote

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

Angst

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

Annotation

Answer 9

Explanatory notes added to a text to explain, cite sources, or give bibliographic data(by the author or student).

Question 10

Antithesis

Answer 10

A balancing of two opposite or contrasting words, phrases, or clauses.

Question 11

Apostrophe

Answer 11

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.”

Question 12

Archetype

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

Aside

Answer 13

A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on stage.

Question 14

Assonance

Answer 14

Repetition of a vowel sound within two or more words in close proximity. “Fake” and “lake” denote rhyme; “lake” and “fate” demonstrate assonance.

Question 15

Bandwagon

Answer 15

Trying to establish that something is true because everyone believes it is true.

Question 16

Catharsis

Answer 16

The process by which an unhealthy emotional state produced by an imbalance of feeling is this corrected and emotional health is restored.

Question 17

Characterization

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

Concrete language

Answer 18

Language that describes specific, observable things, people or places, rather than ideas or qualities.

Question 19

Connotation

Answer 19

Rather than the dictionary definition, the associations associated by a word. Implied meaning rather than literal meaning or denotation.

Question 20

Consonance

Answer 20

Repetition of a consonant sound with two or more words in close proximity.

Question 21

Deduction

Answer 21

A form of reasoning that begins with a generalization, then applies the generalization to a specific case or cases.

Question 22

Diction

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Didactic

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Digression

Answer 24

A temporary departure from the main subject in speaking or writing.

Question 25

Dramatic irony

Answer 25

When the reader is aware of an inconsistency between a fictional or nonfictional characters perception of the situation and the truth of that situation.

Question 26

Elegy

Answer 26

A formal sustained poem lamenting the death of a particular person

Question 27

Emotional appeal

Answer 27

When a writer appeals to and audiences emotions (Often through “pathos”)to excite and involve them in the argument

Question 28

Ennui

Answer 28

A persistent feeling of tiredness or weariness which often afflicts existential man, often manifesting as boredom.

Question 29

Epigraph

Answer 29

A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of a theme. One found at the beginning of John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign; that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.” - Jonathan Swift.

Question 30

Epiphany

Answer 30

A major characters moment of realization or awareness.