Key terms

Question 1

Allegory

Answer 1

A rhetorical device that creates a close, one-to-one comparison. An allegorical comparison of 21st century Britain to a hive might point out that Britain and the hive have queens workers and soldiers.

Question 2

Burlesque

Answer 2

Satire that uses caricature.

Question 3

Colloquial

Answer 3

The informal language of conversation.

Question 4

Denouement

Answer 4

The culmination or result of an action, plan or plot.

Question 5

Diatribe

Answer 5

An impassioned rant or angry speech of denunciation.

Question 6

Empiricism

Answer 6

Basking in knowledge on direct, sensory perceptions of the world. Empirical means seeking out facts established by experience not theory.

Question 7

Foreground

Answer 7

To emphasise or make prominent.

Question 8

Form

Answer 8

The type of literary expression chosen by an author.

Question 9

Genre

Answer 9

A more precise definition of the different literary forms. There are general categories, such as poetry, drama, prose. There are specific categories within these larger divisions, so a sonnet is a specific genre within the larger genre of poetry.

Question 10

Hype

Answer 10

An attempt to deceive the public by over-rating the value of a commodity or experience.

Question 11

Hyperbole

Answer 11

The use of exaggeration for effect: ‘the most daring,prodigious death-defying feat attempted by man or woman in all human history!’

Question 12

Intertextuality

Answer 12

A term describing the many ways in which texts can be interrelated, ranging from direct quotation or echoing, to parody.

Question 13

Ludic

Answer 13

From the Latin word ‘ludo’, a game. A text that plays games with readers’ expectations and/or the expectations aroused by the text itself.

Question 14

Meta

Answer 14

From the Greek meaning ‘above or beyond’. Metaphysics’ is ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ physics. ‘Meta’ is often used in compound with words: metatext, metatheatre, etc. These words usually describe moments when a text goes beyond its own fictionality or makes readers/audience aware of the conventions of its fiction.

Question 15

Metaphor

Answer 15

A comparison that creates a direct correspondence.

Question 16

Modernism

Answer 16

The name given to experiments carried out in poetry, prose and art from around 1920-1939.

Question 17

Narrator/narrative voice

Answer 17

The voice that conveys the story. Includes first person narratives and third person narratives. Some stories are told by unreliable narrators, others by omniscient narrators.

Question 18

Oxymoron

Answer 18

Language device where two opposite words or meanings are used side by side.

Question 19

Parody

Answer 19

The reducing of another text to ridicule by hostile imitation.

Question 20

Pathetic Fallacy

Answer 20

The use of setting, scenery or weather to mirror the mood of a human activity. Two people having an argument whilst a storm breaks out is an example. The technique is used to make sure the feelings of readers or audience are moved.

Question 21

Poetic Justice

Answer 21

A literary version of the saying ‘hoist with his own petard’. The trapper is caught by the trap in an example of ironic but apt justice. Despite the word ‘poetic’, examples usually turn up in texts which are narrative and not necessarily poems.

Question 22

Point of view/viewpoint

Answer 22

A point of view is an opinion. A viewpoint can also be the foundation on which an opinion is based or, literally, a place from which a view can be enjoyed.

Question 23

Postmodernism

Answer 23

Texts that tend to be aware of their own artifice, be filled with intertextual allusions and ironic rather than sincere.

Question 24

Reportage

Answer 24

Reporting news but in literary criticism the word often means the inclusion of documentary material, or material which purports to be documentary, in a text.

Question 25

Satire

Answer 25

A distructive reduction of an idea, image, concept or text. It can employ exaggeration, mimicry, irony or tone.

Question 26

Semantics

Answer 26

The study of how words create meanings.

Question 27

Semantic field

Answer 27

The area of language from which a text draws most of its tropes.

Question 28

Signifier/Signified

Answer 28

Signifier: the indicator. Signified: the indicated.

Question 29

Stream of Conciousness

Answer 29

The removal of conventional sentence structures and grammar in an attempt to imitate the free flow of thoughts.

Question 30

Symbol

Answer 30

A symbol is more independent than a metaphor and less specific than an allegory. Where both have precise meanings or are ways of explaining a complex concept, symbols are often elusive in their exact meaning.

Question 31

Symbolism

Answer 31

The process of creating or detecting symbols within a work. Sometimes critics will talk of a text symbolising a larger concept or idea, irrespective of the author’s intention.

Question 32

Text

Answer 32

A Postmodernist concept designed to eradicate distinction between literary genres. some forms of Postmodernism collapse all types of human experience, including history, into text.

Question 33

Transgressive

Answer 33

The crossing of a boundary of culture or taste, usually with a subversive intention.

Question 34

Trope

Answer 34

Any of the devices whereby art language differentiates itself from functional language.

Question 35

Valorise

Answer 35

To invest with value.

Question 36

Writing Back

Answer 36

A term which describes the appropriation of a text or genre and rewriting in response. This is a technique frequently employed in Post-colonial writers or feminist writers.