Lit Vocab Flashcards
Anecdote
a short story that is significant to the situation or conversation
Apostrophe
a rhetorical device through which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person (or even an object!); often found in elegiac poetry or odes
Diction
a writer’s choice of words in a literary text
Iambic pentameter
a type of metric line that has ten syllables, with one stressed and one unstressed (lamb)
Irony
when a moment of dialogue or plot contradicts the audience’s expectations of what it is supposed to mean or what is expected to occur (especially when the opposite happens)
Juxtaposition
placing two or more ideas, images, or people side by side for contrast
Pastoral
writing that idealizes shepherds and a perceived innocence and idleness about their lives
Petrachan sonnet
a sonnet that is divided into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines) and avoids the final rhyming couplet found in a Shakespearean sonnet
Phenomenology
a philosophy that interrogates the meaning of the lived experience of human beings, especially the study of consciousness from a first-person perspective
Praxis
action or practice, as opposed to theory
Reverie
the dreamy state of being lost in thought
Semiotics
the study of linguistic signs and symbols and their interpretation in writing and other modes of communication
Solarpunk
movement that arose in the 2010s with an aim at solving ecological and social injustices brought on by climate change in a hopeful way
Stream-of-consciousness
a flowing, typically unpunctuated representation of a characters thought in the immediate moment; often featured as an internal monologue
Quatrain
a stanza of four lines in poetry
Polysyndeton
the repeated use of conjunctions (i.e. “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night”)
Petroculture
a term that encompasses the ways by which post-industrial society is shaped by oil in physical, material, and philosophical ways
Passive voice
the subject is acted upon; he or she receives the action expressed by the verb (i.e. “the house is being painted by Anna”) and often results in lifeless writing
Motif
distinctive repeated feature or idea (i.e. the wicked stepmother might be assumed evil by relationship alone)
Metonymy
a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept (i.e. “I need a hand” or “Swear loyalty to the crown”)
Maxim
a short, easily remembered expression of a basic principal, truth, or rule of conduct (i.e. “birds of a feather flock together” or “actions speak louder than words”)
Litotes
form of understatement in which sentiment is expressed ironically by negating its contrary (i.e. “she’s not ugly” or “I am not unfamiliar with poetry”)
Internal (interior) monologue
narrative technique that allows a reader to hear the thoughts of a character
Foil
a character that contrasts with another character; often used to highlight traits of the protagonist, which also turn out to be part of the antagonist (i.e. yin and yang)
Edwardian Era
follows the Victorian Age; key writers include Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, and Rudyard Kipling
Dramatic Irony
when the audience has information the character is unaware of
Denotation
the objective and literal dictionary definition of a word; the opposite of connotation (i.e. saying someone is pushy because they literally pushed someone)
Oxymoron
when contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. “a deafening silence” or “bittersweet”)
Semiotics
the interpretation of signs and symbols
Complex sentence
a sentence with one independent clause and at least one dependent clause
Compound-complex sentence
a sentence with multiple independent clauses and at least one dependent clause
Compound sentence
a sentence with two independent clauses joined by a FANBOYS conjunction
Connotation
an additional idea or emotion that is connected with its word, as opposed to its dictionary definition; used to make a noun sound positive or negative (i.e. “a cheap Valentine’s gift” vs. “an inexpensive Valentine’s gift”)
Chiasmus
a reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses, but with no repetition of words (which can use synonyms) (i.e. “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” or “who dates yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!”)
Chumash
several groups of Native American peoples from the Central and Southern coasts of California and Santa Barbara Islands
Catharsis
the use of strong feelings in literature to leave the effect of the purification of those emotions (think Schindler’s List or any film/book that leaves you with heavy feelings)
Bloomsbury Group
English group of early twentieth century writers that included Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E.M Forster, and John Maynard Keynes
Asyndeton
conjunctions (and, but, or) are intentionally omitted (i.e. “live, laugh, love”)
Assonance
the repetition of a vowel sound in adjacent or closely connected words (i.e. “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain” or “hear the mellow welling bells”)
Anachronism
something belonging or appropriate to a time period other than that exists, especially something that is conspicuously old-fashioned
Anecdote
a short story significant to the situation or conversation; typically narrated to convey a point
Antithesis
a contrast or opposite of subjects, items, adjectives, or verbs (i.e. “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” or “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”)
Archetype
a very typical example of a certain person or thing (i.e. a wizard character introduces a challenge)
Anaphora
the repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses (i.e. “Ein volk! Ein Reich! Ein Fuhrer!”
Aphorism
a concise, terse, iconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle (i.e. “a man is a child of his father” or “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”)
Allusion
relies on the reader’s assumed knowledge of history or pop culture (i.e. “as shiny as Dorothy’s red shoes”)
Active voice
subject of the sentence performs the action; the more direct and preferred style of writing (i.e. “Kathy ate a cake” or “Adrian drove down the street”)
Satire
any type of literary work or part of a literary work that uses humor or ridicule to mock, expose, or criticize a human or societal failing
Simple Sentence
a sentence with one independent clause with no conjunction or dependent clause
Sonnet
a lyrical poem composed of 14 rhyming lines
Situational irony
the opposite of what is expected to actually happen; often used for humorous purposes or to mock the circumstances of an event
Synedoche
type of metonymy that uses a part of something to refer to its whole or vice versa (i.e. “check out my new wheels!” or “prison headcount”)
Syntax
the set of rules that determines the arrangement of words in a sentence (i.e. in English, we use subject-verb-object word order)
Verbal irony
when someone says the opposite of what they really feel or mean; often aligned with sarcasm (i.e. saying “thanks a lot” or “my day is sunshine”)
Verisimilitude
the idea that literature should somehow be true to reality; typically seen in works of realistic fiction where characters don’t fly and rain pours vertically
Volta
an Italian term for the “turn” in mood in a sonnet; placement is determined by the type of sonnet
