Literary Gems Flashcards
allusion
An indirect reference, often to a person, event, statement, theme, or work.
ambiguity
Lack of clarity or uncertainty in meaning. A word, phrase, statement, or passage is ambiguous when it can be understood or interpreted in more than one way.
anachronism
Something outside of its proper historical time period.
analogy
Essentially, when a comparison is being made to clarify understanding.
anecdote
A brief account of some interesting or entertaining and often humorous incident.
antithesis
When two ideas are directly opposed.
archetype
Images, figures, character types, settings, and story patterns that are universally shared by people across cultures and time.
cliché
An expression used so often that it has become hackneyed and has lost its original impact.
imagery
Refers to the corpus of images used in text and the language used to convey a visual picture.
irony
A contradiction or incongruity between appearance or expectation and reality. Irony can be verbal or structural.
microcosm
When something large is represented by something smaller; a kind of symbolism
mood
The prevailing emotion(s) of a work.
objectivity
Associated with external reality, and thus with empirical fact and absolute truth.
paradox
A statement that seems self-contradictory or nonsensical on the surface but that, upon closer examination, may express an underlying truth.
style
The way in which a literary work is written.
