Literary techniques

Question 1

Catharsis:

Answer 1

‘cleansing’; a resolution to
a problem which is satisfying

Question 1

Dramatic irony

Answer 1

When the audience knows something the characters don’t,

Question 2

Foreshadowing:

Answer 2

Hints about an event yet to occur

Question 2

Euphemism:

Answer 2

words which soften or avoid a topic; Macbeth uses these to avoid thinking about his murders

Question 3

Hamartia:

Answer 3

The fatal flaw that brings about tragedy,
corrupting/harming an otherwise ‘good’ character

Question 4

Hubris:

Answer 4

Excessive pride or self-confidence; in Greek theatre, it
would be punished as it was defying the gods

Question 5

Pathetic fallacy:

Answer 5

mirroring the mood or themes of a text in the natural world (weather and animals); when Macbeth disturbs
the natural order by murdering the King, animals and the
weather begin to act strangely too

Question 6

Prose:

Answer 6

Plain language (not using poetic patterns
and features)

Question 7

Tragedy:

Answer 7

Tragedy: Not simply a ‘sad’ story, in Ancient
Greece this was a specific category of drama that
featured a ‘good’ man experiencing a disaster due
to personal failing and/or fate

Question 8

Trochaic tetrameter:

Answer 8

a rhyme pattern of four
stressed and then unstressed syllables – contrasts
with the usual iambic pentameter that
Shakespeare uses; gives a dramatic and unnatural
feel to the Witches’ speech

Question 9

Soliloquy:

Answer 9

an actor speaking directly to the
audience; allows us to understand their
motivations and can lead the audience to feel
complicit in their actions