Literary Terms Flashcards
writing which tells about imaginary characters and events (short stories, novels, etc.)
FICTION
writing which tells about real events. Examples of nonfiction literature are scientific publications, textbooks, articles in newspapers, biographies, documentary stories, etc.
NON-FICTION
GENRE
a division or a type of literature
a story written to be performed in the theatre; the script (the text) consists of a dialog and stage directions
DRAMA
Poems/verses are generally divided into lines and stanzas (several lines joint together), they often employ rhythm and rhyme.
POETRY
ordinary form of written language (neither drama, nor poetry). Thus, only this can be described as fiction - nonfiction.
PROSE
a drama in which the major character is overcome by some superior force or circumstance; excites terror or pity
TRAGEDY
a drama that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone and that usually contains a happy resolution of the thematic conflict.
COMEDY
– a play which is neither a tragedy, nor a comedy
DRAMA
a play, characterized by exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, and interpersonal conflicts; it makes you cry a lot in a happy way
MELODRAMA
light, humorous play that uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, and violent horseplay. Farce is generally regarded as intellectually and aesthetically inferior to comedy in its crude characterizations and implausible plots, but it has remained popular from ancient times to the present
FARCE
– a prosaic work which one should be able to read in one sitting (up to about 20 pages)
SHORT STORY
an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction
NOVEL
a short prose tale often characterized by moral teaching or satire; it is usually longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel
NOVELLA
- a piece of short prose fiction. The distinction between a noveletteand other literary forms is usually based upon word count, with a novelette being longer than a short story, but shorter than a novella.
NOVELLETTE
a form of nonfiction in which a person tells his or her own life story. Besides autobiographies we speak about autobiographical stories / novels, which are based on the writer’s experience, but are fiction works (e.g., “Caleb’s Brother” by James Baldwin).
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
a form of nonfiction in which a writer tells the life story of another person
BIOGRAPHY
is a form of nonfiction in which a writer tells stories about meeting famous people and his / her participation in important events.
MEMOIRS
a specific unity of features of language (writing) used for some definite purpose / in some definite situation
FUNCTIONAL STYLE
can be used in any situation and for any purpose. It applies everyday vocabulary, without stylistic devices or terminology, e.g.“This autumn the weather is changeable” or “Some students are lazy.”
NEUTRAL STYLE
STYLISTICALLY MARKED LANGUAGE is characterized by the usage of:
- colloquial vocabulary or slang (e.g. Hey, guy, what are you sniffing here?)
- archaic and poetic words (e.g., His foes pursued him.)
- terminology (Attention deficit problem is more typical of male than of female students.)
- stylistic devices (He looked at the sad pale moon.)
It involves: conversational – literary (high-flown), scientific, business, mass-media functional styles.
is characterized by usage of colloquial vocabulary or slang, e.g.He kicked the bucket (=died) last night.
CONVERSATIONAL STYLE
is characterized by usage of archaic and poetic words, e.g.Thou shalt not kill. (= You shouldn’t kill).
HIGHLY-LITERARY / HIGHFLOWN STYLE
are characterized by usage of terminology and clichés, e.g.Nokia, the largest cellphone maker in the world, said Thursday that it would cut 1,800 jobs as it tries to streamline operations and speed up delivery of new software and better Web services for its besieged smartphones. The job cuts, which amount to 3 percent of the core work force, came as Nokia, the leader in basic cellphones and smartphones, reported third-quarter earnings of €529 million, or $742 million, a figure that was much better than expected.
SCIENTIFIC, BUSINESS AND NEWSPAPER (MASS-MEDIA) STYLES
manner in which most fiction (prose) is written. It combines neutral style with application of some stylistic devices, e.g.The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few.
COLLOQUIAL-LITERARY STYLE
improper style, characterized by abuse of learned (scientific) and high-flown /archaic vocabulary, when the situation does not require it
POMPOVERBOSITY
is composed orally and then passed from person to person by word of mouth. Main folklore literary genres are fables, fairy tales, myths and legends.
FOLKLORE (ORAL TRADITION)
a brief story, usually with animal characters, that teaches a lesson or a moral. They may be folk (people’s) or literary. Aesop in Ancient Greece, Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani in Georgia, La Fontaine in France, Krilov in Russia, James Thurber in the US, Hoca Nasrettin (Nasreddin) in Turkey are famous for their fables.
FABLE
stories that deal with magic and adventures. They also may be folk or literary.
Some folk fairy tales are known under the name of a person who wrote them down (Charlez Perrault, Brothers Grimm). Authors of famous literary fairy tales are Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde.
FAIRY TALES
a fictional tale that explains the actions of gods or heroes or the origins of elements of nature.Myths are part of the oral tradition, such as the myth about Prometheus (Georgian version is Amirani). Some fiction has also been created based on folk myths (e.g., “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Longfellow) or imitating folk myths.
MYTH
a widely told story about the past, one that may or may not have a foundation in fact.Every culture has its own legends - its familiar, traditional stories, e.g., the legend of how Tbilisi was founded or the legend about King Arthur and his knights of the round table.
LEGEND
highly imaginative writing that contains a whole system of elements not found in real life.Many science fiction stories contain elements of fantasy. “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings”, for instance, are fantasies.
FANTASY
a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation. While fables and fairy tales as literary genres contain allegories, allegory is not a literary genre, but a stylistic device.
ALLEGORY
was first used by the psychologist William James in 1890 to refer to the unbroken flow of thought and awareness in the human mind. As a literary term, ‘stream of consciousness’ refers to any attempt by a writer to represent the conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions in the mind of a character. This technique takes the reader inside the narrating character’s mind, where he sees the world of the story through the thoughts and senses of the focal character.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
At the beginning of the 20th century some authors developed a stream of consciousness technique. The term is borrowed from drama, where ‘monologue’ refers to the part in a play where an actor expresses his inner thoughts aloud to the audience. The interior monologue represents an attempt to transcribe a character’s thoughts, sensations and emotions. In order to faithfully represent the rhythm and flow of consciousness, the writer often disregards traditional grammar, punctuation, and logical connections. He does not interfere to guide the reader or to impose narrative order on the often confused, and confusing, mental processes.
INTERNAL MONOLOGUE
IT refers to the showing of the Christ child to the Magi, and is used by Christian philosophers to signify a manifestation of the presence of God in the world. James Joyce adopted this term and used it to refer to remarkable moments of sudden insight, when a trivial gesture, external object or banal situation leads a character to a better understanding of himself and the reality surrounding him. Joyce believed that the writer’s main task was to record these special moments. IT has become the standard literary term to refer to the sudden revelation or self-realization which frequently occurs in modern poetry or fiction.
EPIPHANY
the direction in the literary theory, developed in England at the end of the in the beginning of the 20th century, and which deals solely with the meaning of the texts of literary works.
PRACTICAL CRITICISM
PRACTICAL CRITICISM IS BASED ON
LIBERAL HUMANISM, which sees the individual – the subject, as not determined and defined by social and economic circumstances, but as fundamentally free. We create ourselves, and our destiny, through the choices we make.
it is primarily oriented towards the form of literature. While Practical Criticism focused on the individual meaning of individual texts, Formalism wanted to discover general laws (form), making literary texts. Originated in Russia in 1910s-1920s.
FORMALISM
is a straightforward account of something, it tells us what actually happened.
FABULA
the story in its whole complexity (manipulation of fabula), the story as it is actually told.
SYUZHET (PLOT)
says that a literary text is a structure in which all the elements are interrelated and interdependent. There is nothing in a literary work that can be seen and studied in isolation. If Formalists focused on the elements, which distinguished literary texts from non-literature, for the Structuralists everything played a role in what a text was and did. Originated in Prague, Czech Republic, after 1925.
sSTRUCTURALISM.
later type of structuralism, which employs the linguistic approach as its basic tool.
FRENCH STRUCTURALISM
MARXIST CRITICISM
interested in issues of class and social exploitation and especially attentive to the cultural mechanisms (and their literary versions) that keep people unaware of their exploited status.
LITERARY FEMINISM
calls attention to the pervasive male bias that we find throughout Western history. It has rediscovered forgotten or marginalized female writers and established a history of writing by women.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN CRITICISM
has rediscovered forgotten or marginalized black writing. It has sought to establish a specially black tradition in writing that is not only thematically, but also stylistically different from writing by white Americans.
NEW CRITICISM
is the type of literary criticism, which developed in Anglo-American world in the 1940s-1950s, which focuses solely on the form and content of textual information of literary texts.
stylistic devices based on sentence structure; they deal with non-standard grammatical forms, some deviations from grammatical norms used by the author to emphasize some emotions, etc.
GRAMMATICAL STYLISTIC DEVICES
is non-standard word order. Contrary to grammatical inversion (e.g., inversion used to form a question: He is a student. Is he a student?), stylistic inversion is used to emphasize some words, e.g. “About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar turned up to his ears, hurried across from the opposite side of the street. ” (From “After twenty years” by O.Henry). The normal order would be “He waited about twenty minutes…”
INVERSION
is a question that does not require an answer. However, they say that rhetorical questions make the speech more interactive. That is why orators often use them.
RHETORICAL QUESTION
is omission of some words in the sentence. Elliptical sentences are typical for informal conversation. Sometimes authors use ellipsis and just grammatical mistakes to stress that the speaker is not very educated or too excited to speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences, e.g. “It’s an appointment made twenty years ago. Sounds a little funny to you, doesn’t it? ” (From “After twenty years” by O.Henry). (It should normally be “It sounds a little funny…” This sentence is also an example of a rhetorical question.
ELLIPSIS
the use, more than once, of any element of language - a sound, word, phrase, clause, or sentence
REPETITION
repetition of a grammatical pattern, while the words are changed
PARALLELISM
is repetition in reversed order: “He came back,… back came he”
CHIASMUS
alliteration (repetition of consonants)
PHONETIC REPETITION
(ASYNDETON
The repeated or the enumerated words (or clauses) can be joined without any conjunctions
POLYSYNDETON
THE REPEATED OR THE ENUMERATED WORDS CAN BE JOINED with too many linking elements
is a break in narration; the introductory words are usually separated from the rest of the story by commas or hyphens, e.g., “And then Cal Harkness, probably reasoning that further pursuance of the controversy would give a too decided personal flavor to the feud, suddenly disappeared from the relieved Cumberlands, baulking the avenging hand of Sam, the ultimate opposing Folwell.” (“Squaring the Circle” by O.Henry). It can also be an unfinished sentence: “‘Well, I lay if I get hold of you I’ll–’(“Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain).
APOSIOPESIS
CLIMAX (OF A SENTENCE)
is three or more (almost) synonymous words, increasing in power,
ANTITHESIS
is usage of two antonyms
LITOTES
is double negation used for a positive feature
DIALOG (DIALOGUE)
is two (or more) people speaking to each other. In theatre dialog is the words spoken by the actors.
SOLILOQUY
is when a character speaks aloud to himself. The playwright uses soliloquy to convey directly to the audience the character’s motives, intentions and his innermost feelings and thoughts.
usually printed in italics, tell how the actors should look, move, and speak. They also describe the setting and effects of sound and lighting.
STAGE DIRECTIONS
an eight-line stanza
OCTAVE
a seven-line stanza
HEPTASTICH
a six-line stanza
SESTET
