Literary Terms 13

Question 0

Formalist criticism

Answer 0

Approach to literature that focuses on formal elements of work: language, structure, tone, examination between relationship of text’s form and meaning

Question 1

Cultural criticism

Answer 1

Approach to literature that focuses on historical and social/religious/economic/political content of work

Question 2

Modernism

Answer 2

• Literature that challenged traditional attitudes about God, humanity, society
• Alienation, despair, loss of individual to machine

Question 3

Stream-of-consciousness

Answer 3

• Narrative technique that takes reader inside character’s mind to reveal perceptions, thoughts, feelings on conscious or unconscious level
• Suggests flow of though and content

Question 4

Epiphany

Answer 4

In fiction, when character suddenly experiences deep revelation about himself or herself; truth grasped in ordinary moment

Question 5

Post-modernism

Answer 5

• Form of literature marked by reliance on literary conventions (fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators)
• major themes are alienation due to race, gender, sexual orientation, intolerance, political and social oppression

Question 6

Imagery

Answer 6

Language that appeals to senses, suggesting mental pictures of sights, smells, tastes, feelings, or actions conveying emotion or mood

Question 7

Mood

Answer 7

Dominant feeling in piece of literature; typically emotional quality of scene of setting

Question 8

Motif

Answer 8

Recurring element, image, idea, in work of literature whose repetition emphasizes some aspect of the work

Question 9

Time

Answer 9

Author’s implicit attitude toward reader or people, places, events in work revealed by elements of author’s style