Literary terms and devices Flashcards
Alter Ego
Represents another personality
Analogy
compare 2 things
Anaphora
Repetition at beginning
Antithesis
Parallel structure with opposing ideas
Asyndeton
Use no Conjunctions
Bildungsroman
coming of age
Characterization
author creates character
commercial fiction
pop fiction, profitable
Diction
word choice
Ellipsis
dropped word (often in repetition)
Epistrophe
Repetition at end
Exposition
Beginning of story
Incongruity
Things don’t seem to go together
In medias res
start in middle of things
Irony
twist on expected
Juxtaposition
Side by Side for comparision
Literary analysis
break down and consider devices
Literary criticism
interpretation of analysis
Literary Fiction
explores human condition
Litotes
understatement to show how big it is
Lyric/Lyrical
type of poem- emotion, praises nature and God
Mood
atmosphere or feeling
Motif
re-occuring idea
Narrative
Poem
Parallel Structure
grammatical similarities
Polysyndeton
use many conjuntions
Prose
ex novel
Satire
Point out flaws to improve them- humor irony
Schemes
arrangement in sentencess
Syntax
Sentence Structure
Themes
Universal Truth
Tone
Attitude from Narrator or author
Tropes
Figures of Speech - metaphor, irony, understatement, overused
Verse
Poetry
Apothesis
made holy
Enjamnent
run on line like in poetry
refrain
repeated line (chorus in song)
deux ex machina
improbable rescue
Romanticism
Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850
Gothic Literature
Gothic fiction, which is largely known by the genre of Gothic horror and gothic fiction, is a genre or mode of literature and film that combines fiction, horror, death and romance.
Apostrophe
when a speaker directly addresses someone or something like love, a person (dead or alive), a place, or even a thing, like the sun or the sea.
Doppelganger
an apparition or double of a living person. also alter ego
Epistolary
relating to or denoting the writing of letters or literary works in the form of letters. ex: Frankenstein
Caricature
A picture, description, or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.
Hyperbole
exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
Double Entendre
a word or phrase open to two interpretations, one of which is usually risqué or indecent.
Paralepsis
to omit or to leave something on one side. It is defined as a rhetorical device in which an idea is deliberately suggested through a brief treatment of a subject, while most of the significant points are omitted.
ex: not to mention…
Metonymy
The substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant
Rhetorical Climax
a figure of speech in which words, phrases, or clauses are arranged in order of increasing importance.
Chiasmus
figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism.
X
Tricolon
rhetorical device that employs a series of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses.
Inverted Syntax
Inverted syntax occurs when lines do not follow traditional sentence patterns, for example when the subject and verb or the object and subject are reversed.
Periodic Structure/syntax
Subject and verb placed near the end of the sentence
Unreliable Narrator
Narrator whose credibility has been seriously compromised
Point of View
the narrator’s position in relation to the story being told.
Allegory
a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
ex: parable
Synecdoche
a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa
