M List Literary Devices Flashcards
now extremely rare, this genre of lush spectacle, song, dance, masks, and elaborate staging was popular among 16th and 17th century British nobles, who also made up its amateur and occasionally royal cast
masque
a type of drama related to tragedy but featuring sensational incidents, emphasizing plot at the expense of characterization, relying on cruder conflicts (virtuous protagonist vs villainous antagonist), and having a happy ending in which good triumphs over evil
melodrama
a figure of speech in which an implicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike; it may take one of the following forms: 1) that in which the literal and figurative term are both named, 2) that in which the literal term is named and the figurative term is implied, 3) that in which the literal term is implied and the figurative term is named; 4) that in which both the literal and figurative terms are implied
metaphor
a literary device that sets up a striking analogy between two entities that would not usually invite comparison, often drawing connections between the physical and the spiritual
metaphysical conceit
the formal, regular organization of stressed and unstressed syllables, measured in feet, in metrical verse
meter
a figure speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or an idea
metonymy
departures from the basic metrical pattern
metrical variations
a style in prose or verse that emphasizes economy of words and unadorned sentences
minimalism
a movement of writers who reached their apex between the 1920s and 1930s and expressed views of disillusionment with contemporary Western civilization, especially in the wake of WWI’s mindless slaughter; rejecting the conventions of the Victorian era, these writers experimented with form and took insights from recent writings by Freud and Jung about the unconscious; they viewed art as restorative and frequently ordered their writing around symbols and allusions
Modernism
a speech by a single character without another character’s response
monologue
a metrical line containing one foot
monometer
synonymous with atmosphere; the feeling created for the reader by a work of literature many things can generate it, esp. style, tone, and setting
mood
a rule of conduct or maxim for living expressed or implied as the point of a literary work
moral
a recurring pattern of images, words, or symbols that reveals a theme in work or literature
motif
the incentives or goals that, in combination with the inherent nature of characters, cause them to behave as they do
motivation
