Popular UIL Literary Terms Flashcards
Alliteration
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
ex. Sally sold seashells by the seashore.
Anaphora
When a certain word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of clauses or sentences that follow each other.
ex. Every single day you let me down. Every single day you make me mad. Every single day you do such silly things!
Allusion
A reference to something else.
ex. Ah, Krusty – this is your Waterloo! (Sideshow Bob, The Simpsons)This is an allusion to the Battle of Waterloo, where Napoleon Bonaparte suffered a crushing defeat from which he would never recover.
Consonance
The combination of consistently copied consonants! It’s when the same consonant sound appears repeatedly in a line or sentence, creating a rhythmic effect.
ex. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! (V for Vendetta)
Chiasmus
It refers to a grammatical structure that inverts a previous phrase. That is, you say one thing, and then you say something very similar, but flipped around.
ex. Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty.
Controlling Image
A literary device employing repetition so as to stress the theme of a work or a particular symbol.
Assonance
Is the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds within words, phrases, or sentences.
ex. She seems to beam rays of sunshine with her eyes of green.
Augustan Age
A style of British literature produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II in the first half of the 18th century and ending in the 1740s; predominance of satire. People: poets, Alexander Pope and John Dryden writers, Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison
Ballad
A ballad is a poem that tells a story, usually (but not always) in four-line stanzas called quatrains.
Beat Generation
They saw runaway capitalism as destructive to the human spirit and antithetical to social equality. In addition to their dissatisfaction with consumer culture, the Beats railed against the stifling prudery of their parents’ generation. The taboos against frank discussions of sexuality were seen as unhealthy and possibly damaging to the psyche.
People:Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and William S. Burroughs.
Colonial Period
Colonial literature is the body of creative work produced by the early American colonists. These works include the personal, emotional poetry of Anne Bradstreet, the jeremiads produced by preachers like Increase Mather and Jonathan Edwards, and the popular Indian captivity narratives. Puritans wrote poetry and sermons in the service of God, and explorers and adventurers wrote tracts on their discoveries in hopes of obtaining funding and political support. Colonial leaders, aware that they were creating a new land with a new history, carefully recorded everything that occurred in their new homes. When printing presses arrived, their owners published broadsides, pamphlets and sermons. The high-selling Indian captivity narratives perhaps represent the first wholly American genre of writing.
Dactyl
one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
ex. / U U / U U
All in the valley of death
Conceit
It is used to refer to an extended rhetorical device that speaks to a situation that does not exist or does so rarely, but all the same, is needed for the story to go on. When a poet makes use of a “conceit” they are able to compare two, unlike things in a surprising way.
Broken Rhyme
A type of rhyme occurs when a poet cuts a word in half to create a rhyme.
ex.When he walks in waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, “He’s gone out in his night-
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!”
Caesura (pronounced see-ZOO-ra)
Refers to a break or pause in the middle of a line of verse.
ex. To be or not to be, || that is the question (William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”) (not always pointed out)
