Romeo and Juliet Key Words Flashcards
A play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, normally ending with the downfall of the main character.
Tradegy (Greek)
The protagonist of a tragic story, in which, despite their virtuous and sympathetic traits and ambitions, they ultimately meet defeat, suffering, or even an untimely end. They are often imperfect and typically have some sort of fatal flaw.
Tragic protagonists
A character in a story who is presented as the main enemy of the protagonist
Antagonist
The use of a single metaphor at length in a work of literature. It is from a mere metaphor in its length, and has more than one single comparison between the subject described and the object used to describe it.
Extended metaphor
A monologue addressed to oneself, thoughts spoken out loud to the audience.
Soliloquy
A dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience or another character on stage showing that other characters cannot hear them.
Aside
Excessive pride or self-confidence or (in Greek Tragedy) excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.
Hubris
A characters fatal flaw
Hamartia
The process of releasing, and providing relief from strong or repressed emotions.
Catharsis
A literary device by which the audience’s or reader’s understanding of events or individuals in a play is greater than that of its characters.
Dramatic irony
A long speech by one actor in a play or film.
Monologue
Having strong romantic feelings toward another person who does not feel the same way.
Unrequited love
A highly conventionalized medieval tradition of love between a knight and a married noblewoman, first started by the troubadours of southern France and extensively used in European literature of the time.
Courtley love
Liable to change rapidly and unpredictably, especially for the worse.
Volatile
Arousing or characterized by intense feeling.
Emotional
Done quickly and without thought or care.
Impetuous
The sense of being “manly” and self-reliant.
Machismo
A person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else.
Antithesis
a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable, for example Two households, both alike in dignity.
Iambic pentameter
A poem of fourteen lines typically having ten syllables per line.
Sonnet
When two or more characters share a line between them.
Shared lines
A rhyming pair of successive lines of verse
Rhyming couplets
The leading character or one of the major characters in a play/film/novel
Protagonist
Written or spoken language in its ordinary form without rythm or rhyme.
Prose
