T-Z

Question 1

the art of “shaped” poems in which the visual force is supposed to work spiritually or magically.

Answer 1

technopaegnia

Question 2

the time of a story, poem, or play.

Answer 2

temporal setting

Question 3

a verse form consisting of three-line stanzas in which the second line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third of the next.

Answer 3

terza rima

Question 4

a line of poetry with four feet: “The Grass | divides | as with | a comb” (Dickinson).

Answer 4

tetrameter

Question 5

rhymed pairs of lines that contain (in classical iambic, trochaic, and anapestic verse) four measures of two feet or (in modern English verse) four metrical feet.

Answer 5

tetrameter couplet

Question 6

(1) a generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work; (2) the statement a poem makes about its subject.

Answer 6

theme

Question 7

a character, “he” or “she,” who “tells” the story; may have either a limited point of view or an omniscient point of view; may also be an unreliable narrator.

Answer 7

third-person narrator

Question 8

a stage design that allows the audience to sit around three sides of the major acting area.

Answer 8

thrust stage

Question 9

the attitude a literary work takes toward its subject and theme.

Answer 9

tone

Question 10

(1) the concrete and literal description of what a story is about; (2) a poem’s general or specific area of concern. Also called subject.

Answer 10

topic

Question 11

an inherited, established, or customary practice.

Answer 11

tradition

Question 12

symbols that, through years of usage, have acquired an agreed-upon significance, an accepted meaning. See archetype.

Answer 12

traditional symbols

Question 13

a drama in which a character (usually a good and noble person of high rank) is brought to a disastrous end in his or her confrontation with a superior force (fortune, the gods, social forces, universal values), but also comes to understand the meaning of his or her deeds and to accept an appropriate punishment. Often the protagonist’s downfall is a direct result of a fatal flaw in his or her character.

Answer 13

tragedy

Question 14

a metrical form in which the basic foot is a trochee.

Answer 14

trochaic

Question 15

a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one (“Homer”).

Answer 15

trochee

Question 16

the third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing. Also called climax.

Answer 16

turning point

Question 17

a subordinate plot in fiction or drama. Also called a subplot.

Answer 17

underplot

Question 18

language that avoids obvious emphasis or embellishment; litotes is one form of it.

Answer 18

understatement

Question 19

one of the three unities of drama as described by Aristotle in his Poetics. Unity of time refers to the limitation of a play’s action to a short period—usually the time it takes to present the play or, at any rate, no longer than a day. See classical unities.

Answer 19

unity of time

Question 20

also called omniscient point of view; a perspective that can be seen from one character’s view, then another’s, then another’s, or can be moved in or out of any character’s mind at any time. Organization in which the reader has access to the perceptions and thoughts of all the characters in the story.

Answer 20

unlimited point of view

Question 21

a speaker or voice whose vision or version of the details of a story are consciously or unconsciously deceiving; such a narrator’s version is usually subtly undermined by details in the story or the reader’s general knowledge of facts outside the story. If, for example, the narrator were to tell you that Columbus was Spanish and that he discovered America in the fourteenth century when his ship the Golden Hind landed on the coast of Florida near present-day Gainesville, you might not trust other things he tells you.

Answer 21

unreliable narrator

Question 22

a statement in which the literal meaning differs from the implicit meaning. See dramatic irony and situational irony.

Answer 22

verbal irony

Question 23

see stanza.

Answer 23

verse paragraph

Question 24

the one who opposes the hero and heroine—that is, the “bad guy.” See antagonist and hero/heroine.

Answer 24

villain

Question 25

a verse form consisting of nineteen lines divided into six stanzas—five tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quatrain (fourline stanza). The first and third lines of the first tercet rhyme, and this rhyme is repeated through each of the next four tercets and in the last two lines of the concluding quatrain. The villanelle is also known for its repetition of select lines. A good example of a twentieth-century villanelle is Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.”

Answer 25

villanelle

Question 26

the acknowledged or unacknowledged source of a story’s words; the speaker; the “person” telling the story.

Answer 26

voice

Question 27

the positioning of words in relation to one another.

Answer 27

word order