TERMINOLOGY Flashcards
Allegory
A literary or visual form in which characters, events or images represent or symbolise ideas. It can be a story of some complexity corresponding to another situation on a deeper level. Animal Farm is about a community of animals, but reflects the Russian Revolution and satirises Communism.
Allusion
An indirect reference to an event, person, place, another work of literature, etc. that gives additional layers of meaning to a text or enlarges its frame of reference.
Anagnoris
A moment of recognition or discovery usually late in the plot where the protagonist discovers something about his or her true nature or behaviour or situation.
Antithesis
Expressing contrasting ideas by balancing words of opposite meaning and idea in a line or sentence, for rhetorical impact: “They promised opportunity and provided slavery”.
Atmosphere
It refers specifically to place – a setting, or surroundings.
Denouement
How the ending of a novel or play turns out, how the plot is unravelled or revealed.
Diction
The writer’s choice and arrangement of words or distinctive vocabulary (its effectiveness and precision).
Didactic
Describes text where there is an intention to preach a (usually) moral, political or religious point it usually has a negative connotation.
Dramatic irony
Where a character (or characters) is/are unaware of something of which the audience/reader and often other characters on stage are aware. A powerful tool especially in drama, used for tragic or comic purposes.
Epiphany
From the Greek “manifestation”, it means a sudden realisation or moment of awakening in which something is seen in a new light, or its essential nature is perceived – which could be a moment of radiance or devastation. Used to effect in some short stories, as well as other fiction an poetry.
Hyperbole
A deliberate exaggeration for various effects – comic, tragic, etc. When Frost writes that the beauty of Spring “is only so an hour”, he emphasises how very brief the life of precious things seems.
Imagery
The mental pictures created by language (both metaphorical and literal) that appeal to the senses.
Interior monologue
Where the narrator depicts the thoughts pouring randomly from a character’s mind, so that the reader experiences these as if overhearing them, unfiltered by comments from the narrator or adjusted grammatically.
Intertextuality
The shaping of some part of a text’s meaning by another text, which can take the form, for example, of quotation, allusion, parody or re-working of an idea or story.
Irony
A gap or mismatch between what is said and what is intended. For example, between what a character or group might see or think, and what the author wishes us to see or think. A powerful tool for a writer to expose hypocrisies and lack of awareness.
Metaphor
A comparison between two unlike things that are seen as alike in some aspect, without the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’. It can facilitate understanding of an abstract concept (for example, life as a journey) or open up the imagination by creating a striking visual and sensual link between things not normally associated.
Monologue
A speech of some length that expresses a character’s thoughts out loud, sometimes addressing other characters. Distinguish from “apostrophe”, “aside”, and “soliloquy”.
Motif
Recurrent element in a narrative or drama (such as an image or spoken phrase) that has symbolic significance and can contribute, through cumulative effect, to a theme. For example, the covered lamp in Williams’ Streetcar, or the flute music in Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
