Terminology Flashcards
Accentual meter
A meter that is measured by the number and/or pattern of accents in given line of poetry.
Accent
Stress
The emphasis laid on a sound or syllable.
Artistry
The selection and arrangement of elements in such a way the the artists’ purposes for the whole are fulfilled.
Allegory
A work in which the author embodies realities in a fictional story in such a way that there is a clear one to one correspondence between those external realities and the internal elements of the story.
Alliteration
Repetition of the initial sound of words in a line or lines of verse.
Assonance
Repetition of vowel sounds within words and a line or lines of verse.
Caesura
A pause or break in the middle of a line or verse.
Character
A personality, whether human or not, in a story
Content
What is expressed through a literary work.
Contrast
An element of artistry in which two things are set up in opposition to one another.
Consonance
Repetition of consonant sounds anywhere in two or more words.
Descriptive style
The technique(s) and other means of expression that an author characteristically uses in his descriptions.
Dream vision
A genre in which the author presents the story under the guise of having dreamed it.
Epic
A long story, written either in prose or in poetry, which tells of significant deeds, events, and/or people, and usually expresses beliefs of an entire age or culture.
Elegiac mode
A mode in which the purpose is to declare allowed deep feelings and/or deeply held beliefs, most often those of lament or love.
Foreshadowing
A plot device whereby the author hints at a future outcome but doesn’t fully reveal it.
Form
The artistic elements that embody, express, and/ or enhance the content of a work of literature.
Form follows function
An author will mold the formal elements of his work in such a way that they serve his purposes for the artistic work as a whole.
Genre
A type of literature that has either definite characteristics of form, or context, or both.
Hero(ine)
A. A character who has strong abilities, which may be beyond the limits of the natural, and who embodies the beliefs of the community.
B. One of several common terms for the main character in a story.
Heroic mode
A mode that emphasizes the description and exaltation of heroism.
Imaginative literature
A subgenre of literature that appeals to the imagination.
Imagination
Image-making and image-perceiving.
Language
Words and methods of combining them for the purposes of expression, communication, and naming.
Lay
Breton lay
Type of shorter romance, written in poetry, and typically based on Arthurian legend.
Literature
The portrayal and interpretation of reality, in a verbal artistic form, for a purpose.
Meter
A measurable pattern of sounds in one more lines of verse.
Metrical line
A line that can be measured in terms of a fixed number and/or pattern of stresses and/or syllables.
Mode
The overall mood, manner, or emphasis expressed in a work of literature.
Morality
A. What actually is right and/or wrong, and the degree to which it is so.
B. Belief(s), expressed in and through a literary work, about what is right and/or wrong.
Meaning through form
The audience receives the author’s meaning through various elements of form which he uses to embody and convey it.
Narrative form
A poem that is also a story, having at least one character, setting, and plot.
Pattern
An element of artistry in which parts are arranged so that they form a recognizable unit or a series of units.
Pattern plot
A kind of plot in which the events are arranged in patterns.
Parable
A short, simple story that explicitly teaches a theme(s).