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).
Personification
A figure of speech in which human attributes are given to something nonhuman.
Poetic Justice
A literary device whereby goodness succeeds or is rewarded, and evil fails or is punished, in appropriate ways.
Prose
Language which is relatively uncompromised, doesn’t follow any metrical rules, and is measured in the basic units of sentences and paragraphs.
Poetry
Highly compressed language, typically written in lines, which may be metrical or not, and characteristically uses imagery as its main medium of expression.
Romance
A story, either prose or poetry, that strongly expresses the characteristics of the romantic mode.
Reality
A. The way things actually are, including both the world we see and the unseen spiritual realm.
B. Belief(s), expressed in and through a literary work, about what is or is it real and/or true
Rhyme
Similar or same sounding syllables occurring at the end of two different words.
Romantic mode
A mode that emphasizes the spiritual, supernatural, and/or emotional elements in human experience.
Rhyme scheme
A pattern of rhymes that occurs throughout a stanza or poem.
Realistic mode
A mode that emphasizes of view of the world as it usually appears to our earthly senses.
Suspense
A sense of interest and uncertainty aroused in the audience when an outcome is in question.
Symbol
An element in a work of literature that, in addition to its basic meaning or roll in that work, also stands for something more.
Symmetry
An artistic element which occurs when two things in a literary work correspond to each other in size and/or form and/or arrangement.
Stanzaic form
An arrangement whereby there is more than one stanza, set off by spaces, in a poem.
Stanza
A group of lines that can be recognized as a separate unit in a poem.
Syllable
A part of a word that is pronounced as a single unit with one dominant sound.
Song of deeds
A type of epic that recounts the great deeds of a hero.
Tragic hero(ine)
A hero of mixed strengths and weaknesses who has a flaw that causes him to make a wrong choice, leading to suffering and his own downfall, thus providing a negative example.
Tragic flaw
A flaw in the basic nature of a tragic hero, which causes him to make a wrong choice that leads to his downfall.
Texture
Deals with the “feel” of a literary work, which is made up of specific techniques and devices, and a particular style.
Values
A. What actually is valuable or worthy, and the degree to which it is so.
B. Beliefs expressed in and through literary work about what is or isn’t valuable, and to what degree.
Worldview
A person’s view of the world, consisting of the set of beliefs on which he bases his life.
Couplet
A. A stanza composed of two lines.
B. A rhyme scheme in which one line rhymes with the one immediately after it.
Dramatic irony
A type of irony whereby some event occurs, or some character acts, in a way that is unexpected or is the opposite of what would seem suitable or ideal.
Folk literature
A kind of story told to, and usually invented by, the ordinary folk of the community.
Iamb
A metrical foot consisting of one lightly accented syllable followed by one heavily accented syllable.
Iambic pentameter
A metrical line composed of five iambic feet.
Irony
A device of artistic contrast usually involving inversion and incongruity.
Metrical foot
A unit for measuring meter, usually consisting of one heavily accented syllable and one or more lightly accented syllables, in various patterns.
Pentimeter
A line of verse composed of five metrical feet.
Plot frame
A literary technique used to introduce and provide a framework for a story, usually by enveloping it in another story.
Situational irony
A type of irony in which a speaker or character finds himself in a situation that is incongruous or is the inversion of what would be suitable or ideal
Verbal irony
A type of irony whereby what a speaker or a character says doesn’t match reality or is the opposite of what the character means.
Balance
An element of artistry, related to symmetry, that consists of giving equal weight to different aspects of a work.
Central focus
The center of a whole arrangement or something that repeats itself at the center of each part of the whole arrangement
Image
A literary device that presents an object through a concrete, usually non-literal, informing word picture.
Syllabic meter
A meter that is measured by the number of syllables in a given line of poetry.
Symbolic character
A character who, in addition to his meaning or role in a story, also stands for another idea or meaning.
Symbolic event (action)
An event or action that points to another event or action, either in the work of literature or outside of it.
Symbolic setting
A place, time, or culture in a story that is at once a setting and a representation of something else, often an ideal or greater reality.
Symbolic thing
Any entity without a personality that has meaning in the literary work beyond its literal or usual significance.
Tercet
A stanza composed of three lines.
Tragic mode
A mode that emphasizes wrong human choices which cause and/or compound suffering.
Unity
The arrangement of parts in an artistic piece such that all of them work together to make up one whole and/or serve one primary purpose.
Aside
In drama, a line delivered either directly to the audience or to oneself in such a way that the audience “overhears” it, but other characters on stage do not.
Commedia dell’arte (Italian Comedy)
A type of Italian comedy that combines stock characters and situations with improvised action and dialogue, performed by a troupe of 10 to 12 actors and actresses.
Romance play
A sub-genre of drama that tends to exhibit tragicomic and romantic elements.
Tragicomedy
A genre that depicts characters who suffer but eventually reach happiness, overcome, and/or find peace.
Characterization
The selection, arrangement, and presentation of information by an author about characters.
Direct characterization
A literary technique whereby the author uses his own direct comments or those of a narrator or a character to inform the audience about how to understand, interpret, and value one or more characters.
Farcical mode
A mode emphasizing buffoonery, characterized by horseplay or even violence, crude physical trickery or crude verbal wit, ludicrous situations, and overbearing or important characters.
Indirect characterization
A literary technique whereby the author indirectly guides the reader’s understanding, interpretation, and evaluation of characters through his presentation of their appearance, behavior, and various details about them.
Satiric mode
A mode emphasizing the exposure, through ridicule or rebuke, of human vice or folly.
