Terms Flashcards
Ambiguity
The quality of being understood in two or more possible ways, uncertainty.
Aphorism
A tersely phrased statement of a truth or an opinion
Aside
A comment made by a stage performer that is intended to be heard by the audience but supposedly not by other characters.
Alliteration
The practice of beginning several consecutive or neighbouring words with the same sound.
Allusion
An indirect or implied reference to a person, place, thing, character, or event from mythological, biblical literary, or historical context.
Allegory
A narrative technique in which characters representing things or abstract ideas are used to convey a message or teach a lesson.
Anthropomorphosim
The presentation of animals or objects in human shape or with human characteristics.
Anachronism
Something located at a time when it could not have existed or occurred; an artifact that belongs to another time, a person displaced in time.
Assonance
The repetition of vowel sounds in a series of words.
Apostrophe
A form of personification in which the absent or dead are spoken to (directly addressed) as if present, and the inanimate as if animate.
Analogy
A comparison of two things made to explain something unfamiliar through its similarities to something familiar, or to prove one point based on the acceptance of another.
Anaphora
The repetition of A word or word phrase as the beginning of successive clauses.
Antithesis
Opposing or contrasting ideas balance against each other in parallel grammatical structure.
Burlesque
Any literary work that uses exaggeration to make its subject appear ridiculous.
Catharsis
The release or purging of unwanted emotions, specifically fear or pity, brought about by exposure to art.
Chorus
In ancient Greek drama, a group of actors who commented on and interpreted the unfolding action on stage.
Cacophony
A dissonant, unpleasant combination of sounds.
Conceit
A clever and fanciful metaphor, usually expressed through elaborate and extended comparison, that presents a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things.
Connotation
An association that comes along with a particular word.
Couplet
Two lines of poetry with the same rhyme and meter, often expressing a complete and self-contained thought.
Comic relief
The use of humour to lighten the mood of a serious or tragic story, especially in plays.
Consonance
An occurrence in poetry when words appearing at the end of two or more verses have similar final consonant sounds but have final vowel sounds that differ.
Deduction
The process of reaching a conclusion through reasoning from general premises to a specific premise.
Denotation
The definition of a word, apart from the impressions or feelings it creates in the reader.
Diction
The selection or arrangement of words in a literary work.
Didactic
A term used to describe works of literature that sim to teach some moral, religious, political, or practical lesson.
Dramatic irony
Occurs when the audience of a play or the reader of a work of literature knows something that a character in the work itself does not know.
Elegy
A lyric poem that laments the death of a person or the eventual death of all people.
Enjambment
The running over the sense and structure of one line of poetry ini the next line without syntactical pause.
Epitaph
An inscription on a tomb or tombstone
Epithet
In literature, a word or phrase preceding or following a name which serves to describe the character of that name in a clearer or sharper light.
Euphony
A substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one whose plainer meaning might be harsh or unpleasant.
Exposition
The gradual revelation of setting, relationship between characters, and other background information needed to understand the plot of a story.
Farce
A form of drama or play that narrows in on an extremely unlikely plot with exuberant and exaggerated characters; an extreme situation, so extreme that it is absurd.
Foil
A character in a work of literature whose physical or psychological qualities contrast strongly with, and therefore highlight, the corresponding qualities of another character.
Figurative language
A technique in wiring in which the author temporarily interrupts the order, construction, or meaning of the writing for a particular effect.
Free verse
Poetry that lacks regular metrical and rhyme patterns but that tries to capture the cadences of everyday speech.
Hamartia
In tragedy, the event or act that leads to the hero’s or heroine’s downfall.
Hyperbole
In literary criticism, deliberate exaggeration used to achieve an effect.
Idiom
A word construction or verbal expression closely associated with a given language.
Imagery
A concrete representation of an object or sensory experience.
Inference
The act of concluding from evidence.
Induction
The process of reaching a conclusion by reasoning from specific premises to form a general premise.
Invective
An emotionally violent, verbal denunciation or attack using strong, abusive language.
Kenning
Frequent in old English poetry such as Beowulf, compound noun or short descriptive phrase with metaphoric value.
Meter
In literary criticism, the repetition of sound patterns that creates rhythm in poetry. The patterns are based on number of syllables and the presence and absence of accents.
Metonomy
A figure of speech in which one work or phrase is substituted for a related word or phrase.
Motif
A theme, character type, image, metaphor, or other verbal element that recurs throughout a single work of literature or occurs in a number of different works over a period of time.
Monologue
An extended narrative, whether oral or written, delivered uninterrupted and exclusively by one person.
Mood
The “air breathed by the reader” as he enters the world of a literary work.
Oxymoron
A form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression. This usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness.
Parable
A story designed to suggest a principle, illustrate a moral, or answer a question.
Paradox
A statement that appears illogical or contradictory at first, but may actually point to an underlying truth.
Parallelism
A method of comparison of two ideas in which each is developed with the sam grammatical structure.
Parody
A composition that imitate the style of another composition normally for comic effect.
Pedantic
An adjective that describes words, phrases, or general tone that us overly scholarly, academic, or bookish.
Personification
A type of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics.
Prose
One of the major divisions of genre, prose refers to fiction and nonfiction, including all its forms, because they are written in ordinary language and most closely resemble everyday speech.
Polemic
A work in which the author takes a stand on a controversial subject and are often extremely argumentative or provocative.
Proverb
A brief, sage saying that expresses a truth about life in a striking manner.
Rhetoric
In literary criticism, this term denotes the art of ethical persuasion. In its strictest sense, rhetoric adheres to various principles developed since classical times for arranging facts and ideas in a clear, persuasive, and appealing manner.
Satire
A work that uses ridicule, humour, an wit to criticise and provoke change in human nature and instruction.
Simile
A figure of speech which makes a comparison between two unlike things using the words like or as.
Soliloquy
A speech un which a character who is alone speaks his or hear thoughts.
Stream of consciousness
A narrative technique for rendering the inward experience of a character. It is designed to give the impression of and ever-changing series of thoughts, emotions, images, and memories in the spontaneous and seemingly illogical order that they occur in life.
Syllogism
A method of presenting a logical argument. A major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion.
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part of something stands for a whole.
Synesthesia
A description of one sensory experience in terms of another.
Syntax
Sentence structure, the way the sequence of words are orders into phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Tone
The authors attitude towards his or her audience may be deducted from the tone of the work.
Tragic flaw
In a tragedy, the quality within the hero or heroine which leads to his or her downfall
Irony
The recognition of the incongruity or differences between reality and appearance.
Litotes
Understatement, for intensification, by denying the contrary or the things being affirmed.
Metaphor
A figure of speech that expresses an idea through the image of another object without using like or as.
Juxtaposition
The act of positioning close together.
