Terms

Question 1

Heterodiagetic narration

autodiegetic narration

Answer 1

Narrator who is not a character in the story

autodiegetic:
part of the terminology introduced by the critic Gérard Genette to denote a narration where the narrator tells his or her own story.

Question 2

Focalization

Answer 2

.

Question 3

asyndeton

Answer 3

the omission of conjunctions to coordinate phrases, clauses, or words where normally conjunctions would be used (opposite of polysyndeton).

Question 4

allegory

Answer 4

a narrative, whether in prose or in verse, in which characters and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived by the author to make coherent sense on the ‘literal’/primary level of significance and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of signification.

Question 5

alliteration

Answer 5

the same sound is repeated at the beginning of several words or stressed syllables in words that are in close proximity.

Question 6

metre

and the different types

Answer 6

e. g.
- accentual
- spondee
- trochee
- syllabic metre: a metrical pattern in which each line has a prescribed number of syllables but the number of stresses varies.

Question 7

rhyme

and the different types

Answer 7

two words that have the same sound (phoneme) from the last stressed vowel onwards (full rhyme).

• alternate rhyme
• tail rhyme: rhyme pattern aab ccb where b is the tail rhyme.

Question 8

rhythm

Answer 8

a series of alternations of speed and emphasis through linguistic and formal devices tending towards regularity.

sprung rhythm:
a type of syllabic metre introduced by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins where only the number of stresses in a line are counted the number of syllables between the stresses vary.

Question 9

romance

Answer 9

a fictional narrative (prose, poetry or drama) which represents a chivalric theme or relates improbable adventures of idealised characters in some remote or enchanted setting. Characters are usually sharply discriminated as heroes or villains, masters or victims. The protagonist is often solitary and isolated from a social context, the plot emphasises adventure, and is often cast in the form of a quest for an ideal or the pursuit of an enemy.

Question 10

run-on-line (enjambment)

Answer 10

a syntactical unit carries over into the next verse line.

Question 11

scansion

Answer 11

the visual representation of the distribution of stress and nonstress in verse.

Question 12

sci-fi

Answer 12

a form of (prose) fiction which explores the positive or disastrous effects of future scientific discovery.

Question 13

secondary text

Answer 13

those parts of the dramatic text which are not spoken on stage: stage directions, description of setting etc.

Question 14

Senecan tragedy

Answer 14

a type of tragedy modelled on the tragedies written by the Roman poet Seneca entailing a five-act-structure, a complex plot and an elevated style of dialogue.

Question 15

short story

Answer 15

a short piece of prose fiction organised into a plot and with a kind of dénouement at the end.

Question 16

simile

Answer 16

two things are openly compared with each other, using ‘like’ or ‘as’.

Question 17

signifier

signified

Answer 17

signified: the concept which a sound image (signifier) denotes, signified and signifier are inseparable like the two sides of a coin, taken together they are the sign which refers to an object in reality (referent).
signifier: the sound image used to refer to a concept (signified), signified and signifier are inseparable like the two sides of a coin, taken together they are the sign which refers to an object in reality (referent).

Question 18

soliloquy

Answer 18

a form of monologue, where no other person is present on stage beside the speaker, usually reveals the speaker’s thoughts or feelings.

Question 19

sonnet

Answer 19

a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of 14 lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme.

Question 20

Spenserian stanza

Answer 20

a nine-line stanza rhyming ababbcbcc, the first eight lines are iambic pentameters, the last line is an alexandrine

Question 21

stanza

Answer 21

a sub-unit into which the sequence of lines which make up a poem is separated.

Question 22

story time

Answer 22

the temporal span of the sequence of events which is described in the narrative or play.

Question 23

story

Answer 23

the chronological sequence of events and actions involving characters

Question 24

stream of consciousness

Answer 24

a concept developed in psychology by William James which denotes the idea that one’s thoughts are not orderly and wellformulated but more of a jumbled-up sequence of associations, these are not necessarily verbal but also include other sensual perceptions.

Question 25

stretch

summary

Answer 25

stretch:
an aspect of duration in time analysis discourse-time is longer than story-time.

summary:
an aspect of duration in time analysis: discourse-time is shorter than story-time.

Question 26

structuralism

Answer 26

an approach to literary analysis influenced by semiotics and structural linguistics, structuralist analysis focuses on the discovery of structures and their functions in literary texts.

Question 27

metre substitution

Answer 27

one metrical foot from a regular pattern is replaced by another one, this does not change the overall metrical pattern.

Question 28

synecdoche

Answer 28

a figure of contiguity (form of metonymy), the use of a part for the whole, or the whole for the part: ‘pars pro toto’ or ‘totum pro parte’.

Question 29

telling name

Answer 29

explicit characterisation of a character through his/her name.

Question 30

three unities

Answer 30

in the 16th and 17th centuries, critics of the drama in Italy and France added to Aristotle’s ‘unity of action’ two other unities, to constitute one of the rules of drama known as ‘the three unities’; on the assumption that the achievement of an illusion of reality in the audience of a stage play (verisimilitude) requires that the action represented by a play approximate the actual conditions of the staging of the play, they imposed the ‘unity of place’ (that the action represented be limited to a single location) and the requirement of the ‘unity of time’ (that the time represented be limited to the two or three hours it takes to act the play, or at most to a single day of either 12 or 24 hours).

Question 31

tragedy

Answer 31

dramatic sub-genre marked by representations of serious actions which end in disaster for the protagonist.

Question 32

tragicomedy

Answer 32

a sub-genre of tragedy which intermingles conventions derived from both tragedy and comedy, usually with a tragic ending.
the former being a genre based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure and the latter being a genre intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter.

example: Shalespeare‘s romances have often been called tragicomedies

Question 33

unreliable narration

Answer 33

a narration where there is reason to distrust the truthfulness or penetration of the narrator’s version of events.

Question 34

word-painting

Answer 34

the creation of vivid images of scenery and atmosphere in the viewer’s mind by means of rhetorical devices .

Question 35

wit

Answer 35

brief verbal expression which is intentionally contrived to create comic surprise, combining humour and intellect.

Question 36

Verisimilitude

Answer 36

Simply means “the quality of resembling reality”
A work of art, or any part of a work of art, has verisimilitude if it seems realistic.
Derived from Latin and means “truth” and “similar”

Question 37

caesura

Answer 37

a pause that occurs within a line of poetry

Question 38

autodiegetic narration

Answer 38

part of the terminology introduced by the critic Gérard Genette to denote a narration where the narrator tells his or her own story.

Question 39

diegesis

Answer 39

the verbal representation of events.

Question 40

tautology

Answer 40

the same idea or concept is repeatedly expressed through additional words, phrases, or sentences.

e.g.
‚are these supplies adequate enough?‘
‚Bits and pieces‘
‚the ball is green or not not green‘

Question 41

symploce

Answer 41

a combination of anaphora and epistrophe, so that one word or phrase is repeated at the beginning and another word or phrase is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or sentences.

Question 42

assonance

Answer 42

the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables of words that are in close proximity while the consonants differ.

Question 43

asyndeton

Answer 43

the omission of conjunctions to coordinate phrases, clauses, or words where normally conjunctions would be used (contrasted with polysyndeton and syndeton)

effect: may speed up the rhythm, making a single idea more memorable.