Useful Terms Flashcards
Allusion
A casual reference to a familiar cultural icon
Ambiguity
An effort by an author to allow for multiple meanings/interpretations
Analogy
A sustained comparison between two different items
Archetype
An original model or pattern from which other later copies are made, especially a character, an action or a situation that seems to represent common patterns of human life.
Bildungsroman
Novel that traces the development of a character, generally from youth.
Convention
A pattern in literature that is familiar to the point of recognisability or predictability
Diction
Word/language choice
Didactic
An adjective describing works, often for children, that are meant to teach a lesson.
Doppelgänger
Characters in a work who may represent alter egos of one self
Epigraph
A line at the beginning of a work/chapter that had significance for that work
Fable
A brief narrative, often using animals, that illustrates a moral truth
Gothic novel
A genre that attempts to create a sense of peril by placing characters in situations with horrific/supernatural overtones
Irony
A device whereby the author overtly suggests one perspective but actually expects the reader to infer a second, more critical perspective.
Linearity
A descriptor for unidirectional plots and narratives. Devices such as flashbacks and montages undermine linearity.
Memoir
A brief autobiographical recollection of events in the author’s life.
Meta fiction
Novels that are intensely aware of their own status as novels
Motif
A recurring visual or verbal theme that has significance in terms of our general understanding of the work
Parable
A short, often obscure tale that is meant to convey a moral truism.
Pastoral
A term that describes a fairly conventional vision of peaceful, beautiful nature in which humans live idyllic lives.
Plot
The way events in a narrative genre are constructed
Prose
Writing that is not overly marked by rhyme
Psychological novel
A novel in which the plot is intensely concerned with the emotions and intellectual concerns of a character
Rhetoric
A mode of understanding the way in which language achieves its effect
Satire
An attempt to make fun of something in a way that uses the forms and conventions of the subject against itself.
Stock character
A character whose pattern of behaviour is familiar.
Stream of consciousness
A narrative style that represents the thinking process a character is going through. It often dispenses with linear narrative flow to imitate the true process of thought.
Utopian literature
Literature that attempts to portray or define an ideal world.
Verisimiltude
An effort to replicate a realistic moment in a literary work eg including the ‘uh huhs’ of real conversation when writing about a phone call
Willing suspension of disbelief
The process by which a reader allows themself to be absorbed into the scenarios established by a text
Alter ego
A literary character or narrator who is a thinly disguised representation of the author
Anachronism
Placing an event, person, item or verbal expression in the wrong historical period
Anagnorisis
The moment of tragic recognition in which the protagonist realised some important fact or insight
Antihero
A protagonist who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a traditional hero
Atmosphere
The emotional feelings inspired by a work
Authorial voice
The voices or speakers used by authors when they seemingly speak for themselves in a book.
Biographical fallacy
The error of believing that characters and events in the authors historical life must have inspired any fictional events or characters in their work, or that the narrative speaker in a literary work must be synonymous with the authors own viewpoints.
Characterisation
An authors use of description, dialogue, dialect and action to create in the reader an emotional or intellectual reaction to a character or to make the character more vivid and realistic.
Chronology
The order in which events happen, especially when emphasising a cause-effect relationship in history or in a narrative
Close reading
Carefully reading a piece of literature to analyse the significance of individual words, images and artistic ornaments.
Closure
A sense of completion or finality, especially a feeling in the audience that all the problems have been resolved satisfactorily.
Conflict
Opposition between two characters, two people groups or between the protagonist and a larger problem.
Episodic
Occurring in a long string of short, individual sections rather than focusing on the sustained development of a single plot.
Eucatastrophe
A final resolution in fantasy literature that evokes a sense of beauty, hope and wonder in readers.
Foreshadowing
Suggesting it hinting at what will occur later in a narrative
Ideal reader
The imaginary audience who would, ideally, understand every phrase, word and allusion in a literary work, and respond emotionally as the writer wished.
Implied audience
The ‘you’ a writer refers to it implies when creating a dramatic monologue
In medias res
(Latin, ‘in the middle of things’) the classical tradition of opening an epic not in the chronological point at which the sequence of events would start, but rather at the midway point of the story.
Interior monologue
A type of stream of consciousness in which the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single individual in the same order they occur in the characters head
Leit-motif
A recurring device/symbol loosely linked with a character, setting or event.
Unreliable narrator
A storyteller who plainly misinterprets the actions or motives of characters, or fails to see connections between events in the story. The author presents material to the reader in such a way that we are able to see what the narrator overlooks.
Paratext
Anything external to the text itself that influences the way we read a text. These may include the authors gender, reviews of their work or other works by the author.
Parody
Something that imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features.
Peripeteia
The sudden reversal of fortune in a story
Persona
An external representation of oneself which may or may not accurately reflect the inner self.
Setting
The locale, historical time and social circumstances in which the action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs.
Subplot
A minor or subordinate secondary plot, often involving a deuteragonist’s struggles, which takes place simultaneously with a larger plot.
Syntax
The orderly arrangement of words into sentences to express ideas
Assonance
The repetition of a vowel sound
Dissonance
Discordant combinations of sounds
Enjambment
Where a sentence continues beyond the end of a line/verse to give a sense of continuity
Types of imagery
Visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gastatory
Onomatopoeia
A word that sounds like the noise it’s describing
Oxymoron
When two words not normally associated are brought together eg bitter sweet
Pathos
Language that evokes pity or sorrow
Sibilance
Repetition of the ‘s’ sound
Zeugma
When an author uses a word that has multiple meanings for different phrases in the same sentence eg Gina lost her wallet and her mind
