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| in poetry, a foot with one weak stress followed by one long stress, as in the word--- afráid |
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| an expression peculiar to a given language whose meaning cannot be derived from its literal meaning or by someone unfamiliar with the phrase, e.g., "keep an eye peeled, kick the bucket, eat crow." |
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| a reference that triggers the mind to fuse together memories of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and sensations of touch; a single mental creation; literary or metaphorical |
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the descriptive language used in literature to recreate sensory experiences:
Silence. Not a leaf stirs.
No sign of light; only pathetic sobs
And scraping of slippers and sighing
And tears in the pauses. |
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a sentence that gives an order or command--- "Wash your hands before dinner."
[If it helps, think of it from Spanish class. The command form of a verb, such as "sede" "sit" is the imperative.] |
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| that which is discovered by reasoning, conclusions |
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| the explication of a literary work for its purpose and meaning through analysis of theme, structure, elements, language, effects, etc. |
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| a sentence that asks a question--- "Why do I have to wash my hands?" |
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changing/reversing the natural word order; sometimes this is an artificial way for the poet to achieve a rhyme and rhythm
[Ex. "A path well walked it is" is inverted from "It is a path well walked"] |
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| the general name given to literary techniques that involve surprising, interesting, or amusing contradictions; an event or outcome that is the opposite of what would be naturally expected. |
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| language that states the opposite of what is intended |
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| placement of characters in situations where the audience understands the implications and meaning of an event on stage, but the character does not. |
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| unpredictable and surprising developments, results differ from the results that were expected |
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(1) confused unintelligible language
(2) special vocabulary of a particular group or activity
(3) obscure and often pretentious language |
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| "artist novel" - a subtype of bildungsroman about the formation of an artist's personality and talents |
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| a widely told story about the past, one that may or may not have a foundation in fact |
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| adhering to the fact or to the ordinary or usual meaning of a word-- descriptive or pictoral |
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| a form of understatement that asserts something is true by denying its opposite, e.g. He is no Einstein = He is stupid; That is no little matter = That is an important matter. |
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| the detailed representation in fiction of the setting, dialect, customs, dress, and ways of thinking and feeling which are distinctive of a particular region, e.g., Thomas Hardy's Wessex or Rudyard Kipling's Indiana |
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| a poem that expresses the observations and subjective feelings of a single speaker |
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| having the qualities of a lyric poem; songlike, musical |
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| the great world or universe, a representation of a smaller unit or entity by a larger one, presumably of similar structure |
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| the mingling and juxtaposition of primarily realistic elements with the fantastic and bizarre. Magical realism expands the category of realism to include myth, magic, and other marvels of the natural world, while using humor and irony. |
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| used by the author to place characters and events in exactly the situations desired |
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(see persona) a fictional self created by an author--a self through whom the narrative of a poem or story is told
[This has the same definition as persona, so mask = persona.] |
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| originally all musical plays, including opera; currently, a debased form of tragedy with a happy ending, flat characters, and exaggerated emotions |
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| a form of autobiography in which the emphasis is not on the author's life, but the people and events the author has known or witnessed |
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| a figure of a speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else (Ex. "death, that long sleep") |
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| a metaphor that has been so overused that its original metaphorical impact has been lost, e.g., "foot of the bed, toe the line" |
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| a metaphor that is developed at length and that involves several points of comparison |
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| a metaphor that does not necessarily develop in meaning but is referred to several times in a literary work |
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| related to the philosophical studies of the ultimate causes and underlying nature of things |
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| the rhythmical pattern of a poem, determined by the number and types of stresses, or beats, in each line |
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| the literal term for one thing is applied to another with which it is closely associated e.g., referring to the king as "the crown" or the president as "the White House" |
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| a little world, a world in miniature; a representation of a larger entity by a smaller one of similar structure. |
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| the term is used to identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts, and styles of literature and other arts in early decades of the 20th century, particularly after World War I |
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| grammatically, to change somewhat the form or qualities of another word, as an adjective modifies the meaning of a noun |
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| a lengthy speech by a single person |
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| consisting of a single syllable |
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| (or atmosphere) the feeling created int he reader by a literary work or passage |
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| an element--a type of incident, device, reference, or formula--which recurs frequently in literature. The "loathly lady" who turns out to be a beautiful princess is a common motif in folklore. |
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| a story that deals with the relationships of gods to humans, or with battles among heroes; a set of beliefs or assumptions among societies |
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| the act or process of storytelling |
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| a literary work that tells a story |
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| the way in which one narrates |
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| the speaker in a literary work |
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| grew out of realism and like realism attempted to depict life truthfully and accurately, but naturalists believe that a person's fate was determined by heredity, chance, and the elements of his or her environment; by forces of nature and society a person could not control or understand |
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| a long work of prose fiction |
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| a stanza of eight lines; first part of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, rhyming abba abba |
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| a long lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure |
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| having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight; in point of view, the narrator has all-knowing qualities and is free to move around in space and time-- "godlike" point of view |
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| the use of words that imitate sounds, as in buzz, hiss, murmur, rustle |
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| the paradoxical utterance conjoining two terms that in ordinary usage are contraries: "jumbo shrimp" "deafening silence" "good grief" |
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| a brief story that allegorically answers a question or expresses a moral or truth |
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| a statement that seems to be contradictory that actually presents the truth |
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| the repetition of a grammatical pattern |
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| a brief restatement, in one's own words, of all or part of a literary work |
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| the imitation of the words, style, and ideas of an author in such an exaggerated way as to make them ridiculous |
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| an imitation of an author's style, syntax, diction, and themes |
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| an elaborately conventional poem expressing an urban poet's nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity o f the life of shepherds or other rural folk in an idealized natural setting |
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| that quality in a work of art which evokes feelings of tenderness, pity or sorrow |
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| verse written in lines of five metrical feet |
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(see mask) a fictional self created by an author-- a self through whom the narrative of a poem or story is told
[This has the same definition as mask. So, persona = mask.] |
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| a type of figurative language in which a non-human subject is given human characeristics |
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| the point of view, or vantage point, from which a story is told |
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| a word whose sound, by an obscure process, to some degree suggests its meaning (ex. flicker, slippery, glisten) |
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| a word group, without a complete subject or verb, that is used as a part of speech in a sentence |
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| the sequence of events in a literary work |
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| the distribution, at the end of a literary work, of earthy rewards and punishments in proportion to the virtue or vice of the various characters |
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| the perspective, or vantage point, from which a story is told |
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| when a character from within the story tells the story |
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| when a voice from outside the story tells the story |
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| author is outside the story but tells it through a single character's thoughts and actions |
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| author is outside the story but seems to know what goes on in the minds of all the characters, godlike perspective |
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| a general term used to refer to changes, developments and tendencies which have taken place in literature, art, music, architecture, philosophy, etc. since the 1940's and 1950's |
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| an abstract or concise summary that maintains the tone of the longer piece |
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| a direct, unadorned form of language, written or spoken in ordinary usage. It is not restricted in rhythm, measure, or rhyme. |
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| the central character and focus of interest in a narrative or drama |
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| a play on words that are either identical in sound (homonyms) or very similar sound, but are sharply diverse in meaning |
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| a foot composed of two successive syllables with approximately equal light stresses |
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| four-line stanza; the most common in English versitfication, and is employed with various meters and rhyme schemes |
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| an adventurous expedition undertaken by a hero to secure or achieve something, or to perform a prescribed feat |
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(1) a nineteenth-century movement in writing of novels
(2) a recurrent mode, in various eras and literary forms of representing human life and experience in literature-- 'life as it really is' |
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| a phrase, verse or group of verses repeated at intervals throughout a song or poem, especially at the end of each stanza |
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| the tone, diction and syntax appropriate for the subject matter and audience of a specififc form of writing. Improper register is the use of words and expressions inappropriate to a specific form of written or spoken expression. |
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| dependability of the speaker, narrator, etc. |
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| act of recalling past persons, events, or places |
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| the act or instance of repeating a certain literary element, word, or phrase |
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| the part of a literary work in which the complications of the plot are resolved and loose ends are tied up; denouement |
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| use of language for persuasion in speaking or writing; especially in oratory |
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| a sentence in the grammatical form of a question which is not asked in order to receive a reply, but to achieve an expressive force, different form, and usually more effective than a direct assertion |
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| the varying speed, intensity, elevation, pitch, loudness, and expressiveness of speech, especially prevalent in poetry |
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| the repetition of identical or closely related sounds in the syllables of different words, most often in concluding syllables at ends of lines |
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| the patter of a poem's rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each rhyming sound |
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| variant spelling of rhyme |
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| Aristotle's complication-- an element of plot following the exposition and before the climax. The events after the introduction of setting and characters that lead up to the turning point --or point of most interest-- in the narrative. |
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| a narrative form concerned with a courtly and chivalric age, often one of highly developed manners and civility; standard plot = a quest undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a lady's favor |
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| a literary movement (as in that of 19th century England-- 1785 to 1830), marked especially by emphasis on the imagination and the emotions. In Romanticism the emotional and intellectual freedom of the individual is elevated above the traditional norms and confines of society. Nature is often seen as a source of inspiration. |
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| crude and taunting use of apparent praise for dispraise-- "Oh, you're God's gift to women, are you!" A form of irony |
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| the literary art ridiculing a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking attitudes of amusement or contempt |
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| author clearly shows that the work is a satire |
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| the satire is not stated directly but implied |
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| the act of determining the prevailing rhythm of a poem |
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| detailed description that appeals and utilizes the five senses |
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| excess emotion to an occasion, especially to an overindulgence in the intended emotions of pathos or sympathy |
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| the time, place and natural environment in which all characters live and move, including all artifacts they use in their lives |
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| the social locale and circumstances in which a narrative's actions occur |
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| the period of historical time in which a narrative is set |
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| an often intentional change in anything - point of view, scenery, mood, etc.; can often be intended as a device |
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| a figure of comparison using "like" with nouns and "as" with clauses |
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| a form of discourse in which a character reveals his or her thoughts when alone or unaware of the presence of other characters |
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| a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme; Elizabethan and Petrarchan being the predominant forms |
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a foot of two successive syllables with approximately equal long stresses as in:
Goód stróng thíck stúpefying incese smoke (Browning) |
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| a group of the verse-lines in a poem, set off by a space in the printed text |
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| a character who is so ordinary and unoriginal that he or she seems to have been cast in a mold; a representative character (see character) |
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| a narrative method using long passages of introspection; used to describe the unbroken flow of perceptions, thought, and feelings in the waking mind |
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| the form or overall design and arrangement of material in a work; the organizing principles in a work of literature |
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| the modes and devices of expression in prose or verse. Thus diction, grammatical constructions, figurative language, alliteration, and other sound patters all enter into style. |
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| in double plots (of Elizabethan drama), a second story that is complete and interesting in its own right |
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| a logical scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion which must logically be true if the premises are true |
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| a specific word, idea, or object that may stand for ideas, values, persons, or ways of life |
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| descriptions of one kind of sensation in terms of another; for example, description of sound in terms of color-- "the scarlet horns and pastel strings" |
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| a part of something is used to signify the whole or vice versa 'ten hands' meaning ten workmen |
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(1) the way that sequences of words are ordered into phrases, clauses, and sentences
(2) the study of the above |
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| a general concept or doctrine which an imaginative work is designed to incorporate and make persuasive to the reader; a significant idea in a literary text |
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| the argument or proposition one attempts to prove or defend in a scholarly essay |
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| the techniques and modes of presentation an author uses to reveal or create attitudes in a literary piece; the author's attitude toward his subject and audience |
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| literary, particularly dramatic, representations of serious and important actions which culminate in a disastrous conclusion for the protagonist |
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| the protagonist's error of judgment--synonym for hamartia |
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| a noble hero who suffers a change in fortune from happiness to misery because of a mistaken act, to which he is lead by his hamartia. The tragic hero moves us to pity because his punishment is greater than he deserves, but he also moves us to fear because we see similar possibilities of error in our own selves |
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| changes in thought or direction of an idea; transitional expressions connect ideas and show how they are related |
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| a two-syllable foot consisting of a heavy stress followed by a light stress as in never, gather, happy |
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Definition
| figures of speech, most of which are used to compare dissimilar objects to achieve effects beyond the range of literal language; tropes include simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, etc. |
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| restraint or lack of emphasis in expression, as for rhetorical effect |
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| the achievement of an allusion of reality in the audience; having the appearance of truth |
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| common everyday speech, slang |
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| compositions written in meter, a line of poetry; can refer to poetry in general |
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| a persuasive authorial presence, a determinate intelligence and moral sensibility, which has invented, ordered, rendered, and expressed literary characters and materials in just this way; usually discussed as a strong voice, absence of voice, etc. |
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| expressions in which a single word stands in the same grammatical relation two or more other words, but with an obvious shift in its significance (Ex. "Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss." -Shakespeare) |
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