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Terminology
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14
Literature
Undergraduate 2
01/10/2013

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Term
Canon
Definition
(Greek "rule"): the group of texts regarded as worthy of special respect or attention by a given institution. Also, the group of texts regarded as definitely having been written by a certain author.
Term
Close Reading
Definition
The careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text. Such a reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general, paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they are read.
Term
Analysis
Definition
The breaking up of a topic to make it easier to understand.
Term
Alliteration
Definition
The repetition of an initial consonant sound or consonant cluster in consecutive or closely positioned words.
Term
Assonance
Definition
The repetition of identical or near identical stressed vowel sounds in words whose final consonants differ, producing half-rhyme.
Term
Caesura
Definition
(Latin "cut"): a term of meter. A pause or breathing space within a line of verse, generally occurring between syntactic units.
Term
Lyric
Definition
Initially meaning a song, "lyric" refers to a short poetic form, without restriction of meter, in which the expression of personal emotion, often by a voice in the first person, is given primacy over narrative sequence.
Term
Metonymy
Definition
(Greek "change of name"): Using a word to denote another concept or other concepts, by virtue of habitual association. Thus, "The Press," designating printed news media.
Term
Dream-vision
Definition
A poetic genre that typically follows a structure whereby a narrator recounts his experience of falling asleep, dreaming, and waking, and the story is often an allegory.
Term
Elegy
Definition
A genre. In classical literature elegy was a form written in elegiac couplets (a hexameter followed by a pentameter) devoted to many possible topics.
Term
Heroic Poetry
Definition
(a.k.a. epic), a genre. An extended narrative poem celebrating martial heroes, invoking divine inspiration, beginning in medias res, written in a high style, and divided into long narrative sequences.
Term
Kenning
Definition
A type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound (usually two words, often hyphenated) that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun.
Term
Synecdoche
Definition
(Greek "to take with something else"): Using a part to express the whole, or vice versa; e.g., "all hands on deck"
Term
Ubi Sunt
Definition
"Where are...[they]?" Sometimes interpreted to indicate nostalgia, the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation on mortality and life's transience.
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