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Vocabulary List 2
N/A
26
Language - English
Not Applicable
09/02/2014

Additional Language - English Flashcards

 


 

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Term
Allegory
Definition

 

A story in which people, things, and events have another meaning.

Term
Ambiguity
Definition

 

 

Multiple meanings a literary work may communicate, especially two meanings that are incompatible.

Term
Apostrophe
Definition

 

 

Direct address, usually to someone or something that is not present.  (Keats’s “Bright star! Would I were steadfast” is an (blank) to a star, and “To Autumn” is an (blank) to a personified season.

Term
Connotation
Definition

 

The implications of a word or phrase, as opposed to its exact meaning.

Term
Convention
Definition

 

 

A device of style or subject matter so often used that it becomes a recognized means of expression.  For example, a lover observing the literary love of this cannot eat or sleep and grows pale and lean.  Romeo, at the beginning of the play is a (blank)  lover, while an overweight lover in Chaucer is consciously mocking the (blank).

Term
Denotion
Definition

 

The dictionary meaning of a word.

Term
Didactic
Definition

 

Explicitly instructive.  Examples: Pope’s  “Essay on Man” and the novels by Ayn Rand.

Term
Digression
Definition

 

 

The use of material unrelated to subject of a work.

Term
Epigram
Definition

 

A pithy saying, often using contrast.  This is also a verse form, usually  brief and pointed.

Term
Euphemism
Definition

 

A figure of speech using indirection to avoid offensive bluntness, such as “deceased” for “dead” or “remains” for “corpse.”

Term
Grotesque
Definition

 

 

Characterized by distortions or incongruities.  The fiction of Poe or Flannery O’Conner is often described as this. 

Term
Hyperbole
Definition

 

Deliberate exaggeration, over statement.  As a rule, this is self conscious, without the intention of being accepted literally.  “The strongest man in the world” and “a diamond as big as the Ritz” are (blank).

Term
Jargon
Definition

 

 

The special language of a profession or group.  This term usually has pejorative associations, with the implication that it is evasive, tedious, and unintelligible to outsiders.  The writings of the lawyer and the literary critic are both susceptible to (blank).

Term
Literal
Definition

 

 

Not figurative; accurate to the letter; matter of fact or concrete.

Term
Lyrical
Definition

 

Songlike; characterized by emotion, subjectivity, and imagination.

Term
Oxymoron
Definition

A combination of opposites;  the union of contradictory terms.  Romeo’s line “feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health” has four examples of this device.

Term
Parable
Definition

 

A story designed to suggest a principle, illustrate a moral, or answer a question.  (Blanks) are allegorical stories.

Term
Paradox
Definition

 

 

A statement that seems to be self-contradicting, but, in fact, is true.  The figure in Donne’s holy sonnet that concludes I never shall be “chaste except you ravish me” is a good example of the device.

Term
Parody
Definition

 

A composition that imitates the style of another composition normally for comic effect.  Fielding’s Shamela is a (blank) of Richardson’s Pamela.  A contest for these of Hemingway draws hundreds of entries each year.

Term
Personification
Definition

 

 

A figurative use of language that endows the nonhuman (ideas, inanimate objects, animals, abstractions) with human characteristics.  Keats (blank)  the nightingale, the Grecian urn, and autumn in his major poems.

Term
Reliability
Definition

 

 

A quality of some fictional narrators whose word the reader can trust.  There are two types of these narrators, that is tellers of a story who should or should not be trusted.  Most narrators are (blank) (Fitzgeral’s Nick Carraway, Conrad’s Marlow), but some are clearly not to be trusted (Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” several novels by Nabokov).  And there are some about whom readers have been unable to decide (James’s governess in The Turn of the Screw, Ford’s The Good Soldier).

Term
Rhetorical question
Definition

 

 

A question asked for effect, not in expectation of a reply.  No reply is expected because the question presupposes only one possible answer.  The lover of Suckling’s “Shall I wasting in despair / Die because of a lady’s fair?” has already decided the answer is no.

Term
Soliloquy
Definition

 

 

A speech in which a character who is alone speaks his or her thoughts aloud.  A monologue also has a single speaker, but the monologuist speaks to others who do not interrupt.  Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” and “O!  What a rogue and peasant slave am I” are examples of these.  Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and “Fra Lippo Lippi” are monologues, but the hypocritical monk of his “(Blank) of a Spanish Cloister” cannot reveal his thoughts to others.

Term
Stereotype
Definition

 

 

A conventional pattern, expression, character, or idea.  In literature, this could apply to the unvarying plot and characters of some works of fiction (those of Barbara Cartland, for example) or to the stock characters and plots of many of the greatest stage comedies.

Term
Syllogism
Definition

 

 

A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them.  A (blank) begins with a major premise (“All tragedies end unhappily.”) followed by a minor premise (Hamlet is a tragedy.”) and a conclusion (Therefore, “Hamlet ends unhappily.”).

Term
Thesis
Definition

 

The theme, meaning, or position that a writer undertakes to prove or support.

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