American Literature Final Exam

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Allusion

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is a reference to something literary, mythological, or historical that the author assumes the reader will recognize; indirect reference

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Ambiguity

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is doubtfulness or uncertainty as regards interpretation: Inexactness

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Anaphora

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is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of two or more sentences.

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Author

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is a person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.; the composer of a literary work.

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Cacophony

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is a harsh discordance of sound; dissonance.

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Cadence

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is a rhythmic flow of a sequence of sounds or words.

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Caesura

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is a break, especially a sense pause, usually near the middle of a verse, and marked in scansion by a double vertical line.

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Common meter

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is a poetic metre consisting of four lines which alternate between iambic tetrameter (four metrical feet per line, with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) and iambic trimeter.

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Connotation

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is the associated, implied or secondary meaning of a word or expression; meaning often carried by emotion.

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Denotation

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is the basic, definitional meaning of a word, independent of emotional or other associations.

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End-stopped line

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is a grammatical structure and sense that reaches completion at the end of a line of verse.

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Enjambment

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is a grammatical structure and sense that carries over from one line of a verse to another.

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Euphony

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is agreeableness of sound; pleasing effect to the ear.

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Foot

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is the basic metrical unit of verso, composed of syllables.

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Free Verse

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is verse that does not follow a fixed metrical pattern.

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Heroic Couplet

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is a stanza consisting of two rhyming lines in iambic pentameter.

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Irony

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is the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.

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Metaphor

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is an analogy identifying one object with another ans ascribing to the first object one or more qualities if the second, Contains a tenor and a vehicle.

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Meter

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is the rhythm established by the regular occurrence of similar units of sound, the recurrence of a rhythmic patter of poetry.

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Paradox

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is a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

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Perfect Rhyme

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is rhyme in which the later part of a word or phrase is identical sounding to that of another.

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Persona

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is the personality of narrator or main character, created by and sometimes identified with the author.

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Pun

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is the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words.

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Quotation

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is something that is quoted; of someone elses' work

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Rhyme

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is the use of the same or similar sounds either internally or at the ends of lines in order to produce an audible echo effect;

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Semantic Ambiguity

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is when a word itself has widely differing meanings it is said to have semantic ambiguity.

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Simile

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is an analogy in which a similarity between two essentially unlike objects is directly expressed (like, as). Contains a tenor and a vehicle

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Slant Rhyme

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, sometimes called half-rhyme or near rhymes is created from words with similar but not identical ending sounds.

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Sonnet

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is a poem, properly expressive of a single, complete thought, idea, or sentiment, of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to Italian or English schemes.

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Stanza

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is an arrangement of a certain number of lines, usually four or more, sometimes having a fixed length, meter, or rhyme scheme, forming a division of a poem.

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Symbol

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is a concrete object in a literary work that suggests or represents another level of meaning.

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Syntactic Ambiguity

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is the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words.

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Synecdoche

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is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something refers to the whole of something, or vice-versa.

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Image

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is a word or phrase in a literary text that appeals directly to the reader's senses

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Rhyme Scheme

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is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. For example abab indicates a four-line stanza in which the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth

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English Sonnet

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is a sonnet consisting of three quatrains and a couplet with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg (volta/turn) —called also Shakespearean sonnet. Uses Iambic Pentameter

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Italian Sonnet

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is a sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abba abba and a sestet (Volta/turn) rhyming in any of various patterns (as cde cde or cdc dcd)

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Blues

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is a style of music that evolved from southern African-American secular songs and is usually distinguished by a strong 4/4 rhythm a 12-bar structure, and lyrics in a three-line stanza in which the second line repeats the first. Often songs were about oppression and depression.

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Catharsis

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is an emotional discharge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from anxiety and stress.

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Lyric Poem

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is a type of emotional songlike poetry, distinguished from dramatic and narrative poetry

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Epic Poem

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is a long, serious, poetic narrative about a significant event, often featuring a hero.

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Found poem

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is a composition made by combining fragments of such printed material as newspapers, signs, or menus, and rearranging them into the form of a poem.

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Epigraph

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is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, or as a summary,

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Iambic Pentameter

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is popular English verse form consisting of five metrical feet--with each foot consisting of an iamb (i.e., an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: diDUM).

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Punctuation

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is the use of symbols not belonging to the alphabet of a writing system to indicate aspects of the intonation and meaning not otherwise conveyed in the written language.

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Capitalization

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refers to writing in uppercase letters and is often used as a literary device in poetry.

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Typography

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is the art or procedure of arranging type or processing data; the style, arrangement, or appearance of printed letters on a page, also often used to convey meaning.

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Cubism

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is a style of art that stresses abstract structure at the expense of other pictorial elements especially by displaying several aspects of the same object simultaneously and by fragmenting the form of depicted objects

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Imagism

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is a 20th century movement in poetry advocating free verse and the expression of ideas and emotions through clear precise images.

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Avant-garde

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is a group of people who develop new and often very surprising ideas in art, literature, etc.

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Portmanteau

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is a word or morpheme whose form and meaning are derived from a blending of two or more distinct forms (as smog from smoke and fog).

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Alliteration

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is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in a line or succeeding lines of verse