English

Front 1

The same as stress. A syllable given more prominence in pronunciation than its neighbors is said to be accented.

Back 1

Accent:

Front 2

A narrative or description that has a second meaning beneath the surface, often relating each literal term to a fixed, corresponding abstract idea or moral principle: usually, the ulterior meaning belong to a preexisting system of ideas or principles.

Back 2

Allegory:

Front 3

The repetition at close intervals of the initial consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words. Important words and accented syllables beginning with vowels may also be said to alliterate with each other inasmuch as they all have the same lack of an initial consonant sound.

Back 3

Alliteration:

Front 4

A reference, explicit or implicit, to something in previous literature or history.

Back 4

Allusion:

Front 5

A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by one accented syllable.

Back 5

Anapest:

Front 6

A meter in which a majority of the feet are anapests.

Back 6

Anapestic meter:

Front 7

Repetition of an opening word or phrase in a series of lines.

Back 7

Anaphora:

Front 8

Any force in a story that is in conflict wit the protagonist. An antagonist may be another person, an aspect of the physical or social environment, or a destructive element in the protagonist’s own nature.

Back 8

Antagonist:

Front 9

A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply.

Back 9

Apostrophe:

Front 10

A term used for words in a rhyming pattern that have some kind of sound correspondence but are not perfect rhymes. Approximate rhymes occur occasionally in patterns where most of the rhymes are perfect and sometimes are used systematically in place of perfect rhyme.

Back 10

Approximate rhyme:

Front 11

The condition of a successful literary work whereby all its elements work together for the achievement of its central purpose. In an artistically unified work nothing is included that is irrelevant to the central purpose, nothing is omitted that is essential to it, and the parts are arranged in the most effective order for the achievement of that purpose.

Back 11

Artistic Unity:

Front 12

A brief speed in which a character turns from the person being addressed to speak directly to an audience; a dramatic device for letting the audience know what a character is really thinking or feeling as opposed to what the character pretends to think or feel.

Back 12

Aside:

Front 13

The repetition at close intervals of the vowel sounds of accented syllables or important words.

Back 13

Assonance:

Front 14

A poem about dawn; a morning love song; or a poem about the parting of lovers at dawn.

Back 14

Aubade:

Front 15

A fairly short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form.

Back 15

Ballad:

Front 16

Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Back 16

Blank Verse:

Front 17

A harsh, discordant, unpleasant-sounding choice and arrangement of sounds.

Back 17

Cacophony:

Front 18

A speech pause occurring within a line.

Back 18

Caesura:

Front 19

A term used by Aristotle to describe some sort of emotional release experienced by the audience at the end of a successful tragedy.

Back 19

Catharsis:

Front 20

The occurrence of an event that has no apparent cause in antecedent events or in predisposition of character.

Back 20

Chance:

Front 21

Any of the persons presented in a story or play.

Back 21

Character:

Front 22

A character who during the course of a work undergoes a permanent change in some distinguishing moral qualities, personal traits, or outlook.

Back 22

Dynamic Character:

Front 23

A character whose distinguishing moral qualities or personal traits are summed up in one or two traits.

Back 23

Flat Character:

Front 24

A minor character whose situation or actions parallel those of the major character, and thus by contrast sets off or illuminates the major character; most often the contrast is complimentary to the major character.

Back 24

Foil Character:

Front 25

A character whose distinguishing moral qualities or personal traits are complex and many-sided.

Back 25

Round Character:

Front 26

A character who is the same sort of person at the end of a work as at the beginning.

Back 26

Static Character:

Front 27

A stereotyped character: one whose nature is familiar to us from prototypes in previous literature.

Back 27

Stock Character:

Front 28

The various literary means by which characters are presented.

Back 28

Characterization:

Front 29

A group of actors speaking or chanting in unison, often while going through the steps of an elaborate formalized dance; a characteristic device of Greek drama for conveying communal or group emotion.

Back 29

Chorus:

Front 30

The turning point or high point in a plot.

Back 30

Climax:

Front 31

The chance concurrence of two events having a peculiar correspondence between them.
Comedy: A type of drama, opposed to tragedy, having usually a happy ending, and emphasizing human limitation rather than human greatness.

Back 31

Coincidence:

Front 32

In a tragedy, a comic scene that follows a scene of seriousness and by contrast intensifies the emotions aroused by the serious scene.

Back 32

Comic Relief:

Front 33

Fiction written to meet the taste of a wide popular audience and relying usually on tested formulas for satisfying such taste.

Back 33

Commercial Fiction:

Front 34

A clash of actions, desires, ideas, or goals in the plot of a story or drama. Conflict may exist between the main character and some other person or persons; between the main character and some external force- physical nature, society, or “fate”; or between the main character and some other person or persons; between the main character and some external force- physical nature, society, or “fate”; or between the main character and some destructive element in his or her own nature.

Back 34

Conflict:

Front 35

What a word suggests beyond its basic definition, a word’s overtone of meaning.

Back 35

Connotation

Front 36

The repetition at close intervals of the final consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words.

Back 36

Consonance:

Front 37

That form of a poem in which the lines follow each other without formal grouping, the only breaks being dictated by units of meaning.

Back 37

Continuous form:

Front 38

Two successive lines, usually in the same meter, linked by rhyme.

Back 38

Couplet:

Front 39

A metrical foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables.

Back 39

Dactyl:

Front 40

A meter in which a majority of the feet are dactyls.

Back 40

Dactylic meter:

Front 41

The basic definition or dictionary meaning of a word.

Back 41

Denotation:

Front 42

That portion of a plot that reveals the final outcome of its conflicts or the solution of its mysteries.

Back 42

Denouement:

Front 43

“God from the machine” The resolution of a plot by use of a highly improbable chance or coincidence (so named the practice of some Greek dramatists of having a god descend from heaven at the last possible minute- in the theater by means of a stage machine- to rescue the protagonist from an impossible situation.)

Back 43

Deus ex machine:

Front 44

Poetry, fiction, or drama having as a primary purpose to teach or preach.

Back 44

Didactic writing:

Front 45

A situation in which a character must choose between two courses of action, both undesirable.

Back 45

Dilemma:

Front 46

A metrical line containing two feet.

Back 46

Dimeter:

Front 47

That method of characterization in which the author, by exposition or analysis, tells us directly what a character is like, or has someone else in the story do so.

Back 47

Direct presentation of character:

Front 48

A rhyme in which the repeated vowel is in the second last syllable of the words involved; one form of feminine rhyme.

Back 48

Double rhyme:

Front 49

Any dramatic device which, though it departs from reality, is implicitly accepted by author and audience as a means of representing reality.

Back 49

Dramatic convention:

Front 50

The presentation through dialogue of information about events that occurred before the action of a play, or that occur offstage or between the staged actions; this may also refer to the presentation of information about individual characters’ backgrounds or the general situation (political, historical, etc.) in which the action takes place.

Back 50

Dramatic exposition:

Front 51

The presentation of character or of emotion through the speech or action of characters rather than through exposition, analyses, or description by the author.

Back 51

Dramatization:

Front 52

A meter in which a majority of the feet contain two syllables.

Back 52

Duple meter:

Front 53

Writing that departs from the narrative or dramatic mode and instructs the reader how to think or feel about the events of a story or the behavior of a character.

Back 53

Editorializing:

Front 54

Rhymes that occur at the ends of lines.

Back 54

End Rhyme:

Front 55

A line that ends with natural speech pause, usually marked by punctuation.

Back 55

End-stopped line:

Front 56

A sonnet in which the content or structure usually parallels the rhyme scheme, falling into three coordinate quatrains and a concluding couplet; but it is often structured, like the Italian sonnet, into octave and sestet, the principle break in thought coming at the end of the eighth line.

Back 56

English (or Shakespearean) sonnet:

Front 57

A moment or event in which a character achieves a spiritual insight into life or into his or her own circumstances.

Back 57

Epiphany:

Front 58

A smooth, pleasant sounding choice and arrangement of sounds.

Back 58

Euphony:

Front 59

That segment of the plot that comes between the climax and the conclusion.

Back 59

Falling action:

Front 60

A kind of fiction that pictures creatures or events beyond the boundaries of known reality.

Back 60

Fantasy:

Front 61

A type of drama related to comedy but emphasizing improbable situations, violent conflicts, physical action, and coarse wit over characterization or articulated plot.

Back 61

Farce:

Front 62

A rhyme in which the repeated accented vowel is in either the second or third last syllable of the words involved.

Back 62

Feminine rhyme:

Front 63

Language employing figures of speech; language that cannot be taken literally or only literally.

Back 63

Figurative language:

Front 64

Broadly, any way of saying something other than the ordinary way; more narrowly a way of saying one thing and meaning another.

Back 64

Figure of speech:

Front 65

A form of poem in which the length and pattern are prescribed by previous usage or tradition, such as sonnet, limerick, villanelle, and so on.

Back 65

Fixed form:

Front 66

A narrative poem designed to be sung, composed by an anonymous author, and transmitted orally for years or generations before being written down. It has usually undergone modification through the process of oral transmission.

Back 66

Folk ballad:

Front 67

The basic unit used in the scansion of measurement of verse. A foot usually contains one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables.

Back 67

Foot:

Front 68

The external pattern or shape of a poem, describable without reference to its content, as continuous form, stanzaic form, fixed form, free verse, and syllabic verse.

Back 68

Form:

Front 69

Nonmetrical poetry in which the basic rhythmic unit is the line, and in which pauses, line breaks, and formal patterns develop organically from the requirements of the individual poem rather than from establishing poetic forms.

Back 69

Free verse:

Front 70

An ending in which events turn out well for a sympathetic protagonist.

Back 70

Happy ending:

Front 71

The actual rhythm of a metrical poem as we hear it when it is read naturally. The heard rhythm mostly conforms to but sometimes departs from or modifies the expected rhythm.

Back 71

Heard rhythm:

Front 72

A metrical line containing six feet.

Back 72

Hexameter:

Front 73

A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used in the service of truth.

Back 73

Hyperbole/Overstatement:

Front 74

A metrical foot consisting of one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable.

Back 74

Iamb:

Front 75

A meter in which the majority of feet are iambs. The most common English meter.

Back 75

Iambic meter:

Front 76

The representation through language of sense experience.

Back 76

Imagery:

Front 77

An ending in which the central problem or conflict is left unresolved.

Back 77

Indeterminate ending:

Front 78

That method of characterization in which the author shows us a character in action, compelling us to infer what the character is like from what is said or done by the character.

Back 78

Indirect presentation of character:

Front 79

A rhyme in which one or both of the rhyme-words occurs within the line.

Back 79

Internal Rhyme:

Front 80

A situation or a use of language involving some kind of incongruity or discrepancy.

Back 80

Irony:

Front 81

A figure of speech in which what is said is the opposite of what is meant.

Back 81

Verbal Irony:

Front 82

An incongruity or discrepancy between what a character says or thinks and what the reader knows to be true (or between what a character perceives and what the author intends the reader to perceive.

Back 82

Dramatic Irony:

Front 83

A situation in which there is an incongruity between appearance and reality, or between the actual situation and what would seem appropriate.

Back 83

Irony of situation:

Front 84

A sonnet consisting of an octave and a sestet using any arrangement of two or three additional rhymes.

Back 84

Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet:

Front 85

A fixed form consisting of five lines of anapestic meter, the first two trimeter, the next two dimeter, the last line trimeter, rhyming aabba; used exclusively for humorous or nonsense verse.

Back 85

Limerick:

Front 86

Fiction written with serious artistic intentions, providing an imagined experience yielding authentic insights into some significant aspect of life.

Back 86

Literary fiction:

Front 87

A rhyme in which the repeated accented vowel sound is in the final syllable of the words involved. (dance-pants, scald-recalled)

Back 87

Masculine rhyme (single rhyme):

Front 88

A type of drama related to tragedy but featuring sensational incidents, emphasizing plot at the expense of characterization, relying on cruder conflicts (virtuous protagonist versus villainous antagonist), and having a happy ending in which good triumphs over evil.

Back 88

Melodrama:

Front 89

A figure of speech in which an implicit comparison is made between two things essentially unalike. It may take one of four forms:
(1) That in which the literal term and the figurative term are both named.
(2) That in which the literal term is named and the figurative term is implied.
(3) That in which the literal term is implied and the figurative term named
(4) That in which both the literal and the figurative terms are implied.

Back 89

Metaphor:

Front 90

The regular patterns of accent that underline metrical verse; the measurable repetition of accented and unaccented syllables in poetry.

Back 90

Meter:

Front 91

A figure of speech in which some significant aspect or detail of an experience is used to represent the whole experience. Not to be confused with synecdoche (the use of a part to represent the whole), metonymy is the use of something closely related for the thing actually meant.

Back 91

Metonymy:

Front 92

Departures from the basic metrical pattern.

Back 92

Metrical variations:

Front 93

A metrical line containing one foot.

Back 93

Monometer:

Front 94

A rule of conduct or maxim for living expressed or implied as the “point” of a literary work.

Back 94

Moral:

Front 95

The incentives or goals that, in combination with the inherent natures of characters cause them to behave as they do. In commercial fiction actions may be unmotivated, insufficiently motivated, or implausibly motivated.

Back 95

Motivation:

Front 96

An unusual set of circumstances for which the reader craves an explanation; used to create suspense.

Back 96

Mystery:

Front 97

In drama a character, found in some plays, who, speaking directly to the audience, introduces the action and provides a string of commentary between the dramatic scenes. The narrator may or may not be a major character in the action itself.

Back 97

Narrator:

Front 98

1. an eight line stanza 2. the first eight lines of a sonnet, especially one structured in the manner of an Italian sonnet.

Back 98

Octave:

Front 99

The use of words that supposedly mimic their meaning in their sound.

Back 99

Onomatopoeia:

Front 100

A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used in service of truth.

Back 100

Overstatement (hyperbole):

Front 101

A compact verbal paradox in which two successive words seemingly contradict one another.

Back 101

Oxymoron:

Front 102

A statement or situation containing apparently contradictory or incompatible elements.

Back 102

Paradox:

Front 103

A situation containing apparently but not actually incompatible elements. The celebration of a fifth birthday anniversary by a 20-yr-old man is paradoxical but explainable if the man was born on Feb. 29. The Christian doctrines that Christ was born a virgin and is both God and man are, for a Christian believer, paradoxes (that is, apparently impossible but true.)

Back 103

Paradoxical situation:

Front 104

A restatement of the content of a poem designed to make its prose meaning as clear as possible.

Back 104

Paraphrase:

Front 105

A metrical line containing five feet.

Back 105

Pentameter:

Front 106

A figure of speech in which human attributes are given to an animal, an object, or a concept.

Back 106

Personification:

Front 107

A word whose sound, by an obscure process, to some degree suggests its meaning. As differentiated from onomatopoetic words, the meanings of phonetic intensive do not refer explicitly to sounds.

Back 107

Phonetic intensive:

Front 108

A maker of plays.

Back 108

Playwright:

Front 109

The sequence of incidents or events of which a story or play is composed.

Back 109

Plot:

Front 110

A situation in which an author gives the plot a twist or turn unjustified by preceding action or by the characters involved.

Back 110

Plot manipulation:

Front 111

The angle of vision from which a story is told.

Back 111

Point of view:

Front 112

The author tells the story using the third person, knowing all and free to tell us anything, including what the characters are thinking and feeling and why they act as they do.

Back 112

Omniscient point of view:

Front 113

The author tells the story using the third person, but is limited to a complete knowledge of only one character in the story and tells us only what the one character thinks, feels, sees or hears.

Back 113

Third-person limited point of view:

Front 114

The story is told by one of its characters, using the first person.

Back 114

First-person point of view:

Front 115

The author tells the story using the third person, but is limited to reporting what the characters say or do; the author does not interpret their behavior or tell us their private thoughts or feelings.

Back 115

Objective (or dramatic) point of view:

Front 116

Usually a short composition having the intentions of poetry but written in prose rather than verse.

Back 116

Prose poem:

Front 117

The central character in a story or play.

Back 117

Protagonist:

Front 118

1. a four line stanza 2. a four-line division of a sonnet marked off by its rhyme scheme

Back 118

Quatrain:

Front 119

Drama that attempts, in content and presentation, to preserve the illusion of actual, everyday life.

Back 119

Realistic drama:

Front 120

A repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines, normally at some fixed position in a poem written in stanzaic form.

Back 120

Refrain:

Front 121

Poetry using artificially eloquent language, that is, language too high-flown for its occasion and unfaithful to the full complexity of human experience.

Back 121

Rhetorical poetry:

Front 122

In natural speech, as in prose and poetic writing, the stressing or words or syllables so as to emphasize meaning and sentence structure.

Back 122

Rhetorical stress:

Front 123

Any wavelength recurrence of motion or sound.

Back 123

Rhythm:

Front 124

The repetition of the accented vowel sound and all succeeding sounds in important or importantly positioned words.

Back 124

Rhyme:

Front 125

assumes that the accented vowel sounds involved are preceded by differing consonant sounds.

Back 125

Perfect rhyme:

Front 126

when the preceding consonant sound is the same or if there is no preceding consonant in either word, or is the same word is repeated in the rhyming position.

Back 126

Identical rhyme:

Front 127

Any fixed pattern of rhymes characterizing a whole poem or its stanzas.

Back 127

Rhyme scheme:

Front 128

That development of plot in a story or play that precedes and leads up to the climax.

Back 128

Rising action:

Front 129

A line which has no natural speech pause at its end, allowing the sense to flow uninterruptedly into the succeeding line.

Back 129

Run-on line:

Front 130

Bitter or cutting speech; speech intended by its speaker to give pain to the person addressed.

Back 130

Sarcasm:

Front 131

A kind of literature that ridicules human folly or vice with the purpose of bringing about reform or of keeping others from falling into similar folly or vice.

Back 131

Satire:

Front 132

The process of measuring verse, that is, of marking accented and unaccented syllables, dividing the lines into feet, identifying the metrical pattern, and noting significant variations from that pattern.

Back 132

Scansion:

Front 133

Unmerited or contrived tender feeling; that quality in a work that elicits or seeks to elicit tears through an oversimplification or falsification of reality.

Back 133

Sentimentality:

Front 134

1. a six-line stanza 2. the last six lines of a sonnet structured on the Italian model

Back 134

Sestet:

Front 135

The context in time and place in which the action of a story occurs.

Back 135

Setting:

Front 136

A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two things essentially unalike. The comparison is made explicit by the use of some such word or phrase as like, as, than, similar to, resembles, or seems.

Back 136

Simile:

Front 137

A speech in which a character, alone on the stage, addresses himself or herself; a soliloquy is a “thinking out loud,” a dramatic means of letting an audience know a character’s thoughts and feelings.

Back 137

Soliloquy:

Front 138

A fixed form of fourteen lines, normally iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme conforming to or approximating one of two main types- the Italian or the English.

Back 138

Sonnet:

Front 139

A metrical foot consisting of two syllables equally or almost equally accented (true-blue).

Back 139

Spondee:

Front 140

A group of lines whose metrical pattern (and usually its rhyme scheme as well) is repeated throughout a poem.

Back 140

Stanza:

Front 141

The form taken by a poem when it is written in a series of units having the same number of lines and usually other characteristics in common, such as metrical pattern or rhyme scheme.

Back 141

Stanzaic form:

Front 142

Narrative that presents the private thoughts of a character without commentary or interpretation by the author.

Back 142

Stream of consciousness:

Front 143

The same as accent. A syllable given more prominence in pronunciation than its neighbors is said to be accented.

Back 143

Stress:

Front 144

An unexpected turn in the development of a plot.

Back 144

Surprise:

Front 145

A completely unexpected revelation or turn at the conclusion of a story or play.

Back 145

Surprise ending:

Front 146

The quality in a story or play that makes the reader eager to discover what happens next and how it will end.

Back 146

Suspense:

Front 147

Verse measured by the number of syllables rather than the number of feet per line.

Back 147

Syllabic verse:

Front 148

Something that means more than what it is; an object, person, situation, or action that in addition to its literal meaning suggests other meanings as well.

Back 148

Symbol:

Front 149

A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (usually body parts).

Back 149

Synecdoche:

Front 150

Presentation of one sense experience in terms usually associated with another sensation.

Back 150

Synesthesia:

Front 151

A three-line stanza exhibited in terza rima and villanelle as well as in other poetic forms.

Back 151

Tercet:

Front 152

An interlocking rhyme scheme with the pattern aba, bcb, cdc

Back 152

Terza rima:

Front 153

A metrical line containing four feet.

Back 153

Tetrameter:

Front 154

The central idea or unifying generalization implied or stated by a literary work.

Back 154

Theme:

Front 155

The writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward the subject, the audience, or herself or himself; the emotional coloring, or emotional meaning, of a work.

Back 155

Tone:

Front 156

A type of drama, opposed to comedy, which depicts the causally related events that lead to the downfall and suffering of the protagonist, a person of unusual moral or intellectual stature or outstanding abilities.

Back 156

Tragedy:

Front 157

A metrical line containing three feet.

Back 157

Trimeter:

Front 158

A meter in which a majority of the feet contain three syllables. Anapestic and dactylic are both triple meters.

Back 158

Triple meter:

Front 159

A meter in which the majority of the feet are trochees.

Back 159

Trochaic meter:

Front 160

A metrical foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by one unaccented syllable.

Back 160

Trochee :

Front 161

In metric verse, the omission of an unaccented syllable at either end of a line.

Back 161

Truncation:

Front 162

A figure of speech that consists of saying less than one means, or of saying what one means with less force than the occasion warrants.

Back 162

Understatement:

Front 163

An ending that turns out unhappily for a sympathetic protagonist.

Back 163

Unhappy ending:

Front 164

Metrical language, the opposite of prose.

Back 164

Verse:

Front 165

A nineteen-line fixed form consisting of five tercets rhymed aba and a concluding quatrain rhymed abaa, with lines 1 and 3 of the first tercet serving as refrains in an alternating pattern through line 15 and then repeated as lines 18 and 19.

Back 165

Villanelle:

Front 166

of the stream of sound. The study of versification.

Back 166

Prosody

Front 167

units of speech uttered with a single breath.

Back 167

Syllables

Front 168

nasal sounds. Hums.

Back 168

Resonance-

Front 169

cacophony (example kick)

Back 169

Harshness-

Front 170

sudden release of breath (pop)

Back 170

Plosiveness-

Front 171

expulsion of breath

Back 171

Breathiness-

Front 172

flows smoothly

Back 172

Liquidity-

Front 173

poet restricts himself to a specific meter. This sometimes allows the poet to come up with something he may not have had before.

Back 173

Heuristic function

Front 174

the pace of the poem. Its speed. Affected by caesura or end stopped line

Back 174

Tempo

Front 175

beginnings and endings of feet correspond. Nothing in line carries over.

Back 175

Diaeresis-

Front 176

end of one syllable and the beginning of the next have the same sound-> must slow down. Ex. Martha apple.

Back 176

Hiatus-

Front 177

often internal and voice drops.

Back 177

Feminine rhyme

Front 178

approximate rhyme. (push rush)

Back 178

Slant rhyme

Front 179

perfect rhyme.

Back 179

Full rhyme

Front 180

Successive stresses slow you down. (Equal accents) Multiple spondees. Prominence of long syllables.
Monosyllabism usually speeds you up. May slow you down.

Back 180

Successive stresses slow you down. (Equal accents) Multiple spondees. Prominence of long syllables.
Monosyllabism usually speeds you up. May slow you down.