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72 Cards in this Set
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Alexandrine |
A line of iambic hexameter; The final line of a Spenserian stanza |
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Alliteration |
Repeated consonant or sound at the beginning of a series of words |
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Allusion |
A reference to someone or something, usually literary ex. "Call me Ishmael" |
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Antagonist |
The main character opposing the protagonist, the villain |
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Anthropomorphism |
Assigning human attributes, such as emotions or physical characteristic, to plants, animals, or objects ex. Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia |
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Apostrophe |
A speech addressed to someone not present, or to an abstraction (lends itself to parody) ex. John Donne's, "The Sun Rising," "Busy old fool, unruly sun..." |
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Bildungsroman |
"A novel of education," it follows a young person over a period of years, from naive youth into the harsh reality of adulthood (coming of age) ex. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce |
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Caesura |
The pause that breaks a line of Old English verse; also, any particularly deep pause in a line of verse. |
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Decorum |
One of the neoclassical principles of drama. Decorum is the relation of style to the content in the speech of dramatic characters. ex. a character's speech should be appropriate to his or her social station, like in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest |
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Doggerel |
A derogatory term used to describe poorly written poetry of little or no literary value. ex. Shakespeare uses doggerel in the dialogue between the Dromio twins in The Comedy of Errors for comedic effect. |
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Epithalamium |
A work, especially a poem, written to celebrate a wedding. ex. Edmund Spenser's "Epithalamium" |
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Euphuism |
A word derived from Lyly's Euphues (1580) to characterize writing that is self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech. This was a popular and influential mode of speech and writing in the late 16th century. ex. Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "Brevity is the soul of wit." |
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Feminine Rhyme |
Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. For example, two lines ending with "running" and "gunning." Properly, the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed. |
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Flat and Round Characters |
Terms coined by E.M. Forster to describe characters built around one trait (flat) and those developed with greater psychological complexity (round). |
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Georgic |
NOT to be confused with pastoral poetry! Georgic poems deal with people laboring in the countryside, pushing plows, raising crops--the virtues of farming life. ex. Virgil's Georgics |
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Hamartia |
Aristotle's term for what is popularly called "the tragic flaw." Hamartia, however, implies FATE, while a tragic flaw implies psychology. ex. Oedipus's hasty temper |
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Homeric Epithet |
A repeated descriptive phrase, as found in Homer's epics. ex. "Rosy-fingered dawn" |
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Hudibrastic |
A term derived from Samuel Butler's Hudibras. It refers specifically to the couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (eight syllables long) which Butler employed in Hudibras, or more generally to any deliberate, humorous, ill-rhythmed, ill-rhymed couplets. (Funny, bad poetry) |
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Hyperbole |
A deliberate exaggeration. ex. "the shot heard round the world," from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Concord Hymn." |
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Litotes |
An understatement created through a double negative (or more precisely, negating the negative). ex. From the Book of Acts, Paul says, "I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city." |
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Masculine Rhyme |
A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka, normal rhyme) ex. Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening": Whose woods these are I think I know His house is in the village though... |
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Metonymy |
A phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature. ex. "The pen is mightier than the sword" |
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Neoclassical Unities |
Principles of dramatic structure from Aristotle's Poetics. Popular in the neoclassical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Time: a work should take place within one day Place: a single locale Action: a single dramatic plot, no subplots |
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Pastoral Elegy |
A lament for the dead sung by a shepherd; the shepherd is the author, and the dead is typically another poet. ex. Milton's "Lycidas" and Shelley's "Adonais" |
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Pastoral Literature |
A work that deals with the lives of people, especially shepherds, in the country or in nature. ex. Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" |
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Pathetic Fallacy |
A term coined by John Ruskin. It refers to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects. ex. "The cruel crawling foam." |
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Personification |
Giving an inanimate object human qualities or form. ex. "The Train" by Emily Dickinson: I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up... |
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Picaresque |
A novel, typically loosely constructed along an incident-to-incident basis, that follows the adventures of a more or less scurrilous rogue whose primary concerns are filling his belly and staying out of jail. ex. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and Defoe's Moll Flanders |
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Protagonist |
The main character, usually the hero. |
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Skeltonics |
A form of humorous poetry, using very short, rhymed lines and a pronounced rhythm, made popular by John Skelton. The only real difference between a skeltonic and doggerel is the quality of the thought expressed. ex. "O ye wretched Scots, / Ye Puant pisspots..." |
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Sprung Rhythm |
The rhythm created and used in the nineteenth century by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Like Old English verse, sprung rhythm fits a varying number of unstressed syllable in a line--only the stresses count in scansion. ex. From "Pied Beauty," by Hopkins: Glory be to God for dappled things-- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow... |
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Synaesthesia |
Phrases that suggest an interplay of the senses. ex. John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale": Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! |
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Synecdoche |
A phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of that object or person. ex. T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." |
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Voice |
The perspective from which a story is written. Usually first or third person. |
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Ballad |
A type of stanza, typical for the folk ballad. The length of the lines is determined by the number of stressed syllables only. Rhyme scheme = abcb. ex. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
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In Memoriam |
The stanza composed of four lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming abba. ex. Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." |
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Ottava Rima |
Eight-line stanza (usually iambic pentameter) rhyming abababcc. ex. Lord Byron's Don Juan |
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Rhyme Royal |
Seven-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc. |
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Spenserian |
A nine-line stanza. The first eight lines are iambic pentameter. The final line, in iambic hexameter, is an alexandrine. The stanza's rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. ex. This is the stanza Spenser created for The Faerie Queene. |
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Terza Rima |
This form consists of three-line stanzas with an interlocking rhyme scheme proceeding aba bcb cdc ded, etc. ex. Terza rima was invented by Dante for his Divine Comedy. |
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Blank Verse |
Unrhymed iambic pentameter. ex. Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses": One equal temper of heroic hearts, Make weak by time and fate, but strong in will, To strive, to seek, to fine, and not to yield. |
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Free Verse |
Unrhymed verse without a strict meter. ex. "Song of Myself," by Walt Whitman |
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Old English Verse |
Verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause called a caesura. ex. Beowulf: Protected in war; so warriors earn Their fame, and wealth is shaped with a sword. |
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Italian, or Petrarchan Sonnet |
Rhyme scheme: abbaabba cdecde Divided into octave and sestet, sestet is divided into two tercets. Identify it by the tercets at the end. |
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English, or Shakespearean Sonnet |
Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg Identify by the couplet at the end. |
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Spenserian Sonnet |
Rhyme scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee Identify by the final couplet plus two couplets in the body of the poem. |
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Villanelle |
A 19-line form that repeats the first and third lines throughout the poem. ex. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" |
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Sestina |
A 39-line poem of 6 stanzas of 6 lines each and a final stanza of 3 lines called an envoi. No rhyme. Instead, one of six words is used at the end word of each line according to a fixed pattern. |
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Auxiliary |
"Helping verb," often a form of "be," "have," or "do" ex. "I am working on it." |
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Gerund |
a verb acting as a noun clause, usually the "ing" ending form of the verb ex. "Sucking dick is good for your complexion." |
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Imperative |
a verb used for issuing commands ex. "Do it now!" |
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Indicative |
plain old verb in present tense ex. "John plays with his balls." |
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Infinitive |
an unconjugated verb with "to" in front of it ex. "To be, or not to be." |
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Participle |
the "ed" form of a verb ex. "John has played with his balls many times." |
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Predicate |
further information about the subject, a verb and its cohorts ex. "This test is really bogus." |
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Subjunctive |
a verb used to express conditional or counterfactual statements ex. "If I were a rich man..." |
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Subordinate conjunction |
a word that introduce a subordinate clause ex. "Since you're awake, I'll just turn on the TV." |
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Substantive |
a group of words acting as a noun ex. "Playing the banjo is extremely annoying." |
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Vocative |
expression of direct address ex. "Sit, Ubu, sit!" |
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Lacanian Criticism |
Jacques Lacan's famous essay, "The Mirror Stage in the Formation of the I," suggests that a child's first (mis)recognition of him/herself in the mirror is the point at which the child becomes alienated from him/herself, and enters the symbolic order. Keywords: mirror, phallus, signifier/signified, substitution, desire, jouissance, objet petit a, and the three orders: imaginary, symbolic, and real. |
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Marxist Criticism |
A left-wing view of literature, keywords of socialism: base and superstructure, class, proletariat, means of production, bourgeoisie, imperialism, dialectical materialism. Influence: texts are NOT timeless, fixed, universal creations; literature is the product of a specific historical and cultural complex. |
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New Historicism |
A type of Marxist criticism, argues that institutions produce discernible effects in the consciousness of a society's members (literature is a product of consciousness). Keyword for the presence of the social-institutional presence in consciousness is ideology. |
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Identity criticisms |
3 types of Marxist criticism: feminist criticism, black criticism, and post-colonial criticism. Keywords: Euro-American patriarchy's marginalization of the other, phallocratic hegemony. |
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Psychological Criticism |
Examines and emphasizes universals of human consciousness and the ways in which essential aspects of the human psyche manifest themselves in literature; considers the personality and biological particulars of the individual author. The opposite of Marxist criticism. |
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Freudian Criticism |
AKA Psychoanalytic criticism. Keywords: Oedipal complex, libido, id, ego, superego, subconscious, repression, resistance. Key critic: Harold Bloom, theory that authors subconsciously position their work against that of another (father figure). An influential author is a strong-poet. |
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Archetype or Myth Criticism |
A type of psychological criticism, drawn from the theories of Carl Jung and anthropologist James G. Frazer. Looks for recurring symbols, motifs, character types, and plots. Keyword: collective unconscious Key critics: Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye |
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Linguistic Criticism |
The broad area of critical though concerned primarily with language. 4 main types: Formalism, New Criticism, structuralism, deconstruction |
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Formalist criticism |
A type of linguistic criticism, attempts to discern the underlying laws that shape a literary text. Analysis centered around defamiliarization. Literature employs devices of plot, story, and voice that make language unfamiliar to signal to the reader an aesthetic, literary object. |
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New Criticism |
Dominant in American and English universities for several decades at mid-century. Key Critics: T.S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren. They think you should just look at purely what is in the text, close reading, rather than commit the heresy of paraphrase. Their terms the intentional fallacy and the affective fallacy describe the errors of earlier, more subjective critics. Most successful with poetry. |
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Structuralism |
Linguistic criticism that holds that meaning is never or rarely intrinsic--meaning is only produced by structure. The fundamental unit of structure is relative difference. Keywords: sign, semiotics, signifier, signified. also, spatial metaphors, like axis. |
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Post-structuralism |
Makes use of structuralist theory and critiques it. More important school: deconstruction. They like the weird things that don't fit into normal theories, displacements, excesses, gaps. Keywords: erasure, trace, bracketing, difference, slippage, dissemination, logocentrism, indeterminancy, decentering. Mimesis, alterity, marginality, desire, lack. |
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Reader-response criticism |
Insists that the reader's experience of the text is the literary event--literature happens in a reader's head, not on the page. Assumes an implied or ideal reader. Some examines the aesthetic impact of a work, judging whether a work broke the aesthetic horizon of expectations of its time. |
