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31 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Allusion
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An allusion is an indirect reference to a person, place, event, or literary work with which the author believes will be familiar.
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Aphorism
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An aphorism is a brief statement, usually one sentence long that expresses a general principal or truth about life.
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Autobiography
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An autobiography is the story of a person’s life written by that person. Generally written from the first person point of view, autobiographies can vary in style from straightforward chronological accounts to impressionistic narratives.
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Chronological
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Things taking place in a story in a logical time sequence; no jumping back and forth between past, present, and future.
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Diction
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A writer’s or speaker’s choice of words is called diction. Diction includes both vocabulary (individual words) and syntax (the order or arrangement of words). Diction can be formal or informal, technical or common, abstract or concrete.
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First Person
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The narrator is a character in the work who tells everything in his or her own words, and uses the pronouns I, me, my.
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Flashback
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A scene that interrupts the action of a narrative to describe events that took place at an earlier time. It provides background helpful in understanding character’s present situation.
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Framing Motif
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Starting a story with the end, then telling the whole story and ending back where the story began.
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Free Verse
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A poetry that does not have regular patterns of rhyme and meter. The lines in free verse often flow more naturally than do rhymed, metrical lines and thus achieve a rhythm more like that of everyday human speech. Walt Whitman is generally credited with bringing free verse to American poetry.
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Hyperbole
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A figure of speech in which the truth is exaggerated for emphasis or for humorous effect. The expression “I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse” is a hyperbole.
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Juxtaposition
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Placing two things side by side to compare them. In Catcher in the Rye, at the nightclub, the ugly couple and the nice couple were side by side to compare each other. Using words, ideas, or themes that show differences and contrast.
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Metaphor
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A figure of speech that compares two things that have something in common. Unlike similes, metaphors do not use the word like or as, but make comparisons directly.
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Mood
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The feeling or atmosphere that a writer creates for the reader. The writer’s use of connotation, imagery, figurative language, sound and rhythm, and descriptive details all contribute to the mood. The mood is more the setting or the feeling--mysterious, cold, or warm. How the Author hopes you feel while reading the book.
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Motif
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A recurring theme or idea throughout a work. Catcher in the Rye: Holden lying, swearing, thinking everyone’s a phony.
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Paradox:
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A statement that seems to contradict itself but may nevertheless suggest an important truth.
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Parallelism
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When a speaker or writer expresses ideas of equal worth with the same grammatical form, the technique is called parallelism, or parallel construction. Note that in the following example, each line or independent clause begins with the word I followed by a verb—sit, hear, see.
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Personification
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a figure of speech in which an object, animal, or idea is given human characteristics.
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Repetition
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The recurrence of words, phrases, or lines.
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Romanticism
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A movement in the arts that flourished in Europe and America throughout much of the 19th century. Romantic writers glorified nature and celebrated individuality. Their treatment of subject was emotional rather than rational, intuitive rather than analytic.
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Simile
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compares two things using like or as
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Slant Rhyme
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Rhymes that are not exact, but approximate. Also known as off rhymes.
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Stream of Consciousness
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A technique that was developed by modernist writers to present the flow of a character’s seemingly unconnected thoughts, responses, and sensations. Following a character’s long and sometimes rambling thoughts.
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Symbol
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A person, place, or object that has a concrete meaning in itself and also stands for something beyond itself, such as an idea or feeling.
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Syntax
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Syntax is the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence.
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Tone
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A writer’s attitude toward his or her subject. A writer can communicate tone through diction, choice of details, and direct statements of his or her position. Unlike mood, which refers to the emotional response of the reader to a work, tone reflects the feelings of the writer. To identify the tone of a work of literature, you might find it helpful to read the work aloud, as if giving a dramatic reading before an audience. The emotions that you convey in an oral reading should give you hints as to the tone of the work.
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Third-Person
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events are related by a voice outside the action, not by one of the characters. A third-person narrator uses pronouns like he, she, and they.
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Third-Person Omniscient
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the narrator is an all knowing, objective observer who stands outside the action and reports what different characters are thinking
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Third-Person Limited
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The narrator stands outside the action and focuses on one character’s thoughts, observations, and feelings.
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Transcendentalism
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An American offshoot of German romanticism, was based on a belief that “transcendent forms” of truth exist beyond reason and experience. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the leader of the movement, asserted that every truth through intuition. Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman are two well-known transcendentalist writers.
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Understatement
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A description of a person, an event, or an idea from a perspective that greatly plays down the importance of the subject, often to add humor or to make a point ironically.
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Verbal Irony
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When someone states one thing and means another.
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