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100 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Act
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A major division in the action of a play.
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Alliteration
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The repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable.
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Ambiguity
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Allows for two or more simultaneous interpretations of a word, phrase, action, or situation, all of which can be supported by the context of a work.
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Aside
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in drama, a speech directed to the audience that supposedly is not audible to the other characters on stage at the time.
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Blank verse
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Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
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Caesura
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A pause within a line of poetry that contributes to the rhythm of the line.
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Catharsis
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meaning “purgation,” catharsis describes the release of the emotions of pity and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy.
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Conflict
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the struggle within the plot between opposing forces.
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Connotation
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associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word, which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the associations people make with int.
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Couplet
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two consecutive lines of poetry that usually rhyme and have the same meter.
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Dialect
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a type of informational diction.
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Electra complex
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the female version of the Oedipus complex. A term used to describe the psychological conflict of a daughter’s unconscious rivalry with her mother for her father’s attention.
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Elegy
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a mournful, contemplative lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead, often ending in a consolation.
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Epigram
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a brief, pointed, and witty poem that usually makes a satiric or humorous point.
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Foot
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the metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured.
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Foreshadowing
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the introduction early in a story of verbal and dramatic hints that suggest what is to come later.
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Formalist criticism
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an approach to literature that focuses on the formal elements of a work, such as its language, structure, and tone.
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Gender criticism
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an approach to literature that explores how ideas about men and women – what is masculine and feminine – can be regarded as socially constructed by particular cultures.
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Hamartia
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a term coined by Aristotle to describe “some error or frailty” that brings about misfortune for a tragic hero.
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Hegemony
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a term used in Marxist criticism to refer to the system of beliefs, values, and meanings to which most people in a given society subscribe.
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Id
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a term used by Sigmund Freud to designate the irrational, instinctual, unknown, and unconscious part of the psyche as differentiated form the ego and superego
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Identity theme
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a term devised by the Freudian psychoanalyst Norman Holland, who argues that, at birth, all of us receive from our mothers a primary identity.
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Imaginary order
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according to psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, one of three parts of the human psych; its contains our wishes, fantasies, and images.
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Implied reader
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a term devised by the German phenomenologist Wolfgang Iser to differentiate between two kinds of readers: the implied reader and the actual reader. The implied reader is the reader who “embodies all those predispositions laid down, not by an empirical outside reality, but by the text itself.
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In medias res
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a term used to describe the common strategy of beginning a story in the middle of the action.
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Irony
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a literary device that uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal a reality different form what appears to be true.
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Jouissance
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a term used by the psychoanalytic critic Jacques Lacan to refer to a brief moment of joy, terror, or desire that somehow arises from deep within the unconscious psyche and reminds us of a time of perfect wholeness when we were incapable of differentiation amount images from the read order.
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Libido
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a term used by Sigmund Freud in psychoanalysis that has become synonymous with sexual drive.
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Marxist criticism
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An approach to literature that focuses on the ideological content of a work – its explicit and implicit assumptions and values about matters such as culture, race, class, and power.
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Misogyny
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a term used in feminist criticism to refer to a hatred or distrust of women.
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Oedipus complex
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a Freudian term derived from Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King. It describes a psychological complex that is predicted on a boy’s unconscious rivalry with his father for his mother’s love and his desire to eliminate his father in order to take his father’s place with his mother.
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Other
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a term used in feminist criticism (the “not-male” and thus unimportant) and postcolonialism (the colonized) to mean “different from” and unimportant, that which is dominated.
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Oxymoron
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a condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used together, as in “sweet sorrow” or “original copy.”
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Paradox
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a humorous imitation of another, usually serious, work.
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Patriarchy
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a societal or social organization in which men hold a disproportionate amount of power.
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Personification
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a form of metaphor in which human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things.
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Phallocentrism
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a term used to describe any form of criticism, philosophy, or theory dominated by men and, thus, governed by a male way of thinking.
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Plot
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an author’s selection and arrangement of incident sin a story to shape the action and give the story a particular focus.
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Prosody
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the overall metrical structure of a poem.
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Protagonist
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the main character of a narrative; its central character who engages the reader’s interest and empathy.
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Simile
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a common figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two things by using words such as like, as, than, appears, and seems.
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Slant rhyme
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the sounds are almost but not exactly alike.
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Sonnet
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a fixed form of lyric poetry that consists of fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter.
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Tension
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a term used in literary criticism that is synonymous with conflict. It designates the oppositions or conflicts operating with a text.
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Thesis
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the central idea of an essay.
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Tone
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the author’s implicit attitude toward the reader or the people, places, and events in a work as revealed by the elements of the author’s style.
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Tragedy
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a story that presents courageous individuals who confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth an depth of the human spirit in the face of failure, defeat, and even death.
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Tragic flaw
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an error or defect in the tragic hero that leads to his downfall, such as greed, pride, or ambition.
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Tragic hero
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Wage slaves
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another term for the proletariat in Marxist criticism.
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Aesthetic reading
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a term used by Louise M. Rosenblatt in The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (1978) to describe the act of reading or the process whereby a reader transacts with a text.
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Affective fallacy
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a term used by New Critics to explain that a reader’s emotional response to a text is neither important nor equivalent o tints interpretation.
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Allegory
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a narration or description usually restricted to a single meaning because its events, actions, characters, settings, and objects represent specific abstractions or ideas.
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Anagnorisis
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the moment in a story when previously unknown or withheld information is revealed to the protagonist, resulting in the discovery of the truth of his or her situation and, usually a decisive change in course for that character. Also known as recognition.
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Apostrophe
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an address, either to someone who is absent and therefore cannot hear the speaker or to something nonhuman that cannot comprehend.
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Appetencies
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a term brought into literary criticism via the writings of the formalist critic I. A. Richards. According to Richards, human beings are basically bundles of desires called appetencies. Richards believes that to achieve psychic health, every person must balance these desires by creating a personally acceptable vision of the world.
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Assonance
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the repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end the same, for example, “asleep under a tree,” or “each evening.”
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Bourgeoisie
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according to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto (1848), this term refers to the social elite, or members of the upper class, who control and define the economic base of society through economic policies and the production of goods.
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Cacophony
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language that is discordant and difficult to pronounce, such as “player piano.”
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Dactyl
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is one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones.
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Denouement
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a French term meaning “unraveling” or “unknotting,” used to describe the resolution of the plot following the climax.
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Efferent reading
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a term used by Louise M. Rosenblatt in The Reader, the Text, the Poem to refer to that type of reading “in which the primary concern of the reader is with what he or she will carry away from the reading.”
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Ego
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a term used by Sigmund Freud to designate the rational, logical, waking part of the psyche as differentiated from the id and the superego.
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Enjambment
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in poetry, when one line ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning.
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Epiphany
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in fiction, when a character suddenly experiences a deep realization about himself or herself; a truth that is grasped in an ordinary rather than a melodramatic moment.
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Epistemology
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of or relating to the branch of philosophy called epistemology, which studies the nature of knowledge, especially its limits and validity.
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Exposition
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a narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work, that provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances.
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False consciousness
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a term used by Karl Marx to describe how the consciousness of the working class is shaped and controlled by the bourgeoisie.
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Feminism
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an approach to literature that seeks to correct or supplement what may be regarded as a predominantly male-dominated critical perspective with a feminist consciousness.
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Free verse
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also called open form poetry, free verse refers to poems characterized by their nonconformity to established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza.
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Hubris
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excessive pride or self-confidence that leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law.
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Hyperbole
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a boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without intending to be literally true.
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Ideology
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a much-debated term in Marxist criticism, which often refers to a culture’s collective or social consciousness (as opposed to the material reality on which experience is based – that is, to the culture’s internal awareness of a body of laws or codes governing its politics, law, religion, philosophy, and art to which that culture’s bourgeoisie and its super structure is subscribed.
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Intentional fallacy
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a term used by New Critics to refer to what they believe is the erroneous assumption that the interpretation of a literary work can be equated to the author’s state or implied intentions or private meanings.
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Metaphor
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a metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, without using the word like or as.
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Mirror stage
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a term coined by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to describe what happens during the development of the human psyche sometime between six and eighteen months of age.
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Objective correlative
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a term coined by T.S. Eliot that refers to a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, or reactions that can serve to awaken in the reader the emotional response that the author desires without being a direct statement of that emotion.
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Objet petit a
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a term used by Jacques Lacan to refer to those images that we discover in our mirror state of psychic development.
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Octave
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a poetic stanza of eight lines, usually forming one part of a sonnet.
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Ode
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a relatively lengthy lyric poem that often expresses lofty emotions in a dignified style.
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Onomatopoeia
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a term referring to the use of a word that resembles the sound it denotes.
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Parody
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a humorous imitation of another, usually serious, work.
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Peripeteia
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the point in a story when the protagonist’s fortunes turn in an unexpected direction. Also known as reversal.
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Persona
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literally, a persona is a mask. In literature, a persona is a speaker created by a writer to tell a story or to speak in a poem.
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Personification
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a form of metaphor in which human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things.
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Political unconscious -
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Proletariat
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a term used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to refer to the working class of society.
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Real order
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according to Jacques Lacan, the third state of psychic development, which consists of the physical world, including the material universe and everything in it.
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Satire
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the literary art of ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it.
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Scansion
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the process of measuring the stresses in a line of verse in order to determine the metrical pattern of the line.
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Sestet
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a stanza consisting of exactly six lines.
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Social construct
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a theory concerning the nature of humanity that rejects the classical humanist’s concept of essentialism. Social constructivism argues that there exists no inner core of human essence that can be defined with finite terms.
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Spondee
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a foot consisting of two stressed syllables, but is not a sustained metrical foot and is used mainly for variety or emphasis.
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Superego
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a term used by Sigmund Freud to designate that part of the psyche that acts like an internal censor, causing us to make moral judgments in light of social pressures, as differentiated from the id and the ego.
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Symbolic order
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according to Jacques Lacan, the symbolic order is the second phase of our psychic development, during which we learn language.
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Symbolism
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a person, object, image, word, or even that evokes a range of additional meaning beyond and usually more abstract than its leteral significance.
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Superstructure
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a term used by Karl Marx to designate that part of a culture that contains the social, legal, political and educational systems along with the religious beliefs, values, and art of a society and which embodies a society’s ideology that is controlled by the dominant social class, or the bourgeoisie.
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Tercet
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a three-line stanza.
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Transcendental signified
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a term introduced into literary criticism by the French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. In trying “to turn Western metaphysics on its head,” Derrida asserts that from the time of Plato to the present, Western culture has been founded upon a classic, fundamental error: the search for a transcendental signified, an external point of reference upon which one may build a concept or philosophy.
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Worldview
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according to James Sire in his text The Universe Next Door, the set of assumptions or presuppositions that we all hold, either consciously or unconsciously, about the basic makeup of our world.
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