Praxis 2 - Literary Terms

Front 1

A moral fable, usually featuring personified animals or inanimate objects which act like people to allow the author to comment on the human condition. Highlights the irrationality of mankind. The beast fable, and the fables of Aesop are examples.

Back 1

* George Orwell, Animal Farm
* Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

Hint 1

Apologue

Front 2

Interrupts the discussion or discourse and addresses directly a person or personified thing, either present or absent. Its most common purpose in prose is to give vent to or display intense emotion, which can no longer be held back

Back 2

* O books who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! -- Richard de Bury
* O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it! --Luke 13:34 (NASB)

Hint 2

Apostrophe

Front 3

Establishes a clear, contrasting relationship between two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them, often in parallel structure.

Back 3

* To err is human; to forgive, divine. --Pope
* That short and easy trip made a lasting and profound change in Harold's outlook.
* That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. --Neil Armstrong

Hint 3

Antithesis

Front 4

A short, informal reference to a famous person or event:

Back 4

* You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth first. 'Tis a word too great for any mouth of this age's size. --Shakespeare
* If you take his parking place, you can expect World War II all over again.
* Plan ahead: it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. --Richard Cushing

Hint 4

Allusion

Front 5

A figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary, symbolic or metaphorical meaning.

Back 5

* Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
* John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress
* Dante, The Divine Comedy
* William Golding, Lord of the Flies (allegorical novel)
* Herman Melville, Moby Dick (allegorical novel)
* George Orwell, Animal Farm (allegorical novel)

Hint 5

Allegory

Front 6

A novel where exciting events are more important than character development and sometimes theme.

Back 6

* H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines
* Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel
* Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers
* Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Hint 6

Adventure Novel

Front 7

A novel based on the author's life experience.

Back 7

* James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
* Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

Hint 7

Autobiographical novel

Front 8

Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's plays are largely this type of verse, as are other Renaissance plays.Most popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England.

Back 8

Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generouis purpose in the glowing breast.
--James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring, 1152-1156

Hint 8

Blank Verse

Front 9

A work designed to ridicule a style, literary form, or subject matter either by treating the exalted in a trivial way or by discussing the trivial in exalted terms (that is, with mock dignity).

Back 9

* John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728)
* Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb the Great (1730)
* Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1711-14)

Hint 9

Burlesque

Front 10

A pause, metrical or rhetorical, occurring somewhere in a line of poetry. The pause may or may not be typographically indicated (usually with a comma).
.

Back 10

At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died
(George Herbert's Redemption)

Hint 10

Caesura

Front 11

A novel written for children and discerned by one or more of these: (1) a child character or a character a child can identify with, (2) a theme or themes (often didactic) aimed at children, (3) vocabulary and sentence structure available to a young reader.

Back 11

* Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer
* L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
* Booth Tarkington, Penrod and Sam

Hint 11

Children's Novel

Front 12

A novel either explicitly or implicitly informed by Christian faith and often containing a plot revolving around the Christian life, evangelism, or conversion stories. Sometimes the plots are directly religious, and sometimes they are allegorical or symbolic.

Back 12

* Charles Sheldon, In His Steps
* Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe
* C. S. Lewis, Perelandra

Hint 12

Christian Novel

Front 13

A type of novel where the protagonist is initiated into adulthood through knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment. Understanding comes after the dropping of preconceptions, a destruction of a false sense of security, or in some way the loss of innocence.

Back 13

* Jane Austen Northanger Abbey
* Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
* Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

Hint 13

Coming-of-age Story

Front 14

A novel focusing on the solving of a crime, often by a brilliant detective, and usually employing the elements of mystery and suspense.

Back 14

* Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
* Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
* Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison

Hint 14

Detective Novel

Front 15

An anti-utopian novel where, instead of a paradise, everything has gone wrong in the attempt to create a perfect society.

Back 15

* George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
* Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Hint 15

Dystopian Novel

Front 16

A line that has a natural pause at the end (period, comma, etc.)

Back 16

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Coral is far more red than her lips red. --Shakespeare

Hint 16

End Stopped

Front 17

The running over of a sentence or thought into the next couplet or line without a pause at the end of the line; a run-on line.

Back 17

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove. . . . --Shakespeare

Hint 17

Enjambed

Front 18

An extended narrative poem recounting actions, travels, adventures, and heroic episodes and written in a high style (with ennobled diction, for example). It may be written in hexameter verse, especially dactylic hexameter, and it may have twelve books or twenty four books.

Back 18

* Homer, Iliad
* Homer, Odyssey
* Virgil, Aeneid
* Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered
* Milton, Paradise Lost

Hint 18

Epic

Front 19

An adjective or adjective phrase appropriately qualifying a subject (noun) by naming a key characteristic of the subject, as in "laughing happiness," "sneering contempt," and "lifegiving water." It is also a descriptive title.

Back 19

Frederick the Great.

Hint 19

Epithet

Front 20

A short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. Some are specified by the dead person beforehand, others chosen by those responsible for the burial.

Back 20

Epitaph

Front 21

A novel consisting of letters written by a character or several characters. The form allows for the use of multiple points of view toward the story and the ability to dispense with an omniscient narrator.

Back 21

* Samuel Richardson, Pamela
* C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
* Hannah W. Foster, The Coquette

Hint 21

Epistolary Novel

Front 22

Substitutes for a particular attribute the name of a famous person recognized for that attribute.

Back 22

* Is he smart? Why, the man is an Einstein.
* You think your boyfriend is tight. I had a date with Scrooge himself last night.

Hint 22

Eponym

Front 23

A brief, clever, and usually memorable statement in verse.The Greek tradition began as poems inscribed on votive offerings at sanctuaries – including statues of athletes – and on funerary monuments,

Back 23

"Go tell it to the Spartans, passer-by ...".

Hint 23

Epigram

Front 24

The substitution of a mild or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one, as in the use of "pass away" instead of "die."

Back 24

"The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." --Emperor Hirohito, upon surrendering after the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan.

Hint 24

Euphemism

Front 25

A highly ornate style of writing popularized by John Lyly's Euphues, characterized by balanced sentence construction, rhetorical tropes, and multiplied similes and allusions.

Back 25

Euphuism

Front 26

A novel written from an existentialist viewpoint, often pointing out the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence.

Back 26

Albert Camus, The Stranger

Hint 26

Existentialist novel

Front 27

Any novel that is disengaged from reality. Often such novels are set in nonexistent worlds, such as under the earth, in a fairyland, on the moon, etc. The characters are often something other than human or include nonhuman characters.

Back 27

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit

Hint 27

Fantasy novel

Front 28

A device that allows the writer to present events that happened before the time of the current narration or the current events in the fiction. Includes memories, dreams, stories of the past told by characters, or even authorial sovereignty. (That is, the author might simply say, "But back in Tom's youth. . . .")

Back 28

Flashback

Front 29

The basic unit of meter consisting of a group of two or three syllables. Scanning or scansion is the process of determining this in a line of poetry.

Back 29

Iamb: U /
Trochee: / U
Anapest: U U /
Dactyl: / U U
Spondee: / /
Pyrrhic: U U
Iambic words: about, event, infuse, persuade
Trochaic words: woman, daisy, golden, patchwork
Anapestic words: underneath, introduce
Dactyllic words: fantasy, alchemy, penetrate

Hint 29

Foot

Front 30

A narrative structure that provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative in a novel. Often, a narrator will describe where he found the manuscript of the novel or where he heard someone tell the story he is about to relate. In the 16th through the 18th centuries, they were sometimes used to help protect the author and publisher from persecution for the ideas presented.

Back 30

* Mary Shelley Frankenstein
* Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter

Hint 30

Frame

Front 31

Verse that has neither regular rhyme nor regular meter. Often uses cadences rather than uniform metrical feet.

Back 31

I cannot strive to drink
dry the ocean's fill
since you replenish my gulps
with your tears

Hint 31

Free Verse

Front 32

A novel in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown terror pervades the action. The setting is often a dark, mysterious castle, where ghosts and sinister humans roam menacingly. Horace Walpole invented the genre with his Castle of Otranto.

Back 32

* Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
* Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
* Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Hint 32

Gothic novel

Front 33

A novel illustrated panel by panel, either in color or black and white. Sometimes referred to as extended comics, because the presentation format (panel by panel illustration, mostly dialog with usually little exposition) suggests a comic. So too does the emphasis on action.

Back 33

Jeff Smith, Bone

Hint 33

Graphic novel

Front 34

Two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter.

Back 34

u / u / u / u / u /
'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
u / u / u / u / u /
Appear in writing or in judging ill. . . .
--Alexander Pope

Hint 34

Heroic Couplet

Front 35

A novel where fictional characters take part in actual historical events and interact with real people from the past.

Back 35

* Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
* Sir Walter Scott, Waverly
* James Fenimore Cooper, Last of the Mohicans
* Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe

Hint 35

Historical novel

Front 36

A gentler, more good humored and sympathetic kind of satire, somewhat tolerant of human folly even while laughing at it. Named after the poet Horace, whose satire epitomized it.

Back 36

Horatian Satire

Front 37

The new emphasis in the Renaissance on human culture, education and reason, sparked by a revival of interest in classical Greek and Roman literature, culture, and language. Human nature and the dignity of man were exalted and emphasis was placed on the present life as a worthy event in itself (as opposed to the medieval emphasis on the present life merely as preparation for a future life).

Back 37

Humanism

Front 38

A novel that can be read in a nonsequential way. That is, whereas most novels flow from beginning to end in a continuous, linear fashion, a hypertext novel can branch--the reader can move from one place in the text to another nonsequential place whenever he wishes to trace an idea or follow a character. Also called hyperfiction. Most are published on CD-ROM. See also interactive novel.

Back 38

* Michael Joyce, Afternoon
* Stuart Moulthrop, Victory Garden

Hint 38

Hypertext novel

Front 39

A novel with more than one possible series of events or outcomes. The reader is given the opportunity at various places to choose what will happen next. It is therefore possible for several readers to experience different novels by reading the same book or for one reader to experience different novels by reading the same one twice and making different choices.

Back 39

Interactive novel

Front 40

Speech or writing that abuses, denounces, or attacks. It can be directed against a person, cause, idea, or system. It employs a heavy use of negative emotive language.

Back 40

* I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. --Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

Hint 40

Invective

Front 41

A mode of expression, through words (verbal) or events (situation), conveying a reality different from and usually opposite to appearance or expectation. A writer may say the opposite of what he means, create a reversal between expectation and its fulfillment, or give the audience knowledge that a character lacks, making the character's words have meaning to the audience not perceived by the character.

Back 41

Irony

Front 42

Where the audience has knowledge that gives additional meaning to a character's words.

Back 42

King Oedipus, who has unknowingly killed his father, says that he will banish his father's killer when he finds him.

Hint 42

Dramatic Irony

Front 43

Harsher, more pointed, perhaps intolerant satire typified by the writings of Juvenal. Often attacks particular people, sometimes thinly disguised as fictional characters.

Back 43

Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope

Hint 43

Juvenalian Satire

Front 44

A crude, coarse, often bitter satire ridiculing the personal appearance or character of a person.

Back 44

Lampoon

Front 45

The term applied to a style of 17th Century poetry first by John Dryden and later by Dr. Samuel Johnson because of the highly intellectual and often abstruse imagery involved. Common characteristics:
* 1. Argumentative structure. The poem often engages in a debate or persuasive presentation; the poem is an intellectual exercise as well as or instead of an emotional effusion.
* 2. Dramatic and colloquial mode of utterance. The poem often describes a dramatic event rather than being a reverie, a thought, or contemplation. Diction is simple and usually direct; inversion is limited. The verse is occasionally rough, like speech, rather than written in perfect meter, resulting in a dominance of thought over form.
* 3. Acute realism. The poem often reveals a psychological analysis; images advance the argument rather than being ornamental. There is a learned style of thinking and writing; the poetry is often highly intellectual.
* 4. Wit. The poem contains unexpected, even striking or shocking analogies, offering elaborate parallels between apparently dissimilar things. The analogies are drawn from widely varied fields of knowledge, not limited to traditional sources in nature or art. Analogies from science, mechanics, housekeeping, business, philosophy, astronomy, etc. are common. These "conceits" reveal a play of intellect, often resulting in puns, paradoxes, and humorous comparisons. Unlike other poetry where the metaphors usually remain in the background, here the metaphors sometimes take over the poem and control it.
Metaphysical poetry represents a revolt against the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry and especially the typical Petrarchan conceits (like rosy cheeks, eyes like stars, etc.).

Back 45

Chief among the metaphysical poets are John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughan.

Hint 45

Metaphysical Poetry

Front 46

The rhythmic pattern produced when words are arranged so that their stressed and unstressed syllables fall into a more or less regular sequence, resulting in repeated patterns of accent (called feet).

Back 46

Meter

Front 47

The use of words whose pronunciation imitates the sound the word it describes. "Buzz," for example, when spoken is intended to resemble the sound of a flying insect.

Back 47

slam, pow, screech, whirr, crush, sizzle, crunch, wring, wrench, gouge, grind, mangle, bang, blam, pow, zap, fizz, urp, roar, growl, blip, click, whimper, and, of course, snap, crackle, and pop.

Hint 47

Onomatopoeia

Front 48

A satiric imitation of a work or of an author with the idea of ridiculing the author, his ideas, or work. The parodist exploits the peculiarities of an author's expression

Back 48

Parody

Front 49

The person created by the author to tell a story. Whether the story is told by an omniscient narrator or by a character in it, the actual author of the work often distances himself from what is said or told by adopting a persona--a personality different from his real one. Thus, the attitudes, beliefs, and degree of understanding expressed by the narrator may not be the same as those of the actual author. Some authors, for example, use narrators who are not very bright in order to create irony.

Back 49

Persona.

Front 50

The kind of conceit (see above) used by Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch and popular in Renaissance English sonnets. Eyes like stars or the sun, hair like golden wires, lips like cherries, etc. are common examples. Oxymorons are also common, such as freezing fire, burning ice, etc.

Back 50

Petrarchan Conceit.

Front 51

An episodic, often autobiographical novel about a rogue or picaro (a person of low social status) wandering around and living off his wits. The wandering hero provides the author with the opportunity to connect widely different pieces of plot, since the hero can wander into any situation.

Back 51

* Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
* Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
* Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild

Hint 51

Picaresque novel

Front 52

A "false name" or alias used by a writer desiring not to use his or her real name. Sometimes called a nom de plume or "pen name," pseudonyms have been popular for several reasons.

Back 52

* Samuel Clemens used the name Mark Twain
* Mary Ann Evans used the name George Eliot

Hint 52

Pseudonym.

Front 53

Novels written for the mass market, intended to be "a good read,"--often exciting, titillating, thrilling. Historically they have been very popular but critically sneered at as being of sub-literary quality. The earliest ones were the dime novels of the nineteenth century, printed on newsprint and sold for ten cents.

Back 53

Westerns, stories of adventure, even the Horatio Alger novels, all were forms of this.

Hint 53

Pulp fiction.

Front 54

A novel faithful to a particular geographic region and its people, including behavior, customs, speech, and history.

Back 54

* Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
* Thomas Hardy, Return of the Native
*Willa Cather, O' Pioneers

Hint 54

Regional novel.

Front 55

A pair of lines rhyming consecutively

Back 55

"These lines make up a couplet with a rhyme. / Just don't expect the lines to be sublime."

Hint 55

Couplet

Front 56

Words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed.

Back 56

slough, tough, cough, bough, though, hiccough. Or: love, move, prove. Or: daughter, laughter

Hint 56

Eye rhyme

Front 57

Two syllable rhyme consisting of stressed syllable followed by unstressed.

Back 57

Dreaming with a watering mouth,
Wishing for a better life for my daughter and spouse,
In this slaughtering house, caught up in bouts
With the root of all evil.
I've seen it turn beautiful people cruel and deceitful

Hint 57

Feminine rhyme

Front 58

Similarity between terminally stressed syllables.

Back 58

Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, in Love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went

Hint 58

Masculine rhyme

Front 59

[French for "novel with a key," pronounced roh MAHN ah CLAY] A novel in which historical events and actual people are written about under the pretense of being fiction.

Back 59

* Aphra Behn, Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
* Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Hint 59

Roman a clef.

Front 60

An extended fictional prose narrative about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people. Knights on a quest for a magic sword and aided by characters like fairies and trolls.

Back 60

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote;
Sir Philip Sidney, The Arcadia

Hint 60

Romance.

Front 61

A literary mode based on criticism of people and society through ridicule. The satirist aims to reduce the practices attacked by laughing scornfully at them--and being witty enough to allow the reader to laugh, also. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present. Many of the techniques of satire are devices of comparison, to show the similarity or contrast between two things. A list of incongruous items, an oxymoron, metaphors, and so forth are examples.

Back 61

Satire

Front 62

A novel in which futuristic technology or otherwise altered scientific principles contribute in a significant way to the adventures. Often the novel assumes a set of rules or principles or facts and then traces their logical consequences in some form. For example, given that a man discovers how to make himself invisible, what might happen?

Back 62

* H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man
* Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
* Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
* Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Hint 62

Science fiction novel

Front 63

A type of novel, popular in the eighteenth century, that overemphasizes emotion and seeks to create emotional responses in the reader. The type also usually features an overly optimistic view of the goodness of human nature.

Back 63

* Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield
* Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling
* Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
* Thomas Day, The History of Sandford and Merton

Hint 63

Sentimental novel

Front 64

A fourteen line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme.

Back 64

Sonnet

Front 65

A type of sonnet divided into two main sections, the octave (first eight lines) and the sestet (last six lines). The octave presents a problem or situation which is then resolved or commented on in the sestet.

Back 65

The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-B-A A-B-B-A C-D-E C-D-E, though there is flexibility in the sestet, such as C-D-C D-C-D.

Hint 65

The Petrarchan Sonnet

Front 66

Type of sonnet which contains three quatrains and a couplet.

Back 66

The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-G.

Hint 66

The Shakespearean Sonnet

Front 67

A nine-line stanza, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter (called an Alexandrine). The rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B B-C-B-C C.

Back 67

The Faerie Queene
A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Y cladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruell markes of many' a bloudy fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he neuer wield:
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full iolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.

Hint 67

Spenserian Stanza

Front 68

Something that on the surface is its literal self but which also has another meaning or even several meanings.

Back 68

White whale depiocts the universe or evil in Moby Dick.

Hint 68

Symbol

Front 69

The writer's attitude toward his readers and his subject; his mood or moral view. A writer can be formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or pessimistic.

Back 69

Tone

Front 70

A work that treats a serious subject frivolously-- ridiculing the dignified. Often the tone is mock serious and heavy handed

Back 70

Travesty.

Front 71

A novel that presents an ideal society where the problems of poverty, greed, crime, and so forth have been eliminated.

Back 71

* Thomas More, Utopia
* Samuel Butler, Erewhon
* Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward

Hint 71

Utopian novel

Front 72

How fully the characters and actions in a work of fiction conform to our sense of reality. Realistic and believable--it is "true to life."

Back 72

Verisimilitude.

Front 73

Generally, the structural form of a verse, as revealed by scansion. Identification of verse structure includes the name of the metrical type and the name designating number of feet.
The most common is iambic pentameter.

Back 73

* Monometer: 1 foot
* Dimeter: 2 feet
* Trimeter: 3 feet
* Tetrameter: 4 feet
* Pentameter: 5 feet
* Hexameter: 6 feet
* Heptameter: 7 feet
* Octameter: 8 feet
* Nonameter: 9 feet

Hint 73

Versification.