Praxis

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allegory

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a story in which people (or things or actions) represent an idea or a generalization about life. Allegories usually have a strong lesson or moral.

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Analogy

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A comparison of objects or ideas that appear to be different but are alike in some important way.

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Allusion

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A reference to a familiar person, place, thing, or event - for example, Don Juan, brave new world. Everyman, Machiavellian, utopia.

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Anapestic Meter

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meter that is composed of feet that are short-short-long or unaccented-unaccented-accented, usually used in light or whimsical poetry, such as a limerick.

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Anecdote

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A brief story that illustrates or makes a point

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Aphorism

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A wise saying, usually short and written

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Apostrophe

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A turn from the general audience to address a specific group of persons (or a personified abstraction) who is present or absent. For example, in a recent performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet turned to the audience and spoke directly to one woman about his father's death.

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Assonance

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A repetition of the same sounds in words close to one another - for example, white striped.

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Blank verse

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Often occurs in iambic pentameter and is unrhymed verse

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Caesura

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A break in rhythm of language, particularly a natural pause in a line of verse, marked in prosody by a double vertical line ('')

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Characterization

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A method an author uses to let readers know more about the characters and their personal traits

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Consonance

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A repetition of the final consonant sounds in words containing different vowels

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Couplet

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a stanza made up of two rhyming lines

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archaic

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old-fashioned words that are no longer used in common speech, such as thee, thy and thou

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colloquialism

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expressions that are usually accepted in informal situations or regions, such as "wicked awesome"

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Dialect

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a variety of a language used in a particular geographic area

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Jargon

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specialized language used in a particular field or content area - for example, educational jargon includes: differential instruction, cooperative learning, and authentic assessment

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enjambment

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also known as a run-on line in poetry, enjambment occurs when one lines ends and continues onto the next line to complete meaning.

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Existentialism

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A philosophy that values human freedom and personal responsibility. Jean-Paul Sartre is the foremost existentialist. Other famous: Soren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, and Simone de Beauvoir

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Flashback

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A literary device in which the author jumps back in time in the chronology of a narrative

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Foot

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A metrical foot is defined as one stressed syllable and a number of unstressed syllables

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Iambic pentameter

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unstressed, stressed

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Trochaic

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stressed, unstressed

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Anapestic

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unstressed, unstressed, stressed

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Dactylic

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stressed, unstressed, unstressed

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One foot

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monometer

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two feet

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dimeter

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three feet

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trimeter

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four feet

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tetrameter

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five feet

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pentameter

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six feet

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hexameter

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seven feet

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septameter

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eight feet

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octameter

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genre

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a category of literature defined by its style, form and content

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heroic couplet

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a pair of lines of poetic verse written in iambic pentameter

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hubris

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the flaw that leads to the downfall of a tragic hero (greek = excessive pride)

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dramatic irony

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the reader sees a character's errors, but the character does not

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verbal irony

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the writer says one things and means another

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situation irony

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the purpose of a particular action differs greatly from the result

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malapropism

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a type of pun, or play on words, results when two words become mixed up in the speaker's mind

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oxymoron

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a phrase that consists of two contradictory terms

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paradox

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a contradictory statement that makes sense

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first person

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the story is told from the point of view of one character

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third person

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the story is told by someone outside the story

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omniscient

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the narrator of the story shares the thoughts and feelings of all the characters

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limited omniscient

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the narrator shares the thoughts and feelings of one character

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camera view

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the narrator records eh action from his or her point of view, unaware of any of the other characters' thoughts or feelings. This perspective is also known as the objective view.

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refrain

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the repetition of a line or phrase of a poem at regular intervals, particularly at the end of each stanza

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transcendentalism

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during the mid 19th century in New England, several writers and intellectuals worked together to write, translate works, and publish and became known as transcendentalists. Their philosophy focused on protesting the Puritan ethic and materialism. They valued individualism, freedom, experimentation, and spirituality. Famous: Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Oliver Holmes, Longfellow

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verse

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a metric line of poetry

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ballad

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a short poem, often written by an anonymous author, comprised of short verses intended to be sung or recited

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Canto

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the main section of a long poem

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Elegy

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a poem that is a mournful lament for the dead.

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Epic

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a long narrative poem detailing a hero's deeds

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Haiku

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A type of Japanese poem that is written in 17 syllables with three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Expresses a single thought

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Limerick

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A humorous verse from of five anapestic (composed of feet that are short-short-long or unaccented-unaccented-accented) lines with a rhyme scheme of aaba)

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Lyric

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A short poem about personal feelings and emotions

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Sonnet

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A fourteen-line poem, usually written in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme. The two main types of sonnet are the Petrarchan (or the italian) and the Shakespearean (or English). A Petrarchan opens with an octave that states a proposition and ends with a sestet that states the solution. A Shakespearean sonnet includes 3 quatrain and a couplet.

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stanza

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a division of poetry named for the number of lines it contains

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couplet

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two line stanza

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triplet

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three line stanza

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quatrain

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four line stanza

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quintet

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five line stanza

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sestet

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six line stanza

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septet

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seven line stanza

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octave

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eight line stanza

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fable

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a short story or folktale that contains a moral, which may be expressed explicitly at the end as a maxim.

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folktale

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a narrative form, such as an epic, legend, myth, song, poem, or fable, that has been retold within a culture for generations.

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frame tale

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a narrative technique in which the main story is composed primarily for the purpose of organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story.

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legend

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a narrative about human actions that is perceived by both the teller and the listeners to have taken place within human history and that possesses certain qualities that give the tale the appearance of truth or reality.

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myth

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narrative fiction that involves gods and heroes or has a theme that expresses a culture's ideology.

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novel

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an extended fictional prose narrative

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novella

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a short narrative, usually between 50-100 pages

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parody

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a text or performance that imitates and mocks an author or work

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satire

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literature that makes fun of social conventions or conditions, usually to evoke change

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science fiction

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fictions that deals with the current or future development of technological advances.

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short story

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a brief fictional prose narrative

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greek classical and hellenistic periods (8th to 2nd centuries bc)

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Homer's Illiad

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roman classical period (1st centurry-2nd -5th ad)

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Cicero's letters to Brutus

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Renaissance (13th-15th century)

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a period during which learning and the arts flourished in Europe. Ex: Dante's The Divine Comedy, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Maloru's Le Morte d'Arthur

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French Neoclassical perios (17th century)

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example: Racine's Andromaque

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English Neoclassical period (17th and 18th century)

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example: Dryden's The Conquest of Granada, Pope's The Rape of Lock, Gulliver's Travels

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German Neoclassical period (18th and 19th)

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ex. Lessing's Zur Geschichte

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Old English period (450-1066 ad)

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Beowulf

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Middle English period (1066-1550)

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Chaucer's Canterbury tales, Utopia

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Elizabethan period (1550-1625)

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Macbeth, Hamlet

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Puritan period (1625-1660)

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Walton's The Compleat Angler, Milton's Lycidas

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Neoclassical period (1660-1780)

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Dryden's The conquest of Granada

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Romantic Period (1780-1840)

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Keat's Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes ... Shelly, Byron

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Victorian period (1840-1900)

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Dicken's Great Expectations, Tennyson

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Modernism (1900-1945)

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Yeats'

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Postmodernism (1945-present)

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Nietzsche's The Antichrist, Orwell's 1984, Eliot's The Waste Land

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phonetics

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the study of the sounds of language and their physical properties

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phonology

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the analysis of how sounds function in a language or dialect

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morphology

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the study of the structure of words

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semantics

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the study of the meaning in language

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syntax

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the study of the structure of sentences

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pragmatics

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the role of context in the interpretation of meaning

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sociolinguistics

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the study of language as it relates to society, including race, class, gender, and age

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ethnolingustics

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the study of language as it relates to culture, frequently associated with minority linguistics

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psycholinguistics

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the study of language as it relates to the psychological and neurobiological factors

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etymology

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the study of the history and origin of words

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ambiguity

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when there are two or more possible meanings to a word or phrase

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doublespeak

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language that s intended to be evasive or to conceal. example: downsized

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renaissance date

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13th-15th century

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old english date

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450-1066 ad

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middle english date

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1066-1550

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elizabethan date

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1550-1625

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puritan date

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1625-1660

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neoclassical date

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1660-1780

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romantic date

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1780-1840

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victorian date

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1840-1900

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modernism date

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1900-1945

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postmodernism date

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1945-present