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70 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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alliteration
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the repetition of an initial consonant sound or consonant cluster in consecutive or closely positioned words.
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assonance
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the repetition of identical or near identical stressed vowel sounds in words whose final consonants differ, producing half-rhyme.
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onomatopoeia
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verbal sounds that imitate and evoke the sounds they denotate.
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allegory
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saying one thing (the “vehicle” of the allegory) and meaning another (the allegory's “tenor”). Allegories may be momentary aspects of a work, as in a metaphor (“John is a lion”), or, through extended metaphor, may constitute the basis of a narrative, as in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; this second meaning is the dominant one.
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antithesis
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juxtaposition of opposed terms in clauses or sentences that are next to or near each other.
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hyperbole
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overstatement, exaggeration.
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irony
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strictly, a subset of allegory;: whereas allegory says one thing and means another, irony says one thing and means its opposite.
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litotes
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strictly, understatement by denying the contrary; More loosely, understatement. (“no slight import”)
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metaphor
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the identification or implicit identification of one thing with another with which it is not literally identifiable.
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metonymy
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using a word to denote another concept or other concepts, by virtue of habitual association.
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oxymoron
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conjunction of normally incompatible terms. (Milton - “darkness visible”)
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periphrasis
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circumlocution; the use of many words to express what could be expressed in few or one.
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personification prosopopoeia
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the attribution of human qualities to nonhuman forces or objects.
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similie
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comparison, usually using the word “like” or “as,” of one thing with another so as to produce sometimes surprising analogies.
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synecdoche
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using a part to express the whole, or vice versa.
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accent
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the special force devoted to the voicing of one syllable in a word over others.
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anapest
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a three-syllable foot following the rhythmic pattern, in English verse, of two unstressed (uu) syllables followed by one stressed (/). Thus, for example, “Illinois.”
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caesura
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a pause or breathing space within a line of verse, generally ocurring between syntactic units.
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dactyl
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a three-syllable foot following the rhythmic pattern, in English verse, of one stressed (/) followed by two unstressed (uu) syllables. Thus, for example, “Oregon.”
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end-stopping
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the placement of a complete syntactic unit within a complete metrical pattern. Compare enjambment.
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enjambment
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the opposite of end-stopping, enjambment occurs when the syntactic unit does not end with the metrical pattern, i.e., when the sense of the line overflows its meter and, therefore, the line break.
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iamb
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the basic foot of English verse; two syllables following the rhythmic pattern of unstressed (u) followed by stressed (/) and producing a rising effect. Thus, for example, “Vermont.”
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pentameter
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in English verse, a five-stress line.
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spondee
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a two-syllable foot following the rhythmic pattern, in English verse, of two stressed (//) syllables. Thus, for example, “Utah.”
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tetrameter
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a line with four stresses.
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trochee
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a two-syllable foot following the pattern, in English verse, of stressed (/) followed by unstressed (u) syllable, producing a falling effect.
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blank verse
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unrhymed iambic pentameter lines. Blank verse has no stanzas, but is broken up into uneven units (verse paragraphs) determined by sense rather than form.
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couplet
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in English verse two consecutive, rhyming lines usually containing the same number of stresses.
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quatrain
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a stanza of four lines, usually rhyming abcb, abab, or abba.
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sonnet
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a form combining a variable number of units of rhymed lines to produce a fourteen-line poem, usually in rhyming iambic pentameter lines. In English there are two principle varieties: the Petrarchan sonnet, formed by an octave (an eight-line stanza, often broken into two quatrains having the same rhyme scheme, typically abba abba) and a sestet (a six-line stanza, typically cdecde or cdecde); and the Shakespearean sonnet, formed by three quatrains (abab cdcd efef) and a couplet (gg). The declaration of a sonnet can take a sharp turn, or “volta,” often at the decisive formal shift from octave to sestet in the Petrarchan sonnet, or in the final couplet of a Shakespearean sonet, introducing a trenchant counterstatement.
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first-person narration
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a narrative in which the voice narrating refers to itself with forms of the first person pronoun (“I,” “me,” “my,” etc., or possibly “we,” “us,” “our”), and in which the narrative is determined by the limitations of that voice.
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frame narrative
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some narratives, particularly collections of narratives, involve a frame narrative that explains the genesis of, and/or gives a perspective on, the main narrative or narratives to follow.
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omniscient narrator
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a narrator who, in the fiction of the narrative, has complete access to both the deeds and the thoughts of all characters in the narrative.
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plot
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the sequence of events in a story as narrated.
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third-person narrative
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a narration in which the narrator recounts a narrative of characters referred to explicitly or implicitly by third person pronouns (“he,” “she,” etc) without the limitation of a first person narration.
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unities
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According to a theory supposedly derived from Aristotle's Poetics, the events represented in a play should have unity of time, place, and action: that the play take up no more time than the time of the play, or at most a day; that the space of action should be within a single city; and that there should be no subplot.
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dramatic monologue
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a poem in which the voice of a historical or fictional character speaks, unmediated by any narrator, to an implied though silent audience.
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elegy
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In classical literature elegy was a form written in elegiac couplets (a hexameter followed by a pentameter) devoted to many possible topics. In Ovidian elegy a lover meditates on the trials of erotic desire (e.g. Ovid's Amores). The sonnet sequences of both Sidney and Shakespeare exploit this genrre, and, while it was still practised in classical tradition by Donne, by the later seventeenth century the term came to denote the poetry of loss, especially through the death of a loved person.
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epic
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an extended narrative poem celebrating martial heroes, invoking divine inspiration, beginning in medias res (see “order”), written in high style (including the deployment of epic similes; on high style, see “register”), and divided into long narrative sequences. Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid were the prime models for English writers of epic verse.
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epigram
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a short, pithy poem witilly expressed, often with wounding intent.
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epigraph
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any formal statement inscribed on stone; also the brief formulation on a book's title page, or a quotation at the beginning of a poem, introducing the work's themes in the most compressed form possible.
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epitaph
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a pithy formulation to be inscribed on a funeral monument
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lyric
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initially meaning a song, “lyrics” refers to a short poetic form, without restriction of meter, in which the expression of personal emotion, often by a voice in the first person, is given primacy over narrative sequence.
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masque
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costly entertainments of the Stuart court, involving dance, song, speech, and elaborate stage effects, in which courtiers themselves participated.
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ode
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a lyric poem in elevated, or high style (see “register”), often addressed to a natural force, a person, or an abstract quality. The Pindaric ode in English is made up of stanzas of unequal length, while the Horation ode has stanzas of equal length.
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pastoral
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Pastoral is set among shepherds, making often refined allusion to other apparently unconnected subjects (sometimes politics) from the potentially idyllic world of highly literary if illiterate shepherds. Pastoral is distinguished from georgic by representing recreational rural idleness, whereas the georgic offers instruction on how to manage rural labor. English writers had classical models in the Idylls of Theocritus in Greek and Virgil's Eclogues in Latin. Pastoral is also called bucolic (from the Greek word for “herdsman”).
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romance
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From the twelfth to the sixteenth century, the main form of European narrative, in either verse or prose, was that of chivalric romance. Romance, like the later novel, is a very fluid genre, but romances are often characterized by i) a tripartite structure of social integration, followed by disintegration, involving moral tests and often marvelous events, itself the prelude to reintegration in a happy ending, frequently of marriage; ii) high-style diction; iii) aristocratic social mileux. The immensely popular, fertile genre was absorbed, in both domesticated and undomesticated form, by the novel.
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satire
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In Roman literature (e.g. Juvenal), the communication, in the form of a letter between equals, complaining of the ills of contemporary society. The genre in this form is characterized by a first-person narrator exasperated by social ills; the letter form; a high frequency of contemporary reference; and the use of invective in low-style language.
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tragedy
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a dramatic representation of the fall of kings or nobles, beginning in happiness and ending in catastrophe. Later transferred to other social mileux. The opposite of comedy.
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allusion
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Literary allusion is a passing but illuminating reference within a literary text to another, well-known text (often biblical or classical). Topical allusions are also, of course, common in certain modes, especially satire.
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anagnorisis
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the moment of protagonists' recognition in a narrative, which is also the moment of moral understanding
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apostrophe
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an address, often to an absent person, a force, or a quality. For example, a poet makes an apostrophe to a Muse when invoking her for inspiration.
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catastrophe
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the decisive turn in a tragedy by which the plot is resolved and, usually, the protagonist dies.
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catharsis
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According to Aristotle, the effect of a tragedy on its audience, through their experience of pity and terror, was a kind of spiritual cleansing, or catharsis.
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denouement
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the point at which a narrative can be resolved and so ended.
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exegesis
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interpretation, traditionally of the biblical text, but, by transference, of any text.
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hermeneutics
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the science of interpretation, first formulated as such by the German philosophical theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century.
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parody
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a work that uses the conventions of a particular genre with the aim of comically mocking a topos, a genre, or a particular exponent of a genre.
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peripeteia
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the sudden reversal of fortune (in both directions) in a dramatic work
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topos
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a commonplace in the content of a given kind of literature. Originally, in classical rhetoric, the topoi were tried-and-tested stimuli to literary invention: lists of standard headings under which a subject might be investigated.
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Astrophil and Stella
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Sir Philip Sidney
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The Burning Babe
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Robert Southwell
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The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
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Christopher Marlowe
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The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
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Sir Walter Ralegh
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What is our Life?
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Sir Walter Ralegh
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Sir Walter Ralegh to His Son
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herp derp
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The Lie
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Sir Walter Ralegh
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The Flea
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John Donne
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The Good-Morrow
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John Donne
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Song
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John Donne
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