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127 Cards in this Set
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Allegory |
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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Alliteration |
Repetition of initial consonant sounds in words, such as "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers." |
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Allusion |
A reference to a familiar person, place, thing, or event -- for example, Don Juan, brave new world, Everyman, Machiavellian, utopia. |
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Analogy |
A comparison of objects or ideas that appear, at first, to be different but are alike in some important way. |
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Anapestic Meter |
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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Anaphora |
A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or a phrase at the beginning of several clauses. An example from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech: "But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro... |
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Anecdote |
A brief story that illustrates or makes a point. |
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Antagonist |
A person or thing working against the hero of a literary work (the protagonist). |
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Anthropomorphism |
A device in which the writer attracts human characteristics to an animate being or an inanimate object. |
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Antithesis |
A contrast or opposition between two things. |
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Anxiety of Influence |
Literary critic Harold Bloom advanced this way of interpreting poetry by using Sigmund Freud's notion of the Oedipus complex to suggest that poets, filled with anxiety and no new ideas to express, struggle against the earlier influences of a previous generation of poets. While Bloom advanced the anxiety of influence when one is reading poetry, readers can also use this lens to interpret other literary works. |
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Aphorism |
A wise saying, usually short and witty. |
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Apostrphe |
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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Archetype |
A character, plot, image, theme, or setting that appears in literature across cultures and is repeated over time. |
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Assonance |
A repetition of the same sound in words close to one another -- for example white stripes. |
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Blank Verse |
Unrhymed verse, often occurring in iambic pentameter. |
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Cadence |
The natural rhythmic rise and fall of language as it is normally spoken. |
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Caesura |
A break in the rhythm of language, particularly a natural pause in a line of verse, marked in prosody by a double vertical line (ll). |
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Canon |
A group of literary works considered by some to be central or authoritative to the literary tradition. For example, many critics agree that the Western canon includes the literary works of Homer, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Faulkner, Frost, Dickinson, and so on. |
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Characterization |
A method an author uses to let readers know more about the characters and their personal traits. |
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Cliche |
An expression that has been used so often that it loses its expressive power -- for example, "dead as a doornail" or "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." |
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Conceit |
A metaphor or figure of speech, often elaborate, that compares two things that are very different. |
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Consonance |
Repetition of the final consonant sound in words containing different vowels -- for example, "stroke of luck." |
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Couplet |
A stanza made up of two rhyming lines. |
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Dactyl |
A metrical foot of three syllables in which the first syllable is stressed and the next two are unstressed. |
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Death of the Author |
A literary criticism that rebuts the traditional literary criticism notion that the biography of an author provides a context for interpretation of text; instead, the writing and the creator are unrelated. |
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Denouement |
The resolution or conclusion of a story. |
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Dialect |
A way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain region or social group. |
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Dialogic |
A literary theory term that advances the idea that works of literature carry on a dialogue with other works of literature and other authors (see also Monologic). |
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Diction |
An author's choice of words based on their clarity, conciseness, effectiveness, and authenticity. |
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Archaic |
Old-fashioned words that are no longer used in common speech, such as thee, thy, and thou. |
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Colloquialisms |
Expressions that usually are accepted in informal situations or regions, such as "wicked awesome." |
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Dialect |
A variation of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. |
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Jargon |
Specialized language used in a particular field or content area -- for example, educational jargon includes differentiated instruction, cooperative learning, and authentic assessment. |
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Profanity |
Language that shows disrespect for others or something sacred. |
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Slang |
Informal lanuage used by a particular group of people amon themselves. |
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Vulgarity |
Language widely considered crude, disgusting, and often, offensive. |
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Doublespeak |
Language that intentionally distorts or disguises meaning. It may take the form of a euphemism, such as "let go" for fired or "assed away" for died. Doublespeak also can disguise meaning in an intentional effort to deceive, such as vinyl is "genuine imitation leather." |
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End Rhyme |
Rhyming the ends of lines of verse. |
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Enjambment |
Also known as a run-on line in poetry, enjambment occurs when one line ends and continues onto the next line to complete the meaning. For example, in Thoreau's poem "My life has been the poem I would have writ," the first line is "My life has been the poem I would have writ," and the second line completes the meaning -- "but I could not both live and utter it." |
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Epithet |
A descriptive phrase or word frequently used to characterize a person or thing, such as "the father of psychology" refers to Sigmund Freud. |
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Euphemism |
A word or phrase that substitutes for an offensive or suggestive one. Examples: "in a family way" means pregnant; "lost their lives" means killed; "I misspoke" means "I lied." |
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Existentialism |
A philosophy that values human freedom and personal responsibility. Jean-Paul Sartre is the foremost existentialist. Other famous existentialist writers include Soren Kierkegaard ("the father of existentialism"), Albert Camus, Freidrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, and Simone de Beauvoir. |
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Flashback |
A literary device in which the author jumps back in time in the chronology of a narrative. |
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Foil |
A character who acts in contrast to another character. |
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Foot |
A metrical foot is one stressed syllable and a number of unstressed syllables (from zero to as many as four). Stresses syllables are indicated by the ' symbol. Unstressed syllables are indicated by the \/ symbol. There are four possible metrical feet. In addition, there are names for the line lengths; eight feet is the typical maximum. |
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Iamvic |
\/' (unstressed, stressed) |
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Trochaic |
'\/ (stressed, unstressed) |
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Anapestic |
\/\/' (unstressed, unstressed, stressed) |
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Dactylic |
'\/\/ (stressed, unstressed, unstressed) |
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One Foot |
Monometer |
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Two Feet |
Dimeter |
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Three Feet |
Trimeter |
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Four Feet |
Tetrameter |
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Five Feet |
Pentameter |
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Six Feet |
Hexameter |
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Seven Feet |
Septameter |
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Eight Feet |
Octameter |
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Foreshadowing |
A literary technique in which the author gives hints or clues about what is to come at some later point in the story. |
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Frame Story |
A literary device in which a story is enclosed in another story. |
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Free Verse |
Verse that contains an irregular metrical pattern and line length; also known as verse lire. |
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Genre |
A category of literature defined by its style, form, and content. |
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Heroic Couplet |
A pair of lines of poetic verse written in iambic pentameter. |
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Hermeneutics |
The art and science of text interpretation. |
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Hubris |
The flaw that leads to the downfall of a tragic hero; this term comes from the Greek word hybrid, which means "excessive pride." |
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Hyperbole |
An exaggeration for emphasis or rhetorical effect. |
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Idiom |
An expression specific to a certain language that means something different from the literal meaning. |
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Imagery |
The use of words to create pictures in the reader's mind. |
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Incongruity |
The intentional joining of opposites. |
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Interior Monologue |
A narrative technique that reveals a character's internal thoughts and memories. |
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Internal Rhyme |
A rhyme that occurs within a line of verse. For example, "Thile I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping," is an example of internal rhyme from "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. |
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Intertextuality |
The relationship between texts, especially works of literature. |
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Irony |
The use of a word or phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or expected meaning. There are three kinds of irony. |
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Dramatic Irony |
The reader sees a character's errors, but the character does not. |
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Verbal Irony |
The writer says one thisthing and means another. |
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Situation Irony |
The purpose of a particular action differs greatly from the result. |
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Malapropism |
A type of pun or play on words that results when two words become mixed up in the speaker's mind. For example, "The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder," Richard Daley, former Chicago mayer. |
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Metaphor |
A figure of speech in which a subtle or implicit comparison is made between two unlike things. |
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Meter |
A rhythmical pattern in verse that is made up of stressed and unstressed syllables. |
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Metonymy |
A figure of speech in which one word is substituted for another with which it is closely associated. |
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Monologic |
A literary theory term in which literature is viewed as transmitting an author's message. (See also Dialogic.) |
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Mood |
The feeling a text evokes in the reader, such as sadness, tranquility, or elation. |
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Moral |
A lesson a work of literature is teaching. |
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Narration |
The telling of a story. |
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Oedipus Complex |
From the Freudian theory that posts people experience a complex set of emotions based on sexual attraction to their parent of the opposite sex. |
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Onomatopoeia |
The use of words to suggest sounds, as in buzz, click, or vroom. |
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Oxymoron |
A phrase that consists of two contradictory terms -- for example, "deafening silence." |
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Paradox |
A contradictory statement that makes sense -- for example, Hegel's paradox, "Man learns from history that man learns nothing from history." |
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Pathetic Fallacy |
The attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals. |
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Personification |
A literary device in which animals, ideas, and things are represented as having human traits. |
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Point of View |
The perspective from which a story is told. There are five points of view. |
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First Person |
The story is told from the point of view of one character in the story. |
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Third Person |
The story is told by someone outside the story. |
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Omniscient |
The narrator of the story shares the thoughts and feelings of all the characters. |
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Limited Omniscient |
The narrator shares the thoughts and feelings of one character. |
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Camera View |
The narrator records the action from his or her point of view, unaware of any of the other characters' thoughts or feelings. This perspective also is known as the objective view. |
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Pun |
A play on words based on multiple meanings or on words that sound alike but have different meanings. |
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Refrain |
The repetition of a line or phrase of a poem at regular intervals, particularly at the end of each stanza. |
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Repetition |
The multiple use of a word, phrase, or idea for emphasis or rhythmic effect. |
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Rhetoric |
Persuasive writing. |
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Rhetorical Question |
A question that is posed but does not actually require an answer. |
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Rhyme |
The repetition of vowel sounds in accented syllables and all succeeding syllables. |
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Rhythm |
The regular or random occurrence of sounds in poetry. |
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Setting |
The time and place in which the action of a story takes place. |
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Simile |
A comparison of two unlike things, usually including the word like or as. |
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Slant Rhyme |
A rhyme that is not exact. Emily Dickinson often used slant rhyme. |
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Soliloquy |
A long speech made in a play while no other characters are speaking. |
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Spondee |
A metrical foot consisting of two syllables, both of which are stressed. |
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Stanza |
A division of poetry named for the number of lines it contains. |
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Couplet |
Two-line stanza. |
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Triplet |
Three-line stanza. |
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Quatrain |
Four-line stanza. |
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Quintet |
Five-line stanza. |
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Sestet |
Six-line stanza. |
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Septet |
Seven-line stanza. |
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Octave |
Eight-line stanza. |
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Stream of Consciousness |
A style of writing that portrays the inner thoughts of a character. Stream-of-consciousness writing may not have regard for standards of language and grammar, and may contain run-on sentences, breaks in logical patterns, and so on. |
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Style |
How the author uses words, phrases, and sentences to form ideas. |
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Symbol |
A person, place, thing, or event used to represent something else, such as the white flag that represents surrender. |
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Synecdoche |
A figure of speech in which a part represents the whole. |
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Synesthesia |
The juxtaposition of one sensory image with another that appeals to an unrelated sense. |
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Tone |
The overall feeling created by an author's use of words. |
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Transcendentalism |
During the mid-19th century in New England, several writers and intellectuals worked together to write, translate works, and publish; they became known as transcendentalists. Their philosophy focused on protesting the Puritan ethic and materialism. They valued individualism, freedom, experimentation, and spirituality. Noted transcendentalists include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. |
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Trochee |
A metrical foot made up of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable. |
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Vernacular |
Language spoken by people who live in a particular region. |
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Verse |
A metric line of poetry. A verse is named based on the kind and number of feet composing it (see Foot). |
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Voice |
Distinctive features of a person's speech and speech patterns. |
