Terms : Hide Images
| 4913312707 | abstract | not related to the concrete properties of an object; pertaining to ideas concepts, or qualitites, as opposed to physical qualities | 0 | |
| 4913317363 | aesthetic | the study or philosophy of beauty in art, literature, and nature | 1 | |
| 4913331252 | allegory | a literary form in which some or all characters embody abstract ideas. It is a story that carries a second meaning along with its surface story | 2 | |
| 4913335472 | alliteration | the repetition of identical consonant sounds at the beginnings of words that come close together | 3 | |
| 4913338357 | allusion | a reference, explicit or implicit, to something in previous literary history or history. Allusions can be political, biblical, classical. The reader is expected to see the application of the allusion to the idea being expressed. | 4 | |
| 4913345642 | ambiguity | having more than one meaning. Used in verbal, written, and non verbal communication | 5 | |
| 4913350329 | anachronism | out of time, placing something in a time where it does not belong. In the movie Ben Hur, soem of the Roman soldiers are wearing wristwatches. TH White uses many anachronisms in The Once and Future King | 6 | |
| 4913357133 | anaphora | the repetition of words, phrases, or sentences at the beginning of successive phrases to heighten the impact of their ideas. | 7 | |
| 4913362380 | anadiplosis | repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the next clause | 8 | |
| 4913365701 | analogy | comparison of two things that are alike in some respects | 9 | |
| 4913367873 | antagonist | the main character opposed to the authors principal character | 10 | |
| 4913369968 | antecedent | in grammar, the antecedent is the noun to which a pronoun refers | 11 | |
| 4913373234 | anticlimax | the arrangement of details in such an order that the unimportant suddenly appears at the point where the critical or serious detail should be found. Often used in humorous detail | 12 | |
| 4913379448 | antihero | protagonist of a literary work who does not embody the traditional qualities of a hero | 13 | |
| 4913382602 | antithesis | a rhetorical device in which contrasted words, clauses, or ideas are balanced. | 14 | |
| 4913385157 | aphorism | short pithy statment of a principle or precept | 15 | |
| 4913387267 | apology | a written or spoken defense | 16 | |
| 4913387893 | apostrophe | a figure of speech in which an inanimate object or a person either dead or absent is addressed directly as though alive and present | 17 | |
| 4913395908 | appeals to logic emotion and authority | rhetorical arguements in which the speaker either by claims to be an expert or relies on information provided by experts, attempts to affect the listeners personal feelings, or attemps to persuade the listener through use of deductive reasoning | 18 | |
| 4913402315 | anecdote | a brief story or tale | 19 | |
| 4913402316 | archaism | a word or phrase no longer in actual speech | 20 | |
| 4913406291 | archetype | a type of struggle or character to which culture relates without prior knowledge | 21 | |
| 4913408768 | assonance | the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, usually in successive words | 22 | |
| 4913411655 | assumption | a fact or statement taken for granted, or as true | 23 | |
| 4913413869 | attitude | a writers feelings toward the subject of his or her work | 24 | |
| 4913416253 | asyndeton | the practice of omitting conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses. In a list, it gives a more extemporaneous effect and suggests the list may be incomplete | 25 | |
| 4913421688 | audience | persons reached by a piece of writing | 26 | |
| 4913421689 | ballad | a short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form | 27 | |
| 4913424583 | bathos | another term for anticlimax. A movement from the sublime to the ridiculous | 28 | |
| 4913427054 | begging the question | to sidestep or evade the real problem | 29 | |
| 4913430890 | Bildungsroman | a novel or short story whose theme is the moral or psychological growth of the main character | 30 | |
| 4913433307 | bombast | grandiloquent, ranting, insincere, extravagant language | 31 | |
| 4913435583 | cacophony | the harsh combination of words | 32 | |
| 4913435584 | canon | the works of an author that have been accepted as authentic | 33 | |
| 4913438501 | carpe diem | a latin phrase that literally means seize the day. carpe diem poetry tends not the be practical, and often advocates immoral or immoderate behavior | 34 | |
| 4913443784 | catharsis | purification of cleansing of the spirit through the emotions of pity and terror as a witness to a tragedy | 35 | |
| 4913448799 | chiasmus | a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of parallel clauses is reversed in the second | 36 | |
| 4913453240 | claim | an assertion of something as fact, to demand as a right or as due | 37 | |
| 4913454820 | cliche | overused and trite language | 38 | |
| 4913454821 | closure | bringing to an end or conclusion | 39 | |
| 4913456649 | colloquialism/colloquial | ordinary language, the vernacular | 40 | |
| 4913458698 | comedy | any literary work that has a happy ending | 41 | |
| 4913458699 | conciet | a type of poetic metaphor. Often ingenious and controlling a whole poem | 42 | |
| 4913462353 | conflict | struggle that grows out of the interplay of opposing forces in the plot | 43 | |
| 4913464098 | connotation | what a word suggests beyond its basic definition a words overtones of meaning | 44 | |
| 4913467023 | consonance | the repetition of two or more consonants with a change in the intervening vowels, such as pitter patter | 45 | |
| 4913470571 | context | the many cultural factors that inform a piece, social, economical, religious, political, racial | 46 | |
| 4913473873 | contradiction | a direct opposition between thing compared, inconsistency | 47 | |
| 4913476080 | convention | an accepted manner, model , or tradition | 48 | |
| 4913478087 | delayed sentence | a sentence that holds its main idea until the end, also called a periodic sentence | 49 | |
| 4913479972 | denotation | a words most literal and limted meaning | 50 | |
| 4913481564 | denouement | the events following the climax or final conflict of the plot | 51 | |
| 4913483333 | deus ex machina | any artifical device for suddenly and unexpectedly resolving difficulties, refers to a device used in a Greek tragedy plays at the end of the play | 52 | |
| 4913487696 | dialect | a particular variety of language spoken in one place by one distinct group | 53 | |
| 4913490829 | diction | an authors choice of words to convey tone or effect | 54 | |
| 4913492952 | didactic | intended for teaching or to teach a moral lesson | 55 | |
| 4913495472 | digression | movement away from the main story or theme of a piece of writing. An author digresses by temporarily focusing attention on subplot or minor character | 56 | |
| 4913499521 | discourse | a formal discussion of a subject | 57 | |
| 4913499522 | doppelganger | ghostly counterpart of a living person or an alter ego | 58 | |
| 4913501882 | dystopia | an imaginary place where people live dehumanized, often fearful lives | 59 | |
| 4913504310 | drama | a form of literature that develops plot and character through dialogue and actions the format is written to be performed the read. SHakespears plays have five acts while modern plays have two or three audiences must accept certain dramatic conventions such as monologues, soliloquies, and asides | 60 | |
| 4913512129 | elegy | poem or prose lamenting the death of a particular person | 61 | |
| 4913514026 | epigrah | quote said at the beginning of a literary work or at its division to set the tone or suggest a theme | 62 | |
| 4913516658 | epiphany | a sudden or intuitive insight or perception into the reality or essential meaning of something usually brought on by a simple or common occurrence or experience | 63 | |
| 4913521109 | epigram | a witty pointed terse saying | 64 | |
| 4913522564 | epithet | a word or group of words used to characterize a person | 65 | |
| 4913524385 | epistrophe | the repetition of a word or words as the end of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences | 66 | |
| 4913527780 | epistolary | a piece of literature contained in or carried by letters | 67 | |
| 4913529850 | epitaph | a piece of writing in praise of a deceased person | 68 | |
| 4913533593 | ethos | the moral element that determines a characters actions rather than thought or emotion | 69 | |
| 4913536984 | euphemism | substitution of a milder or less direct expression for one that is harsh or blunt | 70 | |
| 4913540045 | evidence | an indication or a sign | 71 | |
| 4913541569 | euphony | a smooth pleasant sounding choice and arrangement of words | 72 | |
| 4913543001 | expletive | a single work or short phrase intended to emphasize surrounding words, generally set off by commas | 73 | |
| 4913546064 | explicit | openly stated | 74 | |
| 4913546065 | explication | the interpretation or analysis of a text | 75 | |
| 4913548397 | exposition | explanation or analysis of a subject presenting the purpose or meaning of an issue | 76 | |
| 4913550916 | eulogy | a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, an oration in honor of a deceased person | 77 | |
| 4913553990 | farce | a humorous play depending on an exaggerated improbable situation | 78 | |
| 4913556375 | figurative | the opposite of literal, doesnt mean exactly what it says, we have to translate to find what intended meaning lurks behind them | 79 | |
| 4913568509 | flashback | retrospection, where an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronology of a narrative | 80 | |
| 4913571517 | foil | a character in a fiction or drama designed to shed light on another character | 81 | |
| 4913578367 | formal/informal/colloquial | language that is loftly, dignified, or impersonal, informal, and colloquial are similar to everyday speech | 82 | |
| 4913581890 | foreshadow | to hint at or present things to come in a story or paly | 83 | |
| 4913583251 | genre | a literary type classified by form and technique, novel, epic poetry, essay, the four major genres or creative literature poetry, drama, fiction, and non fiction | 84 | |
| 4913588461 | hamartia | aristotles term for the main characters tragic flaw or error in judgement | 85 | |
| 4913591673 | hyperbole | a rhetorical term for conscious exaggeration | 86 | |
| 4913593702 | hypophora | occurs when the writer poses a question and answers it | 87 | |
| 4913595606 | imagery | sensory details in a work the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, call to mind an idea, or describle an object, involves any or all of the fives senses | 88 | |
| 4913607925 | inference | the process of arriving at a conclusion froma hint, implication or suggestion | 89 | |
| 4913610853 | invective | the use of angry or insulting language in satirical writing | 90 | |
| 4913613120 | in medias res | refers to opening a story in the middle of the action, requiring filling in past details by exposition or flashback | 91 | |
| 4913617229 | implicit | capable of being understood from something else though unexpressed | 92 | |
| 4913619913 | inherent | involved in the constitution or essential character of something, belonging by nature or habit | 93 | |
| 4913624075 | interior monologue | a recording of the thoughts and emotional experiences of a character or one or more levels of consciousness | 94 | |
| 4913626874 | inversion | a rhetorical device used for emphasis, consisting of the transposing of words out of their natural order | 95 | |
| 4913630487 | irony | a situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or meant. Irony is frequently huorous and can be sarcastic, verbal situational or dramatic | 96 | |
| 4913637650 | isocolon | parallel structure in which the parallel elements are similar not only in grammatical structure, but also in length | 97 | |
| 4913641187 | jargon | a specialized language unique to a group | 98 | |
| 4913642814 | juxtaposition | placing two items side by side to create a certain effect, reveal an attitude or accomplish some other purpose | 99 | |
| 4913647091 | local color | popular in the 1800s it is a manner of fiction that exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, customs, character types, and landscape of a certain region | 100 | |
| 4913659382 | litote | form of understatment in which the negative form of the contrary is used to achieve emphasis and intensity | 101 | |
| 4913663029 | malapropism | an error in diction caused by the substitution of one work for another similar in sound but different in meaning | 102 | |
| 4913679780 | metonymy | a figure of speech that use the name of one thing to name or designate something | 103 | |
| 4913682857 | mood | the feeling or ambience resulting from the tone of the piece as well as the writers attitude and point of view the effect is created through descriptions of feelings or objects that establish a particular feeling such as gloom, fear or hope | 104 | |
| 4913689932 | motif | recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event | 105 | |
| 4913693175 | mutability | the quality or state of being changeable while not a necessarily a desirable human trait, it is unfortunately a crucial fact of life | 106 | |
| 4913700182 | naturalism | developed in the late 19th century this is an extreme form of realism the naturalist creates characters that are vicitims of natural forces and internal drives characters are often seen as uncomprehending cogs in the machinery of an uncaring, even cruel world | 107 | |
| 4913707405 | nostalgia | desire to return in thought or fact to a former time | 108 | |
| 4913709227 | oxymoron | a paradox stated in two words, cruel kindness, typically an adjective and a noun | 109 | |
| 4913712211 | paradox | a statement that seems contradictory but is true | 110 | |
| 4913713770 | parody | a satirical imitation of a work of art for purpose of ridiculing its style or subject | 111 | |
| 4913717646 | persona | the voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or not share of the values of the author | 112 | |
| 4913720977 | perspective | a characters view of the situation or events in the story | 113 | |
| 4913722825 | platitude | an overused generalization spoken as though it were fresh and originial | 114 | |
| 4913725709 | point of view | the view the reader gets of the action and characters in a story | 115 | |
| 4913727891 | propaganda | information or rumor deliberately spread to help or harm a person group or institution | 116 | |
| 4913731085 | prose | the ordinaryform of written language without metrical structure as distinguished from poetry or verse | 117 | |
| 4913734889 | precis | a summary or an abstract | 118 | |
| 4913734890 | realism | literary practice of attempting to describe life and nature without idealization and with attention to detail | 119 | |
| 4913739287 | reflective | a piece of writing that gives considered thought to something | 120 | |
| 4913741738 | retrospection | looking back on things past | 121 | |
| 4913743594 | sarcasm | a sharp caustic remark, a form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually bitterly or harshly critical | 122 | |
| 4913747656 | satire | a literary style used to make fun of or ridicule an idea or human vice or weakness | 123 | |
| 4913750681 | speaker | the person not necessarily the author who is the voice of the poem or story | 124 | |
| 4913752585 | syllogism | a form of deduction an extremely subtle sophisticated or deceptive arguement | 125 | |
| 4913754818 | symbol | a figure of speeh in which a part is use for the whole | 126 | |
| 4913756387 | syntax | the way works are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences it is sentence structure and how it influences the way a reader perceives a piece of writing | 127 | |
| 4913763935 | theme | the central idea of a literary work | 128 | |
| 4913763936 | tone | the attitude a literary work takes towards its subject and theme it reflects the authors attitude toward the subject | 129 | |
| 4913768443 | transition words | words and devices that bring unity and coherence to a piece of writing | 130 | |
| 4913770644 | trope | the use of a word in a figurative sense with a decided change or extension in its literal meaning | 131 | |
| 4913775677 | understatement | deliberate expression of an idea or even as less important that it actually is or was | 132 | |
| 4913777916 | utopia | an imaginary place of ideal perfection | 133 | |
| 4913779526 | voice | the acnowledged or unacknowledged source of words of the story, the speaker a person telling the story or peom | 134 | |
| 4913783218 | wit | quickness of intellect and talent for saying brilliant things that surprise and delight by their unexpectedness | 135 | |
| 4913786268 | zeugma | grammatically correct linkage of one subject with two or more verbs or a verb with two or more direct objects the linking show a relationship between ideas more clearly | 136 |
