Literary Terms
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| 1199268193 | malapropism | the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar | 0 | |
| 1199268194 | zeugma | A minor device in which two or more elements in a sentence are tied together by the same verb or noun. Zeugmas are especially acute if the noun or verb does not have the exact same meaning in both parts of the sentence. She dashed His hopes and out of his life when she waked through the door. | 1 | |
| 1199268195 | litote | A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite. | 2 | |
| 1199268196 | affective fallacy | confusing the meaning of a text with how it makes the reader feel; a reader's emotional response to a text generally doesn't produce reliable interpretation | 3 | |
| 1199268197 | elegy | a sorrowful poem or speech | 4 | |
| 1199268198 | enjambment | A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. | 5 | |
| 1199268199 | caesura | A natural pause, a break in a line of poetry, usually indicated by a punctuation mark. Eg. "When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?" | 6 | |
| 1199268200 | verbal irony | A figure of speech in which what is said is the opposite of what is meant | 7 | |
| 1199268201 | situational irony | Occurs when the outcome of a work is unexpected, or events turn out to be the opposite from what one had expected | 8 | |
| 1199268202 | dramatic irony | Occurs when another character(s) and/or the audience know more than one or more characters on stage about what is happening | 9 | |
| 1199268203 | cosmic irony | The perception of fate or the universe as malicious or indifferent to human suffering, which creates a painful contrast between our purposeful activity and its ultimate meaninglessness | 10 | |
| 1199268204 | interjection | A word or phrase sometimes inserted between other words, often expressing emotion; a word not linked grammatically to other words in a sentence. | 11 | |
| 1199268205 | synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword). | 12 | |
| 1199268206 | anachronism | something out of place in time | 13 | |
| 1199268207 | mondegreen | misinterpretation of words (ex. "very close veins" for "varicose veins") | 14 | |
| 1199268208 | annotation | the act of noting observation on a text, especially anything striking or confusing in order to record ideas and impressions | 15 | |
| 1199268209 | denouement | Falling action; resolution of a falling climax | 16 | |
| 1199268210 | bildungsroman | A coming of age story | 17 | |
| 1199268211 | epiphany | A moment of sudden revelation or insight | 18 | |
| 1199268212 | omniscient narrator | A narrator who is able to know, see, and tell all, including the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters | 19 | |
| 1199268213 | Horatian satire | a satirical work that gently ridicules human absurdities and foibles, often in the form of a comedy of manners | 20 | |
| 1199268214 | Juvenalian satire | harsh, biting satire, full of moral indignation and bitter contempt, harsh, biting satire, full of moral indignation and bitter contempt | 21 | |
| 1199268215 | Kafkaesque | Any literature or situation that is often surreal and bizarre, with characters often presented thwarted by red tape and authoritarian bureaucracy. | 22 | |
| 1199268216 | Existentialism | A label for widely different revolts against traditional philosophy, stressing choice, freedom, decision, and anguish, and emerging strongly during and after the World War II years. | 23 | |
| 1199268217 | nihilism | belief that existence and all traditional values are meaningless | 24 | |
| 1199268218 | grotesque | (adj.) unnatural, distorted; bizarre | 25 | |
| 1199268219 | anagnorisis | Disclosure, discovery, recognition; the incident of the plot in which the central character discovers some major piece of information that profoundly affects his actions. | 26 | |
| 1199268220 | black humor | Often considered perverted and morbid, black comedy depicts situations normally thought of as tragic or grave as humorous. Specifically, it displays marked disillusionment and depicts humans without convictions and with little hope. | 27 | |
| 1199268221 | existential angst | is the unavoidable result of being confronted with the givens of existence -- death, freedom, choice, isolation, and meaninglessness. Arises as we recognize the realities of our mortality, our confrontation with pain and suffering, our needs to struggle for survival, and our basic fallibility. | 28 | |
| 1199268222 | dystopia | a work of fiction describing an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror | 29 | |
| 1199268223 | exposition | A narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work that provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances. | 30 | |
| 1199268224 | microcosm | A miniature world; something that resembles something else on a very small scale | 31 | |
| 1199268225 | macrocosm | Great world; universe | 32 | |
| 1199268226 | anti-hero | A central character in a dramatic or narrative work who lacks the qualities of nobility and magnanimity expected of traditional heroes and heroines in romances and epics. | 33 | |
| 1199268227 | In medias res | In the middle of things | 34 | |
| 1199268228 | naif | a naive or inexperienced person | 35 | |
| 1199268229 | objective correlative | A situation or a sequence of events or objects that evokes a particular emotion in a reader or audience. | 36 | |
| 1199268230 | asyndeton | Commas used (with no conjunction) to separate a series of words. The parts are emphasized equally when the conjunction is omitted; in addition, the use of commas with no intervening conjunction speeds up the flow of the sentence. X, Y, Z as opposed to X, Y, and Z. | 37 | |
| 1199268231 | polysyndeton | Deliberate use of many conjunctions in close succession, especially where some might be omitted. Hemingway and the Bible both use extensively. Ex. "he ran and jumped and laughed for joy" | 38 | |
| 1199268232 | epistrophe | A scheme in which the same word is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences. Example: "I believe we should fight for justice. You believe we should fight for justice. How can we not, then, fight for justice?" | 39 | |
| 1199268233 | conduplicatio | repeats a key word (not just the last word) from a preceding phrase, clause, or sentence, at the beginning of the next | 40 | |
| 1199268234 | Romanticism | 19th-century western European artistic and literary movement; held that emotion and impression, not reason, were the keys to the mysteries of human experience and nature; sought to portray passions, not calm reflections | 41 | |
| 1199268235 | Transcendentalism | A philosophy pioneered by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1830's and 1840's, in which each person has direct communication with God and Nature, and there is no need for organized churches. It incorporated the ideas that mind goes beyond matter, intuition is valuable, that each soul is part of the Great Spirit, and each person is part of a reality where only the invisible is truly real. Promoted individualism, self-reliance, and freedom from social constraints, and emphasized emotions. | 42 | |
| 1199268236 | Gothic | Characterized by mystery, castles, supernatural events, old mansions, etc. | 43 | |
| 1199268237 | utopia | An ideal or perfect place or state; a place achieving social or political perfection | 44 | |
| 1978555161 | archetype | A detail, image, or character type that occurs frequently in literature and myth and is thought to appeal in a universal way to the unconscious and to evoke a response | 45 | |
| 1978555162 | versimilitude | similarity to reality; the appearance of truth; looking like the real thing | 46 | |
| 1978555163 | idiom | A common, often used expression that doesn't make sense if you take it literally. | 47 | |
| 1978555164 | consonance | Consonance is the repetition, at close intervals, of the final consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words | 48 | |
| 1978555165 | eschatology | Beliefs about the end of the world and of humanity. | 49 | |
| 1978555166 | allegory | "A story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. In written narrative _____ involves a continuous parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning in a story so that its persons and events correspond to their equivalents in a system of ideas or a chain of events external to the tale.""" | 50 | |
| 1978555167 | terza rima | a verse form with a rhyme scheme: aba bcb cdc, etc. | 51 | |
| 1978555168 | syllogism | A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them. A syllogism is the format of a formal argument that consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. Example: Major Premise: All tragedies end unhappily. Minor Premise: Hamlet is a tragedy. Conclusion: Therefore, Hamlet ends unhappily. | 52 | |
| 1978555169 | doggerel | trivial, poorly constructed verse | 53 | |
| 1978555170 | apostrophe | A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified abstraction, such as liberty or love. | 54 | |
| 1978555171 | paradox | A statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. | 55 | |
| 1978555172 | metonymy | A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated (such as "crown" for "royalty"). | 56 | |
| 1978555173 | antithesis | Direct opposite | 57 | |
| 1978555174 | appositive | A noun or noun substitute that is placed directly next to the noun it is describing: My student, Sidney, makes me want to retire. | 58 | |
| 1978555175 | parallelism | Phrases or sentences of a similar construction/meaning placed side by side, balancing each other | 59 | |
| 1978555176 | non sequitur | A statement that does not follow logically from evidence | 60 | |
| 1978555177 | epistle | A letter or literary compostition in letter form | 61 | |
| 1978555178 | conceit | An elaborate or unusual comparison--especially one using unlikely metaphors, simile, hyperbole, and contradiction | 62 | |
| 1978555179 | elegiac | Expressing sorrow often for something past | 63 | |
| 1978555180 | villanelle | A 19-line poem consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain on two rhymes. The first and third lines of the first tercet repeat alternately as a refrain closing the succeeding stanzas and joined as the final couplet of the quatrain. | 64 | |
| 1978555181 | truism | A statement of self-evident truth; a saying that, while true, has been overused | 65 | |
| 1978555182 | anthromorphism | when inanimate objects, animals or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior or motivation | 66 | |
| 1978555183 | epigram | A brief witty poem, often satirical. | 67 | |
| 1978555184 | baroque | An artistic style of the seventeenth century characterized by complex forms, bold ornamentation, and contrasting elements | 68 | |
| 1978555185 | didactic | A term used to describe fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking. | 69 | |
| 1978555186 | aphorism | A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life. | 70 |
