Terms : Hide Images
| 7764895749 | Aesthetic Distance | Distance between audience and work of art | 0 | |
| 7764895751 | Alliosis | Either or; presenting alternatives | 1 | |
| 7764895755 | Amplification | A dramatic ordering of words "It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman!" | 2 | |
| 7764895756 | Anacoluthon | Odd mixing of phrases "Swear here as before that you never shall note that you know aught of me." | 3 | |
| 7764895757 | Anagnorisis | the protagonist gains some crucial knowledge that he or she did not have. | 4 | |
| 7764895758 | Analepsis | The retelling in a narrative of scenes or events that took place at an earlier point in the story (flashback) | 5 | |
| 7764895759 | Anapest | A metrical foot in poetry that consists of three syllables: two unstressed followed by a stressed (??'). Sounds like DEE-DEE-DUM. __________-ic words would include: contradict, interfere, elegy. | 6 | |
| 7764895760 | Anaphora | exact repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive lines or sentences. __________ is a type of parallelism. | 7 | |
| 7764895761 | Anapodoton | Deliberately creating a sentence fragment by the omission of a clause: "If only you came with me!" If only students knew what __________ was! | 8 | |
| 7764895764 | Antanaclasis | The stylistic scheme of repeating a single word, but with a different meaning each time | 9 | |
| 7764895765 | Anticlimax | Rhetorical descent, usually sudden, from a higher to a lower emotional point--from a topic or tone with greater drama or significance to one with less impact or importance. __________ typically results in disappointment or reversal of expectations. An example would be the last ten chapters of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. | 10 | |
| 7764895767 | Antimetabole | Reverse repetition | 11 | |
| 7764895768 | Antithesis | A rhetorical figure in which two ideas are directly opposed | 12 | |
| 7764895769 | Aphorism | A concise, pointed, epigrammatic statement that reveals a truth or principle | 13 | |
| 7764895770 | Aposiopesis | A figure of speech wherein a sentence is deliberately broken off and left unfinished | 14 | |
| 7764895771 | Apostrophe | When a character speaks to a character or object that is not present or is unable to respond | 15 | |
| 7764895772 | Archetype | The original model from which something is developed or made Examples: The snake, the flood, the savior, the blonde guy wearing white with a square jaw and chiseled pecs who shows up at just the right time. | 16 | |
| 7764895773 | Assonance | Repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. | 17 | |
| 7764895774 | Asyndeton | Using no conjunctions to create an effect of speed or simplicity | 18 | |
| 7764895776 | Aubade | A lyric poem delivered at dawn, usually by lovers who must part | 19 | |
| 7764895777 | Ballad | A poem that recounts a story--generally some dramatic episode--in the form of a song. | 20 | |
| 7764895779 | Blank Verse | Name for unrhymed iambic pentameter. An iamb is a metrical foot in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable. In iambic pentameter there are five iambs per line making ten syllables | 21 | |
| 7764895780 | Cacophony | Harsh, unpleasant, or discordant sounds. Opposite of euphony | 22 | |
| 7764895781 | Caesura | A pause in a line of poetry | 23 | |
| 7764895782 | Canon | A body of written works accepted as authoritative or authentic. | 24 | |
| 7764895783 | Catachresis | A term referring to the incorrect or strained use of a word. | 25 | |
| 7764895784 | Catharsis | The emotional effect a tragic drama has on its audience. | 26 | |
| 7764895788 | Colloquial | Informal, conversational language. __________isms are phrases or sayings that are indicative of a specific region. | 27 | |
| 7764895790 | Confessional Poetry | A contemporary poetic mode in which poets discuss matters relating to their private lives. __________s use intimate detail and often psychoanalytic terms to describe their most painful experiences. Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are are pioneers of this style. | 28 | |
| 7764895792 | Connotation | An idea or meaning suggested by or associated with a word or thing, ie. Bat=evil. | 29 | |
| 7764895794 | Contraction | Removes an unstressed syllable and in order to maintain the rhythmic meter of a line. This practice explains some words frequently used in poetry such as th' in place of the, o'er in place of over, and 'tis or 'twas in place of it is or it was. | 30 | |
| 7764895795 | Convention | An understanding between a reader and a writer about certain details of a story that does not need to be explained. | 31 | |
| 7764895796 | Couplet | Two rhyming lines in poetry. | 32 | |
| 7764895797 | Dactyl | A metrical foot in poetry that consists of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones | 33 | |
| 7764895798 | Denotation | A word's literal meaning(s), independent of any connotations; the dictionary definition of a word. | 34 | |
| 7764895799 | Denouement | The final resolution or clarification of a dramatic or narrative plot. | 35 | |
| 7764895800 | Deus Ex Machina | Term that refers to a character or force that appears at the end of a story or play to help resolve conflict. Word means "god from a machine." In ancient Greek drama, gods were lowered onto the stage by a mechanism to extricate characters from a seemingly hopeless situation. The phrase has come to mean any turn of events that solve the characters' problems through an unexpected and unlikely intervention. | 36 | |
| 7764895803 | Didactic | Instructive or providing information for a particular purpose. "Teachy." | 37 | |
| 7764895804 | Dissonance | Harsh, discordant sounds. | 38 | |
| 7764895806 | Ekphrasis | Literary representation of a response to a visual work or art, such as a painting or sculpture. | 39 | |
| 7764895807 | Elektra Complex | The desire a female child feels toward the male parent, from the ancient Greek legend of Elektra, who convinced her brother to kill their mother to avenge their father's murder. | 40 | |
| 7764895808 | Elegy | A poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person. | 41 | |
| 7764895809 | Enallage | Intentionally misusing grammar to characterize a speaker or to create a memorable phrase. Boxing manager Joe Jacobs, for instance, became immortal with the phrase, "We was robbed!" | 42 | |
| 7764895811 | End-Stopped Line | A line of poetry whose meaning is complete in itself and that ends with a grammatical pause marked by punctuation. | 43 | |
| 7764895812 | English (Shakespearean) Sonnet | A 14-line sonnet consisting of three quatrains with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef, followed by a couplet, gg. | 44 | |
| 7764895813 | Enjambment | A poetic statement that spans more than one line. | 45 | |
| 7764895814 | Epigraph | A passage printed on the first page of a literary work, taken from earlier texts, to establish the tone or theme of what follows. | 46 | |
| 7764895816 | Epiphany | Sudden enlightenment or realization, a profound new outlook or understanding about the world usually attained while doing everyday mundane activities. | 47 | |
| 7764895817 | Epistolary Novel | A novel that tells its story through letters written from one character to another. Ex: Perks of Being a Wallflower | 48 | |
| 7764895818 | Epistrophe | Repetition of a concluding word or endings | 49 | |
| 7764895819 | Epithet | An adjective or phrase applied to a noun to accentuate a certain characteristic. Ex: The Founding Fathers; Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, that Mr. Rogers-looking fool. | 50 | |
| 7764895820 | Euphony | A succession of words which are pleasing to the ear. Opposite of cacophony. | 51 | |
| 7764895821 | Euphemism | The act of substituting a harsh, blunt, or offensive comment for a more politically accepted or positive one. | 52 | |
| 7764895825 | Foil | A character that by contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another. | 53 | |
| 7764895826 | Foot | The metrical length of a line is determined by the number of __________ it contains. | 54 | |
| 7764895827 | Foregrounding | Giving prominence to something in a literary work that would not be accentuated in ordinary discourse. An example would be Zora Neale Hurston's "__________ of language and culture in her fiction, dramatizing vernacular ways of speaking that are so independent, dynamic, and expressive that they cross over, challenge, and transform mainstream dialects." | 55 | |
| 7764895829 | Formalism | A style of literary criticism from the 30s | 56 | |
| 7764895830 | Frame Story | A story that contains another story or stories | 57 | |
| 7764895831 | Free Verse | Poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme, and uses irregular line lengths. | 58 | |
| 7764895832 | Freytag's Pyramid | Gustav Freytag's conception of the typical structure of a five-act play: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, catastrophe. | 59 | |
| 7764895834 | Gothic | A genre characterized by a general mood of decay, suspense, and terror; action that is dramatic and generally violent or otherwise disturbing | 60 | |
| 7764895836 | Hagiography | Originally a biography recounting a saint's life. Now __________ can refer to writing about a revered individual. | 61 | |
| 7764895837 | Hamartia | An error in judgment made by a tragic hero that brings about the suffering, downfall, and often death of that hero. | 62 | |
| 7764895838 | Harlem Renaissance | An intellectual and cultural movement of the 1920s centered in Harlem, then a predominantly African American section of New York City. | 63 | |
| 7764895839 | Hendiadys | The expression of an idea by the use of usually two independent words connected by and (as nice and warm) instead of the usual combination of independent word and its modifier (as nicely warm). | 64 | |
| 7764895841 | Hubris | Used in Greek tragedies, refers to excessive pride that usually leads to a hero's downfall. | 65 | |
| 7764895842 | Hypallage | Also known as a transferred epithet, is the trope in which a modifier, usually an adjective, is applied to the "wrong" word in the sentence. | 66 | |
| 7764895843 | Hyperbaton | A generic term for changing the normal or expected order of words | 67 | |
| 7764895844 | Hyperbole | A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or comic/dramatic effect. | 68 | |
| 7764895845 | Iamb | A metrical foot in poetry that consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. Ex: afloat, respect, in love. | 69 | |
| 7764895846 | Idyll | A narrative work, usually short, descriptive, and composed in verse that depicts and exalts pastoral scenes and themes. The simple shepherd's life is a typical subject. Often composed from the viewpoint of a "civilized" society that longs for something more primal, natural, or innocent. | 70 | |
| 7764895848 | In Medias Res | A literary technique of beginning the narrative in the middle of the action. Used to "hook" the reader or audience. | 71 | |
| 7764895849 | Interior Monologue | A literary technique for rendering stream of consciousness by reproducing a character's mental flow. Presents thoughts, emotions, and sensations as experienced by the character. | 72 | |
| 7764895850 | Internal Rhyme | A rhyme that occurs within a line of verse. Ex: "They took some honey and plenty of money/Wrapped in a five-pound note." | 73 | |
| 7764895851 | Intertextuality | The condition of interconnectedness among texts, or the concept that any text is an amalgam of others, either because it exhibits signs of influence or because its language inevitably contains common points of reference with other texts through such things as allusion, quotation, genre, style, and even revisions. | 74 | |
| 7764895852 | Inversion | An intentional digression from ordinary word order which is used to maintain regular meters. | 75 | |
| 7764895854 | Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet | A poem with fourteen lines. A __________ subdivides into two quatrains and two tercets (or an octave which presents a problem and a sestet which ponders a solution). Rhyme scheme is typically ABBAABBA followed by CDCDCD or a (variation). A contemporary one: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/244570 | 76 | |
| 7764895855 | Litotes | A trope that involves making an affirmation by negating its opposite. "Not unkind" means "kind." "Not bad" usually means "good." | 77 | |
| 7764895856 | Loose Sentence | A complex sentence in which an independent clause is followed by one or more other elements. It is syntactically complete on the front end. __________s are less formal, more conversational, and more common in English than periodic sentences. | 78 | |
| 7764895857 | Meiosis | A trope involving deliberate understatement, usually for comic, ironic, or satiric effect. Typically involves characterizing something in a way that, taken literally, minimizes its gravity. | 79 | |
| 7764895858 | Metaphor | A figure of speech that associates two distinct things without using a connective word. Ex: "That child is a wet napkin." | 80 | |
| 7764895859 | Metaplasmus | A type of neologism in which misspelling a word creates a rhetorical effect. To emphasize dialect, one might spell dog as "dawg." | 81 | |
| 7764895860 | Prosthesis | Adding an extra syllable or letters to the beginning of a word: Shakespeare writes in his sonnets, "All alone, I beweep my outcast state." | 82 | |
| 7764895861 | Epenthesis | Also called infixation. Adding an extra syllable or letters in the middle of a word. Shakespeare might write, "A visitating spirit came last night" to highlight the unnatural status of the visit. More prosaically, Ned Flanders from The Simpsons might say, "Gosh-diddly-darn-it, Homer." | 83 | |
| 7764895862 | Proparalepsis | Adding an extra syllable or letters to the end of a word. For instance, Shakespeare in Hamlet creates the word climature by adding the end of the word temperature to climate (1.1.12). The wizardly windbag Glyndwr (Glendower) proclaims that he "can call spirits from the vasty deep" in 1 Henry IV (3.1.52). | 84 | |
| 7764895863 | Aphaeresis | Deleting a syllable from the beginning of a word to create a new word. For instance, in King Lear, we hear that, "the king hath cause to plain" (3.1.39). Here, the word complain has lost its first syllable. | 85 | |
| 7764895864 | Syncope | Deleting a syllable or letter from the middle of a word. | 86 | |
| 7764895865 | Apocope | Deleting a syllable or letter from the end of a word. In The Merchant of Venice, one character says, "when I ope my lips let no dog bark," and the last syllable of open falls away into ope before the reader's eyes (1.1.93-94). In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare proclaims, "If I might in entreaties find success--/ As seld I have the chance--I would desire / My famous cousin to our Grecian tents" (4.5.148). Here the word seldom becomes seld. | 87 | |
| 7764895866 | Meter | The measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or the number of syllables in a line. | 88 | |
| 7764895867 | Metonymy | The use of a word or phrase to stand in for something else which it is often physically associated. ie. Hollywood for US cinema, the Crown for UK government, the White House, City Hall. | 89 | |
| 7764895871 | First-person Narrator | The author, the protagonist, another character, a witness to the action. "I'm on the ramp." | 90 | |
| 7764895872 | Second-person Narrator | The narrator refers to the reader as "you," making the reader a part of the story. "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge." | 91 | |
| 7764895873 | Third-person Omniscient Narrator | Each and every character is referred to by the narrator as "he", "she", "it", or "they." An omniscient narrator has knowledge of all times, people, places, and events, including all characters' thoughts. | 92 | |
| 7764895874 | Third-person Limited Narrator | A limited narrator may know absolutely everything about a single character and every piece of knowledge in that character's mind, but the narrator's knowledge is "limited" to that character — that is, the narrator cannot describe things unknown to the focal character. | 93 | |
| 7764895877 | Occupatio | Literally "seizing," __________ is the rhetorical figure of bringing up and responding to a counterpoint before the opponent has the chance to make it. | 94 | |
| 7764895878 | Octave | An eight-line stanza. More specifically, the first eight lines of an italian sonnet. May pose a question or a dilemma that the sestet answers. | 95 | |
| 7764895879 | Ode | A relatively long, serious, and usually meditative lyric poem that treats a noble subject in a dignified or calm manner. | 96 | |
| 7764895880 | Oedipus Complex | The desire a young child feels for the opposite-sex parent and the hostility the child correspondingly feels toward the same-sex parent. Based on the Greek legend of __________, who blinds himself after discovering that he killed his dad and then married his mother. | 97 | |
| 7764895881 | Onomatopoeia | Words that seem to signify meaning through sound effects. Ex: Hiss, sizzle, pop, moo, purr, quack, beep. | 98 | |
| 7764895882 | Other | A person or category of people seen as different from the dominant social group. Almost any ideology involves the classification of some group as the __________, often by virtue of race, class, gender, sexuality, or other characteristic. | 99 | |
| 7764895884 | Paradox | A statement that seems self-contradictory, but expresses an underlying truth. Ex: "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it." Or, from the Tao Te Ching: "My words are easy to know and practice, but there is no one in the world who is able to know and practice them." | 100 | |
| 7764895885 | Paralipsis | A rhetorical figure involving a speaker's assertion that he or she will not discuss something that he or she in fact goes on to discuss. | 101 | |
| 7764895886 | Parataxis/Paratactic Style | A sequence of sentences bearing only a loose logical relation to one another. | 102 | |
| 7764895887 | Pastoral | A literary mode historically and conventionally associated with shepherds and country living. | 103 | |
| 7764895888 | Pentameter | A line of verse with five metrical feet. The most common line length in English verse. Ex: "Deer walk | upon | our moun | tains, and | the quail |" | 104 | |
| 7764895889 | Periodic Sentence | A complex sentence that is not syntactically complete until its very end. The opposite of a loose sentence. | 105 | |
| 7764895890 | Periphrasis | A roundabout way of speaking or writing. The term is often used pejoratively to designate pompous or wordy writing. Ex: Ronald Reagan once called a lie a "terminological inexactitude." | 106 | |
| 7764895893 | Poetic Diction | The choice and phrasing of words deemed suitable for verse. Ex: "Ere," "thrice," "thou." | 107 | |
| 7764895894 | Poetic Justice | The idea that virtuous and evil actions are ultimately dealt with justly, with virtue rewarded and evil punished." | 108 | |
| 7764895895 | Poetic License | The linguistic liberty taken by poets in composing verse. They can do unusual things, break rules, etc. | 109 | |
| 7764895897 | Polysyndeton | __________ is the use of several conjunctions in close succession, especially where some might be omitted (as in "he ran and jumped and laughed for joy"). | 110 | |
| 7764895898 | Postcolonial Literature | The body of literature written by authors with roots in countries that were once colonies established by European nations. | 111 | |
| 7764895899 | Postmodernist Literature | A term referring to radically experimental works produced after WWII. Much of __________ writing reveals and highlights the alienation of individuals and the meaninglessness of human existence. | 112 | |
| 7764895900 | Prose Poem | A brief, rhythmic composition blending prose and verse, ranging from several lines to several pages. __________ are written in sentences and do not have line breaks. | 113 | |
| 7764895901 | Protagonist | The main character of a work; usually the hero or heroine, but sometimes an antihero. | 114 | |
| 7764895902 | Quatrain | A stanza containing four lines. | 115 | |
| 7764895903 | Refrain | A phrase, line, or lines that recur(s) throughout the poem or song. It may vary slightly, but is usually exactly the same. When the __________ is meant to be repeated or sung by a group of people, it is called a chorus. | 116 | |
| 7764895906 | Rhyme Scheme | The pattern of rhyme in a poem or stanza. | 117 | |
| 7764895909 | Round Character | Characters which are fully developed, with the complexity and depth associated with real people. They can surprise readers convincingly and have full-blown personalities complete with contractions and quirks that make it difficult to describe them reductively. | 118 | |
| 7764895911 | Scansion | The analysis of poetic meter, the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables found in verse. | 119 | |
| 7764895913 | Sestet | Any six-line poem or stanza. More specifically, the last six lines of an Italian sonnet, which typically answer or resolve the question or problem posed in the octave. | 120 | |
| 7764895914 | Sibilance | A type of alliteration involving repetition or the consonant s or other letters and letter combinations such as c (cent), ch (chalet), sh (shade), and z (zip). | 121 | |
| 7764895916 | Soliloquy | A monologue delivered by a character while alone on the stage that reveals inner thoughts, emotions, or information that the audience needs to know. | 122 | |
| 7764895917 | Stanza | A grouped set of lines in a poem, usually separated from other such clusters by a blank line. | 123 | |
| 7764895918 | Stream of Consciousness | A literary technique featuring the mental flow of one or more characters. This flow is more determined by free association than by logic or grammatical rules. | 124 | |
| 7764895919 | Stress | The emphasis placed on a syllable. In the last name "Freeburg," the first syllable is __________ed. | 125 | |
| 7764895921 | Surrealism | A literary and artistic movement whose proponents view the unconscious mind as the source of imaginative expression and who seek to liberate the mind from the constraints of reason, convention, self-censorship, and conscious control. | 126 | |
| 7764895923 | Synesthesia | The condition where one kind of sensory stimulus evokes the subjective experience of another. Ex: "heavy silence," "icy tone," "red hot." | 127 | |
| 7764895924 | Synecdoche | A figure of speech where a part of something represents the whole. Ex: calling a car your "wheels," referring to the violins and cellos as "the strings," senior citizens as "greyheads," football as "pigskin," etc. | 128 | |
| 7764895926 | Tercet | A group of three lines of verse. | 129 | |
| 7764895927 | Texture | A term referring to the surface details or elements of a work. __________ includes: imagery, meter, rhyme, alliteration, euphony, etc. | 130 | |
| 7764895930 | Threnody | A threnody is a song, hymn or poem of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person. | 131 | |
| 7764895934 | Trochee | A metrical foot in poetry that consists of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable. | 132 | |
| 7764895935 | Unreliable Narrator | A narrator who, intentionally or unintentionally, fails to provide an accurate report of events or situations and whose credibility is therefore compromised. | 133 | |
| 7764895936 | Verisimilitude | The apparent truthfulness and credibility of a fictional literary work. | 134 | |
| 7764895937 | Villanelle | A French verse form consisting of nineteen lines grouped in five tercets followed by a quatrain and involving only two rhymes, with the rhyme scheme aba aba aba aba aba abaa. | 135 | |
| 7764895938 | Zeugma | A rhetorical figure where one word or phrase governs or modifies two or more words or phrases. Ex: "Mary likes chocolate, John vanilla." "Lust conquered shame; audacity, fear; madness, reason." | 136 |
