Terms : Hide Images
| 5265220648 | allegory | a figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary metaphorical meaning | 0 | |
| 5265220649 | allusion | an indirect reference | 1 | |
| 5265220650 | coming-of-age story | a type of novel where the protagonist is initiated into adulthood through knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment | 2 | |
| 5265220651 | conceit | an extended and elaborated comparison | 3 | |
| 5265220652 | detail | the selection of individual events, names, description, and so on that make up the content of a work | 4 | |
| 5265220653 | diction | word choice | 5 | |
| 5265220654 | dramatic irony | the irony felt when the audience is aware of important information that a character is not aware of | 6 | |
| 5265220655 | frame | a narrative structure that provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative in a novel | 7 | |
| 5265220656 | imagery | language that appeals vividly to the senses | 8 | |
| 5265220657 | irony | something contrary to what is expected and yet having a peculiar kind of fitness | 9 | |
| 5265220658 | parody | a work intended to poke fun at another work or other specific target through imitation, exaggeration, and ridicule | 10 | |
| 5265220659 | persona | the personality adopted for or reflected in an act of communication | 11 | |
| 5265220660 | sarcasm | verbal irony aimed at ridiculing a specific target | 12 | |
| 5265220661 | satire | a work intended to critique society, institutions, etc., through ridicule | 13 | |
| 5265220662 | situational irony | when the circumstances themselves are ironic | 14 | |
| 5265220663 | style | the author's characteristic approach and use of language | 15 | |
| 5265220664 | syntax | the rules for, and art of, constructing sentences | 16 | |
| 5265220665 | tone | the narrator's attitude toward the subject | 17 | |
| 5265220666 | verbal irony | words that are the opposite of what is really meant | 18 | |
| 5265220667 | voice | the narrator's persona and characteristic use of language | 19 | |
| 5265220668 | burlesque | form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion | 20 | |
| 5265220669 | caricature | a representation in which the subject's distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect | 21 | |
| 5265220670 | colloquialism | use of slang or informal language-includes regional dialect | 22 | |
| 5265220671 | deflation | an object either assumes or is given elevated status and then is treated in such as way that estimation of the object decreases | 23 | |
| 5265220672 | disparagement | to speak of in a slighting way; belittle; reduce in rank or esteem | 24 | |
| 5265220673 | euphemism | a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept | 25 | |
| 5265220674 | farce | a light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot, exaggerated character, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect | 26 | |
| 5265220675 | high comedy | pure or serious comedy that appeals to the intellect and arouses thoughtful laughter | 27 | |
| 5265220676 | hyperbole | exaggeration or overstatement | 28 | |
| 5265220677 | incongruity | surprising contrast occurring through situation, image, allusion, character, diction, anachronism, etc. | 29 | |
| 5265220678 | invective | harsh, abusive language directed against a person or cause | 30 | |
| 5265220679 | lampoon | a broad satirical piece that uses ridicule to attack a person or group | 31 | |
| 5265220680 | litotes | a form of understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite | 32 | |
| 5265220681 | low comedy | comedy that lacks seriousness of purpose or subtlety of manner and has little intellectual appeal | 33 | |
| 5265220682 | malapropism | an inappropriateness of speech resulting from the use of one word for another which resembles it | 34 | |
| 5265220683 | non-sequitur | inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premise or evidence | 35 | |
| 5265220684 | oxymoron | a group of apparently contradictory terms suggesting a paradox | 36 | |
| 5265220685 | paradox | a statement or situation that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity | 37 | |
| 5265220686 | slapstick | boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes | 38 | |
| 5265220687 | travesty | presents a serious (often religious) subject frivolously and reduces everything to its lowest level | 39 | |
| 5265220688 | adventure novel | a novel where exciting events are more important than character development and sometimes theme | 40 | |
| 5265220689 | anecdote | a summarized version of a story, generally told to illustrate a point | 41 | |
| 5265220690 | bildungsroman | a novel concerned with the development of the protagonist's mind, spirit, and character from childhood to adulthood | 42 | |
| 5265220691 | dystopian novel | an anti-utopian novel where, instead of a paradise, everything has gone wrong in the attempt to create a perfect society | 43 | |
| 5265220692 | episodic plot | a plot that consists of a series of smaller stories | 44 | |
| 5265220693 | epistolary novel | this first person narrative progresses in the form of letters, journals, or diaries | 45 | |
| 5265220694 | existentialist novel | a novel written from an existentialist viewpoint, often pointing out the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence | 46 | |
| 5265220695 | frame | a narrative structure that provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative in a novel | 47 | |
| 5265220696 | gothic novel | a novel in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown terror pervades the action | 48 | |
| 5265220697 | novel of manners | a work that defines the social mores of a specific group, often the upper-middle class, which control the actions of the characters | 49 | |
| 5265220698 | novel | an extended prose fiction narrative of 50,000 words or more, broadly realistic--concerning the everyday events of ordinary people--and concerned with character | 50 | |
| 5265220699 | novella | an extended prose fiction narrative longer than a short story but shorter than a novel | 51 | |
| 5265220700 | picaresque | a novel that relates the adventures of an eccentric or disreputable hero in episodic form | 52 | |
| 5265220701 | regional novel | represents accurately the habits, speech, and folklore of a particular geographical section | 53 | |
| 5265220702 | roman a clef | a novel in which historical events and actual people are written about under the pretense of being fiction | 54 | |
| 5265220703 | romance | an extended fictional prose narrative about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people | 55 | |
| 5265220704 | sentimental fiction | a type of novel, popular in the eighteenth century, that overemphasizes emotion and seeks to create emotional responses in the reader | 56 | |
| 5265220705 | utopian novel | a novel that depicts an ideal world | 57 | |
| 5265220706 | verisimilitude | the appearance of reality | 58 | |
| 5265220707 | vignette | a brief, descriptive narrative piece that does not tell a complete story | 59 | |
| 5265220708 | apostrophe | addressing speech to something insensate | 60 | |
| 5265220709 | assonance | the use of similar vowel sounds repeated in successive or proximate words containing different consonants | 61 | |
| 5265220710 | ballad meter | four lines of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimester | 62 | |
| 5265220711 | blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter | 63 | |
| 5265220712 | caesura | a pause, metrical or rhetorical, occurring somewhere in a line of poetry | 64 | |
| 5265220713 | elegy | a poem eulogizing the dead | 65 | |
| 5265220714 | end-stopped | a line that has a natural pause at the end (period, comma, etc.) | 66 | |
| 5265220715 | enjambment | the running over of a sentence or thought into the next couplet or line without a pause at the end of the line; a run-on line | 67 | |
| 5265220716 | eye-rhyme | words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough, etc) | 68 | |
| 5265220717 | foot | the smallest unit of verse | 69 | |
| 5265220718 | free verse | poetry that has no pattern of rhyme or rhythm | 70 | |
| 5265220719 | heroic couplet | two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter | 71 | |
| 5265220720 | iamb | a set of two syllables in which the accent is on the second syllable | 72 | |
| 5265220721 | internal rhyme | rhyme within a line of poetry | 73 | |
| 5265220722 | metonymy | a figurative device that uses a closely associated object, etc., to stand in for the person or thing that is the real subject | 74 | |
| 5265220723 | musical devices | techniques that can be used to create a desired "sound" to a passage of language, such as alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition, rhyme and rhythm | 75 | |
| 5265220724 | near rhyme | words that nearly rhyme but are not true rhymes | 76 | |
| 5265220725 | octave | a set or stanza of eight lines generally rhymed abbaabba | 77 | |
| 5265220726 | ode | dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally | 78 | |
| 5265220727 | onomatopoeia | words that mimic the sounds of the objects they name | 79 | |
| 5265220728 | synecdoche | the use of the whole to represent one of its parts or the use of a part to represent the whole | 80 | |
| 5265220729 | aside | a brief speech that excludes at least one character from hearing | 81 | |
| 5265220730 | catharsis | the purging of the feelings of pity and fear that, according to Aristotle, occur in the audience of tragic drama | 82 | |
| 5265220731 | comic relief | the use of a comic scene to interrupt a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments | 83 | |
| 5265220732 | dialogue | the lines spoken by the characters | 84 | |
| 5265220733 | deus ex machina | a god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention. the latin phrase means, literally, 'a god from the machine.' the phrase refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play | 85 | |
| 5265220734 | everyman | a character found in medieval morality plays, intended to allegorically represent mankind; thus, any literary character intended to function more or less as a stand-in for mankind | 86 | |
| 5265220735 | foil | a character meant to parallel another character in most ways so that some important difference can be highlighted | 87 | |
| 5265220736 | fourth wall | the imaginary wall of the box theater setting, supposedly removed to allow the audience to see the action | 88 | |
| 5265220737 | hamartia | Aristotle's term for a "tragic error" | 89 | |
| 5265220738 | melodrama | a form of play that intensifies sentiment, exaggerates emotions, and relates sensational and thrilling action with four basic sharply contrasted and simplified characters: the hero, the heroine, their comic ally, and a villain | 90 | |
| 5265220739 | monologue | a long speech by one character that has an intended audience | 91 | |
| 5265220740 | morality play | a common medieval european dramatic form in which the adventures of allegorical characters taught the audience christian values | 92 | |
| 5265220741 | reversal | the point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist | 93 | |
| 5265220742 | soliloquy | a long speech by one character with no intended audience | 94 | |
| 5265220743 | stage directions | a playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play | 95 | |
| 5265220744 | anadiplosis | repetition of a word or phrase that ends one clause at the beginning of the next | 96 | |
| 5265220745 | anaphora | the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines | 97 | |
| 5265220746 | antistrophe | repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses | 98 | |
| 5265220747 | antithesis | opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction | 99 | |
| 5265220748 | asyndeton | lack of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words | 100 | |
| 5265220749 | cacophony | harsh joining of sounds | 101 | |
| 5265220750 | chiasmus | a crossing parallelism, where the second part of a grammatical construction is balanced or paralleled by the first part, only in reverse order | 102 | |
| 5265220751 | diacope | repetition with only one or two words between each repeated phrase | 103 | |
| 5265220752 | epithet | an adjective or adjective phrase appropriately qualifying a subject (noun) by naming a key or important characteristic of the subject, as in "laughing happiness," "sneering contempt," "untroubled sleep," "peaceful dawn," and "life-giving water." | 104 | |
| 5265220753 | epizeuxis | repetition of words in immediate succession, for vehemence or emphasis | 105 | |
| 5265220754 | juxtaposition | positioning of two elements next to one another in order to make a point | 106 | |
| 5265220755 | lyrical | prose that is particularly poetic, musical, and expressive | 107 | |
| 5265220756 | parallelism | a repeated pattern of syntax | 108 | |
| 5265220757 | paraprosdokian | surprise or unexpected ending of a phrase or series | 109 | |
| 5265220758 | paronomasia | use of similar sounding words; often etymological word-play | 110 | |
| 5265220759 | polysyndeton | the repetition of conjunctions in a series of coordinate words, phrases, or clauses | 111 | |
| 5265220760 | rhetorical question | a question meant to provoke thought and not meant to be answered | 112 | |
| 5265220761 | sentimentality | a pejorative term used to describe the effort by an author to induce emotional responses in the reader that exceed what the situation warrants | 113 | |
| 5265220762 | structure | the order in which a piece is presented and any devices or features that reinforce or give meaning to this order | 114 | |
| 5265220763 | Apollonian | having to do with the god Apollo, with ideas associated with Apollo-justice, balance, rules, order, life, consciousness-or with symbols of Apollo-the sun, light, etc. | 115 | |
| 5265220764 | archetype | a repeated pattern in a culture's literature | 116 | |
| 5265220765 | aubade | a poem about dawn, or about lovers in the morning | 117 | |
| 5265220766 | connotations | the cultural associations, whether positive (honorific) or negative (pejorative), charged or not, that make the true meaning of a word more than its denotation | 118 | |
| 5265220767 | denotation | the dictionary meaning of a word-its most basic meaning | 119 | |
| 5265220768 | didactic | preaching or lecturing | 120 | |
| 5265220769 | Dionysian | having to do with the god Dionysus, with ideas associated with Dionysus-chaos, celebration, drunkenness, sexuality, discord, death, the subconscious-or with symbols of Dionysus-the ocean, etc. | 121 | |
| 5265220770 | editorializing | writing that departs from the narrative or dramatic mode and instructs the reader how to think or feel about the events of a story or behavior of a character | 122 | |
| 5265220771 | epigram | a brief verse or statement that is clever in its concise and witty use of words | 123 | |
| 5265220772 | epiphany | a moment in which a character achieves a spiritual insight into life or into his or her own circumstances; the moment at which a character most truly knows him- or herself | 124 | |
| 5265220773 | grotesque | irregular, extravagant, and fantastic in form | 125 | |
| 5265220774 | in medias res | a story that is already in progress at the point when the narrative begins | 126 | |
| 5265220775 | indeterminate ending | an ending in which the central conflict is not resolved or is resolved ambiguously | 127 | |
| 5265220776 | internal monologue | a character's actual thoughts, rather than a summary of these thoughts, given as they happen, not altered to suit the needs of a reader or the tense of the narrative | 128 | |
| 5265220777 | motif | a repeated pattern (of symbols, images, etc.) found in a piece of literature; more individual to an author or a particular work than the archetype, which is culturally determined | 129 | |
| 5265220778 | prose poem | a short composition having the intentions of poetry but not written in verse | 130 | |
| 5265220779 | shift | a change in structure, in tone, in narrative point of view, in mood or atmosphere, etc | 131 | |
| 5265220780 | synesthesia | presentation of one sense in terms usually associated with another sense | 132 | |
| 5265220781 | unreliable narrator | a narrator who is, for one of any number of reasons, not capable of accuracy and whom we are encouraged to distrust | 133 |
