Terms : Hide Images
| 6266508910 | pathos | appeal to emotion | 0 | |
| 6266508911 | pentameter | a line of five feet | 1 | |
| 6266508912 | periodic sentence | a sentence that, by leaving the completion of its main clause to the end, produces an effect of suspense | 2 | |
| 6266508913 | peripeteia | a sudden turn of events or an unexpected reversal in a tragedy | 3 | |
| 6266508914 | personification | the technique by which animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate objects are referred to as if they were human | 4 | |
| 6266508915 | plot | the careful arrangement by an author of incidents in a narrative to achieve a desired effect | 5 | |
| 6266508916 | point of view | the vantage point, or stance, from which a story is told | 6 | |
| 6266508917 | polysyndeton | the opposite of asyndeton. the use of many conjugations has a slowing effect. | 7 | |
| 6266508918 | post-modernism | a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth. | 8 | |
| 6266508919 | primitivism | the belief that nature provides a truer and more healthful model than culture; the nobel savage | 9 | |
| 6266508920 | prosody | the study of sound and rhythm in poetry | 10 | |
| 6266508921 | pun | a form of wit, not necessarily funny, involving a play on a word with two or more meanings | 11 | |
| 6266508922 | puritanism | extreme strictness in moral or religious matters, often to excess; rigid austerity | 12 | |
| 6266508923 | quatrain | a verse stanza of four lines, rhymed or unrhymed | 13 | |
| 6266508924 | rationalism | the doctrine that reason alone is a source of knowledge and is independent of experience | 14 | |
| 6266508925 | realism | the author's use of accuracy in the portrayal of life or reality | 15 | |
| 6266508926 | regionalism | the tendency in literature to focus on a specific geographical region or locality, re-creating as accurately as possible its unique setting, speech, customs, manners, beliefs and history | 16 | |
| 6266508927 | rhetoric | the art of persuasion, in speaking or writing | 17 | |
| 6266508928 | rising action | the part of a plot that leads through a series of events of increasing interest and poe to the climax or turning point | 18 | |
| 6266508929 | romanticism | literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form | 19 | |
| 6266508930 | sarcasm | harsh, cutting, personal remarks to or about someone, not necessarily ironic | 20 | |
| 6266508931 | satire | any form of literature that blends ironic humor and wit with criticism directed at a particular folly, vice or stupidity. satire seeks to correct, improve, or reform through ridicule | 21 | |
| 6266508932 | setting | the general locale, time in history, or social milieu in which the action takes place | 22 | |
| 6266508933 | simile | a less direct metaphor, using like or as | 23 | |
| 6266508934 | situational irony | the contrast between what is intended or expected and what actually occurs | 24 | |
| 6266508935 | slant rhyme | inexact rhyme between two words | 25 | |
| 6266508936 | soliloquy | a speech by one character while alone on the stage or under the impression of being alone | 26 | |
| 6266508937 | sonnet | a fourteen-line lyric poem in iambic pentameter | 27 | |
| 6266508938 | speaker's attitude | the speaker's viewpoint regarding his subject matter | 28 | |
| 6266508939 | stanza | a section or division of a poem, resembling paragraphs in prose | 29 | |
| 6266508940 | stock character | a stereotyped character; one familiar to use from examples in previous fiction | 30 | |
| 6266508941 | stream of consciousness | a technique in which the reader sees the continuous, chaotic flow of a character's thoughts | 31 | |
| 6266508942 | structure | the pattern of organization | 32 | |
| 6266508943 | style | how the author's word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, and sentence arrangement all work together to establish mood, images, and meaning in the text | 33 | |
| 6266508944 | surrealism | employs illogical, dreamlike images and events to suggest the unconscious | 34 | |
| 6266508945 | syllogism | a form of logical reasoning, consisting of two premises and a conclusion (A=B B=C A=C) | 35 | |
| 6266508946 | symbol | anything that stands for or represents something else beyond it | 36 | |
| 6266508947 | synathesia | the description of one kind of sensation in terms of another | 37 | |
| 6266508948 | synecdoche | figure of speech that utilizes a part as representative of a whole | 38 | |
| 6266508949 | syntax | the rules or patterns of grammatical language | 39 | |
| 6266508950 | theme | an abstract idea that emerges from a literary work's treatment of its subject matter | 40 | |
| 6266508951 | title character | a character who gives his/her name to the work | 41 | |
| 6266508952 | tone | the reflection in a work of the author's attitude toward his or her subject | 42 | |
| 6266508953 | tragedy | a drama in which the protagonist, a person of high position, suffers a fall in fortune due to some error of judgement or flaw in his or her nature | 43 | |
| 6266508954 | tragic flaw | the defect of a character that brings about the protagonist's downfall in a tragedy | 44 | |
| 6266508955 | transcendentalism | the american version of romanticism; held that there was something in human beings that transcended human nature -- a spark of divinity | 45 | |
| 6266508956 | trope | any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense | 46 | |
| 6266508957 | unity of action | a tragedy that has one main action that it follows with no or few subplots | 47 | |
| 6266508958 | verbal irony | a contrast between what is said and what is actually meant | 48 | |
| 6266508959 | verisimilitude | the appearance or semblance of truth | 49 | |
| 6266508960 | villanelle | a lyric poem made up of five stanzas of three lines, plus a final stanza of four lines | 50 | |
| 6266508961 | voice | how a written work conveys to a reader of the writer's attitude, personality, and character | 51 | |
| 6266508962 | wit | ingenuity in connecting amusingly incongruous ideas; intellect, humor | 52 | |
| 6266508963 | allegory | a story with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning ex. animal farm | 53 | |
| 6266508964 | alliteration | the repitition of the same sounds, usually initial consonants, in neighboring words ex. anxious ants avoid anteaters | 54 | |
| 6266508965 | allusion | an indirect or passing reference to an event, person, place or artistic work that the author assumes the reader will understand | 55 | |
| 6266508966 | ambiguity | a word, phrase or attitude that has double or even multiple meanings, resulting in multiple interpretations | 56 | |
| 6266508967 | anachronism | an event, custom, person, or thing that is out of its natural order of time ex. back to the future | 57 | |
| 6266508968 | anagnorisis | the critical moment of recognition or discovery in a tragedy | 58 | |
| 6266508969 | anaphora | the regular reputation of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses | 59 | |
| 6266508970 | antithesis | a figure of speech in which opposing or contrasting ideas are balanced against each other using grammatically parallel syntax | 60 | |
| 6266508971 | apostrophe | a rhetorical device in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person, or an inanimate object or abstraction | 61 | |
| 6266508972 | archetype | a pattern or model of an action, a character type, or an image that recurs consistently enough in life and literature to be considered universal | 62 | |
| 6266508973 | assonance | the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in neighboring words | 63 | |
| 6266508974 | asyndeton | conjunctions are omitted, producing a fast-paced and rapid prose | 64 | |
| 6266508975 | ballad | a form of narrative poetry that presents a single dramatic episode, which is often tragic or violent | 65 | |
| 6266508976 | bildungsroman | a coming of age work that follows its protagonist from youth to experience, or maturity ex. to kill a mockingbird, harry potter | 66 | |
| 6266508977 | blank verse | poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter | 67 | |
| 6266508978 | bombast | speech too pompous for an occasion; pretentious words | 68 | |
| 6266508979 | burlesque | an artistic composition, especially literary or dramatic, that, for the sake of laughter, vulgarizes lofty material or treats ordinary material with mock dignity | 69 | |
| 6266508980 | cacophony | harsh, clashing, or dissonant sounds, often produced by combinations of words that require a clipped, explosive delivery | 70 | |
| 6266508981 | caesura | a pause in a line of verse, often coinciding with a break between clauses or sentences | 71 | |
| 6266508982 | caricature | a picture, description, etc., ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of persons or things ex. clueless | 72 | |
| 6266508983 | catharsis | the effect of purification achieved by tragic drama; emotional release | 73 | |
| 6266508984 | chiasmus | grammatical structure in which the first clause or phrase is reversed in the second, sometimes repeating the same words. | 74 | |
| 6266508985 | classicism | an adherence to the principals of greek and roman literature | 75 | |
| 6266508986 | climax | the turning point or high point in a plot's action | 76 | |
| 6266508987 | colloquial | words or phrases that are used in everyday conversation; informal writing | 77 | |
| 6266508988 | conceit | an unusually far-fetched or elaborate metaphor presenting a surprisingly apt parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or feelings | 78 | |
| 6266508989 | consonance | the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different | 79 | |
| 6266508990 | couplet | two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme and that are written to the same meter | 80 | |
| 6266508991 | dactyl | metrical foot of three syllables, on accented followed by two unaccented | 81 | |
| 6266508992 | dénouement | the portion of a plot that reveals the final outcome of its conflicts or the solution of its mysteries | 82 | |
| 6266508993 | determinism | philosophy that suggests people's actions and all other events are determined by forces over which human beings have no control ex. romeo and juliet | 83 | |
| 6266508994 | deus ex machina | the resolution of a plot by use of highly improbable change, coincidence or artificial device that solves some difficult problem or crisis | 84 | |
| 6266508995 | diction | the choice of words used in a literary work | 85 | |
| 6266508996 | digression | a portion of a written work that interrupts or pauses the development of the theme of plot | 86 | |
| 6266508997 | dissonance | harshness of sound and/or rhyme, either inadvertent or deliberate | 87 | |
| 6266508998 | dramatic irony | a situation in which the audience knows more about a character's situation that the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character's expectations ex. romeo and juliet | 88 | |
| 6266508999 | dystopia | an undesirable imaginary society | 89 | |
| 6266509000 | elegy | an elaborately formal lyric poem lamenting the death of a friend or public figure, or serious reflection on a serious subject | 90 | |
| 6266509001 | end-stopped | a line brought to a pause at which the end of a verse line coincides with the completion of a sentence, clause, or other independent unit of syntax | 91 | |
| 6266509002 | enjambment | the running over of the sense and grammatical structure form one verse line or couplet to the next without a punctuated pause | 92 | |
| 6266509003 | epic | a long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes in a grand style ex. the odyssey | 93 | |
| 6266509004 | epistolary | a novel written in the form of correspondence between characters ex. frankenstein, perks of being a wallflower | 94 | |
| 6266509005 | epithet | any word or phrase applied to a person or thing to describe an actual or attributed quality ex. "richard the lion-hearted" | 95 | |
| 6266509006 | euphony | a pleasing smoothness of sound, perceived by the ease with which the words can be spoken in combination | 96 | |
| 6266509007 | exegesis | critical explanation or interpretation of a text or portion of text | 97 | |
| 6266509008 | exposition | the setting forth of a systematic explanation of or argument about nay subject; or the opening part of a play or story | 98 | |
| 6266509009 | extended metaphor | a metaphor that is sustained for several lines or that becomes the controlling image of an entire poem | 99 | |
| 6266509010 | fable | a brief tale that conveys a moral lesson usually by giving human speech and manners to animals and inanimate things ex. the tortoise and the hare | 100 | |
| 6266509011 | falling action | the segment of the plot that comes between the climax and the conclusion | 101 | |
| 6266509012 | farce | a type of drama related to comedy but emphasizing improbable situations, violent conflicts, physical action, and coarse wit over characterization or articulated plot | 102 | |
| 6266509013 | feminine rhyme | two-syllable rhyme | 103 | |
| 6266509014 | first person pov | the story is told by one of its characters, using the first person pronoun "i" which does not give the reader insight into the other characters' motives or thoughts | 104 | |
| 6266509015 | flashback | a way or presenting scenes or incidents that took place before the opening scene | 105 | |
| 6266509016 | foil | a character whose qualities or actions serve to emphasize those of the protagonist by providing a strong contrast with them | 106 | |
| 6266509017 | foot | the basic unit of rhythmic measurement in a line of poetry | 107 | |
| 6266509018 | foreshadowing | the organization and presentation of events and scenes in a work of fiction or drama so that the reader or observer is prepared to some degree for what occurs later in the work | 108 | |
| 6266509019 | frame narrative | the result of inserting one or more small stories within the body of a larger story that encompasses the smaller ones | 109 | |
| 6266509020 | free verse | poetry that is free of rhyme and meter resembling natural speech | 110 | |
| 6266509021 | gothic novel | a type of novel characterized by master, horror, and the supernatural, often with haunted castles, secret passageways, grisly visions, and all the paraphernalia of the tale of terror | 111 | |
| 6266509022 | grotesque | a character or location that is irregular, extravagant or fantastic in form | 112 | |
| 6266509023 | harmartia | the greek word for error or failure; slightly different from tragic flaw, which is a flaw of character | 113 | |
| 6266509024 | heroic couplet | two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc, with the thought usually compete the two line unit | 114 | |
| 6266509025 | hexameter | a line containing six feet | 115 | |
| 6266509026 | homily | religious sermon or discourse | 116 | |
| 6266509027 | hubris | the greek word for insolence or affront, applied to the arrogance or pride of the protagonist in a tragedy in which he or she defies moral laws in the prohibitions of the gods. | 117 | |
| 6266509028 | humanism | a variety of ethical theory and practice that emphasizes reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world and often rejects the importance of belief in God. | 118 | |
| 6266509029 | hyperbole | exaggeration for the sake of emphasis in a figure of speech not meant literally | 119 | |
| 6266509030 | lamb | a metrical foot consisting of two syllables, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented ex: invade, today | 120 | |
| 6266509031 | idyll | a poe or prose work describing an idealized rural life, pastoral scenes | 121 | |
| 6266509032 | imagery | the making of pictures in words | 122 | |
| 6266509033 | impressionism | a practice in literature that emphasizes immediate aspects of objects or actions without attention to details | 123 | |
| 6266509034 | in medias res | latin for "the middle of things," the term describes the narrative practice of beginning a story in the middle of the action to involve the reader, and then sing one or more flashbacks to fill in what led up to that point | 124 | |
| 6266509035 | internal rhyme | rhyme which comes within the line | 125 | |
| 6266509036 | invective | direct denunciation or name-calling | 126 | |
| 6266509037 | irony | the incongruity, or difference, between reality (what is) and appearance (what seems to be) | 127 | |
| 6266509038 | jargon | the special language of a profession or group | 128 | |
| 6266509039 | juxtaposition | the "side by side" comparison of two or more objects or ideals for the purpose of highlighting similarities or differences | 129 | |
| 6266509040 | kenning | a metaphoric compound word or phrase used as a synonym for a common noun | 130 | |
| 6266509041 | lampoon | a sharp, often virulent satire directed against an individual or institution | 131 | |
| 6266509042 | limited pov | the narrator limits him;herself to a complete knowledge of one character in the story and tells us only what the one character feels, thinks, sees or hears. | 132 | |
| 6266509043 | litotes | a figure of speech by which an affirmation is made indirectly by saying its opposite, usually with an effect of understatement | 133 | |
| 6266509044 | loose sentence | sentence that follows normal patterns, subject then verb then modifiers | 134 | |
| 6266509045 | lyric poetry | a usually short, personal poem expressing the poet's emotions and thoughts rather than telling a story | 135 | |
| 6266509046 | malapropism | the comic substitution of one word for another similar in sound, but different in meaning. functions to make characters look ignorant or amusingly uneducated. | 136 | |
| 6266509047 | masculine rhyme | one-syllable rhyme | 137 | |
| 6266509048 | metaphor | one thing, idea, or action, is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two | 138 | |
| 6266509049 | metaphysical poetry | intricate 17th century English poetry employing with and unexpected images | 139 | |
| 6266509050 | meter | the pattern of measured sound-units recurring more or less regularly in lines of verse | 140 | |
| 6266509051 | metonymy | figure of speech in which a representative term is used for a large idea | 141 | |
| 6266509052 | mock epic | comically or satirically imitates the form and style of the epic, treating a trivial subject in a lofty manner | 142 | |
| 6266509053 | mode | an employed method or approach, identifiable with a written work | 143 | |
| 6266509054 | modernism | movement and emphasizing the desire to break away from established traditions | 144 | |
| 6266509055 | mood | the prevailing emotional attitude in a literary work | 145 | |
| 6266509056 | myth | an anonymous narrative, originating in the primitive folklore of a race or nation, that explains natural phenomena, or recounts the deeds of the heroes, passed on through oral tradition | 146 | |
| 6266509057 | naturalism | style of writing that rejects idealized portrayals of life and attempts complete accuracy, disinterested objectivity, and frankness in depicting life as a brutal struggle for survival | 147 | |
| 6266509058 | non sequitur | an inference or conclusion that does not follow established evidence or premises | 148 | |
| 6266509059 | novel of manners | a novel, usually comical and satirical, whose characters and plot emerge from and are limited by the social customs, values, habits and mores of a particular social class in a particular time and place | 149 | |
| 6266509060 | ode | an elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy address to a person or abstract entity always serious and elevated in tone | 150 | |
| 6266509061 | omniscient pov | the narrator knows all (godlike) and is free to tell us anything, including what the characters are thinking or feeling and why they act as they do | 151 | |
| 6266509062 | onomatopeia | the use of words that seem to imitate the sounds they refer to | 152 | |
| 6266509063 | oxymoron | a figure of speech in which two contradictory words or phrases are combined in a single expression | 153 | |
| 6266509064 | parable | a brief tale intended to be understood as an allegory illustrating some lesson or moral | 154 | |
| 6266509065 | paradox | a statement or expression so surprisingly self-contradictory as to provoke us into seeking another sense in which it would be true | 155 | |
| 6266509066 | parody | a composition that ridicules another composition by imitating and exaggerating aspects of its content | 156 | |
| 6266509067 | pastoral | a poem dealing with rural life | 157 | |
| 6266509068 | pathetic fallacy | the presentation of nature as possessing human feelings | 158 |
