Terms : Hide Images
| 4620370681 | Allegory | a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. | 0 | |
| 4620376023 | Alliteration | the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers | 1 | |
| 4620378104 | Allusion | a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of historical, cultural, literary or political significance | 2 | |
| 4620382181 | Ambiguity | a word, phrase, or statement which contains more than one meaning | 3 | |
| 4620383184 | Analogy | a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is quite different from it | 4 | |
| 4620386124 | Anaphora | the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses | 5 | |
| 4620387839 | Anastrophe | the inversion of the usual order of words or clauses. | 6 | |
| 4620388685 | Anecdote | a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. | 7 | |
| 4620389630 | Antagonist | An antagonist is a group of characters, institution, or concept that stands in or represents opposition against which the protagonist(s) must contend. In other words, an antagonist is a person or a group of people who opposes a protagonist. | 8 | |
| 4620390974 | Anticlimax | a disappointing end to an exciting or impressive series of events. | 9 | |
| 4620391527 | Antihero | a central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes | 10 | |
| 4620392791 | Antithesis | a figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposites of, or strongly contrasted with, each other, such as "hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins" | 11 | |
| 4620393497 | Aphorism | a pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." | 12 | |
| 4620395728 | Apostrophe | figure of speech in which an absent person, a personified inanimate being, or an abstraction is addressed as though present. | 13 | |
| 4620398803 | Apposition | .When a noun or word is followed by another noun or phrase that renames or identifies it, this is called appositive. This is a literary device that appears before or after a noun or noun phrase. It is always used with commas. | 14 | |
| 4620400948 | Archetype | a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology | 15 | |
| 4620407970 | Aside | a remark or passage by a character in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience but unheard by the other characters in the play. | 16 | |
| 4620408958 | Assonance | in poetry, the repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in nonrhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible | 17 | |
| 4620410851 | Asyndeton | the omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence. | 18 | |
| 4620411345 | Aubade | An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn. It has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak". | 19 | |
| 4620412522 | Ballad | a poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas. Traditional ballads are typically of unknown authorship, having been passed on orally from one generation to the next as part of the folk culture | 20 | |
| 4620414388 | Bathos | an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the serious to the trivial or ridiculous | 21 | |
| 4620416408 | Black humor | A black comedy (or dark comedy) is a comic work that makes light of serious, disturbing and/or taboo subject matter. Black comedy is often controversial due to its subject matter. | 22 | |
| 4620418434 | Blank verse | verse without rhyme, especially that which uses iambic pentameter | 23 | |
| 4620420092 | Cacophony | the term refers to the use of words with sharp, harsh, hissing and unmelodious sounds primarily those of consonants to achieve desired results. | 24 | |
| 4620421795 | Cadence | term used to signal the rising and falling of the voice when reading a literary piece. In poetry, it is the momentary changes in rhythm and pitch. Cadences help set the rhythmic paces of a literary piece. | 25 | |
| 4620423683 | Canto | one of the sections into which certain long poems are divided. | 26 | |
| 4620424792 | Caricature | a picture, description, or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect. | 27 | |
| 4620425553 | Catharsis | an emotional discharge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from anxiety and stress. In literature it is used for the cleansing of emotions of the characters. It can also be any other radical change that leads to emotional rejuvenation of a person. | 28 | |
| 4620427824 | Characterization | Characterization is the process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character | 29 | |
| 4620428750 | Indirect characterization | Indirect characterization is the process by which the writer shows the character's personality through speech, actions and appearance. When you watch a movie or television show, you can usually gather what type of person the main character is based on the character's actions and reactions in different situations. | 30 | |
| 4620430356 | Direct characterization | Direct Characterization tells the audience what the personality of the character is. Example: "The patient boy and quiet girl were both well mannered and did not disobey their mother." | 31 | |
| 4620431234 | Static character | a literary or dramatic character who undergoes little or no inner change; a character who does not grow or develop | 32 | |
| 4620433867 | Dynamic character | In a story, a dynamic character is someone who undergoes an important, internal change because of the action in the plot. Ebenezer Scrooge, from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, is a classic example. | 33 | |
| 4620434461 | Flat character | Flat characters are two-dimensional in that they are relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work. | 34 | |
| 4620435025 | Round character | round characters are complex and undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader. | 35 | |
| 4620436222 | Chiasmus | a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order, in the same or a modified form; e.g. 'Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.' | 36 | |
| 4620438524 | Chorus | In the ancient Greek theater, the chorus was a rowdy bunch. They were the peanut gallery that sang, danced, and made comments about the action on stage. They also gave you key information about stuff happening off stage—like battles and sea voyages | 37 | |
| 4620442843 | Cliché | a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought | 38 | |
| 4620448196 | Colloquialism | a word or phrase that is not formal or literary, typically one used in ordinary or familiar conversation. | 39 | |
| 4620449064 | Comedy | Comedy is a literary genre and a type of dramatic work that is amusing and satirical in its tone, mostly having cheerful ending. The motif of this dramatic work is triumph over unpleasant circumstance by which to create comic effects, resulting in happy or successful conclusion. | 40 | |
| 4620450201 | Conceit | a conceit uses an extended metaphor that compares two very dissimilar things | 41 | |
| 4620486003 | Conflict | Conflict is the struggle between two opposing forces, or a problem that must be solved. Most stories have many different conflicts, most of them minor, as well as a single, MAIN CONFLICT (which is what the story is mostly about), all of which arise and are solved in a completed story. | 42 | |
| 4620491556 | External conflict | External conflicts may be character vs. character, character vs. nature, or character vs. society. | 43 | |
| 4620510778 | Internal conflict | Internal conflicts are character vs. self. something else, such as nature, another person or persons, or an event or situation. | 44 | |
| 4620511474 | Connotation | Connotation refers to a meaning that is implied by a word apart from the thing which it describes explicitly | 45 | |
| 4620545047 | Consonance | Consonance refers to repetitive sounds produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase. This repetition often takes place in quick succession such as in pitter, patter. It is classified as a literary term used in both poetry as well as prose. | 46 | |
| 4620547853 | Couplet | two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit. | 47 | |
| 4620549513 | Denotation | the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests | 48 | |
| 4620551735 | Deus ex machina | an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel. | 49 | |
| 4620556236 | Dialect | a particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group | 50 | |
| 4620557398 | Diction | the choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing | 51 | |
| 4620558733 | Didactic | Didactic works often have morals to impart or are written to teach us something about religion, philosophy, history, or politics. Examples of didactic literature include Aesop's Fables. Novels written for women in the 18th and 19th century were also often didactic, kind of like fictionalized conduct manuals. | 52 | |
| 4620564311 | Dirge | a somber song or lament expressing mourning or grief, such as would be appropriate for performance at a funeral. | 53 | |
| 4620565775 | Dissonance | the use of harsh-sounding, unusual, or impolite words in poetry to create a disturbing effect or to catch the reader's attention by interrupting a smooth flow of words. It is considered to be the opposite of assonance. | 54 | |
| 4620567897 | Elegy | an elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead | 55 | |
| 4620569347 | Enjambment | the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza. | 56 | |
| 4620570870 | Epic | A long narrative poem written in elevated style, in which heroes of great historical or legendary importance perform valorous deeds. The setting is vast in scope, covering great nations, the world, or the universe, and the action is important to the history of a nation or people. | 57 | |
| 4620582473 | Epigraph | a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme. | 58 | |
| 4620583546 | Epistrophe | the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses or sentences. | 59 | |
| 4620585113 | Epithet | an adjective or descriptive phrase expressing a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned | 60 | |
| 4620586178 | Euphemism | a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing | 61 | |
| 4620587427 | Euphony | the use of words and phrases that are distinguished as having a wide range of noteworthy melody or loveliness in the sounds they create. | 62 | |
| 4620588899 | Explication | Explication is the process of making something clearer. When you carefully explain your performance art piece to your mystified parents, you can describe what you're doing as an explication. The noun explication is closely related to "explicit," which essentially means "crystal clear." | 63 | |
| 4620589726 | Exposition | the background information on the. characters and setting explained at the. beginning of the story | 64 | |
| 4620591808 | Fable | Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are given human qualities, such as the ability to speak human language) and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly as a maxim. | 65 | |
| 4620595716 | Farce | a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations. | 66 | |
| 4620596757 | Feminine rhyme | a rhyme between stressed syllables followed by one or more unstressed syllables (e.g., stocking / shocking, glamorous / amorous .). | 67 | |
| 4620597480 | Figurative language | Figurative language is language that uses words or expressions with a meaning that is different from the literal interpretation. | 68 | |
| 4620599185 | Flashback | a scene in a movie, novel, etc., set in a time earlier than the main story. | 69 | |
| 4620601112 | Foil | a foil is a character who contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist) in order to highlight particular qualities of the other character | 70 | |
| 4620603546 | Foot | In literary circles, this term refers to the most basic unit of a poem's meter. A foot is a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. | 71 | |
| 4620605141 | Foreshadowing | a literary device in which a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. | 72 | |
| 4620606936 | Free verse | poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular meter. | 73 | |
| 4620607657 | Genre | any category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. | 74 | |
| 4620609371 | Heroic couplet | a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter. | 75 | |
| 4620610475 | Hubris | (in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis. | 76 | |
| 4620611986 | Hyperbole | exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally. | 77 | |
| 4620612997 | Imagery | visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work. Tactile: touch Auditory: sound Visual: seeing Kinesthetic: movement Thermal: temperature Gustatory: taste Olfactory : smell | 78 | |
| 4620616265 | In medias res | describes a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle — usually at some crucial point in the action. | 79 | |
| 4620621880 | Interior monologue | a piece of writing expressing a character's inner thoughts. | 80 | |
| 4620622693 | Internal rhyme | a rhyme involving a word in the middle of a line and another at the end of the line or in the middle of the next. | 81 | |
| 4620623950 | Inversion | a literary technique in which the normal order of words is reversed in order to achieve a particular effect of emphasis or meter. | 82 | |
| 4620625369 | Irony | the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. | 83 | |
| 4620626379 | Verbal irony | Verbal irony is a figure of speech. The speaker intends to be understood as meaning something that contrasts with the literal or usual meaning of what he says | 84 | |
| 4620627278 | Dramatic irony | a literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character. | 85 | |
| 4620628356 | Situational irony | Situational irony is a literary device that you can easily identify in literary works. Simply, it occurs when incongruity appears between expectations of something to happen, and what actually happens instead. | 86 | |
| 4620629029 | Cosmic irony | Cosmic irony feeds on the notion that people cannot see the effects of their actions, and sometimes the outcome of a person's actions may be out of their control. | 87 | |
| 4620631055 | Socratic irony | a pose of ignorance assumed in order to entice others into making statements that can then be challenged. | 88 | |
| 4620632104 | Juxtaposition | the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect | 89 | |
| 4620633160 | Kenning | A Kenning is derived from Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is a stylistic device and can be defined as a two-word phrase that describes an object through metaphors. A Kenning poem is also called a riddle that consists of a few lines of kennings which describe someone or something in confusing detail. | 90 | |
| 4620640250 | Litotes | A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite. | 91 | |
| 4620642012 | Local color | a term applied to fiction or poetry which tends to place special emphasis on a particular setting, including its customs, clothing, dialect and landscape. | 92 | |
| 4620643283 | Loose sentence | A type of sentence in which the main idea comes first, followed by dependent grammatical units such as phrases and clauses | 93 | |
| 4620644149 | Lyric poem | A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. | 94 | |
| 4620646550 | Masculine rhyme | a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable--spent, went | 95 | |
| 4620647215 | Metaphor | A comparison without using like or as | 96 | |
| 4620648265 | Implied metaphor | The comparison is hinted at but not clearly stated. | 97 | |
| 4620649109 | Extended metaphor | A metaphor developed at great length, occurring frequently in or throughout a work. | 98 | |
| 4620650392 | Dead metaphor | A metaphor which has become so commonplace that it has lost its force, and we forget that it is not literally true. | 99 | |
| 4620651740 | Mixed metaphor | is a metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms so that they are visually or imaginatively incompatible. "The President is a lame duck who is running out of gas." | 100 | |
| 4620654350 | Meter | A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry | 101 | |
| 4620654351 | Anapestic meter | A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. The words "underfoot" and "overcome" are anapestic. Example: "Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house..." | 102 | |
| 4620655973 | Dactylic meter | with measures of three syllables, in which the first is accented, the other two are not, e.g.: "Rage, goddess, sing the rage, of Peleus' son, Achilles" (Homer, The Iliad); | 103 | |
| 4620657404 | Iambic meter | A specific type of foot is an iamb. A foot is an iamb if it consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, so the word remark is an iamb. Pent means five, so a line of iambic pentameter consists of five iambs - five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables. | 104 | |
| 4620659239 | Spondaic meter | -two consecutive syllables that are stressed almost equally | 105 | |
| 4620662169 | Trochaic meter | A metrical foot with a long or accented syllable followed by a short or unaccented syllable, as in ON-ly or TO-tal, or the opening line of Poe's "The Raven:" ONCE up- | ON a | MID-night | DREAR-y, | WHILE I | PON-dered, | WEAK and | WEAR-y | 106 | |
| 4620664583 | 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"). | 107 | |
| 4620665164 | Mood | Feeling or atmosphere that a writer creates for the reader | 108 | |
| 4620665165 | Monologue | A speech by one actor; a long talk by one person | 109 | |
| 4620666008 | Motif | A recurring subject, theme, or idea in a literary work. | 110 | |
| 4620668552 | Motivation | A character's incentive or reason for behaving in a certain manner; that which impels a character to act | 111 | |
| 4620670952 | Narration | A method of informing that explains something by recounting events | 112 | |
| 4620671587 | Narrative verse | a poem that tells a story | 113 | |
| 4620672409 | Frame narrative | a secondary story or stories embedded in the main story | 114 | |
| 4620673203 | Nemesis | Someone or something a person cannot conquer or achieve; a hated enemy | 115 | |
| 4620674115 | Objectivity | treating facts without influence from personal feelings or prejudices | 116 | |
| 4620675695 | Onomatopoeia | A word that imitates the sound it represents. | 117 | |
| 4620676697 | Oxymoron | A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase. (jumbo shrimp) | 118 | |
| 4620677318 | Parable | A simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson | 119 | |
| 4620678231 | Paradox | A statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. | 120 | |
| 4620678938 | parallelism | Phrases or sentences of a similar construction/meaning placed side by side, balancing each other | 121 | |
| 4620678948 | Parenthetical phrase | Phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail | 122 | |
| 4620679863 | Parody | A work that closely imitates the style or content of another with the specific aim of comic effect and/or ridicule. | 123 | |
| 4620681794 | Pastoral poetry | literary work dealing with shepherds and rustic life., highly conventionalized; it presents an idealized rather than realistic view of rustic life. | 124 | |
| 4620683436 | Pathos | Emotional appeal | 125 | |
| 4620689238 | Periodic sentence | The opposite of loose sentence, a sentence that presents its central meaning in a main clause at the end. This independent clause is preceded by a phrase or clause that cannot stand alone. The effect of a periodic sentence is to add emphasis and structural variety. It is also a much stronger sentence than the loose sentence. (Example: After a long, bumpy flight and multiple delays, I arrived at the San Diego airport.) | 126 | |
| 4620690949 | Persona | A pattern of relatively permanent traits, dispositions, or characteristics that give some consistency to people's behavior. | 127 | |
| 4620691823 | Personification | A figure of speech in which the author presents or describes concepts, animals, or inanimate objects by endowing them with human attributes or emotions. Personification is used to make these abstractions, animals, or objects appear more vivid to the reader. | 128 | |
| 4620692356 | Plot | Sequence of events in a literary work | 129 | |
| 4620693897 | Exposition | A narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work that provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances. | 130 | |
| 4620694875 | Rising action | A series of events that builds from the conflict. It begins with the inciting force and ends with the climax. | 131 | |
| 4620704275 | Climax | That point in a plot that creates the greatest intensity, suspense, or interest; usually the point at which the conflict is resolved | 132 | |
| 4620705064 | Falling action | the part of a literary plot that occurs after the climax has been reached and the conflict has been resolved | 133 | |
| 4620705952 | Resolution | End of the story where loose ends are tied up | 134 | |
| 4620706043 | Point of view | In literature, the perspective from which a story is told. | 135 | |
| 4620707098 | First person point of view | Told from the viewpoint of one of the characters using the pronouns "I" and We" | 136 | |
| 4620708542 | Third person point of view | A story where the narrator is not a character and the author reveals only a single character's thoughts and feelings by using pronouns such as he, she, it, they, and them. | 137 | |
| 4620708543 | Omniscient point of view | all knowing narrator tells the story from "outside" the tale. The author can reveal everything ALL the characters think and feel | 138 | |
| 4620709166 | Objective point of view | a narrator who is totally impersonal and objective tells the story, with no comment on any characters or events. | 139 | |
| 4620709685 | Second person | The narrator tells a listener what he/she has done or said, using the personal pronoun "you." This point of view is rare. | 140 | |
| 4620710376 | Polysyndeton | Deliberate use of many conjunctions | 141 | |
| 4620711504 | Protagonist | Main character in a story | 142 | |
| 4620712796 | Pun | A play on words | 143 | |
| 4620715075 | Pyrrhic meter | Common in classic Greek poetry, a metrical foot consisting of two short or unaccented syllables, as in the third foot of: The SLINGS | and AR | -rows of | out-RA | -geous FOR | -tune | 144 | |
| 4620716298 | Quatrain | A four line stanza | 145 | |
| 4620717164 | Refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem. | 146 | |
| 4620718397 | Requiem | A song or religious service for the dead or lost | 147 | |
| 4620719246 | Rhyme | Repetition of sounds at the end of words | 148 | |
| 4620719247 | Slant Rhyme | rhyme in which the vowel sounds are nearly, but not exactly the same (i.e. the words "stress" and "kiss"); sometimes called half-rhyme, near rhyme, or partial rhyme | 149 | |
| 4620720064 | Eye Rhyme | occurs when words are spelled the same and look alike but sound differently. ex. move, love / shove, grove / tear, fear | 150 | |
| 4620724246 | End Rhyme | A word at the end of one line rhymes with a word at the end of another line | 151 | |
| 4620724247 | Rhetoric | From the Greek for "orator", this term describes the principles governing the art of writing effectively, eloquently, and persuasively. | 152 | |
| 4620726145 | Rhetorical question | A question asked more to produce an effect than to summon an answer. | 153 | |
| 4620728312 | Romance | in general, a story in which an idealized hero or heroine undertakes a quest and is successful. | 154 | |
| 4620728962 | Satire | A work that reveals a critical attitude toward some element of human behavior by portraying it in an extreme way. It doesn't simply abuse (as in invective) or get personal (as in sarcasm). It targets groups or large concepts rather than individuals. | 155 | |
| 4620730258 | direct satire | Satire spoken in first person (essay or speech) | 156 | |
| 4620731075 | Horatian | Satire in which the voice is indulgent, tolerant, amused, and witty. The speaker holds up to gentle ridicule the absurdities and follies of human beings, aiming at producing in the reader not the anger of a Juvenal but a wry smile. | 157 | |
| 4620731828 | Juvenalian | Abrasive, scornful, ridiculing and punishment of social evils, such as malevolent public figures and institutions | 158 | |
| 4620733342 | Setting | The context in time and place in which the action of a story occurs. | 159 | |
| 4620733343 | Simile | A comparison using "like" or "as" | 160 | |
| 4620734001 | Soliloquy | A dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a listener. | 161 | |
| 4620737545 | Stanza | A group of lines in a poem | 162 | |
| 4620737546 | Stock character | A character type that appears repeatedly in a particular literary genre, one which has certain conventional attributes or attitudes. | 163 | |
| 4620738523 | Stream of consciousness | a style of writing that portrays the inner (often chaotic) workings of a character's mind. | 164 | |
| 4620739645 | Style | A basic and distinctive mode of expression. | 165 | |
| 4620740954 | Suspense | A feeling of uncertainty and curiosity about what will happen next in a story; key element in fiction and drama; "hook" writer uses to keep audience interested | 166 | |
| 4620740955 | Suspension of disbelief | The demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination. | 167 | |
| 4620742836 | Symbol | A thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract. | 168 | |
| 4620743801 | Synecdoche | a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa | 169 | |
| 4620745195 | Synesthesia | describing one kind of sensation in terms of another ("a loud color", "a sweet sound") | 170 | |
| 4620746535 | Syntax | The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language. | 171 | |
| 4620746536 | Tall tale | an outrageously exaggerated, humorous story that is obviously unbelievable | 172 | |
| 4620747591 | Theme | Central idea of a work of literature | 173 | |
| 4620747592 | Thesis | Focus statement of an essay; premise statement upon which the point of view or discussion in the essay is based. | 174 | |
| 4620748570 | Tone | A writer's attitude toward his or her subject matter revealed through diction, figurative language, and organization on the sentence and global levels. | 175 | |
| 4620749202 | Tragedy | A serious form of drama dealing with the downfall of a heroic or noble character | 176 | |
| 4620749221 | Tragic flaw | A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero. | 177 | |
| 4620750942 | Tragic irony | is a form of dramatic irony found in tragedies such as Oedipus the King (Oedipus searches for the person responsible for the plague that ravishes his city and ironically ends up hunting himself). | 178 | |
| 4620753930 | Understatement | A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. | 179 | |
| 4620754471 | Utopia | an ideal society | 180 | |
| 4620755964 | Vernacular | Everyday language of ordinary people | 181 | |
| 4620757092 | Impressionism | An artistic movement that sought to capture a momentary feel, or impression, of the piece they were drawing | 182 | |
| 4620757917 | Modernism | A cultural movement embracing human empowerment and rejecting traditionalism as outdated. Rationality, industry, and technology were cornerstones of progress and human achievement. | 183 | |
| 4620760028 | Naturalism | A nineteenth-century literary movement that was an extension of realism and that claimed to portray life exactly as it was. | 184 | |
| 4620760782 | Plain style | Writing style that stresses simplicity and clarity of expression (but will still utilize allusions and metaphors), and was the main form of the Puritan writers. | 185 | |
| 4620761659 | Rationalism | A belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response | 186 | |
| 4620762863 | Realism | A 19th century artistic movement in which writers and painters sought to show life as it is rather than life as it should be | 187 | |
| 4620764364 | Regionalism | an element in literature that conveys a realistic portrayal of a specific geographical locale, using the locale and its influences as a major part of the plot | 188 | |
| 4620765092 | 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 reflection. | 189 | |
| 4620765744 | Surrealism | A movement in art emphasizing the expression of the imagination as realized in dreams and presented without conscious control. | 190 | |
| 4620766522 | Symbolism | Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense. | 191 | |
| 4620767076 | 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. | 192 |
