English Terms
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68 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Allegory | Allegory is the representation of one thing by another in a work of prose or poetry. It differs from symbolism in that the representation usually extends throughout the whole piece. The elements represent specific people, situations, and events outside of themselves. |
| Alliteration | The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of a word. Consonance is similar but must include the end of the word as well |
| Anaphora | Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines. THIS royal throne of kings, THIS sceptred isle, THIS earth of majesty, THIS seat of Mars, THIS other Eden, demi-paradise, THIS fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war. |
| Apostrophe | Speaking to someone not present using thee, thy, or thou "Oh Romeo, Where art thou dear Romeo" |
| Asyndeton | A style that omits conjunctions between words, phrases or clauses(opposite of polysendeton). Why, they've got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. |
| Antagonist | The character who pushes the protagonist to resolve the conflict. |
| Assonance | The repetition of middle vowel sounds Ex: fight, hive, or pane, make |
| Atmosphere | The mood, tone, or "feeling" created by a particular place, scene or incident, usual a function of setting |
| Caesura | An intentional pause used for effect or to complete a metrical pattern in a line of verse: - |
| Caricature | An exaggerated flat character in which one or two traits, features, or mannerisms of speech are made to represent the whole person: often intended for satire or humor. |
| Carpe Diem | (Latin: "Seize the day") Name for a common literary motif in which the subject is urged to make the most of present time and pleasures. |
| Characterization | The methods by which an author creates and reveals his characters; perhaps the most important talent for a novelist. |
| Chronological Technique | The technique of relating events in the order in which they happen in time. |
| Conceit | A series of elaborate metaphors to develop a concept. |
| Connotation | The ideas, attitudes, or emotions associated with a word in the mind of speaker or listener or the writer or reader. It is contrasted with denotation, the thing a word stands for, the dictionary definition, an objective concept without emotional coloring. |
| Couplet | A couplet is composed of two successive rhyming lines. |
| Crisis | The episode or incident wherein the situation in which the protagonist finds himself is sure either to improve, or to grow worse. |
| Denotation | This is the literal meaning of a word. |
| Denouement | The series of events which concludes a narrative, ties together all the loose ends, solves all the mysteries, and settles the fate of all the characters; literally, the "unknotting". |
| Deus Ex Machine | The use of an improbable incident to bring a novel to a satisfactory conclusion. Literally, "god from a machine" derived from the Greek dramatists' habit of having a god descent to the stage to make things turn out right. |
| Diction | The choice of words by a poet or novelist which helps determine the flavor or tone of his/her style. |
| Ellipsis | Omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context. "The average person thinks he isn't." - Father Larry Lorenzoni. The term "average" is omitted but understood after "isn't." |
| Enjambment | The running on of the thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without a syntactical break. |
| Epilogue | A conclusion separated in time from the main events in a novel; the final section of a frame or flashback novel. |
| Epistrophe | Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words: the opposite of anaphora. Hourly joys be still upon you! Juno sings her blessings on you. [...] Scarcity and want shall shun you; Ceres' blessing so is on you. |
| Fable | A short allegorical story in verse or prose, frequently of animals, told to illustrate a moral. |
| Figurative Language | The imaginative use of words to imply more than their literal meaning. 1. simile - a comparison using 'like or 'as. 2. metaphor - a comparison not using 'like or 'as 3. personification - the suggestion that an object is comparable to a person |
| Flashback Technique | The technique of beginning a novel in the "present" and then "flashing back" to an earlier period of time in the lives of the characters. |
| Flat Character | An oversimplified character that does not change, grow or develop as the novel progresses; the two kinds of flat characters are "types" and "caricatures". |
| Foreshadowing | The use of incidents to suggest that may happen later in a novel; one of the many ways to create suspense. |
| Frame Narrative | A narrative in which the main incidents, occurring in the past, are enclosed in a framework of the present. The narrative begins with a prologue, flashes back to the past, and then returns to the present in an epilogue. |
| Free Verse | Poetry free of traditional metrical and stanzaic patterns; verse that lacks regular metre, rhyme and line length. |
| Hyperbole | A bold overstatement or extreme exaggeration. |
| Imagery | Pictures or representation of things accessible to the five senses; the sensory content of a literary work. |
| In Media Res | The technique of starting a narrative "in the middle of things" with earlier events being told later. |
| Irony | The perception of a clash between appearance and reality. Verbal Irony: Saying one thing but meaning the exact opposite Situational Irony: In a wider sense, when the actual state of affairs is tragically or comically different from the appropriate state of affairs, or when the actual outcome of an action differs from the intended one. Dramatic Irony: Is when the audience knows that the characters in the action do not. |
| Limited Point of Narration | The technique of telling a story from the point of view of a single character. |
| Malapropism | A humorous confusion of words that sound vaguely similar, as in "We have just ended our physical year" instead of "We have just ended our fiscal year." Mrs Malaprop, a character in an eighteenth-century British comedy, The Rivals, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, constantly confuses words. Malapropisms are named after her. |
| Metonymy | The replacing of the name of one concrete object with the name of another while changing the meaning. |
| Metre | A measured pulse of poetry. (Iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, spondaic) |
| Motif | A frequently recurring element or detail in a novel; (i.e. "echoing footsteps" in A Tale of Two Cities). |
| Narrator | The person who tells the story. First Person - The narrator is a character in the story and uses the person pronoun, 'I' Third Person - The narrator tells the story about other people. 'They' rather than 'We'. Third Person Omniscient - The narrator tells the story about other people but has access to the innermost thoughts of one or more of the characters. Shifting Point of View - A point of view that shifts back and forth among various characters and the "Point of Narration" is the position, angle, and distance from which the author and consequently the reader views the characters and events in a novel.) |
| Onomatopoeia | The use of words formed or sounding like what they signify. Ex: buzz, crack, smack, whinny |
| Parallelism | Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. Perch are inexpensive; cod are cheap; trout are abundant; but salmon are best. |
| Personification | Giving human qualities to abstract objects or animals. |
| Plot | A series of incidents structured in a particular way to create an intended effect. |
| Plot Curve | Elements of plot including: inciting action crises climax catharsis denouement |
| Polysyndeton | A sentence style that employs many conjunctions (opposite of asyndeton). "Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly--mostly--let them have their whiteness." (Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) |
| Prologue | The introductory section of a "frame" or "flashback" novel. |
| Protagonist | The main character who resolves the conflict in the novel. |
| Quatrain | A stanza of four lines rhymed or unrhymed. |
| Rhyme | The effect created by matching sounds at the end of words. |
| Rhyme Scheme | The patter created by the rhyming words of a stanza or poem. |
| Setting | The place or places where the events of the novel occur; setting can provide physical background, environment or atmosphere. The primary components of setting are time and place, occupation and circumstance. |
| Stanza | Any group of lines in a separate unit in a poem. |
| Structure | The overall construction of a novel, story, or poem; the arrangement of all the elements which go into the making of a literary work. |
| Style | The way in which an author selects and arranges words, constructs sentences, and uses figures of speech so as to give his writing a certain flavor or personality. |
| Subjectivity | Either an emphasis on the novelist's own thoughts and feelings or an emphasis on the thoughts and feelings rather than the actions of a character in a novel. |
| Suspense | Curiosity as to the outcome of a plot, the fate of a character, or the results of an action; the reader's desire to know what happens next. |
| Symbol | Images which take on a meaning beyond their literal or metaphorical significance. |
| Synecdoche | The name of a part used to represent the whole object. |
| Technique | The sum of all the devices and methods by which an author tells a story. |
| Tempo | The speed at which the story moves. |
| Theme | The unifying or central idea in a serious novel. |
| Tone | An author's attitude toward subject and audience. |
| Unity | The quality of an artistic work that allows it to stand as a complete and independent whole, with each part related to each other part, and no part irrelevant or superfluous. |
| Versimilitude | Literally, "likeness to truth". The techniques of making the reader believe that the events of the novel could actually have happened, or that the characters could actually have existed. |
| Zeugma | The use of a word to modify or govern two or more words when it is appropriate to only one of them or is appropriate to each but in a different way, as in to Wage war and peace or On his fishing trip, he caught three trout and a cold. |
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