| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Aesthetic | an adjective meaning "appealing to the senses" |
| Aesthetic Judgment | phrase synonymous with artistic judgment |
| Aesthetic | coherent sense of taste |
| Aesthetics | study of beauty |
| Alliteration | the repetition of initial consonant sounds; consonant clusters coming closely cramped and compressed |
| allusion | a reference to another work or famous figure |
| topical allusion | refers to a current event |
| popular allusion | something from popular culture (a reference to a tv show or hit movie) |
| anecdote | a short narrative |
| ballad | a long, narrative poem, usually in very regular meter and rhyme |
| ballad | typically has a naive folksy quality, a characteristic that distinguishes it from epic poetry |
| black humor | use of disturbing themes in comedy (like suicide) |
| bombast | this is pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language |
| chorus | (in drama) the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it |
| classic | typical |
| classic | an accepted masterpiece |
| classical | arts of ancient Greece and Rome and the qualities of those arts |
| coinage (neologism) | a new word, usually one invented on the spot |
| dissonance | the grating of incompatible sounds |
| doggerel | crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme (ex: limericks) |
| elegy | a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner |
| elegy | often use the recent death of a noted person or love one as a starting point; memorialize specific dead people |
| euphemism | a word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality |
| gothic | sensibility derived from gothic novels |
| in media res | latin for "in the midst of things" ; convention of epic poetry |
| lampoon | a satire |
| melodrama | form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very,very good, the villain mean and rotten, and the heroine oh-so-pure; movies of this sort make a lot of money every year |
| paraphrase | to restate phrases and sentences in your own words; not analysis or interpretation |
| persona | narrator in a non-first-person novel; not really the author's personality |
| requiem | a song of prayer for the dead |
| rhapsody | an intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise |
| suspension of disbelief | the demand made of theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with imaginations |
| suspension of disbelief | the acceptance on an audience's or reader's part of the incidents of plot in a play or story |
Combine with other sets
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