Upgrade to remove ads
Only $35.99/year

Literary Terms American Literature

Terms in this set (43)

Folk Tale
Body of stories, legends, myths arising out of the oral traditions of people around the world
Blank Verse
Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter
Rhyme
Repetition of sounds at the end of words
Alliteration
Repetition of the consonant sounds at the beginning of words
Assonance
Repetition of the vowel sounds in conjunction with dissimilar consonant sounds
Meter
Usually in poems and is a rhythmical pattern determined by the number of beats in each line
Style
Includes word choice, tone, degree of formality, rhythm, grammar
Single Effect
Edgar Allan Poe's theory about what constituted a good short story. Achieved by a single emotional effect on the reader.
Irony
Contrast between what is stated and what is meant or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens.
Romanticism
Literary and artistic movement of 19th century that arose in reaction again the Neoclassic movement and placed emphasis on imagination, emotion, nature
Figurative Language
Writing that used figures of speech such as metaphor, simile and irony
Transcendentalism
American literary movement of 19th century. Believed that intuition and the individual conscience transcend experience and thus are better guides to truth than are sense and logical reason.
Allegory
Story or tale with two or more levels of meaning - a literal level and one or more symbolic levels.
Symbol
Anything that stands for or represents something else.
imagery
descriptive or figurative language used in literature to create word pictures for the reader.
Sets with similar terms