Eng Lit Terms

Allegory

A literary or visual form where characters, events, or images symbolize ideas on a deeper level. Animal Farm reflects the Russian Revolution and satirizes Communism.

Alliteration

Repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of stressed words for effect, common in poetry and prose.

Allusion

Indirect reference to events, people, or works of literature to add meaning or context. E.g., Frost's "Out, Out" alludes to Macbeth.

Ambiguity

Unclear elements in language, action, or character that allow for multiple interpretations.

Ambivalence

Holding contradictory feelings towards something or someone simultaneously.

Anagnorisis

A moment of recognition or discovery in a plot, revealing the protagonist's true nature or situation.

Antithesis

Balancing contrasting ideas for rhetorical impact, like in "They promised opportunity and provided slavery."

Apostrophe

Addressing a dead, absent person, or object in an exclamatory passage.

Assonance

Repetition of similar vowel sounds close together, creating atmosphere in poetry.

Atmosphere

Refers to the specific setting or surroundings in a literary work.

Bathos

A sudden shift from serious to trivial for rhetorical effect.

Bildungsroman

A novel focusing on a character's development from youth to maturity.

Blank verse

Unrhymed poetry in iambic pentameter, used notably by Shakespeare.

Caesura

A pause within a line of poetry for emphasis or change in direction.

Caricature

Exaggerated representation of a character for comic or satiric purposes.

Colloquial

Everyday speech and language, contrasting with formal register.

Conceit

A witty or far-fetched comparison, often found in 16th and 17th-century English poetry.

Concrete

Refers to objects perceived by the senses through language.

Connotation

The suggested association of a word, useful in discussing diction.

Consonance

Repetition of final consonants in close words, as in Macbeth's "Poor player/That struts and frets."

Context

The circumstances or environment in which an event or text takes place, aiding understanding.

Contradiction

Stating or implying the opposite of what has been said or suggested.

Couplet

Two consecutive rhyming lines of verse, often used to emphasize an idea.

Defamiliarisation

Making the familiar seem new and strange to awaken the mind, often used in art and writing.

Denouement

How the ending of a novel or play unfolds, revealing the plot.

Diction

The writer's choice and arrangement of words for effectiveness and precision.

Didactic

Text intending to preach a moral, political, or religious point, often with a negative connotation.

Dramatic irony

Where the audience knows something the character does not, used for tragic or comic effect.

Elegy

A mournful lament for the dead or times past, often in poetic form.

End-stopped line

A line of poetry where the meaning pauses or stops at the end.

Enjambment

The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line or stanza.

Epigram

A concise, pointed, witty statement, often found in prose or poetry.

Epiphany

A sudden realization or moment of awakening in which something is seen in a new light.

Form

The physical structure or shape of a literary work, including traditional and modern forms.

Free indirect discourse

Third-person narration adopting a character's voice and thoughts.

Free verse

Verse without fixed structure in meter or rhyme, common since the early 20th century.

Genre

A specific type or kind of literature.

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration for various effects, like comic or tragic emphasis.

Iambic

A metrical measure with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Idyll/idyllic

Refers to an idealized rural setting or experience.

Imagery

Mental pictures created by language appealing to the senses, both metaphorical and literal.

Interior monologue

Narration depicting a character's unfiltered thoughts.

Internal rhyme

Rhymes within a line of poetry.

Intertextuality

Shaping a text's meaning through references to other texts.

Irony

A gap between what is said and what is intended, exposing hypocrisies or lack of awareness.

Lyric

A song-like poem expressing personal feelings.

Metafiction

Fiction drawing attention to its fictional nature or the writing process.

Rhythm

The succession of strong and weak syllables creating a patterned recurrence of sound.

Satire

Exposing and ridiculing human follies in society, aiming to reform or deflate, with varying tones.

Setting

Context and location of a literary work involving physical place, time, and social environment.

Simile

Comparison using 'as' or 'like' for vivid descriptions, distinct from metaphor.

Skaz

Narrative technique mirroring oral storytelling with hesitations, corrections, and interactions.

Soliloquy

Character's speech alone on stage, revealing thoughts and emotions, used for psychological complexity.

Sonnet

A fourteen-line rhyming poem, often in iambic pentameter with varying rhyme schemes.

Stanza

Blocks of lines in poetry organized with a scheme governing metre, lines, and rhymes.

Story

Events of a narrative in chronological order, distinct from plot which is deliberately arranged.

Stream of consciousness

Representation of character's thoughts, feelings, memories as a random stream.

Style

Author's distinctive linguistic traits, quality of vision, and subject matter in their work.

Subtext

Ideas, feelings, thoughts not directly expressed in the text, existing underneath.

Symbol

Objects representing wider abstract ideas or concepts, like roses symbolizing love.

Syntax

Grammatical structure of words in a sentence, can be displaced for effect without losing sense.

Theme

Central ideas or issues in a work, often abstract or argument raised in the text.

Tone

Conveying the writer's attitude and emotions towards subjects through language aspects.

Trochee/trochaic

Metrical foot in poetry with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.