CSET: English Subtest I Review - Literary Forms and Concepts

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers literary movements, rhetorical techniques, and writing process concepts featured in the CSET: English Subtest I test guide.

Trickster Tale

A literary form from the oral tradition featuring an anthropomorphized animal protagonist who is a shape-shifter or cheat, characterized by mischievous, deceptive, or treacherous behavior.

Sonnet

A fixed or closed verse form that originated in Italy; the English version was established with a structure of three quatrains and a couplet with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.

Postmodernism

A movement in literature characterized by fragmented narrative structures with multiple shifts in consciousness, chronology, and location, often experimenting with and examining literature itself.

Regionalism

A literary style focusing on a unique physical landscape and the distinctive customs, dialect, and way of thinking of the people who live in a particular geographic area.

Modernism

A 20th-century movement that developed in response to war and disconnection from the past, often using language and imagery to invoke uncertainty, disillusionment, and despair.

Neoclassical Literature

Works by British writers like Alexander Pope and John Dryden that often use satire and aphoristic verse to make general observations about shared human experiences and thoughts.

Young Adult Literature

A genre that typically features a teenage protagonist, focuses on the individual's thoughts and experiences, and conveys a sense of immediacy rather than nostalgia.

Imagist Poetry

A poetic style written in free verse that uses common speech and relies on a clear, concentrated image to convey meaning without a particular metrical form.

Stream of Consciousness

A narrative technique that seeks to record the continuous, often discursive or repetitive flow of a narrator's thoughts, feelings, memories, and expectations.

Deus ex machina

A technique from ancient Greek drama where a god was lowered onto the stage by a mechanism to resolve plot complications and save the hero from hopeless situations.

Theatre of the Absurd

A form of drama where characters use dislocated, repetitious, and clichéd speech to illustrate the essentially illogical and purposeless nature of the human condition.

Revision

A recursive activity that may occur at any phase of the writing process to improve structural, stylistic, or conventional elements of a composition.

Extended Definition

An effective mode of development for reports that begins with a formal sentence definition and follows with shorter definitions to clarify a complex term for a lay audience.

Allusion

A poetic device that references another work of literature, art, person, or event to add deeper levels of meaning to a text.

Comic Irony

A literary device resulting from an amusing reversal of expectations, often used to highlight contrast between what is expected and what actually occurs.

Tenacity

A quality characterized by firm resolve and dogged persistence, often identified as a key factor in individual success and overcoming hidden challenges.

Brackets

The punctuation used by researchers to enclose and differentiate an interjected phrase within a direct quotation from a primary source.