LIterary Vocabulary: Exam 2

Scene

A small division of a drama within an act, usually of the same setting as the act, but not by definition.

Stereotype

A conventional and oversimplified opinion or belief about a person or group of persons who may share similar characteristics.

Virtue

The quality of moral excellence, righteousness, and responsibility, probity; goodness.

Vice

An evil, degrading or immoral practice or habit; a serious moral failing.

Complex character

A character with different traits and aspects of personality but who neither grows nor changes during the literary work in which he resides.

Superego

The part of the personality which acts as a moral monitor (the morality principle) to the behaviors of the individual. It is the faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable desires; it represents all moral restrictions and is the "advocate of a striving towards perfection."

Direct Quotation

Using the words of a source directly, in a word-for-word borrowing.

Plot

The events which make up the story line, in order of their happening.

Style

The language used by the writer, as well as the narrative techniques employed, working together to form the full aspect of the printed material in front of us.

Omniscient narrator

The third person narrator who sees all and knows all – even the thoughts – about the characters of the story.

Nemesis

That force which restores order within a tragedy, named for the goddess of retributive justice.

Metaphor

A comparison of unlike things without using “like” or “as.”

Irony

A contrast between what is stated and what is meant; there are verbal irony, situational irony, and dramatic irony.

Foreshadow

To use details and images to hint at events to come in the narrative.

Analysis

The separation of an intellectual whole into its component parts in order to better understand and to reach a truth.

Indirect Quotation

Using the words of the author, though not in a direct, word-for-word borrowing.

Paraphrase

To put the words of the author into your own words.

Novella

A prose fictional narrative containing all the elements of a novel but much shorter.

Tragic Hero

A person of noble birth whose personal destruction is in some way involved with the well-being of her/his world and who faces a battle of morals; her/his destruction comes from a flaw with her/his personality.

Insight

The act or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things which in turn tells the grasper a significant message about herself/himself; makes the learning personal, owned.

Stream-of-consciousness

The unbroken flow of thought and awareness of the waking mind; a special mode of narration that undertakes to capture the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character's mental process.

Rhetoric

The body of principles and theory having to do with the presentation of facts and ideas in clear, convincing, and attractive language.

Ad hominem

Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.

A priori

Involving deductive reasoning from a general principle to a necessary effect; not supported by fact.

Purple Patch

A selection of writing which contains an unusual piling up of devices in such a way as to evidence a self-conscious literary effort; a colorful passage standing out from the writing around it.

Euphemism

The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive.

Apostrophe

When an absent person, an abstract concept, or an important object is directly addressed.

Dichotomy

Division into two usually contradictory parts or opinions.