1/89
Looks like no tags are added yet.
Name | Mastery | Learn | Test | Matching | Spaced |
---|
No study sessions yet.
Alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of a word.
Allusion
A reference to an historical or a literary person, place, or event with which the reader is assumed to be familiar.
Anaphora
The repetition of a word or word group at the beginning of successive sentences, clauses, paragraphs, or poetic lines.
Anecdote
A short written or oral account of an interesting event or an episode. A(n) _ can serve many purposes: reveal character, illustrate a theme support an opinion, clarify an idea, grab the reader's attention, or simply entertain.
Antagonist
A person or a force in society or nature that opposes the protagonist, or central character, in a story or drama.
Antithesis
Figure of speech in which sharply contrasting words, phrases, clauses, or sentences are juxtaposed. ____ is used to emphasize a point.
Apostrophe
Figure of speech in which a thing, an abstract quality, or an absent or imaginary person is addressed as if present and able to understand.
Assonance
The repetition of a vowel sound within words.
Aside
In a play, a comment that a character makes to the audience or another character onstage, a comment that the others onstage do not hear.
Blank verse
Unrhymed poetry in iambic pentameter.
Caesura
A pause placed in the middle of a line for effect.
Character
An individual in a literary work.
Round Character
A character who shows varied and sometimes contradictory traits.
Flat Character
A character who reveals only one personality trait.
Dynamic Character
This character undergoes a change during the story.
Static Character
This character remains the same throughout the story.
Characterization
The techniques employed by writers to develop characters.
Direct Characterization
When the author clearly tells the reader what we need to know about a character.
Indirect Characterization
When the reader must use hints to understand a character by: 1) Narrator's description of a character's physical appearance or personal traits, 2) Character's thoughts, 3) Character's actions, 4) Character's speech, 5) Other characters' thoughts, comments, and actions
Confidante
A character in a drama or fiction, such as a trusted friend or servant, who serves as a device for revealing the inner thoughts or intentions of a main character.
Conflict
A struggle between two opposing forces or characters.
Internal Conflict
A struggle that takes place within the mind of the character
External Conflict
takes place between the character and an outside force (Person vs. Person, Person vs. Society, Person vs. Nature, Person vs. Machine, Person vs. Self)
Consonance
The repetition of consonant sounds within and at the end of words.
Diction
A writer's choice of words.
Enjambment
The continuation of the sense and grammatical construction of a line of poetry onto the next line or of a couplet or stanza into the succeeding couplet or stanza.
Epic hero
of high rank, strong, courageous, clever, cunning; the hero's qualities represent those valuable to his society; the hero struggles to overcome human character flaws; he faces supernatural forces; the story takes places over large, vast areas and locations; the story is told in a formal and grand style; the epic hero WINS!
Epic Simile
A long, elaborate comparison that continues for several lines.
Epithet
A brief phrase used to characterize a person, place, or thing.
Figurative Language
Language that uses figures of speech, or expressions that are not literally true but express some truth beyond the literal level.
Flashback
An interruption in the chronological order of a narrative to describe an event that happened earlier.
Foil
A character who provides a striking contrast to another character.
Foreshadowing
An author's use of hints or clues to prepare readers for events that will happen later in a story.
Free Verse
Poetry that has no fixed pattern of meter, rhyme, length, or stanza arrangement.
Heroic Couplet
Two consecutive lines of rhyming iambic pentameter.
Hubris
Excessive pride or self-confidence
Hyperbole
Figure of speech in which the truth is exaggerated for emphasis or humorous effect.
Imagery
Words or phrases that create pictures, or images, in the reader's mind.
In Medias Res
Latin phrase meaning "in the middle of things." A work of literature is said to start like this when the story begins in the middle of the action.
Irony
The contrast between appearance and actuality, or between expectation and reality.
Situational irony
When something happens that is entirely different than what is expected.
Verbal irony
a writer/character says one thing, but means something entirely different.
Dramatic irony
The reader or audience understands meanings that one or more characters do not.
Metaphor
An implied comparison.
Meter
The repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry.
Iamb
unstressed, stressed
Trochee
stressed, unstressed
Anapest
unstressed, unstressed, stressed
Dactyl
stressed, unstressed, unstressed
Spondee
stressed, stressed
Pyrrhic
unstressed, unstressed
Dimeter
two rhythmic feet
Trimeter
three rhythmic feet
Tetrameter
four rhythmic feet
Pentameter
five rhythmic feet
Monologue
A long speech or expression of thoughts by a character in a literary work.
Mood
The emotional quality of a literary work.
Motif
A recurring feature (such as a name, an image, or a phrase) in a work of literature.
Onomatopoeia
Refers to the use of echoic words whose pronunciations suggest their specific meanings.
Oxymoron
A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory ideas or terms.
Parallelism
The use of phrases, clauses, or sentences that are similar or complementary in structure or in meaning.
Persona
A mask or voice that the author uses in a poem. Note that the author and the voice in the poem are not the same.
Personification
Figure of speech in which human qualities are attributed to an object, an animal, or an idea.
Plot
The sequence of events or actions in a narrative work.
Exposition
Information essential to understanding the situation is introduced.
Inciting Incident
The event or decision that begins a story's problem.
Rising Action
The action rises to the moment of crises.
Climax
The point of greatest intensity, interest, or suspense
Falling Action
After the climax, there is a reversal of fortune for the protagonist.
Resolution
The moment when the conflict ends and the outcome is clear.
Point of View
The vantage point from which a narrative is told.
First-Person
The story is told by one of the characters in his/her own words.
Third-Person Omniscient
The narrator is not in the story. This "all-knowing" observer can describe and comment on all the characters in the story.
Third-Person Limited
The narrator is not a character in the story. However, rather than tell the story from each character's vantage point, this "limited" narrator tells the story from the viewpoint of only one character.
Protagonist
The central character in a literary work, around whom the main conflict revolves.
Pun
A humorous play on words.
Rhyme
Words __ when sound of accented vowels and all succeeding sounds are identical.
Masculine rhyme
Only final accented syllables rhyme. (pursue/renew)
Feminine (or Double) rhyme
Rhyme occurs in two or three consecutive syllables, the first of which is stressed. (remember/December; waken/shaken)
End rhyme
Rhyme comes at end of line.
Internal rhyme
Rhyme occurs within a line. ("The splendor falls on castle walls")
Off (or Slant or Near) rhyme
The sounds are closely related but not identical. (fear/care)
Setting
The time and place in which events in a literary work occur.
Simile
A comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as."
Soliloquy
A dramatic device in which a character alone on stage reveals his or her private thoughts aloud to the audience.
Sonnet
A verse form consisting of 14 lines in iambic pentameter with rhyme arranged according to a fixed scheme, usually divided either into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines) or into three quatrains and a couplet.
Symbol
Any person, animal, place, object, or event that exists on a literal level within a work but also represents something on figurative level.
Theme
The main idea or message of a story, poem, novel, or play often expressed as a general statement about life.
Tone
The attitude that a writer takes toward his or her subject.
Understatement
The technique of creating emphasis by saying less than is actually or literally true.