English Final Study Guide

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.