Literature - Test 1

Intro to Literature - Test 1 - Dr. Hodgins

The Appointment in Samarra

W. Somerset Maugham, a Fable

The Fox and the Grapes

Aesop, a Fable

The Camel and His Friends

Bidpai, a Fable

Independence

Chuang Tzu, a Parable

Godfather Death

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, a Tale

A & P

John Updike

A Rose for Emily

William Faulkner

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Katherine Anne Porter

To Build a Fire

Jack London

A Sound of Thunder

Ray Bradbury

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Ernest Hemingway

The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry

The Open Boat

Stephen Crane

Harrison Bergeron

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Ursula K. Le Guin

The Lottery

Shirley Jackson

The Gospel According to Mark

Jorge Luis Borges

The Story of an Hour

Kate Chopin

Sweat

Zora Neale Hurston

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Flannery O’Connor

Fable

• A brief, often humorous narrative told to illustrate a moral.

• The characters are traditionally animals whose personality traits symbolize human traits.

• The moral is explicitly stated within the narrative.

Parable

• A brief, usually allegorical narrative that teaches a moral.

• The moral themes are implicit and can often be interpreted in several ways.

Tale

• A short narrative without a complex plot.

• An ancient form of narrative found in folklore and traditional stories of this type often contain supernatural elements.

• Tends toward lesser-developed characters and linear plotting.

Tall tale

• A humorous short narrative that provides a wildly exaggerated version of events.

• Originally an oral form, it assumes that its audience knows the narrator is distorting the events.

• The form is often associated with the American frontier.

Fairy tale, folktale

• A traditional form of short narrative, originally transmitted orally, which features supernatural characters such as witches, giants, fairies, or animals with human personality traits.

• Often features a hero or heroine who strives to achieve some desirable fate - such as marrying royalty or finding great wealth.

Short story

• A prose narrative too brief to be published in a separate volume.

• Usually a focused narrative that presents one or two characters involved in a single compelling action.

Initiation/coming-of-age story

A narrative in which the main character, usually a child or adolescent, undergoes an important experience that prepares him or her for adulthood.

Protagonist

• The main or central character in a narrative.

• Usually initiates the main action of the story, often in conflict with the antagonist.

Antagonist

• The most significant character or force that opposes the protagonist in a narrative.

• May be another character, society itself, a force of nature, or even - in modern literature - conflicting impulses within the protagonist.

Exposition

• The opening portion of a narrative.

• Here, the scene is set, the protagonist is introduced, and the author discloses any other background information necessary for the reader to understand the events that follow.

Conflict

• The central struggle between two or more forces in a story.

• Generally occurs when some person or thing prevents the protagonist from achieving his or her goal.

• The basic material out of which most plots are made.

Complication

• The introduction of a significant development in the central conflict between characters (or between a character and his or her situation).

• May be external (an outside problem that the characters cannot avoid) or internal (originates in some important aspect of a character’s values or personality.

Crisis

• The point in a narrative when the crucial action, decision, or realization must take place. 

• From the Greek word krisis, meaning decision.

Climax

• The moment of greatest intensity in a story, which almost inevitably occurs toward the end of the work.

• Often takes the form of a decisive confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist.

Conclusion

• In plotting, the logical end or outcome of a unified plot, shortly following the climax. 

• Also called resolution or denouement, as in resolving plot complications earlier in the narrative.

Foreshadowing

• An indication of events to come in a narrative. 

• The author may introduce specific words, images, or actions in order to suggest significant later events.

Flashback

• A scene relived in a character’s memory.

• May be related by the narrator in a summary, or they may be experienced by the characters themselves.

• Allows the author to include significant events that occurred before the opening of the story.

Epiphany

A moment of profound insight or revelation by which a character’s life is greatly altered.

In medias res

A Latin phrase meaning “in the midst of things”; refers to the narrative device of beginning a story midway in the events it depicts (usually at an exciting or significant moment) before explaining the context or preceding actions.

Total omniscience

• Point of view in which the narrator knows everything about all of the characters and events in a story.

• A narrator with this POV can move freely from one character to another.

• Generally, this type of narrative is written in the third person.

Limited or selective omniscience

• POV in which the narrator sees into the minds of some but not all of the characters.

• Most typically, this POV sees through the eyes of one major or minor character.

Impartial omniscience

POV employed when an omniscient narrator, who presents the thoughts and actions of the characters, does not judge them or comment on them.

Editorial omniscience

POV employed when an omniscient narrator goes beyond reporting the thoughts of his characters to make a critical judgment or commentary, making explicit the narrator’s own thoughts or attitudes.

Objective point of view

POV in which the third-person narrator merely reports dialogue and action with little or no interpretation or access to the characters’ minds.

Interior monologue

• An extended presentation of a character’s thoughts in a narrative.

• Usually written in the present tense and printed without quotation marks.

• Reads as if the character were speaking aloud to himself or herself, for the reader to overhear.

Stream of consciousness

A type of modern narration that uses various literary devices, especially interior monologue, in an attempt to duplicate the subjective and associative nature of human consciousness.

Characterization

The techniques a writer uses to create, reveal , or develop the characters in a narrative.

Flat character

• A term coined by English novelist E. M. Forster to describe a character with only one outstanding trait.

• Rarely the central character in a narrative and stays the same throughout a story.

Round character

• A term coined by E. M. Forster to describe a complex character who is presented in depth in a narrative.

• Changes significantly during the course of a narrative or whose full personality is revealed gradually throughout the story.

Stock character

• A common or stereotypical character.

• Ex. mad scientist, battle-scarred veteran, strong but silent cowboy

Setting

• The time and place of a story.

• May include the climate, event, social, psychological, or spiritual state of the characters.

Locale

The location where a story takes place.

Atmosphere

• The dominant mood or feeling that pervades all or part of a literary work.

• The total effect conveyed by the author’s use of language, images, and physical setting.

Regionalism

• The literary representation of a specific locale that consciously uses the particulars of geography, custom, history, folklore, or speech.

• In these types of narratives, the locale plays a crucial role in the presentation and progression of the story.

Naturalism

• A type of fiction in which the characters are presented as products or victims or environment and heredity.

• Considered an extreme form of realism (the attempt to reproduce faithfully the surface appearance of life, especially that of ordinary people in everyday situations).

Summary

• A brief condensation of the main idea or plot of a literary work.

• Similar to a paraphrase but less detailed.

Theme

• The main idea or larger meaning of a work of literature.

• May be a message or a moral, but it is more likely to be a central, unifying insight or viewpoint.

Tone

• The attitude toward a subject conveyed in a literary work.

• No single stylistic device creates this; it is the net result of the various elements an author brings to creating the work’s feeling and matter.

Style

• All the distinctive ways in which an author uses language to create a literary work.

• Depends on the author’s characteristic use of diction, imagery, tone, syntax, and figurative language.

Diction

• Word choice or vocabulary.

• Refers to the class of words that an author decides is appropriate to use in a particular work.

Irony

• A literary device in which a discrepancy of meaning is masked beneath the surface of the language.

• Present when a writer says one thing but means something quite the opposite.

Dramatic irony

When the reader understands the implication and meaning of a situation and may foresee the oncoming disaster or triumph while the character does not.

Cosmic irony or irony of fate

A type of situational irony that emphasizes the discrepancy between what characters deserve and what they get, between a character’s aspirations and the treatment he or she receives at the hands of fate.

Sarcasm

A conspicuously bitter form of irony in which the ironic statement is designed to hurt or mock its target.

Symbol

• A person, place, or thing in a narrative that suggests meanings beyond its literal sense.

• Related to allegory, but works more complexly.

• Often contains multiple meanings and associations.

Symbolic act

• An action whose significance goes well beyond its literal meaning.

• Often involves some conscious or unconscious ritual element such as rebirth, purification, forgiveness, vengeance, or initiation.

Allegory

• A narrative in which the literal events ( persons, places, and things) consistently point to a parallel sequence of symbolic equivalents.

• This narrative strategy is often used to dramatize abstract ideas, historical events, religious systems, or political issues.

• Has two levels of meaning: a literal level that tells a surface story and a symbolic level in which the abstract ideas unfold.