EN 130 - Key Terms

Fiction

* Literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people
* “Telling lies”
* ex. Happy Autumn Fields, The Fly

Plot

The main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work created and presented by the writer as a related sequence

Protagonist

* The leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other text
* ex. Mary is the protagonist in The Happy Autumn Fields because all of the events are told relative to her imagination/memory/experiences

POV / Narration

* Narration
* Give a spoken or written account of
* 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person
* Indirect discourse is a way of controlling the narrative (ex. A decision was made)
* POV
* From whose perspective the story is occurring

Character

* A person in a novel, play, or movie
* Characterization
* The creation of a fictional character
* Can be done by diction/register/interaction with other characters

Setting

* The time and place in which a story is told
* Ex. Happy Autumn Fields has two settings
* The past history of Sarah’s family
* Mary’s war-time present

Atmosphere / Mood

* The emotional quality of a story that is created through the writer’s use of language
* Ex. The description of the warm red room in The Happy Autumn Fields conveys a different mood than the description of Mary’s bombed house

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Lyric poetry

* Short
* Expresses thoughts and feelings of one speaker
* Has rhythm / beat
* Fundamentally musical

Narrative poetry

* Tells a story
* Long

3 key elements of poetry

* Thoughts and feelings intertwined in response to a specific experience
* Diction
* Connotation (suggesting) and denotation (saying)

Form (poetry)

* The physical structure of the poem
* The length of the lines
* Rhythms
* System of rhymes and repetition
* Features shaped into a pattern

Sonnet

* A poem of fourteen lines using any number of formal rhyme schemes
* Ex. God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Couplet

* A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length
* Ex. Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
* Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen, / Bright topaz denizens of a world of green

Quatrain

* A four-line stanza, often with various rhyme schemes
* Ex. London by William Blake
* I wander through each chartered street, / Near where the chartered Thames does flow. / And mark in every face I meet / Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

Octave

An eight-line stanza or poem

Sestet

A 6-line stanza

Denotation

Actually outright saying

Connotation

Suggesting something without explicitly saying it

Theme

* A universal idea, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature
* Ex. One theme present in Twelfth Night is the relationship between love and imagination

Subject

* Who the poem is about
* Ex. Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers is about Aunt Jennifer, although she is not the speaker

Persona

* Speaker
* The person who is understood to be speaking or thinking in a particular work
* Ex. Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
* Although the poem is about Aunt Jennifer, she not the speaker/persona

Tone

* The poet’s attitude towards the poem’s speaker, reader, or subject matter
* Ex. Lazarus by Elizabeth Jennings
* The tone is one of wonder or mystery

Irony

* Saying something in such a way as to suggest a discrepancy
* Typically for humorus or empathic effect
* Ex. My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke
* Talking about abuse by painting it as dancing

Diction

* Word choice
* Ex. The contrast between God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins and the de/composed version by W.D Snodgrass highlights the importance of word diction
* The de/composed version is much less powerful/memorable because it simplifies word choice, thereby losing meaning

Allusion

* An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it expliccitly
* An indirect or passing reference

Sound

* Sound devices / descriptions can be used as a way to create an emotional response in the reader
* Ex. Use of sound in Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen convey mood and setting

Metaphor

* A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated
* Without using the words “Like” or “As”
* Ex. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
* The whole poem is a metaphor for life choices

Simile

* A comparison using “like” or “as”
* Ex. “As brave as a lion”

Personification

* Giving innanimite objects human-like characteristics
* Ex. Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
* “The monstrous anger of the guns”
* Obviously guns can’t be angry, so this is personification

Comedy

* A play where the character’s circumstances at the beginning are quite bad, but are better at the end
* Ex. Twelfth Night
* Viola is sad at the beginning because she believes her twin brother has died in a shipwreck, but they are reunited at the end

Tragedy

* A play where the characters circumstances are great in the beginning but then are horrible at the end
* Ex. Hamlet
* Things start off pretty good but then basically everyone is dead at the end

Soliloquy

* A monolouge that is delivered when the character is alone
* Ex. Act 2, scene 2 when Viola picks up the ring Olivia left

Aside

* When a character turns to the audience or one other character to make an observation or remark that the other characters can’t hear
* Ex. Andrew and Toby making remarks when Malvolio reads his letter aloud

Verse

* Lines are written, spoken, and delivered in a more poetic/ rhythmic way
* In Shakespeare, this can convey two things about a character
* They are an aristocrat / educated
* They are in love with another character (Antonio switching from prose to verse)

Prose

* “Regular speaking”
* No rhythm or fanccy language
* Typically for lower-class characters

Register

* The way a character speaks
* Has to do with tone
* In Shakespeare’s Tweflth Night, this can be seen when Antonio switches from prose to verse

How is a soliloquy different from an aside?

In a soliloquy, the speaking character is alone on stage. But in an aside, the speaking character is not alone on stage