ENGLISH CSET SUBSET I

Based on the REA english subset book

Literary Genres

The different modes of literary creation developed over the centuries

Absurdist fiction

is a novel or play that presents humanity’s plight as meaningless and without purpose

Importance of Absurdist fiction?

This genre arose in the twentieth century and often reflects a reaction against war, society, and the stresses of modern life.

Allegory

is a fictional narrative that contains a second, symbolic meaning in addition to its overt story. 

Importance of an Allegory

In this type of story, characters represent human qualities such as virtues and vices or abstract concepts such as death. 

Ballad

is a songlike poem that tells a story and often has a refrain, or repeated line or lines. Many ballads are in iambic form with alternating lines of four stresses and three stresses.

Importance of a Ballad?

Ballads were popular in Europe from the Middle Ages down to the nineteenth century. They often were lurid accounts of murders, revenge, and violence. 

Comic Novel

a feature of British and American literature. Like a dramatic comedy, it seeks to amuse the reader with larger-than-life characters and outlandish events.

Dystopia/Dystopian novel

A narrative that depicts an anti-utopia, a world where ordinary people live regimented lives at the whim of a totalitarian government.

Epic

A long narrative poetic work in a formal or elevated style that features a heroic lead character who often must undertake a journey or a great trial to overcome a powerful foe

Importance of an Epic

Many of the oldest epics survived as oral tales until they were finally written down— ex: Ramayana by Sanskrit, The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer, and The Aeneid by Virgil.

Epistolary Novel

Is written in the form of letters, diaries, and journal entries

Essay

A prose work written in the first-person expressing strong opinions about some topic or life experience.

Fable

A tale that provides a moral lesson and features animals with human characteristics.

Fairy Tale

A story that features fantasy characters from folklore and usually ends happily.  Often, a fairy tale begins with the words “Once upon a time..”

Example of Fairy Tale Stories

-The Brothers Grimm’s collected fairy tales (such as “Cinderella” and “Hansel and Gretel”) from old Germanic sources

-Hans Christian Andersen’s tales (such as “The Ugly Duckling”) as original stories with fairy tale trappings.

Fantasy

Genre that blends historical material, such as Viking warriors or British knights, with invented elements such as wizards with magical powers and mythical creatures such as dragons and unicorns.

Farce

A comic play that employs stock situations and characters and exaggerated emotions.

Importance of Farce?

Many critics consider farce, with its many clichés, to be the lowest form of dramatic comedy.

Legend

A traditional story that has become part of the collective experience of a nation, ethnic group, or culture.

Importance of a Legend

It features characters that are not historical but seem to have existed at some time in the distant past.

Lyric Poem

A brief work in verse that addresses the reader directly and expresses the poet’s feelings and perceptions.

Myth

An ancient story that presents the exploits of gods or heroes to explain some aspect of life or nature. 

Novel

A long work of prose fiction that is often realistic and tends to address the concerns of the society in which it is produced. 

Importance of a novel

As a form of storytelling, however, it has proven endlessly adaptable, incorporating elements of fantasy, history, and philosophy.

Examples of A novel

-Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

-David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

-War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

-One Hundred by Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

-The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Parody

Is a work written in imitation of an author’s style or of a genre in order to make fun of it and mock its conventions.

Poem

Is a literary work that is generally written in rhythmic lines of various lengths that may be divided into groups called stanzas— may be as long as novels or as brief as two lines, and they can address any subject from first love to nuclear war. 

Importance of a Poem

Before the twentieth century, poems in English generally were written in formal verse, with regular metered rhythm and a pattern of rhymes. 

Elegy

A poem in a solemn or melancholic tone, especially one that mourns the death of a person or group.

Haiku

A Japanese poetic form consisting of three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables. A haiku in English typically includes a seasonal word or image as part of a comparison of two things.

Limerick

A comic five-line poem (rhyme scheme AABBA) that seems to have originated in England in the early 1700s.

Ode

A meditative poem written in praise of someone or about a serious subject. 

Importance of an Ode

Ancient Greek odes were performed to music, and had a precise three-part structure. Modern odes, such as those by the English poet John Keats, have an irregular form with lines of different length and intermittent rhymes.

Pastoral

A poem that depicts rural life or the life of shepherds in an idealized form, often for urban audiences.

Sonnet

A fourteen-line poetic form that originated in Italy and later became popular in Shakespeare’s England.

Importance of a Sonnet

-A fourteen-line poetic form that originated in Italy and later became popular in Shakespeare’s England.

-The Shakespearian sonnet has three quatrains (rhymed ABAB) and a closing couplet (two rhymed lines).

Triolet

An eight-line poetic form based on French models. A triolet’s first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are its second and final lines.

Villanelle

An intricate French poetic form with nineteen lines divided into five three-line stanzas (called tercets) and one final quatrain. 

Importance of a Villanelle

A villanelle has only two rhyme sounds, so it is difficult to write one in English, which has a relative scarcity of rhymes. The first two stanzas of Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” shows the wit and intricacy of a villanelle.

Satire

Is a work that ridicules the follies and vices of individuals and society, often through comic exaggeration. 

Science fiction

Depicts scientific and technological breakthroughs and their effects on future society. Sometimes an alternate universe is described in which history on Earth unfolded differently.

Short story

A brief work of prose fiction that often concentrates on a single incident and one or two main characters. 

Utopian novel

depicts its author’s ideas about what a perfectly ordered society would be like. 

What is an important fact about a Utopian Novel?

The first such book was Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516. Later examples are Samuel Butler’s Erewhon and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward.

Literacy Devices

The various tools of language and storytelling that writers use to convey meaning and create a personal style. 

Alliteration

is the repeating of initial consonant sounds in a sentence, paragraph, or line of poetry. It can be used for a hypnotic effect or to emphasize certain words and phrases. 

Allusion

A reference in a literary work to some famous person, place, event, artwork, or other literary work.

Example of Allusion

Writers use allusion to enrich their work with shared cultural markers. In “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot writes: “London bridge is falling down falling down falling down,” an allusion to a well-known children’s song. 

Anachronism

is a detail of a literary work that is not appropriate for its time setting. For example, having a woman in Victorian England make a call on a cell phone would be an anachronism.

Analogy

is when a writer emphasizes the ways two apparently unlike things are actually similar

Antagonist

Is a person who opposes or is hostile to the protagonist, or central character in a story. 

Antithesis

is a figure of speech that balances an idea with a contrasting one or its opposite. From Robert Frost: “Some say the world will end in fire,/Some say in ice.”

Assonance

Is the repetition of vowel sounds in a sentence or line of poetry. Robert Louis Stevenson uses the long o sound here:

Character

Is a person or humanlike animal in a story, poem, or play. Writers use characterization to reveal a character’s personality through actions, gestures, mode of speech, etc. 

The Climax

A narrative in which it is the point of greatest dramatic tension.

Connotation

The use of precise words to give a positive or negative slant to a statement or passage.

Denotation

the literal meaning of a word, as found in a dictionary.

Dramatic monologue

is a poetic form generally written in blank verse that presents the thoughts and emotions of a character in a particular situation. There is usually also an implied listener and setting, and often the speaker inadvertently reveals his or her true character in the course of the poem.

Enjambment

Is the continuation of a clause or sentence from one line of poetry to the next. Poets may use enjambment to subvert the reader’s expectations about what the lines are saying. Enjambment can also create a faster pace or a change of rhythm.

Epigraph

is a quotation from another source that appears at the beginning of a literary work and suggests its theme.

Euphemism

An inoffensive phrase used to replace a more direct or unpleasant expression. EX: euphemism “She passed on” might be used for “She died.”

Figure of speech

is the use of words aside from their literal meaning. Often a figure of speech is used for an artistic or emotionally heightened effect.

Types of Figures of Speech

-Simile

-Metaphor

-Hyperbole

-Personification

-Onomatopoeia

-Irony

-Oxymoron

-Ometonymy

-Antithesis

-Euphemism

A Flashback

Is a description or episode in a literary work that interrupts the main story to recount something that happened in the past.

Foreshadowing

Is when an author provides clues to what will happen later in a narrative. EX: the witches’ speech at the beginning of Macbeth foreshadows the tragedy to come.

Heroic couplets

Are a form of English poetry with pairs of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter (five stresses to a line).

Importance of a Heroic Couplets

This form was particularly important in the work of eighteenth century poets such as Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and John Dryden. Here is a heroic couplet from Pope:

Hyperbole

Is an absurdly exaggerated statement: “I am so thirsty I could drink the ocean dry.”

Imagery

Is the use of descriptive language to enlist the senses in evoking a scene, situation, or state of mind.

Irony

Is a sudden discordance between the expected meaning of words or actions and what they actually mean.

Types of Irony

-Verbal irony

-Situational irony

-Dramatic irony

Verbal irony

Is saying one thing and meaning something else. Hamlet mocks how hastily his mother married his uncle after his father’s death: “Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the wedding tables.”

Situational irony

Is when a situation is in reality much different than the character or characters think: For his final sword battle with Laertes, Hamlet is unaware that Laertes’ sword has a deadly poison on its tip.

Dramatic irony

Is when the audience is aware of something that the characters onstage (or in a story) do not know. In Hamlet, the audience knows that Hamlet is feigning madness to gain time, while the characters around him think he is genuinely mad.

Malapropism

is a word mistaken for another word with a similar sound. Often it is used in the speeches of a comic character.

Metaphor

Is a figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared without the use of the words like or as,

Meter

is a way of measuring the rhythm in formal verse. Meter is shown by dividing a line of verse into feet, or units of two or three syllables. For example, each foot of an iambic meter has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A line of formal verse can have one foot (monometer), two (dimeter), three (trimeter), four (tetrameter), five (pentameter), or six (hexameter).

Iambic (– /)

EX: And miles to go before I sleep.

Trochaic (/ –)

EX: Homeward goes the weary shepherd.

anapestic (– – /)

EX: The mysterious stranger appeared on the steps.•dactylic (/ – –)

dactylic (/ – –)

EX: Feelings of sadness are calling me home.

Metonymy

is a figure of speech in which a word is substituted for another word with which it is somehow linked or closely associated. EX: “The pen is mightier than the sword”

Onomatopoeia

is using words that imitate sounds, such as crash, ring, clatter, buzz, and boom.

oxymoron

is a phrase made up of words that seem contradictory when placed together but actually express a special meaning, such as “act naturally,” “a deafening silence,” and “passive aggressive.”

paradox

a statement whose two parts seems contradictory, yet upon further study convey a deeper truth. Ex: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Personification

is a figure of speech in which human characteristics are given to something nonhuman, such as an animal, object, or concept.

Point of view

is how a literary work is narrated. Types: First, Second, Third, and Omniscient.

First-person point of view

is when the main character tells the story in his or her own words: “I knew I was in danger from the beginning.”

Third-person point of view

is when a person outside the story is the narrator.

Second-person point of view

IsOmniscient point of view when the author uses pronouns such as you to describe the main character. The effect is to include the reader as the main character: “You are walking down a dark street long past midnight.”

Omniscient point of view

in which the narrator has knowledge of everything in the story including all the characters’ thoughts and emotions, or limited omniscient, in which the narrator knows the plotthoughts and inner emotions of one character.

plot

is the sequence of events in a narrative such as a short story, novel, or play.

Most plots have FIVE main sections:

• introduction or exposition, in which the characters and setting are introduced

• rising action, in which the main problem or conflict arises

• climax, in which a dramatic turn of events creates great tension

• falling action, in which the climax leads to an unwinding of the problem or conflict

• resolution, in which the problem or conflict is worked out in the end.”

Prologue

is the introductory section of a literary work.protagonist

protagonist

is the central character in a narrativeA

A refrain

is a line or phrase that is repeated at regular intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza.

Rhyme

is the matching of end sounds in lines of verse.

Rhythm

is the arrangement of beats or stresses in verse or prose. In verse, rhythm is measured in meter.

Setting

is the time and place in which a narrative unfolds. The time may be the historical past, the present, or thousands of years in the future.