WOMEN IN LITERATURE FINAL TERMS

ELISION

Refers to the omission of something, a word, a syllable, or letters.

SENTIMENTAL APPEAL

"Appeal to emotion" or "emotional appeal," is the attempt to persuade somebody based on an emotional hook.

PATHOS

To persuade an audience by purposely evoking certain emotions to make them feel the way the author wants them to feel.

RESPECTABILITY POLITICS

A philosophy coined by black elites to fulfill the race relations made within the negative stereotypes that have belonged to black people.

POETIC SPEAKER

The voice of the poem, similar to a narrator in fiction.

TOXIC MASCULINITY

Refers to the notion that some people's idea of "manliness" perpetuates domination, homophobia, and aggression. Toxic masculinity involves cultural pressures for men to behave in a certain way.

TOXIC HETEROSEXUALITY

Refers to the notion that "hetero" relationships have norms, supported by patriarchy vantages.

"INTIMATE OPPRESSION"

Feelings of shame towards intimacy stemming from the experience of being oppressed by societal views.

FRAME NARRATIVE/STORY

A literary technique used to tell a story within a story. An introductory or main narrative sets the stage either for a second narrative or for a set of stories.

INNUENDO

A hint or insinuation about a person or thing.

HYPERBOLE

A literary device used to draw emphasis through extreme exaggeration. It is not meant to be taken literally.

TWIST ENDING

A literary technique that introduces a radical change in the direction or expected outcome of the plot in a work of fiction

RACIAL PASSING

A black or brown person or of multiracial ancestry who assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social conventions of racial segregation and discrimination.

SEXUALITY PASSING

A queer person or who assimilated into the hetero-normal majority to escape the legal and social conventions of discrimination.

NEW NEGRO

Differed from the "Old Negro" in assertiveness and self-confidence, which led New Negro writers to question traditional "white" aesthetic standards, to eschew parochialism and propaganda, and to cultivate personal self-expression, racial pride, and literary experimentation.

BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT

An African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.

FEMINIST READING/CLASS READING/QUEER READING/PSYCHOLOGICAL READING

Formed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. I.E the way females speak, conversations spoken within women.

CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Focused on the relationships between social conceptions of race and ethnicity, social and political laws, and media. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, and not only based on individuals' prejudices.

MULTI-PERSPECTIVE

The narrator's perspective changes throughout the course of your story.

JUXTAPOSITION

The close placement of contrasting ideas, images, or entities, with the intent of highlighting the contrast between those entities.

PERSONIFICIATION

A literary device that gives human characteristics to nonhuman things or inanimate objects.

ALLITERATION

A literary device that involves two or more words that appear close together and have the same initial stressed consonant syllable.

RACIAL REALISM

The struggle by black people to obtain freedom, justice, and dignity is as old as this nation.

FLASHBACK

An interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story.

FORESHADOWING

The narrative gives an advance hint of what's to come later in the story.

SUSPENSE/STRUCTURE OF SUSPENSE

A clear and logical sequence of events that leads to a climax and resolution. Incorporating subplots, twists, and turns can add complexity and surprise to the main plot.

UNDERSTATEMENT

A literary device by which a particular quality of a person, object, emotion, or situation is downplayed or presented as being less than what is true to the situation.

CULTURAL ALLUSION

When a narrative alludes to something that has become a part of the society's wider consciousness, or something that the world is currently facing in contemporary society.

HARLEM RENAISSANCE

An intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s

HOMOEROTICISM

A sexual attraction between members of the same sex,

DRAMATIC IRONY

A literary device by which the audience's or reader's understanding of events or individuals in a work surpasses that of its characters.

CHARACTER FOILS

A foil is a character who contrasts with another character, typically, a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist. A foil to the protagonist may also be the antagonist of the plot.

IN MEDIAS RES

Into the middle of a narrative; without preamble. It opens in the midst of the plot. Often, exposition is bypassed and filled in gradually, through dialogue, flashbacks or description of past events.

STRUCTURE/STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

An example of structure in western literature is the three-act structure. It arranges various elements of plot (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement) and setting into three distinct acts of a beginning, middle, and end.

VIGNETTE

A short, descriptive passage that captures a moment in time. It can enhance a mood, develop a character, or describe a setting, but one thing a vignette doesn't do is move along a plot.

DIALECT

A form of a language in which an author writes their dialogue.

FIRST-PERSON MONOLOGUE

A narrative technique that exhibits the thoughts passing through the minds of the protagonists.

DIRECT SECOND-PERSON ADDRESS

A narrative technique used to address the reader. Pronouns such as you/your/yours are used.

FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE

A literary term that refers to writing a character's first-person thoughts in the voice of the third-person narrator. It is a style using aspects of third-person narration conjoined with the essence of first-person direct speech. Pronouns such as he/she/they are used to refer to the narrative.

EUPHEMISM

A word or phrase that softens an uncomfortable topic. It uses figurative language to refer to a situation without having to confront it.

ABSENCE/VOID

The concept of nothingness manifested where some other concept should have been.

TYPE/ARCHETYPE

Characters, motifs, themes, or symbols that represent a particular idea, trait, or experience that is shared by humans.

SYMBOL/SYMBOLISM

The use of words or images to symbolize specific concepts, people, objects, or events.

UNRELIABLE NAARATOR

A narrator whose credibility is compromised. I.E "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Perkins

GENERATIONAL TRAUMA

The psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group.

RACIAL LANGUAGE

The use of a race's dialect. I.E AAVE

VANTAGE POINT/POINT OF VIEW

A position or standpoint from which something is viewed or considered.

FRAGMENTATION/FRAGMENTARY NOVEL

A novel made of fragments, vignettes, segments, documents or chapters that can be read in isolation and/or as part of the greater whole of the book.

RELIGIOUS ALLUSION

A brief reference to a person, event, place, or phrase from religious texts or traditions, without describing them in detail.

SIMILE

A comparison between two things, usually using the words 'like' and 'as',.

METAPHOR

A figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn't literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison

IMAGERY

A form of visual symbolism, or figurative language that evokes a mental image or other kinds of sense impressions, especially in a literary work.

MELODRAMA

A literary or dramatic genre in which standard tropes and elements are exaggerated to elicit emotional responses from audiences or readers.

TRUTH-CLAIM

A statement about how things are or might be.

VERISIMILITUDE

Supports the feminist goals of defining, establishing, and defending equal civil, political, economic, and social rights for women.

INTERSEECTIONAL FEMINISM

The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender.

PATRIARCHY

A social system where men control a disproportionately large share of social, economic, political and religious power, and inheritance usually passes down the male line.

CHAUVINISM

The unreasonable belief in the superiority or dominance of one's own group or people, who are seen as strong and virtuous, while others are considered weak, unworthy, or inferior.

ALLEGORY

A narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance.

ANALOGY

A literary device used to compare similarities between two unrelated things as a way to make a point through the comparison