Praxis : English Language Arts : Content Knowledge (5038)

Apostrophe

Addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present.

Setting

An environment or surrounding in which a story takes place.

Anaphora

Regularly repeats a word or phrase at the beginning of consecutive clauses/phrases to add emphasis.

Ex: Winston Churchill "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets..."

Antithesis

Using opposite phrases in close conjunction.

Ex: Alexander Pope, "To err is human; to forgive divine."

Anastrophe

Inverted order of words or events as a rhetorical scheme.

Ex: "What a wonderful world it is."

Anticlimax

A drop from a dignified or important idea...usually ridiculous or humorous.

Anecdote

A brief story authors may relate, which can illustrate their points in a more relatable way.

Archetype

Universal symbol

Symbolism

Use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense.

Tone

The attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience.

Voice

A form or format through which the narrator/author tells their story. Reflects individual writing style.

Alliteration

The occurrence of the same letter or sound at then beginning of adjacent or closely connected word.

Consonance: bake, duck, soak, pick

Assonance: meek, beam, peace, reap pier

Allusion

Expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly (a hint, a reference to). For example: "Don't be such a Romeo around her".

Analogy

Comparison between two things--usually for the purpose of explanation or clarity. Ex: similes, metaphors

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter - lines of 10 syllables that don't rhyme, each even-numbered syllable has an accent.

Burlesque

Ridicules a topic by treating something exalted as if it were trivial, and vice versa.

Caesura

A pause. Sometimes signified by a slash or a comma.

Chiasmus

Uses parallel clauses, the second reversing the order of the first.

Ex: JFK "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Catastrophe

The "turning downward" of a plot in a tragedy - usually in the 4th act, after the climax.

Catharsis

Events that bring about a moral or spiritual renewal. Relief from tension.

Cliché

Trite phrase that has become overused.

Connotation

Emotional meaning of a word, plus it's literal meaning.

Consonance

A type of alliteration where the consonants stay the same but the vowels change.

Denotation

The literal meaning of a word.

Denouement

The outcome after a string of complex events, i.e. the end of a story.

Simile

Makes a comparison, showing similarities between two things using like or as.

Ex: Shakespeare "shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Dialect

Particular form of language that is particular to a specific region/social group. E.g. slang.

Ex: "To Kill A Mockingbird"

Exposition

Telling, not showing.

Metonymy

Using an object to embody a general idea.

Ex: "The pen is mightier than the sword", where 'pen' stands for the written word.

Motif

A recurring element that appears frequently in works of literature.

Metaphor

A figure of speech/word/phrase that is applied to an object or action to which is not literally applicable.

Ex: "My brother was boiling mad".

Figurative Language

Offers readers insight into people, events, things, or subjects beyond the page.

Ex: alliteration, personification, imagery, simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, hyperbole.

Allegory

Figure of speech with abstract ideas, used to describe characters/figures/events.

Ex: Animal Farm (animals used as communists)

Sentence Fragment

Missing some essential component: a subject, predicate, or a dependent clause with no independent clause.

Ex: "When we got in the car. We rolled down the windows."

Aphorism

Concisely state common beliefs and may often rhyme.

Ex: Benjamin Franklin's "early to bed and early to rise..."

Paradox

A contradiction that oddly makes sense.

Ex: "You can save money by spending it."

Parallelism

When there are similar patterns of grammatical structure and length.

Persona

An external representation of oneself.

Quatrain

A stanza of 4 lines.

Rhyme Royal

7 lines, poetry, iambic pentameter, fixed rhyme scheme.

Hyperbole

Exaggeration of ideas for emphasis. For example: "my grandmother is as old as the hills" (similar to simile/metaphor, but is almost always comical).

Mood

Evokes certain feelings or vibes in readers through choice of words and descriptions.

Sarcasm

Saying one thing but meaning another.

Scansion

The art of scanning a poem to determine its meter.

Satire

A writing style that ridicules human foibles or ideas. Often sarcastic, and political in nature, this type of writing is typically critical, albeit humorous. Promotes change.

Soliloquy

Speech given by a character that believes to be alone. What the character says is what they're truly thinking.

Sestet

6-line rhyme with a varying pattern.

Syllogism

Refers either to deductive reasoning or a deceptive, very sophisticated or subtle argument.

Ex: All men are mortal. John is a man. John must be mortal.

Deductive Reasoning

Moves from general to specific. Is the argument valid, or invalid?

Inductive Reasoning

Moves from specific to general. Are the premises of the argument true, and do they support the conclusion?

Sprung Rhythm

Accentual rhythm - the accent falls on the first syllable of every foot.

Spenserian Stanza

9-line stanza - first eight lines are pentameter and the last line is alexandrine.

Stock Character

Appears repeatedly in a particular literary genre.

Strophe

A stanza sung aloud, alternating with the antistrophe.

Synecdoche

A part of an object representing the whole.

Terza Rima

3-line stanza form with interlocking rhymes that move from one stanza to the next. ABA BCB CDC

Zuegma

Using a single verb to defer to two different objects in a way that is unusual - "kill the boys and the luggage"

Verbal Irony

Use of words to mean something different than what the speaker says. For example: This parking ticket just made my day!

Dramatic Irony

The audience knows something that the characters don't.

Situational Irony

What is expected to happen vs. what really happens

Personification

A figure of speech in which a thing, idea, or animal is given human features. For example: My car is a beauty!

Foreshadowing

When a writer gives an advanced hit of what is to come later in the story.

First Person

A story being told from the "I" perspective

Second Person

is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you".

Third Person

The narrator is using "he" "she" "they"

Objective Third Person

Doesn't include what characters are thinking/feeling.

Subjective Third Person

Does include what characters are thinking/feeling.

Third Person Omnicscient

The narrator knows everything.

Third person Limited

The narrator may know everything about a particular character or characters; only knows what the character knows.

Epic (poem)

Large scale in length and topic with elevated language. Sometimes features the supernatural.

Ex: Virgil's "Aeneid", Milton's "Paradise Lost", Homer's "The Odyssey"

Ballad

A song, originally transmitted orally, which tells a story. Usually a 4-line stanza, alternating tetrameter and trimeter.

Lyric (poem)

A comparatively short poem. Non-narrative. Describes a state of mind of emotional state. Often used in songs.

Ex: elegy, ode, sonnet

Elegy

A lament for the death of a person.

Ex: Tennyson's "In Memoriam"

Ode

A long lyric poem with a serious subject written in an elevated style.

Ex: Wordsworth's "Hymn to Duty", Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn"

Sonnet

A love poem with a particular verse and rhyming pattern. Typically 14 lines. Usually in iambic pentameter)

Shakespearean Sonnet (English sonnet)

3 quatrains of alternating rhyme and a couplet. Iambic pentameter.

ABAB

CDCD

EFEF

GG

Petrarchan Sonnet (Italian sonnet)

14 lines, typically iambic pentameter. Two sections with two different groups of rhyming sounds. The first 8 lines is called the octave and rhymes: ABBA/ ABBA. The remaining 6 lines is called the sestet and can have either two or three rhyming sounds, arranged in a variety of ways.

Spenserian Sonnet

ABAB

BCBC

CDCD

EE

Narrative Poetry

A verbal representation in verse of a sequence of events with a plot. Always told by a narrator. Representatives of epics and ballads.

Novel

Fictitious prose narrative, with some degree of realism usually

Prose (poem)

Written/spoken language in it's ordinary form, without metrical structure

Haiku

5 syllables in first line, 7 Syllables in the second, and 5 Syllables in the third line

Bildungsroman

An "education novel" focusing on coming-of-age stories, including youth's struggles and searches for things such as identity, spiritual understanding, or the meaning in life.

Ex: "David Copperfield," "Great Expectations," "Catcher in the Rye," "Lord of the Flies"

Novel of Manners

Fictional stories that observe, explore, and analyze the social behaviors of a specific time and place. Characteristics include descriptions of society w/ defined behavioral codes; use of standardized, impersonal formulas in language; inhibition of emotional expression.

Ex: Jane Austen

Roman à Clef

"Novel with a key", meaning the story needs a real-life frame of reference for full comprehension. Often disguises truths too dangerous for the author to state explicitly.

Ex: "Animal Farm", "Canterbury Tales: the Nun's Priest's Tale"

Gothic (novel)

Combined elements of horror and romance. For Example: Edgar Allen Poe's "The Casque of Amontillado"

Pastoral (novel)

Novel set in beautiful, rural, landscapes

Harlem Renaissance

1920s, Harlem, NY. The moment African-American literature came into its own. Themes of the Jazz Age, modernism, the Great Migration, racial divisions/tensions, urbanity, socialism and communism, duality, pan-Africanism, high/low culture.

Ex: Zora Neal Hurston, Countee Cullen, WEB Dubois, Langston Hughes

British Romantic poets

Mid-17th--18th century England. Reaction against the ideology of the Englightenment. Passion, emotion, individuality > logic, reason, rationality. Themes of nature, rural, pastora life; individual achievements (the romantic hero).

Ex: Keats, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Wordsworth

Transcendentalism

1820s--1830s, eastern USA. Idealistic, philosophical, social movement against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality; rooted in Anglo-Saxon Romanticism. Believed in the inherent goodness of people and nature; society and its institutions corrupt.

Ex: Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson

Old English period

~500--1100. Characterized by foreign invasions and internal struggles. Poetry, prose, riddles, maxims, proverbs etc, w/ a mix of pagan and Christian thought. Long epic poems; lament and melancholy.

Ex: Beowulf

Middle English period

~1100--1500. Many authors were anonymous, and much literature was passed on orally. Religious. Themes of courtly love, chivalry, romance. The Great Vowel Shift. Ex: Ormulum, 12th Century Epithath of John the Smyth, Chaucer, Gower.

British Renaissance period

Mid-15th--early-17th century. Themes of humanism, religion vs. magic, exploration, math/science/tech, mythology and classic tradition.

Ex: Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Spenser, Wyatt.

British Neoclassical period

Mid-17th--1800. Social order was undergoing immense change. Enlightenment thinking pushed reason as the primary basis of authority. Social needs > personal needs; reason comes from religious, social, nature, governmental order.

Ex: John Dryden, Alexander Pope, John Wesley, Daniel DeFoe, Molière

British Romantic period

End-18th--1860. Characterized by narratives/poems/short stores of relatable people. Valued feelings and intuition over reasoning; sought to journey away form the corruption of civilization; helped instill societal norms.

Ex: Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keates, Percy Shelley, Whitman, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Hawthorne, Emerson, Melville, Douglass

American Renaissance period

End-18th--1860. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Thoreau

British Victorian period

1830-early--20th century. Themes of industrialization, class and status, science vs. religion, progress, nostalgia, issues of women and their changing roles.

Ex: Dickens, Bronteë sisters, George Eliot, Tennyson, Yeats, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw

American Naturalistic period

Late-19th--early-20th century. Opposite of romanticism in its quest to protray the real world. Dark and gritty. Tone is distant, non-judgmental. Man is at the mercy of nature, an dacts according to nature. Character-driven as opposed to plot-driven. Typically about lower socioeconomic classes.

Ex: Zola, Jack London, Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris

Romanticism

First half of the 19th century. Reaction to Enlightenment ideals. Radical, progressive politics, yet also conservative in its influences on increased nationalism. Championed individualism, freedom of expression etc.

Ex: Poe, Hawthorne, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth

Realism

A literary form whose goal is to represent reality as faithfully as possible. Genesis in Western literature. Uses vernacular; dialects; character development > plot development; ethical issues; concentrated on the middle-class.