Year 9 English Curriculum Practice Flashcards

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering Gothic Literature, Tragedy, Freedom, and Women in Literature based on the Year 9 English Curriculum Map 2025-2026.

Gothic Literature

A genre of literature and film that covers horror, death, and at times, romance.

The Castle of Otranto

The text by Walpole from which the Gothic genre is derived.

Characterisation

A conscious construct developed by a writer, often representing a convincing version of society or a dramatised version for stylistic or moral effect.

Conceptual metaphor

A figurative comparison that draws on experience and shared understanding of a source and a target image.

Romanticism

An artistic and intellectual movement beginning in the late 18th century where imagination was considered more important than reason.

Byronic hero

An arrogant, intelligent, and educated outcast who balances cynicism and self-destructive tendencies with a mysterious magnetism, particularly for heroines.

Periodic sentence

A sentence where the main clause is placed at the end to create interest or suspense.

Analepsis

A literary device involving a flashback or a shift in the narrative to an earlier event.

Duality

A Tier 3 technical term referring to the state of having two parts or aspects, often contrasting, within the narrative or character.

Fin-de-siècle

A technical term relating to the end of a century, often associated with specific cultural or literary movements.

Frame narrative

A narrative structure that contains another story within it, used in texts like Wuthering Heights and Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Physiognomy

The practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face.

Aristotelian unities

The conventions of Greek tragedy, often focusing on the unity of action, place, and time.

Machiavellian

A term used to describe a character (such as Iago) who is cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous.

Hamartia

A technical term for the fatal flaw of a tragic hero that leads to their downfall.

Peripeteia

A sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in a tragedy.

Anagnorisis

A moment in a plot or story, specifically tragedy, where the main character recognizes their true nature or leading to a discovery.

Catharsis

The process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions, often a goal of tragedy.

Soliloquy

A technical term for a speech in a play that the character speaks to themselves or the audience, revealing их inner thoughts.

Bildungsroman

A literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood.

Diachronic change

A technical term referring to the change in language or a phenomenon over a period of time.

Lacanian ‘mirror stage’

A concept adapted by Hurston to present the self-identification of the character Janie.

Ethos, Pathos and Logos

Modes of persuasion used in reference to persuasive writing.

Lexical Field

A set of words grouped by meaning or referring to a specific subject.

Vindication of the Rights of Women

A text by Mary Wollstonecraft that considers perspective and language for informing and encouraging the feminist movement.

Feminine Ecriture

A technical term within the Women in Literature curriculum referring to female-specific styles of writing.

Androgynous Mind

A concept studied in Women in Literature exploring the move beyond binary thinking.

Intertextuality

The relationship between texts, or how one text influences/refers to another.

Epithet

A descriptive phrase expressing a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned, used to analyse Gothic characters.

Pathetic fallacy

A linguistic device where human emotions are attributed to aspects of nature, such as the weather.