ENG100 Final Definitions

Bot AI and Literature

Myth

story told about the origins of a society, usually to explain a social or natural phenomenon in it

Epic

long poem detailing the values of a civilization through the journey of a representative hero

Romanticism

literary period characterized by personal expression of strong feeling, often inspired by nature

Frame Tale

outer story that contains an inner story within it, inviting (implicit) comparison between them

Sublime

feeling of terror and awe inspired by something beyond human power, size, or understanding

Allusion

reference to another text, event, or person within a text without directly naming it

Utopia

“no place”, genre depicting an ideal society, focusing on institutions rather than characters and plot

Robot

from Czech word ‘robota’, meaning forced labor or slavery

Fordism

a system of mass production to create a large number of identical goods efficiently and cheaply

Taylorism

application of scientific ideas for efficiency and optimization to human labor

Functionalism

belief that the structure of the mind is what creates consciousness, regardless of the brain

Physicalism

belief that our brain is what is solely responsible for consciousness

Turing Test

double-blind test to see if a machine can successfully mimic a human

Chinese Room

thought experiment refuting Turing which argues that a machine must be able to understand what it says rather than just performing correctly

Lyric

poem expressing the inward thoughts, feelings, or desires of a speaker

Speaker

the person voicing a poem, not to be identified with the author

Meter

the way a poem’s lines are organized, typically by number and stress of syllables

Iambic Pentameter

ten syllables over five iambs, which are pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables

Free Verse

poetry without a traditional meter, though may still be organized

Alliteration

the repetition of opening consonants across words

Anaphora

the repetition of a word or phrase in successive clauses

Assonance

repetition of vowel sounds within and across words

Short Story

tends to present a slice of life rather than a complete narrative, often refraining character development and ending with a revelation or epiphany

Deus ex machina

‘god from the machine’, plot device whereby a sudden intervention from outside the story’s world or plot solves that story’s crisis

Mise-en-scene

the arrangement of elements in a film scene – the blocking of actors, camera angle and with, prop distribution, color – to convey the nature and properties of the film’s world

Uncanny Valley

effect of disorientation and horror when a reproduced image is almost but not quite like the original

First Person

story written from the perspective of the one speaking

Neoliberalism

ideology that sees competition as the defining feature of human relations; you are your own brand (marketing yourself)

Montage

the cutting together of short scenes or images to make a continuous whole, typically to imply a passage of time

Metafiction

story aware of its status as fiction, often questioning the boundary between fiction and reality