Literary Analysis Midterm

Explication

the line-by-line or word-by-word discussion of a text

Fable

a brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author typically including animals as characters

Diction

the selection of words in a literary work that may include regional distinctives, class markers, historically specific idioms, etc

Parable

a brief story that teaches a lesson often ethical or spiritual

Narrator

the voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author

Dialogue

the conversation of characters in a literary work

Climax

the turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story

the turning point of the action in the plot of a drama or work of fiction

Character

an imaginary person, animal, or essence that inhabits the world of a literary work

Didactic

the literature that teaches or instructs

Tale

a story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without detailed descriptions of character

Syntax

word order, the grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue.

the pattern of arrangements of words or the rule governed arrangement of words in sentences

Subplot

a subsidiary or subordinate or parallel story line in a play that coexists with the main plot

subordinate or minor story in a piece of fiction

Thematics

the systematic comparative study of recurrent elements of literature—such as motifs and images which constitute important links between the literary work and the social, cultural, and historical contexts

Tall tale

a kind of humorous tale, common on the American frontier, that uses realistic-detail, a literal manner, and common speech to recount extravagantly impossible happenings, usually resulting from the superhuman abilities of a character

Verisimilitude

the semblance of truth; the degree to which a work creates the appearance of the truth

Mood

the emotional-intellectual attitude of the author toward the subject

Myth

an anonymous story that presents supernatural episodes as a means of interpreting natural events; it makes concrete and particular a special perception of human beings or a cosmic view

Motif

a simple element that serves as a basis for expanded narrative, or, less strictly, a conventional situation, device, interest, or incident

Atmosphere

the prevailing tone or mood of a literary work, particularly established by the setting of the work

Legend

a narrative or tradition handed down from the past; distinguished from a myth by having more of historical truth and perhaps less of the supernatural

What are the two basic purposes of literature?

To entertain and instruct

What is the definition of fiction?

an imagined narrative, a made-up narrative.

Which literary mode is a more immediate and interactive mode: drama or fiction?

Drama

What is the basic distinction between the short story, the novella, and the novel?

Length or development

Doppelganger

a character who functions as a mysterious double; this is a common figure in literature, especially gothic literature

Episodic

the term applied to writing that consists of little more than a series of incidents, with the incidents succeeding each other and having no particularly logical arrangement or complication

Genre

the term used to designate the types or categories into which a literary work is grouped according to form, technique, or, sometimes, subject matter

Unintrusive

a narrator who merely describes or reports actions in dramatic scenes, without commentary or personal judgment

Mode

broad categories of treatment of material, such as romance, comedy, tragedy, or satire

Bathos

the effect resulting from the unsuccessful effort to achieve dignity or sublimity of style; an unintentional anticlimax, dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous

Style

The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques

the term that describes the ideas expressed (what is said) in a piece and the individuality of the author (the way things are said) in that same piece

Point of view

the angle of vision from which a story is narrated

Falling Action

the term for the developments following the climax of the work that move it towards its denouement or resolution in the plots of stories or plays

Type

a group having certain characteristics in common which distinguish them as being members of a definite class: two distinct used of the term are for literary genres and for characters

Self-effacing

a narrative voice that is so objective that it seems to disappear; or for a narrative voice, particularly in the writing of 19th Century women writers, that directly announces its own possibly inadequacies

Rising action

a set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play’s or story’s plot leading up to the climax

Setting

the time and place of a literary work that establish its context

Subject

what a story or play is about, to be distinguished from plot and theme

the term DiYanni uses for the content of a work, what the work is generally about, but not the message or point of a work

Flashback

an interruption of a work’s chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work’s action

Dynamic

a character who demonstrates complexity and many qualities during the course of a work of literature is called what kind of character

Denouement

the resolution of the plot of a literary work; in a comedy, the unraveling of the complications of the plot end in success for the protagonist, while in tragedy, the resolution embodies the protagonist’s downfall

Resolution

the sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story

Unreliable

a narrative voice that may be in error in his/her understanding or report of things and who leaves readers without the guides needed for making judgments

Dramatic irony

the device in which a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters

the discrepancy between what a character knows and what the audience/reader knows

Episode

an incident presented as one continuous action; though the incident has a unity of its own, it is often part of a larger total work

First-person

a narrator who is also a character in the story, novel, or drama and who tells the story through the use of “I” or “we” reporting only her/his/its own thoughts and observations not those of others

Symbol

an object, action, character, setting, animal, or other element in a literary work that is itself but that also stands for something more than itself or its literal meaning

Theme

the central idea or ideas, underlying or explicit, of a literary work

the idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization

Epiphany

the moment at which the central nature of something—a person, a situation, an object—was suddenlny perceived; an intuitive grasp of reality achieved in a quick flash of recognition in which something, usually simple and commonplace, is seen in a new light

Tone

the implied attitude of a writer toward the subject matter and characters of a work

the attitudes toward the subject matter and toward the audience implied in a literary work

Protagonist

the main character of a work

Irony

a discrepancy or contrast between what is said and what is done or between what is expected and what actually happens

Structure

the planned framework of a piece of literature 

Verbal irony

the term for a figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words that carry the opposite meaning

Literal

the mode of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote

Irony of circumstance

the element of literature in which the opposite of what is expected occurs

Complication

the intensification of the conflict in a story or play that builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work

What is the name and date of the earliest literary period for the English tradition?

Old English, 428-1066

What is the name and date of the earliest literary period for the American tradition?

Colonial, 1607-1765

What is the term Harmon and Holman give you for the intial incident of the plot structure?

Point of attack, inciting incident

Framework story

a story inside a story

Picaresque

a chronicle, usually autobiographical, presenting the life story of a rascal of low degree engaged in menial tasks and making his living more through his wits than his industry. It is also often episodic and structureless

Satire

the genre that exposes human folly, criticizes human conduct, and aims to correct it often by means of ridiculing the weaknesses of human nature and human behavior—a work that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity

Gothic

a novel in which magic, mystery, and chivalry are the chief characteristics, with settings often being dark remote castle-like structures

Realism

a novel that emphasizes truthful representation of the actual

Sentimental

works that tend to overemphasize the goodness or badness of characters, handle plots violently so that goodness or virtue always triumphs, and that try to induce emotional responses greater than the situation of the plot warrants

Slave narrative

the autobiographical accounts that appepared between 1830 and 1860 and were written by slaves

Künstlerroman

a form of apprenticeship novel in which the protagonist is an artist struggling from childhood to maturity toward an understanding of his/her creative mission

Metafiction

a work of fiction, a major concern of which is the nature of fiction itself

Naturalism

literature that tends to emphasize either a biological or a socioeconomic determinismin which humans are seen as the victims of destiny or fate

Pyschological novel

a novel that places unusual emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action that spring from, and develop, external action

Propaganda novel

a novel dealing with a special social, political, economic, or moral issue or problem and possibly advocating a doctrinaire solution

Stream of consciousness

the kind of narrative that depicts the total range of awareness and emotive-mental response of an individual or individuals, from the lowest prespeech level to the highest fully articulated level of rational thought

Jeremiad

a work that foretells destruction because of the evil of a group

Bildüngsroman

a novel that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical

Autobiography

a story of a person’s life as written by that person

Exemplum

a moralized tale

Novel of manners

a novel dominated by social customs, conventions, and habits of a definite social class

Epistolary

a narrative written entirely or partly as letters

Sociological novel

a form of the problem novel that concentrates on the nature, function, and effect of the society in which characters live (this type of fiction may also be reffered to as social realism or socialist realism)

Dystopia

accounts of imaginary worlds, usually in the future, in which present tendencies are carried out to their intensely unpleasant culminations

Local color

writing that exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, habit of thought, and topography peculiar to a certain region, primarily for the portrayal of the life of a geographical region

 

roman á clef

a novel in which actual persons are presented under the guise of fiction

Nonfiction novel

the term for literature in which a historical event such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (a multiple murder in Kansas) is described in a way that exploits some of the devices of fiction, including a nonlinear time sequence and access to inner states of mind and feeling not commonly present in historical writing

Romance

literature that describes in lofty and elevated language what has never happened or is ever likely to happen. a work with extravagant characters, remote and exotic locations, highly exciting and heroic events, passionate love, or mysterious or supernatural experiences; may also mean a work relatively free from the constraints of realistic verisimilitude

Ballad

a narrative poem writte in four line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style

Ode

a long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. usually a serious poem on an exalted subject

Villanelle

a nineteen line lyric poem that relies heavily on repitition. the first and third lines alternate throughout the poem, which is structured in six stanzas-five tercets and a concluding quatrain

Elegy

a lyric poem that laments the dead

a sustained and formal poem setting forth meditations on death or another solemn theme

Aubade

a love lyric in which the speaker compains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover

Epic

a long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero; these typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values

Tercet

a stanza of three lines in which each line ends with the same rhyme

Epigram

a brief witty poem, often satirical

Epigraph

a quotation on the title page of a book or a motto heading a section of a work

Form

the organization of the elementary parts of a work of art and contributing to its expectations and total effect

Sestina

a poem of thirty nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. its six line stanza repeats in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. after the sixth stanza, there is a three line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line

Narrative poem

a poem that tells a story

Sonnet

a poem almost invariably of fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes

Meter

the recurrence in poetry of a rhythmic pattern of the rhythm by the regular occurrence of similar units of sound