Untitled Flashcards Set

Rhetorical question – A question asked for effect rather than an actual answer, often used to persuade or emphasize a point.
Example: “Do you think money grows on trees?”

Rhythm – The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry or prose, creating a musical flow.
Example: Shakespeare's iambic pentameter: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Round character – A complex and well-developed character with depth, emotions, and change throughout the story.
Example: Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.

Satire – A literary technique that criticizes human foolishness, politics, or society through humor, irony, or exaggeration.
Example: George Orwell’s Animal Farm satirizes totalitarianism.

Scrim – A thin, semi-transparent curtain used in theater to create visual effects, such as making actors appear or disappear.

Sestet – A six-line stanza or the final six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, often resolving a problem.

Setting – The time and place where a story occurs, including cultural and historical context.
Example: 1920s America in The Great Gatsby.

Sight rhyme – Words that look like they should rhyme but don’t when spoken aloud.
Example: “love” and “move.”

Simile – A comparison using “like” or “as” to create imagery.
Example: “Her smile was as bright as the sun.”

Situational irony – When the opposite of what is expected happens.
Example: A fire station burns down.

Slant rhyme – A near rhyme where words have similar but not identical sounds.
Example: “hope” and “cup.”

Soliloquy – A long speech in a play where a character speaks their thoughts aloud, usually alone on stage.
Example: Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.”

Sonnet – A 14-line poem, often in iambic pentameter, with specific rhyme schemes.
Example: Shakespearean sonnet: ABABCDCDEFEFGG.

Stanza – A group of lines in a poem, like a paragraph in prose.

Static character – A character who does not change throughout the story.
Example: Sherlock Holmes.

Stock character – A stereotypical or repeated character type found across literature.
Example: The “wise mentor” like Dumbledore or Yoda.

Symbol – An object, person, or event that represents a deeper meaning beyond its literal sense.
Example: The green light in The Great Gatsby symbolizes hope and dreams.

Synecdoche – A figure of speech where a part represents the whole or vice versa.
Example: “All hands on deck” (hands = sailors).

Synonyms – Words with similar meanings but different spellings.
Example: “Happy” and “joyful.”

Syntax – The structure and order of words in a sentence.
Example: “The cat sat on the mat” (correct) vs. “Sat the cat on mat the” (incorrect).

Theme – The central idea or message of a literary work.
Example: The theme of “power and corruption” in Macbeth.

Tone – The author’s attitude toward the subject, shown through word choice and style.
Example: Humorous, serious, sarcastic, melancholic.

Unreliable narrator – A narrator whose perspective cannot be fully trusted, often due to bias, deception, or limited knowledge.
Example: Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.

Verbal irony – When a character says one thing but means another, often sarcastic.
Example: Saying “Great weather!” during a thunderstorm.

Verisimilitude – The appearance of reality in fiction, making a story feel believable.
Example: Historical details in War and Peace create verisimilitude.