English, Lit Terms Test #1 - Niccum

Accent: the stress given a syllable in pronunciation.  ex: “The dew shall weep thy fall into night”   (George Herbert, “Virtue”)

Allegory: a story in which people, things, and events have another meaning.  ex: Orwell’s Animal Farm

Alliteration:   the repetition of initial consonant sounds within a line of poetry.  ex: “He clasps the crag with crooked hands.” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Eagle”)

Allusion: a reference, explicit or implicit, to something in previous literature or history.  ex: “Out, Out,---“ by Robert Frost deals with a seemingly useful life that is wiped out unexpectedly which reinforces the theme as it alludes to the phrase in Macbeth “Out, out, brief candle!”

Ambiguity: the language that gives more than one meaning, that leaves uncertainty as to meaning, alternate meanings to words, and that gives several streams of thought from the same word.

Ambivalence: present when people have contradictory attitudes or emotions toward the same things or the person at the same time.  ex: love/hate, resentment/admiration

Analogy: a comparison of two things, alike in certain aspects; particularly a method of exposition by which one unfamiliar object or idea is explained by comparing it in certain of its similarities with other objects or ideas more familiar.  ex: Life may be explained as a card game in which each person is dealt a hand and must decide what play he will make accordingly.

Anaphora: the deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs.

Anecdote: a short narrative detailing particulars of an interesting episode or event which differs from a short story in that, it lacks a complicated plot and is unified in its presentation of time and place elements and in its relation to a single episode.

Antagonist:   the character in fiction who stands directly opposed to the protagonist.  The antagonist need not be a villain.  ex: In Beowulf, the monster Grendel is the antagonist of the hero Beowulf.

Anti-hero: a graceless, inept, sometimes stupid, or dishonest protagonist who is the opposite of a traditional hero.  ex: Don Quixote in Don Quixote

Antithesis: a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas; a balance of one term against another for impressiveness and emphasis.  ex: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…”  (Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

Apocalyptic: literature concerned with predicting the ultimate destiny of the world, imminent catastrophe, and final judgment on mankind.  ex: Orwell’s 1984

Assonance: resemblance or similarity in sound between vowels followed by different consonants in two or more stressed syllables; its effect is more subtle than alliteration.  ex: “We hailed it in God’s name.” (Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”)

Asyndeton: a stylistic pattern in composition in which writing contains clauses without coordinating conjunctions (can occur with or without parataxis).

Atmosphere: the prevailing tone or mood of a literary work, particularly—but not exclusively—when that mood is established in part by setting or landscape.  ex: The sense of “something rotten in the state of Denmark” is established by the scene on the battlements in the opening of Hamlet

Avant-garde: new writings which show striking innovations in style, form, and subject matter; avant-garde literature makes a frontal and organized attack upon established literary traditions.

Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (ten syllables containing five stressed syllables, beginning with an unstressed syllable). ex: “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I.”

Cacophony: a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones.  The hard c or k, the hard g, and the t and d, for example, when occurring close together are liable to produce a discordant effect.

Caesura: a pause or break in the rhythmical progress of a line of poetry.

Characterization: the creation of imaginary persons so credible that they exist for the reader as real within the limits of the fiction; may be accomplished through direct exposition, presentation of the character in action, or representation from within a character.  ex: At the beginning of A Christmas Carol, Dickens characterizes Scrooge as stingy, greedy, and uncaring.

Cliché: an overused phrase that has lost its freshness (the body falling with a dull thud) or an overused situation (the rescue in the nick of time).

Climax: the turning point in the action, the place at which the rising action reverses and becomes the falling action.  The point in the plot of the greatest excitement, intensity, or impressiveness. ex: In Macbeth, the climax occurs at the banquet when Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo.

Colloquialism: a word or phrase that is informal and used in ordinary or familiar conversation; slang

Comic relief: a humorous scene, incident, or speech in the course of a serious fiction or drama. Its purpose is to relieve the tension and thereby heighten the tragic emotion by contrast.  ex: the drunken porter scene in Macbeth