English Lit Terms Flashcards
(27 cards)
Allegory
A story that can be interpreted on the literal and figurative level
Allusion
A reference either explicit or implicit to something outside of the story
Catharsis
A audiences sense of the release pent up emotions through vicariously experiencing character emotions
Drama
Verse or prose composition intended to portray life or character or tell a story usually involving conflicts and emotions through actio and dialogue
Genre
A distinctive type of literary composition
Literal language
Words being used in their primary or dictionary definitions
Mood
Feeling or vibe that the reader is made to deal while reading the story
Motif
A recurring object concept or theme in a story
Oxymoron
Words that contradict each other
Pathetic fallacy
Attributing human emotions or responses to nature inanimate objects or animals
Personification
Giving inanimate objects living qualities
Symbol
Any idea object being thing action that represents another idea
Syntax
The grammatical order of words in a sentence of verse or dialogue
Tone
A literary element of composition that encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work
Archetype
A basic model from which copies are made with characters in fiction
Frame narrative
A story within a story several layers of a story can be embedded within any novel
Apostrophe
A figure of speech in which some absent or nonexistent person or thing is addressed as if present and capable of understanding
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose
Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem
Denotation
The dictionary meaning of a word
Elegy
A poem that laments the dead
Enjambment
A run on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense Carrie’s over from one line into the next
Epic
A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero
Foot
A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables
