Final Flashcards
(20 cards)
Intended solely to entertain
Legal thrillers, romance novels
Escapist
Formulaic
Commercial fiction
Written with serious artistic intentions by someone who hopes to enable
readers to broaden understanding of life and to empathize with others
Literary writers are more like explorers who take us out into the midst of
life, show us the props and mirrors and seek to dispel the illusions.
Provides keener awareness of our humanity in a friendly and hostile world.
Usually need to read twice.
Plot: the sequence of events through which an author constructs a story.
Structure: usually chronological or cause/effect, however, a complex structure is
often required to convey complex meanings, so it may be more experimental and
unpredictable.
Literary Fiction
Elements of Fiction
Man vs. Himself
Man vs. Man
Man vs. External Force (physical nature, society, or “fate”)
Man vs. Nature (environment)
Protagonist: central character in a conflict, sympathetic or unsympathetic
Antagonist: any force against protagonist\
an unusual set of circumstances for which the reader craves an
explanation
Mystery
position in which he or she must choose between two courses of
action, both undesirable
Dilemma
a sudden, unexpected turn or twist, and furnishes
meaningful illumination, not just a reversal of expectation
Surprise ending
more common in commercial fiction.
Happy ending
more common in literary fiction because it more closely
mirrors real life and forces readers to contemplate the complexities of life.
Unhappy ending
: no definitive conclusion is reached, but need not be in
terms of a resolved conflict.
Intermediate ending
story is told in first person by a narrator whose knowledge
and prerogatives are unlimited.
Omniscient
from the viewpoint of one character in the story.
No knowledge of what other characters are thinking or feeling.
Third Person Limited
the author disappears into one of the characters, who tells
the story in the first person. This may be either a minor or major character,
protagonist, or observer, and it will make a considerable difference whether
the protagonist tells the story or someone else tells it. Shares the limitations
of the third-person limited point of view.
First Person
the narrator disappears into a
kind of roving sound camera. This camera can go anywhere but can record
only what is seen and heard. It cannot comment, interpret, or enter a
character’s mind.
Objective Point of View
a story that has a second meaning beneath the surface adding
significance.
Allegory
nonrealistic story and transcends the bounds of known reality.
Fantasy
appears in the many serious works, usually conveyed through irony
Humor
technique used to convey a truth about human experience by exposing
some incongruity of a character’s behavior or a society’s traditions. Irony helps to
critique the world in which we live by laughing at the many varieties of human
eccentricity and folly.
Both evoke responses that are intellectual and emotional at once.
Irony
The author’s type of diction (choice of words), syntax (arrangement of
words), and other linguistic features of a work.
Style
The central and dominating idea (or ideas) in a literary work. The
term also indicates a message or moral implicit in any work of art.
Themes
It’s common knowledge in the publishing industry that women constitute the
biggest book-buying segment. So, it’s certainly no accident that most mainstream
as well as genre fiction is popular among women. For that reason, publishers and
booksellers have identified a category within the mainstream that they classify as
Women’s Fiction. And its no surprise that virtually all the selections of Oprah’s
Book Club are in this genre.
Women’s Fiction
