General Literary Devices Flashcards
(150 cards)
1
Q
Allegory
A
A literary or visual form in which characters, events or images represent or symbolise ideas. It can be a story of some complexity corresponding to another situation on a deeper level. Animal Farm is about a community of animals, but reflects the Russian Revolution and satirises Communism.
2
Q
Alliteration
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Repetition of an identical consonant sound at the beginning of stressed words, usually close together. Alliteration can create different effects. (Used in poetry and prose).
3
Q
Allusion
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An indirect reference to an event, person, place, another work of literature, etc. that gives additional layers of meaning to a text or enlarges its frame of reference. Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out”, about a boy’s accidental death, alludes to Macbeth’s line about life: “Out, out, brief candle”.
4
Q
Ambiguity
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Where language, action, tone, character, etc. are (sometimes deliberately), unclear and may yield two or more interpretations or meanings. Gertrude’s actions and character are ambiguous in the early acts of Hamlet.
5
Q
Ambivalence
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Simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings towards something or someone. A writer’s attitude to a character or event may not be clear-cut, but may seem to hold at least two responses at the same time. Distinguish this from ‘ambiguity’.
6
Q
Anagnoris
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(a Greek term associated with tragedy but also used with fiction). A moment of recognition or discovery usually late in the plot where the protagonist discovers something about his or her true nature or behaviour or situation. Elizabeth Bennet, late in Pride and Prejudice dramatically realises her prejudice.
7
Q
Analogy
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An extended comparison between two seemingly dissimilar things.
8
Q
Anaphora
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The repetition of words at the beginning of successive clauses.
9
Q
Anecdote
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A short account of an interesting event.
10
Q
Annotation
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Explanatory or critical notes added to a text.
11
Q
Antecedent
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The noun to which a later pronoun refers.
12
Q
Antimetabole
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The repetition of words in an inverted order to sharpen a contrast.
13
Q
Antithesis
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Expressing contrasting ideas by balancing words of opposite meaning and idea in a line or sentence, for rhetorical impact: “They promised opportunity and provided slavery”.
14
Q
Aphorism
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A short, astute statement of a general truth.
15
Q
Apostrophe
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An exclamatory passage where the speaker or writer breaks off in the flow of a narrative or poem to address a dead or absent person, a particular audience, or object.
16
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Appositive
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A word or phrase that renames a nearby noun or pronoun.
17
Q
Archaic diction
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The use of words common to an earlier time period; antiquated language.
18
Q
Argument
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A statement put forth and supported by evidence.
19
Q
Aristotelian triangle
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A diagram representing a rhetorical situation as the relationship among the speaker, the subject, and the audience (see rhetorical triangle).
20
Q
Assertion
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An emphatic statement; declaration. An assertion supported by evidence becomes an argument.
21
Q
Assonance
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Repetition of similar vowel sounds close to one another (“The sweep / of easy wind”: Frost). This can create atmosphere in descriptive poetry. Sound this aloud to hear the effect.
22
Q
Assumption
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A belief or statement taken for granted without proof.
23
Q
Asyndeton
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Leaving out conjunctions between words, phrases, clauses.
24
Q
Atmosphere
A
It refers specifically to place – a setting, or surroundings.
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Attitude
The speaker's position on a subject as revealed through his or her tone.
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Audience
One's listener or readership; those to whom a speech or piece of writing is addressed.
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Authority
A reliable, respected source—someone with knowledge.
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Bathos
A sudden descent from the serious, to the ridiculous or trivial, for rhetorical effect. “His pride and his bicycle tyre were punctured in the first hour”.
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Bias
Prejudice or predisposition toward one side of a subject or issue.
30
Bildungsroman
German term for a novel focusing on the development of a character from youth to maturity (Joyce: Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is a famous example for a male; Jane Eyre for a female).
31
Blank verse
Unrhymed poetry, not broken into stanzas, keeping to a strict pattern in each line, usually in iambic pentameter. Used by Shakespeare.
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Caesura
A break or pause within a line of poetry, created by a comma or full stop or unmarked pause needed by the sense. Used effectively for emphasis, or to change direction or pace.
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Caricature
An exaggerated representation of a character, often emphasising physical or vocal features, usually for comic and satiric purposes. Jane Austen and Dickens frequently use this.
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Cite
Identifying a part of a piece of writing as being derived from a source.
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Claim
An assertion, usually supported by evidence.
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Close reading
A careful reading that is attentive to organization, figurative language, sentence structure, vocabulary, and other literary and structural elements of a text.
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Colloquial
Everyday speech and language; as opposed to a literary or formal **register**. The inclusion of the odd colloquial word or phrase in an otherwise formal work can be stirking.
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Common ground
Shared beliefs, values, or positions.
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Complex sentence
A sentence that includes one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.
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Conceit
A witty thought or idea or image, a fanciful or deliberately far-fetched comparison, as found in Shakespeare and other 16th and 17th century English poetry. A famous example is John Donne’s comparison of two lovers to the points of a mathematical compass.
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Concession
A reluctant acknowledgment or yielding.
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Conclusion
All horses are warm-blooded (see syllogism).
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Concrete
(As in ‘concrete imagery’). Refers to objects or aspects that may be perceived by one or more of the five senses, through the language used.
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Connotation
An association suggested by a word, useful when discussing diction.
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Consonance
Where the final consonants are the same in two or more words close together, as in Macbeth’s “Poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage”.
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Context
(i) The circumstances, background or environment in which an event (or text) takes place, or an idea is set, and in terms of which it can be understood.
(ii) The part of a text that surrounds a word or passage and determines or clarifies its meaning.
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Contradiction
(Distinguish from ‘paradox’). Stating or implying the opposite of what has been said or suggested.
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Coordination
Grammatical equivalence between parts of a sentence, often through a coordinating conjunction such as "and", or "but."
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Counterargument
A challenge to a position; an opposing argument.
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Couplet (rhyming couplet)
Two consecutive rhyming lines of verse. May clinch or emphasise an idea.(“Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold”. Frost)
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Declarative sentence
A sentence that makes a statement.
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Deduction
Reasoning from general to specific.
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Defamiliarization
The technique of making the familiar seem new and strange, of making us see more vividly, of awakening the mind. Although a specific term of literary theory, it is generally the aim of art and all good writing. It may be achieved, for example, through point of view, or perspective, as in Gulliver’s Travels, or unusual chronology, or diction and imagery.
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Denotation
The literal meaning of a word; its dictionary definition.
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Denouement
From the French, literally ‘unknotting’. How the ending of a novel or play turns out, how the plot is unravelled or revealed.
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Diction
The writer’s choice and arrangement of words or distinctive vocabulary (its effectiveness and precision).
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Didactic
Describes text where there is an intention to preach a (usually) moral, political or religious point it usually has a negative connotation.
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Documentation
Bibliographic information about the sources used in a piece of writing.
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Dramatic irony
Where a character (or characters) is/are unaware of something of which the audience/reader and often other characters on stage are aware. A powerful tool especially in drama, used for tragic or comic purposes.
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Elegy
A mournful lament for times past or the dead. It is a specific poetic form, but the term can be used more generally. “Elegiac” describes a meditative mood in prose or verse, reflecting on the past.
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End-stopped line
A line of poetry where the meaning pauses or stops at the end of the line. The full stop allows a statement or idea to stand out clearly, and provides a pause for the reader’s reflection.
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Enjambement
The opposite of the above (End-stopped line). The sense flows over from one line to another, or through a series of lines, or to the next stanza. This can reflect a build-up of emotion or some other effect. From the French for “leg”.
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Epigram
A concise, pointed, witty statement. ‘Epigrammatic’ style means those qualities in prose or poetry. Oscar Wilde is a master of epigram. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple”.
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Epiphany
From the Greek “manifestation”, it means a sudden realisation or moment of awakening in which something is seen in a new light, or its essential nature is perceived – which could be a moment of radiance or devastation. Used to effect in some short stories, as well as other fiction an poetry.
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Ethos
A Greek term referring to the character of a person; one of Aristotle's three rhetorical appeals (see logos and pathos).
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Figurative language
The use of tropes or figures of speech; going beyond literal meaning to achieve literary effect.
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Figure of speech
An expression that strives for literary effect rather than conveying a literal meaning.
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Form
The physical structure or shape of a work, the arrangement of its parts, the patterns, divisions and structures used. In poetry there are specific traditional, metrical and rhyming ‘forms’ (ode, ballad, sonnet, etc.), and modern, non-metrical forms.
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Free indirect discourse or speech
Is where the third person or omniscient narrator takes on (for a short while) the voice, speech characteristics of a character, taking us into the mind and thoughts of the character without indicating this directly. It can be used sympathetically or ironically. Jane Austen uses it to great effect.
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Free verse
Verse written without any fixed or traditional structure in metre or rhyme. Commonly used since the early 20th century. It is very flexible because it follows the speech rhythms of the language.
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Genre
A specific type or kind of literature.
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Hyperbole
A deliberate exaggeration for various effects – comic, tragic, etc. When Frost writes that the beauty of Spring “is only so an hour”, he emphasises how very brief the life of precious things seems.
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Iambic
The ‘iamb’ is a metrical measure, or foot, in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable (“To be, or not to be”). Iambic pentameter (five iambs in a line) is the commonest metrical pattern in English poetry, and notably Shakespeare. (Macbeth: “Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown”. Sound it out to find those five stresses. There are other kinds of iambic line such as the four-iamb line, called tetrameter.)
74
Idyll/idyllic
Refers to the innocent simple life in an idealised rural setting. It is a specific form of poetry, but the adjective is generally used to denote an experience that has those untroubled, and simple qualities, for example a childhood or a time in a rural setting.
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Imagery
The mental pictures created by language (both metaphorical and literal) that appeal to the senses.
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Imperative sentence
A sentence that requests or commands.
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Induction
Reasoning from specific to general.
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Interior monologue
Where the narrator depicts the thoughts pouring randomly from a character’s mind, so that the reader experiences these as if overhearing them, unfiltered by comments from the narrator or adjusted grammatically.
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Internal rhyme
Rhymes within a line of poetry.
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Intertextuality
The shaping of some part of a text’s meaning by another text, which can take the form, for example, of quotation, allusion, parody or re-working of an idea or story.
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Inversion
A sentence in which the verb precedes the subject.
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Irony
A gap or mismatch between what is said and what is intended. For example, between what a character or group might see or think, and what the author wishes us to see or think. A powerful tool for a writer to expose hypocrisies and lack of awareness.
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Juxtaposition
Placement of two opposing things side by side for emphasis.
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Logos
A Greek term that means "word"; an appeal to logic; one of Aristotle's three rhetorical appeals (see ethos and pathos).
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Lyric
A song-like poem expressing personal feeling. Originally a song performed to a lyre or early harp.
86
Metafiction
Fiction that draws attention to the fact that it is fiction or construct of the author, and to the writing process itself. The author may break the reader out of the fictional frame and comment on what s/he is doing or concerned about in the act of writing, or offer the reader a choice of endings, etc.
87
Metaphor
A comparison between two unlike things that are seen as alike in some aspect, without the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’. It can facilitate understanding of an abstract concept (for example, life as a journey) or open up the imagination by creating a striking visual and sensual link between things not normally associated.
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Metonymy
Use of an aspect of something to represent the whole.
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Metre
The organisation of lines of verse into regular patterns of stressed and unstressed syllabues, to achieve a rhythmic effect. “Iambic” and “trochaic” metres are useful to know.
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Monologue
A speech of some length that expresses a character’s thoughts out loud, sometimes addressing other characters. Distinguish from “apostrophe”, “aside”, and “soliloquy”.
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Mood
Describes an emotional state of mind. It can also describe the emotional response created in the mind of the reader or audience by elements in literature. Distinguish from ‘atmosphere’, which is to do with place.
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Motif
Recurrent element in a narrative or drama (such as an image or spoken phrase) that has symbolic significance and can contribute, through cumulative effect, to a theme. For example, the covered lamp in Williams’ Streetcar, or the flute music in Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
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Omniscient
“third person” narrator: An “all-knowing” narrator who can see into the minds of any character and see any event, place, time, from the ‘outside’. It is the most common and flexible narrative method. A variation on the third person narrator, the “omniscient/limited” narrator, knows everything about one character and is limited to that character. Omniscient and first person modes can be mixed in a work.
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Onomatopoeia
The use of words that imitate or suggest the sounds associated with them, such as “murmur” or “buzz”.
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Oxymoron
Where two words, seemingly contradictory or incongruous are joined, often suggesting something complex, as in Romeo and Juliet when Juliet says that “parting is such sweet sorrow”.
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Paradox
An apparently contradictory statement, which on investigation is found to contain a truth. (For example Frost’s title “Nothing gold can stay”). Distinguish from the compressed paradox of ‘oxymoron’.
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Parallelism
The repetition of similar grammatical or syntactical patterns.
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Parody
A comic imitation of another work, for deliberately comic, ridiculous or satiric effect. It is actively critical or attacking.
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Pastiche
Imitation of the style of another work (content and manner) sometimes mildly ridiculing, but often in homage to the original (distinguish from ‘parody’) and creating a new work.
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Pathos
A Greek term that refers to suffering but has come to be associated with broader appeals to emotion; one of Aristotle's three rhetorical appeals (see ethos and logos).
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Persona
The identity or character assumed by the writer in a work (for example, T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath assume another character in some of their poetry, as in “Prufrock” and “Lady Lazarus”).
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Personification
Where human feelings or sensations are attributed to an inanimate object.
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Plot
The events of a narrative in the order the writer has chosen to arrange them in, to show cause and effect or pattern, for artistic and emotional effect. Distinguish from ‘story’.
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Point of view
The angle from which a narrative is told, reflecting who is seeing and speaking. Point of view may shift within a work or even a paragraph.
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Polemic
An argument against an idea, usually regarding philosophy, politics, or religion.
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Polysyndeton
The deliberate use of a series of conjunctions.
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Premise (major, minor)
two parts of a syllogism. The concluding sentence of a syllogism takes its predicate from the major premise and its subject from the minor premise.
Major premise: All mammals are warm-blooded.
Minor premise: All horses are mammals
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Propaganda
A negative term for writing designed to sway opinion rather than present information.
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Protagonist
Main character in a work.
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Purpose
One's intention or objective in a speech or piece of writing.
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Quatrain
Stanza or group of four lines in a poem. They can have different rhyme schemes. Shakespeare’s sonnets often contain three quatrains and a couplet.
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Refrain
Repetition of a phrase or lines in a work of literature, often at the end of a stanza.
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Refute
To discredit an argument, particularly a counterargument.
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Rhetoric
The art of speaking or writing effectively.
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Rhetorical modes
Patterns of organization developed to achieve a specific purpose; modes include but are not limited to narration, description, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, definition, exemplification, classification and division, process analysis, and argumentation.
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Rhetorical question
A question asked more to produce an effect than to summon an answer.
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Rhetorical triangle
A diagram representing a rhetorical situation as the relationship between the speaker, the subject, and the audience (see Aristotelian triangle).
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Rhythm
The succession of strong and weak (or stressed and unstressed) syllables to create a patterned recurrence of sound. Distinguish this from metre, which has to do with the technical, identifiable organisation of lines into units of stressed and unstressed syllables.
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Satire
Exposing and ridiculing of human follies in a society, sometimes with the aim to reform, sometimes predominantly to deflate. May be gentle, comic, biting or bitter, or a combination. Chaucer, Swift, Jane Austen and Dickens use this tool memorably.
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Sentence patterns
The arrangement of independent and dependent clauses into known sentence constructions—such as simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex.
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Sentence variety
Using a variety of sentence patterns to create a desired effect.
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Setting
Context and location in which a work of literature takes place: it involves the physical place, time, and social environment.
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Simile
Where a comparison is made explicit with ‘as’ or ‘like’ (distinguish from metaphor). Can make descriptions vivid and unusual. Dickens is a master of the simile.
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Simple sentence
A statement containing a subject and predicate; an independent clause.
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Skaz
(From the Russian). A technique of narration that mirrors oral narration with its hesitations, corrections, grammatical mistakes, interactions, etc. Catcher in the Rye uses this, but also Huckleberry Finn, amongst others.
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Soliloquy
A speech by a character along on stage, thinking aloud, revealing thoughts and emotions, or communicating directly with the audience. Powerful tool for revealing psychological complexity, used often by Shakespeare. (Distinguish from monologue).
127
Sonnet
A fourteen-line rhyming poem usually in iambic pentameter. Rhyme schemes and organisation of lines vary, depending on the type of sonnet (for example, Shakespearian), but often set out as a block of 8 lines (octave) and six lines (sestet).
128
Source
A book, article, person, or other resource consulted for information.
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Speaker
A term used for the author, speaker, or the person whose perspective (real or imagined) is advanced in a speech or piece of writing.
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Stanza
The blocks of lines into which a poem is organised. In traditional forms of poetry each stanza follows a scheme governing metre, lines and rhymes.
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Story
(Distinguish this from plot). The events of a narrative in the chronological order in which they actually happened, not deliberately patterned and arranged as in plot.
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Straw man
A logical fallacy that involves the creation of an easily refutable position, misrepresenting, then attacking an opponent's position.
133
Stream of consciousness
The representation of a character’s (or first person narrator’s) thought processes-feelings, sensations, memories, etc. as a random stream of thoughts.
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Style
The distinctive linguistic traits in an author’s work, but also involves the writer’s quality of vision and subject matter. It concerns theme, diction (emotional, abstract, poetic), sentence construction, imagery, sound, etc.
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Subject
In rhetoric, the topic is addressed in a piece of writing.
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Subordinate clause
A clause that modifies an independent clause created by a subordinating conjunction.
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Subordination
The dependence of one syntactical element on another in a sentence.
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Subtext
Ideas, feelings, thoughts, not dealt with directly in the text (drama especially), but existing underneath. Characters don’t always express their real thoughts.
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Syllogism
A form of deductive reasoning in which the conclusion is supported by a major and minor premise (see premise)
140
Symbol
Objects that represent or evoke an idea or concept of wider, abstract significance, as roses represent love, walls divisions.
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Syntax
The grammatical structure of words in a sentence. The normal order of words or grammatical structures can be slightly displaced to create a particular effect, without losing the sense. A powerful tool in poetry, especially.
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Synthesize
Combining or bringing together two or more elements to produce something more complex.
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Theme
Central ideas or issues in a work, often abstract (for example racial injustice). Can also refer to an argument raised or pursued in a text, like a thesis.
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Thesis
The central idea in a work to which all parts of the work refer.
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Thesis statement
A statement of the central idea in a work may be explicit or implicit.
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Tone
Created where the writing conveys the attitude and emotions of the writer towards his/her subjects through aspects of language like diction, syntax, and rhythm.
147
Topic sentence
A sentence often appearing at the beginning of a paragraph that announces the paragraph's idea and often unites it with the work's thesis.
148
Trochee/trochaic
A metrical foot in poetry that has a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (the opposite of iambic, and much less common). For example, in Blake’s “Tyger, tyger, burning bright”. Often there is a mixture of trochaic and iambic metre in a poem, where the sense invites the switch.
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Trope
Artful diction; nonliteral language, also called a figure of speech.
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Understatement
Lack of emphasis in a statement or point; restraint in language often used for ironic effect.
