lit exam Flashcards
(203 cards)
1
Q
What is Formalism?
A
A theory that has dominated the American literary scene for most of the twentieth century, advocating methodical and systematic readings of texts.
2
Q
What are the major premises of New Criticism?
A
“Art for art’s sake,” “content = form,” and “texts exist in and for themselves.”
3
Q
What is the aim of New Criticism?
A
To classify, categorize, and catalog works according to their formal attributes and discuss universal truths concerning the human condition.
4
Q
Who are some leading new critics?
A
I.A. Richards, Cleanth Brooks, Northrop Frye, John Crowe Ransom, T.S. Eliot, and Roman Jacobsen.
5
Q
What do New Critics believe about literature?
A
They consider literature to be a language game in which communication becomes semi-transparent.
6
Q
What do Formalists value in poetry?
A
Poetry rich in ambiguity, irony, and intention.
7
Q
What is an antagonist?
A
The main villain in a story.
8
Q
What defines a dynamic character?
A
A character that is changing, growing, and active.
9
Q
What is a flat character?
A
A character that is not well-developed.
10
Q
What is a protagonist?
A
The main character with whom the audience is expected to sympathize.
11
Q
What is a round character?
A
A well-developed character.
12
Q
What is a static character?
A
A character that is not growing or changing, an inactive personality.
13
Q
What is symbolism in literature?
A
Using inanimate or imagined things to stand for real situations.
14
Q
What is an allegory?
A
A parallel story with an underlying moral or message.
15
Q
What is irony?
A
Paradoxical events, ideas, or attitudes that are played off against each other.
16
Q
What is sarcasm?
A
Making serious fun of things, ideas, people, or events.
17
Q
What is satire?
A
A synthesis of heavily developed ironies and sarcasm.
18
Q
What is a metaphor?
A
A brief or extended comparison of something with something else.
19
Q
What is metonymy?
A
Using the story of a small, localized event to illustrate a larger social concern.
20
Q
What is personification?
A
Comparing inanimate things to people.
21
Q
What is a simile?
A
A comparison using “as a” to relate something or someone to something else.
22
Q
What is tangible symbolism?
A
Physical or ‘actual’ symbols.
23
Q
What is a plot?
A
A series of events or happenings that organize a text.
24
Q
What is the climax of a story?
A
The point of highest dramatic tension in a text.
25
What is conflict in literature?
Plot features that demonstrate human rivalries and difficulties.
26
What is external conflict?
Conflicts that are active, perhaps physical or overtly expressed.
27
What is internal conflict?
Conflicts that are passive, perhaps mental or covertly expressed.
28
What is denouement?
The final part of a narrative where the strands of the plot are drawn together.
29
What is foreshadowing?
Plot features that predict other events.
30
What is an inciting event?
The event that marks the beginning of a course of action.
31
What is recognition in a plot?
Events that reveal aspects of a character in a new light.
32
What is a reversal in a plot?
Events that mark a turnabout of fortune for a character.
33
What is point of view?
The perspective of the controlling narrative voice.
34
What is first person point of view?
A narrative voice that speaks with 'I/we/us' pronouns.
35
What is limited omniscience?
A narrator who doesn't know everything.
36
What is an objective narrator?
A narrator who tells the story from an impersonal point of view.
37
What is an omniscient narrator?
A narrator who presumes to know the ultimate truth of the story.
38
What is a reliable narrator?
A narrator who can be trusted to tell the truth.
39
What is a subjective narrator?
A narrator whose personal viewpoint has skewed the telling of the story.
40
What is setting in literature?
The atmosphere, historical period, physical setting, or mood of a text.
41
What is the difference between chronological and ahistorical setting?
Chronological is a linear telling of events, while ahistorical is not grounded in any 'real' historical period.
42
What is atmosphere in literature?
Physical and external descriptions that help us better understand the setting.
43
What is mood in literature?
Emotional and internal descriptions that help us better understand the setting.
44
What is a theme in literature?
A major idea or message in the text.
45
What is a controlling idea?
The organizing theme of a work.
46
What are related ideas in literature?
Subthemes that contribute to the development of the main idea.
47
What are separate issues in literature?
Ideas not directly related to the main idea or subthemes, but that contribute to the overall success of the text.
48
feminism
promote equality by ensuring fair representation and treatment of women in text and classrooms
49
psychological approach
deals with the work of literature primarily as an expression, in fictional form, of the state of mind and the structure of the personality of the individual author.
50
Ecocriticism
relationships between literature and the natural environment. relationships between literature and the natural environment. This interdisciplinary approach not only examines how literary texts represent nature but also interrogates the cultural, social, and political implications of these representations.
51
Marxism
based on the ideas of German philosopher Karl Marx a social, economic, and political philosophy that analyses the impact of the ruling class on the laborers, leading to uneven distribution of wealth and privileges in the society.
52
culture criticism
through which any text can be viewed. This form of criticism examines how different religions, ethnicities, class identifications, political beliefs, and views affect the ways in which texts are created and interpreted.
53
54
What is an allegory?
A story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities.
## Footnote
Example: Animal Farm; Dante’s Inferno; Lord of the Flies
55
What is alliteration?
The repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.
## Footnote
Example: “When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of the regiment had crumbled away, and the dejected remnant was coming slowly back.” –Stephen Crane
56
What is an allusion?
A reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or another branch of culture.
57
What is ambiguity?
Deliberately suggesting two or more different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work.
58
What is an analogy?
A comparison made between two things to show how they are alike.
59
What is anaphora?
Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row.
60
What is anastrophe?
Inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence.
61
What is an anecdote?
A brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something.
62
What is an antagonist?
An opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero, or protagonist, in a story.
63
What is antimetabole?
Repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order.
## Footnote
Example: Moliere: “One should eat to live, not live to eat.”
64
What is antithesis?
Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure.
65
What is an antihero?
A central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes.
66
What is anthropomorphism?
Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object.
67
What is an aphorism?
A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life or a principle.
## Footnote
Also called maxim, epigram.
68
What is an apostrophe?
Calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place or thing.
69
What is apposition?
Placing in immediately succeeding order of two or more coordinate elements, the latter of which is an explanation or qualification of the first.
70
What is assonance?
The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds.
71
What is asyndeton?
Commas used without conjunction to separate a series of words, emphasizing the parts equally.
72
What is balance in writing?
Constructing a sentence so that both halves are about the same length and importance.
73
What is characterization?
The process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character.
74
What is indirect characterization?
The author reveals to the reader what the character is like by describing how the character looks and dresses, by letting the reader hear what the character says, and more.
75
What is direct characterization?
The author tells us directly what the character is like.
76
What is a static character?
A character who does not change much in the course of a story.
77
What is a dynamic character?
A character who changes in some important way as a result of the story’s action.
78
What is a flat character?
A character who has only one or two personality traits.
79
What is a round character?
A character who has more dimensions to their personality and is complex.
80
What is chiasmus?
A type of rhetorical balance in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but with the parts reversed.
## Footnote
Example: Coleridge: “Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike.”
81
What is a cliché?
A word or phrase that has become lifeless because of overuse.
82
What is colloquialism?
A word or phrase in everyday use in conversation and informal writing but inappropriate for formal situations.
83
What is comedy?
A story that ends with a happy resolution of the conflicts faced by the main character or characters.
84
What is conceit?
An elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different.
85
What is confessional poetry?
A twentieth-century term used to describe poetry that uses intimate material from the poet’s life.
86
What is conflict?
The struggle between opposing forces or characters in a story.
87
What is external conflict?
Conflict that can exist between two people, between a person and nature or a machine, or between a person and society.
88
What is internal conflict?
A conflict that involves opposing forces within a person’s mind.
89
What is connotation?
The associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase.
90
What is a couplet?
Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.
91
What is dialect?
A way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain social group or geographical area.
92
What is diction?
A speaker or writer’s choice of words.
93
What is didactic?
A form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral.
94
What is an elegy?
A poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died.
95
What is epanalepsis?
A device of repetition in which the same expression is repeated both at the beginning and at the end of the line, clause, or sentence.
96
What is an epic?
A long narrative poem, written in heightened language, recounting the deeds of a heroic character.
97
What is an epigraph?
A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme.
98
What is epistrophe?
A device of repetition in which the same expression is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences.
99
What is an epithet?
An adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing that emphasizes a characteristic quality.
100
What is an essay?
A short piece of nonfiction prose in which the writer discusses some aspect of a subject.
101
What is argumentation?
One of the four forms of discourse which uses logic, ethics, and emotional appeals to convince the reader.
102
What is persuasion?
A form of argumentation that relies more on emotional appeals than on facts.
103
What is causal relationship?
A form of argumentation in which the writer claims that one thing results from another.
104
What is description?
A form of discourse that uses language to create a mood or emotion.
105
What is exposition?
One of the four major forms of discourse, in which something is explained or 'set forth.'
106
What is narrative?
The form of discourse that tells about a series of events.
107
What is explicate?
The act of interpreting or discovering the meaning of a text.
108
What is a fable?
A very short story told in prose or poetry that teaches a practical lesson about how to succeed in life.
109
What is farce?
A type of comedy in which ridiculous and often stereotyped characters are involved in silly situations.
110
What is figurative language?
Words which are inaccurate if interpreted literally, but are used to describe.
111
What is a flashback?
A scene that interrupts the normal chronological sequence of events in a story to depict something that happened at an earlier time.
112
What is a foil?
A character who acts as a contrast to another character.
113
What is foreshadowing?
The use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in a plot.
114
What is free verse?
Poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
115
What is hyperbole?
A figure of speech that uses incredible exaggeration for effect.
116
What is hypotactic?
A sentence marked by the use of connecting words between clauses or sentences.
117
What is imagery?
The use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, thing, place, or experience.
118
What is inversion?
The reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase.
119
What is irony?
A discrepancy between appearances and reality.
120
What is verbal irony?
Occurs when someone says one thing but really means something else.
121
What is situational irony?
Takes place when there is a discrepancy between what is expected to happen and what really does happen.
122
What is dramatic irony?
A character thinks one thing is true, but the audience or reader knows better.
123
What is juxtaposition?
A poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas are placed next to one another.
124
What is litotes?
A form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form.
125
What is local color?
A term applied to fiction or poetry which emphasizes a particular setting.
126
What is a loose sentence?
One in which the main clause comes first, followed by further dependent grammatical units.
127
What is a lyric poem?
A poem that does not tell a story but expresses the personal feelings or thoughts of the speaker.
128
What is a metaphor?
A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without using specific words of comparison.
129
What is an implied metaphor?
A metaphor that does not state explicitly the two terms of the comparison.
130
What is an extended metaphor?
A metaphor that is developed as far as the writer wants to take it.
131
What is a dead metaphor?
A metaphor that has been used so often that the comparison is no longer vivid.
132
What is a mixed metaphor?
A metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms.
133
What is metonymy?
A figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing, is referred to by something closely associated with it.
134
What is mood?
An atmosphere created by a writer’s diction and the details selected.
135
What is a motif?
A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a work.
136
What is motivation?
The reasons for a character’s behavior.
137
What is onomatopoeia?
The use of words whose sounds echo their sense.
138
What is an oxymoron?
A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.
139
What is a parable?
A relatively short story that teaches a moral or lesson about how to lead a good life.
140
What is a paradox?
A statement that appears self-contradictory, but reveals a kind of truth.
141
What is parallel structure?
The repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structures.
142
What is a paratactic sentence?
A sentence that simply juxtaposes clauses or sentences.
143
What is parody?
A work that makes fun of another work by imitating some aspect of the writer’s style.
144
What is a periodic sentence?
A sentence that places the main idea or central complete thought at the end.
145
What is personification?
A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.
146
What is plot?
The series of related events in a story or play, sometimes called the storyline.
147
What is exposition in plot?
Introduces characters, situation, and setting.
148
What is rising action in plot?
Complications in conflict and situations that may introduce new ones.
149
What is climax in plot?
That point in a plot that creates the greatest intensity, suspense, or interest.
150
What is the main idea or central complete thought in a sentence?
It is found at the end of the sentence, after all introductory elements.
## Footnote
Literary Terms page 7
151
What are the characteristics of plot?
Exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution.
152
What is exposition in a plot?
It introduces characters, situation, and setting.
153
What is rising action in a plot?
Complications in conflict and situations, which may introduce new ones.
154
What is climax in a plot?
The point that creates the greatest intensity, suspense, or interest; also called the turning point.
155
What is resolution in a plot?
The conclusion of a story, when all or most conflicts have been settled; often called the denouement.
156
What is point of view?
The vantage point from which the writer tells the story.
157
What is first person point of view?
One of the characters tells the story.
158
What is third person point of view?
An unknown narrator tells the story, focusing on the thoughts and feelings of only one character.
159
What is omniscient point of view?
An all-knowing narrator tells the story, often revealing everything about many characters.
160
What is objective point of view?
A narrator who is totally impersonal and objective, telling the story without comment on characters or events.
161
What is polysyndeton?
A sentence which uses a conjunction with no commas to separate items in a series.
162
What is a protagonist?
The central character in a story, who initiates or drives the action.
163
What is a pun?
A play on words based on multiple meanings of a single word or words that sound alike but mean different things.
164
What is a quatrain?
A poem consisting of four lines, or four lines of a poem that can be considered as a unit.
165
What is a refrain?
A word, phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated for effect several times in a poem.
166
What is rhythm?
The rise and fall of the voice produced by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.
167
What is rhetoric?
The art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse.
168
What is a rhetorical question?
A question asked for effect, not actually requiring an answer.
169
What is romance in literature?
A story in which an idealized hero or heroine undertakes a quest and is successful.
170
What is satire?
A type of writing that ridicules the shortcomings of people or institutions to bring about change.
171
What is a simile?
A figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two unlike things, using words like 'like', 'as', 'than', or 'resembles'.
172
What is a soliloquy?
A long speech made by a character in a play while no other characters are on stage.
173
What is a stereotype?
A fixed idea or conception of a character or an idea that does not allow for individuality.
174
What is stream of consciousness?
A style of writing that portrays the inner workings of a character’s mind.
175
What is style in writing?
The distinctive way in which a writer uses language, including diction, tone, and syntax.
176
What is suspense?
A feeling of uncertainty and curiosity about what will happen next in a story.
177
What is a symbol?
A person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and also stands for something more.
178
What is synecdoche?
A figure of speech in which a part represents the whole.
179
What is syntactic fluency?
The ability to create a variety of sentence structures, appropriately complex and/or simple and varied in length.
180
What is syntactic permutation?
Sentence structures that are extraordinarily complex and involved, often difficult for a reader to follow.
181
What is a tall tale?
An outrageously exaggerated, humorous story that is obviously unbelievable.
182
What is a telegraphic sentence?
A sentence shorter than five words in length.
183
What is theme in literature?
The insight about human life that is revealed in a literary work.
184
What is tone in writing?
The attitude a writer takes toward the subject, characters, or audience, revealed through diction, figurative language, and organization.
185
What is tragedy in literature?
A story in which a heroic character either dies or comes to some other unhappy end.
186
What is a tricolon?
A sentence of three parts of equal importance and length, usually three independent clauses.
187
What is understatement?
A statement that says less than what is meant.
188
What is unity in writing?
Unified parts of the writing are related to one central idea or organizing principle.
189
What is vernacular?
The language spoken by the people who live in a particular locality.
190
What is impressionism in literature?
A nineteenth-century movement advocating a recording of the artist’s personal impressions of the world.
191
What is modernism?
A term for the bold new experimental styles and forms that swept the arts during the first third of the twentieth century.
192
What is naturalism?
A nineteenth-century literary movement that portrayed life exactly as it was.
193
What is plain style?
A writing style that stresses simplicity and clarity of expression.
194
What is puritanism in writing?
A style that emphasizes obedience to God, consisting mainly of journals, sermons, and poems.
195
What is rationalism?
A movement that held we can arrive at truth using reason rather than relying on authority.
196
What is realism?
A style of writing that attempts to depict life accurately without idealizing or romanticizing it.
197
What is regionalism in literature?
Literature that emphasizes a specific geographic setting and reproduces the speech, behavior, and attitudes of the people in that region.
198
What is romanticism?
A revolt against rationalism that affected literature and the arts, beginning in the late eighteenth century.
199
What is surrealism?
A movement that aimed to replace conventional realism with the full expression of the unconscious mind.
200
What is symbolism?
A literary movement that rearranged the world of appearances to reveal a more truthful version of reality.
201
What is transcendentalism?
A nineteenth-century movement in the Romantic tradition, emphasizing that individuals can reach ultimate truths through spiritual intuition.
202
mythological criticism
a literary analysis that identifies and interprets how myths are used in a work. It's also known as archetypal criticism.
203
deconstructionism
