lit terms Flashcards
(53 cards)
The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage.
Ambiguity
The misplacing of any person, thing, custom or event outside its proper historical time.
Anachronism
A symbol, theme, setting, or character-type that recurs in different times and places in myth, literature, folklore, dreams, and rituals so frequently or prominently as to suggest that it embodies some essential element of ‘universal’ human experience.
Archetype
A direct or indirect reference to something which is presumably commonly known, such as an event, book, myth, place, or work of art.
Allusion
A specialized type of comparison that employs animal characteristics or language to describe something.
Animal Imagery
The most prominent of the characters who oppose the protagonist or heroine or hero in a dramatic or narrative work.
Antagonist
A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified abstraction, such as liberty or love.
Apostrophe
A short speech or remark spoken by a character in a drama, directed either to the audience or to another character, which by convention is supposed to be inaudible to the other characters on stage.
Aside
Attributes the qualities of a character in a description or commentary.
Direct Characterization
Inviting readers to infer a character’s qualities from characters’ actions, speech or appearance.
Indirect Characterization
A criticism or discussion by the act of using rhetorical means to provide commentary on issues in a society. This is often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace about a given problem and appealing to people’s sense of justice.
Social Commentary
The organization of conflict between characters in their world. The form of a play or film usually containing a beginning, middle and end. Also referred to as plot developments.
Dramatic Structure
A short, poetic nickname, often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase-attached to the normal name.
Epithet
Writing or speech that is not intended to carry literal meaning and is usually meant to be imaginative and vivid.
Figurative Language
A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character.
Foil Character
Using the same features, wording, setting, situation, or topic at both the beginning and end of a literary work.
Framing
The major category into which a literary work fits. The basic divisions of literature are prose, poetry, and drama.
Genre
A figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or overstatement.
Hyperbole
The sensory details or figurative language used to describe, arouse emotion, or represent abstractions.
Imagery
When facts or events are unknown to a character in a play or piece of fiction but known to the reader, audience, or other characters in the work.
Dramatic Irony
When events turn out the opposite of what was expected; when what the characters and readers think ought to happen is not what does happen.
Situational Irony
When the words literally state the opposite of the writer’s (or speaker’s) meaning.
Verbal Irony
The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development.
Juxtaposition
The opposition or contrast of ideas; the direct opposite.
Antithesis
