Lit Terms (unit 2 set 1) Flashcards
(24 cards)
Anastrophe
Inverted word order for emphasis, rhyme, or rhythm.
Ex:
“Wrecked is the ship of pearl”
Sterotype
predictable character
Ex:
Used car salesmen
Butler did it murder mystery
Synecdoche
Figurative language in which the part is used for the whole or the whole is used for the part.
Ex:
“the dying year” used for “Autumn”
“Wall Street” referring to the “Money market”
Rythym
The arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry
Ex: Iambic Pentameter
Irony
The term used to describe a contrast what appears to be and what really is
Verbal Irony
When a character says one thing but means something else
Irony of a situation
an occurrence that is different from what is expected
Dramatic Irony
When there is a contradiction between what a character thinks and what the audience knows to be true
Understatement
a fact is stated less empathetically than it could be
Characterization
method used to describe characters by revealing physical traits and personality
Alliteration
Repetition of initial consonance sounds
Ex:
“The road was a ribbon of moonlight”
The river rose rapidly with a roaring sound
Assonance
repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds
Ex: made / mail
Consonance
repetition of consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds
Ex:
bear / more
letter / mutter
frail / feel
Onomatopoeia
words whose sounds imitate the natural sounds of an object or animal
Ex:
hiss / mew
Classicism
a movement or tendency in art, literature, and music reflecting the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece and Rome. Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, placing value on reason, clarity, balance, order.
Romanticism
a movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music, and art in Western culture during most of the 19th century, beginning as a revolt against classicism. Romanticism essentially upholds feeling and the imagination over reason and fact. It favors the picturesque, the emotional, the exotic, and the mysterious.
Blank Verse
verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter
Ex:
“Thanatopsis”
Free Verse
unrhymed verse that has either no metrical pattern or an irregular pattern
Ex:
“Song of Myself”
Caesura
a break or pause in a line of poetry which contributes to the rhythm of the poem.
Ex:
William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”: “Go forth,// under the open sky,// and list . . .”
Internal Rhyme
rhyme that occurs within a line of poetry
Ex:
“To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells”
Allegory
a tale in prose or verse in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities—has two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.
Ex: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” and “Young Goodman Brown” or Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
Symbol
any object, person, place, or action that has a meaning in itself and that also stands for something larger than itself, such as a quality, an attitude, a belief, or a value.
Figures of speech
word or expression not meant to be taken in a literal sense
Metonymy
a figure of speech in which something very closely associated with a thing is used to stand for or suggest the thing itself.
Ex:
“Three sails came into the harbor”
