Lit Vocab

Question 1

Anecdote

Answer 1

a short story that is significant to the situation or conversation

Question 2

Apostrophe

Answer 2

a rhetorical device through which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person (or even an object!); often found in elegiac poetry or odes

Question 3

Diction

Answer 3

a writer’s choice of words in a literary text

Question 4

Iambic pentameter

Answer 4

a type of metric line that has ten syllables, with one stressed and one unstressed (lamb)

Question 5

Irony

Answer 5

when a moment of dialogue or plot contradicts the audience’s expectations of what it is supposed to mean or what is expected to occur (especially when the opposite happens)

Question 6

Juxtaposition

Answer 6

placing two or more ideas, images, or people side by side for contrast

Question 7

Pastoral

Answer 7

writing that idealizes shepherds and a perceived innocence and idleness about their lives

Question 8

Petrachan sonnet

Answer 8

a sonnet that is divided into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines) and avoids the final rhyming couplet found in a Shakespearean sonnet

Question 9

Phenomenology

Answer 9

a philosophy that interrogates the meaning of the lived experience of human beings, especially the study of consciousness from a first-person perspective

Question 10

Praxis

Answer 10

action or practice, as opposed to theory

Question 11

Reverie

Answer 11

the dreamy state of being lost in thought

Question 12

Semiotics

Answer 12

the study of linguistic signs and symbols and their interpretation in writing and other modes of communication

Question 13

Solarpunk

Answer 13

movement that arose in the 2010s with an aim at solving ecological and social injustices brought on by climate change in a hopeful way

Question 14

Stream-of-consciousness

Answer 14

a flowing, typically unpunctuated representation of a characters thought in the immediate moment; often featured as an internal monologue

Question 15

Quatrain

Answer 15

a stanza of four lines in poetry

Question 16

Polysyndeton

Answer 16

the repeated use of conjunctions (i.e. “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night”)

Question 17

Petroculture

Answer 17

a term that encompasses the ways by which post-industrial society is shaped by oil in physical, material, and philosophical ways

Question 18

Passive voice

Answer 18

the subject is acted upon; he or she receives the action expressed by the verb (i.e. “the house is being painted by Anna”) and often results in lifeless writing

Question 19

Motif

Answer 19

distinctive repeated feature or idea (i.e. the wicked stepmother might be assumed evil by relationship alone)

Question 20

Metonymy

Answer 20

a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept (i.e. “I need a hand” or “Swear loyalty to the crown”)

Question 21

Maxim

Answer 21

a short, easily remembered expression of a basic principal, truth, or rule of conduct (i.e. “birds of a feather flock together” or “actions speak louder than words”)

Question 22

Litotes

Answer 22

form of understatement in which sentiment is expressed ironically by negating its contrary (i.e. “she’s not ugly” or “I am not unfamiliar with poetry”)

Question 23

Internal (interior) monologue

Answer 23

narrative technique that allows a reader to hear the thoughts of a character

Question 24

Foil

Answer 24

a character that contrasts with another character; often used to highlight traits of the protagonist, which also turn out to be part of the antagonist (i.e. yin and yang)

Question 25

Edwardian Era

Answer 25

follows the Victorian Age; key writers include Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, and Rudyard Kipling

Question 26

Dramatic Irony

Answer 26

when the audience has information the character is unaware of

Question 27

Denotation

Answer 27

the objective and literal dictionary definition of a word; the opposite of connotation (i.e. saying someone is pushy because they literally pushed someone)

Question 28

Oxymoron

Answer 28

when contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. "a deafening silence" or "bittersweet")

Question 29

Semiotics

Answer 29

the interpretation of signs and symbols

Question 30

Complex sentence

Answer 30

a sentence with one independent clause and at least one dependent clause

Question 31

Compound-complex sentence

Answer 31

a sentence with multiple independent clauses and at least one dependent clause

Question 32

Compound sentence

Answer 32

a sentence with two independent clauses joined by a FANBOYS conjunction

Question 33

Connotation

Answer 33

an additional idea or emotion that is connected with its word, as opposed to its dictionary definition; used to make a noun sound positive or negative (i.e. "a cheap Valentine's gift" vs. "an inexpensive Valentine's gift")

Question 34

Chiasmus

Answer 34

a reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses, but with no repetition of words (which can use synonyms) (i.e. "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" or "who dates yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!")

Question 35

Chumash

Answer 35

several groups of Native American peoples from the Central and Southern coasts of California and Santa Barbara Islands

Question 36

Catharsis

Answer 36

the use of strong feelings in literature to leave the effect of the purification of those emotions (think Schindler's List or any film/book that leaves you with heavy feelings)

Question 37

Bloomsbury Group

Answer 37

English group of early twentieth century writers that included Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E.M Forster, and John Maynard Keynes

Question 38

Asyndeton

Answer 38

conjunctions (and, but, or) are intentionally omitted (i.e. "live, laugh, love")

Question 39

Assonance

Answer 39

the repetition of a vowel sound in adjacent or closely connected words (i.e. "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" or "hear the mellow welling bells")

Question 40

Anachronism

Answer 40

something belonging or appropriate to a time period other than that exists, especially something that is conspicuously old-fashioned

Question 41

Anecdote

Answer 41

a short story significant to the situation or conversation; typically narrated to convey a point

Question 42

Antithesis

Answer 42

a contrast or opposite of subjects, items, adjectives, or verbs (i.e. "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" or "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind")

Question 43

Archetype

Answer 43

a very typical example of a certain person or thing (i.e. a wizard character introduces a challenge)

Question 44

Anaphora

Answer 44

the repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses (i.e. "Ein volk! Ein Reich! Ein Fuhrer!"

Question 45

Aphorism

Answer 45

a concise, terse, iconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle (i.e. "a man is a child of his father" or "if it ain't broke, don't fix it")

Question 46

Allusion

Answer 46

relies on the reader's assumed knowledge of history or pop culture (i.e. "as shiny as Dorothy's red shoes")

Question 47

Active voice

Answer 47

subject of the sentence performs the action; the more direct and preferred style of writing (i.e. "Kathy ate a cake" or "Adrian drove down the street")

Question 48

Satire

Answer 48

any type of literary work or part of a literary work that uses humor or ridicule to mock, expose, or criticize a human or societal failing

Question 49

Simple Sentence

Answer 49

a sentence with one independent clause with no conjunction or dependent clause

Question 50

Sonnet

Answer 50

a lyrical poem composed of 14 rhyming lines

Question 51

Situational irony

Answer 51

the opposite of what is expected to actually happen; often used for humorous purposes or to mock the circumstances of an event

Question 52

Synedoche

Answer 52

type of metonymy that uses a part of something to refer to its whole or vice versa (i.e. "check out my new wheels!" or "prison headcount")

Question 53

Syntax

Answer 53

the set of rules that determines the arrangement of words in a sentence (i.e. in English, we use subject-verb-object word order)

Question 54

Verbal irony

Answer 54

when someone says the opposite of what they really feel or mean; often aligned with sarcasm (i.e. saying "thanks a lot" or "my day is sunshine")

Question 55

Verisimilitude

Answer 55

the idea that literature should somehow be true to reality; typically seen in works of realistic fiction where characters don't fly and rain pours vertically

Question 56

Volta

Answer 56

an Italian term for the "turn" in mood in a sonnet; placement is determined by the type of sonnet