Literary Devices Flashcards
(121 cards)
1
Q
What is an allegory?
A
A literary work in which the characters and events represent particular qualities or ideas relating to morals, politics or religion.
2
Q
What is alliteration?
A
Words that begin with the same sound (often the repetition of letters) placed closely together.
3
Q
What is an allusion?
A
An unexplained or implicit reference to someone or something outside of the text.
4
Q
What is an analogy?
A
Where two unrelated objects are compared for their shared qualities.
5
Q
What is anaphora?
A
The repetition of the same phrase at the beginning of a sentence or clause.
6
Q
What is an anecdote?
A
A short and interesting story, or an amusing event, often proposed to support or demonstrate a point.
7
Q
What is an antagonist?
A
A character who opposes the main character.
8
Q
What is anthropomorphism?
A
Where an animal or non-human object is given human form, behaviour or personality.
9
Q
What is antithesis?
A
A person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else.
10
Q
What is an aphorism?
A
A short statement that is intended to express a general truth.
11
Q
What is an apostrophe in literature?
A
Addressing a person who is not present, or a thing that is personified.
12
Q
What is an archetype?
A
A typical example of something, or the original model of something from which others are copied.
13
Q
What is assonance?
A
The repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds close together.
14
Q
What is asyndeton?
A
Where conjunctions are left out between words or parts of a sentence, often creating a list-like style.
15
Q
What is a ballad?
A
A type of poem that tells a narrative which was traditionally set to music and usually written in quatrains.
16
Q
What is a bildungsroman?
A
A narrative or novel about events and experiences in the life of the main character as they mature and become an adult.
17
Q
What is blank verse?
A
A type of poetry that does not rhyme, usually with ten syllables in each line.
18
Q
What is a caesura?
A
A pause within a line of poetry.
19
Q
What is a caricature?
A
A highly exaggerated representation of a character in a text, often for comic effect.
20
Q
What is catharsis?
A
The release of strong or repressed emotions, usually by an audience.
21
Q
What is characterisation?
A
The act of creating and describing characters in literature, including their traits and psychological make-up.
22
Q
What is chiasmus?
A
When words, grammatical constructions or concepts are repeated in reverse order.
23
Q
What is a cliché?
A
Something or someone that is not at all original, surprising or interesting because it has very often been seen before.
24
Q
What is the climax of a story?
A
The highest point of tension or drama in a piece of writing.
25
What is a colloquialism?
The use of informal words or phrases in writing or speech.
26
What is connotation?
A feeling or idea that is implied by a word that is separate from its dictionary meaning.
27
What is consonance?
The same consonant sound repeated within a group of words.
28
What is a couplet?
A pair of consecutive lines of poetry that create a complete thought or idea.
29
What is denotation?
The literal meaning or dictionary definition of a word.
30
What is denouement?
The resolution of conflict in a narrative plot structure.
31
What is deus ex machina?
An unnatural or very unlikely end to a story or event, that solves or removes any problems easily.
32
What is dialogue?
The exchange of spoken words between characters in a piece of writing.
33
What is direct characterisation?
When an author explicitly tells a reader directly what a character is like.
34
What is dramatic irony?
When the audience or reader knows something the characters in the story do not.
35
What is a dramatic monologue?
A poem written as if someone is speaking to an unseen listener about important thoughts.
36
What does dystopian mean?
An cruel or unfair society, especially an imaginary society in the future, in which there is a lot of hardship or suffering.
37
What is an elegy?
A serious, melancholic poem, often written to mourn the loss of someone who has died.
38
What is end rhyme?
When the last syllables or words in two or more lines rhyme with each other.
39
What is an end-stopped line?
A line of poetry ending in a grammatical break, for example with a full stop.
40
What is enjambment?
The continuing of a sentence from one line of a poem into the next line.
41
What is an epigraph?
A poem, quotation, or sentence, usually placed at the beginning of a piece of writing.
42
What is ethos?
An argument that appeals to an audience’s morality by highlighting the speaker’s credibility or trustworthiness.
43
What is a euphemism?
A word or phrase used to avoid saying an unpleasant or offensive word.
44
What is exposition?
The description or explanation of background information within a work of literature.
45
What is an extended metaphor?
A metaphor that is further developed throughout all or part of a piece of writing.
46
What is falling action?
The part of the plot that occurs after the climax has been reached and the major conflict has happened.
47
What is fiction?
Literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people.
48
What is figurative language?
The use of non-literal phrases or words to elicit an emotional response from a reader or audience.
49
What is first person narration?
When a story is narrated by one character from their own perspective, usually using the pronouns “I”, “me” and “my”.
50
What is a flashback?
A device that moves the reader from the present moment in a chronological piece of writing to a scene in the past.
51
What is foreshadowing?
A device used by a writer to provide hints or clues to the reader or audience about what will happen later on in the text.
52
What is form in literature?
The type or genre of a text that a writer has chosen to use.
53
What is formal verse?
A poem which uses a strict metre, rhyme and form, especially in fixed forms such as sonnets, villanelles, etc.
54
What is free verse?
A poem that does not use a strict metre or rhyme scheme.
55
What is genre?
A specific literary style that involves a particular set of characteristics.
56
What is a haiku?
A specific type of Japanese poem which has 17 syllables divided into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables.
57
What is hamartia?
The flaw in character which leads to the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy.
58
What is a heroic couplet?
A verse form found in epic poetry, where the lines are in rhyming pairs.
59
What is hubris?
Excessive pride or self-confidence.
60
What is hyperbole?
Deliberate exaggeration used for effect.
61
What is iambic pentameter?
A verse line consisting of ten syllables, organised into five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables.
62
What is an idiom?
A short expression or phrase that means something more than just its literal meaning.
63
What is imagery?
The use of words to describe ideas or situations.
64
What is indirect characterisation?
Revealing details about a character without explicitly or directly stating what they are like.
65
What does in medias res mean?
A story which begins in the middle of events, without any introduction.
66
What is internal rhyme?
Rhyme that occurs between words within a verse line.
67
What is intertextuality?
The relationship a text may have with other texts.
68
What is irony?
When there is a noticeable, often humorous, difference between what is written and its intended or expected meaning.
69
What is juxtaposition?
The placement of two or more things side by side, often in order to bring out their differences.
70
What is language in literature?
The words, phrases and literary devices a writer uses for effect.
71
What is litotes?
Understatement used for rhetorical effect.
72
What is logos?
An argument that appeals to someone's sense of reason.
73
What is malapropism?
The unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one of similar sound, often with humorous results.
74
What is a metaphor?
A figure of speech that makes a direct comparison by relating one thing to another unrelated thing.
75
What is metonymy?
A figure of speech that refers to something by using a word that describes its qualities or is closely associated with it.
76
What is metre?
The regular and rhythmic arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables according to a particular pattern.
77
What is a monologue?
An extended speech uttered by one character, either to others or as if alone.
78
What is a motif?
A recurring image or idea in a piece of writing.
79
What is narrative?
The description of a series of events, usually in a novel.
80
What is an ode?
A poem, especially one that is written in praise of a particular person, thing, or event.
81
What is an omniscient narrator?
A narrator who is all-knowing about plot, characters as well as characters’ motivations and emotions.
82
What is onomatopoeia?
Words whose pronunciations imitate the sounds they describe.
83
What is an oxymoron?
A figure of speech that puts together opposite elements.
84
What is a paradox?
A statement that contradicts itself, or that must be both true and untrue at the same time.
85
What is parallelism?
Where similar ideas are arranged in phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that balance one element with another of equal importance and similar wording.
86
What is a parody?
A humorous piece of writing, drama, or music which imitates the style of a well-known person or represents a familiar situation in an exaggerated way.
87
What is pathetic fallacy?
The use of inanimate objects, most commonly the weather, to reflect human feelings and tone.
88
What is pathos?
An appeal to an audience’s emotion, often evoking pity, sadness, or tenderness.
89
What is a persona?
The narrative voice that a writer adopts for a specific piece of writing.
90
What is personification?
Giving human characteristics to an inanimate object, abstract thing or an animal.
91
What is perspective in literature?
The narrator’s point of view in a story.
92
What is plot?
The sequence of events that make up a narrative.
93
What is polysyndeton?
The overuse of the same connective (for example, using “and” in between every item in a long list).
94
What is prolepsis?
Where the order of events in a narrative is disrupted so that a future plot point is told earlier in the narrative than it actually occurs.
95
What is prose?
Written language in its ordinary form (structured in sentences and paragraphs) rather than set out as poetry.
96
What is a protagonist?
The chief character in a literary work.
97
What is a pun?
The humorous use of a word or phrase that has several meanings or that sounds like another word.
98
What is a quatrain?
A stanza of four lines.
99
What is a refrain?
A word, line, or phrase repeated in a poem.
100
What is repetition?
The intentional repeating of certain words, phrases or other literary devices in a text.
101
What is rhetoric?
Speech or writing intended to influence or persuade people.
102
What is a rhetorical question?
A question that is used for dramatic effect that does not expect an answer.
103
What is rhyme?
A word that has the same last sound as another word.
104
What is a rhyme scheme?
A poet's chosen pattern of lines whose last syllables rhyme with other lines in a poem (for example ABAB, or CDCD).
105
What is a rhyming couplet?
A pair of rhyming lines of poetry, typically of the same length, next to each other.
106
What is rhythm?
A strong pattern of sounds or words in verse or prose, determined by the relation of long and short or stressed and unstressed syllables.
107
What is rising action?
The section of the narrative that leads towards its climax.
108
What is satire?
The use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticise people’s stupidity or vices.
109
What is second person?
Using the pronouns “you”, “your” and “yours” to refer to someone.
110
What is sibilance?
Words which make a “s”, “z” or “sh” sound.
111
What is a simile?
A description that uses “like” or “as” to compare two things that are not obviously similar, but share a common quality.
112
What is a soliloquy?
A dramatic speech uttered by one character speaking aloud while alone on the stage (or while under the impression of being alone).
113
What is a sonnet?
A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter with a strict rhyme scheme.
114
What is a stanza?
One of the parts into which a poem is divided.
115
What is stream of consciousness?
A type of narration where a character’s every thought and feeling is expressed directly to the reader.
116
What is structure in literature?
The deliberate organisation of a text by an author.
117
What is a symbol?
Any image or thing that stands for something else.
118
What is symbolism?
A literary device in which a writer uses one thing to represent something more abstract.
119
What is synecdoche?
A figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa.
120
What is tautology?
The use of different words to say the same thing twice in the same statement.
121
What is a tercet?
A set or group of three lines of verse rhyming together or connected by rhyme with an adjacent triplet.
