Tri 1 Final

Question 1

Literally, ‘attempt’-any short piece of nonfiction prose that makes specific points and statements about a limited topic.

Answer 1

Essay

Question 2

A work that takes place in a world that does not exist.

Answer 2

Fantasy

Question 3

A phrase so overused that it has lost its original punch (for example, ‘beating a dead horse’).

Answer 3

Cliché

Question 4

A portion of a narrative or dramatic work that establishes the tone, setting, and basic situation.

Answer 4

Exposition

Question 5

The fallacy of wrongly evaluating a literary work by emphasizing only its emotional impact.

Answer 5

Affective fallacy

Question 6

A narrative whose characters, symbols, and situations represent elements outside the text. For example, the character “Christian” in the allegory Pilgrim’s Progress represents the Everyman who is a Christian.

Answer 6

Allegory

Question 7

A metaphor extended to great lengths in a poem or literary work (for example, ‘the Flea’).

Answer 7

Conceit

Question 8

A debate or conversation among characters—e.g., Tom and Gatsby.

Answer 8

Colloquy

Question 9

A concrete expression of something perceived by the senses, using simile, metaphor, and figurative language.

Answer 9

Image/Imagism

Question 10

Literally, ‘God from a machine’-the improbable intervention of an outside force that arbitrarily resolves a conflict.

Answer 10

Deus ex machina

Question 11

A protagonist in a modern literary work who has none of the noble qualities associated with a traditional hero.

Answer 11

Antihero

Question 12

A type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.

Answer 12

Bildungsroman

Question 13

A struggle among opposing forces or characters in fiction, poetry, or drama.

Answer 13

Conflict

Question 14

A short tale that presents a specific moral and whose characters are often animals.

Answer 14

Fable

Question 15

An implicit comparison of an object or feeling with another unlike it—e.g., ‘under a blood red sky.’

Answer 15

Metaphor

Question 16

A person or thing that contrasts with and so emphasizes and enhances the qualities of another.

Answer 16

Foil

Question 17

A part of a plot in which the conflict among the characters or forces is engaged.

Answer 17

Complication

Question 18

A term used in speech but not acceptable in formal writing.

Answer 18

Colloquialism

Question 19

A false belief or perception.

Answer 19

Illusion

Question 20

In a plot, an indication of something yet to happen.

Answer 20

Foreshadowing

Question 21

A term used to describe writing that is strikingly different from the dominant writing of the age-in its form, style, content, and attitude.

Answer 21

Avant Garde

Question 22

A term used to describe the effect of words of a character in a play or novel that have more significance than they appear to have.

Answer 22

Dramatic irony

Question 23

An image or character representative of some greater, more common element that recurs constantly and variously in literature.

Answer 23

Archetype

Question 24

A closing section of some literary works, occurring after the main action has been resolved.

Answer 24

Coda

Question 25

A comparison of two different things on the basis of their similarity.

Answer 25

Analogy

Question 26

Implications of words or sentences, beyond their literal, or denotative, meanings.

Answer 26

Connotation

Question 27

The central character of a literary work; he or she often has great virtues and faults, and his or her trials and successes form the main action of the plot.

Answer 27

Hero/Heroine

Question 28

A literary device in which an author uses words with more than one meaning, deliberately leaves the reader uncertain.

Answer 28

Ambiguity

Question 29

Deliberately overstated, exaggerated figurative language, used either for comic or great emotional effect.

Answer 29

Hyperbole

Question 30

A short inscription at the start of a literary work.

Answer 30

Epigraph

Question 31

A word or phrase substituting indirect for direct statement (for example, 'passed away' in place of 'died').

Answer 31

Euphemism

Question 32

Language that deliberately departs from everyday phrasing, with dramatic and imagistic effects that move the reader into a fresh mode of perception.

Answer 32

Figurative language

Question 33

The use of words; word choice that is accurate and appropriate to the subject.

Answer 33

Diction

Question 34

A descriptive word or phrase pointing out a specific quality-as when Shakespeare is referred to as 'the Bard.' This term can be used ironically to describe terms of contempt.

Answer 34

Epithet

Question 35

An effect associated with statements or situations in which something said or done is at odds with how things truly are.

Answer 35

Irony

Question 36

Literal meaning of a word or sentences.

Answer 36

Denotation

Question 37

A direct, emotional address to an absent character or quality, as if it were present.

Answer 37

Apostrophe

Question 38

A competitor or opponent of the main character (protagonist) in a work of literature.

Answer 38

Antagonist

Question 39

A sharp, witty saying, such as Oscar Wilde's 'I can resist everything but temptation.'

Answer 39

Epigram

Question 40

Conversation between two people in fiction, drama, or poetry.

Answer 40

Dialogue

Question 41

A contemporary form of fiction in which an author makes process of writing fiction part of his or her subject.

Answer 41

Metafiction

Question 42

The final action of a plot, in which the conflict is resolved; the outcome.

Answer 42

Denouement

Question 43

A point at which the events in a play or story reach their crisis, where the maximum emotional reaction of the reader is created. This might also be the turning point in which an important decision is made.

Answer 43

Climax

Question 44

A person created by an author for use in a work of fiction, poetry, or drama.

Answer 44

Character

Question 45

A concluding portion of a literary work, occurring after the main action has been completed.

Answer 45

Epilogue

Question 46

An indirect reference to some literary or historical figure or event. For example, the line in T.S. Eliot's Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 'No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,' is an allusion.

Answer 46

Allusion

Question 47

A distinct kind of writing, such as mystery, gothic, farce, or black comedy.

Answer 47

Genre

Question 48

Novels, often historical, in which weird, grotesque activity takes place; Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is an example of gothic fiction.

Answer 48

Gothic fiction

Question 49

The fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect; e.g., the juxtaposition of these two images reveals a startling insight.

Answer 49

Juxtaposition

Question 50

Ironical, deliberately understated figurative language, used either for comic or great emotional effect.

Answer 50

Litotes

Question 51

A summary of the main points of a plot.

Answer 51

Synopsis

Question 52

Ancient stories of unknown origin involving the supernatural: myths have provided cultures and writers with interpretations of the world's events.

Answer 52

Myth

Question 53

A powerful literary movement beginning in the late eighteenth century; it shook off classical forms and attitudes, embracing instead the power, promise, and political dignity of the imaginative individual.

Answer 53

Romanticism

Question 54

Fantasy in which scientific facts and advances fuel the plot.

Answer 54

Science fiction

Question 55

Widely believed and oversimplified attitudes toward a person, an issue, and so on.

Answer 55

Stereotype

Question 56

A statement that seems contradictory but actually points out a truth (for example, Wordsworth's 'The Child is the father of the Man').

Answer 56

Paradox

Question 57

The background of a literary work-the time, the place, the era, the geography, and the overall culture.

Answer 57

Setting

Question 58

The angle from which a writer tells a story. Point of view can either be omniscient, limited, or through the eyes of one or more characters.

Answer 58

Point of view

Question 59

A distinctive feature or prominent idea in an artistic or literary composition. Example: His latest novel has a nautical motif

Answer 59

Motif

Question 60

A story that consists of an account of a sequence of events.

Answer 60

Narrative

Question 61

The emotional tone or outlook an author brings to a subject.

Answer 61

Mood / Atmosphere

Question 62

A figure of speech in which an object or person is not mentioned directly but suggested by an object associated with it, as when a reference to 'the white house' means 'the president.'

Answer 62

Metonymy

Question 63

The expression of a writer's attitudes toward a subject; the mood the author has chosen for a piece

Answer 63

Tone

Question 64

The arrangement of words to form sentences.

Answer 64

Syntax

Question 65

An approach to writing that emphasizes recording everyday experience.

Answer 65

Realism

Question 66

A comparison of two things via the word 'like' or 'as.'

Answer 66

Simile

Question 67

A statement putting forth a great truth (e.g., the biblical proverb 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider his ways and be wise').

Answer 67

Proverb

Question 68

The discrepancy between things as they are stated and as they really are.

Answer 68

Verbal irony

Question 69

Narrative or linguistic devices that keep literary works moving and interesting

Answer 69

Pacing

Question 70

The person, place, idea, situation, or thing with which some piece of literature most immediately concerns itself.

Answer 70

Subject

Question 71

Significant communication, especially in dialogue, that gives motivation for the words being said.

Answer 71

Subtext

Question 72

A literary strategy giving nonhuman things human characteristics or attitudes, as in Aesop's fables or Keat's poem 'To Autumn.'

Answer 72

Personification

Question 73

Those literary qualities that leave a reader breathlessly awaiting further developments with no clear idea of what those developments will be.

Answer 73

Suspense

Question 74

The study and practice of language in action-presenting ideas and opinions in the most effective way.

Answer 74

Rhetoric

Question 75

The property of writing that gives form, expression, and individuality to the content.

Answer 75

Style

Question 76

Originally a word that meant 'intelligence,' 'wit' now refers to a facility for quick, deft writing that usually employs humor to make its point.

Answer 76

Wit

Question 77

A literary work using wit, irony, anger, and parody to criticize human foibles and social institutions.

Answer 77

Satire

Question 78

A speaker or implied speaker of a work of fiction who can tell the story, shift into the minds of one or more characters, be in various places, and comment on the meaning of what is happening in the story

Answer 78

Omniscient narrator

Question 79

A short novel or tale.

Answer 79

Novella

Question 80

A kind of metaphor in which the mention of a part stands for the whole (for example, 'head' refers not only to the heads of cattle but to each animal as a whole).

Answer 80

Synecdoche

Question 81

A literary work that deliberately makes fun of another literary work or of a social situation.

Answer 81

Parody

Question 82

The main idea of a literary work created by its treatment of its immediate subject.

Answer 82

Theme

Question 83

Any form of writing that does not have the rhythmic patterns of metrical verse or free verse. Good prose is characterized by tightness, specificity, and a sense of style.

Answer 83

Prose

Question 84

The mask through which a writer gives expression to his or her own feelings or participates in the action of a story, poem, or play.

Answer 84

Persona

Question 85

The action of repeating words and phrases that have already been said or written for emphasis or literary effect.

Answer 85

Repetition

Question 86

Art that values and expresses the unconscious imagination by altering what is commonly seen as reality.

Answer 86

Surrealism

Question 87

The contrast between what a character wants and what he or she receives, arising not from the character's faults but from other circumstances

Answer 87

Situational irony

Question 88

A story illustrating a moral, in which every detail parallels the moral situation.

Answer 88

Parable

Question 89

The leading character; the protagonist engages the main concern of readers or audience.

Answer 89

Protagonist

Question 90

Writing that attempts to imitate and follow a character's thought process.

Answer 90

Stream of consciousness

Question 91

Any work of fiction that takes place in an extravagant world remote from everyday life.

Answer 91

Romance

Question 92

A brief fictional narrative.

Answer 92

Short story

Question 93

A long fictional narrative that represents human events, characters, and actions.

Answer 93

Novel

Question 94

Literature in which the author attempts to present the world in a realistic and often harsh and hopeless way.

Answer 94

Naturalism

Question 95

The sequence of events in a story, poem, or play; the events build upon each other toward a convincing conclusion.

Answer 95

Plot

Question 96

Something that represents something else, the way a flag represents a country or a rose may stand for love-implying not only another physical thing but an associated meaning.

Answer 96

Symbol

Question 97

The dramatic action occurring after the climax of a play, before the events themselves are played out.

Answer 97

Resolution