Literary and Rhetorical terms
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| aphorism | a short often witty statement of a principle or a truth about life
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| apostrophe | (usually in poetry but sometimes in prose) the device of calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person or to a place, thing, or personified abstraction
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| argumentation | writing that attempts to prove the validity of a point of view or an idea by presenting reasoned arguments (persuasive writing is a form of argumentation)
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| assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds (such as neigh/fade)
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| authority | support for an argument that is based on recognized experts in the field
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| burlesque | broad parody; whereas a parody will imitate and exaggerate a specific work, such as Romeo and Juliet, a burlesque will take an entire style or form, such as myths, and exaggerate it into ridiculousness
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| cacophony | hars, awkward, or dissonant sounds used deliberately in poetry or prose; the opposite of euphony
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| caricature | descriptive writing that greatly exaggerates a specific feature of a person's appearance or a facet of personality
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| classicism | the principles & styles admired in the classics of Greek and Roman literature, such as objectivity, sensibility, restraint, and formality
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| coherence | quality of a piece of writing in which all the parts contribute to the development of the central idea, theme or organizing principle
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| colloquialism | a word/phrase used in everday conversation and informal writing but that is often inapporpriate in formal writing
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| conceit | an elaborate figure of speech in which two seemingly dissimilar tthings/situation are compared
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| connotation | implied or suggested meaning of a word because of its association in the reader's mind
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| consonance | the repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after different vowel sounds, as in boost/best (it can also be seen within several compound words, such as fulfil and ping-pong)
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| conundrum | a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun; it may also be a paradox or difficult problem
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| denotation | literal meaning of a word as defined
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| description | the picturing in words of something or someone through detailed observation of color, motion, sound, taste, smell, and touch (one of the 4 MODES OF DISCOURSE)
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| diction | word choice, an element of style (also called SYNTAX)
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| discourse | spoken or written language, including literary works; the 4 traditionally classified Modes of Discourse are 1)description 2)exposition 3)narration 4)persuasion
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| dissonance | harsh or grating sounds that do not go together
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| epigram | a concise, witty saying in poetry or prose that either stands alone or is part of a larger work (it may also refer to a short poem of this type)
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| euphony | a succession of harmonious sounds used in poetry or prose (the opposite of cacophony)
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| exemplum | a brief tale used in medieval times to illustrate a sermon or to teach a lesson
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| exposition | the immediate revelation to the audience of the setting and other background info. neccessary for understanding the plot (also, explanation; one of the 4 MODES OF DISCOURSE)
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| figurative language | language that contains FIGURES OF SPEECH, such as similies and metaphors, in order to create associations that are imaginative rather than literal
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| figures of speech | expressions such as similes, metahpors, and personifications, that make imaginative, rather an literal, comparisons or associations
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| folklore | traditional stories, songs, dances, and customs that are preserved among a people (folklore usually precedes literature, being passed down orally from generation to generation until recorded by scholars
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| foreshadowing | the use of a hint or clue to suggest a larger event that occurs later in the work
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| genre | a type of literary work, such as a novel or poem (there are also subgenres, such as science fiction or sonnent, within the larger genres
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| hubris | the excessive pride or ambition that leads a tragic hero to disregard wanings of impending doom, eventually causing his/her downfall
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| humor | antying that causes laughter or amusement (up until the end of the Renaissance, humor meant that a person's temperament
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| hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration in order to create humor or emphasis
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| idyll | ashort descriptive narrative, usually a poem, about an idealized country life (also called a PASTORAL)
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| imagery | words or phrases that use a collection of images to appeal to one or more of the five senses in order to create a mental picture
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| interior monologue | writing that records the conversation that occurs inside a character's head
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| inversion (effectively) | reversing the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase; it is used effectively in many cases, such as posing a question: "Are you going to the store?"
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| inversion (ineffectively) | often it is used ineffectively in poetry, making it sound artificial and stilted: "to the hounds she rode, with her flags behind her streaming"
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| irony | a situation or statement in which the actual outome or meaning is opposite to what was expected
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| lose sentence | a sentence that is complete before its end such as "Thuy played the violin with excitement"
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| metaphor | a FIGURE OF SPEECH in which one thing is reffered to as another; for ex, "my love is a fragile flower"
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| metonymy | a FIGURE OF SPEECH that uses the name of an object, person, or idea to represent something with which it is associated, such as using "the crown" to refere to a monarch
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| mode | the method or form of a literary work; the manner in which a work of literature is written
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| mood | similar to tone, mood is the primary emotional attitude of a work
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| motif | main theme or subject of a work that is elbaorated on in the development of the piece; a repeated pattern or idea
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| myth | one story in a system of narratives set in a complete imaginary world that once served to explain the origin of life. religious beliefs and the forces of nature as supernatural occurences
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| narration | the telling of a story in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama; one of the four MODES OF DISCOURSE
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| naturalism | a literary movement that grew out of realism ini France, the US, & England. It portrays humans as having no free will, being driven by the natural forces of heredity, environment, and animalistic urges over which they have no control
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| objectivity | an impersonal presentation of events and characters
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| onomatopoeia | the use of words that sound like what they mean such as hiss and boom
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| oxymoron | a FIGURE OF SPEECH composed of contradictory words or phrases, such as "wise fool"
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| parable | a short tale that reaches a moral; similar to but shorter than an allegory
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| paradox | a statement that seems to contradict itself but that turns out to have a rational meaning, as in this quotation from Hengry David Thoreau: "I never found the companion that was so companionable as soltitude."
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| parallelism | the technique of arranging words, phrases, clauses, or larger structures by placing them side by side and making them similar in form
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| parody | a work that ridicules the style of another work by imitating and exaggerating its elements
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| periodic sentence | a sentence that is not complete until its last phrase such as, "Despite Glenn's hatred of his sister's laziness and nosity heating habits, he still cared for her."
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| persona | a fictional voice that a writer adopts to tell a story, determined by subject matter and audience; eg. Mark Twain
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| personficiation | the attribution of human qualities to a nonhuman or an inanimate object
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| persuasion | a form of argumentation, one of the four MODES OF DISCOURSE; language intended to convence through appeals to reason or emotion
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| point of view | the perspective from which a story is presented
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| first person narrator | a narrator, referred to as "I," who is a character in the story and relates athe actions through his own perspective, also revealing his own thoughts
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| stream of consciousness narrator | like a first-person narrator, but instead of placing the reader inside the character's head, making the reader privy to the continous, chaotic flow of disconnected, half-formed thoughts and impressions in the character's mind
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| omniscient narrator | a third-person narrator, reffered to as "he," "she," or "they," who is able to see into each character's mind and understands all the action
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| limited omniscient narrator | a third-person narrator who reports the thoughts of only one chracter and generally only what that one character sees
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| objective narrator | a thrid-person narrator who only reports what would be visible to a camera; thoughts anf eelings are only revealed if a character speaks of them
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| protagonist | the main character of a literary work
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| realism | a 19 century literary movement in Europe & the US that stressed accuracy in the portrayal of life, focusing on characters with whom middle-class readers could easily identify; it is in direct contrast with romanticism
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| regionalism | an element in literature that conveys a realistic portrayal of a specific geographical locale, using the local and its influences as a major part of the plot
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| rhetoric | the art of using language effectively
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| What does rhetoric involve? | 1)writer's purpose 2)his consideration of the audience 3)the exploration of subject 4)arrangement & organization of the ideas, 5)style & tone of expression 6)form
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| rhetorical modes | exposition, description, narration, argumentation
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| When did the romanticism movement began? | a literary, artistic, & philosophical movement that began in 18 century as a reaction to neoclassicism
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| What are the focal points of the romanticism movement? | imagination, emotion, freedom, stressing subjectivity, individuality, the love and worship of nature, & a fascination with the past
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| sarcasm | harsh, caustic personal remarks to or about someone; less subtle than irony
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| simile | a FIGURE OF SPEECH that uses like, as, or as if to make a direct comparison between tow different objects, actions, or qualities; for ex: "the sky looked like an artist's canvas"
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| speaker | the voice of a work; an author may speak as himself or as a fictitious persona
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| stereotype | a character who represents a trait that is regarded to a social or racial group and who lacks individuality
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| style | an author's characteristics manner of expression
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| subjectivity | a personal presentation of events and characters, influenced by the author's feelings and opinions
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| suspension of disbelief | the demand made that the reader accept the incidents recounted in the literary work
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| symbolism | the use of symbols or anything that is meant to be taken both literally and as representative of a higher and more complex significance
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| synecdoche | a FIGURE OF SPEECH in which a part of something is used to represent a whole, such as using "wheels" to mean a car
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| syntax | word choice of diction
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| theme | the central idea of "message" of a literary work
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| tone | the characteristic emotion or attitude of an author toward the characters, subject, and audience
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| unity | quality of a piece of writing (see COHERENCE)
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| voice | the way a written work conveys an author's attitude
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