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AcDec Lang/Lit guide
THS AcDec Lang and Lit study guide
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Accent- | When a syllable is given a greater amount of force in speaking than is given to another, also called a stress. |
| Alexandrine- | In English verse a line of iambic hexameter, usually having a caesura after the third foot. |
| Allegory- | A narrative in either verse or pros in which characters, events, and in some cases, setting represent abstract concepts apart from the literal meaning of the story. |
| Alliteration- | A repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or within them, especially in accented syllables. |
| Allusion- | An indirect reference to a person, place, or thing-fictitious, historical, or actual |
| Analogy- | A comparison made between two objects, situations, or ideas that share something in common but are otherwise totally different. |
| Anapest- | A metrical foot consisting of 3 syllables, 2 unaccented followed by 1 accented. |
| Anaphora- | The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of several successive clauses, verses, or paragraphs. |
| Antagonist- | A character in a story or play that opposes the protagonist. |
| Apostrophe- | A figure of speech in which a character or a narrator directly addresses an abstract concept, an inanimate object, or a person who is not present. |
| Assonance- | the repetition of similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables or words; like alliteration, assonance may occur either initially or internally. |
| Ballad- | A narrative song or poem passed on orally |
| Blank Verse- | Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. |
| Caesura- | A light but definite pause within a line of poetry. |
| Catharsis- | the purification of emotions by vicarious experience, especially through drama. |
| Characterization- | The methods used by an author to develop the personality of a character in a literary work. |
| Chiasmus- | A rhetorical device in which words or phrases initially presented are restated in reverse order for example, "do not live to eat, but eat to live" |
| Chorus | An ancient Greek drama, a group of actors who sang an danced in unison and provided commentary on the actions of the main characters. |
| Cliche | A trite or hackneyed expression, idea, plot, character development, ECT. |
| Climax | A decisive moment that is of maximum intensity or is a major turning point in a plot; a point when the action changes course and begins to revolve itself in some manner. |
| Comedy | A play written primarily to amuse the audience, usually featuring a protagonist who's fortunes take a turn for the better. |
| Comic Relief | An amusing scene, incident, character, or speech introduced to a tragic work to relieve tension. |
| Conceit | An elaborate, extended, and often surprising comparison made between two very dissimilar things that exhibits the authors ingenuity and cleverness; (from the Italian concetto, meaning concept, bright idea). |
| Concrete Poem | A poem in which the visual arrangement of the letters and words suggests its meaning. |
| Conflict | A struggle between two opposing forces or characters in a short story, play, novel, or narrative poem; a conflict can be external or internal. 4 types: Person VS Person, Person VS Nature, Person VS Society, Person VS Self |
| Connotation | The emotional associations that surround a word, as opposed to its denotation. |
| Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds that are preceded by a different vowel. |
| Couplet | Two successive lines of verse that have the same meter and in many cases rhyme. |
| Dactyl | A three syllable metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. |
| Declining Action | Falling Action |
| Denouement | The resolution of a plot of a literary work; the final unraveling of the complications of a plot; the word denouement is French unknotting or untying. |
| Denotation | The literal meaning of a word-its dictionary definition that doesn't take into account any other emotions or ideas the reader may associate with it. |
| Deus Ex Machina | a Latin term meaning the god from the machine, in ancient dramas, a god would rescue the protagonist from doom. At any power event person or thing that comes in the knick of time to come to solve a difficulty. Also can refer to providential interposition. |
| Dialect | Variety of language spoken by a social group or spoken in a certain locality that defers from the standard speech in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical form. |
| Dialogue | a conversation carried on between two or more people in a literary work; dialogue can serve many purposes, including characterization, advancement of the plot, development of the theme(s) and creation of mood. |
| Diction | The author's choice of words and phrases; diction involves both connotation and denotation. |
| Didactic Poetry | Poetry whose purpose is to teach the reader some kind of lesson. |
| Dramatic Irony | A situation in which the author and the audience share knowledge by which they can recognize that the character's actions are inappropriate or that the character's words have a signifigance but these things are unknown to the character. |
| Dramatic Monologue | A lyric poem in which the speaker addresses someone whose replies are not recorded; the poet adopts the voice of a fictive or historical voice or some other persona. |
| Dramatic Situation | A situation that drives the plot of a drama that involves the dynamic relation between a character and a goal or objective and the obstacles that intervene between the character and the objective. |
| Dynamic Character | A character that changes in some way- usually for the better- during the course of the story. |
| Elegy | A lament or a sadly meditative poem, sometimes written on the occasion of death; usually formal in the language and structure and solemn or melancholy in tone. |
| End Rhyme | Rhyming of words at the ends of lines of poetry. |
| End-Stopped Line | A line of poetry that contains a complete thought, usually end with a period, colon, or semi-colon, and therefore ends in a full pause; the opposite of a run-on line. |
| English or Shakespearean Sonnet | A 14 line poem in iambic pentameter having a rhyme scheme of abab/cdcd/efef/gg; is usually presented in a 4 part structure in which a theme or idea is developed in the 1st three quatrains and then is brought to a conclusion in a couplet. |
| Enjambment | The employment of run-on lines of poetry, whereby the meaning of the statement is carried on from one line to the next without a pause. |
| EPIC!!!!!!! | A long narrative poem describing the deeds of a great hero, great adventures, and matters of national or global significance and sometimes featuring supernatural forces. |
| Epigram | A short poem that ends in a witty or ingenious turn of thought, to which the rest of the composition is intended to lead up. |
| Epigraph | a motto or quotation at the beginning of a book, poem, or chapter that usually indicates its name. |
| Epiphany | A moment of enlightenment in which the underlying truth or essential nature of something is suddenly revealed something or made clear to a character. |
| Epistolary | Associated with letters or the writing of letters; for example, an epistolary poem is a letter written in verse. |
| Eye rhyme | rhyme in which two or more words look the same and are spelled similarly but have different pronunciations, for example, "have" and "grave"; also called sight rhyme. |
| Exposition | In fiction, the narrative passages that establish the basic details of the story, including setting, time, and characters; in drama, scenes that introduce the main characters and introduce the dramatic situation. |
| Exposition; | In some cases, the exposition will provide the audience with info on events that occurred prior to the point in time at which the work begins. |
| Falling Action | In a narrative, action that occurs after the climax and directly before the denouement or the resolution of the plot. |
| Farce | A highly comic, lighthearted drama, usually involving stack situations and characters and based on a far-fetched humorous situation. |
| Feminine Ending | An unaccented syllable at the end of line of poetry. |
| Feminine Rhyme | A rhyme in which the similarity of sound is in both of the last two syllables; for example,"weary" and "dreary". |
| Figurative Language | Language used in a non-literal way; figurative language uses figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, synecdoche, etc. |
| Figure Of Speech | An expression in which words are used in a non-literal way to achieve an effect beyond the range of ordinary language. |
| Flashback | An interruption in the continuity of a story by the betrayal of some earlier episode. |
| Flat Character | A character that a single distinguishing trait and has not developed into a whole personality. |
| Foil | a person or thing that highlights the traits of a character by contrast. |
| Foot | A division of verse consisting of a number of syllables, one of which that has the principal stress; the basic unit of meter in poetry. |
| Foreshadowing | The use of hints or clues that suggest what will happen later in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem |
| Framed Story | A narrative device whereby a story or group of stories is presented (often told by one of the characters) within the framework of a larger narrative; Chaucer's the Canterbury Tales is an example of a framed story. |
| Free Verse | Poetry that does not have a fixed meter of rhyme scheme. |
| Haiku | A Japanese poetic form that is comprised of three unrhymed of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. |
| Half-Rhyme | Slant Rhyme. |
| Hero/Heroine | The central character in a work of fiction. |
| Heroic Couplet | Two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter. |
| High | |
| Framed Story | A narrative device whereby a story or group of stories is presented (often told by one of the characters) within the framework of a larger narrative; Chaucer's the Canterbury Tales is an example of a framed story. |
| Free Verse | Poetry that does not have a fixed meter of rhyme scheme. |
| Haiku | A Japanese poetic form that is comprised of three unrhymed of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. |
| Half-Rhyme | Slant Rhyme. |
| Hero/Heroine | The central character in a work of fiction. |
| Heroic Couplet | Two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter. |
| High Comedy | A comedy that appeals to the intellect using verbal wit, a clever plot, and visual elegance, usually having upper class characters. |
| Hyperbole | A figure of speech in which exaggeration or overstatement is used for special effect. |
| Iamb | A metrical foot consisting of two syllables, the first unaccented, the second accented. |
| Iambic Pentameter | Poetry consisting of a line of five iambs;the most common verse line in English poetry;a meter especially familiar because it occurs in all blank verse, heroic couplets, and sonnets. |
| Imagery | The details in a work of literature that appeal to the senses of the reader, lend the work vividness, and tend to arouse an emotional response in the reader. |
| In Medias Res | A Latin phrase meaning "in the middle of things", used in reference to narratives that begin in the middle of the action. |
| Internal Rhyme | Rhyme that occurs within a line of poetry. |
| Irony | The contrast between what appears to be and reality; see dramatic irony, situational irony, and verbal irony. |
| Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet | A 14 line poem in two parts, an initial octet(eight lines) followed by a sestet( six lines), usually having a rhyme scheme of abbaabba/cdecde; the octet and sestet are usually played off of one another in some way. |
| Limerick | A five line comic verse form with a rhyme scheme of aabba, with the first, second, and fifth lines in tri-meter and the third and fourth in dimeter. |
| Litotes | A type of understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negation of its opposite; for example," this is no small problem". |
| Low Comedy |
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