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ELE
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Ad Misericordiam | an appeal to the audience's sympathy; an attempt to persuade another, using a hard luck storry instead of logic or reason |
| alliteration | the repetition of accented consonant sounds at the beginning of words close toghet, to create an effect, rhythm, or emphasis |
| allusion | a reference in literature or art to previous literature, history, etx. to illustrate a meaning |
| ambiguity | the quality of beign unclear; events or situation that are ambiguous can be interpreted in more than one way |
| anachronism | an element in a story that is out of its time fraem; sometiems used to reate a humorous or jarring effect |
| analogy | an analogy clarifies or explain an unfamiliar concept or object, by comparing it wiht one which is familiar; it usually explains the abstract in terms fo the concrete |
| Analysis: | The process of examining the components of a literary work. |
| Anecdote: | A short and often personal story used to emphasize a point, to develop a character or theme, or to inject humor. |
| Antagonist: | A character who (or occasionally which) functions as a resisting force to the goals of the protagonist. |
| Anticlimax: | An often disappointing, sudden end to an intense situation. |
| Antihero: | A protagonist who carries the action of the literary piece but does not embody the classic characteristics of courage, strength, and nobility. |
| Antithesis: | A concept that is directly opposed to a previously presented idea. |
| Aphorism: | A terse statement that expresses a general truth or moral principle; sometimes considered a folk proverb. |
| Apostrophe: | A rhetorical (not expecting an answer) figure of direct address to a person, object, or abstract entity. |
| Apotheosis: | Elevating someone to the level of a god. |
| Archetype: | A character, situation, or symbol that is familiar to people from all cultures because it occurs frequently in literature, myth, religion, or folklore. |
| Aside: | A short speech or remark made by an actor to the audience rather than to the other characters, who do not hear him or her. |
| Assonance: | The repetition of a vowel sound in poetry or prose. |
| Blank Verse: | Unrhymed poetry of iambic pentameter (five feet of two syllables each – unstressed and stressed). |
| Cacophony: | Harsh, discordant sounds, unpleasant to the ear. |
| Carpe Diem: | Latin for “seize the day”; frequent in 16th and 17th-century court poetry, expressing the idea that one only goes around once. |
| Catharsis: | The emotional cleansing or feeling of relief that (as Aristotle wrote in his Poetics), usually comes at the end of a tragedy, after the pity and fear of the audience has been aroused. |
| Colloquial: | Slang or regional dialect, used in familiar everyday conversation; in writing, it refers to an informal style that reflects the way people spoke in a distinct time and place. |
| Comic Relief: | Humor that provides a release of tension and breaks up a more serious episode. |
| Conceit: | A far-fetched comparison between two seemingly unlike things; an extended metaphor that gains appeal from its unusual or extraordinary comparison. |
| Connotation: | The associations that a word calls to mind, vs. its literal definition (denotation). |
| Consonance: | The same consonant sound in words with different vowel sounds. |
| Conventional character: | A character with traits that the audience member would find expected or traditional. |
| Couplet: | Two successive rhyming lines of the same number of syllables, with the same cadence. |
| Denotation: | The dictionary or literal meaning of a word or phrase. |
| Denouement: | The outcome or clarification at the end of a story; the winding down from climax to ending. |
| Deus ex Machina: | Literally, when the gods intervene at the story’s end to resolve a seemingly impossible conflict. |
| Diction: | The deliberate choice of a style of language for a desired effect or tone (formal or informal). |
| Didactic: | A didactic story, speech, essay, or play is one in which the primary purpose is to instruct, teach, or moralize. |
| Distortion: | A stretching of the truth to achieve a distorted effect. |
| Enjambment: | In poetry, the running over of a sentence from one verse or stanza into the next. |
| Epigram: | A short, clever poem with a witty turn of thought. |
| Epigraph: | A brief quotation found at the beginning of a literary work, reflective of a theme. |
| Epiphany: | A sudden flash of insight; a startling discovery and/or appearance; a dramatic realization. |
| Epistolary Novel: | A novel in letter form written by one or more of the characters. |
| Euphemism: | The substitution of an inoffensive word or phrase for one that would be harsh or embarrassing. |
| Euphony: | The quality of a pleasant or harmonious sound of a word or group of words as an intended effect. |
| Farce: | A comedy that depends on exaggerated or improbable situations, physical disasters, and sexual innuendo to amuse the audience. |
| Figurative Language: | Unlike literal language, figurative language uses figures of speech (such as metaphor, simile, personification & hyperbole) to appeal to the senses. |
| First Person: | A character in the story who tells the story, using the pronoun “I.” |
| Flashback: | The interruption of a narrative by the introduction of an earlier event or by an image of a past experience. |
| Flat Character: | A simple, one-dimensional character who remains the same throughout the work. |
| Foil: | A character whose contrasting personal characteristics contrast with (and draw attention to) those of the protagonist. |
| Foreshadowing: | Hints dropped by an author about what is to come, usually in an indirect, subtle manner. |
| Free Verse: | Poetry that does not have a regular rhythm or rhyme. |
| Genre: | The category into which a piece of writing can be classified – poetry, prose, drama, each with its own conventions and standards. |
| Heroic Couplet: | In poetry, a rhymed couplet written in iambic pentameter. (five feet, each with one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). |
| Hubris: | Insolence, arrogance, or pride. In Greek tragedy, the usual tragic flaw that leads to the downfall of the protagonist. |
| Hyperbole: | An extreme exaggeration used for literary (as opposed to literal) effect. |
| Iambic Pentameter: | A five-foot poetic line made up of an unaccented followed by an accented syllable. |
| Inference: | A reasonable conclusion drawn by a reader, based upon writer clues. |
| Imagery: | A literary / poetic moment that appeals to the reader’s senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and/or smell. |
| Implication: | The method by which an author hints at a particular subject or idea. (Writers imply; readers infer.) |
| In Medias Res: | In literature, a work that begins in the middle of a story. |
| Interior Monologue: | A literary technique used in poetry and prose to reveal a character’s unspoken thoughts and feelings. |
| Internal Rhyme: | A rhyme that is within a line, rather than at the end. |
| Inversion: | A switch in the normal word order, often used for emphasis or for rhyme scheme. |
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