Question | Answer |
Tone | author's attitude towards the subject |
Tragedy | broadly defined, a literary and particularly a dramatic presentation of serious actions in which the chief character has a disastrous fate. |
Comedy | A work intended to interest, involve, and amuse the reader or audience, in which no terrible disaster occurs and that ends happily for the main characters. |
Hubris | Excessive pride or self-confidence that leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law. In tragedies, hubris is a very common form of hamartia. |
Ironic Deeds | |
Unconsciously Ironic Speech | |
Dramatic Irony | |
Sophoclean Irony | |
Hamartia | "some error or frailty" that brings about misfortune for a tragic hero. The concep is closely related to that of the tragic flaw: both lead to downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy. Hamartia may be interpreted as an internal weakness in a character |
Anagnorisis | the recognition or discovery by the protagonist of the identity of some character or the nature of his own predicament, which leads to the resolution of the plot; denouement |
Recognition | The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. |
Reversal | The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. |
Peripeteia | sudden and unexpected change of fortune or reverse of circumstances |
Catharsis | describes the release of the emotions of pity and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy. |
Choragus | A sponsor or patron of a play in classical Greece. Often this sponsor was honored by serving as the leader of the chorus |
Chorus | (1) A group of singers who stand alongside or off stage from the principal performers in a dramatic or musical performance. (2) The song or refrain that this group of singers sings. |
Ode | usually a lyric poem of moderate length, with a serious subject, an elevated style, and an elaborate stanza pattern. |
Strophe | the strophe and the antistrophe were alternating stanzas sung aloud. |
Anti-Strophe | the strophe and the antistrophe were alternating stanzas sung aloud. |
Exposition | introduces the situation, characters, setting, conflict |
Rising Action | A series of events that builds from the conflict. It begins with the inciting force and ends with the climax |
Climax | The climax is the result of the crisis. It is the high point of the story for the reader. |
Falling Action | The events after the climax which close the story. |
Denouement | The resolution of the plot of a literary work. |
Catastrophe | The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play. |
Conflict | A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. |
Objective | Narrator is unnamed/unidentified (a detached observer). Does not assume character's perspective and is not a character in the story. The narrator reports on events and lets the reader supply the meaning. |
Obstacle | something that impedes progress or achievement. |
Complication | refers to the difficult circumstances that come about through the character's attempts to find solutions to his/her problem. |
In media res | The classical tradition of opening an epic not in the chronological point at which the sequence of events would start, but rather at the midway point of the story. |
Allegory | The term loosely describes any writing in verse or prose that has a double meaning. |
Diction | choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language, which combine to help create meaning. |
Syntax | The ordering of words into meaningful verbal patterns such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. Poets often manipulate syntax, changing conventional word order, to place certain emphasis on particular words. |
Connotation | Associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word, which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the associations people make with it. |
Denotation | The dictionary meaning of a word. See also connotation. |
Imagery | A word, phrase, or figure of speech (especially a simile or a metaphor) that addresses the senses, suggesting mental pictures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, or actions. |
Unreliable Narrator | An unreliable narrator is a storyteller who "misses the point" of the events or things he describes in a story, who plainly misinterprets the motives or actions of characters, or who fails to see the connections between events in the story. |
Stream of Consciousness | Writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. |
Dystopian literature | oppression and rebellion |
Metonymy | a figure of speech which substitutes one term with another that is being associated with the that term. A name transfer takes place to demonstrate an association of a whole to a part or how two things are associated in some way. |
Anaphor | Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of word groups occurring one after the other. |
Aphorism | Short, often witty statement presenting an observation or a universal truth; an adage. |
Apostrophe | Addressing an abstraction or a thing, present or absent; addressing an absent entity or person; addressing a deceased person. |
Juxtaposition | |
Climax | The climax is the result of the crisis. It is the high point of the story for the reader. |
Falling Action | The events after the climax which close the story. |
Denouement | The resolution of the plot of a literary work. |
Catastrophe | The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play. |
Conflict | A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. |
Objective | Narrator is unnamed/unidentified (a detached observer). Does not assume character's perspective and is not a character in the story. The narrator reports on events and lets the reader supply the meaning. |
Obstacle | something that impedes progress or achievement. |
Complication | refers to the difficult circumstances that come about through the character's attempts to find solutions to his/her problem. |
In media res | The classical tradition of opening an epic not in the chronological point at which the sequence of events would start, but rather at the midway point of the story. |
Allegory | The term loosely describes any writing in verse or prose that has a double meaning. |
Diction | choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language, which combine to help create meaning. |
Syntax | The ordering of words into meaningful verbal patterns such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. Poets often manipulate syntax, changing conventional word order, to place certain emphasis on particular words. |
Connotation | Associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word, which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the associations people make with it. |
Denotation | The dictionary meaning of a word. See also connotation. |
Imagery | A word, phrase, or figure of speech (especially a simile or a metaphor) that addresses the senses, suggesting mental pictures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, or actions. |
Unreliable Narrator | An unreliable narrator is a storyteller who "misses the point" of the events or things he describes in a story, who plainly misinterprets the motives or actions of characters, or who fails to see the connections between events in the story. |
Stream of Consciousness | Writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. |
Dystopian literature | oppression and rebellion |
Metonymy | a figure of speech which substitutes one term with another that is being associated with the that term. A name transfer takes place to demonstrate an association of a whole to a part or how two things are associated in some way. |
Anaphor | Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of word groups occurring one after the other. |
Aphorism | Short, often witty statement presenting an observation or a universal truth; an adage. |
Apostrophe | Addressing an abstraction or a thing, present or absent; addressing an absent entity or person; addressing a deceased person. |
Juxtaposition | The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development. |
paradox | a statement whose two parts seem contradictory yet make sense with more thought. |
Parallelism | an arrangement of the parts of a composition so that elements of equal importance are balanced in similar constructions.Parallelism is a rhetorical device. |
Mood | The climate of feeling in a literary work. The choice of setting, objects, details, images, and words all contribute towards creating a specific mood |
Synecdoche | understanding one thing with another; the use of a part for the whole, or the whole for the part. (A form of metonymy.) |
Chiasmus | two corresponding pairs arranged not in parallels (a-b-a-b) but in inverted order (a-b-b-a); from shape of the Greek letter chi |
Litotes | understatement, for intensification, by denying the contrary of the thing being affirmed |
Euphemism | substitution of an agreeable or at least non-offensive expression for one whose plainer meaning might be harsh or unpleasant |
Sarcasm | is one kind of irony; it is praise which is really an insult; sarcasm generally invovles malice, the desire to put someone down |
Buildungsroman | A bildungsroman is a novel that traces the development of a character from childhood to adulthood, through a quest for identity that leads him or her to maturity |