Friday, February 20, 2015

Lit Terms VI

Simile:  a figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific word of comparison.

Soliloquy: an extended speech, usually in a drama, delivered by a character alone on stage.

Spiritual: a folk song, usually on a religious theme.

Speaker: a narrator, the one speaking.

Stereotype: cliché; a simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story.

Stream of Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images, as the character experiences them.

Structure: the planned framework of a literary selection; its apparent organization.

Style:  the manner of putting thoughts into words; a characteristic way of writing or speaking.

Subordination: the couching of less important ideas in less important  structures of language.

Surrealism: a style in literature and painting that stresses the subconscious or the nonrational aspects of man’s existence characterized by the juxtaposition of the bizarre and the banal.

Suspension of Disbelief: suspend not believing in order to enjoy it.

Symbol: something which stands for something else, yet has a meaning of its own.

Synesthesia: the use of one sense to convey the experience of another sense.

Synecdoche: another form of name changing, in which a part stands for the whole.

Syntax: the arrangement and grammatical relations of words in a sentence.

Theme:  main idea of the story; its message(s).

Thesis: a proposition for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved
or disproved; the main idea.

Tone: the devices used to create the mood and atmosphere of a literary work; the         
author’s perceived point of view.

Tongue in Cheek: a type of humor in which the speaker feigns seriousness; a.k.a. “dry” or “dead pan”

Tragedy: in literature: any composition with a somber theme carried to a disastrous conclusion; a fatal event; protagonist usually is heroic but tragically (fatally) flawed

Understatement: opposite of hyperbole; saying less than you mean for emphasis

Vernacular: everyday speech

Voice:  The textual features, such as diction and sentence structures, that convey a writer’s or speaker’s pesona.

Zeitgeist: the feeling of a particular era in history

Monday, February 9, 2015

Lit Terms IV

interior monologue - exhibits the thoughts passing through the minds of the protagonists
inversion -  the normal order of words is reversed in order to achieve a particular effect of emphasis or meter
juxtaposition - the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect
lyric - expressing the writer’s emotions, usually briefly and in stanzas or recognized forms.
magic(al) realism - incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction
metaphor (extended, controlling, & mixed)
Extended -  comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem
Controlling - metaphor that dominates or organizes an entire poem
Mixed - the use in the same expression of two or more metaphors that are incongruous or illogical when combined,
metonymy - a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated
modernism - literary movement prominent after WWI
monologue - a long speech given by a character
mood - what an audience perceives in emotion from a literary work
motif - idea that is constantly presented throughout a work
myth - a traditional story that includes supernatural beings or events
narrative - a report of related events presented to the listeners or readers in words arranged in a logical sequence
narrator - the subject who narrates the story
naturalism - literary movement of extreme realism, it sought to depict everyday reality
novelette/novella - A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel
omniscient point of view - A narrator who knows everything about all the characters
onomatopoeia - the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named
oxymoron - a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction
pacing - the rhythm and speed in which the story is told by the author
parable - a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson
paradox - a statement that apparently contradicts itself but is often true