Lit terms 51-110

Flashback: a narrative device that flashes back to prior events.

Foil: a person or thing that, by contrast, makes another seem better or more prominent.

Folk Tale: story passed on by word of mouth.

Foreshadowing: in fiction and drama, a device to prepare the reader for the outcome of the action; “planning” to make the outcome convincing, though not to give it away.

Free Verse: verse without conventional metrical pattern, with irregular pattern or no rhyme.

Genre: a category or class of artistic endeavor having a particular form, technique, or content.

Gothic Tale: a style in literature characterized by gloomy settings, violent or grotesque action, and a mood of decay, degeneration, and decadence.

Hyperbole: an exaggerated statement often used as a figure of speech or to prove a point.

Imagery: figures of speech or vivid description, conveying images through any of the senses.

Implication: a meaning or understanding that is to be arrive at by the reader but that is not fully and explicitly stated by the author.

Incongruity: the deliberate joining of opposites or of elements that are not appropriate to each other.

Inference: a judgement or conclusion based on evidence presented; the forming of an opinion which possesses some degree of probability according to facts already available.

Irony: a contrast or incongruity between what is said and what is meant, or what is expected to happen and what actually happens, or what is thought to be happening and what is actually happening.

Interior Monologue: a form of writing which represents the inner thoughts of a character; the recording of the internal, emotional experience(s) of an individual; generally the reader is given the impression of overhearing the interior monologue.

Inversion: words out of order for emphasis.

Juxtaposition: the intentional placement of a word, phrase, sentences of paragraph to contrast with another nearby.

Lyric: a poem having musical form and quality; a short outburst of the author’s innermost thoughts and feelings.

Magic(al) Realism:  a genre developed in Latin America which juxtaposes the everyday  with the marvelous or magical.

Metaphor(extended, controlling, and mixed): an analogy that compare two different

things imaginatively.

Extended: a metaphor that is extended or developed as far as the writer

wants to take it.

Controlling: a metaphor that runs throughout the piece of work.

Mixed: a metaphor that ineffectively blends two or more analogies.

Metonymy:  literally “name changing” a device of figurative language in which the name of an attribute or associated thing is substituted for the usual name of a thing.

Mode of Discourse:  argument (persuasion), narration, description, and exposition.

Modernism:  literary movement characterized by stylistic experimentation, rejection of tradition, interest in symbolism and psycholog

Monologue:  an extended speech by a character in a play, short story, novel, or narrative poem

Mood:  the predominating atmosphere evoked by a literary piece.

Motif:  a recurring feature (name, image, or phrase) in a piece of literature.

Myth:  a story, often about immortals, and sometimes connected with religious rituals, that attempts to give meaning to the mysteries of the world.

Narrative:  a story or description of events.

Narrator:  one who narrates, or tells, a story.

Naturalism: extreme form of realism.

Novelette/Novella: short story; short prose narrative, often satirical.

Omniscient Point of View:  knowing all things, usually the third person

Onomatopoeia: use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its

meaning.

Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which two contradicting words or phrases are combined to produce a rhetorical effect by means of a concise paradox

Pacing:  rate of movement; tempo

Parable:  a story designed to convey some religious principle, moral lesson, or general truth.

Paradox:  a statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really containing a possible truth; an opinion contrary to generally accepted ideas.

Parallelism: the principle in sentence structure that states elements of equal function should have equal form.

Parody:  an imitation of mimicking of a composition or of the style of a well-known artist.

Pathos:  the ability in literature to call forth feelings of pity, compassion, and/or sadness.

Pedantry: a display of learning for its own sake.

Personification: a figure of speech attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or  abstract ideas.

Plot: a plan or scheme to accomplish a purpose

Poignant:  eliciting sorrow or sentiment.

Point of View: the attitude unifying any oral or written argumentation; in description, the physical point from which the observer views what he is describing.

Postmodernism: literature characterized by experimentation, irony, nontraditional forms, multiple meanings, playfulness and a blurred boundary between real and imaginary.

Prose:  the ordinary form of spoken and written language; language that does not have a regular rhyme pattern.

Protagonist: the central character in a work of fiction; opposes antagonist.

Pun:  play on words; the humorous use of a word emphasizing different meanings or applications.

Purpose: the intended result wished by an author.

Realism:  writing about the ordinary aspects of life in a straightfoward manner to reflect life as it actually is.

Refrain:  a phrase or verse recurring at intervals in a poem or song; chorus.

Requiem:  any chant, dirge, hymn, or musical service for the dead.

 Resolution: point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out; denouement.

Restatement: idea repeated for emphasis.

Rhetoric: use of language, both written and verbal in order to persuade.

Rhetorical Question: question suggesting its own answer or not requiring an answer; used in argument or persuasion.

Romanticism:  movement in western culture beginning in the eighteenth and peaking in the nineteenth century as a revolt against Classicism; imagination was valued over reason and fact.

 Satire:  ridicules or condemns the weakness and wrong doings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general.

Scansion: the analysis of verse in terms of meter.

Setting: the time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur

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

Lit Anal #5

1. The Color Purple is a novel about an African American woman named Cecil who struggles throughout life. She had to take the part f her mother when she passed away, and during that time her father rapped. She had two children which she never met. Soon after that she is forced to marry another man who already has children. The children as well as her husband are cruel to her and do not respect her. After a couple of years she adjusts to the life. Her sister Nettie moved in with them for  a while but  when she refused to have a relationship with Cecil’s husband she was told she could no longer live there. When Nettie left the house she went to be a servant for an African couple and later became a missionary with them in Africa. Cecil not only morns with the loss of her sister but also with the fact that her husband cheats on her with a singer named Shug. After years of having Shug live with them Cecil begins to form a physical as well as emotional relationship with Shug. Together Shug and Cecil discover letters from Nettie to Cecil that her husband had been hiding from her. When Shug announces that she is leaving Cecil says that she will leave as well, she gets the courage to tell her husband how she really feels about him. Cecil begins her own store and becomes very successful. She goes back to the town to discover that her husband is a changed man and while there she is reunited with her sister.

2. The theme of this novel is that strength can be hidden in the people that appear to be weak. This theme mainly applies to Cecil because she started off as a push over and ends up being independent. She is pushed around by everyone at first and then comes out being strong. She dealt with her father abusing her and then with the abuse of her husband. Shug was the person that Cecil needed to push her to be strong.

3. The tone in this novel is serious and tragic. Though there is a couple of happy moments in there it is mainly filled with sad ones. Since the very beginning Cecil introduces the fact that she was raped and her tone was very somber. She had a very difficult life and spoke of it with a serious tone. The majority of her life was not very good and enjoyable for her. Even when Nettie sent the letters they always contained serious topics and a tragic tone to all she said. Toward the end of the novel it begins to brighten up a bit but Cecil still speaks with a tragic tone.

4. The literary elements in this novel were diction, zenith, and  characterization. The diction was used with the slang that Cecil spoke in. It was effective by making this novel more realistic as well as making Cecil more realistic. The zenith occurred when Shug and Cecil found the letters from Nettie. This was a turning point for the way the story took place because Cecil’s attitude changed after this. The characterization added a better idea f the characters. It helped make sense of why they did what they did. For example the death of Cecil’s husbands ex wife explained his cruel attitude. 

Lit Anal #4

1.       The novel “Black Boy” written by Richard Wright, also the protagonist, is about all of the struggles that Richard faces through life. He is an African American living in a time where blacks were not respected and had no type of freedom, though it was after the Civil War. Since a young age Richard questioned the relationship between blacks and whites and could not understand why it was not equal. He not only struggled with that but also with problems at home. He was constantly beaten and when his father abandoned the family he never had a stable home. As the years went by he began to develop a passion for reading and writing, something that his family did not understand or support. He decided to leave to the north in hopes of a better place but whines up in the same place. Struggling from job to job and still facing discrimination. He turned to a communist group for answers but ends up at the same spot he started.

2.       The theme that this book promotes the most is the theme of equal rights. It constantly shows how Richard struggles to be treated fairly. He is discriminated at every job he obtains. As well as out in public both in the north and in the south. 

3.       The tone that the author uses is serious and melancholy. This novel has nothing funny about it because it depicts a life of a discriminated black man. Mostly all of the events in his life were tragic and sad in some way and so it only makes sense for the author to use this tone.

4.       Richard chose to use simple everyday diction. His choice made reading the novel enjoyable and simple. He also used many literary techniques such as foreshadowing, analogy, dialect, diction, and personification which made the novel that much more interesting. He would use foreshadowing by speaking about his future plans. Though they were only his dreams at the moment they grew to be realities.

Lit Anal #3

1.       The novel The Bluest eye takes place after the great depression and describes the life of African Americans. The main characters are Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola. Claudia and Frieda are sisters and they meet Pecola when she and another man named Henry move into their home for a while. At first they are hesitant about Pecola but soon begin to help her and guide her. Pecola is obsessed with having blue eyes and blonde hair like Shirley Temple. Pecola is also very troubled because of the family she comes from, her parents constantly argue and the arguments constantly turn violent. One day Pecola is rapped by her father, Cholly, and she becomes pregnant. Everyone in the neighborhood judges her and her mother even beats her. The neighborhood hopes her baby dies but Claudia and Frieda hope otherwise. The baby ends up dying because it was born prematurely. After her child’s death Pecola goes mad and believes everyone hates her because her blue eyes are so beautiful.

2.       The theme of this novel is lack of love. This is constantly seen with every character in the novel. Not only does Pecola not receive love from her own family but the community doesn’t show her love either. Her parents did not receive much love when they were growing up which explains why they can’t show love to their own children. The lack of love which Pecola receives ends up driving her crazy and to hating herself so much.

3.       Toni Morrison uses first person point of view which gives us an inside look to the novel. It makes it be that much more interesting and detailed. Her tone is melancholy and through every event we foreshadow something bad resulting from it. Some of the examples in the novel are “All he would do was get drunk sand beat her.” Also “although his income was small he had no taste for luxury.”

4.       The literary techniques that Morrison used that helped me better understand the novel were foreshadowing, diction, dialect, and imagery. The foreshadowing allowed us to get a heads up for all of the bad things to come. The dialect used allowed me as a reader to be able to get a better understanding of the characters. The imagery made the reading become more realistic and the diction was very simple which made reading enjoyable.

vocab list fall # 11

Affinity- relationship by marriage

Bilious- of or indicative of a peevish ill nature disposition

Cognate- of the same nature

Corollary- A proposition inferred Immediately from a proved proposition with little or no additional proof

Cul-de-sac: referred to as a dead end

Derring-do- a daring action

Divination- The art or practice that seeks to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge due to the interpretation of omens

Elixir- A substance capable of prolonging life indefinitely

Folderol- a useless accessory

Gamut- an entire range or series

Hoi polloi- the General populace

Ineffable- incapable of being expressed in words

Lucubration- to study by night

Mnemonic- intended to assist memory

Obloquy- abusive language

Parameter- an independent variable used to express the coordinates of variable point and functions of them

Pundit- a learned man

Risible- provoking laughter

Symptomatic- having the characteristics of a certain disease but arising of a different cause

Volte-face- a reversal in policy