Lit Terms 101-136
101. Realism: writing
about the ordinary aspects of life in a straightfoward manner to reflect life
as it actually is.
102. Refrain: a phrase or
verse recurring at intervals in a poem or song; chorus.
103. Requiem: any chant,
dirge, hymn, or musical service for the dead.
104. Resolution: point in a literary work at which the chief
dramatic complication is worked out; denouement.
105. Restatement: idea repeated for emphasis.
106. Rhetoric: use of language, both written and verbal in order
to persuade.
107. Rhetorical Question: question suggesting its own answer or
not requiring an answer; used in argument or persuasion.
108. Rising Action: plot build up, caused by conflict and
complications, advancement towards climax.
109. 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.
110. Satire: ridicules or
condemns the weakness and wrong doings of individuals, groups, institutions, or
humanity in general.
111. Scansion: the analysis of verse in terms of meter.
112. Setting: the time and place in which events in a short
story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur.
113. Simile: a figure of
speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific
word of comparison.
114. Soliloquy: an extended speech, usually in a drama, delivered
by a character alone on stage.
115. Spiritual: a folk song, usually on a religious theme.
116. Speaker: a narrator, the one speaking.
117. Stereotype: cliché; a simplified, standardized conception
with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story.
118. 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.
119. Structure: the planned framework of a literary selection;
its apparent organization.
120. Style: the manner of
putting thoughts into words; a characteristic way of writing or speaking.
121. Subordination: the couching of less important ideas in less
important structures of language.
122. 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.
123. Suspension of Disbelief: suspend not believing in order to
enjoy it.
124. Symbol: something which stands for something else, yet has a
meaning of its own.
125. Synesthesia: the use of one sense to convey the experience
of another sense.
126. Synecdoche: another form of name changing, in which a part
stands for the whole.
127. Syntax: the arrangement and grammatical relations of words
in a sentence.
128. Theme: main idea of
the story; its message(s).
129. Thesis: a proposition for consideration, especially one to
be discussed and proved
or disproved; the main idea.
130. Tone: the devices used to create the mood and atmosphere of
a literary work; the
author’s perceived point of view.
131. Tongue in Cheek: a type of humor in which the speaker feigns
seriousness; a.k.a. “dry” or “dead pan”
132. 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
133. Understatement: opposite of hyperbole; saying less than you
mean for emphasis
134. Vernacular: everyday speech
135. Voice: The textual
features, such as diction and sentence structures, that convey a writer’s or
speaker’s pesona.
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