- a symbolic representation a of an abstract idea that has a deeper meaning to the reader than the symbol's literal, face value

In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester is forced to wear a red letter on her blouse that symbolizes shame, but as the novel continues, it becomes an allegory of judgment and punishment.

-The repetition of two or more stressed syllables that begin with the same consonants and similar sounds.

"Sally saw sea shells by the sea shore"

- A mention or reference to a previous, well-known thing - can be literary, historical, mythological, or biblical.

- "How the knave jowls it to the ground as if 'twere Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder!" is a biblical allusion found in the play Hamlet.

a comparison of a similar trait of two generally different things, usually used to help clarify a thought or idea

A novel is to a letter as speech is to a word.

- the deliberate repetition of the same word at the beginning of sentences or clauses

- Martin Luther King Jr's speech "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up...I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia...I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi..."

- Changing the syntactical order of words

"To market went she."

A short take narrating an interesting or even amusing biographical incident

"I was walking to class yesterday and a teacher dressed as a clown gave me $100 dollars."

A character or force in a work of literature that, by opposing the protagonist produces tension or conflict.

The Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz

Reversal of the order if repeated words or phrases to intensify the final formulation, to present alter, or show contrast.

"One should eat to live, not live to eat." Alternatively, "You like it; it likes you." Or, Fair is foul and foul is fair.”

- contrasting ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction

"Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more". "The vases of the classical period are but the reflection of classical beauty; the vases of the archaic period are beauty itself". "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

A main character in a dramatic or narrative work that is characterized by a lack of traditional heroic qualities, such as idealism or courage.

Greg House from the TV show House.

Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby

A version of personification, but instead of attributing human qualities to animals, it attributes human qualities and form to gods or goddesses

Zeus and Apollo are two common examples of gods that were given human attributes. The qualities often applied are those such as love, hatred, jealousy, etc.

A brief and concise statement embodying a moral or principle generally containing truth or accepted as truth.

Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Emerson: “Imitation is suicide”

The act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present

“Oh, Death, be not proud”

"Oh, you cruel streets of Manhattan, how I detest you!"

A grammatical construction in which two elements are placed side by side, with one element serving to define or modify the other

John and Bob, both friends of mine, are starting a band.

An original model or pattern from which other later copies are made, especially a character, an action, or situation that seems to represent common patterns of human life. Think of it as the biggest cliché ever, but one that never dies

The orphaned prince or the lost chieftain's son raised ignorant of his heritage until he is rediscovered by his parents

The damsel in distress rescued from a hideous monster by a handsome young man who later marries the girl

Cyclops are the archetypical monsters

- a form of rhyme in which, although different consonants in the stressed syllables are used, the same vowel sounds are used

"fleet feet sweep by sleeping geeks"

The artistic elimination of conjunctions in a sentence to create a particular effect. Its use can have the effect of speeding up the rhythm of a passage and making a single idea more memorable

Examples are veni, vidi, vici and its English translation "I came, I saw, I conquered."

A balance between the opposing elements or tendencies.

"Our strength is on our service"

A simple narrative verse that tells a story that is sung or recited. Usually with short stanzas and often with a refrain.

Schubert's Der Erlkönig

A coming of age story. Concentrates on the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the protagonist usually from childhood to maturity.

Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird

A comedy having gloomy or disturbing elements, especially one in which a character suffers an irreparable loss

The movie Dr. Strangelove

or

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even-numbered syllables bearing the accents

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.

The term in poetry refers to the use of words that combine sharp, harsh, hissing, or unmelodious sounds

John Updike's "Player Piano": My stick fingers click with a snicker And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys; Light footed, my steel feelers flicker And pluck from these keys melodies... But never my numb plunker fumbles,

A pause separating phrases within lines of poetry

"England - how I long for thee!"

Describes the release of the emotions of pity and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy;;; An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety.

The story of Antigone: She refused to let her brother remain unburied. So she buried him despite the king’s order, which resulted in her death. Antigone realized her wrongs, but she told the king that his law conflicted with the gods’ law. Antigone feels that if death is the cost of a holy action, than she will pay with her life. Rather that recoil in the face of death, Antigone embraced it and ended her own life. This invoked catharsis into the audience

The author's way of communication characteristics

Flat: built around a single idea or quality and unchanging over the course of the narrative: villains, like the Joker

Round: complex in temperament and motivation; drawn with subtlety; capable of growth and change during the course of the narrative: Harry Potter

Direct: the writer makes direct statements about a character's personality and tells what the character is like: Ed smells

Indirect: he writer reveals information about a character and his personality through that character's thoughts, words, and actions, along with how other characters respond to that character, including what they think and say about him: Sue thinks Ed stinks

Static: does not undergo significant change: villains, like the Joker

Dynamic: changes significantly during the course of the story: Harry Potter

A type of rhetoric in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first

"There's a bridge to cross the great divide. . . . There's a cross to bridge the great divide. . . ."

"Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike."

An idea or expression that has become tired and trite from overuse, its freshness and clarity having worn off.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

A word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing.

Ain’t, ya’ll,wanna,gonna

A comic drama consisting of five or three acts in which the attitudes and customs of a society are critiqued and satirized according to high standards of intellect and morality. The dialogue is usually clever and sophisticated, but often risqué.

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) is an outstanding example of a comedy of manners. The central character's inability to marry the girl of his dreams unless he is called Ernest typifies the genre's satire upon superficiality

An elaborate or unusual comparison--especially one using unlikely metaphors, simile, hyperbole, and contradiction. In literary terms, the word denotes a fairly elaborate figure of speech, especially an extended comparison involving unlikely metaphors, similes, imagery, hyperbole, and oxymora

In Richard II, Shakespeare compares two kings competing for power to two buckets in a well, for instance.

Poetry of the personal or "I."

"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time--

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal

The struggle within the plot between opposing forces. The protagonist engages in the conflict with the antagonist, which may take the form of a character, society, nature, or an aspect of the protagonist’s personality.

Internal: conflict oneself: drug addiction; self destructive behavior

External: conflict with others and outside forces: struggling for survival in remote locales

The implied meaning of a word or phrase

The word eagle connotes ideas of liberty and freedom

Two lines--the second line immediately following the first--of the same metrical length that end in a rhyme to form a complete unit.

True wit is nature to advantage distressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. — Eve King

(God From The Machine)

An unrealistic or unexpected intervention to rescue the protagonists or resolve the story's conflict.

A greek god saving a hero in a helpless situation is a typical example of deus ex machina

The language of a particular district, class, or group of persons. Dialect encompasses the sounds, spelling, grammar, and diction employed by a specific people as distinguished from other persons either geographically or socially

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn:

Jim: "We's safe, Huck, we's safe! Jump up and crack yo' heels. Dat's de good ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it."

Huck: "I'll take the canoe and go see, Jim. It mightn't be, you know."

The choice of a particular word as opposed to others. The word choice a writer makes determines the reader's reaction to the object of description, and contributes to the author's style and tone.

His reputation was tarnished. His reputation was obliterated. Both words mean ruined but obliterated implies that his reputation was completely ruined, while tarnished implies that his reputation was only slightly ruined.

A mournful, contemplative lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead, often ending in a consolation.

Tennyson’s In Memoriam, written on the death of Arthur Hallam, is an elegy.

In poetry, when one line ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning.

Wordsworth’s poem "My Heart Leaps Up"

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

Envoy See sestina.

Repeating a word from the beginning of a clause or phrase at the end of the same clause or phrase.

“Year chases year."

"Man's inhumanity to man."

"Common sense is not so common." 

"Blood will have blood."

A long narrative poem, told in a formal, elevated style that focuses on a serious subject and chronicles heroic deeds and events important to a culture or nation.

Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey.

A phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional context.

The epigraph to E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime quotes Scott Joplin's instructions to those who play his music, "Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast." This stands in contrast to the accelerating pace of American society at the turn of the 20th century.

(1) An inscription in verse or prose on a building, tomb, or coin. (2) a short verse or motto appearing at the beginning of a longer poem or the title page of a novel, at the heading of a new section or paragraph of an essay or other literary work to establish mood or raise thematic concerns. (3) A short, humorous poem, often written in couplets, that makes a satiric point.

What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole; Its body brevity, and wit its soul. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Repetition of a concluding word or word endings. When the epistrophe focuses on sounds rather than entire words, we normally call it rhyme

"He's learning fast; are you earning fast?"

In fiction, when a character suddenly experiences a deep realization about himself or herself; a truth which is grasped in an ordinary rather than a melodramatic moment.

Watching Sue cry, Jill had an Epiphany: “Wow, I am mean…”

Any novel that takes the form of a series of letters--written either by one character or by several characters. The form allows an author to dispense with an omniscient point of view, but still switch between the viewpoints of several characters during the narrative

C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

A short, poetic nickname--often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase--attached to the normal name.

"The wine-dark sea."

“Fleet-footed Achilles"

A short piece of writing, often written from an author's personal point of view

ARGUMENTATIVE: uses persuasive writing with the objective of winning over the audience to your side.

DESCRIPTIVE: describes an event or story. Focuses on details and descriptions

EXPOSITION: the purpose is to inform, explain, describe or define

NARRATIVE: Tells a story.

Language that is smooth and musically pleasant to the ear. Opposite of Cacophony

John Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes (1820):

And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;

Manna and dates, in argosy transferred

From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one

From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon.

-about 1836 until 1860-

4 Basic Premises: 1. An individual is the spiritual center of the universe - and in an individual can be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the cosmos itself.

2. The structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self - all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge.

3. conception of nature as a living mystery, full of signs - nature is symbolic.

4. The belief that individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization. To Puritanism it owed its pervasive morality and the "doctrine of divine light.” In Unitarianism, deity was reduced to a kind of immanent principle in every person - an individual was the true source of moral light. To Romanticism it owed the concept of nature as a living mystery. among the leaders of the movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

19th and 20th century.

Impressionistic literature can be defined as when an author centers his story/attention on the character's mental life such as the character's impressions, feelings, sensations and emotions, rather than trying to interpret them. Authors such as Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway) and Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness and "The Lagoon") are among the foremost creators of the type. These novels have been said to be the finest examples of a genre which is not easily comprehensible. The term is used to describe a work of literature characterized by the selection of a few details to convey the sense impressions left by an incident or scene. This style of writing occurs when characters, scenes, or actions are portrayed from a subjective point of view of reality.

1900-1946

Content: dominant mood: alienation and disconnection; people unable to communicate effectively; fear of eroding traditions and grief over loss of the past

Genre/Style: highly experimental; allusions in writing often refer to classical Greek and Roman writings use of fragments, juxtaposition, interior monologue, and stream of consciousness writers seeking to create a unique style

Historical Context: overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Century World War I was the first war of mass destruction due to technological advances rise of the youth culture

(sub-genre of realism)1880-1900

Content: dominant themes: survival fate violence taboo nature is an indifferent force acting on humans; "brute within" each individual is comprised of strong and warring emotions such as Greed, power, and fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent world.

Genre/Style: short story, novel; characters usually lower class or lower middle class; fictional world is commonplace and unheroic; everyday life is a dull round of daily existence; characters ultimately emerge to act heroically or adventurously with acts of violence, passion, and/or bodily strength in a tragic ending Effect: this type of literature continues to capture audiences in present day: the pitting of man against nature

Historical Context: writers reflect the ideas of Darwin (survival of the fittest) and Karl Marx (how money and class structure control a nation))

1930s

An effort to eliminate overly complex language from academia, government, law, and business. Clear, modern, unpretentious language carefully written to ease understanding. It is a reaction to the alleged gobbledygook (aka Legal English) used by lawyers and others to impress or confuse rather than communicate. It distinguishes gobbledygook (example 1) from useful jargon employed as a shorthand among those who understand it In the 1930s, there was an outburst of making texts more readable.

1650-1750

Content: errand into the wilderness be a city upon a hill Christian utopia

Genre/Style: sermons, diaries personal narratives captivity narratives jeremiads written in plain style Effect: instructive reinforces authority of the Bible and church

Historical Context: a person's fate is determined by God all people are corrupt and must be saved by Christ

1750-1800

Content: national mission and American character; democratic; utopia; use of reason history is an act of individual and national self-assertion

Genre/Style: political pamphlets; travel writing; highly ornate writing style; fiction employs generic plots and characters fiction often tells the story of how an innocent young woman is tested by a seductive male Effect: patriotism grows; instills pride; creates common agreement about issues shows differences between Americans and Europeans

Historical Context: tells readers how to interpret what they are reading to encourage Revolutionary War support; instructive in values

1855-1900

Content: common characters not idealized (immigrants, laborers) people in society defined by class; society corrupted by materialism; emphasizes moralism through observation Style: novel and short stories are important; prefers objective narrator; dialogue includes many voices from around the country does not tell the reader how to interpret the story

Effect: social realism: aims to change a specific social problem aesthetic realism: art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it

Historical Context: Civil War brings demand for a "truer" type of literature that does not idealize people or places

Post Civil War Era and 19th century

Local-color writers depicted nearly every region of the United States, lending realism to their stories by describing customs, manners and re-creating dialects. Because these authors usually set their stories in regions as they remembered them from their own youth, they often blended realism with nostalgic sentiment. This parallels the Regionalism in art. Many Americans found this mixture palatable, and local-color stories filled the pages of the leading magazines until the end of the nineteenth century.

1800-1855

Content: writing that can be interpreted 2 ways, on the surface for common folk or in depth for philosophical readers; sense of idealism; focus on the individual's inner feelings emphasis on the imagination over reason and intuition over facts urbanization versus nostalgia for nature; burden of the Puritan past

Genre/Style: literary tale; character sketch; slave narratives; political novels; poetry; transcendentalism

Effect: helps instill proper gender behavior for men and women; fuels the abolitionist movement; allow people to re-imagine the American past

Historical Context: expansion of magazines, newspapers, and books publishing slavery debates

1920s

Literary and art movement influenced by Freudianism and dedicated to the expression of imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and free of convention. The movement was founded (1924) in Paris by André Breton. In literature, surrealism was confined almost exclusively to France. Surrealist writers were interested in the associations and implications of words rather than their literal meanings; their works are thus extraordinarily difficult to read. Among the leading surrealist writers were Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos,

Late 19th century

The symbolist movement began in France in the 1880s as a literary phenomenon. Each manifestation of symbolism had its own distinct characteristics. For example, most Belgian symbolists were more socially and politically engaged with working-class issues than their French counterparts, while Russian symbolism linked spiritual, social, and national concerns. Many artists and writers who never would have called themselves symbolists are considered under the rubric of symbolism because their work shares at least some of the same interests as that produced by self-proclaimed symbolist artists. They proposed to create works that would use suggestive (and often abstract) forms, images, or sounds to embody transcendent ideas and would thus offer their readers an experience of truth, beauty, or the idea beyond the material realm.