| A | B |
|---|
| assurance | a guarantee or pledge |
| collapse | to break down or fall apart suddenly and cease to function |
| conceive | to understand or form in the mind; to devise |
| devote | to give one's entire energy or attention to something or someone |
| vision | ability to see; insight |
| affliction | something that causes suffering or pain |
| purge | to eliminate or wash away |
| infamous | having a bad reputation |
| taut | tense or tightly fixed |
| pilgrimage | a journey to a historical or religious site |
| loathsome | hateful or repulsive |
| allusion | an indirect reference to a famous person, place, event, or literary work that an author uses to make a point or to make the writing stronger |
| universal theme | a message that can be found throughout the literature of all time periods |
| theme | the underlying messages an author/writer wants the audience/reader to understand |
| ethos | refers to an ethical appeal that relies on the credibility of the speaker |
| pathos | In this method of appeal, a speaker tries to provoke an emotional response from the audience |
| logos | A speaker using this type of appeal supports his or her claim with reasons and evidence such as facts, examples, and statistics |
| connotation | an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning |
| plot | the sequence of actions and events in a literary work |
| point of view | perspective from which the story is told (1st, 2nd, 3rd person) |
| mood and atmosphere | feeling created (in the reader) by a work |
| inference | a guess of what can be |
| imagery | descriptive or figurative language used to create word pictures for the reader |
| protagonist | the good main character |
| climax | the high point of the story |
| conflict | in a story/poem it is the problem that exists; a struggle between opposing forces that is the basis of a story's plot |
| symbolism | uses something to represent something else |
| irony | contrast between what is stated and what is meant; a contrast between expectation and reality |
| satire | a literary technique in which individuals, ideas, customs, behaviors, institutions, or social conventions are criticized or ridiculed for the purpose of improving society |
| simile | making comparisons between two subjects using like or as |
| metaphor | one thing is spoken of as if it were something else |
| personification | a non-human subject is given human traits |
| alliteration | repetition of first sound (Peter Piper picked) - repeated at least two times |
| hyperbole | an exaggeration |
| kenning | a specialized metaphor made of compound words or phrases |
| Hyphenated kenning | A kenning that is written as hyphenated compounds, i.e sky-candle |
| Prepositional kenning | A kenning with a prepositional phrases, i.e wolf of wounds |
| Possessive kenning | A kenning that shows something or someone possessing something, i.e the sword’s tree |
| Compound kenning | A kenning that consists of more than one word or a compound word |
| Central Idea | An important idea or message that an author wants to convey |
| Nouns | name persons, places, things, or ideas |
| Pronouns | take the place of nouns |
| Adjectives | describe or modify nouns or pronouns |
| Verbs | express action or being |
| Adverbs | describe or modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs |
| Conjunctions | join words or groups of words |
| Prepositions | relate nouns or pronouns to other words in a sentences |
| Interjections | express emotion or feeling |
| controversy | public disagreement, argument |
| convince | persuade or lead to agreement by means of an argument |
| ethics | rules of conduct or set of principles |
| radical | extreme; desirous of change in established institutions or practices |
| tension | mental strain or excitement |
| facile | easy to make or understand |
| eviscerate | to remove the necessary or important parts |
| indigenous | native to a land |
| extortionist | one who obtains something by force or threat |
| insurgency | rebellion or revolt |
| reparations | compensation or payment from a nation for damage or injury during a war |
| recalcitrant | uncooperative and resistant of authority |
| adamant | inflexible and insistent, unchanging |
| Parallelism | the use of similar grammatical constructions to express related ideas |
| Repetition | repeating words and phrases to reinforce meaning and to create rhythm |
| Antithesis | juxtaposes sharply contrasting words, phrases, clauses, or sentences to emphasize a point, often using parallel grammatical structures |
| Rhetorical question | are asked for the purpose of drawing attention to ideas or changing the tempo of the speech; they do not require an answer |
| bias | predisposition toward; preference for one thing over another |
| complementary | completing; forming a whole |
| exploit | to take advantage of; to use for selfish or unethical purposes |
| inclinations | leanings toward; propensities for |
| predominance | superiority in control, force, or influence |
| preamble | an introductory statement |
| virtue | purity or virginity |
| sovereignty | independent rule or authority |
| bequeath | to pass on to heirs |
| rebuke | to reprimand or scold |
| frame story | a story that surrounds and binds together one or more different narratives in a single work |
| narrator | the character or voice that relates the story's events to the reader |
| verbal irony | occurs when a writer or character says one thing but means another |
| situational irony | occurs when a character or the reader expects one thing to happen but something else actually happens |
| dramatic irony | occurs when the reader or viewer knows something that a character does not know |
| sarcasm | a type of verbal irony that refers to a critical remark expressed in a mocking fashion |
| heroic couplet | consists of two rhyming lines written in iambic pentameter |
| drama | a prose or verse composition that is intended to be acted out |
| integrity | quality of being ethically or morally upright |
| mediate | to settle differences between two individuals or groups |
| restrain | to hold back or control |
| trigger | to set off a chain of events |
| comedy | a dramatic work with a happy ending |
| tragedy | a work in which the main character, or tragic hero, came to an unhappy end |
| histories | plays which present stories about England's monarchs |
| catharsis | a cleansing of emotions in the audience |
| hubris | excessive pride that leads the tragic hero to challenge the gods |
| characteristics of tragedy | the tragic hero, the plot, the theme |
| tragic flaw | a fatal error in judgment or weakness of character that leads directly to a downfall |
| antagonist | a character in opposition to the hero of a narrative or drama |
| catastrophe | a tragic resolution within the plot of a story or play |
| comic relief | a light, mildly humorous scene preceding or following a serious one |
| blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| verse drama | a play in which the dialogue consists almost entirely of poetry with a fixed pattern of rhythm |
| dialogue | a conversation between two or more characters in either fiction or nonfiction |
| stage directions | written in italics and in parentheses to specify the setting and how the characters should behave and speak |
| acts and scenes | a play is divided into these items |
| setting | the time and place of a story or drama |
| meter | the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry |
| iambic pentameter | a meter in which the normal line contains five stressed syllables, each preceded by an unstressed syllable |
| soliloquy | a speech that a character makes while alone on stage to reveal his or thoughts to the audience |
| aside | a remark that a character makes in a undertone to the audience or another character but that others on stage are not supposed to hear |
| foreshadowing | a writer's use of hints or clues to suggest what events will occur later in a work |
| external conflict | pits a character against nature, society, or another character |
| internal conflict | a conflict between opposing forces within a character |
| apostrophe | A direct address to an inanimate object or idea or to an absent person |
| foil | a character who contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist) in order to highlight various features of the main character's personality |
| OEDIPAL COMPLEX | Sigmund Freud’s concept that all sons want to sleep with their mothers and kill their fathers. |
| characterization | the process by which a character is made; what they do, say, think, look like, or has said about them |
| understatement | a figure of speech employed by writers or speakers to intentionally make a situation seem less important than it really is |
| tragic hero | possesses a defect, or tragic flaw, that brings about or contributes to his or her downfall |
| denotation | the literal meaning of a word |
| paradox | a statement that seems to contradict, or oppose itself; reveals some element of truth |
| pun | a form of word play that suggests two or more meanings |
| extended metaphor | two things are compared at length and in various ways |
| understatement | a technique of creating emphasis by saying less than is actually or literally true |
| idiom | a common figure of speech whose meaning is different from the literal meaning of its words |
| sarcasm | a critical remark expressed in a mocking fashion |
| protagonist | main character who is involved in the central conflict |
| antagonist | a character in opposition to the hero of a narrative or drama |
