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A comprehensive glossary of literary terms, offering definitions and explanations for various concepts in literature. It covers a wide range of terms, from basic literary devices like metaphor and simile to more complex concepts like allegory and existentialism. The glossary is a valuable resource for students studying literature, providing a concise and accessible reference for understanding key literary concepts.
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Paradox ✔✔a contradiction or dilemma
Myth ✔✔A traditional story about gods, ancestors, or heroes, told to explain the natural world or the customs and beliefs of a society.
Oxymoron ✔✔A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.
Essay ✔✔A piece of prose writing, usually short, that deals with a subject in a limited way and expresses a particular point of view.
Malapropism ✔✔the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar
Denoument ✔✔Refers to the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events.
Novella ✔✔A short narrative, usually between 50 and 100 pages long. Examples include George Orwell's Animal Farm and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
Irony ✔✔A literary device that uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal a reality different from what appears to be true.
Hubris ✔✔Excessive pride or arrogance that results in the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy
Enjambment ✔✔A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next.
Jargon ✔✔(noun) specialized technical terminology; a characteristic language of a particular group
Document ✔✔A written or printed record that gives information or proof.
Metaphor ✔✔A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity.
Cliche ✔✔A worn-out idea or overused expression
Characterization ✔✔A method an author uses to let readers know more about the characters and their personal traits.
Morphology ✔✔Structure of words
Anapestic Meter ✔✔Meter that is composed of feet that are short-short-long or unaccented- unaccented-accented, usually used in light or whimsical poetry, such as limerick.
Imagery ✔✔Description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste)
Vulgarity ✔✔Language widely considered crude, disgusting, and oftentimes offensive.
Onomatopoeia ✔✔A word that imitates the sound it represents.
Verse ✔✔A metric line of poetry. Its name is based on the kind and number of feet composing it ("foot").
Biography ✔✔A story about a person's life written by another person.
Phonology ✔✔Refers to what language sounds like. Are the smallest units of sound in a language
Mood ✔✔Feeling or atmosphere that a writer creates for the reader
Moral ✔✔A lesson a work of literature is teaching.
Narration ✔✔Retelling an event or series of events
Heroic Couplet ✔✔A pair of rhyming iambic pentameters
Dialect ✔✔A variety of a language distinguished by variations of accent, grammar, or vocabulary.
Profanity ✔✔Language that is disrespectful of things sacred
Style ✔✔An evaluation of the sum of the choices an author makes in blending diction, syntax, figurative language, and other literary devices OR Classification of authors to a group and comparison of an author to similar authors.
Couplet ✔✔A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem
Hyperbole ✔✔A figure of speech in which the truth is exaggerated for emphasis or humorous effects.
Apostrophe ✔✔A figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or imaginary person, or some abstraction
Historical Fiction ✔✔A novel, story, or play set during a real historical era.
Legend ✔✔A narrative handed down from the past, containing historical elements and usually supernatural elements
Mystery ✔✔A type of realistic fiction that is a suspenseful story about a puzzling even
Fairy Tale ✔✔A narrative that is made up of fantastic characters and creatures, such as witches, goblins, and fairies, and usually begins with the phrase "Once upon a time..." Examples include Rapunzel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Little Red Riding Hood.
Point of View ✔✔the perspective from which a story is told
Haiku ✔✔A japanese form of poetry, consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables
Horror ✔✔Fiction in which events evoke a feeling of dread in both the characters and the reader.
Folktale ✔✔A narrative form, such as an epic, legend, myth, song, poem, or fable, that has been retold within a culture for generations. Examples include The People Couldn't Fly retold by Virginia Hamilton and And Green Grass Grew All Around by Alvin Schwartz.
Internal Rhyme ✔✔A rhyme that is within the line, rather than at the end
Rhetoric ✔✔the art or study of effective use of language for communication and persuasion
Aphorism ✔✔A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life
Colloquialisms ✔✔Expressions that are usually accepted in informal situations or regions, such as "wicked awesome"
Personification ✔✔A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes
Limerick ✔✔A humorous verse form of 5 anapestic (a metrical foot consisting of two short or unstressed syllables followed by one long or stressed syllable) lines with a rhyme scheme aabba
Ballad ✔✔A fairly short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form.
Epic ✔✔A long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds
Elegy ✔✔A lyric poem that laments the dead.
Voice ✔✔Distinctive features of a person's speech and speech patterns.
Transcendentalism ✔✔A philosophy pioneered by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1830's and 1840's, in which each person has direct communication with God and Nature, and there is no need for organized churches. It incorporated the ideas that mind goes beyond matter, intuition is valuable, that each soul is part of the Great Spirit, and each person is part of a reality where only the invisible is truly real. Promoted individualism, self-reliance, and freedom from social constraints, and emphasized emotions.
Tone ✔✔Is the literary work expresses the writer's attitude toward his or her subject
Sonnet ✔✔14 line poem
Existentialism ✔✔A philosophical approach that emphasizes the inevitable dilemmas and challenges of human existence.
Semantics ✔✔Content of language
Canto ✔✔A main division of a long poem
Foreshadowing ✔✔A narrative device that hints at coming events; often builds suspense or anxiety in the reader.
Flashback ✔✔A literary device in which an earlier episode, conversation, or event is inserted into the chronological sequence of a narrative.
Phonetics ✔✔Scientific study of speech sounds and their formation
Analogy ✔✔A comparison of two different things that are alike in some way.
Antagonist ✔✔A character or force in conflict with the main character.
Repetition ✔✔Repeating a key word or idea for emphasis
Lyric ✔✔A poem that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet
Parody ✔✔A work that closely imitates the style or content of another with the specific aim of comic effect and/or ridicule.
Satire ✔✔A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies.
Doublespeak ✔✔Deliberate use of evasive or ambiguous language
Foot ✔✔A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by ˘ ΄, that is, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one.
Novel ✔✔A long fictional narrative written in prose, usually having many characters and a strong plot.
Slang ✔✔Informal language
Autobiography ✔✔An account of the writer's own life.
Euphemism ✔✔An indirect, less offensive way of saying something that is considered unpleasant
SSR ✔✔Silent Sustained Reading
KWL ✔✔A before, during, and after reading strategy usually used with expository text to increase comprehension by drawing on prior knowledge (Know), asking questions before reading (Want to know), and using what was learned immediately after reading (Learned).
Holistic Scoring ✔✔A method by which trained readers evaluate a piece of writing for its overall quality. There is no focus on one aspect of the writing.
Analytic Scoring ✔✔Scoring a student's performance on an assessment by evaluating various aspects of it separately.
5 Steps of the Writing Process ✔✔Pre-write, rough draft, revise, edit, publish
Portfolios ✔✔A compilation of student work indicative of their learning. Generally includes student work samples, self-assessment, and evidence of how the work met the laid our criteria.
Conferencing ✔✔this assessment tool allows the instructor to evaluate a student's progress or decline; students also learn techniques for self-evaluation
Semantic Feature Analysis ✔✔A graphic organizer using a grid to compare a series of words or other items on a number of characteristics.
Persuasive Appeal ✔✔ethos, pathos, logos
rhetorical devices that try to get reader or viewer to react based on logic, ethics, or emotion.
Versification ✔✔the writing of verse.
Utopian Fiction ✔✔Predicts perfect society
Dystopian Fiction ✔✔story about the creation of a degraded society
Soliloquy ✔✔A literary or dramatic speech spoken by a solitary character
Individualism vs. Collectivism ✔✔Independent vs. life belongs to a group
Monologue ✔✔A long speech a character says to another character or group of characters
Semantic Practice ✔✔The study of meaning
Structural Cues ✔✔Includes titles, headings, and transitional words. Helps readers determine the meaning of the overall text.
Vernacular ✔✔Language or dialect of a particular country, language or dialect of a regional clan or group, plain everyday speech.
Primary Source ✔✔An original document containing the observations, ideas, and conclusions of an individual. It is a firsthand account presented by someone present or actively participating in the event. Examples include manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, and personal journals.
Secondary Source ✔✔A secondhand account of an event or a retelling of another person's observations written by someone who did not witness or actually participate in the events. Includes sources that combine, synthesize, and or interpret information from primary sources. Examples include encyclopedias, textbooks, and reviews.
Figurative Language ✔✔A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words.
Reciprocal Teaching ✔✔A cooperative learning model used to improve reading, in which students play the teacher's role
Jovial ✔✔(adj.) good-humored, in high spirits; merry
Kinesthetic ✔✔A student who learns best when they can use their sense of touch and move around prefer what learning style?
Epigram ✔✔A brief witty poem, often satirical.
Summative Assessments ✔✔a) Occurs at the end of instruction b) Provides a summary of accomplishments d) End of chapter, midterms, final exam
Formative Assessment ✔✔Information gathered while students are learning, to give information about their progress; see also 'assessment for learning'
Self Assessment ✔✔a personal evaluation of one's strengths and weaknesses