Written Comp II
Terms
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- Plot
- An author's selection and arrangement of incidents in a story to shape the action and give the story a particular focus
- Exposition
- A narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work, that provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstsances.
- Rising Action
- The component of plot in which complication creates some sort of conflict for the protagonist
- Conflict
- The struggle within the plot between opposing forces, such as a character against other characters, against society, or against the character's own consciousness.
- Climax
- The moment of greatest emotional tension in a narrative
- Resolution
- The conclusion of a plot's conflicts and complications. The resolution, also known as the falling action, follows the climax in the plot.
- Denouement
- A French term meaning "unraveling" or "unknotting", used to describe the resolution of the plot following the climax.
- Foreshadowing
- The introduction early in a story of verbal and dramatic hints that suggest what is to come later.
- Protagonist
- The main character of a narrative; its central character who engages the reader's interest and empathy
- Antagonist
- The character, force, or collection of forces in fiction or drama that opposes the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of a story.
- Character
- A character is a person presented in a dramatic or narrative work, and characterization is the process by which a writer makes that character seem real to the reader.
- Dynamic Character
- A character that undergoes some kind of change.
- Static Character
- A character that does not change throughout the work, and the reader's knowledge of that character does not grow.
- Flat Character
- A character that embodies one or two qualities, ideas, or traits that can be readily described in a brief summary. They are not psychologically complex characters and therefore are readily accessible to readers.
- Round Character
- More complex characters than flat or stock characters that often display the inconsistencies and internal conflict found in most real people. They are more fully developed, and therefore are harder to summarize.
- Setting
- The time, the place, and the social environment (cultural codes) that frame the characters and influence their action.
- Point of View
- Term referring to who tells the story and how it is told. A story's point of view is determined by its narrator.
- Narrator
- The teller of a story; its central consciousness. It is not always the author's voice.
- First-person Narrative
- A form of narration in which the "I" of the story presents the point of view of only one character.
- Third Person Narration
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Three main kinds of third-person narrators:
-Third-person omniscient narrator: an all-knowing narrator who is not a character in the story. THe narrator can present the point of view of any character at any given time.
-Third-person limited-omniscient narrator: A narrator who usually is a character in the story and who may have insight into some, but not all, characters and events
-Third-person objective narrator: A narrator who does not ese into the mind of any character. - Style
- The distinctive manneri n which a writer arranges words to achieve particular effects.
- Diction
- The writer's choice of words
- Irony
- A literary device which reveals a reality different from what is expected or what appears to be true.
- Intentional Fallacy
- This term is used by W.K. Wimsatt and M.C.Beardsley to describe the dubious critical practice of seeking to decipher a texts meaning by determing the author's intentions. For them, the author's intentions can never be properly determined, but even if they could, a text should in any case only be analyzed in its own terms, ignoring any extra-textual information
- Symbol
- A person, object, image, word, or event that evokes a range of additional meaning beyond and usually more abstract than its literal significance
- Allegory
- The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters in narrative; often allegorical characters interact for some moral or didactic purpose.
- Lineation
- Thhe manner in which a poet has arranged lines on a page. If a line is end-stopped, it has a pause at the end. If a line is enjambed, the line ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning
- Image
- A word, phrase, or figure of speech (especially a simile or metaphor) that addresses the senses, suggesting sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, or actions.
- Onomatopoeia
- A term referring to the use of aword that resembles the sound it denotes. Buzz, rattle, bang, and sizzle all reflect onomatopoeia.
- Alliteration
- the repetitino of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the beginning of a word
- Assonance
- The repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end the same; for example, "asleep under a tree."
- Rhyme
- the repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines. Rhyme within a line is called internal rhyme.
- Off Rhyme
- In this form of rhyme, the sounds are almost but not exactly alike
- Fixed Form Poetry
- A poem that may be categorized into a traditional form (sonnet, villanelle, sestina, etc.) by the pattern of its lines, meter, rythm, or stanzas.
- Open Form Poetry
- sometimes called "free verse", open form poetry does not conform to established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza. Such poetry derives its rythmic qualities from the repitition of words, phrases, or grammatical structures, the arrangement of words on the printed page, or by some other means.
- Foot
- The metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured (i.e. an iamb)
- Meter
- The rhythmic pattern of stresses in a poetic line
- Scansion
- The process of measuring the stresses in a line to determine its metrical pattern, often expressed as a combinatino of food and meter (i.e. "iambic pentameter", or five iambic feet)
- Rhyme Scheme
- The rhyme scheme of a poem describes the pattern of end rhymes. Rhyme schemes are mapped out by noting patterns of rhyme with small letters: each rhyme is designated alphabetically (i.e. abab cdcd efef gg).
- Stanza
- In poetry, stanza refers to a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme
- Couplet
- Two consecutive lines of poetry that usually rhyme and have the same meter
- Quatrain
- A four-line stanza
- Octave
- A poetic stanza of eight lines, usually forming one part of a sonnet
- Sestet
- A stanza consisting of exactly six lines
- Sonnet
- A fixed form of lyric poetry that consists of fourteen l ines, usually written in iambic pentameter
- Italian Sonnet
- An Italian sonet consists of an octave and a sestet: abbaabba cdecde; the sestet rhyme scheme varies. Often the octave presents a problem or question, then a turn occurs as the sestet proceeds to resolve the problem. The Italian sonnet is sometimes called a Petrarchan sonnet.
- English sonnet
- An English sonnet consists of three quatrains and a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg. It is sometimes called a Shakespearean Sonnet.
- Turn
- The point at which a poem's tone or emphasis changes, especially in a sonnet
- Villanelle
- A type of fixed form poetry consisting of nineteen lines of any length divided into six stanzas: five tercets and a concluding quatrain. The first and third lines of the initial tercet rhyme; these rhymes are repeatedi n each subsequent tercet (aba) and in the final two lines of the quatrain (abaa).
- Sestina
- A type of fixed form poetry consisting of 36 lines of any length divided into six sestets and a three-line concluding stanza called an envoy. The six words at the end of the first sestet's line must also appear at the ends of the other five sestets, in varying order. These six words must also appear in the envoy, where they often resonate with important themes.
- Prose Poem
- A kind of open form poetry that is printed as prose. Prose poems are densely compact and often make use of striking imagery and figures of speech
- Elegy
- A lyric poem lamenting death
- Ode
- A longer lyric poem in praise of something divine or expressing some noble idea in a grand and dignified style.
- New Criticism
- A school of literary criticism dating from the 1920s which emphasized close reading and explication of a text as opposed to biographical or historical study.
- Close Reading
- Often called an explication. A close reading of a poem addresses how the elements of lineation, image, sound, rythm, form, word choice, etc. construct a poem's meaning
- Foil
- sometimes called a character foil, a character in a play who sets off or otherwise helps delineate the main character or other characters by comparison.