EN210 vocab
Terms
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- Verse
- From the Latin <i>versum</i>, "to turn." 1. Refers to any single line of poetry. 2. Any composition in lin of more or less regular rhythm. In contrast to prose.
- Dramatic poetry
- Presents the voice of an imaginary character speaking directly, without additional narration by author.
- Drama
- Greek "to do." Form of literary compositiono designed for performance in theater in which actors take the role of characters.
- Dramatic Irony
- When audience or reader understands the implication and meaning of a situation onstage and foresees the oncoming disastery (tradegy) or triumph (in comedy) but the char. does not.
- Poetic Diction
- Means any language deemed suitable for verse, but the term generally refers to elevated language intended for poetry rather than common use.
- Symbols
- A person, place, or thing in a narrative that suggests meaning beyond its literal sense
- Unities
- The three formal qualities reconmmended by Italian Renaissance literary critics to unify a plot in order to give it a cohesive and complete integrity.
- Unity of action
- a single set of related actions;must be either funny or sad: comedy/tradegy
- unity of time
- that take place within 24 hours
- unity of place
- in a single location
- Connotation
- an association or additional meaning that a word, image, or phrase may carry, apart from its literal denotation or dictionary definition
- Metaphor
- a statement that one thing is something else, which, in literal snese, it is not.
- High comedy
- relies more on wit and wordplay than physical action for its humor; appls to audience's intelligence, for example by pointing out hypocrisy and pretension in human behavior
- Hyperbole
- also called overstatement. exaggeration used to emphasize a point.
- Paradox
- a statement th at first strikes as self-contradictory,but that on relfection reveals some deeper sense.
- Burlesque
- humorous parady or travesty of another play or kind of play
- Hubris
- extreme pride leading to overconfidence
- Incremental refrain
- a refrain whose words change slightly with each recurrence.
- Expressionism
- sought to reflect intense states of emotion and sometimes, to depict the world through lunatic eyes; madness is objectified & dreams become realities.
- Folk Ballad
- anonymous narrative songs, usually in ballad meter, that were originally transmitted orally.
- Onomatopoeia
- a literary device that attempts to represe a thing or action by the word that imitates the sound associated with it
- Haiku
- a Japanese verse form that has three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Traditionally haiku is often serious and spiritual in tone, relying mostly on imagery, and usually set in one of the four seasons.
- Carpe Diem
- latin for "sieze the day"
- Dramatic monologue
- a poem writeen as a speech made by character (other than the author) at some decisive moments
- Soliloquy
- in drama, a speech by a character alone onstage in which he or she utters his or her thoughts aloud
- Tragic irony
- a form of dramatic irony that ultimately arrives at some tragedy
- Vulgate diction
-
from Latin vulgus, "mob" or
"common people." The lowest level formality in language, vulate is the diction of the common people with no pretension at refinement or elevation. - Stage business
- nonverbal action that engages the attention ofan audience
- imagery
- use of the five senses
- simile
- a comparison of two things, indicated by some connective, usually like, as, than, or a verb such as resembles
- Epigram
- a very short poem, often comic, usually ending with some sharp turn of wit or meaning
- Understatement
- an ironic figure of speech that deliberately describes something in a way that is less than the true case
- Farce
- a funny play whose action is fast moving and improbable; a descendant of the Italian commedia dell'arte of the Renaissance; traditionally performed by troubadours
- Realism
- an attempt to reproduce faithflly the surface appearance of life, especilly, that of ordinary people in everyday situations
- Internal refrain
- a refrain that appears within a stanza, generally in position that stays fixed throughout the poem
- Arena theater
- a modern, nontraditional performance space in which the audience surrounds the stage on four sides
- Child ballad
- folk ballad created by illiterate/semliterate people; transmitted orally
- Euphony
- a harmonioueffect when the sounds of the words connect with the meaning in a way pleasing to the ear and mind
- Iambic meter
- a line mae up of IAMBS; an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable; most common meter in english poetry; captures natural rhythm of EN speech
- Lyric poetry
- a short poem expressing the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker
- Tone
- a voice that communicates feelings, attitudes; examines chioce of words and their sounds
- Sublot
- a.k.a double plot.a second or plotline that is complete and interesting in its own right, often doubling or inverting the main plot
- Cosmic Irony
- also called irony of fate; fate seems to play a cruel trick on humans; fates are personified and seen as hostile; contrast between a char's aspirations and his treatment at fate's hands
- Dialect
- a particular variety of lang. spoken by an identifiable regional mgroup or social class of people
- Rising action
- where events move towards a climax
- Personification
- a figure of speech in which a thing, an animal, o an abstract term is endowed with human characteristics
- Comedy of Manners
- witty satire set in fashionable society; popular during the restauration period (after 1660 when Charles II was restored to the EN throne; London Playhouse reopened)
- Metonymy
- figure of speech in which the name of a thing substituted for that of another closely associated with it
- Refrain
- a word, phrase, line or stanza repeated at intervals in a song or poem
- Slapstick Comedy
- like 3 stooges, a kind of farce w/ violent action.
- Naturalism
- a kind of realism in fiction and drama dealing w/the brutal aspects of reality; codfied by Emile Zola, who viewed a man as a creature whose acts are determined by heredity and environment; Zola urged writers to stud characters' behavior w/ detachment of zoologists studying animals
- Troubadours
- travelling musicians and poets of longago, in Europe
- Blues
- a type of folk music originally developed by African Americans in the South, ten about some pain or loss
- Quatrain
- a stanza consisting of four lines
- Assonance
- the repitition of words; may be initial or internal
- Prosody
- the study of metrical structures in petry
- Narrative poetry
- a poem that tells a story
- Verbal irony
- when words say one thing but mean something else, perhapsthe opposite
- Suspense
- Enjoyable anxiety cred in the reader by the author's handling of plot
- Allusion
- an indirect reference to any person, place, thing, fictitious or actual
- Denotation
- the literal, dictionary meaning of a word
- Falling action
- subsequent events, including resolution
- Anapestic Meter
- a line made up mostly of ANAPESTS; 2 unstressed syllables folled by a stressed syllable; results in a galloping sound like a horse
- Apostrophe
- addressing something invisible or not ordinary spoken to, e.g. an inanimate object, a dead person, or spirit "Oh sun!"
- Low comedy
- explores the opposite extremem of humor, places emphasis on gags and physical actions; verbal jokes do not require much intellect to appreciate, e.g. Groucho Marx
- Synecdoche
- the use of a significant part of a thing to stand for the whole of it or vice versa "She lent a hand"
- Terminal refrain
- a refrain that appears at the end of each stanza in a song or poem
- Hamartia
- man's error or transgression or flaw or weakness of character; tragic flaw
- Symbolism
- the use of symbols to represent invisible, intangible, or abstract things
- Ballad
- a song that tells a story
- Doggerel
- verse full of irregularities, often due to the poet's incompetence. crude verse that brims with cliche, obvious rhyme, and inept rhythm
- Broadside ballad
- poems printed on a single sheet of paper, often set to traditional tunes
- Alliteration
- repition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of successive words, e.g. Round and round the rugged rocks the ragged...ran
- Scansion
- a practice used to descibe rhythmic patterns in a poem by separating the metrical feet, counting the syllables, marking the accents, and indicating the pauses
- Literary ballad
- not for singing; written by poets for book educated people who like being reminded of folk ballads; meant to be read