Lit Terms: Meaning
A literary technique in which two or more ideas, places, characters (etc) are placed side-by-side/one after-another for narrative or dramatic effect.
What is contrast or juxtaposition?
A form of wit, not necessarily funny, that involves a play on words that have similar sounds
What is Pun?
A character flaw or error (i.e. excessive Pride)
What is Harmatia?
lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter
What is Blank Verse?
Sound Device: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (1.1.11)
What is Alliteration?
Reference to another work of literature or historical event
What is Allusion?
The incongruency between what is said and what is meant?
What is verbal irony?
Inclusion of a humorous character or scene to contrast with the tragic elements of the work
What is Comic Relief?
The number of feet in a line of iambic pentameter
What is five?
Sound device--repetition of internal vowel sounds: "Double double toil and trouble"
What is Assonance?
Where future events in a story, or perhaps the outcome, are suggested by the author before they happen.
What is foreshadowing?
An understatement, used to lessen the effect of a statement; substituting something innocuous for something that might be offensive or hurtful.
What is euphemism?
A character whose basic goodness and superiority are marred by a tragic flaw/error such as pride
What is Tragic Hero?
This literary device involves creating a fracture of sorts within a line of poetry--can be a semi-colon, long dash or period
What is Caesura?
A combination of two words that appear to contradict each other.
What is oxymoron?
When nature reflects what is going on in the heart/minds of people.
What is Pathetic Fallacy?
A statement in which a seeming contradiction may reveal an unexpected truth.
What is paradox?
A dramatic device that reveals motives, inner thoughts or internal struggles going in the mind of the character.
What is Soliloquy?
Shakespeare often concludes scenes and soliloquies with this type of two-line sound pattern
What is a rhyming couplet?
Repetition of S sounds--not alliteration:
"Wherever in your sightless substances"
What is Sibilance?
Speaking directly to a real or imagined listener or inanimate object.
What is apostrophe?
Finish the line: "look like the innocent flower..."
"but be the serpent under't" (1.6.65-66)
emotional discharge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from effects of true tragedy on the spectator
What is Catharsis?
This is the name for the technique when the thought runs over the poetic line or stanza.
What is enjambment?
'Grown serpent' and 'worm' are examples of this technique:
"There the grown serpent lies; the worm that's
fled/ Hath nature that in time will venom breed,/
No teeth for th'present." (3.4.29-31)
What is metaphor?