Definition: Terms
A reference to a well-known character, place, or situation from history, art, or music, or another story.
What is an allusion?
A humorous play on words
What is a pun?
"She hath Dian's wit,
And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,
From Love's weak childish bow she lives uharm'd" (211-13).
What is an allusion?
"Why, then, my pump is well-flowered" (Shakespeare, 2.4).
What is a pun?
When what is said is the opposite of what is meant, but not necessarily always sarcasm.
What is verbal irony?
The methods a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character
What is characterization?
A device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the audience, but may or may not be heard by other characters in the play.
What is an aside?
"Doodle was just about the craziest brother a boy ever had" (Hurst, 1).
What is characterization?
After inquiring about Romeo's identity to the Nurse, Juliet says, "My only love sprung from my only hate./Too early seen unknown, and known too late./Prodigious birth of love it is to me/That I must love a loathed enemy."
What is an aside?
When the audiences knows more than the characters in a film, book, or other dramatic media.
When something unexpected occurs.
What are dramatic and situational irony?
giving human characteristics to an object, idea, or force of nature.
What is personification?
A character who is in most ways opposite to the main character (protagonist) or one who is nearly the same as the protagonist. This character emphasizes the traits of the main character by contrast only.
What is a foil?
"Death, not Romeo, take my maiden-head" (Shakespeare, 3.2).
What is personification?
Mercutio is this to Romeo.
What is a foil?
The camera shows a scary monster creeping into the sleeping man's room. The man does not seem to be aware of the intruder.
What is dramatic irony?
central character around whom the main
conflict revolves
What is a protagonist?
A group of characters in Greek tragedy (and in later forms of drama), who comment on the action of a play without participation in it
What is a chorus?
In the short story, "The Scarlet Ibis," Doodle or Brother could both be argued to be this.
What is a protagonist?
"Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage—
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend."
What is a chorus?
Mercutio, after being stabbed, says, "No, it is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve; ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man."
What are verbal irony and a pun?
a person or force that opposes the central character of a story
What is an antagonist?
What is iambic pentameter?
In the story, "The Scarlet Ibis," Brother could be argued to be this.
What is an antagonist?
In the poem Birches, Robert Frost pens the following lines, “When I see birches bend to left and right/Across the line of straighter darker trees."
What is iambic pentameter?
When Rainsford first meets General Zaroff, he is impressed by the man's skill as a hunter--until he learns what Zaroff meant by "big game hunter."
What is situational irony?