Show:
Literary Terms
Literary Genres
Major Texts Synopses
Literary Movements
Grammar & Mechanics
100
The act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present: For instance, John Donne commands, "Oh, Death, be not proud." King Lear proclaims, "Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, / More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child / Than the sea-monster."
What is an apostrophe?
100
A story written to be performed by actors. The script of this term is made up of dialogue and stage directions, which are descriptions of how and where action happens.
What is drama?
100
The Danes suffer many years of fear, danger, and death at the hands of a demon until a young warrior sails to Denmark with a small company of men, determined to defeat the demon.
What is Beowulf?
100
Washington Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathanial Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville were authors of this period.
What is the American Romantic period?
100
The study of the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.
What is syntax?
200
The character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends (if there is one.)
Who is the antagonist?
200
A writer of plays; a dramatist.
What is a playwright?
200
An arrogant, obnoxious,and wealthy English gentleman becomes increasingly infatuated with the daughter of an English gentleman whom he considers beneath him in status.
What is Pride and Prejudice?
200
Largely a reaction against the ideology of the Enlightenment period that dominated much of European philosophy, politics, and art from the mid-17th century until the close of the 18th century. Authors included William blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats.
What is the Romantic Period in English Literature?
200
The correspondence of a verb with its subject in person (first, second, or third) and number (singular or plural). The principle of subject-verb agreement applies to finite verbs in the present tense and, in a limited way, to the past forms of the verb to be (was and were).
What is subject-verb agreement?
300
A work that ridicules a topic by treating something exalted as if it were trivial or vice-versa.
What is burlesque?
300
Ordinary speech or writing, without metrical structure;a commonplace expression or quality.
What is prose?
300
A middle-aged gentleman from the region of La Mancha in central Spain is obsessed with the chivalrous ideals touted in books he has read. He decides to take up his lance and sword to defend the helpless and destroy the wicked.
What is Don Quixote?
300
The great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. It was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. Think Charles Dickens!
What is the Victorian period?
300
This term has two characteristics. First, it is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like kick, want, paint, write, eat, clean, etc. Second, it must have a direct object, something or someone who receives the action of the verb.
What is a transitive verb?
400
A literary and rhetorical term for an elaborate or strained figure of speech, usually a metaphor or simile. Originally used as a synonym for "idea" or "concept," this term refers to a particularly fanciful figurative device that's intended to surprise and delight readers by its cleverness and wit. Carried to extremes, this term may instead serve to perplex and annoy.
What is a conceit?
400
A poem composed in elegiac couplets;a poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person; something resembling such a poem or song. In music, it is a composition that is melancholy or pensive in tone.
What is an elegy?
400
Mr. Durbeyfield and his wife decide to send their daughter to the d’Urberville mansion, where they hope Mrs. d’Urberville will make her fortune.
What is Tess of the d'Urbervilles?
400
These writers frequently examine such issues as emerging identities in the postcolonial climate, neo-colonialism and new forms of oppression, cultural and political hegemonies, neo-elitism, language appropriation, and economic instability. Think Chinua Achebe!
What is African literature?
400
This is the form of a verb, but it is not a verb. Second, it is an adjective. And finally, it ends in "ing" or "ed" or "en."
What is a participle?
500
Prosody a stanzaic form introduced into English verse by Chaucer, consisting of seven lines of iambic pentameter rhyming a b a b b c c
What is rhyme royal?
500
Work characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by speculation about topics such as love or religion. A term coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe the style of a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century.
What is metaphysical poetry?
500
Written in prose, this drama portrays life accurately and shuns any idealized visions (genre--realism.) The author employs the themes and structures of classical tragedy while writing in prose about everyday, unexceptional people concerned for women’s rights, and for human rights in general.
What is A Doll's House?
500
This period addressed the subjects of will and work, the relationship between humans and nature, and the differences between European and Native American cultures. Puritans such as Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop wrote about their spiritual feelings and quests.Puritan Jonathan Edwards and non-Puritans such as Phillis Wheatley and John Woolman reflected on their faith in poems and journals.
What is the Colonial period of American literature?
500
this refers to the literal meaning of a word, the "dictionary definition."¨
What is denotation?