Conflict can also refer to the ideas in a literary work.Ĭoncrete diction: words that express details perceptible by the senses. E.g.: Shakespeare’s “oak-cleaving thunderbolts,” or the cliché “ear-splitting noise.”Ĭonceit: a startling metaphor or idea, especially one on which a Renaissance poem is based.Ĭonflict: the central problem or issue to be resolved in a plot, involving the protagonist struggling against another character(s) or obstacle. Like tragedy, the term originally applied only to plays but is now also used for other genres.Ĭomplication: a secondary, minor conflict introduced part of the way through a story or drama.Ĭompound epithet: a hyphenated adjective of two or more words. Books are a load of crap,” Philip Larkin deliberately seeks an unpoetic effect.Ĭomedy: a literary genre intended primarily to amuse the audience. A common poetic theme.Ĭatharsis: according to Aristotle, the purging of pity and fear that tragedy causes in viewers.Ĭlimax: the high point of tension in a plot, when the outcome is decided.Ĭolloquial diction: the casual diction of informal speech and writing. Literary critics debate the way canons are formed, and whether factors like gender and ethnicity affect inclusion.Ĭarpe diem: Latin for “seize the day”: live for the joys of the moment. Now it is used to mean the works considered worthy to be studied in college and included in anthologies. E.g.: “Downward to darkness || on extended wings” (Wallace Stevens).Ĭanon: a body of writings considered authentic (e.g., books of the Bible, or Shakespeare’s works). E.g.: “Their clenched teeth still clench’d, and all their limbs / Locked up like veins of metal, clamped and screwed” (John Keats).Ĭaesura (plural: caesurae ): a light pause within a line it may or may not be marked with punctuation. The most common verse in Shakespeare’s plays.Ĭacophony: deliberate use of harsh, dissonant sounds. E.g.: John Keats’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” The literary term should not be confused with the use of “ballad” in modern popular music to mean “slow, sentimental love song.”īlank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. Literary ballads are modern imitations of folk ballads. E.g.: “Sir Patrick Spens.” The ballad stanza is four alternating 4- and 3-foot lines rhymed abcb. They feature refrains, simple stanza forms, and sparse detail. Folk ballads are anonymous ballads, mostly from before 1700, and transmitted orally. Often in good poetry the tone is mixed and the attitude complex.īallad: a narrative song in stanzas. Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” expresses the attitude that efforts to glorify war in the name of patriotism are lies that distort its ugly reality. Tone is emotional, attitude intellectual. To be distinguished from tone (the emotion with which views are expressed). E.g.: “Through the long noon coo” (George Meredith).Īttitude: a judgment which an author, character or work expresses. John Donne apostrophizes death in the line “Death, be not proud.”Īside: a dramatic convention: a speech to the audience, understood to be the speaker’s thoughts.Īssonance: repetition of a vowel sound. E.g.: “Oft she rejects, but never once offends” (Alexander Pope).Īpostrophe: a rhetorical address to someone or something invisible, inanimate, or not normally addressed. The use of allusion assumes a common cultural background with readers.Īntagonist: a character (or sometimes a thing) in conflict with the main character or protagonist.Īnticlimax: a drop from dignity to banality or trivia usually ironic and humorous in tone.Īntithesis: the use of parallelism (i.e., similar grammatical constructions) to express contrasting ideas. E.g.: “ b eaded b u bb les” (Keats).Īllusion: an indirect reference to a famous person or thing, usually from the Bible, history, other literature, or mythology. Allegory was more common in the Middle Ages, but some modern works are allegorical.Īlliteration: repetition of an initial sound (usually a consonant). Characters are personified abstractions like Mercy or Faith. Mill).Īllegory: a symbolic story in which characters, places and things correspond to other things at a different level of meaning. E.g.: “The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement” (J. Abstract diction: words that express ideas or concepts, as opposed to concrete details perceptible to the senses.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |