Reading and Understanding Text (General Terms)
Terms
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- Allegory
- Story in which people/places/things/actions represent an idea or generalization about life-- strong lesson/moral
- Alliteration
- Rep. of initial consonant sounds
- Allusion
- A reference to a familiar person, place, thing, or event.
- Analogy
- Comparison of to seemingly unlike objects that share something important in common.
- Anecdote
- Brief story that makes a point
- Antagonist
- A person or thing working against that hero of a literary work.
- Aphorism
- A wise saying, usually short and written
- Apostrophe
- A turn from the general audience to address a specific group who is present or absent
- Assonance
- Rep. of same sound in words close to one another
- Blank Verse
- Unrhymed verse, often occurring in iambic pentameter
- Caesura
- A break in the rhythm of language
- Characterization
- A method an author uses to let readers know more about the characters and their personal traits
- Cliche
- An expression that has been used so often that it has lost its expressive power.
- Consonance
- Rep. of final consonant sounds in words containing different vowels.
- Couplet
- A stanza made up of 2 rhyming lines
- Diction
- An author\'s choice of words based on their clearness, conciseness, effectiveness, and authenticity.
- (Diction) Arahaic
- Old-fashioned, no-longer used in common speech.
- (Diction) Colloquialisms
- Informal Expressions
- (Diction) Dialect
- Variety of language used by a specific group of people (social, ethic, geographic)
- (Diction) Jargon
- Specialized language (Field, content area)
- (Diction) Profanity
- Disrespectful language
- (Diction) Slang
- Informal language, used by specific groups (teens) among themselves
- (Diction) Vulgarity
- crude, offensive
- (Line Length) Monometer
- one foot
- (Line Length) Dimeter
- Two Feet
- (Line Length) Trimeter
- 3 feet
- (Line Length) Tetrameter
- Four feet
- (Line Length) Pentameter
- Five feet
- (Line Length) Hexameter
- Six feet
- (Line Length) Septameter
- Seven feet
- (Line Length) Octameter
- Eight feet
- Enjambment
- Occurs when one line of poetry ends and continues onto the next line to complete meaning.
- Existentialism
- A philosophy that values human freedom and personal responsibility Key Authors: Jean-Paul Sartre Soren Kierkegaard Albert Campus Freidrich Nietzche Franz Kafka Simone de Beauvoir
- Flashback
- A literary device in which the author jumps back in time
- Foot
- A metrical foot is defined as one stressed syllable and a number of unstressed syllables (0-4)
- (Foot) Iambic
- Unstressed, stressed (/)
- (Foot) Trochaic
- Stressed, Unstressed
- (Foot) Anapestic
- Unstressed, unstressed, stressed
- (Foot) Dactylic
- Stressed, unstressed, unstressed
- End Rhyme
- Rhyming of the ends of lines of verse
- Foreshadowing
- A literary technique in which the author hints about what\'s to come.
- Free Verse
- Verse that contains an irregular metrical pattern and line length.
- Genre
- A category of literature defined by its style, form, and content.
- Heroic Couplet
- A pair of lines of poetic verse written in iambic pentameter
- Hubrics
- The fall that leads to the downfall of a tragic hero.
- Imagery
- The use of words to create pictures in the readers\' minds
- Internal Rhyme
- Rhyme that occurs within a line of verse
- Irony
- The use of a word/phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or expected meaning.
- (Irony) Dramatic
- Reader sees character errors but character does not
- (Irony) Verbal
- Writer says one thing but means another
- (Irony) Situational
- The purpose of a particular action differs greatly from the results.
- Malapropism
- Pun that results when two words become mixed up in a speaker\'s mind.
- Metaphor
- Implied/not stated comparison
- Meter
- Rhythmical patter in verse that is made up of stressed and unstressed syllables
- Mood
- The overall feeling a text evokes (i.e. sadness, tranquility, elation)
- Moral
- A lesson of a story
- Narration
- The telling of a story
- Onomatopoeia
- The use of sounds in words to suggest meaning (i.e. \"buzz\" or \"click\")
- Oxymoron
- A phrase that consists of two contradictory terms (i.e. jumbo shrimp)
- Paradox
- A contradictory statement that makes sense
- Personification
- Giving human-like traits to those that don\'t usually possess them
- POV (Point of View)
- Perspective of story Types: First Person Third Person Omniscient (All Characters) Limited Omniscient (one character) Camera view (Narrator tells story from his/her POV, unaware of any character\'s thoughts or feelings.
- Refrain
- The repetition of line or phrase
- Repetition
- Multiple use of a word, phrase, or idea for emphasis or rhythmic effect
- Rhetoric
- Persuasive writing
- Rhythm
- The regular/random occurrence of sound in poetry
- Setting
- Time/place of lit. story
- Similie
- Two unlike things using like or as
- Style
- How author uses words, phrases and sentences to form ideas
- Symbol
- Person/place/thing/event used to represent something else
- Tone
- The overall feeling created by an author\'s use of words.
- Trancendentalism
- Literary Movement that focused on protesting the puritan ethic and materialism. Valued individualism, freedom, experimentation, and spirituality Key authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson Nathaniel Hawthorne Henry David Thoreau Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Verse
- A metric line of poetry
- Voice
- Distinctive features of a person\'s speech and speech patterns.