Flashcards
Terminology
Cards in this deck (27)
- 1AllegoryA symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities.
- 2AlliterationThe repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words.
- 3AntagonistA character or force against which another character struggles.
- 4AsideWords spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play.
- 5AssonanceThe repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose
- 6CatastropheThe action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play.
- 7CharacterizationThe means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions.
- 8ChorusA group of characters in Greek tragedy (and in later forms of drama), who comment on the action of a play without participation in it.
- 9ClimaxThe turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work.
- 10ComedyA type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better.
- 11ConnotationThe associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning.
- 12DenouementThe resolution of the plot of a literary work.
- 13Figurative languageA form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words.
- 14FlashbackAn interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action.
- 15HyperboleA figure of speech involving exaggeration.
- 16IronyA contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.
- 17MetaphorA comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as.
- 18OnomatopoeiaThe use of words to imitate the sounds they describe.
- 19PathosA quality of a play's action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character.
- 20PersonificationThe endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities.
- 21ProtagonistThe main character of a literary work
- 22SatireA literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies.
- 23SimileA figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though.
- 24SoliloquyA speech in a play that is meant to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on the stage.
- 25Stage directionA playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play.
- 26SyntaxThe grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue.
- 27Tragic HeroA privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and fate, suffers a fall from glory into suffering.
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- A-Level English Flashcards on Terminology, created by nataliecoley992 on 23/04/2015.
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