Literary Terms Practice

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Literary Terms Practice

• By Mrs. Sears

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Dramatic Monologue

• A poem that is spoken by a FICTIONAL NARRATOR who
  is clearly different from the author in age,
  situation, or gender.
• Its purpose is for the speaker to reveal, often
  unwittingly, significant aspects of his or her
  qualities, values, and experiences, which are
  inferred by the reader.
• (click on all underlined terms for more
  information)

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Epigram

• From the Greek word for inscription
• Has come to mean a witty saying in either verse
  or prose, concisely phrased and often SATIRIC.
• Ie. Samuel Taylor Coleridge What is an
  Epigram? A Dwarfish whole,/Its body brevity, and
  wit its soul.
• Different from an APHORISMa terse statement on a
  serious subject.

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Satire

• A genre of COMEDY that is directed at ridiculing
  human foibles and vices, such as vanity,
  hypocrisy, stupidity, and greed.
• It is different from pure comedy in that the aim
  is not simply to evoke laughter, but to expose
  and censure such faults, often with the aim of
  correcting them.
• There is DIRECT or FORMAL SATIRE (1st person
  narrator addresses a specific audience) and
  INDIRECT (when its not addressing the audience
  specifically, but implying it)

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Simile

• Is where one kind of this is compared to a
  markedly different object, concept, or
  experience the comparison is made explicit by
  the word like or as

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Metaphor

• A word or PHRASE that in literal use designates
  one kind of thing is applied to a conspicuously
  different object, concept, or experience, without
  asserting an explicit comparison.
• May be short or long, a quick linking or a series
  of sustained comparisons.
• The next slides will explore more.

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MIXED Metaphor

• Occurs when two or more incongruous ideas are
  applied to the same object. Instead of
  clarifying, the figure confuses it by linking
  images that clash
• She felt a heavy burden of guilt, but she would
  not let it engulf her resolve. Word burden is
  already a way to feel her guilt it classes with
  the engulf. The image of being weighed down is
  confused by the conflicting image of being
  surrounded and swallowed up, drowned.

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EXTENDED Metaphor

• Is the use of words or phrases that sustain
  through several lines
• In his expression of total despair, the tyrant
  Macbeth compares life to a walking shadow, a
  poor player that struts and frets his hour upon
  the stage, and a tale told by an idiot. It
  portrays the sense of failure or futility the
  bitter images of meaninglessness.

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Personification

• An abstract concept, animal, or inanimate object
  is treated as though it were alive or had human
  attributes
• ALLEGORY is an extended form of personification
  in which an abstract concept is presented as
  though it were a character who speaks and acts as
  an independent being

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Pathetic Fallacy

• A special type of PERSONIFICATION, where
  inanimate aspects of nature, such as the
  landscape or the weather, are represented as
  having human qualities or feelings.
• Its usually reserved for purposes of IRONY. The
  bloody battle of Chancellorsville in Stephen
  Cranes The Red Badge of Courage is set on a
  lovely summer day. On the eve of the battle, the
  naïve young private Henry Fleming sees nature as
  attuned to his need for consolation

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Cont. with Pathetic Fallacy

• There was a caress in the soft winds and the
  whole mood of the darkness, he thought, was one
  of sympathy for himself in his distress. A
  change in the mood of the weather or the look of
  the landscape is a favorite means for authors to
  signal a shift in the fortunes of characters. As
  Henry encounters the devastation of war, the
  setting accordingly turns dark and threatening.
  Only much later, after he has emerged from the
  battle, scarred by his experiences but grateful
  to have survived, does the pathetic fallacy
  return to its usual use. The young solider is
  able to turn with a lovers thirst to images of
  tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooksan
  existence of soft and eternal peace. The
  weather reflects his newly optimistic mood as a
  golden ray of sun comes through the hosts of
  leaden rain clouds.

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Synecdoche

• The term for part of something that is used to
  represent the whole, or, less commonly, the term
  for the whole is used to represent a part.
• Ie. A fleet of ships may be described as forty
  sails
• Athlete might be nicknames Muscles
• Manuel laborersblue collar workers
• Food daily bread

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Metonymy

• Substitutes the name of an entity with something
  else that is closely associated with it.
• Ie the throne is a metonymic synonym for the
  king
• Shakespeare for the works of a playwrightthe
  citadel the Kremlin for the ruling body of
  Russia

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Irony

• Verbal.consists of implying a meaning different
  from, and often the complete opposite of, the one
  explicitly stated. It is often very subtle in
  nature.
• Often sarcasm is mistakenly used as synonymous
  with verbal irony, but sarcasm is simpler and
  more crude and often uses the vocal inflection

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Structural Irony

• Click on the link and it tells you all that you
  will need to know far better than I can

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Dramatic Irony

• Occurs when the audience is privy to knowledge
  that one or more of the characters lack.
• When dramatic irony occurs in tragedies, it is
  called tragic irony ie. The audience in Othello
  is knows that Iago is plotting the demise of the
  noble general who he pretends to be faithfully
  serving.

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Cosmic Irony

• Refers to an implied worldview in which
  characters are led to embrace false hopes of aid
  or success, only to be defeated by some larger
  force, such as God or fate.
• I.e.. Macbeth believes that he is protected by
  the weird sisters prophecies, but he is betrayed
  by their fiendish duplicity. Or in King Lear the
  Earl of Gloucester, stunned by a series of blows
  that have left him blind, in peril of his life,
  and, he wrongly believes, betrayed by his
  favorite son, describes cosmic irony in a bitter
  simile
• As flies to wanton boys are we to th gods,
• They kill us for their sport.

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For the remaining Literary Terms, you will need
to read the links provided to complete the
assignments

• Lets get going

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Click the links to find the information

• Hyperbole
• Understatement
• Paradox and Oxymoron
• Litotes

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Some more

• Periphrasis
• Pun
• And thats all folks!