Most Important Terminologies in English Literature PDF

Most Important Terminologies in English Literature TERMINOLOGIES DEFINITION AND KEYWORDS Comedy a play written to entertain its audience, ends happily. Classical means any writing that conforms to the rules...

Most Important Terminologies in English Literature TERMINOLOGIES DEFINITION AND KEYWORDS Comedy a play written to entertain its audience, ends happily. Classical means any writing that conforms to the rules and modes of old Greek and Latin writings. Antithesis is contrast or polarity in meaning. Allusion is a reference to an idea, place, person or text existing outside the literary work. Allegory is a literary work that has an implied meaning. Alliteration the repetition of a consonant in two or more words. Ballad is a song which tells a story. Biography is the history of a person’s life by one else. Blank Verse verses written in iambic pentameter without any rhyme pattern are called blank verse. Auto-Biography is the history of one’s life written by one self. Act is the major division of a drama. Canto is a sub-division of an epic or a narrative poem comparable to a chapter in a novel. Chorus is a group of singers who stand alongside the stage in a drama. Catharsis is emotional release of pity and fear that the tragic incidences in a tragedy arouse to an audience. Comic relief a humorous scene in a tragedy to eliminate the tragic effect from audience. Couplet to lines of the same material length usually found in Shakespearean sonnets. Catastrophe is the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy. Didactic is a literary work which aims at teaching and instructing its readers. Dirge is a short functional term. Diction is the selection of words in literary work. Drammatical Monologue In a poem when a single person speaks along with or without an audience is called drammatical monologue. Example “My last Duchess”-----Browning. Difference between drama and novel. Drama is meant to be performed Novel is meant to be read. Stanza contains verses Paragraph contains prosaic lines. Epic is a long narrative poem composed on a grand scale and is exalted style. Example “Paradise Lost”-------Milton. Epilogue is the concluding part of a longer poem or a novel or a drama. Fable is a brief story illustrating a moral. Farce a form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter. Foot a basic unit of meter. Fiction a fiction is an imaginative narrative in prose e.g. Lord of the fly—by Golding. Elegy is a poem mourning to the death of an individual or a lament for a tragic event. Genre means category or types of literature-epics, ode, ballad etc. Hyperbole an overstatement or exaggeration. Image is the mental picture connected with metaphor, smile and symbol. Limerick is a short poem of a five-line stanza rhyming aaba.  Lyric a lyric is a short poem expressing a simple mood. It is usually personal and musical e.g. Keats’s odes. Linguistic is the scientific and systematic study of language. Melodrama a highly sensational drama with happy ending. Example ‘The Spanish Tragedy’ –Kyd. Metaphysical Poetry Meta means beyond and physical is related to body Mock-epic It is a long satirical poem dealing with a trivial theme. Example: “The rape of the lock”-Alexander Pope. Metaphor a metaphor is an implicit comparison between two different things. Metre the recurrence of similar stress pattern in some lines of a poem. Novel is a long prose narrative fiction with plot, characters, etc. Novelette is longer than a short story and shorter than a novel. Ode is a long narrative poem of varying, line length dealing with serious subject matter. Objectivity We have objectivity in a literary piece when the author focuses on an object from broadened point of view. Octave is the first part of Italian sonnet. Oxymoron is apparently a physical contrast which oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Prologue is the beginning part of a novel or a play or a novel. Prose any material that is not written in a regular meter like a poetry. Prosody is the mechanics or grammar of verse. Protagonist is the main character in a literary work Plot the arrangement of incidents is called plot. Pun is playing with words. Periods of English The Anglo-Saxon Literature Middle English Renaissance Restoration Neoclassical Romantic Victorian Modern Post-Modern Romanticism was a literary movement. It stands Opposite to reason and focuses on emotion. Rhetoric is the art of persuasive argument through writing. Symbol is anything that stands for something else. Sonnet is a lyric poem consisting of fourteen rhymed lines dealing with a lofty theme. Satire is ridiculing the vices and follies of an individual or a society with a corrective design. E.g. “The rape of the lock”---Pope.  Most Important Terminologies in English Structure TERMINOLOGIES DEFINITION AND KEYWORDS Fragments Sentence that are not complete or cannot stand alone missing it’s subject or verb Ex: Inflectional Morpheme It modifies the word in which they occur in order to indicate a Grammatical Properties Ex: Free Morpheme That can stand alone as a word. The root word itself Bound Morpheme a word element that cannot stand alone as a word, including both prefixes and suffixes. Ex: Derivational Morpheme The formation of words by adding prefixes and suffixes to existing words and bases. Ex: Lexical Ambiguity When a word has more than one meaning, causing it to be understood differently. Ex: Syntactic Ambiguity When a sentence can be interpreted in two (or more) ways due to the (structural ambiguity) structure of the sentence. Ex: Direct Object Directly receives the action of the verb. Ex: She gives a gift. Indirect Object The word or phrase that receives the direct object Ex: She gives him a gift. Appositive Is a noun or noun phrase that renames or explains another noun next to it Ex: My friend, Jenny is…… Subject Complement A word or group of words that completes the meaning of the subject Ex: She is a teacher. Object of the Preposition A noun or pronoun that follows a preposition Ex: under the fence. Coordinating Conjunctions Connect words, phrases, and clauses that are connected, or equal to each other. Ex: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So Subordinating Conjunctions Word or phrase that links a dependent clause to an independent clause. Ex: After, although, as, as if, because, before, how, if, since, than, though, unless, until, when, where, while, however Correlative Conjunctions Used to illustrate how two words or phrases within a sentence relate to each other. Ex: Either-or, neither-nor, both and, not only-but also Determiners A type of word that comes before a noun to introduce it and provide additional information about the quantity and proximity of the noun. Article Determiner Examples: a, an, and the Possessive Determiners Examples: my, yours, his, her, its, our, their Demonstrative Determiners Examples: this, that, those, these Quantifiers Determiners Examples: some, a few, many, a little, little, few, none Ditransitive Verb Verb that takes a direct object and an indirect object of a sentence. Ex: She showed her friend the picture. Transitive Verb Has a direct object Ex: She gives a gift. Intransitive Verb Does not have a direct object. Ex: The sun rises. Ascriptive Verb Be- verb Ex: Jenny looks happy. Reflexive Verb Verb whose direct object is the same as its subject. Ex: I wash myself. Possessive Pronoun Ownership and possession Ex: mine, yours, hers, his, its, theirs Personal Pronoun Replace proper nouns Ex: I, me, you, she, her, he, him, it, we, us, you, they, them Relative Pronoun Describes other nouns or pronouns Ex: whose, which, that, who, whom Reflexive Pronoun Refers back to the subject Ex: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves Demonstrative Pronoun Point to specific people or things Ex: this, that, these, those