LIT TERMS #6

Simile: a figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific word of comparison.
ex: A heart like a lion

Soliloquy: an extended speech, usually in a drama, delivered by a character alone on stage.
ex: Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be 

Spiritual: a folk song, usually on a religious theme.
ex: Used in Sula

Speaker: a narrator, the one speaking.
ex: first person speaker, third person speaker
 
Stereotype: cliché; a simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story.
ex: all teenagers are trouble makers

Stream of Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s
thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images, as the character experiences them.
ex: popular in postmodernism
 
Structure: the planned framework of a literary selection; its apparent organization.
ex: loose structure

Style:  the manner of putting thoughts into words; a characteristic way of writing or speaking.
ex: educational style, leisurely style

Subordination: the couching of less important ideas in less important  structures of language.
ex: Less important characters will not be as vividly described

Surrealism: a style in literature and painting that stresses the subconscious or the nonrational aspects of man’s existence characterized by the juxtaposition of the bizarre and the banal.
ex: Rene Magritte

Suspension of Disbelief: suspend not believing in order to enjoy it.
ex: People know vampires don't exist, but they read Twilight anyways

Symbol: something which stands for something else, yet has a meaning of its own.
ex: a tree symbolizes life

Synesthesia: the use of one sense to convey the experience of another sense.
ex: a "loud color"

Synecdoche: another form of name changing, in which a part stands for the whole.
ex: "sails" can refer to a whole ship

Syntax: the arrangement and grammatical relations of words in a sentence.
ex: "Powerful you have become; the dark side I sense in you."

Theme:  main idea of the story; its message(s).
ex: A theme in Sula is friendship

Thesis: a proposition for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or disproved; the main idea.
ex: Should be in the introductory paragraph of an essay

Tone: the devices used to create the mood and atmosphere of a literary work; the author’s perceived point of view.
ex: caustic, enlightening, calm, bombastic

Tongue in Cheek: a type of humor in which the speaker feigns seriousness; a.k.a. “dry” or “dead pan”
ex: Catch-22

Tragedy: in literature: any composition with a somber theme carried to a disastrous conclusion; a fatal event; protagonist usually is heroic but tragically (fatally) flawed
ex: Romeo and Juliet

Understatement: opposite of hyperbole; saying less than you mean for emphasis
ex: I will be ready in 2 seconds

Vernacular: everyday speech
ex: conversations you hear around campus

Voice:  The textual features, such as diction and sentence structures, that convey a writer’s or speaker’s pesona.
ex: individual voice

Zeitgeist: the feeling of a particular era in history
ex: music can capture zeitgeist