Gaps and Silences
Definition:
Gaps and silences are places where readers can apply their imagination to, they will see everything differently then another reader.
Example:
Everyone would see a bubble differently because of the lighting, size and imagination.
Marginalization
Definition:
treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral
Example:
In S-Town, Tyler gets marginalized by the Johns Cousins
Decentering
Definition:
Actively dislocating what was assumed to be at the center of attention and draw attention to something inside or outside the text which they feel throws a revealing light across it
Example:
In S-Town when Johns mental health becomes the center of attention, it decanters the storyline from the initial murder crime in the first episode.
Idiolect
Definition:
an individual's distinctive and unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. An idiolect is the variety of language unique to an individual.
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Example:
Johns accent in S Town represents Idolect because his use of words and accent are unique to the region he lives in.
Character and Characterization
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Definition
Character can be defined as: the construction of a fictional figure.
Characterization can be defined as: the literary, linguistic and cultural means whereby the figure if constructed
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Example:
Character: John from S-Town is constructed into a character by being characterized: through his use of dialogue, culturally where he is from, his mental battle, use of humor etc.
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Round vs Flat
Definition:
Flat characters are two-dimensional in that they are relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work. By contrast, round characters are complex and undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader.
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Example:
n “To Kill a Mocking Bird” Atticus is considered a round character because the audience sympathizes with him and he is depicted as a relatively complex man. On the other hand, Jim and Scout are considered flat characters because they lack a comparable emotional depth and experience of inner change.
Comedy
Definition:
Comedy is a literary genre and a type of dramatic work that is amusing and satirical in its tone, mostly having a cheerful ending. The motif of this dramatic work is triumph over unpleasant circumstance by creating comic effects, resulting in a happy or successful conclusion.
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Example:
Saturday night live is an example of Comedy because it is often satirical in the sense that they poke fun at modern day issues and create a light hearted tone around the subject.
Tragedy
Definition:
A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.
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Example:
“The Fault in Our Stars” By John Green is an example of Tragedy because it’s about suffering with cancer that eventually leads to a young girls loss of her lover.
Pastoral
Definition:
a work of literature portraying an idealized version of country life.
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Example:
“A Land Remembered” by Patrick D. Smith is a historical fiction set in pioneer Florida that idolizes that life style.
Carnival
Definition:
a literary mode that liberates the assumptions of the atmosphere through chaos.- critique normal societal rules and having no idea what happened at the end
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Example:
the purge film or mardi gras
Absurd
Definition:
literary fiction (typically) that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they search for purpose in life- questioning what is around us
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Example:
Aristotle, sophists, and plato: questioning the world
Discourse
Definition:
Can mean everything from: language understood as a form of social interaction and power, to: a distinctive way of seeing and saying the world; from dialogue in general to conversation in particular.
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Example:
“I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr.- In this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. blended different types of discourse, such as narration and argument.
Dialogue
Definition:
conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie.
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Example:
S- Town the podcast shows clear dialogue between John and Brian as they form a relationship.
Absence and Presence
Definition:
The absence or presence of a motive or character in a piece of literature
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Example:
Johns presence in S-Town even when he wasn't alive
Background
Definition:
fuzzy part that isn't clear
in the text but doesn't jump out at you and isn't obvious historical and social background (social conditions when the piece was written)
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Example:
in Romeo and Juliet the background is set in the 14th century in Italy based on context clues
Foreground
Definition:
What appears closest/most prominent to someone
Can be different based on audience... subjective
Contrasted by background
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Example:
Fault in our stars- Hazel's cancer
Point of View
Definition:
Narrator/character/reader all have different POVs What engages us as a reader is a gliding POV, with a fixed POV being “boring" books with differing POVs, how that impacts a story
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Example:
​You see John's cousins via Tyler's POV before we meet them through John, and each experience offers different perspectives
Image
Definition:
Can be strictly visual or a verbal representation of something to create a picture in someone's mind
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Example:
Brian's description of the maze and John's compound. A visual image of what it looks like without seeing it
Imagery
Definition:
visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work.
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Example:
When Brian was describing John’s house in S-Town
Metaphor
Definition:
a word or phrase that is applied to an object or action that is not necessarily applicable. Equated so there is symbolism to a subject.
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Example:
Song lyrics "you aint nothing but a hound dog"
Personification
Definition:
giving human traits to inanimate objects. Demonstrating a quality of human form that isn't human.
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Example:
"Opportunity was knocking at her door.”-“The sun smiled and chased away the angry clouds.”
Simile
Definition:
comparison using like or as
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Example:
“You were as brave as a lion”
“This house is as clean as a whistle.”
Context
Definition:
the circumstances that form the setting
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Example:
A setting in a storyline would provide the context to the situation in the story
Intertext
Definition:
text that influences our interpretation of another text
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Example:
“The Great Gadsby”: Fitzgerald alludes to T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, which was published two years before the novel. Like Eliot's poem, The Great Gatsby presents a barren land, the valley of ashes, where nothing grows. In both the literary works, the land is called spiritually dead.
Realism
Definition:
Detailed attention to the routine texture of social life Any movement that offers fresh, realistic view of reality
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Example:
Pride & Prejudice showcases life and how it worked back then
Heteroglossia
Definition:
the coexistence of distinct varieties within a single “language" Diversity of voices, styles of voices, or point of view
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Example:
Harry’s ability to tap into the Voldemort side of himself
Iambic Pentameter
Definition:
a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed)
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Example:
“Two households, both alike in dignity.”
End Stop
Definition:
a line of poetry ends with a period or definite punctuation mark, such as a colon.
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Example:
​Bright Star (By John Keats), “And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite”
Aestheticism
Definition:
A movement to appreciate beauty
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Example:
the maze in S-Town being appreciated just for maze itself, and not examining a deeper meaning.
Amoebaen Verses
Definition:
A poetic form in which two characters chant alternate lines, couplets, or stanzas, in competition or debate with one another.
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Example:
Rap Battle
Apollonian v Dionysian
Definition:
a philosophical and literary concept and dichotomy/dialectic, based on Apollo and Dionysus in Greek mythology
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Example:
Apollo is the god of the sun, of rational thinking and order, and appeals to logic, prudence and purity.
Camp
Definition:
Similar to kitsch in the fact that it’s eccentric, excessive, and glorious Taking things without value and placing massive value on them
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Example:
Met Gala making ordinary concepts over the top through clothes
Classicism
Definition:
The use of ancient Greek or Roman principles/style in art/literature Generally associated with harmony/strength used to emphasize form/craftsmanship
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Example:
Dante, Petrarch, and Shakespeare in poetry and theatre.
Conceit
Definition:
Kind of metaphor that compares two very unlike things in a surprising way- Very elaborate metaphor, sometimes using oxymorons/paradoxes
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Example:
The Flea by John Donne, flea in woman's private parts
Différance
Definition:
Defining things by what they are not
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Example:
Defining a lion isn’t helps to see what a lion is
Dynamic vs Static
Definition:
Dynamic: One who undergoes major change in personality, character, or perspective in the story- Static:minor character
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Example:
A soldier who goes off to war is dynamically changed as a result of his experiences, but his wife back home remains static throughout the story.
Leitmotif/Motif
Definition:
Recurring theme throughout a story
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Example:
S town- astrolabes
Objective Correlative
Definition:
Whats on the inside should match the outside - an external equivalent for an internal state of mind; thus any object, scene, event, or situation that maybe said to stand for or evoke a given mood or emotion, as opposed to a direct subjective expression of it. (what’s on the inside should match the outside)
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Example:
When in a movie people are in love music is happy and sun is shining
When people in movie are sad it rains and thunders and its sad music
Old English
Definition:
Anglo-Saxon everything from the 5-12th century like its own language
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Example:
Tolken elfan language
Soliloquy
Definition:
A dramatic speech usually told by one person- like a monologue. Said to general space, not to a person in the text.
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Example:
“To Be or Not to Be” William Shakespeare
Syntax
Definition:
the way in which words and clauses are ordered and connected so as to form sentences; or the set of grammatical rules governing such word-order.
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Example:
Incorrect: "while watching a movie, people who text are annoying."
Correct: "People who text while watching a movie are annoying"
volta
Definition:
the Italian term for the 'turn' in the argument or mood of a *SONNET, occurring (in the Italian form of sonnet) between the octave and the sestet, i.e.at the 9th line (irony)
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Example:
Sonnet 18 line 9
Coming of Age Novel
Definition:
A coming of age novel may be devoted to a crisis of late adolescence involving courtship, sexual initiation, separation from parents.
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Example:
“Love, Simon” is a novel involving an adolescence struggling with his identification with his sexuality and eventually comes out as gay.
Revenge Tragedy
Definition:
Story usually centered upon a leading characters attempt to avenge the murder of a loved one, sometimes prompting of the victim’s ghost
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Example:
Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus
Rhyme
Definition:
The identity of sounds between syllables or paired groups of syllables, usually at the ends of verse lines; also a poem implying this device
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Example:
Love, above-whether, together-glamourous, amorous
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Dystopia
Definition:
Applied to an alarmingly unpleasant imaginary world , usually of the projected future
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Example:
Fahrenheit 451: Novel about how in the future people aren’t allowed to read books, therefore they are all burned.
Essay
Definition:
A short written composition in prose that discusses a subject or proposes an argument without claiming to be complete or through exposition.
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Example:
“Land of Darkness” by Suki Kim. An essay recounting her experiences as a spy in North Korea.
Antagonist
Definition:
s the opposite of the protagonist, or main character. Typically, this is a villain of some kind, but not always! It’s just the opponent of the main character, or someone who gets in their way.
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Example:
Adolph Hitler (World History): The dictator has appeared as an antagonist in countless stories, both fictional and non-fictional, over the past few generations.
Caesura
Definition:
Caesura refers to a break or pause in the middle of a line of verse. It can be marked as || in the middle of the line, although generally it is not marked at all – it’s simply part of the way the reader or singer pronounces the line. In this article, we’ll include the || mark for the sake of clarity.
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Example:
The lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” contain many caesurae, including the opening line: “Oh, say can you see || by the dawn’s early light…”
Cynicism
Definition:
Cynicism is a dark attitude toward the world, especially toward human beings.
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Example:
“I’ll try being nicer if you’ll try being smarter.”
Aporia
Definition:
In literature, aporia is an expression of insincere doubt. It’s when the writer or speaker pretends, briefly, not to know a key piece of information or not to understand a key connection. After raising this doubt, the author will either respond to the doubt, or leave it open in a suggestive or “hinting” manner.
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Example:
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. (William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet)
Cacophony
Definition:
Cacophony is the use of a combination of words with loud, harsh sounds—in reality as well as literature. In literary studies, this combination of words with rough or unharmonious sounds are used for a noisy or jarring poetic effect. Cacophony is considered the opposite of euphony which is the use of beautiful, melodious-sounding words.
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Example:
"Klarissa Klein drives an old, grumbling Cadillac which has a crumpled bumper and screaming, honking horn."
Diacope
Definition:
Diacope is when a writer repeats a word or phrase with one or more words in between.
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Example:
“He’s a good man! What a good man!“
Asyndeton
Definition:
Asyndeton is skipping one or more conjunctions (and, or, but, for, nor, so, yet) which are usually used in a series of phrases. Asyndeton is also known as asyndetism. This word is derived from the Greek phrase asyndetos meaning “unconnected.”
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Example:
"After seeing all the evidence, I agree. They disagree."
Thriller
Definition:
A thriller is a genre of literature, film, and television whose primary feature is that it induces strong feelings of excitement, anxiety, tension, suspense, fear, and other similar emotions in its readers or viewers
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Example:
"Physco" Alfred Hitchcock
Epitaph
Definition:
An epitaph is a short statement about a deceased person, often carved on his/her tombstone. Epitaphs can be poetic, sometimes written by poets or authors themselves before dying.
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Example:
"Beloved mother and wife"
Anthimeria
Definition:
Anthimeria (also known as antimeria) is the usage of a word in a new grammatical form, most often the usage of a noun as a verb.
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Example:
I could use a good sleep.
Here, the word “sleep,” usually a verb, is used as a noun.
Zeugma
Definition:
Zeugma is when you use a word in a sentence once, while conveying two different meanings at the same time. Sometimes, the word is literal in one part of the sentence, but figurative in another; other times, it’s just two completely separate meanings for the word.
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Example:
They left the room with tear-filled eyes and hearts.
Obviously, hearts don’t fill up with tears, except in a very figurative sense.
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Verisimilitude
Definition:
Aside from being fun to say, verisimilitude simply means ‘the quality of resembling reality.’ A work of art, or any part of a work of art, has verisimilitude if it seems realistic.
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Example:
The sky is dark and cloudy at the beginning of a story. By the end of the day in the story, it has begun to rain.
Pun
Definition:
words with the same pronunciation but different meanings. It can also play with words that sound similar, but not exactly the same. The joke’s humor (if any) comes from the confusion of the two meanings.
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Example:
The tallest building in town is the library — it has thousands of stories!
Malapropism
Definition:
Malapropisms are incorrect words used in place of correct words; these can be unintentional or intentional, but both cases have a comedic effect.
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Example:
The doctor administered the anecdote.
A doctor is meant to administer an “antidote,” or remedy, rather than an “anecdote,” or story.
Oxymoron
Definition:
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that puts together opposite elements. The combination of these contradicting elements serves to reveal a paradox, confuse, or give the reader a laugh.
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Example:
"My room is an organized mess, or controlled chaos, if you will. Same difference."
Poetry
Definition:
Poetry is a type of literature based on the interplay of words and rhythm. It often employs rhyme and meter
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Example:
Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth,
nothing is bred that is weaker than man
(Homer, The Odyssey)
Understatement
Definition:
Understatement is when a writer presents a situation or thing as if it is less important or serious than it is in reality.
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Example:
There’s some water in the Atlantic Ocean.
Haiku
Definition:
A haiku is a specific type of Japanese poem which has 17 syllables divided into three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. Haikus or haiku are typically written on the subject of nature.
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Example:
From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon-beholders.
— Matsuo Basho
Onomatopoeia
Definition:
refers to words whose pronunciations imitate the sounds they describe.
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Example:
Boom! Pow! Whoosh! Wham!
Plagiarism
Definition:
Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s ideas, words, or thoughts as your own without giving credit to the other person.
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Example:
Melania Trump copying Michelle Obama's speech: THERE I SAID IT, AND I STAND BY IT!
Mnemonic
Definition:
also known as a memory aid, is a tool that helps you remember an idea or phrase with a pattern of letters, numbers, or relatable associations.
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Example:
PEMDAS – Please excuse my dear Aunt Susie.
Horror
Definition:
a genre of fiction whose purpose is to create feelings of fear, dread, repulsion, and terror in the audience
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Example:
"IT" Stephen King
Fairy Tale
Definition:
A fairy tale is a story, often intended for children, that features fanciful and wondrous characters such as elves, goblins, wizards, and even, but not necessarily, fairies.
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Example:
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Adventure
Definition:
a remarkable or unexpected journey, experience, or event that a person participates in as a result of chance.
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Example:
Avenger Movies
Doppelganger
Definition:
a twin or double of some character, usually in the form of an evil twin.
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Example:
Edgar Allen Poe’s story William Wilson is about a young boy who meets his (almost) exact double and becomes increasingly corrupted by his influence.
Eponym
Definition:
An eponym refers to a person or thing after which something else is named.
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Example:
Napoleon is the eponym of the Napoleonic Code.
Enjambment
Definition:
the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza
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Example:
A Small Needful Act poem by Ross Gay
Mythology
Definition:
a body of relatedness a given belief or system, set of stories or beliefs about a particular person, institution, or situation.
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Example:
Heracles and the 12 labors
Denouement
Definition:
is the very end of a story, the part where all the different plotlines are finally tied up and all remaining questions answered.
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Example:
…and they lived happily ever after.