Lit Terms

Please write down and learn the following Lit Terms and their definitions (these are largely taken from Dr. Kip Wheeler's website):

• protagonist
• the main character in a work, on whom the author focuses most of the narrative attention. 
• i.e. Odysseus, Achilles, Phaeton, Theseus

• satire 
• an attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards.

• fable
• A brief story illustrating human tendencies through animal characters.
• i.e. Aesop's fables like "The tortoise and the hare" 

• didactic
• writing that is "preachy" or seeks overtly to convince a reader of a particular point or lesson.
• i.e. Aesop's fables 

• stanza
• an arrangement of lines of verse in a pattern usually repeated throughout the poem (or . . . a "paragraph" of poetry). 

• rhyme
• a matching similarity of sounds in two or more words, especially when their accented vowels and all succeeding consonants are identical.
• i.e. hands, lands, stands
• i.e. crawls, walls, falls 

• catalogue
• a long list for poetic or rhetorical effect.
• i.e.(items of dappled or spotted things: skies of couple color, brinded cow, rose moles, finches' wings, etc. All of these items are specific examples (making up a catalogue) of spotted things for which the poet is glorifying God.

• alliteration
• repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound.
• i.e. fresh firecoal chestnut falls, finches wings
• i.e. landscape plotted and pieced; fold, fallow and plough 

• assonance
• repeating identical or similar vowels (especially in stressed syllables) in nearby words.
• i.e. couple-color as a brinded cow
• i.e. all in stipple upon trout  
• i.e. fallow and plow 

• utopia
• comes from a Greek pun. In Greek, eu + topos ("good" + "place") and ou + topos ("no" + "place") sound very similar. Thus, utopia at once suggests a perfect society and an impossible one. 

• dystopia
• (from Greek, dys topos, "bad place"): presents readers with a world where all citizens are universally unhappy, manipulated, and repressed by a sinister, sadistic totalitarian state.
• i.e. The society in The Hunger Games
• i.e. George Orwell's 1984
• i.e. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World 

• motif
• recurring object, structure, character type, phrase, or concept in a work and/or numerous works of art.
• i.e. the poor family, the weak father, the evil stepmother, the forest (unknown), enchantment (magic), destruction of evil, wedding, sympathetic animals, naive protagonist(s), etc. 
• i.e. (Biblical motifs) creation-recreation, three days, seven days, the eighth, the garden, the serpent-dragon, the forbidden fruit (tree), banishment from the garden, brother-murder, breath of life
• "In the beginning God [was the Word]"
• Adam in the Garden (of Eden); Jesus in the Garden (of Gethsemane)
• Serpent in the Garden; Judas and the soldiers in the garden
• Forbidden fruit; Bathsheba; the cross
• Brother-murder: Cain and Abel, David and Uriah, Jews and Jesus 
• Breath of Life: God breathes on Adam; Jesus breathes on His disciples
• New Creation: Eve from Adam's side; the Church from Jesus's side 

• irony
• verbal 
• sarcasm - saying one thing and meaning its opposite
• i.e. If the weather is really bad saying something like, "Nice weather today."
• i.e. If your friend has a funny new haircut, saying something like, "Hey, nice haircut." 
• situational   
• When something totally unexpected happens
• i.e. the firehouse burns down
• i.e. the car thief has his getaway car stolen when his plans go awry
• i.e. a pickpocket has his pocket picked 
• i.e. when the evil queen in "Snow White" tries to eat Snow White's heart while the wild beasts in the forest do not touch her. She is unaware this is swine's flesh, which is a fitting meal for such a morally unclean woman. 
• dramatic
• When a character doesn't know what the audience does
• i.e. when the wicked queen of "Snow White" eats the boar's heart, thinking she's eating Snow White's

• juxtaposition 
• the arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development.
• i.e. again, when the evil queen in "Snow White" tries to eat Snow White's heart while the wild beasts in the forest do not touch her. This juxtaposition suggests that the evil queen is more "beastly" than the real beasts of the forest, which we would expect to eat Snow White.

• parody
• (Greek: "beside, subsidiary, or mock song"): A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features. 
• i.e. Nadine Gordimer's "Once upon a Time" depicts how people who believe in fairy tales get chewed up and spit out by real life (i.e. the fear-laden adult world).