Gaps and silences
What is “suppressed” in the text should be analyzed as well. What is said, but also what is not said, is important.
EX: In S-Town, a gap would be explaining mental health more directly, and a full silence would be bipolar disorder.
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Other/Marginalization
Focusing on what in the text might be marginalized. It might be mentioned in the text but it is not a focus. The “other” would be something left out of the text, or “everything else”.
EX: In S-Town, women are marginalized. They appear in the story, but are not a main focus for the majority of the story.
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De-centering
The center of the text that one is reading is the more obvious point of focus. Through de-centering, you look away from the main points and examine more subtle, perhaps marginalized, parts of the text.
EX: De-centering S-Town would mean looking away from John and Brian and the main story line, and examining other factors closer, such as the women and other minority characters.
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Idiolect
Someone’s way of speaking, it can include both dialect and accents.
EX: In S-Town, the characters have southern accents, but John also has a large vocabulary and choses to have a harsher choice of words, creating his own idiolect of an angry, educated, southern man.
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Author and Authority
Author is the person who wrote the text. Authority tends to be more tied to someone’s credibility on the subject at hand.
Ex. Kurt Vonnegut is the Author of Breakfast of Champions, but Barack Obama is someone we would consider an Authority in politics
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Character
The identity of someone, the fictional sense a personality in a story. Characters are used to create dialog and move the story line along.
EX: The Office TV show, Michael is a main character who wants to find family and love, but his mistakes and blunders along the way move the story line.
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Characterization
The construction of a personality in a story through the use of various tools and strategies used to create/ describe the character. This can be done in a variety of ways, including dialogue and reactions.
EX: In Harry Potter, the dialogue that Doby the elf uses, always calling Harry “the noble Harry Potter” and his reaction to people entering a room always being a bow or hiding, add to his characterization.
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Comedy
What makes us laugh through something bad happening, or something ridiculous, but it’s all okay in the end.
EX: Cat in the Hat
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Tragedy
Drama of experience with a sad/unhappy ending. The main character is often brought down by their own flaws.
EX: Romeo and Juliet have a dramatic love story that tragically ends in both their deaths.
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Pastoral
Shepherds represented ideally and in simplicity far away from city life. They live in a state of nature. Implies a sense of organic simplicity and “back-to-nature”. This can be offset by the sometimes brutal, primitive, tooth-and-claw nature of the wild.
Typically, the relationship between these two contrasting views of pastoral literature drives the plot and main issues.
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Carnival/ Absurd
A way of writing that implies absurdity, things that are wild and out of the ordinary, usually in a way that makes you think about a deeper meaning.
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Discourse
When we use language to connect the literature to the culture. It cuts across fact fiction distinctions, and could be called “factional”. You can take the reading and make a greater statement about society.
EX: Political discourse can be found in presidential debates, but especially on twitter.
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Dialogue
A conversation between two or more people. Usually in quotation marks and helps to move the plot line along.
EX: David Foster Wallace uses a lot of dialogue in Infinite Jest in order to give the information he wants the reader to know and nothing more.
Absence and Presence
What is present in the text that the reader will read is presence. Absence is the oposite, it is what is not said in the text at all.
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Background
What is not at the front of the story line or what is not blatant to the reader. The reader would have to de-center the text to take a closer look at the background.
Ex: In the Harry Potter series, Nevel Longbottom is a background character at first. He comes to the foreground halfway through the series.
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Foreground
What appears to be the most prominent aspect of a text to the reader. It can be different based on the audience, so it is subjective.
EX: Hamlet is in the foreground as the main character, but that can be up for interpretation.
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Point of View
what the character or narrator telling the story can see from their perspective. The author chooses “who” is to tell the story by determining the point of view.
EX: The novel Room by Emma Donoghue is told from the perspective of a 5 year old boy.
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Image
A picture that is either a physical image or in someones mind. What a person sees.
Ex: The children's book Goodnight Moon uses images of a child's bedroom and the moon.
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Imagery
language used to create images in the mind of the reader.
Ex: "The rusty red wagon had a wobbly wheel and a broken handle, turned orange from the rust."
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Metaphor
A comparison of two or more things through imagery and description.
Ex: Moby Dick is often thought of as a metaphor for the meaninglessness of life.
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Personification
we apply human characteristics and create these metaphors to describe a scene. When we talk about non-human things as if they were human, we personify them.
EX: Thomas the Train is a personified train.
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Simile
A comparison of two or more things use connector words.
EX: The red wagon is so old it is almost as if it was her Great Grandpa's.
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Context
What is going on outside the text that could have influenced it.
Ex: The Vindication of a Women was written by a women in a time that was a part of the first wave of feminism.
Intertext
A literary text that is related to one or more other texts.
Ex. the New Testament in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Realism
A movement to write pieces based on the laws of reality, focusing on daily mundane tasks.
EX: The Cherry Orchard
Heteroglossia
the coexistence of distinct varieties within a single "language". Diversity of voices, styles of voices, or point of view from varying characters.
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Example: Harry Potter’s ability to tap into Voldemort’s thoughts and the reader can learn both points of view.
Iambic pentameter
A line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by or stressed syllable.
Ex. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
End Stop
a line of poetry ends with a period or definite punctuation mark, such as a colon.
Ex. an unceasing death bell tolls there.
Enjambment
the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza
Example: A Small Needful Act poem by Ross Gay
Aestheticism
A movement to appreciate beauty. It attempts to preserve the arts from subordination to moral, didactic, or political purposes.
EX: the maze in S-Town being appreciated just for maze itself, and not examining a deeper meaning.
Amoebaean verses
A poetic form in which two characters chant alternate lines, couplets, or stanzas, in competition or debate with one another.
EX: Pitch perfect riff off scene if it was in couplets, smarter and more obscure
Apollonian v Dionysian
Terms for the twin principles which the German philosopher Friedrich detected in Greek civilization in his early work The Birth of Tragedy.
Apollonian associated with the instinct for form, beauty, moderation, and symmetry.
Ex. The Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo
Dionysian instinct was one of irrationality, violence, and exuberance, found in music.
Ex. Drop the World by Lil Wayne
Camp
Glorious and over the top, taking things that are not valued and placing inormaninent value on them.
EX: Hello Kitty look for the met gala makes hello kitty feel rich and valued. Rocky horror picture show is another example.
Classicism
The use of ancient Roman or Greek styles in literature. Related to restraint and formality.
EX: Shakespeare’s classic work such as Romeo and Juliet
Conceit
A parallel between unlikely things, an elaborate metaphor.
Ex: The Flea Poem comparing a lover to a flea
Différance
Difference in referral of meaning, knowing two things are different but also what they
post structural beginning post modernism
Dynamic v Static
A dynamic character can shift and change, they have depth as a character. Static characters are the opposite, they remain the same and usually one note.
EX: Nevel Longbottom in Harry Potter is a dynamic character, whereas Harry Potter could be considered static. He does not change a lot.
Jouissance
The French word for “enjoyment”, but used often in a sexual context.
Ex: 50 Shades of Gray
Leitmotif/motif
Leitmotif is a frequently repeated phrase, image, or symbol in a text that usually supports an overarching theme.
EX: In Fahrenheit 451 the salamander appears in random parts of the book. This animal is able to survive fires and represents the theme of fighting spirit.
Literariness
What makes a given work a literary work, Appears as a relation between different uses of language, where multiples usages of language contrast each other based on context
Sum of special linguistic and formal properties that distinguish literary texts from non-literary texts, according to theories of Russian Formalism.
Mythology
a body of relatedness a given belief or system, set of stories or beliefs about a particular person, institution, or situation.
Ex: Money is worth 1$ which is essentially paper value
Objective Correlative
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)
Ex: The wicked witch, romance movies HSM
Old English
anglosaxan everything from the 5-12th century like its own language
Ex: Tolken elfan language
Soliloquy
A speech especially made dramatic like a monologue (spoken to no one)
Ex: “To be or not to be” Shakespeare speech.
Syntax
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.
Volta
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)
Ex: Sonnet 18 line 9