WACE Literature flashcards
WACE Literature · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Close reading
- Sustained interpretive attention to a short passage, analysing diction, imagery, syntax and form to show how specific language choices generate meaning and shape reader response.
- Free indirect discourse
- A narrative technique merging third-person narration with a character's idiom and perspective, letting the narrator's voice carry the character's thoughts without quotation marks or reporting clauses.
- Unreliable narrator
- A narrator whose account the reader has reason to distrust, through gaps, contradictions, self-interest or limited knowledge, forcing active reconstruction of the implied truth.
- Implied author
- The organising consciousness and value system inferred from a text's choices, distinct from the real writer and from any narrator the text contains.
- Motif
- A recurring image, phrase or object that accumulates meaning across a text and quietly signals its thematic preoccupations without necessarily carrying full symbolic weight.
- Enjambment
- The continuation of a syntactic unit past the end of a line of verse, creating forward momentum or tension between the line break and the sentence.
- Caesura
- A pause or break within a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation, that interrupts rhythm and can isolate a word for emphasis.
- Volta
- The turn in argument or feeling in a poem, traditionally at the shift between octave and sestet in a Petrarchan sonnet, marking a change in direction.
- Dramatic irony
- A gap between what a character understands and what the audience or reader knows, generating tension, pathos or comedy from the character's unawareness.
- Foreshadowing
- A detail that prepares the reader for later events, working through suggestion rather than statement so its significance emerges only in retrospect.
- Pathetic fallacy
- The attribution of human feeling to natural phenomena in a text, so that weather or landscape mirrors or comments on a character's emotional state.
- Bildungsroman
- A novel of formation tracing a protagonist's psychological and moral growth from youth to maturity, typically ending with the character's accommodation to or rejection of society.
- Intertextuality
- The shaping presence of other texts within a work through allusion, quotation, parody or genre convention, which readers recognise and use to build meaning.
- Register
- The variety of language a text adopts according to context, audience and purpose, ranging from formal and elevated to colloquial and intimate.
- Diction
- A writer's choice of words, considered for connotation, formality and precision; diction analysis asks why this word rather than its near-synonyms.
- Syntax as effect
- Sentence structure treated as meaning: short clauses accelerate, long subordinate periods delay resolution, and fragments isolate emphasis.
- Thesis statement
- A single sentence stating an arguable, specific interpretation that the whole essay exists to demonstrate, distinct from a topic statement or a summary.
- Topic sentence
- The opening sentence of a body paragraph that names the paragraph's claim and its relation to the overall thesis, governing everything that follows.
- Embedded quotation
- A short quotation woven into the grammar of the writer's own sentence, so the evidence is controlled by the analysis rather than standing free.
- Analysis versus description
- Description reports what happens in a text; analysis explains how a specific technique produces a specific effect that supports an interpretation.
- Signposting
- Explicit connective language signalling the direction of an argument, such as contrast, concession, consequence or escalation, so the reader can follow the reasoning.
- Concession
- Acknowledging a plausible counter-reading before demonstrating why the main interpretation remains stronger, which strengthens rather than weakens the argument.
- Literary present tense
- The convention of discussing events in fiction and drama in the present tense, since the text's action exists whenever it is read.
- Transformative writing
- Creative work that deliberately reworks a source text's perspective, setting, form or voice, making the relationship to the original visible and meaningful.
- Pastiche
- Creative imitation of another writer's style, reproducing characteristic diction, rhythm and structure while usually applying them to new content.
- Parody
- Imitation of a style or genre with deliberate exaggeration or ironic distance, drawing attention to the conventions being imitated.
- Controlling idea
- The unifying concept that organises a creative or critical piece, determining which details are selected and how they are arranged.
- Voice
- The distinctive personality and idiom of a narrator or speaker, produced by diction, rhythm, syntax and attitude rather than by content alone.
- Comparative structure
- An essay arrangement organised by shared idea or theme, treating both texts within each paragraph, rather than by text-by-text blocks.
- Attribution verb
- A reporting verb chosen for its interpretive force, such as concedes, undercuts or foregrounds, which characterises the source's stance rather than merely reporting speech.
- Editing for concision
- Revision that removes plot retelling, redundant modifiers and vague evaluative adjectives, replacing each with a described textual effect or a specific claim.
- Referencing conventions
- Consistent citation of quoted and paraphrased material, including page numbers for prose and line numbers for verse, so evidence can be verified by a reader.