HKDSE Lit Eng key terms

A situation in a play where the audience knows something important that a character does not, so the character's words or actions carry a meaning they themselves cannot see.

A gap between what is said or expected and what is actually meant or happens; it can be verbal, situational, or dramatic, and often creates humour or poignancy.

A speech in which a character, alone on stage, speaks his or her thoughts aloud, revealing inner feelings to the audience rather than to other characters.

A short remark spoken by a character that other characters on stage are not supposed to hear, usually sharing a private thought or comment with the audience.

An extended speech by one speaker within a play or narrative, often addressed to others present, used to reveal character, backstory, or argument.

A poem spoken by a single fictional character to an implied listener at a critical moment, revealing personality and situation through what is said and left unsaid.

A high-status protagonist in tragedy who suffers a downfall brought about partly by a flaw or error, and who gains some insight before or through that fall.

The error, misjudgement, or flaw in a tragic protagonist that contributes to his or her downfall; it need not be a moral vice but often involves pride or blindness.

The purging or release of pity and fear that audiences are said to experience at the end of a tragedy, leaving a sense of emotional clarification.

A serious drama in which a protagonist of stature meets suffering or death, moving the audience through pity and fear toward reflection on fate, choice, and human limits.

A dramatic genre that ends happily, often using misunderstanding, wit, and social friction to expose folly and restore order, frequently through marriage or reconciliation.

Writing that uses humour, irony, or exaggeration to expose and criticise human folly, vice, or institutions, usually with the aim of provoking reform or awareness.

Unrhymed poetry written in iambic pentameter, a metre of five unstressed-stressed pairs per line, widely used in English verse drama and narrative poetry.

A metrical line of five iambs, each an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, producing the familiar ten-syllable rhythm of much English poetry.

Poetry that does not follow a fixed metre or rhyme scheme, relying instead on line breaks, rhythm of speech, and imagery to shape its effects.

The patterned arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry, giving lines a measurable rhythm that can be regular or deliberately varied.

The perceived beat or flow of language in a poem or prose passage, created by stress, pause, and pace, and affecting mood and emphasis.

A pause or break within a line of verse, often marked by punctuation, that can slow reading, add emphasis, or mirror a character's hesitation.

The running on of a sentence or phrase past the end of a line of verse without a pause, creating momentum or tension between line and syntax.

A group of lines in a poem set off by spacing, functioning like a paragraph and often shaping pace, argument, or emotional movement.

The pattern of end rhymes in a poem, usually shown with letters such as ABAB, which can create closure, expectation, or ironic disruption.

A line or phrase repeated at intervals in a poem or song, building incantatory effect, emphasis, or a sense of changing meaning through repetition.

A fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, following a set rhyme pattern such as the Petrarchan or Shakespearean form and often turning on a thought change.

The turn or shift in argument or feeling within a sonnet, often occurring between the octave and sestet or before the final couplet.

Descriptive language that appeals to the senses, creating vivid mental pictures and often carrying emotional or symbolic weight beyond literal description.

A figure of speech that states or implies that one thing is another, transferring qualities to create new meaning without using 'like' or 'as'.

A comparison between two unlike things introduced by 'like', 'as', or a similar word, making a quality vivid through explicit resemblance.

An extended, often surprising or intellectual metaphor developed through a poem or passage, linking two apparently remote ideas in sustained comparison.

A figure of speech giving human qualities or actions to non-human things, animals, or abstract ideas, often shaping mood or moral perspective.

The attribution of human feelings to nature or weather, so that landscape appears to share or reflect a character's emotional state.

An object, person, or action that stands for something beyond itself, often an idea or value, and gains meaning through repetition and context.

A recurring image, phrase, or idea in a literary work that develops theme or atmosphere through repetition and variation.

A narrative in which characters, events, and settings carry systematic second meanings, often moral, political, or religious, beneath the literal story.

The central idea or underlying concern explored by a literary work, such as love, justice, or loss, conveyed through patterns rather than stated as a moral.

The attitude a speaker or narrator takes toward the subject or audience, conveyed through word choice, rhythm, and detail, and distinct from the author's own view.

The atmosphere or emotional feeling created by a text and experienced by the reader, shaped by setting, diction, imagery, and rhythm.

The writer's choice of words and level of language, whether formal, colloquial, archaic, or technical, which shapes tone and characterisation.

The associations and emotional overtones a word carries beyond its literal meaning, influencing how readers respond to a phrase or image.

The literal, dictionary meaning of a word, as distinct from the associations and feelings it may evoke in context.

The variety of language suited to a particular situation, audience, or purpose, such as formal, conversational, or literary, and often used to signal character or class.