LGCSE Literature in English (0185) flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Free indirect discourse

Third-person narration that adopts a character's idiom, judgements and syntax without quotation marks, so readers hear the character's thought while retaining a narrator's ironic or sympathetic distance.

Analepsis

A jump backwards in narrative time, commonly called flashback, used to supply motive, family history or context that reframes the reader's understanding of present action.

Bildungsroman

A novel tracing a protagonist's growth from childhood or adolescence to maturity, usually testing that character's values against wider society and ending in accommodation, compromise or disillusion.

Unreliable narrator

A narrator whose account is limited or distorted by ignorance, self-interest or naivety, so readers must test the telling against contradictions, other voices and the plot's outcome.

Character foil

A figure whose contrasting temperament, class or morality sharpens perception of the protagonist; the contrast becomes meaningful when both face the same pressure or choice.

Pathetic fallacy

Attribution of human feeling to weather, landscape or objects so that setting echoes, anticipates or ironically undercuts a character's emotional state at that moment in the text.

Motif

A recurring image, object, phrase or gesture whose repetition across a text accumulates meaning and links scenes otherwise separated by time, place or narrative strand.

Volta

The turn in a poem's argument or feeling, most visible at line nine of a Petrarchan sonnet but marked in any form by changed diction, address or direction.

Enjambment

Running a sentence past the line ending without punctuation, so syntax outruns metre and the reader is pulled forward into the meaning of the next line.

Caesura

A pause inside a line created by punctuation or syntax, which slows pace, isolates a word or dramatises hesitation, interruption or breathlessness in the speaking voice.

Iambic pentameter

A metre of five iambic feet per line, each foot an unstressed then a stressed syllable; it is the base rhythm of blank verse and Shakespearean sonnets.

Dramatic monologue

A poem spoken by a created persona to an implied listener at a decisive moment, revealing character through what is claimed, avoided or unwittingly betrayed.

Tenor and vehicle

In metaphor, the tenor is the subject being described and the vehicle the image applied to it; meaning emerges from the interaction between the two rather than from either alone.

Sibilance

Repetition of s or sh sounds, creating a hissing or whispering texture that may suggest secrecy, water, softness, sleep or menace depending on the surrounding context.

Soliloquy

A speech delivered by a character alone on stage, voicing private thought, so the audience receives information and self-assessment that no other character can hear.

Aside

A short remark spoken to the audience, or to a single character, that others on stage are understood not to hear, exposing hidden attitude or intention.

Dramatic irony

The gap between what a character understands and what the audience knows, producing suspense, comedy or dread as the character acts on incomplete knowledge.

Stichomythia

Rapid exchange of single-line speeches between two characters, used for conflict, interrogation or verbal duelling, where each line answers and escalates the previous one.

Subplot

A secondary action running beside the main plot, which parallels or contrasts with it and so clarifies theme through repetition with significant variation.

Stage directions

A playwright's instructions about setting, props, movement, gesture, tone or silence; they are unspoken yet guide interpretation and can carry symbolic weight.

Peripeteia

A reversal of fortune within the plot, where a protagonist's situation inverts sharply and often triggers recognition of a truth previously hidden from that character.

Lexical field

A set of words in a passage drawn from one area of meaning, such as medicine, warfare or trade; their accumulation signals theme and attitude without explicit comment.

Tone shift

A detectable change in a text's attitude or intensity, marked by a turn, altered sentence length or new diction; locating it is usually the first move in unseen analysis.

Narrative voice

The constructed teller of a prose passage, defined by person, range of knowledge, attitude to events and mode of address rather than by the author's own biography.

Connotation

The associations a word carries beyond its dictionary sense, varying with context and usage; close analysis argues from these associations rather than simply asserting them.

Sentence rhythm

The pace and emphasis created by sentence length, clause order and punctuation, which can hurry action forward or hold a single moment in suspension.

Sensory imagery

Language appealing to sight, hearing, touch, taste or smell; a shift in which sense dominates often signals a change in mood, focus or setting.

Thesis statement

A single sentence naming the argument the essay will prove about the text; it is neither a restatement of the question nor a list of techniques.

Embedded quotation

A short quotation woven into the grammar of your own sentence so commentary continues unbroken, rather than a block quotation followed by a separate, detached remark.

PETAL paragraph

Point, Evidence, Technique, Analysis, Link: a scaffold ensuring each paragraph claims, supports and explains a point, then returns to the question's precise wording.

Alternative reading

A brief, defensible second interpretation acknowledged and then subordinated to the main line of argument, showing critical balance without undermining the thesis.

Conclusion

The closing paragraph that weighs how far the argument has been proved, answers the exact question wording and states what the text ultimately suggests.