MATSEC SEC English Literature cheat sheet

Narrative point of view: first person creates limited, unreliable access; omniscient third person enables ironic distance between narrator and character; free indirect discourse merges character voice with narrator report.

Characterisation is built from five channels: what a character does, says, thinks, is said about them by others, and physical description; track which channel dominates a given character.

Setting functions as more than backdrop: it can encode social class, moral atmosphere, or psychological state; ask what the setting forbids or permits the characters to do.

Dramatic structure: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution; tragedy typically reverses fortune through peripeteia and recognition through anagnorisis.

Soliloquy and aside give the audience access to private thought that other characters cannot hear; their absence in a scene signals concealment from the audience as well.

Stage directions carry information about costume, lighting, props and movement; in modern drama they are authorial instruction, in Shakespearean texts they are often editorial additions.

Theme is a recurring idea tested through conflict, not a one-word topic; state it as a claim the text makes or interrogates, e.g. ambition corrupts rather than simply ambition.

Structural devices to name precisely: foreshadowing, parallel plot, subplot mirroring main plot, cyclical opening and closing, chapter or act breaks that mark shifts in time or focus.

Quotation use: integrate a short phrase into your own sentence and analyse one or two words for connotation, register or sound; a long block quotation without close reading earns little.

Form vocabulary: sonnet (14 lines, Petrarchan octave/sestet or Shakespearean three quatrains/couplet), ode, elegy, ballad, dramatic monologue, free verse, blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter).

Metre is counted in feet per line: iamb (unstressed-stressed), trochee (stressed-unstressed), anapaest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed), dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed); pentameter means five feet.

Rhyme types: end rhyme, internal rhyme, half or slant rhyme, eye rhyme, masculine (stressed final syllable), feminine (unstressed final syllable); rhyme scheme is labelled abab, abba, aabb.

Caesura is a pause within a line; enjambment runs syntax past the line break; end-stopped lines close with punctuation. These control pace and emphasis.

Sound devices: alliteration (consonant repetition at word start), assonance (vowel repetition), consonance (consonant repetition inside or at end of words), sibilance (hissing s/sh sounds), onomatopoeia.

Figurative language: metaphor (implied comparison), simile (comparison with like/as), personification, metonymy (attribute for thing), synecdoche (part for whole), hyperbole, oxymoron, paradox.

The volta is the turn in argument or mood, conventionally at line 9 in a Petrarchan sonnet or at the closing couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet.

Tone is the speaker's attitude inferred from diction, punctuation and rhythm; it is not the same as the poet's biography, and the speaker is a constructed voice.

When comparing poems, organise by point of comparison (theme, method, effect) rather than poem by poem; each paragraph should move between both texts.

Unseen procedure: read once for sense, annotate for who speaks, to whom, in what situation, then identify two or three striking language choices and their effects.

Diction analysis: classify word choice by register (formal, colloquial, archaic, technical), connotation (positive, negative, neutral) and semantic field (e.g. words of disease, of weather, of commerce).

Sentence syntax as meaning: short simple sentences accelerate and harden; long periodic sentences delay and build; fragments isolate; lists accumulate; questions destabilise.

Punctuation as rhythm: dashes interrupt, semicolons balance, colons announce, ellipses trail off; comment on effect rather than merely naming the mark.

Imagery clusters: group recurring images (light/dark, heat/cold, animal, mechanical) and show how the cluster develops or contradicts itself across the passage.

Irony types: verbal (saying the opposite), situational (outcome reverses expectation), dramatic (audience knows what a character does not); identify which is operating before claiming irony.

Structure of an unseen response: brief overview of the passage's movement, then paragraphs on chosen methods, then a judgement on how the methods create the overall effect.

Avoid feature-spotting: naming a device earns nothing unless you state what it does to the reader's understanding in that specific line.

Essay thesis must be arguable and specific: it should be possible for a reasonable reader to disagree; a statement of fact or plot summary cannot serve as a thesis.

Paragraph structure: claim, evidence (short quotation or close reference), analysis of the language, then link back to the thesis; keep the analysis longer than the evidence.

Assessment objectives in English Literature typically reward personal response supported by textual evidence, analysis of language, form and structure, and awareness of context where relevant; balance all rather than only retelling.

Context is used, not displayed: link a social or historical detail to a specific choice in the text, and avoid biography that the writing does not support.

Alternative interpretations: present a second reading, then adjudicate; phrases such as a reader might argue, however the text also suggest show critical independence.

Signposting language for argument: moreover, conversely, nevertheless, this suggests, which undercuts, the effect is reinforced by; avoid vague evaluators such as very effective or lots of emotion.

Time management for a timed essay: allocate roughly one fifth of the time to planning, three fifths to writing, and the remainder to checking quotations and thesis consistency.

Quotation accuracy matters: if unsure of exact wording, paraphrase precisely rather than inventing words; an inaccurate quotation undermines the whole argument.

Conclusion should not repeat the introduction: state what the analysis has shown about the text's overall design or values, and acknowledge any limit to your reading.