STPM Literature in English 920 flashcards

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

Hamartia

A tragic character's error of judgement or moral flaw that contributes to downfall; in Aristotle it is not necessarily a vice but a misstep with serious consequences.

Anagnorisis

The moment in tragedy when a character recognises the true identity, situation, or consequence of actions; it often precedes or accompanies catastrophe and deepens tragic effect.

Peripeteia

A sudden reversal of fortune or intention in a dramatic plot, often turning expected success into disaster; Aristotle treats it as a key structural element of complex tragedy.

Dramatic irony

A gap between what a character knows and what the audience knows, created by soliloquy, aside, or prior information; it generates tension, pity, or comic effect.

Soliloquy

A speech delivered alone on stage in which a character voices private thoughts; it reveals motive and can create dramatic irony when the audience understands more than other characters.

Blank verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter, common in Shakespearean drama; its regular beat can be varied by pauses, enjambment, and prose switches to signal status, emotion, or disorder.

Catharsis

Aristotle's term for the emotional purification or release produced by tragedy, especially through pity and fear; the audience's response is part of the genre's designed effect.

Tragic flaw

A character trait or pattern of judgement that makes disaster probable, such as pride or indecision; it should be inferred from action and speech, not assumed from the ending alone.

Speaker

The constructed voice uttering a poem, distinct from the poet's biography; identifying the speaker's situation, addressee, and attitude prevents autobiographical misreading of dramatic monologues or lyrics.

Volta

A turn in argument or mood in a poem, especially the shift between octave and sestet in a Petrarchan sonnet or before the final couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet.

Enjambment

The continuation of a sentence without a pause across a line break; it can speed reading, create suspense, or force emphasis on the first word of the next line.

Caesura

A pause within a line of verse, often marked by punctuation or syntax; it can interrupt meter, create emphasis, or dramatise hesitation and speech-like rhythm.

Iambic pentameter

A metrical line of five iambic feet, each foot an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one; it is the baseline rhythm of much English blank verse and sonnet writing.

Metonymy

A figure in which an associated object stands for something else, as crown for monarchy; unlike metaphor, the substitution relies on a real-world relation rather than stated resemblance.

Synecdoche

A figure in which a part stands for the whole or the whole for a part, as hands for workers; it is often treated as a type of metonymy in stylistic analysis.

Ode

A formal lyric poem addressing an object, person, or abstraction, often elevated in tone and varied in stanza; English odes may follow Pindaric, Horatian, or irregular patterns.

Free indirect discourse

A narrative technique merging third-person narration with a character's idiom and thoughts, without quotation marks; it creates intimacy while retaining an external narrative perspective.

Analepsis

A flashback in narrative, presenting events that occurred before the current story time; it can supply motive, context, or a contrast that reinterprets present action.

Prolepsis

A flash-forward in narrative, narrating an event before its chronological place in the story; it can create suspense, foreshadowing, or a sense of inevitability.

Epiphany

A moment of sudden insight or revelation in a character's experience, often ending a short story; it may be explicit or implied through a changed perception of ordinary details.

Motif

A recurring image, phrase, object, or situation in a literary work; repetition builds pattern and can reinforce theme, character, or structure without functioning as a fixed symbol.

Omniscient narrator

A third-person narrator with access to multiple characters' thoughts and to information beyond any single perspective; the narrator may comment, judge, or withhold knowledge strategically.

Situational irony

A discrepancy between what is expected and what actually happens, often produced by reversal or unintended consequence; it differs from verbal irony, which involves saying the opposite.

Bildungsroman

A novel of formation tracing a protagonist's growth from youth into maturity through experience, conflict, and social adjustment; the ending often tests whether that development is complete.

Close reading

Sustained analysis of a short passage's diction, syntax, imagery, structure, and tone; the aim is to show how formal choices produce meaning rather than merely summarise content.

Thesis statement

A concise, arguable claim that governs an essay and predicts its line of reasoning; it should be specific enough to require textual evidence and analysis in every paragraph.

Intentional fallacy

The critical error of judging a text by the author's supposed intentions rather than by what the text actually says and does; intention may be relevant context but is not identical with meaning.

Affective fallacy

The critical error of judging a text mainly by its emotional effect on readers; response matters, but analysis must also show how textual features produce that response.

Formalist criticism

An approach treating the literary text as an autonomous verbal structure; it prioritises close reading of form, ambiguity, pattern, and unity over biography or historical context.

Feminist criticism

An approach examining how texts construct gender, power, and identity; it asks whose voices are authorised, how stereotypes function, and how form reinforces or challenges patriarchy.

Postcolonial criticism

An approach analysing literature in relation to empire, colonisation, resistance, and identity; it examines language, representation, hybridity, and the legacies of colonial power.

Comparative essay structure

Organise by analytical criteria such as theme, character, or technique, discussing both texts in each paragraph; this avoids separate summaries and makes the comparison itself the argument.