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Critical Terminology for `A' Level

THE GCE'A'LEVEL Assessment Objective ii puts emphasis on the importance of skills developed in understanding of FORM, STRUCTURE & LANGUAGE. Students are also expected to be able to use a relatively mature critical vocabulary.

Keep in mind that there is a somewhat different critical vocabulary needed for poetry, prose and drama.

Primary Terms:

Certain primary terms apply universally:
In language analysis: metaphor; simile; symbol/symbolism; image/imagery.
Narrative perspective: tone of voice; attitude; mood; (sombre; bleak; resigned; ironic; sarcastic; witty; melancholic, etc); point of view. The university puts great emphasis on the ability of students to explore point of view, tone of voice, attitude and mood in particular.
Types of narrative forms: tragedy; comedy; satire; farce; fable, etc. Students should always be clear about the nature of the text they are studying.
Verse and verse forms: stanza; blank verse; free verse; rhyming couplets; ballad; lyric, etc.
Narrative conventions: character/characterisation; plot; setting; dialogue; description; action; pace; climax; catharsis; denouement, etc.
Valuable general terms: diction; syntax; ambiguity; genre; point of view; didactic.

Terms such as these should become fundamental aspects of students' work as part of the what the Board refers to as "the exploration of meanings". They should be clear in their minds about the meaning of relevant terms, but avoid using them mechanically .

General Terms:

Allegory: a narrative that carries a second meaning as well as its surface story or content. It often, as a form, personifies abstract ideas, virtues and vices in the form of representative characters, settings, action and plot devises.
Alliteration: repetition of same consonant sound.
Ambiguity: language or event with doubtful meaning or several meanings.
Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds.
Blank verse: poetry which does not rhyme but which is metrical.
Caricature: a character whose personality is described in terms of a very small number of features, often grossly exaggerated.
Catharsis: the purging emotions that take place at the end of tragedy.
Cliché: a phrase or idea that has been used so often, and is so well worn, that it has lost its original inventive freshness or appeal.
Conceit; an elaborate, extended and startling comparison between apparently dissimilar objects.
Couplet: a two-line section of a poem which rhymes and which has meaning within itself.
Denouement: the ending of a work of literature when all the necessary information is revealed and the plot concluded.
Diction: the poet's choice and arrangement of words.
Didactic; a text with a lesson, moral or teaching.
Elegy: a mourning or lamentation (poem): usually sad, reflective.
End-stopping: a verse line with a pause or stop at the end.
Dramatic monologue: a speech written by an imaginary character, in his or her own voice and tone.
Enjambment: running on the sense of one verse line to the next, without a stop.
Fable: a short tale or story conveying a clear moral lesson.
Farce: a play intended to invoke non-censorious laughter by presenting absurd and ridiculous characters and actions.
Flat and Rounded characters: one-dimensional characters, characterised by a single feature or mannerism; a type.
Free verse: poetry that does not have a regular metrical structure.
Genre: a kind of style or writing.
Hyperbole: a figure of speech which uses exaggeration.
Imagery: simply put, descriptive language, often in the form of metaphor and simile, which creates a picture in the mind (an image). The language tends to be figurative.
Irony: saying one thing whilst meaning another. Irony occurs when a word or phrase has a surface meaning, but another contradictory meaning beneath the surface. There are many types of irony: rhetorical; Socratic; dramatic being the most popular.
Masque: a lavish form of dramatic entertainment relying heavily on song, dance, costumes, extravagant spectacle and special effects. Popular in 17th century.
Metaphor: a comparison between two objects with the purpose of describing one of them. A metaphor states that an object is another.
Metre: the regular and repetitive us of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.
Objectivity: an impersonal and detached style of writing.
Omniscient narrator: a narrator in a novel who knows all and sees all.
Onomatopoeia: a word that sound like the noise it describes.
Paradox; an apparently self-contradictory statement that, on closer examination, is shown to have a basis in truth.
Parody: a work written in imitation of another work, usually with the object of making fun of or ridiculing the original.
Pastoral: literature that concerns country life, often idyllic and in the form of shepherds and shepherdesses who fall in love and pass the time singing and playing songs. Usually distanced from reality.
Pathos: moments in literature which evoke strong feelings of sorrow or pity.
Personification: giving human characteristics to inanimate objects or ideas; making non-human things appear human.
Realism: currently quite impossible to define and should be avoided.
Rhetoric; the art of speaking and writing in order to win an audience round. Implies a certain falseness, even emptiness nowadays.
Satire: exposes human vices, pretensions and folly to ridicule.
Scansion: the analysis of metrical patterns in poetry.
Simile: a comparison between two objects where one object is said to be like or as another.
Style: in its broadest sense, the collective impression left by the way an author writes. Characteristic features of the writer's language or techniques.
Symbol: a symbol is similar to an image in that it stands for something else, but unlike an image it is not merely descriptive. It has a weight of attached significance not present in an image.
Stanza: a group of lines in a poem divided off from the others (often referred to as `verse').
Subjective: a personal, individual outlook as distinct from an objective outlook.
Subplot: a secondary plot or story line in a narrative which often provides comic relief from the main plot or a different way of looking at the themes and interests of the main plot.
Extended metaphor: a metaphor elaborated upon over a series of lines - an extended comparison of the characteristics of one thing and another for the purpose of illumination.
Theme: the central idea or ideas examined by a writer in the course of a book. A major structuring device at the intellectual or emotional level of a text. Conclusions can be presented on a theme or the theme simply explored. Very usable term again - frowned upon in the 70s and 80s - but one that can lead students into an artificial perception of the nature and construction of fiction.




























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