updated 06/20/2011

You will be responsible for the following terms on the final exam.  I encourage you to develop a journal or database so that you can define, identify, exemplify, apply, and connect these terms and concepts.  The Bedford Handbook of Critical and Literary Terms will be a useful resource.

Literary Elements/Devices and Concepts

1. alliteration

2. allusion

3. ambiguity/ambiguous

4. characterization (direct and indirect)

5. connotation

6. denotation

7. diction

8. didactic poetry

9. drama

10. epic

11. essay

12. fiction

13. figurative language

14. genre

15. hyperbole/exaggeration

16. imagery (different types)

17. irony

18. literal language

19. literature

20. lyric

21. metaphor

22. meter/rhythm

23. metonymy

24. narrative poetry

25. narrator/persona/speaker

26. non-fiction

27. novel

28. novella

29. personification

30. plot

31. poetry

32. point of view

33. prosody

34. rhyme

35. scansion

36. setting

37. simile

38. sonnet

39. stanza

40. story

41. style

42. symbol

43. synecdoche

44. syntax

45. theme

46. tone

47. understatement

Critical/Theoretical Terms

1. Authorial Intention

2. Canon

3. Classical Theories: Mimetic, Pragmatic/Rhetorical, Expressive, Objective

4. Cultural Studies

5. Feminist Theory

6. Formalism

7. Marxist Theory

8. New Criticism

9. Psychoanalytic Theory

10. Representation

Writing Terms

1. Analysis

2. Annotated Bibliography

3. Close Reading

4. Explication

5. Paraphrase

6. Plagiarism

7. Process-based writing

8. Précis/Abstract/Summary

9. Signal phrases, citation, documentation

10. Synthesis

11. Thesis

12. Topic Sentences

13. Unity and Coherence