Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at
the beginning of words. Example: " Mad man Moyes
must move many million miles away from Manchester’’/m/ and World wide web /w/.
Antagonist:
A character or force against which another character struggles. Otieno
Kembo is Akoko's antagonist in Margaret Ogola's novel The River And The Source.
Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence
or a line of poetry or prose, as in " I will fly high at night just
to see her eye" /ai/
Character: An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work.
Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic
(capable of change).
Characterization:
The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although
techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal
characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions and what
others say about them.
Climax: The turning point of the action in the plot of a
play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the
work.
Complication:
An intensification of the conflict
in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the
primary or central conflict in a literary work.
Conflict: A struggle between opposing forces in a story or
play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur
within a character as well as between characters. A character could be
with his conscience in an inner conflict or the community.
Connotation:
The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary
meaning. E.g tea for bribe.
Denotation: The dictionary meaning of a word. It is the surface
meaning rather than the implied meaning.
Denouement:
The resolution of the plot
of a literary work. Tension and anxiety cools down.
Dialogue: The conversation of characters in a literary work.
In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In
plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.
Diction: The selection or choice of words in a literary work.
A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements,
as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes,
identify themes, and suggest values. Diction is
usually used to describe the level of formality that a speaker uses.
· Diction (formal or high): Proper,
elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language. This type of
language used to be thought the only type suitable for poetry
· Neutral or middle diction: Correct
language characterized by directness and simplicity.
· Diction (informal or low): Relaxed,
conversational and familiar language.
Monologue: A
type of poem, derived from the theater, in which a speaker addresses an
internal listener or the reader. It is a prolonged talk by one person.
Especially one that one prevents others from others from participating
from the conversation.
Soliloquy:
It is a situation whereby a character alone or as if alone discloses
innermost thoughts to audience but not to other characters.
Aside:
It is a line by a character/ actor to the audience but not to other
characters.
Explication: A
complete and detailed analysis of a work of literature, often
word-by-word and line-by-line. It is critical appreciation.
Analogy: An analogy
is a literary device that helps to establish a relationship based on
similarities between two concepts or ideas. By using an analogy we can
convey a new idea by using the blueprint of an old one as a basis for
understanding. With a mental linkage between the two, one can create
comprehension regarding the new concept in a simple and succinct manner. Example: In the
same way as one cannot have the rainbow without the rain, one cannot
achieve success and riches without hard work.
Epic:
A long narrative poem
that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the
origins of a civilization and embody its central values. Eg The Epic of Gor Mahia
Exposition: The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in
which necessary background information is provided. In The River And The Source, for
instance, begins with the birth of Akoko, the central character, a
major event that sets the attitude towards the girl child, traditions and
rituals which are important in the development of its plot.
Falling action:
In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the
work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution.
Anastrophe: Anastrophe is a form of literary device wherein the
order of the noun and the adjective in the sentence is exchanged. In
standard parlance and writing the adjective comes before the noun but
when one is employing an anastrophe the noun is followed by the
adjective. This reversed order creates a dramatic impact and lends weight
to the description offered by the adjective. Example: He spoke of times
past and future, and dreamt of things to be.
Fiction: An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or
drama. And, of course, characters in stories and novels are fictional,
though they, too, may be based, in some way, on real people. The
important thing to remember is that writers embellish and embroider and
alter actual life when they use real life as the basis for their work. They
fictionalize facts, and deviate from real-life situations as they
"make things up."
Figurative language: A form of language use in which writers and speakers
convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples
include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and
metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which
a part of a thing stands for the whole.
Flashback: An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or
present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a
work's action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of
chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the
experience of human time- what happened before.
Foreshadowing: Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a
story. Tells us of what will happen in future.
Free verse: Poetry without a regular pattern of meter
or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier
poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and
identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet (14-line
poem).
Hyperbole: A figure of speech involving exaggeration.
"Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star." Or Bruno Mars I’ll catch
you a grenade.
Image: A concrete representation of a sense impression, a
feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in
a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring
throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot.
Often writers use multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of
feeling and to convey implications of thought and action.
Imagery: The pattern of related comparative aspects of
language, particularly of images, in a literary work. It is the mental
image which is triggered by the five senses.
Irony: A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and
what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in
life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of
what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of
what is expected occurs. In dramatic irony, a character speaks in
ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other
characters.
Literal language:
A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their
words denote. It is limited to the simplest, ordinary and most obvious
meaning.
Lyric poem: A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression,
and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics.
The anonymous "Western Wind" epitomizes the genre:
Western
wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
Touch
her heart, not her body
Steal
her attention, not her virginity
Make
her laugh, don’t waste her tears
Metaphor: A comparison between essentially unlike things
without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as.
An example is "My love is a red, red rose," ‘’I am a lion.”
Metonymy: A figure of speech in which a closely related term
is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always
remained loyal to the crown.”
Narrative poem: A poem that tells a story.
Narrator: The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to
be distinguished from the actual living author.
Ode : A long, stately poem in stanzas
of varied length, meter,
and form.
Onomatopoeia:
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz
and crack are onomatopoetic. Most often, however, onomatopoeia
refers to words and groups of words, such as description of the
"murmur of innumerable bees," which attempts to capture the
sound of a swarm of bees buzzing.
Parody:
A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic,
but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation.
Ideophone:
It is the sound itself which mimics the source. E.g wuui,for a scream.
Personification:
The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living
qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily
in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a
cloud" includes personification.
Point of view: The angle of vision from which a story is
narrated. A work's point of view
can be: first person, in which
the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively and uses I and we rather than he,
she and they; objective, in which the narrator
knows or appears to know no more than the reader; third person /omniscient, in which the narrator knows
everything about the characters; and limited
omniscient, which allows the narrator to know some things about the
characters but not everything.
Protagonist: The main character of a literary work for instance
Akoko in The River and The Source.
Quatrain:
A four-line stanza
in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a sonnet. A
Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet.
Recognition: The point at which a character understands his or her
situation as it really is.
Resolution:
The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or
story.
Allusion:
A reference to the person, event, or work outside the poem or literary
piece. It can be allusion to music, geographical feature, historical
activity, a famous speech or a religious document- Bible.
Reversal: The point at which the action of the plot turns in
an unexpected direction for the protagonist.
Rhyme: The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in
two or more words. The following stanza employs alternate rhyme, with the
third line rhyming with the first and the fourth with the second:
Whenever Richard Cory went
down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him;
He was a gentleman from sole to crown
Clean favored and imperially slim.
Rhythm: The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of
verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by Langston
Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined:
I
said to my baby,
Baby take it slow....
Lulu said to Leonard
I want a diamond ring
Rising action:
A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or
story's plot leading up to the climax.
Satire: A
literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices,
stupidities, and follies.
Setting: The time and place of a literary work that establish
its context.
Simile: A figure of speech involving a comparison between
unlike things using like, as, or as though. An
example: "My love is like a red, red rose."
Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem.
Stanza:
A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either
with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter,
or with variations from one stanza to another. They are just like
paragraphs in prose.
Style: The way an author chooses words, arranges them in
sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and
actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques.
Subplot:
A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot
in a play or story that coexists with the main plot.
Symbol: An object or action in a literary work that means
more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself.
Synecdoche:
A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An
example: "Lend me a hand."
Refrain:
repeated word or series of words in response or counterpoint to the main
verse, as in a ballad. Are lines repeated exactly the same way in a poem.
They usually come at the end of stanzas.
Syntax: The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line
of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses
in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example,
normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted:
"Whose
woods these are I think I know."
Theme: The idea of a literary work abstracted from its
details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a
generalization. It is the main message in a work of art.
Tone: The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject
and characters of a work.
Understatement: A
figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or
she means; the opposite of exaggeration.
Euphemism: Euphemism is used to
refer to the literary practice of using a comparatively milder or less
abrasive form of a negative description instead of its original,
unsympathetic form. This device is used when writing about matters such
as sex, violence, death, crimes and embarrassing scenes. The purpose of
euphemisms is to substitute unpleasant and severe words with more gentle
ones in order to mask the harshness. The use of euphemisms is sometimes
manipulated to lend a touch of exaggeration or irony in satirical
writing. Examples: Using “to put out to pasture” when one implies
retiring a person because they are too old to be effective. Downsizing -
This is used when a company fires or lay off a larger number of
employees. Friendly fire - This is used by the military when soldiers are
accidentally killed by other soldiers on the same side. Tipsy - This is a
soft way to say that someone has had too much to drink. Golden years/
twilight - This is used to describe the later period of life when someone
is of old age. Gone to heaven - This is a polite way to say that someone
is dead. Enhanced interrogation - This is modern euphemism to minimize
what by many people would be viewed as torture.
Success as you dive in Mr Ngetich
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