Allusion
A reference to a famous person, event or text, such as Marilyn Monroe.
Notes: Before You Were Mine
English Literature terminology
Every key term, with its definition and a picture where one helps. Tap a bold word in the notes to see it there too.
179 terms
A
Ambiguity
When something can be understood in more than one way.
Notes: Language and narrative · Follower
Ambition
A strong desire for power or success. It is Macbeth's fatal flaw.
Notes: The character of Macbeth · Themes
Animal imagery
Describing a person with words linked to animals, to suggest they are wild or less than human.
Notes: Language and narrative
AO1
Responding to the text with your own argument, supported by quotations.
Notes: Essay skills · Extract essay skills · Extract essay skills · Comparing poems · Comparing poems · Writing about one poem
AO2
Analysing the writer's methods: language, form and structure.
Notes: Essay skills · Extract essay skills · Extract essay skills · Comparing poems · Comparing poems · Writing about one poem · Comparing two poems
AO3
Linking the text to the context it was written in.
Notes: Essay skills · Extract essay skills · Extract essay skills · Comparing poems · Comparing poems
AO4
Accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar, and a range of vocabulary.
Notes: Essay skills · Extract essay skills
Apparition
A ghostly vision. The witches show Macbeth three apparitions in Act 4 Scene 1.
Notes: Plot and structure
Aside
A line spoken to the audience, or to the character themselves, that others on stage can't hear.
Notes: The character of Macbeth
B
Ballad
A poem that tells a story in short stanzas, often with rhyme and a steady rhythm.
Notes: Poetic methods
Blank verse
Unrhymed lines in a regular rhythm of ten syllables (iambic pentameter).
Notes: Language and form · Extract from The Prelude · Storm on the Island
C
Caesura
A pause in the middle of a line of poetry, often shown by punctuation.
Notes: My Last Duchess · Remains · Poetic methods
Capitalism
A system where businesses are privately owned and run for profit.
Notes: Arthur and Sybil Birling · Context
Class
A group in society defined by wealth, job and background, such as the working class or upper class.
Notes: Themes
Cliffhanger
An ending to an act or chapter that leaves the audience in suspense, desperate to know what happens next.
Notes: Plot and structure
Comparative connective
A word or phrase that links two texts, such as ‘similarly’ or ‘whereas’.
Notes: Comparing two poems
Compare
Explain how two things are similar and different.
Notes: Ozymandias · London · Extract from The Prelude · My Last Duchess · The Charge of the Light Brigade · Exposure · Storm on the Island · Bayonet Charge · Remains · Poppies · War Photographer · Tissue · The Émigrée · Checking Out Me History · Kamikaze · Comparing poems · When We Two Parted · Love's Philosophy · Porphyria's Lover · Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ · Neutral Tones · Letters from Yorkshire · The Farmer's Bride · Walking Away · Eden Rock · Follower · Mother, any distance · Before You Were Mine · Winter Swans · Singh Song! · Climbing My Grandfather · Comparing poems
Conflict
A struggle or fight: war, but also conflict between people, or within a person's mind.
Notes: Themes across the cluster
Connective
A word or phrase that links ideas, such as ‘however’ or ‘similarly’.
Notes: Comparing poems · Comparing poems
Conscience
Your inner sense of right and wrong, which makes you feel guilty when you do wrong.
Notes: The Inspector
Context
The time, place and ideas around a text when it was written or set, which shape its meaning.
Notes: Context · Essay skills · Writing about one poem
Contrast
Putting two different things side by side to show their differences.
Notes: Letters from Yorkshire
Courtship
The period when a couple get to know each other before marriage.
Crimean War
A war from 1853 to 1856 between Russia and an alliance including Britain and France; the setting of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.
Cyclical structure
When a text ends where it began, so events seem about to repeat or a character seems trapped.
Notes: Plot and structure · Dramatic methods · When We Two Parted · Neutral Tones
D
Dactyl
A beat of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones: DUM-da-da.
Degeneration
The Victorian fear that people or society could slip back to a more primitive, animal state.
Notes: Context
Dialect
The words and grammar of a particular region or social group.
Divine right of kings
The belief that a king is chosen by God, so rebelling against him is a sin.
Notes: Context
Doppelgänger
A ghostly double of a living person: a Gothic idea behind Jekyll and Hyde.
Notes: Context
Double life
Living as two different people: one respectable in public and one hidden.
Notes: Jekyll and Hyde
Dramatic device
A character, event or technique a playwright uses to create an effect or get a message across.
Notes: The Inspector
Dramatic irony
When the audience knows something that a character on stage does not.
Notes: Arthur and Sybil Birling · Context · Dramatic methods · Banquo, Macduff and Duncan
Dramatic monologue
A poem spoken by one character, not the poet, often to a silent listener, which reveals more about them than they realise.
Notes: My Last Duchess · Porphyria's Lover · The Farmer's Bride
Duality
Being made of two opposite parts. The novel's central idea is the duality of human nature.
Notes: Jekyll and Hyde · Themes · Setting and the Gothic · Key quotations
E
Embedded quotation
A short quotation woven into your own sentence, rather than written out on its own.
Notes: Key quotations · Key quotations · Key quotations
Enjambment
When a sentence runs on from one line of poetry to the next without a pause.
Notes: Extract from The Prelude · My Last Duchess · Storm on the Island · Poppies · Tissue · Porphyria's Lover · Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ · Poetic methods
Equivocation
Using words with two meanings to mislead someone without telling an outright lie.
Notes: The witches and the supernatural · Context
Euphemism
A mild word or phrase used instead of a harsh one, such as ‘gone away’ for dying.
Notes: Poetic methods
Evolution
The theory that living things change over many generations, developed by Charles Darwin.
Notes: Context
Extended metaphor
A metaphor that is developed over several lines or the whole poem.
Notes: Storm on the Island · Tissue · Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ · Mother, any distance · Climbing My Grandfather
#
Émigrée
A woman who has left her country to live in another, often because of war or politics.
Notes: London · Tissue · The Émigrée · Checking Out Me History · Kamikaze
F
First World War
The war of 1914 to 1918 between the Allies, including Britain, and the Central Powers, including Germany, in which millions of soldiers died.
Notes: Context · Themes across the cluster
First-person narrative
A story told by someone who was there, using ‘I’.
Notes: Plot and structure · Language and narrative
Foil
A character who contrasts with another, to highlight their qualities.
Notes: Banquo, Macduff and Duncan
Form
The shape and type of a poem: its stanzas, line lengths, rhyme and rhythm.
Notes: Comparing two poems
Free verse
Poetry without a regular rhyme or rhythm.
Notes: Poppies · Tissue · Letters from Yorkshire · Before You Were Mine · Winter Swans · Climbing My Grandfather
French Revolution
The uprising in France from 1789 against the king and the ruling classes.
Notes: London
G
Generation
All the people born at about the same time. The play contrasts the older Birlings with Sheila and Eric.
Notes: Sheila and Eric · Themes
Gentleman
A man of good social position who was expected to behave respectably.
Notes: Utterson, Lanyon and others · Context
Great Chain of Being
The belief that everything has a fixed place in an order created by God, with the king near the top.
Notes: Context
Gunpowder Plot
A failed Catholic plan in 1605 to blow up Parliament and kill King James I, which made treason and regicide fresh in audiences' minds.
Notes: Context
H
Half-rhyme
Words whose sounds nearly rhyme but don't quite, such as ‘silent’ and ‘salient’.
Notes: Exposure · Walking Away · Poetic methods
Hallucination
Seeing or hearing something that isn't really there.
Hypocrisy
Claiming to have good morals or beliefs while behaving in a way that goes against them.
Notes: Arthur and Sybil Birling · Context
I
Iambic pentameter
A line of ten syllables, with the stress on every second one: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM.
Notes: Language and form
Imagery
Language that creates a picture in the reader's mind.
Notes: Language and form · Checking Out Me History
Integrated comparison
Comparing two texts in every paragraph, rather than writing about them separately.
Notes: Comparing poems · Comparing poems
Interpretation
One possible meaning of a quotation or moment. Strong answers explore more than one.
Notes: Key quotations · Key quotations · Key quotations
J
Jacobean
From the reign of King James I (1603–1625). The play's first audience was Jacobean.
Notes: Context
K
Kamikaze
Japanese pilots in the Second World War who flew suicide missions, crashing planes into enemy ships.
Notes: Extract from The Prelude · Poppies · War Photographer · The Émigrée · Kamikaze
L
Loyalty
Faithful support for a person or country. Macduff is loyal to Scotland, not to Macbeth.
Notes: Banquo, Macduff and Duncan
M
Manipulation
Controlling or influencing someone in a clever or unfair way, often by playing on their feelings.
Notes: Lady Macbeth
Masculinity
The qualities thought of as typical of men. The play questions what being a man means.
Notes: Banquo, Macduff and Duncan · Themes
Metaphor
Describing something as if it were something else, such as war as a machine of ‘cold clockwork’.
Notes: Bayonet Charge
Methods
The techniques a writer uses: language, imagery, form, structure and sound.
Notes: Reading a new poem · Comparing two poems
Mistress
A woman in a long-term relationship with a man she isn't married to, often supported by his money.
Notes: Gerald and Eva Smith
Morality play
A type of medieval play that taught the audience how to live by showing characters punished for their sins.
Notes: Plot and structure
N
National Health Service
Britain's free public health service, set up in 1948 as part of the welfare state.
Notes: Context
O
Octave
The first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, which usually set out a problem or situation before the volta.
Oxymoron
Two contradictory words or ideas put together, such as ‘bittersweet’.
Notes: London · Storm on the Island · Neutral Tones
P
Paradox
A statement that seems to contradict itself but contains a truth, such as ‘Fair is foul’.
Pathetic fallacy
When the weather or setting reflects the mood or events of a story.
Notes: Language and form · Setting and the Gothic · Porphyria's Lover · Neutral Tones · Winter Swans
Patriarchy
A society in which men hold most of the power and women are expected to depend on them.
Notes: Themes · My Last Duchess
Patron
A powerful person who supports artists. James I was the patron of Shakespeare's company.
Notes: Context
Personification
Giving human actions or feelings to something that isn't human.
Notes: Extract from The Prelude · Exposure · The Émigrée · Love's Philosophy · Poetic methods
Persuasion
Trying to make someone believe or do something, by argument or by appealing to feelings.
Notes: Love's Philosophy
Petrarchan sonnet
A fourteen-line love poem split into an octave of eight lines and a sestet of six.
Phonetic spelling
Spelling words as they sound in someone's accent, such as ‘ov’ for ‘of’.
Notes: Singh Song!
Poet Laureate
A poet chosen to write for the nation and the monarch, an honour held for many years.
Prejudice
An unfair opinion of someone formed because of the group they belong to, such as their class.
Notes: Arthur and Sybil Birling
Propaganda
Information, often one-sided, used to persuade people to support a cause, such as a war.
Notes: Bayonet Charge
Prose
Ordinary writing without the regular rhythm of verse. Shakespeare often gives it to characters who are mad or low-born.
Notes: Lady Macbeth · Language and form
Protest
A strong objection to something that seems unfair, often against people in power.
Notes: Checking Out Me History
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder: a mental illness caused by a terrifying experience, with flashbacks and anxiety.
Notes: Remains
Punglish
A mix of Punjabi and English, used by the speaker of ‘Singh Song!’ to show his British Sikh identity.
Notes: Singh Song!
Q
R
Rational
Based on logic and reason, rather than feelings or the supernatural.
Notes: Utterson, Lanyon and others
Real time
When the events on stage take as long as they would in real life, with no jumps in time.
Notes: Plot and structure
Relationship
The way two people are connected, such as lovers, parent and child, or friends.
Notes: Themes across the cluster
Repetition
Repeating a word or phrase for effect, such as emphasis or obsession.
Repression
Holding back or hiding feelings and desires, rather than facing them.
Notes: Jekyll and Hyde
Reserved
Quiet and private; slow to show feelings or share opinions.
Notes: Utterson, Lanyon and others
Rhetorical question
A question asked for effect, to make a point, not to get an answer.
Notes: Love's Philosophy
Romantic poets
Poets around 1800, such as Wordsworth, Blake, Byron and Shelley, who valued nature, feeling and freedom.
Notes: Ozymandias · Themes across the cluster · When We Two Parted · Themes across the cluster
S
Semantic field
A group of words linked by meaning, such as words to do with war.
Notes: Storm on the Island · Follower
Sibilance
Repeated ‘s’ sounds, which can suggest whispering, hissing or secrecy.
Notes: Exposure · War Photographer · When We Two Parted · Love's Philosophy
Social responsibility
The idea that we all have a duty to care for other people in society, not just ourselves.
Notes: Arthur and Sybil Birling · Sheila and Eric · The Inspector · Themes
Socialism
The belief that wealth should be shared more fairly and that society should look after everyone.
Notes: The Inspector · Context
Soliloquy
A speech in which a character alone on stage speaks their thoughts aloud.
Notes: The character of Macbeth
Sonnet
A 14-line poem, traditionally about love, often with a turn (volta) in the argument.
Notes: Ozymandias · Love's Philosophy · Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ · Letters from Yorkshire · Mother, any distance · Winter Swans · Poetic methods
Stage direction
An instruction in the script, such as how a character looks or speaks. You can quote these too.
Notes: Dramatic methods · Key quotations
Stage directions
Instructions in a play script about setting, lighting, movement and how lines are spoken.
Notes: Dramatic methods
Stanza
A group of lines forming a section of a poem, like a paragraph in prose.
Notes: Bayonet Charge · War Photographer · The Émigrée · Kamikaze
Supernatural
Beyond the natural world: witches, ghosts, spirits and visions.
Symbol
Something that stands for a bigger idea, such as the poppy for remembrance.
Notes: Gerald and Eva Smith · Utterson, Lanyon and others · Setting and the Gothic · Poppies · Winter Swans
Symbolism
Using an object or image to stand for a bigger idea, such as a stream for the line between life and death.
Notes: Eden Rock
T
Tension
The feeling of suspense or anxiety an audience feels as they wait to see what will happen.
Notes: Dramatic methods
The Troubles
A violent conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998.
Notes: Storm on the Island
Theme
A big idea that runs through a text, such as love, power or memory.
Notes: Key quotations · Ozymandias · London · Extract from The Prelude · My Last Duchess · The Charge of the Light Brigade · Exposure · Storm on the Island · Bayonet Charge · Remains · Poppies · War Photographer · Tissue · The Émigrée · Checking Out Me History · Kamikaze · Themes across the cluster · When We Two Parted · Love's Philosophy · Porphyria's Lover · Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ · Neutral Tones · Letters from Yorkshire · The Farmer's Bride · Walking Away · Eden Rock · Follower · Mother, any distance · Before You Were Mine · Winter Swans · Singh Song! · Climbing My Grandfather · Themes across the cluster
Thesis
Your overall argument, the answer to the question, stated at the start and argued all the way through.
Notes: Essay skills · Extract essay skills · Extract essay skills · Writing about one poem
Third-person narrator
A narrator who isn't a character, telling the story using ‘he’ and ‘she’.
Notes: Language and narrative
Tone
The mood or attitude of a text or speaker, such as angry, nostalgic or hopeful.
Notes: Extract from The Prelude · When We Two Parted · Porphyria's Lover · Neutral Tones · Winter Swans
Tragedy
A play in which a great person is destroyed, usually because of a flaw in their own character.
Notes: Plot and structure · Context
Tragic hero
The main character of a tragedy: a great person whose own flaw leads to their downfall.
Notes: The character of Macbeth · Context
Transcendental
Going beyond the normal physical world, into the spiritual or supernatural.
Notes: Themes
Turning point
The moment in a story when the main character's fortunes start to change.
Notes: Plot and structure
Tyrant
A cruel ruler who uses power unjustly and by force.
Notes: Plot and structure · The character of Macbeth · Themes
U
Unseen poem
A poem you haven't studied, printed in the exam for you to read and analyse.
Notes: Reading a new poem · Comparing two poems
Upper class
The richest, most powerful class, often with inherited wealth and titles, like the Crofts.
Notes: Gerald and Eva Smith
V
Victorian
From the reign of Queen Victoria, 1837 to 1901.
Notes: Context · Themes across the cluster · Themes across the cluster
Volta
A turn or shift in a poem's argument or mood, often marked by a word like ‘but’ or ‘yet’.
Notes: Ozymandias · Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ · Reading a new poem
W
Welfare state
A system where the government provides health care, benefits and support for people who need them.
Notes: Context
Well-made play
A play with a tightly built plot, where secrets are revealed one by one and tension builds to a climax.
Notes: Plot and structure
Working class
People who work for wages, often in factories or shops, with little money or security.
Notes: Gerald and Eva Smith