Dear All,

When preparing for the final test, be sure, please, that you are acquainted with the following
issues:

- the selected subgenres of the novel (a short description and one or two examples):
picaresque novel, the bildungsroman, historical novel, epistolary novel, gothic novel,
utopian novel, detective novel (Klarer 13-17)

- the plot and its elements/stages (short definitions):

exposition or presentation, complication or conflict, climax, resolution of the complication
(denouement)

- the meaning of the following terms:

suspense, flashbacks, foreshadowing, setting, flat vs. round characters, dynamic vs. static
characters (plus the issues connected with characters we discussed last week)

- narrative situation, focalization and other issues:

• narration, narrator, authorial narrative, omniscient/first person/figural narrative
situation,
• the stream of consciousness
• interior monologue
• focalization (internal, external, zero focalization)

- the definitions of the following:

simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, personification, symbol,
oxymoron, emphasis, euphemism, hyperbole, inversion, anaphora, epiphora,
parallelism, chiasmus, litotes, asyndeton, polysyndeton, Italian sonnet vs. English
sonnet, caesura, enjambment, blank verse, types of rhymes and feet

- approaches to literature (only basic information/short definitions, 1-2 important names,

important terms)
 • formalism and structuralism, including myth and archetypal criticism, New
Criticism, Marxist literary theory, psychoanalysis, feminist literary theory, gender
theory, semiotics and deconstruction (also be aware of what Klarer includes in text-
author-, reader-, context-oriented approaches to literature) (Klarer 102-124)

• historical and biographical, moral and philosophical approaches to literature

(Guerin et al.)

Analysing poetry: basic issues (partly based on Meyer pp. 53-54)

1. Situation
• the title
• the speaker
• the mode (lyric or narrative)
• the mood (melancholic, calm...) + the tone (formal…)
2. Topic
3. Rhetorical form
• tropes and schemes used in the text
4. Poetic form
• metre or free verse? (kind and number of feet – if possible)
• rhymes and other phonological issues (if possible)
• traditional forms of stanzas?
5. Your interpretation/conclusion/final remarks

See you next week,

Monika Szymczak-Kordulasińska
Here you have a few simple definitions coming from
Cuddon, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin Books, 2014,
pp. 346, 432-433, 434, 529, 657, 704.

SIMILE
“A figure of speech in which one thing is linked to another, in such a way as to clarify and enhance
an image. It is an explicit comparison […] recognizable by the use of the words ‘like’ or ‘as’”.

METAPHOR
“A figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another. The basic figure in poetry.
A comparison is usually implicit; whereas in simile it is explicit.”

PERSONIFICATION
“[T]he attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.”

HYPERBOLE
“A figure of speech which contains an exaggeration for emphasis.”

METONYMY
“A figure of speech in which the name of an attribute or a thing is substituted for the thing itself.
Common examples are ‘The stage’ for the theatrical profession; ‘The Crown’ for the monarchy.”

SYNECDOCHE
“A figure of speech in which the part stands for the whole, and thus something else is understood
within the thing mentioned.”