Literary Terms�An Inventory

Please define any of the literary terms with which you are familiar �

1. explication

2. analysis

3. evaluation

4. paraphrase

5. summary

6. parody

7. review

8. theme

9. persona

10. setting

11. imagery

12. simile

13. metaphor

14. personification

15. allegory/allegorical

16. metonymy/synecdoche

17. paradox

18. overstatement/hyperbole

19. irony

20. understatement

21. allusion

22. plot

23. structure

24. conflict

25. protagonist/antagonist

26. suspense/mystery/dilemma

27. rising action/falling action

28. denouement

29. characterization

30. round/flat/stock/static characters

31. epiphany

32. point of view

33. symbol

34. fantasy

35. denotation

36. connotation

37. apostrophe

38. tone

39. alliteration

40. assonance

41. rhyme: slant/masculine/feminine

Research/Library Skills

Please answer to the best of your knowledge

1. Imagine you�re taking a course from Dr. Lovell and you want to locate all his scholarly publications and this information is not available via a department or personal web site. What library database or index would you go to in order to find this information? Explain why that database/index is the best choice.

2. A first year college student has been through library orientation, but needs some points clarified. She asks why the librarian said students should begin research for term papers at the SJSU library website, using its databases rather than simply typing the topic into Google. Briefly explain the reason/s that�s good advice.

3. If you needed to find the full titles and original publication dates for all the major works produced by a canonical author�e.g. William Shakespeare or Edgar Allan Poe�and speed and reliability were both of the utmost importance, which library database/text/resource would you turn to and why?

4. How would you go about locating the full text of a review of Walt Whitman�s Leaves of Grass written in the poet�s lifetime (i.e. in the 1800s)?

5. How do you located the full text of a recent article about playwright Moises Kaufman in The New York Times?

6. You�re preparing a presentation on Phillis Wheatley and just heard on NPR that Harvard scholar Henry L. Gates has published a field-altering book on her poetry. When you check the SJSU library catalog, however, the title doesn�t come up. What�s the next thing you should try in order to get the book as quickly as possible?

7. Your film studies professor asks you to locate one popular review of, and one scholarly article about the recent film of J. K. Rowling�s Prisoner of Azkaban/ Briefly explain the difference between popular and scholarly publications�noting how you would distinguish between them and giving titles of periodicals that fall into those categories�and describe what steps you would take and which resources you would turn to in order to locate the two texts about Prisoner of Azkaban.

8. What contact, if any, have you had with the English Department�s library liaison, Judy Reynolds? Have you ever gone to the �English and Comparative Literature resource page she maintains on the SJSU library website?

9. Circle any resource or database you have used in the last year. Put an �X� next to any resource you�re never used.