GCSE & IGCSE English Literature key terms

85 terms with short definitions you can learn for the exam. Type to filter the list.

Assessment objectives 9

AO1 (30%) IGCSE: Show close knowledge and understanding of texts, keeping a critical style and an informed personal engagement.
AO1 (37%) GCSE: Read, understand and respond to texts: keep a critical style, develop an informed personal response, and use references and quotations to support your interpretations.
AO2 (40%) IGCSE: Analyse the language, form and structure a writer uses to create meanings and effects.
AO2 (42%) GCSE: Analyse the language, form and structure a writer uses to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology.
AO3 (10%) IGCSE: Explore links and connections between texts. Assessed in the anthology comparison (Paper 1 Section B).
AO3 (16%) GCSE: Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.
AO4 (20%) IGCSE: Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written. Assessed in Paper 1 Section C and Paper 2 (or 3) Section B.
AO4 (5%) GCSE: Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation. Assessed only in Paper 1 Section B.
Comparison GCSE: 40 of the 160 marks (25%) come from the two poetry comparison questions in Paper 2 Section B.

Literary terms glossary 76

Allegory: A story in which characters and events stand for something else, often political or moral. Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian Revolution.
Alliteration: Repetition of the same consonant sound at the start of nearby words, used to link ideas or create a sound effect.
Allusion: A brief reference to another text, person, place or event, such as a Bible story or myth.
Ambiguity: When a word, line or ending can be read in more than one way.
Anaphora: Repeating the same word or phrase at the start of several lines or sentences to build emphasis.
Antagonist: The character or force that opposes the main character.
Anthology: A published collection of poems or texts. Edexcel GCSE students study one of four poetry collections in the Pearson anthology.
Aside: In drama, a short remark a character makes to the audience that other characters on stage are not meant to hear.
Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words, such as 'cold' and 'stone'.
Ballad: A poem that tells a story, usually in short four-line stanzas with a regular rhythm and rhyme, often with a refrain.
Blank verse: Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's noble characters often speak in blank verse.
Caesura: A pause in the middle of a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation.
Characterisation: The methods a writer uses to create and develop a character: speech, actions, description and other characters' reactions.
Cliffhanger: An ending to a chapter, scene or act that leaves the outcome in suspense.
Climax: The point of greatest tension or the turning point in a story or play.
Context: The circumstances in which a text was written and set, such as historical events, social attitudes and the writer's life (AO3 in the GCSE, AO4 in the International GCSE).
Couplet: Two lines of poetry that go together, usually rhyming. A Shakespearean sonnet ends with a rhyming couplet.
Dialect: A form of language used in a particular region or social group, with its own words and grammar.
Dialogue: Words spoken between characters.
Dramatic irony: When the audience or reader knows something that a character does not.
Dramatic monologue: A poem spoken by one character to a silent listener, which reveals more about the speaker than they intend. My Last Duchess is an example.
Enjambment: When a sentence or phrase runs on from one line of poetry to the next without a pause.
Epiphany: A sudden moment of realisation or insight for a character.
Extended metaphor: A metaphor developed over several lines or a whole text.
Fatal flaw: A weakness in a tragic hero, such as ambition or jealousy, that leads to their downfall (also called hamartia).
First-person narrator: A narrator who is a character in the story and uses 'I'. Pip in Great Expectations and Jane in Jane Eyre are first-person narrators.
Foreshadowing: Hints early in a text about what will happen later.
Form: The type and shape of a text: for example sonnet, ballad, free verse, tragedy, comedy, novel or play.
Frame narrative: A story told within another story. Frankenstein is framed by Walton's letters; The Woman in Black is framed by Arthur Kipps's Christmas Eve.
Free verse: Poetry without a regular rhyme scheme or metre.
Gothic: A genre with mystery, horror, the supernatural, gloomy settings and extreme emotions. Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde have Gothic features.
Iambic pentameter: A line of ten syllables in five pairs, each pair with the stress on the second syllable (da-DUM).
Imagery: Language that creates a picture or appeals to the senses, including similes, metaphors and personification.
Imperative: A command, such as 'Look' or 'Remember me'.
Irony: A contrast between what is said and what is meant, or between what is expected and what happens.
Juxtaposition: Placing two contrasting ideas, images or characters side by side to highlight the difference.
Metaphor: A comparison that says one thing is another, without using 'like' or 'as'.
Metre: The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
Monologue: A long speech by one character.
Motif: An image, object or idea that recurs through a text and gains meaning, such as blood in Macbeth.
Narrative voice: The personality and viewpoint of the narrator who tells the story.
Octave: The first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, usually setting up a problem or idea.
Omniscient narrator: A third-person narrator who knows the thoughts and feelings of all the characters.
Onomatopoeia: A word that sounds like what it describes, such as 'crash' or 'hiss'.
Oxymoron: Two contradictory words placed together, such as 'loving hate'.
Pathetic fallacy: Using weather or setting to reflect a character's mood or the atmosphere.
Personification: Giving human qualities to something non-human.
Petrarchan sonnet: A sonnet divided into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines), with a volta between them.
Plosive: A hard consonant sound made with a burst of air: b, d, g, k, p, t.
Prologue: An opening speech or section that introduces a play or story. Romeo and Juliet opens with a sonnet prologue.
Protagonist: The main character of a story or play.
Quatrain: A stanza or group of four lines.
Refrain: A line or phrase repeated at intervals through a poem or song.
Rhetorical question: A question asked for effect rather than to get an answer.
Rhyme scheme: The pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines, labelled with letters, such as ABAB.
Rhyming couplet: Two consecutive lines that rhyme.
Satire: Mocking people, ideas or society through humour, irony or exaggeration in order to criticise them.
Second-person address: Speaking directly to 'you', which draws the reader or listener into the text.
Semantic field: A group of words linked by meaning, such as words connected with war or religion.
Sestet: The last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, often answering or turning from the octave.
Sibilance: Repetition of 's' and 'sh' sounds, which can sound soft, hissing or sinister.
Simile: A comparison using 'like' or 'as'.
Soliloquy: A speech in which a character alone on stage speaks their thoughts aloud to the audience.
Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem, traditionally about love, usually in iambic pentameter.
Speaker: The voice of a poem. The speaker is not always the poet.
Stage directions: Instructions in a play script about action, setting, sound, lighting or how lines are spoken.
Stanza: A group of lines forming a section of a poem (a verse).
Structure: How a text is organised and develops: its order, shifts, turning points, openings and endings.
Symbol: An object, colour or image that represents a bigger idea, such as the conch in Lord of the Flies standing for order.
Theme: A big idea explored in a text, such as power, love, guilt or responsibility.
Tone: The attitude or feeling conveyed by the writer or speaker, such as bitter, playful or sorrowful.
Tragedy: A play or story in which a central character suffers a downfall, usually caused partly by a flaw in their character.
Tragic hero: A high-status protagonist whose fatal flaw leads to their downfall, such as Macbeth.
Unseen poem: A poem you have not studied before, printed in the exam paper for you to analyse.
Villanelle: A nineteen-line poem with two refrains and only two rhymes, arranged in five three-line stanzas and a final four-line stanza.
Volta: A turn in thought or mood in a poem, especially in a sonnet.

Practise English Literature free Revision checklist