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Terms for subject Literature (1061 entries)

rags to riches	rags-to-riches story
rags to riches	rags-to-riches story
realism	Originally the term referred to a literary movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America, Europe, and England. More generally speaking the term signals towards a literary, or artistic, depiction of life in an accurate, straightforward, unidealised manner.
received pronunciation	The pronunciation associated with Standard British English.
refrain	A repeated line, or number of lines, at the close of a stanza.
regional dialect	Variation in pronunciation and speech patterns due to geographical location.
Renaissance	Originally, the term refers to a period of cultural, technological, and artistic vitality during the British economic expansion in the late 1500s and early 1600s. More generally a renaissance is any period in which a people or nation experiences a period of vitality and explosive growth in its art, poetry, education, economy, linguistic development, or scientific knowledge. The term is positive in connotation.
repetition	This term can refer to the duplication of a number of things in literature. It can be the reiteration of words, phrases, sounds, motifs or ideas within a text. The device is often used within poetry for emphasis.
sibilance	repetition, or alliteration, of the letter "s" and the sound it makes. For example, 'the snake slithered soundlessly across the stony ground'.
resolution	Where the "loose" ends of a narrative are brought together and resolved, or the conclusion of the climax.
restoration	The restoration, or the Restoration Period, is the time from 1660, when the Stuart monarch Charles II was re-established as ruler of England, to about 1700.
revenge play	A Renaissance genre of drama, where the plot revolves around the protagonist's attempt to avenge a previous wrong, by killing the perpetrator of the deed. There is usually much bloodshed and violence. Shakespeare's Hamlet has been identified as a revenge play.
Revolutionary Age	A term from time to time employed to refer to American literature written between 1765 and roughly 1790.
rhetoric	The art of persuasive argument or eloquent and charismatic language through writing or speech.
rhetorical question	A question, which does not expect an answer, usually asked for effect or comment. On occasion the speaker or author offers the answer to the question.
rhyme	Rhyme is the matching similarity of sounds in two or more words, especially when their accented vowels and all succeeding consonants are identical. For instance, the word-pairs listed here are all rhymes: mating/dating, feast/beast, emotion/demotion and fascinate/deracinate. Rhyme is often used in poetry.
rhyme scheme	The pattern of rhyme. The traditional way to mark these patterns of rhyme is to assign a letter of the alphabet to each rhyming sound at the end of each line. For instance, ABABCDCD.
rhyming couplets	Pairs of lines that rhyme, for instance aabbcc. Examples of rhyming couplets can be found throughout Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for instance in The Merchant’s Tale. it for hoolynesse or for dotage Hadde this knyght to been a wedded man That day and nyght he dooth al that he kanrhythm -> The varying speed, movement, intensity, loudness, pitch, and expressiveness of speech, especially in poetry.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan	An Irish playwright during the 18th Century, he was born on 30 October 1751 and died 7 July 1816. He was well known for his satirical comedy of manners. He is known for his works The School for Scandal and The Rivals.
riddle	A word puzzle where something is described and then a question is asked. An audience would then have to decipher and guess what the speaker is referring to. The answer to the question is usually an object, person or idea. Riddles have been popular in all cultures, during all ages.