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Satire

A story or argument that brings folly to light through the use of sarcasm and wit.

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Satire"

• American Literary Humor: Mark Twain, George Harris, and Nathaniel Hawthorne

Setting

The location of a story’s action.

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Setting"

• Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper"--Writing Women
• Fairy Tales Around the World
• Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find": Who's the Real Misfit?
• Kate Chopin's The Awakening: No Choice but Under?
• Nature and Culture Detectives: Investigating Jack London's White Fang
• Pioneer Values in Willa Cather's My Antonia
• Quest for the American Dream in A Raisin in the Sun
• William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: Narrating the Compson Family Decline and the Changing South

Simile

A comparison of two seemingly dissimilar things using "like" or "as."

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Simile"

• Pictures in Words: Poems of Tennyson and Noyes
• Recognizing Similes: Fast as a Whip

Slave Narrative

An account of a slave’s experience, usually told as a memoir, biography, or oral history.

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Slave Narrative"

• From Courage to Freedom: Frederick Douglass's 1845 Autobiography
• Perspective on the Slave Narrative
• Slave Narratives: Constructing U.S. History Through Analyzing Primary Sources

Shakespeare

A prominent playwright and poet (1564-1616) generally considered to be one of the finest contributors to literature in the English language.

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Shakespeare"

• 'You Kiss by the Book': Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• Hamlet and the Elizabethan Revenge Ethic in Text and Film
• Hamlet Meets Chushingura: Traditions of the Revenge Tragedy
• Shakespeare's Macbeth: Fear and the "Dagger of the Mind"
• Shakespeare's Macbeth: Fear and the Motives of Evil
• Shakespeare's Othello and the Power of Language

Sonnet

Popularized by the 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch, who established the custom of presenting a problem, situation, or incident in the octave, followed by a resolution in the sestet. In Petrarch's work, these were usually problems, situations, and incidents arising from his love for the unattainable Laura. When English poets began imitating Petrarch's sonnets in the early 16th century, they continued this thematic focus on the pleasures and frustrations of love. But English poets eventually developed a more flexible sonnet form which could be divided into octave and sestet, in the manner of Petrarch, or into three quatrain-length variations on a theme followed by an epigrammatic couplet. More information about the Petrarchan and English sonnet forms (and other varients) is provided in "Poetic Form: Sonnet" via the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets.

For practice with the two popular forms, use the EDSITEment Parts of a Sonnet worksheet to test your knowledge [PDF - Acrobat reader required].

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Sonnet"

• 'You Kiss by the Book': Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• Listening to Poetry: Sounds of the Sonnet
• The Statue of Liberty: Bringing the 'New Colossus' to America

Stream-of-consciousness

A literary technique in which the character’s thoughts are revealed in a free-associative manner intended to replicate as closely as possibly the free range of an individual’s thought process.

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Stream-of-consciousness"

• William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: Narrating the Compson Family Decline and the Changing South

Symbol

An object or other entity used to represent or suggest something else that is either implicitly or explicitly associated with it. Symbols take the form of visual images, words, and gestures used to convey an idea or belief. All human cultures use symbols to express underlying ideals and structures.

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Symbol"

• Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Hieroglyphs
• Poetry of The Great War: 'From Darkness to Light'?
• Stories in Quilts
• The Statue of Liberty: The Meaning and Use of a National Symbol
• William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: Narrating the Compson Family Decline and the Changing South

Symbolism

An offshoot of Romanticism that originated with a group of French poets in the late 19th century and spread across the arts. Formed as a reaction against Realism, Symbolism centered on individual emotional experience and a belief that truth could be obtained through the poet’s rendering of individually significant symbols in metaphorical language. Symbolist poets include Charles Baudelaire and are identified with the Decadent movement.

EDSITEment Lesson Plans that use "Symbolism"

• "Shooting An Elephant": George Orwell's Essay on his Life in Burma
• Charles Baudelaire: Poète Maudit (The Cursed Poet)
• Poetry of The Great War: 'From Darkness to Light'?
• Quest for the American Dream in A Raisin in the Sun
• Symmetry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight