Literature flashcards

What this deck covers

• Unit 3: Literature and identity (30 cards, 10 dot points)

  • Aesthetic features and stylistic devices in QCE Literature Unit 3 (2)
  • Context of production and reception in QCE Literature Unit 3 (2)
  • Cultural assumptions, attitudes, values and beliefs in QCE Literature Unit 3 (4)
  • Imaginative response and transformation in QCE Literature Unit 3 (4)
  • Intertextuality and allusion in QCE Literature Unit 3 (2)
  • Language, culture and identity in QCE Literature Unit 3 (4)
  • Perspectives and representations in QCE Literature Unit 3 (4)
  • Positioning and inviting the reader in QCE Literature Unit 3 (2)
  • The power of language to represent in QCE Literature Unit 3 (4)
  • Ways of reading a literary text in QCE Literature Unit 3 (2)
• Unit 4: Independent explorations (37 cards, 14 dot points)

  • Characterisation and focalisation in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • Close reading of drama in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • Close reading of poetry in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • Close reading of prose fiction in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • Comparative study of literary texts in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • Critical perspectives and reading lenses in QCE Literature Unit 4 (4)
  • Plot structure and narrative sequencing in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • Point of view and narrative voice in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • Setting, mood and atmosphere in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • Style, structure and subject matter in QCE Literature Unit 4 (4)
  • Symbolism, motif and imagery in QCE Literature Unit 4 (5)
  • Synthesising multiple interpretations in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • The analytical essay and external assessment in QCE Literature Unit 4 (2)
  • The dynamic nature of literary interpretation in QCE Literature Unit 4 (4)

Sample cards from this deck

1. Definition

   Cultural assumptions, attitudes, values and beliefs in QCE Literature Unit 3

   Define Assumptions

   The things a text takes as given and never pauses to prove. An assumption is the most useful of the four because it is invisible from the inside. A text that opens with a wedding as the natural close of a love story assumes marriage is the destination, and it never argues the point.

2. Definition

   Critical perspectives and reading lenses in QCE Literature Unit 4

   Define Feminist criticism

   How does the text represent gender? Whose experience is centred, whose is marginal, and what does the text assume is natural about the roles it depicts? The lens surfaces the gendered assumptions a text takes for granted.

3. Definition

   Imaginative response and transformation in QCE Literature Unit 3

   Define Shift of perspective

   Retell an episode from the position of a marginalised or silenced character. The retelling exposes what the original's perspective left out, and the gap between the two versions becomes your argument about whose identity the original centred and whose it pushed to the edge.

4. Definition

   The dynamic nature of literary interpretation in QCE Literature Unit 4

   Define Historical moment

   Texts outlive the moment of their making. A novel written in one decade meets readers in the next, who bring concerns the writer never anticipated. The text acquires meanings its first readers could not have seen, not because the words changed but because the world reading them did.

5. Definition

   Language, culture and identity in QCE Literature Unit 3

   Define Diction

   The level and source of the vocabulary. A character whose speech is rendered in plain, monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon words reads differently from one whose speech is Latinate and formal. Diction signals class, education, region and belonging before any plot information arrives.

6. Definition

   Style, structure and subject matter in QCE Literature Unit 4

   Define Style

   The local texture of the language, sentence by sentence. Diction, syntax, imagery, figurative density, rhythm, tone. Style is what the prose or verse feels like to read. Two writers can handle the same subject matter and produce utterly different texts because their styles differ.

7. Definition

   Perspectives and representations in QCE Literature Unit 3

   Define Character perspective

   The position of a figure inside the text. A character sees only what their situation allows. A narrator who is also a character is limited by their own stake in events; their account of another person's identity is shaped by what they need that person to be. Reading character perspective means reading for the limits of the view, not just the content of it.

8. Definition

   Symbolism, motif and imagery in QCE Literature Unit 4

   Define Imagery

   Imagery is sensory language: descriptions that appeal to sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. Imagery is the broadest term and the raw material of the other two.

9. Definition

   The power of language to represent in QCE Literature Unit 3

   Define Framing

   The angle from which the selected material is presented. Focalisation, ordering, what is foregrounded and what is pushed to the margin. The same event framed through the perpetrator and through the victim produces two incompatible representations from identical facts.

10. Key fact

    The analytical essay and external assessment in QCE Literature Unit 4

    Tell me about From question to thesis

    QCAA questions use directive verbs: analyse, discuss, to what extent, how is the reader invited. Each verb asks for an argument, not a description.