Group 5, Vocab!
By: Betty Engida and Sarah Keyser
Terms of focus
-In Medias
-Exposition
-Flashback
-Narrative pace
-Parenthetical Observation
-Subplot
-Shift in style
In Medias Res
-Latin for: “In the midst of things”
-When the narrative of a story doesn’t start at
the beginning.
In Medias Res
“True! Nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I
had been and am; but why will you say that I
am mad?”
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”
-Page 178 in book
Exposition
Exposition is a device that introduces
background information to the audience.
● “ a showing forth”
Exposition
- “ The Last time I talked to my mother”( 181
Baldwin)
- Almost all fairy tales begin with an exposition
- “Once upon a time there lived an unhappy young girl.
Her mother was dead and her father had married a
widow with two daughters…”
Flashback
A flashback is a form of exposition, and is a
transition in a story to an earlier time, that
interrupts the chronological order.
Ex: The Odyssey
Narrative Pace
Narrative Pace determines how quickly or
slowly it takes a reader through a story.
Ex: Walden and the Piano Lesson
-
-
“...I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad
swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest
terms.”
“I
aint..” (66)
Parenthetical Observation
A brief interruption during which the character
or the narrator reflects on a minor point that
seizes his attention.
Parenthetical Observation
“...everything in appearance and manner Emily
was not; … Susan telling jokes and riddles to
company for applause while Emily sat silent…”
-Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing”
-Page 182 in book
Subplot
Subplots are secondary stories that parallel or
contrast with the main action.
-Midsummers Nights Dream
-romantic subplot
Shift in style
A term in sociolinguistics referring to alternation
between styles of speech included in a
linguistic repertoire of an individual speaker.
Shift in style
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a
single man in possession of a good fortune,
must be in want of a wife. However little known
the feelings or views of such a man may be on
his first entering a neighborhood…”
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
-Page 179 in book