I think one of the reasons that so many people have ambiguous views of their English teachers of the past is due to the terminology.  Literature classes usually include an esoteric list of terms that sound a bit fishy.  Few people have ever heard of them; few will ever use them again in life.  That is, unless they are lit majors or savants.

Very Similitude

Let’s take “verisimilitude.”  It means “realism within fiction.”  It’s not a difficult concept to grasp:  when the teenage girls in The Crucible by Arthur Miller claim that witches were making them commit bad acts, there is a verisimilitude in showing teenage girls as manipulative, especially in groups.  It kind of reminds one of “mean girls.”   So we really don’t have a hard time believing this could happen. We can say the play has verisimilitude.  Whereas a talking lion from the great Wizard of Oz does not possess verisimilitude, although if one dives deep into the story, realistic metaphors might be discovered.  Or, certain substances might have been ingested in order to buy into a talking lion.

1. My Cobra

Another such term that frustrates students to no end is “macabre.”  The term is quite odd:  mah-CAWB.  It’s a little difficult to pronounce, and it really only means scary literature (or art, film, music, etc..).  Yet, once students overcome the challenge of the word, most of them LOVE the genre.   Generally, humans enjoy being scared, including me. 

Mr. Poe

Edgar Allan Poe stands out as the number one most popular author for the majority of my high school students. Their fascination for him seem eternal and boundless, much like the love the author had for his dead wife at her seaside grave, Annabel Lee (Virginia was her real name, but you try to rhyme a word with “Virginia.”) My favorite Poe story to teach is “The Cask of Amontillado.” Come Halloween time, Poe is my main focus, and this story is a showcase: it’s got a psychotic and vengeful narrator who allows us to get into his demented mind, and also to inwardly giggle at his nefarious verbal irony (one of the easier lit terms). Another great Poe story is “The Black Cat,” but this one hurts me a little bit to bring into class due to the extreme animal abuse presented in the story.

Many and many a time, I have had tremendous success with assigning memorization of Poe Poems. I recall standout moments when several students memorized and recited the entirety of “The Raven,” all 108 lines. Impressive…plus if you read the whole poem, you’ll see some words that few other living beings have ever even attempted to use: surcease, thereat, obeisance, Plutonian, nepenthe…

My conflict with teaching Poe so passionately and lovingly is that he is just intensely morose. If he were alive today, he may even be considered criminally insane. Or he would have at least been placed on an FBI watch list. So…bringing to my students this type of darkness into an already terrifying world makes me feel a little guilty and weird. Yet, I continue to cover Poe yearly. Oy vey.

Here is a presentation I use to teach the great story “Cask of Amontillado”. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Cask-of-Amontillado-Presentation-to-Accompany-Story-13827272

Is that a Real Word?

Okay, ready? “Asyndeton, chiasmus, epizeuxis, epiglottis, hyperbaton, and a personal favorite–litotes.”  Some of these are real words, and most are literary terminology.  Frankly, the only one I care about it the last one…because it is funny.   A LITOTE  (pronounced lee-TOTE) is a statement made about something or someone that is positive, yet it is stated with negative terms.    For example:

Student One:  What do you think of this teacher?

Student Two:  Umm…she’s NOT STUPID.   ( litote)

Student One:  But she’s kind of weird , no?

Student Two:  Umm…she’s not NOT weird.  (litote)

To crystallize, the so-called “literary terms” are about as important as a snowflake in a heatwave. Poe stated, “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”  But I suppose all specialties have their jargon.  Many students will just forget these odd terms from disuse…and that’s fine.    It is simply a verisimilitudinous fact of life:  when you don’t use it, you lose it.

Since students are forced to learn all sorts of terms like these, especially in AP Lit, I have a Literary Terms test at my store….here’s a link: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Literary-Terms-AP-Comprehensive-Test-and-Answer-Key-14097324