AQA GCSE English Literature key terms

Cultivated, considerate manners. Austen tests whether genuinely good behaviour corresponds to privileged birth or fashionable appearances.

A literary mode that uses secrecy, confinement, threatening settings and apparently supernatural events to create fear and uncertainty.

Fiction that creates fear and mystery through features such as confinement, threatening buildings, concealed secrets and apparently supernatural events.

A literary genre associated with terror, mystery, threatening or supernatural events, gloomy settings and the crossing of forbidden boundaries.

A woman employed to educate children in a private household. Her education could distinguish her from other servants, while her paid employment separated her from the family.

A belief that everything in creation has a fixed position within a divinely ordered hierarchy. Disrupting that hierarchy threatens the natural and social order.

An excessive desire to acquire or keep wealth or possessions, especially at the expense of other people.

A person responsible for caring for a child in place of their parents.

Responsibility for wrongdoing; the word can also describe the troubled feeling someone experiences when they recognise that they have acted wrongly.

A feeling of responsibility for wrongdoing. Pip sometimes feels guilty even when he has not committed the act he fears.

The tricking of someone into believing a false story; in Much Ado About Nothing, staged overhearing persuades Benedick that Beatrice loves him.

A scene in which a character is deliberately deceived or tricked.

A rhyme in which the sounds are similar but do not fully match.

A flaw or error that contributes to a tragic character's downfall. Romeo's haste and impulsiveness can be interpreted as his hamartia.

A person entitled to inherit another person's property or wealth.

A woman who inherits money or property.

An arrangement of people into unequal levels of rank, status or authority.

A play based on historical events that presents destructive conflict, suffering and the downfall of important characters.

Moral integrity or the respect earned through conduct. In Julius Caesar, these meanings can conflict: a good reputation does not guarantee a just action.

A person who maintains a household, a position associated with responsibility and social respectability.

Excessive pride or confidence, especially in a person’s own power or importance.

Recognition of one’s limitations and faults, rather than an assumption of superiority.

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or effect.

A contradiction between a person’s claimed moral standards and their behaviour.

A metrical pattern with five feet per line, each normally consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

A rhythmic pattern usually consisting of four iambs per line; each iamb has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Presenting someone as especially admirable or perfect, often because affection influences the observer’s judgement.