Edexcel GCSE English Literature key terms

Writing that exposes or mocks behaviour, attitudes or institutions, often through humour or irony.

Someone made to carry the blame for other people’s problems or failures, allowing those responsible to avoid accountability.

A questioning attitude towards claims, especially when they appear to lack convincing evidence.

Deliberately keeping information or behaviour hidden from other people.

An interpretation based on human life and values rather than religious belief.

Believing something untrue about yourself or your situation, often because it matches what you want to believe.

The deliberate rejection of personal desires or comforts, often for a moral or religious purpose.

The process of developing knowledge, skills or character; it need not involve gaining wealth or social status.

Understanding your own motives, weaknesses and limitations, rather than only judging other people.

Excessive admiration of oneself, which can prevent someone from understanding other people accurately.

An excessive certainty in one’s own goodness or moral superiority.

A group of words connected by meaning, such as the sewing vocabulary in 'Poppies'.

Sensitivity to feelings, especially the capacity to recognise and respond to another person’s emotions.

Language that evokes sight, sound, smell, taste or touch.

An appeal to tender emotions, especially through innocence, family affection, suffering or loss.

A harem: women associated with a powerful male ruler’s household. Jane rejects Rochester’s comparison because she refuses to be treated as a possession.

Publication of a work in successive instalments rather than all at once.

Excessively submissive behaviour towards someone considered powerful or important.

The condition of being required to serve a master rather than being free to direct one’s own life.

The final six-line section of a sonnet.

The place and circumstances in which events happen. Changes of setting can mark changes in a character’s situation and development.

Prejudice or discrimination based on a person’s sex or gender.

The application of different moral standards to men’s and women’s sexual behaviour, typically excusing men while judging women more harshly.

Language with an indirect sexual meaning, often used for comedy.

A fourteen-line poem. A Shakespearean sonnet usually has the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and uses iambic pentameter.

A single verse line divided between two or more speakers.

A protective case for the blade of a sword or dagger. Juliet metaphorically calls her own body the dagger's sheath.