Eduqas GCSE English Literature key terms

A speaker’s account of earlier experiences, shaped by the understanding gained since they happened.

Lively, noisy celebration, especially involving drinking, singing and dancing.

A question used to make a point or express a feeling rather than to request an answer.

Two successive lines of poetry whose final words rhyme.

A change in the usual relationship between characters, such as children becoming the moral teachers of their parents.

A play centred on love which usually moves through obstacles and misunderstandings towards marriage or the promise of marriage.

A literary and artistic movement that valued emotion, imagination, individual experience and the natural world.

Love presented through emotional attachment, affection and a desire for a relationship with another person.

A disorderly retreat after defeat. Wells extends this military idea to civilisation itself as the population flees.

The historical practice of a monarch touching sick people in the belief that royal, divinely granted power could heal them.

An act that violates something regarded as sacred.

Mocking or cutting language that often expresses the opposite of its literal meaning.

Writing that exposes faults or abuses through ridicule, exaggeration or irony.

Fiction that imagines scientific or technological possibilities and explores their effects on people and society.

A literary form that develops an imaginative story from scientific ideas or possibilities, often exploring their consequences for society.

Believing something false because it supports what a person wants to believe about themselves or their situation.

Knowledge of one’s own motives, limitations and faults, including the willingness to recognise uncomfortable truths about oneself.

Excessive admiration for oneself, which can prevent a person from understanding others accurately.

The belief that one’s own moral or religious superiority makes one entitled to judge others.

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

An approach that appeals strongly to tender feelings, often through innocence, family love or suffering.

Excessively submissive behaviour towards someone powerful, often intended to gain favour.

Service or subjection to another person’s authority; Jane uses the word when imagining a different form of employment.

A six-line section of a poem, particularly the final six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.

The place and time in which events happen. A setting can also shape a character’s opportunities and carry symbolic meanings.

Language that suggests a sexual meaning without stating it directly.

Love or attraction involving physical desire and sexual intimacy.

A dramatic genre with a generally light-hearted tone and a happy resolution, often involving marriages. Serious suffering can occur before the ending.