Eduqas GCSE English Literature key terms

A large merchant ship used to carry goods.

The central interpretation that an essay develops and supports with evidence.

A marriage organised or negotiated by families or guardians. It does not necessarily exclude the consent of the people marrying.

Money that should already have been paid but remains owing, such as overdue rent.

A soldier serving with large guns. In The War of the Worlds, the artilleryman is a driver in the artillery, whose military experience initially helps him and the narrator survive.

Speech heard by the audience but conventionally not heard by other characters on stage.

The belief that the positions and movements of stars and planets influence human lives.

A list whose items are joined without conjunctions such as ‘and’, often creating an accumulating or rapid rhythm.

The imagined return to an earlier, more primitive ancestral state. In Victorian discussions, this could express fears that civilisation concealed an animal-like capacity for violence.

A poem drawing on events or experiences from the poet’s own life.

The ability to make and act on one’s own decisions rather than being controlled by another person.

Extreme greed for wealth or possessions.

An unmarried man.

A narrative poem traditionally associated with song, often using regular rhyme and alternating four-beat and three-beat lines.

The punishment of being forced to leave a place. Romeo’s banishment from Verona separates him from Juliet.

A public announcement in church of an intended marriage, allowing objections to be raised before the ceremony.

An abrupt descent from an elevated or serious tone to something ordinary or potentially ridiculous.

Sexually suggestive humour, often using words that have both an ordinary and a sexual meaning.

Kindness and a desire to help others.

A formal commitment to marry.

A reference to a person, event or passage in the Bible that brings associated meanings into a literary work.

The act of marrying someone while already legally married to another living person.

A novel concerned with the central character’s growth and development towards adulthood.

The theatrical practice of a performer darkening their skin to impersonate a Black person; its history is associated with racial stereotyping and exclusion.

Using threats, especially threats to reveal damaging information, to obtain money or another advantage.

Violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Tasmanians from the mid-1820s to 1832, connected to expanding settlement and the dispossession of Aboriginal people.

Unrhymed verse written in iambic pentameter: lines typically containing five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables.