English Literature key terms

The group that controls a society’s decisions and resources. In Animal Farm, the pigs become a ruling class rather than representatives accountable to the other animals.

Poverty in the countryside, involving a lack of money and basic necessities such as sufficient food, electricity or running water.

Violation or disrespect of something regarded as sacred.

Enjoyment of another person’s pain or humiliation.

An event at Hailsham where students obtain items brought from outside the school, rather than work made by fellow students.

A traditional South Asian outfit consisting of trousers and a long shirt or tunic, widely worn in Pakistan.

Language whose intended meaning differs from its literal meaning, often used sharply to criticise or mock.

The use of humour, irony or ridicule to expose and criticise wrongdoing, especially abuses of political power.

A person or group blamed for problems so that attention is diverted from those actually responsible.

Blaming a person or group for problems they have not caused.

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

A literary tradition centred on school life, often involving friendships, rivalries, teachers and the experience of growing up.

Fiction that explores imagined scientific developments and their consequences for people or society; it need not be set in the future.

A historical term for imaginative fiction built around scientific ideas or possibilities, especially the late nineteenth-century writing of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Here, ‘romance’ means an imaginative adventure, not a love story.

A small room used for washing dishes and other kitchen work.

A person who grows up in a country to which at least one parent migrated. Del grows up in Britain with a Jamaican-born mother.

Addressing someone as ‘you’, which can draw the reader into another person’s experience.

The three-man ruling alliance of Antony, Octavius and Lepidus, formally established in Rome in 43 BC after Julius Caesar's assassination.

Deliberately keeping information or behaviour hidden from other people.

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

Believing something misleading about oneself, often because it protects one’s pride or fits what one wants to believe.

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

A person's distinct identity: their sense of being an individual rather than simply an extension of someone else.

The development of a person’s abilities, knowledge or conduct. Dickens distinguishes becoming better educated or wealthier from becoming more considerate and responsible.

A defence of one’s own actions which presents them as reasonable or morally right.

Knowledge of one’s own motives, limitations and faults, rather than simply confidence in one’s abilities.

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