EXPLIQUER UN TEXTE: Vocabulaire important

1) Genres (Les différents genres littéraires)

- a satire > satirical
- a poem > poetic
- an epic > epic, epical
- a stanza (= une strophe)
- a line (= un vers / une ligne)
- drama
- the picaresque novel / the gothic novel / the historical novel / the regional novel / the novel of education or Bildungsroman
- the short story
- the tale
- the critic (= le critique, la personne) | criticism (= la critique) | a piece of criticism (= une critique)
- a critical approach
- to criticize

2) Settings & atmosphere (Le décor & l'atmosphère)

- you have to study the recurrent patterns and the devices (procédés) a writer uses to achieve particular effects > the art of story-telling
- pathos (the quality in a work which evokes sympathy or pity or sorrow)
- suggestive power / effective, effectiveness (= qui porte, frappant)
- mood or predominating atmosphere
- response (=réaction) of the reader
- to arouse the reader's sympathy / to stir reactions
- suspense: tension gathers, rises, heightens, intensifies, culminates in / tension lessens, subsides, slackens
- climax (point culminant) / anti-climax (= a release of feelings after a rising tension) / a reversal of situation
- a passage may be gripping, moving, stirring, exciting, captivating, breathtaking
- a passage may arouse a sense of uneasiness, anguish, strangeness, a sense of the unknown
- the reader must pay attention to time-markers and place-markers: in other words, the historical, geographical, social and political data.
- a thorough or detailed description / a cursory description
- to conjure up (= évoquer) / to border on (= toucher, confiner, friser)

3) Character-drawing or characterization (Traits de caractères)

- a life-like character
- a stock character (a familiar figure or a type as such as the vulnerable heroine or the villain)
- a flat character (often referred to as a caricature or a type / his behaviour is predictable or in character)
- a round character (presents the complexitiy of a real individual : he/she reacts unpredictably or out of character)
- a major figure
- the divided self (= le moi divisé) / Most characters are questing for something: liberty/love/identity (to be in quest of)
- landmarks (repères)
- the writer has a deep insight into a character (= to have a deep understanding) / he may be objective or ironical or he may identify with his creations which become his mouthpiece
- characters may be revealed through their physical appearance, through gesture, turn of phrase or the way they dress.

4) Grammatical terms (Termes grammaticaux)

- a sentence (=une phrase)
- a phrase (= une expression)
- a clause (= une proposition)
- a sentence in the present tense
- the tense switches from the present to the past
- an attributive adjective (= un adj épithète)
- a predicative adjective (= un adj attribut)
- the mood (= le mode grammatical)

5) STYLE

> Figures of speech (Figures de style)

- stylistic effects
- a simile (= an explicit comparison introduced by a word such as "like" or "as" or a verb such as "seem")
- the synechdoche (= uses the part for the whole or the whole for the part. eg a sail for a boat)
- metaphor (brings together apparently disconnected elements. Ex: "my heart sings")
- the pathetic fallacy (technique used when nature is endowed with human feelings)
- metonymy (uses one element for another with which there is a relation of continuity)
- opposition, inversion, antithesis (plural: antitheses), repetition, parallelism
- dramatic irony (when the reader is supposed to understand more than the characters)
- rhythmic patterns (a smooth rhythm / a jerky rhythm)
- colloquial, familiar, informal, slangy language
- technical, scientific, learned, formal, elevated langage

> Punctuation (Ponctuation):

- comma: ","
- semicolon: ";"
- colon: ":"
- inverted commas: '....'
- hyphen ( - )
- dash ( -- )
- brackets: (...)
- quotes / quotation marks : "..."

Etape 3: Expressions importantes