This definitions covers Key Terms for Love and Conflict within Theme: Love & Conflict for GCSE English Literature. Revise Theme: Love & Conflict in Romeo and Juliet for GCSE English Literature with 12 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This topic shows up very often in GCSE exams, so students should be able to explain it clearly, not just recognise the term. It is section 10 of 16 in this topic. Make sure you can use the exact wording confidently, because definition marks are often lost through vague language.
📜 Key Terms for Love and Conflict
- Oxymoron
- Two contradictory terms placed together — "loving hate", "brawling love", "feather of lead". Romeo uses oxymorons extensively in Act 1 to describe the feud's paradoxes. Shakespeare uses the technique to show love and conflict as inherently contradictory forces that nonetheless share the same emotional intensity.
- Dramatic irony
- When the audience knows something characters do not. The Prologue tells us the lovers are "star-cross'd" from line 1 — so every scene is experienced against the knowledge of its ending. Hope is always also foreshadowed destruction.
- Foreshadowing
- When a text plants signals of future events. "These violent delights have violent ends" is explicit foreshadowing. The oxymorons in Act 1 are implicit foreshadowing. Shakespeare builds foreshadowing into both the structure and the language.
- The Prologue
- A sonnet that opens the play, stating the full tragedy before it begins. Shakespeare removes dramatic tension about WHAT happens and replaces it with tension about HOW — the audience watches every scene knowing it ends in death.
- Foreboding
- A general feeling of impending disaster, distinct from specific foreshadowing. Romeo's "my mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars" (1.4) is foreboding — vague dread before the feast where he meets Juliet.
Practice questions for Theme: Love & Conflict
Which of the following is an oxymoron spoken by Romeo in Act 1 Scene 1 to describe the feud?
Identify the technique Shakespeare uses in 'O brawling love! O loving hate!' (Act 1 Scene 1) and explain what it achieves about the relationship between love and conflict. (2 marks)