Literary Terms

Adage

a proverb or short statement expressing a general truth:

Alliteration

The repetition of the same initial consonant sounds in a sequence of words or syllables.

Anachronism

A thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.

Anagnorisis

The point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character's true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances.

Anapestic

A metrical foot in a line of a poem that contains three syllables wherein the first two syllables are short and unstressed, followed by a third syllable that is long and stressed.

Anaphora

Repetition of an initial word or words to add emphasis

Antagonist

Character in a story or play who opposes the protagonist; while not necessarily an enemy, this character creates or intensifies a conflict for the protagonist.

Antithesis

A figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposites of, or strongly contrasted with, each other.

Aphorism

A pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it.":

Archetypal Hero

The character is a protagonist whose life is a series of well-marked adventures.

• Characteristics:

o Self-sacrifice

o Endures separation and hardship

o Pays a price

o Entrance into a challenging world

o Returns to the ordinary

Archetype

A literary device in which a character is created based on a set of qualities or traits that are specific and identifiable for readers.

Aside

Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play.

Allegory

A literary work that portrays abstract ideas concretely.

Allusion

A reference to another work of literature, or to art, history, or current events.

Apostrophe

A direct address to an abstraction (such as Time), a thing (the Wind), an animal, or an imaginary or absent person.

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose(story).

Ballad

A narrative poem written in FOUR-LINE stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style.

Bathos

An effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.

Biblical Free Verse

Biblical poetry that does not have a rhyme scheme or a consistent metrical pattern.

Blank Verse

A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Bombastic

Pompous or overblown in language; full of high-sounding words intended to conceal a lack of ideas

Cacophony

A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds

Cadence

Quality of spoken text formed from combining the text's rhythm with the rise and fall in the inflection of the speaker's voice.

Caesura

A pause within a line of poetry, sometimes punctuated, sometimes not, often mirroring natural speech.

Caricature

A character with features or traits that are exaggerated so that the character seems ridiculous. The term is usually applied to graphic depictions but can also be applied to written depictions.

Carpe Diem

A widespread literary theme meaning "seize the day" in Latin and found especially in lyric poetry, This word encourages readers to enjoy the present and make the most of their short lives.

Catastrophe

The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play. One example is the dueling scene in Act V of Hamlet in which Hamlet dies, along with Laertes, King Claudius, and Queen Gertrude.

Catharsis

Refers to the emotional release felt by the audience at the end of a tragic drama. The term comes from Aristotle's Poetics, in which he explains this frequently felt relief in terms of a purification of the emotions caused by watching the tragic events.

Climax

The point in a story when the conflict reaches its highest intensity.

Comedy

Usually used to refer to a dramatic work that, in contrast to tragedy, has a light, amusing plot, features a happy ending, centers around ordinary people, and is written and performed in the vernacular.

Comedy of Manners

A satiric dramatic form that lampoons social conventions.

Comic Relief

A humorous scene or speech intended to lighten the mood.

Conceit

A fanciful expression in writing or speech; an elaborate metaphor:

Conflict

A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The word may occur within a character as well as between characters.

Connotation

The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in this word.

Consonance

An instance in which identical final consonant sounds in nearby words follow different vowel sounds.

Couplet

A literary device featuring two consecutive lines of poetry that typically rhyme and have the same meter.

Dactylic Foot

A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry.

Denotation

The literal definition of a word, often referred to as the "dictionary definition."

Denouement

In this phase of a story's plot, the conflict has been resolved and balance is restored to the world of the story.

Dues Ex Machina

A god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention. The Latin phrase means, literally, "a god from the machine." The phrase refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play.

Dirge

A lament for the dead, especially one forming part of a funeral rite. (Hymn or song)

Doggerel

Verse or words that are badly written or expressed.

Double Entendre

A word or phrase that is open to two interpretations, one of which is usually risqué or indecent:

Dramatic Monologue

A poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events.

Euphony

The quality of being pleasing to the ear, especially through a harmonious combination of words.

Elegy

A contemplative poem, on death and mortality, often written for someone who has died.

End-Stopped Lines

A line of poetry concludes with punctuation that marks a pause. The line is completely meaningful in itself, unlike run-on lines, which require the reader to move to the next line to grasp the poet's complete thought.

English Sonnet

A type of fourteen-line poem. Traditionally, the fourteen lines of this word consist of an octave (or two quatrains making up a stanza of 8 lines) and a sestet (a stanza of six lines). This word generally uses a meter of iambic pentameter and follows a set rhyme scheme.is any short, catchy phrase or saying.

Enjambment

A poetic technique in which one line ends without a pause and must continue on to the next line to complete its meaning; also referred to as a "run-on line."

Epigram

Is any short, catchy phrase or saying to demonstrate the seriousness of the situation in a memorable way.

Epigraph

A quotation preceding a work of literature that helps set the text's mood or suggests its themes

Epiphany

A character's transformative moment of realization. James Joyce, often credited with coining this as a literary term, defined it as the "sudden revelation of the whatness of a thing," the moment in which "the soul of the commonest object . . . seems to us radiant . . . a sudden spiritual manifestation [either] in the vulgarity of speech or of a gesture or in a memorable phrase of the mind itself."

Euphony

The quality of a sound that sounds pleasant to the ear.

Exposition

In a literary work, contextual an background information told to readers (rather than shown through action) about the characters, plot, setting and situation)

Fable

A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author

Falling Action

In a plot diagram, this is a result of the climax or turning point. In this phase, the conflict is being resolved.

Farce

A dramatic form marked by wholly absurd situations, slapstick, raucous wordplay, and sometimes innuendo.

Foil

A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story.

Foreshadowing

Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story.

Free Verse

A form of poetry that does not have a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme.

Hamatria

A concept used by Aristotle to describe tragedy.

Heroic Couplet

Rhyming pairs of verse in iambic pentameter.

Homily

A sermon or speech is delivered typically by a member of the clergy whose purpose is to offer a moral change in direction.

Hubris

An extreme expression of pride or self-confidence in a character.

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or ironic effect; an overstatement to make a point.

Iambic

The most common metrical foot in English poetry, is made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.

Imagery

A description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds.

Implied Author

Source of a work's design and meaning which is inferred by readers from the text, and imagined as a personality standing behind the work

Implied Reader

Designates the image of the recipient that the author had while writing or, more accurately, the author's image of the recipient that is fixed and objectified in the text by specific indexical.

In Media Res

Latin for "in the middle of things," a technique in which a narrative begins in the middle of the action.

Irony - Verbal

A figure of speech that occurs when a speaker or character says one thing but means something else, or when what is said is the opposite of what is expected, creating a noticeable incongruity.

Irony - Situational

A pointed discrepancy between what seems fitting or expected in a story and what actually happens.

Irony - Dramatic

Tension created by the contrast between what a character says or thinks and what the audience or readers know to be true.

Irony - Cosmic

Irony involving fate. Fate and destiny, or even gods, control and play with human hopes and desires

Italian Sonnet

Its fourteen lines are divided into an octave and a sestet. The octave rhymes abba, abba; the sestet that follows can have a variety of different rhyme schemes: cdcdcd, cdecde, cddcdd.

Juxtapose

Placing two things side by side for the sake of comparison or contrast. Authors sometimes use incongruous juxtapositions to produce verbal irony.

Litote

A figure of speech and a form of understatement in which a sentiment is expressed ironically by negating its contrary.

Lyric Poetry

Have a musical rhythm, and their topics often explore romantic feelings or other strong emotions.

Malapropism

The mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance.

Meiosis

A euphemistic figure of speech that intentionally understates something or implies that it is lesser in significance or size than it really is.

Melodrama

Plays with stereotyped villains and heroes who represent the extremes of good and evil

Metaphor

A figure of speech that compares or equates two things without using like or as.

Metaphysical Conceit

A literary device that sets up a striking analogy between two entities that would not usually invite comparison, often drawing connections between the physical and the spiritual.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is related to it.

Metrics

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line.

Miracle and Morality Plays

These plays were allegorical dramas that personified the moral values and abstract ideas to teach moral lessons

Meter

The combination of stressed and unstressed syllables that make up the lines in poetry.

Mock Heroic

To describe poems which use a very grand and formal style to describe a common or trivial subject for which this style is not appropriate.

Motif

A recurring pattern of images, words, or symbols that reveals a theme in a work of literature.

Octave

An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza.

Ode

A form of poetry used to meditate on or address a single object or condition. It originally followed strict rules of rhythm, meter, and rhyme, which by the Romantic period had become more flexible.

Omniscient Point Of View

Told by a narrator using third-person pronouns. This narrator is privy to the thoughts and actions of all of the characters in the story.

Onomatopoeia

Use of words that refer to sound and whose pronunciations mimic those sounds.

Parable

A tale told explicitly to illustrate a moral lesson or conclusion. Parables can take the form of drama, poetry, or fiction.

Pastoral

Literature that employs a romanticized description of leisurely farm or rural life.

Pathos

A quality of a play's action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character. This word is always an aspect of tragedy and may be present in comedy as well.

Personification

A figure of speech in which an animal or an inanimate object is imbued with human qualities.

Picaresque Novel

Relating the adventures of a rogue or lowborn adventurer as he drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in his effort to survive.

Plot vs Story

The arrangement of events in a narrative. Almost always, a conflict is central to a plot, and traditionally a plot develops in accordance with the following model: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement.