TAPPS Lit Crit

Abecedarius

A composition in which lines or stanzas begin with successive letters of the alphabet.

Acatalectic

A verse line that is metrically complete, with no syllables missing at the end.

Accentual-Syllabic Verse

Verse depending on both the number of accented and unaccented syllables per line; the standard pattern in English poetry.

Acmeism

A Russian poetry movement (c. 1912) emphasizing precise, clear imagery and realistic subjects; founders included Gumilev and Akhmatova.

Acephalous

"Headless"; a verse line missing the first expected syllable. See Headless Line.

Acrostic

A composition in which the first (or last) letters of each line spell out a word or phrase.

Act

A major division of a drama; five-act structure was standard in Elizabethan plays, later reduced to three or fewer acts.

Action

The series of events constituting the plot of a fiction, play, short story, or narrative poem.

Actor

A person who performs in a drama; loosely, any participant in an action.

Adage

A proverb or wise saying made familiar by long use (e.g., "No bees, no honey").

Adaptation

The rewriting of a work from its original form to fit another medium, such as film or stage, retaining characters but differing significantly.

Addenda

Matter to be added to a text after production, often appearing as a slip or appendix.

Adonic Verse

A Greek and Latin metrical line consisting of a dactyl and a trochee (— ∪ ∪ — ∪); associated with the festival of Adonis.

Adventure Story (or Film)

A story driven by exterior physical action, suspense, and frequent danger, in which "What will happen next?" is the central question.

Adversarius

A character in formal satire who is addressed by the speaker and whose remarks prompt the satirist's response; analogous to a straight man.

Aesthetic Distance

A term for the detachment an audience feels from a work, allowing objective appreciation rather than purely emotional reaction.

Aestheticism

A 19th-century movement holding that art exists for its own sake ("art for art's sake"), rejecting moral or didactic purposes; key figures include Oscar Wilde.

Aesthetics

The philosophy of beauty and art; the study of how beauty is perceived, the relationship of art to morality and nature.

Affective Fallacy

The critical error of judging a work by its emotional effect on the reader rather than by its intrinsic qualities; identified by Wimsatt and Beardsley.

Affix

A verbal element (prefix or suffix) added to a base word to change its meaning.

African American Literature

Literature by Black American writers; a long-neglected but increasingly studied body of American literary culture.

Age of Johnson

The interval in English literature between roughly 1750 and 1798, marked by neoclassicism; named for Samuel Johnson.

Age of Reason

A term for the Neoclassical Period in English/American literature, emphasizing rationalism, self-knowledge, law, and decorum.

Age of Sensibility

A name for the transitional period c. 1750-1798 in England emphasizing personal feeling, sensibility, and originality; overlaps the Age of Johnson.

Age of the Romantic Movement in England, 1798-1832

Period when Romanticism triumphed in British letters; marked by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Scott.

Agent

An amateur or professional representative acting as a go-between for authors and publishers, editors, or other executives.

Agitprop

Literature or drama serving political propaganda, originally on behalf of Soviet communist ideology; later applied broadly to any propagandistic effort.

Agon

A formal debate or contest, especially in Greek comedy, between the chorus's two halves; also a conflict in any work of fiction.

Agrarians

Writers espousing agrarian ideals; specifically, the group associated with the Southern Review and I'll Take My Stand manifesto (1930), including Ransom, Tate, Davidson, and Warren.

Alba

A Provençal lament over lovers parting at dawn; each stanza ends with "alba" (dawn).

Alcaics

Verses written in the manner of Alcaeus, a four-stanza pattern with specific dactylic and trochaic meter; attempted in English by Tennyson.

Alexandrine

A verse of six iambic feet (iambic hexameter); standard line in French poetry, used occasionally in English (e.g., the final line of a Spenserian stanza).

Alexandrianism

The literary and scientific spirit prevailing in Alexandria c. 325 B.C.-A.D. 642, distinguished by bibliophilia, editorial thoroughness, and devotion to ancestral models.

Alienation Effect

Bertolt Brecht's technique of distancing audiences from emotional involvement so they think critically rather than empathize; also called Verfremdungseffekt.

Allegory

An extended metaphor in which characters, events, and settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities beyond the literal narrative (e.g., Pilgrim's Progress).

Alliteration

The repetition of initial identical consonant sounds in successive or closely associated syllables (e.g., "The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew").

Allegorostropha

Milton's term for the variable division of choric odes in Samson Agonistes; irregular stanzas or pauses.

Alliterative Romance

A medieval verse romance written in alliterative verse, especially in 14th-century England (e.g., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).

Alliterative Prose

The medieval tradition of dignifying prose with pronounced alliterative rhythms; flourished early in the 11th century with Aelfric and Wulfstan.

Alliterative Verse

Verse forms whose metrical structure is based on patterned repetition of initial consonant sounds; common in Germanic and Celtic poetry.

Allohistory

Another name for alternative history fiction.

Allonym

The name of an actual person other than the author used as a pen name; compare Pseudonym.

Allusion

A brief, indirect reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object; always indirect, relying on the reader's prior knowledge.

Almanac

A permanent yearly table providing weather forecasts, statistics, and general information; evolved into compendiums like Poor Richard's Almanac.

Altar Poem

A poem arranged so that its lines form the shape of an altar or cross on the page; see Carmen Figuratum.

Alternative History

A species of fiction positing that some major historical event turned out differently, then tracing the geopolitical consequences.

Ambages

A form of circumlocution in which truth is conveyed in a way that tends to deceive or mislead.

Ambiguity

The state of having more than one meaning; in literature, a valued complexity arising from words, syntax, or images that carry multiple valid interpretations.

Ambo

A stage direction meaning "both"; Shakespeare uses it in Much Ado About Nothing.

American Academy of Arts and Letters

An organization created in 1904 to recognize accomplishment in literature, art, and music; limited to 250 members.

American Dream, The

A fixture of American thought representing the aspiration to success, wealth, and fulfillment through individual effort; treated positively and critically in literature.

American Language

A term for certain idioms, pronunciations, and expressions peculiar to English as spoken in America, differing from British usage.

American Literature, Periods of

Chronological divisions including Colonial (1607-1765), Revolutionary (1765-1830), Romantic (1830-1865), Realistic (1865-1900), Naturalistic (1900-1930), and Confessional/Symbolistic (1930-1960).

Amoebean Verse

Matched pastoral verses in alternating stanzas spoken by two speakers; found in Theocritus and Virgil.

Amphibiology (Amphibolia)

A term for statements that carry two different meanings, a kind of ambiguity; prominent in Macbeth's witches' prophecies.

Amphibrach

A metrical foot of three syllables: unaccented, accented, unaccented (∪ — ∪).

Amphimacer

A metrical foot of three syllables: accented, unaccented, accented (— ∪ —); also called Cretic.

Amplification

A figure of speech in which bare expressions are emphasized through additional detail or restatement, often misunderstood because of bluntness.

Anachronism

Assigning something to a time when it did not exist (e.g., Hector learned to reference Shakespeare); used deliberately by humorists such as Mark Twain.

Anacoenesis

Asking a question as though to seek the opinion of the hearer, reader, opponent, or judge.

Anacolutha

The failure to complete a sentence grammatically as started; the device creates anxiety or disturbed coherence (e.g., Tennyson's "Ulysses").

Anacreontic Poetry

Verse in the mood of the Greek poet Anacreon: erotic, amatory, or Bacchanalian; associated with wine and love.

Anacrusis

One or more extra unaccented syllables at the beginning of a verse before the regular rhythm begins.

Anadiplosis

A kind of repetition in which the last word or phrase of one sentence or line is repeated at the beginning of the next.

Analects (Analecta)

Literary gleanings, fragments, or passages from an author's writings; also the title for a collection of choice extracts.

Analepsis

In Robert Graves's terminology, the recovery of vision or trance from the unconscious mind; generally, any recovery or restoration.

Analogy

A comparison of two things alike in certain aspects; used in argumentation and description to explain something unfamiliar by comparing it to something familiar.

Analogue

Something analogous to or like another given thing; in literary history, a cognate story or plot in a different language.

Analogism versus Anomalism

A philosophical debate about whether language is analogous to structures outside itself or is inherently anomalous.

Analysis

A method by which a subject is separated into parts that are examined rigorously, logically, and relatively completely.

Anapest

A metrical foot of three syllables with two unaccented followed by one accented (∪ ∪ —); e.g., "like a child from the tomb."

Anaphora

A device of repetition in which the same word or phrase begins two or more successive lines, clauses, or sentences.

Anaphone (or Anaphony)

The acoustic counterpart of the anagram; sounds comprising one word are rearranged to make another.

Anagram

A word or phrase made by transposing the letters of another (e.g., "vile" is an anagram of "evil").

Anagoge (or Anagogy)

In biblical interpretation, the mystical or spiritual level of meaning pointing toward heaven or the afterlife; the highest of the four senses of interpretation.

Analytic Editing

A film/criticism term for the process by which a director selects details in a scene to impose a specific meaning.

Analytical Criticism

A term applied to rigorous, logical criticism that views the work of art as a whole and believes its meaning, nature, and significance can be discovered through analysis.

Ananym

A word fabricated by spelling another word backward (e.g., "Oprah" backward is "Harpo").

Anceps (Latin: "two-headed")

In classical prosody, a syllable that can be counted as either long or short.

Ancients and Moderns, Quarrel of the

The controversy in France and England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries over whether ancient or modern writers were superior.

Anecdote

A short narrative detailing particulars of an interesting or amusing episode, often about a historical or prominent person.

Ancilla

An ancillary aid in the study of a subject (e.g., Plato's Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers).

Anglo-Catholic Revival

See Oxford Movement.

Anglo-French

The French language as used in England between 1100 and 1350; see Anglo-Norman.

Anglo-Irish Literature

Literature produced in English by Irish writers, especially those using Celtic idioms; sometimes called "Hibernian English."

Anglo-Latin Literature

Literature produced in Latin by English writers dwelling in England during the Old English period; includes chronicles, histories, and religious plays.

Anglo-Norman

The form of the French language applied to the Norman conquerors in England (1100-1350); also the literature written in that dialect.

Anglo-Norman Period

The period in English literary history between 1100 and 1350 under Norman-French cultural dominance.

Anglo-Saxon

A Teutonic tribal group resident in England in post-Roman times; ancestors of the English people; their literature is the foundation of English literary tradition.

Anglo-Saxon Versification

See Old English Versification.

Animal Epic

See Beast Epic.

Annals

Year-by-year narratives of historical events; distinguished from Chronicles by stricter adherence to dated entries.

Annotation

The addition of explanatory notes to a text; an annotated bibliography cites sources and gives bibliographical data plus commentary.

Antagonist

The character directly opposed to the protagonist; a rival, opponent, or enemy.

Anthem

Originally, a song from the Psalms arranged for church worship; in common use, any song of praise, reverence, or national devotion.

Anthology

Literally "a gathering of flowers"; a collection of selected prose or poetry by various authors (e.g., Norton Anthology).

Anti-hero

A protagonist of a modern play or novel who lacks the traditional heroic qualities—grace, courage, nobility—and is instead graceless, inept, or dishonest.

Anti-intellectualism

A philosophic doctrine denying the ability of the intellect to comprehend the true nature of things; associated with Pragmatism, Positivism, and Bergsonism.

Antimasque

A grotesque, humorous dance interspersed among the beautiful dances of a masque; often performed by professional actors.

Antimeria

A species of enallage using one part of speech for another (e.g., a verb used as a noun).