English Lit Glossary

Actant (setting)

Actant (setting)

when a setting acts as a character.

Alliteration

the repetition of initial consonant sounds.

Allusion

a reference in literature to another piece of literature, art, music or history.

Analysis

the identification and evaluation of the way in which literary strategies are used to create meaning.

Anapest

two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.

Antagonist

a character who is working consciously to stop the protagonist from implementing his or her plan.

Anthropomorphism

the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to an animal.

Assonance

the repetition of vowel sounds within words.

Blank verse

an indeterminate number of lines of iambic pentameter.

Cacophony

a harsh or unpleasant sound.

Caesura

pause within a line of poetry, often created by punctuation such as a comma, semicolon or dash.

Characterization

the setting around a character can help the reader to understand the nature of that character.

Climax

in drama, the final complication that determines whether the plan is going to be successful or not.

Colloquialism

the use of informal or everyday language.

Complication

in drama, something that arises as a result of the protagonist's effort to implement the plan, and which interferes with the ability to employ the plan effectively.

Conceit

a type of metaphor that compares two different things in a surprising and inventive way.

Conflict

a struggle between two opposing forces.

Connotation

the ideas provoked beyond the literal meaning.

Consonance

the repetition of consonant sounds within words.

Dactyl

a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.

Denotation

the literal, dictionary definition of a word.

Diction

the words chosen in a text.

Disturbance

in a play, something that occurs to upset the balance and force the characters) to deal with an unexpected problem.

Dramatic irony

when the audience knows something that the characters in the play do not.

Dramatic situation

the situation in which the actions of the story occur.

Dramatic time

in a play, describes the fact that regardless of when in history the play is set, the audience experiences the events as they happen, as if they have never happened before.

Characters often discuss events from the past, but those events are rarely staged as actual flashbacks.

Elegy

a poem written in response to the death of a person.

Enjambment

when an idea or device carries on from one line or stanza to the next.

Entropy

a state of disorder.

Envoi

a short concluding stanza to a sestina.

Euphony

a sound that is pleasant to the ear.

Fabula

a fictional world created by the writer.

Figurative language

language that uses figures of speech, such as metaphors or symbols, to embellish meaning beyond the literal.

First-person narration

the narrator is presented as an actual character who has access to the events either as a participant or as an interested observer. The first-person narrator is not omniscient and so can be fallible.

Foot

one unit of metre.

Form

a type of text, closely relating to structure. In poetry, we can think of form as a specific type of poem, shaped into a pattern through structural devices such as line and stanza length, rhythmic features (including metre and rhyme) and repetition.

Free indirect speech

a narrative trick whereby the narrator is expressing a character's thoughts without quotation marks, so that we hear the thoughts not as reported by an onlooker or listener, but in their unedited form, as the characters themselves experience them.

Free verse

an open form of poetry that has no formal or recognized structure.

Freytag's pyramid; a way of looking at plot that includes an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.

Functions of setting

the role that a setting plays in conveying meaning.

Hyperbole

exaggeration to make a situation seem more dramatic or humorous.

Iamb

the most common metrical pattern in English: an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable

lambic pentameter

a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable. Shakespeare often wrote in iambic pentameter.

Imagery

a technique employed to convey emotion using language that appeals

to the senses.

In medias res

the structural technique of beginning a story in the middle of the action and then going back to the beginning later.

Irony

using words or phrases to convey an intended meaning different to the literal meaning or in contrast to the expected meaning.

Jargon

words that are used in a specific context that may be difficult to understand, often involving technical terminology.

Lexical sets

a group of words that are related to each other in meaning, for example

Line

the smallest unit of structure within a poem. Lines are typically grouped into stanzas.

Literary analysis

the systematic examination of a text or aspects) of a text - a consideration of how the individual parts contribute to the whole.

Metaphor

a comparison between two things.

Metonymy

a figure of speech in which the name of an object or concept is replaced with a word which is closely related to the original.

Metre

the arrangement and number of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of a poem or a verse.

Mood

the feeling that is evoked in the reader (or audience) as a result of the tone that is set.

Narrative situation

the situation in which the narrator tells the story.

Obstacle

in drama, something that already exists in the fictional situation, which interferes with the protagonist's ability to implement his or her plan.

Octet

the first eight lines of a sonnet.

Ode

a lyrical poem, usually without a regular metre, in praise of a particular subject.

Omniscient (narrator)

a narrator capable of knowing not only the actions characters undertake, but also their thoughts, feelings and motivations.

Onomatopoeia

a word which sounds like the noise that it makes. For example

Pantoum

a poem originating in Malaysia; composed of quatrains, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the next. The second and fourth lines of the final stanza repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza.

Persona

the voice or person chosen by the author to tell the narrative.

Personification

giving human characteristics to inanimate objects.

Playwright

the writer of the play.

Plot

a series of events that are linked causally.

Plot snake

a series of rising and falling actions with a resolution.

Predominant metre

the metre that is used most often.

Prose poem

poetic writing in prose form.

Protagonist

in drama, the character who has the plan for dealing with the disturbance.

Pyrrhic foot

a very rare type of metre which has no stresses.

Quatrain

a stanza of four lines.

Quest

a journey which results in significant change.

Reliable narrator

a narrator whose version of the story can be relied upon because he or she is not confused, deluded or wrong.

Repetition

the repeated use of a word, phrase or image to draw attention to it.

Resolution

in drama, the outcome that brings a new balance.

Rhyme

the repetition of two or more similar sounds, often occurring at the ends of a line in poetry.

Rhythm

achieved through a combination of structural elements, which gives a poem its sound.

Rondeau

a form of medieval and Renaissance French poetry, characterized by a repeated refrain. The poem usually consists of 10 to 13 lines, with two rhymes, and follows the pattern AB aAab AB, with the capital letters representing the repeated refrains and the lowercase letters representing extra lines.

Second-person narration

a narrator who addresses his or her story directly to an audience using you where the 'you' has had the experiences being described. Second-person narration has a first-person narrator behind it.

Semantic fields

a collection of words or phrases that are related to each other in meaning and connotation, for example

Sestet

the last six lines of a sonnet.

Sestina

a 39-line poem that follows a strict pattern of repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza throughout the remaining five six-line stanzas. It ends with a three-line envoi which includes all six words.

Setting

the place where events of the story happen.

Sibilance

the repetition of 's' sounds.

Simile

a comparison of two things using like or as.

Sonnet

a 14-line poem, usually based on the subject or theme of love. There are two main types of sonnets

Spondee

two stressed syllables.

Stage directions

in drama, instructions for actors on how to move or speak their lines.

Stanza

a group of lines in a poem.

Stream of consciousness

where the narrator says whatever comes into his or her head as he or she thinks it.

Structure

the way in which a text or poem is organized (it is not the same thing as layout or form).

Summary

the description of the events of the dramatic situation.

Supernatural

setting that functions either to aid or to hinder a character's actions, but without exhibiting any will—it helps or hinders simply by existing.

Suspense

a feeling from the audience when waiting for an outcome.

Symbol

a comparison between something the author wants the reader to think about and another element, often discussed as a subset of the category of metaphor.

Symbolic

setting which functions as a symbol.

Sympathetic

setting that functions as a reflection of a change in the character's mood.

Synecdoche

the naming of a part for the whole or the whole for the part.