LIT-2300 Intro to Literature - Exam 1

Vocabulary and other things for test 1 on short stories.

Author of Appointment in Samarra

W. Somerset Maugham

Author of The Fox and the Grapes

Aesop

Author of The Camel and His Friends

Bidpai

Author of Independence

Chuang Tzu

Author of Godfather Death

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm

Author of A & P

John Updike

Author of A Rose for Emily

William Faulkner

Author of The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Katherine Anne Porter

Author of To Build a Fire

Jack London

Author of A Sound of Thunder

Ray Bradbury

Author of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Ernest Hemingway

Author of The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry

Author of The Open Boat

Stephen Crane

Author of Harrison Bergeron

Kurt Bonnegut Jr.

Author of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Ursula K.

Author of The Lottery

Shirley Jackson

Author of The Gospel According to Mark

Jorge Luis Borges

Author of Sweat

Neale Hurston

Author of A Good Man is Hard to Find

Flannery O’Conner

Fable

A brief, often humorous narrative told to illustrate a moral. The characters in fables are traditionally animals whose personality traits symbolize human traits.

Parable

A brief, usually allegorical narrative that teaches a moral. The moral themes are implicit and can often be interpreted in several ways.

Tale

A short narrative without a complex plot.

Tall tale

A humorous short narrative that provides a wildly exaggerated version of events.

Fairy Tale (folktale)

A traditional form of short narrative folklore, originally transmitted orally, which features supernatural characters such as witches, giants, fairies, or animals with human personality traits.

Short Story

A prose narrative too brief to be published in a separate volume—as novellas and novels frequently are.

Initiation Story (coming-of-age)

A narrative in which the main character, usually a child or adolescent, undergoes an important experience (or “rite of passage”) that prepares him or her for adulthood.

Protagonist

The main or central character in a narrative. They usually initiate the main action of the story, often in conflict with the antagonist.

Antagonist

The most significant character or force that opposes the protagonist in a narrative. They may be another character, society itself, a force of nature, or even—in modern literature—conflicting impulses within the protagonist.

Exposition

The opening portion of a narrative. In this, the scene is set, the protagonist is introduced, and the author discloses any other background information necessary for the reader to understand the events that follow.

Conflict

The central struggle between two or more forces in a story. It generally occurs when some person or thing prevents the protagonist from achieving his or her goal. It is the basic material out of which most plots are made.

Complication

The introduction of a significant development in the central conflict between characters (or between a character and his or her situation). They may be external (an outside problem that the characters cannot avoid) or internal (originates in some important aspect of a character’s values or personality).

Crisis

The point in a narrative when the crucial action, decision, or realization must take place. From the Greek word kriss, meaning “decision.”

Climax

The moment of greatest intensity in a story, which almost inevitably occurs towards the end of the work. It often takes the form of a decisive confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist.

Conclusion

In plotting, the logical end or outcome of a unified plot, shortly following the climax. Also called resolution or dénouement (“the untying of the knot”), as in resolving—or untying the knots created by—plot complications earlier in the narrative.

Foreshadowing

An indication of events to come in a narrative. The author may introduce specific words, images, or actions in order to suggest significant later events.

Flashback

A scene relived in a character’s memory. They may be related by the narrator in a summary, or they may be experienced by the characters themselves. They allow the author to include significant events that occurred before the opening of the story.

Epiphany

A moment of profound insight or revelation by which a character’s life is greatly altered.

In medias res

A Latin phrase meaning “in the midst of things”; refers to the narrative device of beginning a story midway in the events it depicts (usually at an exciting or significant moment) before explaining the context or preceding actions.

total Omniscience

Point of view in which the narrator knows everything about all of the characters and events in a story.

Limited or Selective Omniscience

Point of view in which the narrator sees into the minds of some but not all of the characters. Most typically, it sees through the eyes of one major or minor character.

Impartial Omniscience

Point of view employed when an omniscient narrator, who presents the thoughts and actions of the characters, does not judge them or comment on them.

Editorial Omniscience

Point of view employed when an omniscient narrator goes beyond reporting the thoughts of his characters to make a critical judgment or commentary, making explicit the narrator’s own thoughts or attitudes.

Objective Point of View

Point of view in which the third-person narrator merely reports dialogue and action with little or no interpretation or access to the characters’ minds.

Interior Monologue

An extended presentation of a character’s thoughts in a narrative. Usually written in the present tense and printed without quotation marks; it reads as if the character were speaking aloud to himself or herself, for the reader to overhear.

Stream of Consciousness

A type of modern narration that uses various literary devices, especially interior monologue, in an attempt to duplicate the subjective and associative nature of human consciousness.

Characterization

The techniques a writer uses to create, reveal, or develop the characters in a narrative.

Flat Character

A term coined by English novelist E. M. Forster to describe a character with only one outstanding trait. They are rarely the central characters in a narrative and stay the same throughout a story.

Round Character

A term also coined by E. M. Forster to describe a complex character who is presented in depth in a narrative. They are those who change significantly during the course of a narrative or whose full personalities are revealed gradually throughout the story.

Stock Character

A common or stereotypical character. Examples of these characters are the mad scientist, the battle-scarred veteran, and the strong but silent cowboy.

Setting

The time and place of a story. It may also include the climate and even the social, psychological, or spiritual state of the characters.

Locale

The location where a story takes place.

Atmosphere

The dominant mood or feeling that pervades all or part of a literary work. It is the total effect conveyed by the author’s use of language, images, and physical setting.

Regionalism

The literary representation of a specific locale that consciously uses particulars of geography, custom, history, folklore, or speech. In regional narrative, the locale plays a crucial role in the presentation and progression of the story.

Naturalism

A type of fiction in which the characters are presented as products or victims of environment and heredity. It is considered an extreme form of realism (the attempt to reproduce faithfully the surface appearance of life, especially that of ordinary people in everyday situations).

Tone

The attitude toward a subject conveyed in a literary work. No single stylistic device creates this; it is the net result of the various elements an author brings to creating the work’s feeling and manner.

Style

All the distinctive ways in which an author uses language to create a literary work. This depends on the author’s characteristic use of dictation, imagery, tone, syntax, and figurative language.

Diction

word choice or vocabulary. It refers to the class of words that an author decides is appropriate to use in a particular work.

Irony

A literary device in which a discrepancy of meaning is masked beneath the surface of the language. It is present when a writer says one thing but means something quite the opposite.

Dramatic Irony

Where the reader understands the implication and meaning of a situation and may foresee the oncoming disaster or triumph while the character does not.

Cosmic Irony

A type of situational irony that emphasizes the discrepancy between what characters deserve and what they get, between a character’s aspirations and the treatment he or she receives at the hands of fate.

Sarcasm

A conspicuously bitter form of irony in which the ironic statement is designed to hurt or mock its target.

Summary

A brief condensation of the main idea or plot of a literary work. It is similar to a paraphrase, but less detailed

Theme

The main idea or larger meaning of a work of literature. It may be a message or a moral, but it is more likely to be a central, unifying insight or viewpoint.

Symbol

A person; place, or thing in a narrative that suggests meanings beyond its literal sense. These are related to allegory, but works more complexly. They often contain multiple meanings and associations.

Symbolic Act

An action whose significance goes well beyond its literal meaning. In literature, they often involve some conscious or unconscious ritual element such as rebirth, purification, forgiveness, vengeance, or initiation.

Allegory

A narrative in which the literal events (persons, places, and things) consistently point to a parallel sequence of symbolic equivalents. This narrative strategy is often used to dramatize abstract ideas, historical events, religious systems, or political issues. It has two levels of meaning: a literal level that tells a surface story and a symbolic level in which the abstract ideas unfold.

A fox fails to reach some grapes and dismisses them as sour, illustrating rationalization of failure.

The Fox and the Grapes

A camel trusts other animals who betray him to save themselves, highlighting misplaced trust and cautioning against false friends.

The Camel and His Friends

Chuang Tzu rejects high office, preferring freedom and obscurity over wealth and power.

Independence

A man chooses Death as his child’s godfather, but when the child grows up and disobeys Death’s rules, Death takes him.

Godfather Death

A cashier impulsively quits his job after defending three girls treated rudely by his boss, only to realize the harshness of adulthood.

A & P

After years of isolation, Emily Grierson is found to have kept her lover’s corpse in her house, revealing her inability to let go of the past.

A Rose for Emily

On her deathbed, Granny recalls betrayals and disappointments, facing death still longing for divine comfort that never comes.

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

A man traveling alone in the Yukon underestimates nature and freezes to death after failing to build a fire.

To Build a Fire

A time traveler steps off the path during a prehistoric hunt, alters history, and returns to a darker present.

A Sound of Thunder

Two waiters discuss meaning and despair while serving an old man who seeks solace in a bright café at night.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

A poor couple sacrifices their most prized possessions to buy gifts for each other, rendering the gifts useless but proving their love.

The Gift of the Magi

Four shipwreck survivors struggle to reach land; three survive but the strongest drowns, showing nature’s indifference to man.

The Open Boat

In a dystopia where equality is enforced through handicaps, a gifted youth rebels briefly before being killed.

Harrison Bergeron

A city’s joy depends on the misery of a single child, and while most accept it, some leave Omelas in silent protest.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

In a small town’s ritual lottery, the “winner” is stoned to death, exposing blind adherence to tradition.

The Lottery

An outsider reads the Gospel to peasants, who later crucify him in literal imitation of the text.

The Gospel According to Mark

A woman briefly rejoices at her husband’s reported death, only to die from shock when he returns alive.

The Story of an Hour

An abused washerwoman endures her cruel husband until he dies from his own attempt to kill her with a rattlesnake.

Sweat

A manipulative grandmother leads her family into danger, and they are murdered by an escaped convict she futilely appeals to for mercy.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

A man flees Baghdad to avoid Death but finds him waiting in Samarra, showing fate is inevitable.

The Appointment in Samarra