Glossary of Literary Terms for English 1020 Exam

Blank Verse

Unrhymed poetry in English that contains five iambic feet per line.

Archetype

A recurring symbol, character, landscape, or event found in myth and literature across different cultures and eras.

Antihero

A protagonist who is buffoonish, cowardly, self-interested, or weak instead of dignified, brave, idealistic, and purposeful.

Allegory

A narrative in verse or prose in which the literal events consistently point to a parallel sequence of symbolic ideas.

Diction

Refers to the choice of words by a writer, not the arrangement of words.

Couplet

A two-line stanza in poetry, usually rhymed, which tends to have lines of equal length.

Connotation

An association or additional meaning that a word, image, or phrase may carry, apart from its literal dictionary definition.

Alliteration

The repetition of two or more consonant sounds in successive words in a line of verse or prose.

Denotation

The literal dictionary definition of a word as opposed to associated ideas.

Antagonist

A person who opposes the central character in a story or drama.

Elegy

A lament or a sadly meditative poem, often written on the occasion of a death or other solemn theme.

Ballad

Traditionally a song that tells a story; originally an oral tradition of handing down legends, myths, folklore.

Gothic Fiction

A genre that creates terror and suspense; set in an isolated castle, mansion, or monastery populated by mysterious threatening individuals.

Dramatic Irony

Occurs when the audience knows more than the character, creating tension and suspense.

Situational Irony

Occurs when there is a difference between what is expected to happen and what actually happens.

Free Verse

Poetry that does not rhyme or follow a specific structure or pattern.

Close Reading

A method of analysis involving step-by-step explication of a poem or parts of play in order to understand how various elements work together.

English Sonnet

Consists of 14 lines. Three quatrains and a couplet. Rime is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG.

Allusion

An implied or direct reference to a person, event, or thing or to a part of another text.

Irony

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

Didactic Fiction

A narrative that intends to teach a specific moral lesson or provide a model for proper behavior.

Lyric

A short poem expressing the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker. A poem about the beauty of God's hand in the description of a butterfly would qualify as a lyric poem.

Accent

The emphasis or stress placed on a syllable in speech. This is not the same word as the accent of a person from another country or culture who sounds 'foreign' to native populations.

Hyperbole

An extreme form of exaggeration used to emphasize a point.

Literary Epic

A long, often book-length, narrative in verse form that retells the heroic journey of a single person, or group of persons.

Persona

The main character in a poem or short story--The person who is understood to be speaking (or thinking or writing) a particular work. The persona is almost invariably distinct from the author; it is the voice chosen by the author for a particular artistic purpose.

Falling Action

Period of time that follows the climax and leads to the resolution of a literary work as plot complications are unraveled.

Explication or close reading

A type of analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem. Explaining all the details with analysis and commentary is an effective way for a reader to fully comprehend a work of literature.

Deus Ex Machina

The system used to mechanically lower a god from the heavens to the stage from the skene roof to resolve human conflict.

Dénouement

The resolution of conflict in a narrative plot structure. It occurs at the end of a story, after the climax, and serves to resolve plot lines. Derives from the French word denoue, which means 'to untie.'

Comic Relief

The presence of a humorous situation, character, or clownish humor during a serious action that introduces a contrast in mood. The role of the urinating porter in Macbeth is a classic example.

Flashback

In fiction, a flashback is a scene that takes place before a story begins. Flashbacks interrupt the chronological order of the main narrative to take a reader back in time to the past events in a character's life.

Climax

The moment of greatest intensity in a story, which almost inevitably occurs toward the end of the work.

Imagery

The collective set of word images in a poem or other literary work e.g. images of being restrained/chained/confined in a poem titled Freedom At Last. The imagery would consist of shackles and prison bars.

Fable

A short fictitious story. Especially one intended to teach a moral lesson and in which animals speak and act like human beings. Aesop was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables.

Italian Sonnet

A sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba, followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern cdecde or cdcdcd.

In Medias Res

A narrative device of beginning a story midway in the events it depicts; Latin phrase meaning 'in the midst of things.'

Foreshadowing

The technique of arranging events and information in such a way that later events are prepared for beforehand.

Farce

A type of comedy featuring exaggerated character types in ludicrous and improbable situations. Pie throwing and ridiculous antics make up this genre.

Carpe Diem

Literally, "seize the day." Used to signify to make good use of time assigned to you when you're young. Slang YOLO is modern equivalent.

Magic Realism

A type of contemporary narrative in which the magical and the mundane are mixed in an overall context of realistic storytelling e.g. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Marquez.

Anaphoric Refrain

That part of a poem of song that repeats the same starting word or phrase. A good example would be IF by Rudyard Kipling; these usually appears at the front of the lines.

Parody

A mocking imitation of a literary work or individual author's style, usually for comic effect.

Quatrain

A stanza consisting of four lines; the most common stanza used in English-language poetry. Three of these make up the first 12 lines of English sonnet.

Tragic Flaw

A fatal weakness or moral flaw in the protagonist that brings him or her to a bad end. Pride or Hubris is usually the flaw. The story of Oedipus by Sophocles is a perfect example of the classic tragic hero.

Omniscient Narrator

A narrator who has the ability to move freely through the consciousness of any character; also called "all-knowing narrator."

Paradox

A statement that at first strikes one as self-contradictory, but that on reflection reveals some deeper sense.

Onomatopoeia

A literary device that attempts to represent a thing or action by a word that imitates the sound associated with it (e.g., crash, bang).

Soliloquy

An extended speech by a single character; in drama, it refers to a solo speech that has listeners. The thoughts of an actor spoken out loud. Hamlet's To Be or Not to Be speech is the very best example of this.

Aside

In drama, it is a speech spoken for the benefit of the audience, but the actors on stage are not supposed to hear it.

Personification

A figure of speech in which a thing, an animal, or an abstract term is endowed with human characteristics.

Theater of the Absurd

Post-WWII genre depicting the grotesquely comic plight of human beings thrown by accident into an irrational and meaningless world. Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco, and Samuel Beckett are best exponents.

Stream of Consciousness technique in fiction

Technique uses unusual, often grammatically incorrect, sentence structure full of incomplete thoughts and tangents to illustrate how a character thinks. Stream of consciousness writing can be frustrating for many readers because the storytelling doesn't flow in a logical manner. James Joyce's Ulysses is a prime example.

Slice-of-life poem

Relating to, or being a naturalistic, unembellished representation of real life. Storytelling technique uses glimpses of a character's mundane life. Character might be trying to close an umbrella for much of the poem.

Motif

A motif is a repeated pattern—an image, sound, word, or symbol that comes back again and again within a particular story.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere in literature is the way an author uses setting, objects, or internal thoughts of characters to create emotion, mood, or experiences for the reader.