EN 110 - Fiction and Foundational Concepts

Bildungsroman

literally, "education novel", a novel that depicts the intellectual, emotional and moral development of its protagonist from childhood to adulthood

Characterization

the presentation of a fictional personage

Discriminated Occasion

specific, discrete moment portrayed in a fictional work, often signaled by phrases such as "Later that evening", "Meanwhile" etc.

Fantasy

a genre of literary work featuring strange settings and characters and often involving magic or the supernatural

Flashback

A plot-structuring device whereby a scene from the fictional past is inserted into the fictional present or dramatized out of order

Focus

the visual component of point of view, the point from which people, events, and other details in a story are viewed

Gothic Fiction

a subgenre of fiction conventionally featuring plots that involve secrets, mystery, and the supernatural and large, gloomy, and usually antiquated buildings as settings

Hero/Heroine

a character in a literary work, especially the leading male/female character, who is especially virtuous, usually larger than life, sometimes almost godlike

Magic Realism

a type of fiction that involves the creation of a fictional world in which the kind of familiar, plausible action and characters one might find in more straightforwardly realist fiction coexist with utterly fantastic ones straight out of myths or dreams

Metafiction

a subgenre of works that playfully draw attention to their status as fiction in order to explore the nature of fiction and the role of authors and readers

Narrator

someone who recounts a narrative or tells a story, sometimes referred to as a speaker

Narration

(1) broadly, the act of telling a story or recounting a narrative

(2) more narrowly; the portions of a narrative that are attributable to the narrator rather than words spoken by the characters

Narrative

a story, whether fictional or true and in prose or verse, related by a narrator or narrators

Novel

a long work of fiction typically published as a stand-alone book

Novella

a work of prose fiction that falls somewhere in between a short story and a novel in terms of length, scope, and complexity

Realism

(1) generally, the practice in literature, especially in fiction and drama, of attempting to describe nature and life as they are without idealization and with attention to detail, especially the everyday life of ordinary people

(2) more narrowly, and especially when capitalized, a mid to late nineteenth century literary and artistic movement in the US and Europe

Point-of-View

the perspective from which people, events, and other details in a work of fiction are viewed

Romance

(1) originally, a long medieval narrative in prose or verse written in one of the romance languages and depicting the quests of knights and other chivalrous heroes

(2) later and more broadly, any literary work, especially a long work of prose fiction, characterized by nonrealistic and idealizing use of the imagination

(3) commonly today, works of prose fiction aimed at a mass, primarily female, audience and focusing on love affairs

Short Story

a relatively short work of prose fiction

Allusion

a brief, often implicit and indirect reference within the literary text to something outside the text, whether another text or any imaginary or historical person, place or thing

Archetype

a character, ritual, symbol, or plot pattern that recurs in the myth and literature of many cultures

Canon

the range of works that a consensus of scholars, teachers, and readers of a particular time and culture consider "great" or "major"

Convention

in literature, a standard or traditional way of presenting or expressing something, or a traditional or characteristic feature of a particular literary genre or subgenre

Diction

choice of words

Drama

a literary genre consisting of works in which action is performed and all words are spoken before an audience by an actor or actors impersonating the characters

Epigraph

a quotation appearing at the beginning of a literary work or of one section of such a work

Episode

a distinct action or series of actions within a plot

Fable

an ancient type of short fiction, in verse or prose, illustrating a moral or satirizing human beings. The characters are often animals that talk and act like human beings

Fiction

any narrative, especially in prose, about invented or imagined characters and action

Genre

a type of category of works sharing particular formal or textual features or conventions

Imagery

broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object

Legend

a type of tale conventionally set in the real world and in either the present or historical past based on actual people and events and offering an exaggerated or distorted version of the truth about these people and events

Myth

(1) originally and narrowly, a narrative explaining how the world and humanity developed into their present form and, unlike a folktale, generally considered to be true by the people who develop it.

(2) more broadly and especially in its adjectival form, any narrative tat obviously seems to work like a ____ in the first and more narrow sense especially by portraying experiences or conveying truths that it implies are universally valid regardless of culture or time

Moral

a rule of conduct or a maxim for living communicated in a literary work

Motif

a recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event within a literary work

Nonfiction

a work or genre of prose works that describe actual, as opposed to imaginary or fictional, characters and events

Rhythm

the modulation of weak and strong (stressed and unstressed) elements in the flow of speech

Parable

a short work of fiction that illustrates an explicit moral but that, unlike a fable, lacks fantastic or anthropomorphic characters

Poetry

one of the three major types of imaginative literature, which has its origins in music and oral performance and is often characterized by controlled patterns of rhythm and syntax

Rhetoric

the art and scholarly study of effective communication, whether in writing or speech

Setting

the time and place of the action in a work of fiction, poetry, or drama

Situation

the basic circumstances depicted in a literary work, especially when the story, play, or poem begins or at a specific later moment in the action

Syntax

word order; the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences

Style

a distinctive manner of expression unique to the author

Theme

(1) broadly and commonly, a topic explored in a literary work

(2) more narrowly and properly, the insight about a topic communicated in a work

Tone

the attitude a literary work takes toward its subject or that a character in the work conveys

Time

4 potential types of _____ in literature

1. author _____: when the author originally created or published a literary work

2. narrative _____: when the narrator in a work of fiction supposedly narrated the story

3. plot ______: when the action depicted in the work supposedly took place

4. reader (or audience) _______: when an actual reader reads the work or when an actual audience sees it performed