English Literature Terms

Canon

The range of works that a consensus of scholars, teachers, and readers of a particular time and culture consider “great” or “major.”

• Example: William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is commonly taught as part of the American literary canon.

Genre

Type or category of works sharing particular formal or textual features and conventions; especially used to refer to the largest categories for classifying literature—fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction. A smaller division within a genre is usually known as a subgenre, such as gothic fiction or epic poetry

• Example: Poe’s “The Black Cat” is Gothic fiction because it uses horror, psychological disturbance, death, and a dark, unsettling atmosphere

Epiphany

Sudden revelation of truth, often inspired by a seemingly simple or commonplace event

• Example: At the end of Joyce’s “Araby,” the boy recognizes that his romantic quest has been driven by illusion when the bazaar disappoints him

Action

The events, conflicts, and changes that occur in a story

• Example from literature we read: In Bradbury’s “The Veldt,” the action includes the parents trying to shut down the nursery, the children resisting them, and the parents being trapped in the veldt

Plot

The arrangement of the action. The five main parts or phases of plot are exposition, rising action, climax or turning point, falling action, and conclusion or resolution

• Example from literature we read: In “The Story of an Hour,” the plot moves from the report of Brently Mallard’s death, to Louise’s growing sense of freedom, to the reversal when he returns alive

Sequence

(1) the ordering of action in a fictional plot; (2) a closely linked series or cycle of individual literary works

• Example from literature we read: “A Rose for Emily” does not tell events in chronological sequence: the story begins after Emily’s death, then moves backward and forward through her life

Pace

The speed and rhythm at which a story unfolds and information is revealed to the reader

• Example from literature we read: Hemingway creates a slow, tense pace in “Hills Like White Elephants” through pauses, repeated dialogue, and the couple’s indirect discussion

in medias res

“In the midst of things” (Latin); refers to opening a plot in the middle of the action, and then filling in past details by means of exposition and/or flashback

• Example from literature we read: “Sonny’s Blues” begins after Sonny has already been arrested, then the narrator gradually provides the brothers’ earlier history and family background

Flashback

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

• Example from literature we read: In “Sonny’s Blues,” the narrator recalls his mother telling him about the death of his uncle, who was killed by a car while walking on a road at night

Flashforward

Plot-structuring device whereby a scene from the fictional future is inserted into the fictional present or is dramatized out of order

• Example from literature we read: In “A Wall of Fire Rising,” the narrative moves toward the future event implied by Guy’s obsession with the hot-air balloon—his eventual fatal jump

External conflict

A conflict between a character against something or someone outside that character—another character or characters or some impersonal force (e.g., nature or society)

• Example from literature we read: In “The Veldt,” George and Lydia’s external conflict is with Peter and Wendy, who resist their parents’ attempt to shut down the nursery

Internal conflict

A conflict is internal when the opposing forces are two drives, impulses, or parts of a single character

• Example from literature we read: In “Good People,” Lane Dean Jr. struggles internally between his religious beliefs, his fear of fatherhood, and his responsibility toward Sheri and their pregnancy

Exposition

First phase or part of plot, which sets the scene, introduces and identifies characters, and establishes the situation at the beginning of a story or play. Additional exposition is often scattered throughout the work

• Example from literature we read: The opening of “The Veldt” introduces the futuristic Happylife Home, the Hadley family, and Lydia’s anxiety about the nursery

Inciting incident/Destabilizing event

An action that sets a plot in motion by creating conflict

• Example from literature we read: In “The Black Cat,” the narrator’s violent killing of Pluto begins the chain of guilt, horror, and escalating violence that drives the plot

Climax/Turning Point

The third part of plot, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing

• Example from literature we read: In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the climax occurs when the narrator tears at the wallpaper and identifies herself with the woman she imagines trapped behind it

Resolution

The fifth and last phase or part of plot, the point at which the situation that was destabilized at the beginning becomes stable once more and the conflict is resolved.

• Example from literature we read: In “The Black Cat,” the police discover the narrator’s wife’s body after the cat cries from behind the wall, resolving the murder plot through his exposure and arrest

deus ex machina

Literally, “god out of the machine” (Latin); any improbable, unprepared-for plot contrivance introduced late in a literary work to resolve the conflict

• Example from literature we read:

Narrator

The person or voice that tells a story

• Example from literature we read: In “Cathedral,” the unnamed husband serves as the narrator and recounts Robert’s visit to his home

First-person narration

An internal narrator who consistently refers to themselves using the first-person pronouns “I” or “we”

• Example from literature we read: “The Black Cat” is narrated in the first person by the man who abuses Pluto, murders his wife, and tells the reader his version of events

Third-person omniscient narration

Narrators when they describe the inner thoughts and feelings of multiple characters

• Example from literature we read: Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” uses third-person omniscient narration because it gives readers access to both Aylmer’s obsessive thoughts and Georgiana’s growing fear and devotion

Third-person limited narration

Narrators when they relate the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of only one character (the central consciousness)

• Example from literature we read:

Third-person objective narration

Does not explicitly report characters’ thoughts and feelings but may obliquely suggest them through the characters’ speech and actions

• Example from literature we read: White Elephant

Unreliable narrator

If a work encourages us to view a narrator’s account of events with suspicion, the narrator (usually first person) is called this

• Example from literature we read:

Protagonist

Most neutral and broadly applicable term for the main character in a work, regardless of gender and whether heroic or not heroic

• Example from literature we read:

Antagonist

A character or a nonhuman force that opposes or is in conflict with the protagonist

• Example from literature we read:

Antihero

Protagonist who is in one way or another the very opposite of a traditional hero. Instead of being courageous and determined, for instance, an antihero might be timid, hypersensitive, and indecisive. Antiheroes are especially common in modern literature and media; examples might include the speaker of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Homer Simpson

• Example from literature we read:

Foil

Character that serves as a contrast to another

• Example from literature we read:

Round character

Are complex and multifaceted and act in a way that readers might not expect but accept as possible

• Example from literature we read:

Flat character

Are relatively simple, have a few dominant traits, and tend to be predictable

• Example from literature we read:

Stock character

Represent familiar types that recur frequently in literary works, especially of a particular genre

• Example from literature we read:

Setting

Stime and place of the action in a work of fiction, poetry, or drama. The spatial setting is the place or places in which action unfolds; the temporal setting is the time

• Example from literature we read:

Allegory

A literary work in which characters, actions, and even settings have two connected levels of meaning. Elements of the literal level signify (or serve as symbols for) a figurative level that often imparts a lesson or moral to the reader

• Example from literature we read: John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, in which a character named Christian has to make his way through obstacles such as the Valley of Humiliation to get to the Celestial City

Allusion

Brief, often implicit and indirect reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text (e.g., the Bible, a myth, another literary work, a painting, or a piece of music) or any imaginary or historical person, place, or thing

• Example from literature we read:

Metaphor

Figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly—that is, without the use of a signal such as the word like or as—as in “Love is a rose, but you better not pick it.”

• Example from literature we read:

Personification

Figure of speech that involves treating something nonhuman, such as an abstraction, as if it were a person by endowing it with humanlike qualities, as in “Death entered the room.”

• Example from literature we read:

Simile

Figure of speech involving a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words like or as to draw the connection, as in “My love is like a red, red rose.”

• Example from literature we read:

Subject/Topic

X

• Example from literature we read:

Moral

Rule of conduct or maxim for living (that is, a statement about how one should live or behave) communicated in a literary work. Though fables often have morals, such as “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” more modern literary works instead tend to have themes.

• Example from literature we read:

Theme

(1) broadly and commonly, a topic explored in a literary work (e.g., “the value of all life”); (2) more narrowly and properly, the insight about a topic communicated in a work (e.g., “All living things are equally precious”). Most literary works have multiple themes, though some people reserve the term theme for the central or main insight and refer to others as subthemes. Usually, a theme is implicitly communicated by the work as a whole rather than explicitly stated in it, though fables are an exception

• Example from literature we read:

Satire

Literary work—whether fiction, poetry, or drama—that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure

• Example from literature we read: Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels and Jordan Peele’s film Get Out (2017).