literary terms

Assonance

Assonance

The repeating of vowel sounds for aesthetic effect: ‘low, close, clouds’.

Chorus

In songs a few lines that are repeated at the end of each stanza. In Greek drama a group of people on stage who act as a communal character and recite verses.

Enjambment

The flowing on of a line of poetry so there is no pause at the end of the line

Refrain

The repeating of a single line in a poem, often the last line of a stanza.

Repetend

A recurring word of phrase, not necessarily as formally arranged as a refrain.

Sibilance

The aesthetic use of the hissing ‘s’ sound.

Verse

The word is sometimes used to refer to poetry in general but can be used to mean the same as stanza.

Allegory

A rhetorical device that creates a close, one-to-one comparison

Burlesque

Satire that uses caricature

Colloquial

The informal language of conversation.

Denouement

The culmination or result of an action, plan or plot.

Diatribe

An impassioned rant or angry speech of denunciation.

Empiricism

Basing knowledge on direct, sensory perceptions of the world. Empirical means seeking out facts established by experience not theory.

Form

The type of literary expression chosen by an author

Hyperbole

The use of exaggeration for effect

Intertextuality

The concept of intertextuality describes the relationship between media products where one text references another text by reusing some its ideas and meanings.

Ludic

A text that plays games with readers’ expectations and/or the expectations aroused by the text itself. A ludic text that arouses audience expectations: there will be a plot and a mystery to solve but provides no solution. Here the audience is first enticed, then teased and finally frustrated.

Meta

These words usually describe moments when a text goes beyond its own fictionality or makes readers/audience aware of the conventions of its fiction. An aside could be described as a ‘metatheatrical’ event.

Modernism

The name given to experiments carried out in poetry, prose, and art from around 1920-1939

Poetic Justice

The trapper is caught by the trap in an example of ironic but apt justice. an outcome in which vice is punished and virtue rewarded usually in a manner peculiarly or ironically appropriate.

Postmodernism

A complex term. Postmodern texts tend to be aware of their own artifice, be filled with intertextual allusions, and ironic rather than sincere.

Reportage

Literally means reporting news but in literary criticism the word often means the inclusion of documentary material, or material which purports to be documentary, in a text.

Satire

A destructive reduction of an idea, image, concept or text. It can employ exaggeration, mimicry, irony or tone

Semantics

The study of how words create meaning.

Transgressive

The crossing of a boundary of culture or taste, usually with a subversive intention.

Writing Back

A term which describes the appropriation of a text or genre and a rewriting in response. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) rewrites the Bible to expose its anti-feminist implications.

Ballad

the ballad verse-form is a simple AB,AB, rhyme structure with simple rhythms

Classical, or Neoclassical

Movements that believe all writing or art should imitate precedents and genres created by the writers or artists of the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome

Effusion

A word meaning a spontaneous expression

Elegy

A poem lamenting a dead person or persons.

Epic

A long poem concerned with large events of conflict. An epic is frequently seen as displaying and testing the values of the civilisation that produced it.

Epithalamium

A poem celebrating a wedding.

Mock-epic

A poem employing the devices of an epic to create a parody of the epic’s grandeur, satirical.

Pastoral

An idealised depiction of rural life.

Romantic

Word that is applied to movements from the late 18th century onwards who valued feelings above thought and originality above derivation.

Sonnet

Generally refers to a 14 line poem with a strict rhyme scheme. Petrarchan sonnets (post 1374) usually have the rhyme scheme a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, and either c-d-e-c-d-e , c-d-c-c-d-c, or c-d-c-d-c-d. Shakespearean sonnets (post 1600) end with a couplet: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

Absurdist theatre/Theatre of the Absurd

A genre of plays in which apparently impossible or ridiculous events make a statement about the strangeness and irrationality of existence.

Agit-prop (AGITationPROPaganda)

A piece of drama that exists to make a political point. Often performed in the street.

Brechtean Drama

A drama designed to confront its audience directly through devices like the alienation effect, to put forward a political point of view. In Brecht’s case this was used to advance leftwing politics. Sometimes this type of play is called ‘Epic theatre’, especially when created by other playwrights

Classical Drama

Drama observing the rules of Classical Greek and Roman drama, following the critic Aristotle’s codification of three unities’: Unity of time (action takes place within 24 hours), unity of place (only one scene throughout), unity of plot (no sub-plots) (322BC).

Epic theatre

A drama designed to confront its audience directly through devices like the alienation effect, to put forward a political point of view. In Brecht’s case this was used to advance leftwing politics. Sometimes this type of play is called ‘Epic theatre’, especially when created by other playwrights

Farce

A comedy featuring exaggerated situations and physical humour, usually based around the attempt to preserve respectability. The adjective ‘farcical’ is less specific, usually referring to some event that becomes absurd.

Happening

A spontaneous or semi-spontaneous event in a public space that combined theatre and art.

Masque

16th/17th form of court entertainment with music, dancing, and dialogue but emphasising spectacle, costume and theatrical effects rather than plot.

Realistic Drama

An attempt to represent life on stage with the minimum interference from convention. The defining metaphor is that viewing a realistic play should be like looking into a room with one wall missing.

Shakespearean Drama

The name conveniently given to British drama of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period that ignored the rules of classical drama to use large time-spans, sub-plots and many scenes

Catharsis

The process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

Dramatis personae

Latin term for the list of characters in a play

Hamartia

A fatal moral flaw in a protagonist of a tragedy.

Hubris

used to designate overweening pride in a protagonist of a tragedy

Alienation effect

The use of devices that disrupt the illusion of realistic theatre, such as the cast speaking or singing directly to the audience, or holding up signs or slogans.

Aside

A remark to the audience which other characters on stage do not hear. In effect a device used to make a character’s inner feelings evident.

Exeunt

Used to indicate several people leave the stage.

Monologue

A long speech delivered by a character during a conversation

Soliloquy

A solo speech by a character, usually taking place when s/he is alone on stage. Like an aside, it is a way of allowing a character’s thoughts to be overheard

Chronicle

A list of events. Some may be in verse. The emphasis tends to be on action not inner life. Somenare factual, some are not

Epistolary

A novel written in the form of an exchange of letters (epistles).

Gothic

At its simplest the use of medieval and/or supernatural elements to create a horror story. Nowadays the word is often used to describe any story with antique horrors within it.

Magic-realism

A novel written in a realistic style which incorporates impossible or unlikely events.

Picaresque

A novel where the protagonist’s travels and encounters are more important than the protagonist’s character.

Romance

A medieval prose or poetry text that tells a story in which barely possible and supernatural events are an essential feature of the action.

Realistic

The attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, as well as implausible, exotic and supernatural elements.

Naturalism

Describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings

Interleaving

The telling of several stories in one text; the stories are interwoven with each other.