Lit Terms

adage

a short, pointed, and memorable saying that is based on facts, and which is considered a veritable truth by the majority of people

Allegory

A literary work that portrays abstract ideas concretely. Characters in an allegory are frequently personifications of abstract ideas and are given names that refer to these ideas.

Alliteration

The repetition of the same initial consonant sounds in a sequence of words or syllables.

Allusion

A reference to another work of literature, or to art, history, or current events.

Anagnorisis

the startling discovery that produces a change from ignorance to knowledge

Anachronism

an error of chronology or timetimeline in a literary pieceline in a literary piece

Anapestic

A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable.

Anaphora

Repetition of an initial word or words to add emphasis.

Antagonist

Character in a story or play who opposes the protagonist; while not necessarily an enemy, the antagonist creates or intensifies a conflict for the protagonist. An evil antagonist is a villain.

Antithesis

a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else

Aphorism

a pithy observation that contains a general truth

Apostrophe

A direct address to an abstraction (such as Time), a thing (the Wind), an animal, or an imaginary or absent person.

Archetypal hero

a hero/main character in literature who possess great or admirable qualities and be forced to overcome obstacles to achieve specific goals

Archetype

a very typical example of a certain person or thing; universal recurrent symbol or motif

Aside

a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words.

Ballad

First taking shape in the later Middle Ages, the ballad was a sung poem that recounted a dramatic story. Ballads were passed down orally from generation to generation. Arising in the Romantic period, the literary ballad — a poem intentionally imitative of the ballad's style and structure — attempted to capture the sentiments of the common people in the same way the traditional ballad had.

Bathos

an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous

Biblical Free Verse

biblical poetry that does not have a rhyme scheme or a consistent metrical pattern.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter, blank verse is the most commonly used verse form in English because it is the verse form that comes closest to natural patterns of speaking in English.

Bombastic

pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language; when one tries to be eloquent by using the largest, most uncommon words

Cacophony

a combination of words or phrases that sound harsh, jarring, and generally unpleasant.

Cadence

Quality of spoken text formed from combining the text's rhythm with the rise and fall in the inflection of the speaker's voice.

Caesura

A pause within a line of poetry, sometimes punctuated, sometimes not, often mirroring natural speech.

Carpe Diem

A widespread literary theme meaning "seize the day" in Latin and found especially in lyric poetry, carpe diem encourages readers to enjoy the present and make the most of their short lives.

Catastrophe

The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play.

Catharsis

Refers to the emotional release felt by the audience at the end of a tragic drama. The term comes from Aristotle's Poetics, in which he explains this frequently felt relief in terms of a purification of the emotions caused by watching the tragic events.

Climax

The point in a story when the conflict reaches its highest intensity.

Comedy

Usually used to refer to a dramatic work that, in contrast to tragedy, has a light, amusing plot, features a happy ending, centers around ordinary people, and is written and performed in the vernacular.

Comedy of Manners

A satiric dramatic form that lampoons social conventions.

Conceit

a kind of metaphor that compares two very unlike things in a surprising and clever way.

Conflict

The tension, opposition, or struggle that drives a plot. External conflict is the opposition or tension between two characters or forces. Internal conflict occurs within a character. Conflict usually arises between the protagonist and the antagonist in a story.

Connotation

Meanings or associations readers have with a word or item beyond its dictionary definition, or denotation. Connotations may reveal another layer of meaning of a piece, affect the tone, or suggest symbolic resonance.

Consonance

An instance in which identical final consonant sounds in nearby words follow different vowel sounds.

Couplet

A two-line, rhyming stanza

Dactylic Foot

A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones

Denotation

The literal definition of a word, often referred to as the "dictionary definition."

Denouement

this literally means "untying the knot"; in this phase of a story's plot, the conflict has been resolved and balance is restored to the world of the story.

Deus ex Machina

A god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention.

Dirge

A brief hymn or song of lamentation and grief; it was typically composed to be performed at a funeral.

Doggerel

a low, or trivial, form of verse, loosely constructed and often irregular, but effective because of its simple mnemonic rhyme and loping metre. It appears in most literatures and societies as a useful form for comedy and satire.

Double Entendre

a phrase or a figure of speech that might have multiple senses, interpretations, or two different meanings, or which might be understood in two different ways

Dramatic monologue

A type of poem in which the speaker, who is clearly distinct from the poet, addresses an audience that is present in the poem.

Euphony

pleasing harmony of sounds: achieved through the use of vowel sounds in words of generally serene imagery.

Elegy

A contemplative poem, on death and mortality, often written for someone who has died.

End stopped lines

An end-stopped line of poetry concludes with punctuation that marks a pause.

English sonnet

Its fourteen lines are composed of three quatrains and a couplet, and its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg

Enjambment

A poetic technique in which one line ends without a pause and must continue on to the next line to complete is meaning; also referred to as "run-on line"

Epigram/epigraph

A brief witty poem, often satirical

Epiphany

A character's transformative moment of realization.

Exposition

In a literary work, contextual and background information told to readers (rather than shown through action) about the characters, plot, setting and situation)

Fable

A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author

Falling action

In a plot diagram, this is a result of the climax or turning point. In this phase, the conflict is being resolved.

Farce

A dramatic form marked by wholly absurd situations, slapstick, raucous wordplay, and sometimes innuendo

Foil

A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story.

Foreshadowing

Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story

Free Verse

A form of poetry that does not have a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme

Hamartia

a concept used by Aristotle to describe tragedy

Heroic Couplet

Rhyming pairs of verse in iambic pentameter

Homily

a sermon or speech delivered typically by a member of the clergy whose purpose is to offer a moral change in direction

Hubris

an extreme expression of pride or self-confidence in a character

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or ironic effect; an overstatement to make a point

Imagery

A description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds.

Implied Author

source of a work's design and meaning which is inferred by readers from the text, and imagined as a personality standing behind the work

Implied Reader

designates the image of the recipient that the author had while writing or, more accurately, the author's image of the recipient that is fixed and objectified in the text by specific indexical

In Media Res

Latin for "in the middle of things," a technique in which a narrative begins in the middle of the action.

Irony - Verbal

A figure of speech that occurs when a speaker or character says one thing but means something else, or when what is said is the opposite of what is expected, creating a noticeable incongruity.

Irony - situational

A pointed discrepancy between what seems fitting or expected in a story and what actually happens.

Irony - Dramatic

Tension created by the contrast between what a character says or thinks and what the audience or readers know to be true

Irony - cosmic

irony involving fate. Fate and destiny, or even gods, control and play with human hopes and desires

Italian Sonnet

its fourteen lines are divided into an octave and a sestet. The octave rhymes abba, abba; the sestet that follows can have a variety of different rhyme schemes: cdcdcd, cdecde, cddcdd.

Juxtapose (Juxtaposition)

Placing two things side by side for the sake of comparison or contrast. Authors sometimes use incongruous juxtapositions to produce verbal irony.

Litote

a figure of speech and a form of understatement in which a sentiment is expressed ironically by negating its contrary

Lyric poetry

have a musical rhythm, and their topics often explore romantic feelings or other strong emotions

Malapropism

the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance

Meiosis

a euphemistic figure of speech that intentionally understates something or implies that it is lesser in significance or size than it really is

melodrama

Plays with stereotyped villains and heroes who represent the extremes of good and evil

Metaphor

A figure of speech that compares or equates two things without using like or as.

Metaphysical conceit

A literary device that sets up a striking analogy between two entities that would not usually invite comparison, often drawing connections between the physical and the spiritual.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is related to it.

Metrics

the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line

Miracle and morality plays

These plays were allegorical dramas that personified the moral values and abstract ideas to teach moral lessons

Denotation

The literal definition of a word, often referred to as the "dictionary definition."

Mock Heroic

to describe poems which use a very grand and formal style to describe a common or trivial subject for which this style is not appropriate

Motif

A recurring pattern of images, words, or symbols that reveals a theme in a work of literature.

Octave

An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet.

Ode

A form of poetry used to meditate on or address a single object or condition. It originally followed strict rules of rhythm, meter, and rhyme, which by the Romantic period had become more flexible.

Omniscient point of view

Told by a narrator using third-person pronouns. This narrator is privy to the thoughts and actions of all of the characters in the story.

Onomatopoeia

Use of words that refer to sound and whose pronunciations mimic those sounds.

Parable

A tale told explicitly to illustrate a moral lesson or conclusion. Parables can take the form of drama, poetry, or fiction.

Pastoral

Literature that employs a romanticized description of leisurely farm or rural life.

Pathos

A quality of a play's action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character. Pathos is always an aspect of tragedy, and may be present in comedy as well.

Personification

A figure of speech in which an animal or an inanimate object is imbued with human qualities.

Picaresque Novel

relating the adventures of a rogue or lowborn adventurer as he drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in his effort to survive

Plot vs. story

The arrangement of events in a narrative. Almost always, a conflict is central to a plot, and traditionally a plot develops in accordance with the following model: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement.

Point of view

the perspective from which a work is told.

Pun

A play on words that derives its humor from the replacement of one word with another that has a similar pronunciation or spelling but a different meaning.

Quatrain

A four-line stanza.

Resolution

The working out of a plot's conflicts, following the climax.

Reversal

When, in a narrative, the protagonist's fortunes take an unforeseen turn.