Norton Intro to Literature 14th Shorter Editoin

action

any event or series of events depicted in a literary work

allegory

a literary work in which characters, actions, and even settings have two connected levels of meaning.

alliteration

The repetition of usually initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words.

allusion

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

Anapestic

Referring to a metrical form in which each foot consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one.

antagonist

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

antihero

protagonist who is in one way or another the very opposite of a traditional hero

Apostrophe

A figure of speech in which a speaker or narrator addresses an abstraction, an object, or a dead or absent person.

archetype

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

auditor

imaginary listener within a literary work, as opposed to the actual reader or audience outside the work

author

the actual or real author of a work is the historical person who wrote it and the focus of biographical criticism, which interprets a work by drawing on facts about the author's life and career.

Ballad

A verse narrative that is, or originally was, meant to be sung.

Ballad stanza

A common stanza form, consisting of a quatrain that alternates four-foot and three-foot lines.

bildungsroman

literally, "education novel" (German), a novel that depicts the intellectual, emotional, and moral development of its protagonist from childhood to adulthood; also sometimes called an apprenticeship novel.

biography

a work of nonfiction that recounts the life of a real person.

canon

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

central consciousness

character whose inner thoughts, perceptions, and feelings are revealed by a third-person limited narrator who does not reveal the thoughts, perceptions, or feelings of other characters.

characterization

the presentation of a fictional personage.

characters

imaginary personage who acts, appears, or is referred to in a literary work

climax/turning point

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

comedy

a broad category of literary, especially dramatic, works intended primarily to entertain and amuse an audience.

complication

in plot, an action or event that introduces a new conflict or intensifies the existing one, especially during the rising action phase of plot.

conclusion/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.

conflict

struggle between opposing forces.

conventions

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.

crisis

in plot, the moment when the conflict comes to a head, often requiring the character to make a decision

dénouement

literally, "untying," as of a knot (french); a plot-related term used in three ways: 1) a synonym for falling action, 2) as a synonym for conclusion or resolution, and 3) as the label for a phrase following the conclusion in which any loose ends are tied up.

deus ex machina

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

dialogue

(1) usually, words spoken by characters in a literary work, especially as opposed to words that come directly from the narrator in a work of fiction; (2) more rarely, a literary work that consists mainly or entirely of the speech of two or more characters.

Diction

Choice of words

discrimination occasion

a specific, discrete moment portrayed in a fictional work.

drama

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.

Dramatic monologue

A type or subgenre of poetry in which a speaker addresses a silent auditor in a specific situation and setting that is revealed entirely through the speaker's words.

Dramatic poem

A poem structured so as to present a scene or series of scenes, as in a work of drama.

Elegy

A formal lament on the death of a particular person.

End-stopped line

A line of verse that contains or concludes a complete clause and usually ends with a punctuation mark.

Enjambent

In poetry, the technique of running over from one line to the next without stop.

epic

long narrative poem that celebrates the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines, usually in founding a nation or developing a culture, and uses elevated language and a grand, high style.

epilogue

1) in fiction, a short section or chapter that comes after the conclusion, tying up loose ends and often describing what happens to the characters after the resolution of the conflict; 2) in drama, a short speech, often addressed directly to the audience, delivered by a character at the end of a play

epiphany

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

episode

distinct action or series of actions within a plot

Epithet

A characterizing word or phrase that precedes, follows, or substitutes for the name of a person or thing.

exposition

first phase or part of a plot, which sets the scene, introduces and identifies characters, and establishes the situation at the beginning of a story or play.

fable

ancient type of short fiction, in verse or prose, illustrating a moral or satirizing human beings.

falling action

fourth of the five phases or parts of plot, in which the conflict or conflicts move toward resolution.

fantasy

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

fiction

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

figures of speech

any word or phrase that creates a "figure" in the mind of the reader by effecting an obvious change in the usual meaning or order of words, by comparing or identifying one thing with another; also called a trope.

first-person narrator

internal narrator who consistently refers to himself or herself using the first-person pronouns I or we.

flashback

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

flashforward

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

focus

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

foil

character that serves as a contrast to another

folktale

A brief narrative that incorporates a formulaic beginning and ending, a setting that is not highly particularized in terms of time or place, flat or stock characters, and fairly simple plots.

Foot

The basic unit of poetic meter, consisting of any of various fixed patterns of one to three stressed and unstressed syllables.

Free verse

Poetry characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and nonrhyming lines.

genre

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

gothic fiction

subgenre of fiction conventionally featuring plots that involve secrets, mystery, and the supernatural (or the seemingly supernatural) and large, gloomy, and usually antiquated (especially medieval) buildings as settings.

hero/heroine

character in a literary work, especially the leading male/female character, who is especially virtuous, usually larger than life, sometimes even god-like.

historical fiction

subgenre of fiction, of which length, in which the temporal setting, or plot time, is significantly earlier than the time in which the work was written (typically, a period before the birth of the author).

image

a particularly instance of imagery

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.

implied author

The vision of the author's personality and outlook implied by the work as a whole.

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 flashbacks.

inciting incident/destabilizing event

an action that sets a plot in motion by creating conflict

intrusive narrator

a third-person narrator who occasionally disrupts his or her narrative to speak directly to the reader or audience in what is sometimes called a direct address

Inversion

A change in normal syntax such as putting a verb before its subject.

irony

situation or statement characterized by a significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant.

limited third-person narrator

when they relate the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of only one character

literary criticism

mainly interpretive (versus evaluative) work written by readers of literary texts, especially professional ones (who are thus known as literary critics).

Lyric

Any relatively short poem in which the speaker expresses his or her thoughts and feelings in the first person.

magic realism

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.

metaphor

figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly

meter

the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.

Meter

The more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.

metonymy

figure of speech in which the name of one thing is used to refer to another associated thing

moral

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

myth

originally and narrowly, 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

narrative

story, whether fictional or true and in prose or verse, related by a narrator or narrators (rather than acted out onstage, as in drama).

narrative poem

A poem in which a narrator tells a story.

narrator

someone who recounts a narrative or tells a story.

nonfiction

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

novel

long work of fiction (approximately 40,000+ words), typically published (or at least publishable) as a stand-alone book; though most novels are written in prose, those written as poetry are called verse novels.

novella

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

Ode

A lyric poem characterized by a serious topic and formal tone but without a prescribed formal pattern in which the speaker talks about…an especially revered person or thing.

omniscient third-person narrator

when they describe the inner thoughts and feelings of multiple characters

oxymoron

figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory elements

parable

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

parody

any work that imitates or spoofs another work or genre for comic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original; parody is a subgenre of satire.

pastoral

work or category of works -- whether fiction, poetry, drama, or nonfiction -- describing and idealizing the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live a painless life in a world full of beauty, music, and love.

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

plot

arrangement of the action

plot summary

brief recounting of the principal action of a work of fiction, drama, or narrative poetry, usually in the same order in which the action is recounted in the original work rather than in chronological order

poetry

one of the three genres of imaginative literature, which has its origins in music and oral performance and is characterized by controlled patterns of rhythm and syntax (often using meter and rhyme); compression and compactness and allowance for ambiguity; a particularly concentrated emphasis on the sensual, especially visual and aural, qualities and effects of words and word order; and especially vivid, often figurative language.

point of view

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

prose

The regular form of spoken and written language, measured in sentences rather than lines.

protagonist

most neutral and broadly applicable term for the main character in a work, whether male or female, heroic or not heroic.

rhyme

The repetition or correspondence of the terminal sounds of words.

rhyme scheme

pattern of end rhymes in a poem, often noted by lowercase letters.

rhythm

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