21st Century Literature: Literary Genres, Elements, and Analysis

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering literary genres, forms of poetry, prose, drama, creative nonfiction, structural elements of plot, characterization, figurative language, and analytical reading strategies from the lecture notes.

Literary Genre

Any category of literature, music, or art based on specific stylistic criteria, originating in ancient Greece as a classification system tied to thematic style.

Lyric Poetry

Comparatively short, non-narrative poetry in which a speaker presents an emotional state or a state of mind.

Elegy

A lyric poem of serious reflection, typically composed as a lament for the dead.

Ode

A lyric poem in which the poet expresses a strong feeling of love or respect for someone or something.

Sonnet

A fourteen-line lyric poem written in iambic pentameter with a tight thematic structure and one or several rhyme schemes.

Dramatic Monologue

A poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined character revealing their personality while describing a situation or series of events.

Narrative Poetry

Poetry that tells a story using the voices of a narrator and characters, typically written in metered verse.

Epic

A long narrative poem written in an elevated style about heroes of great historical or legendary importance executing valorous deeds.

Mock-Epic

A satirical poem or parody that mocks classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature.

Ballad

A narrative poem or song composed in short stanzas, traditionally of unknown authorship and transmitted orally as part of folk culture.

Didactic Poetry

Poetry written with the primary objective of teaching or instructing the reader.

Contemporary Poetry

Poetry composed from the second half of the 20th century to the present, characterized by free verse, colloquial diction, fragmented structures, and modern social themes.

Spoken-Word Poetry

An oral poetic performance art emphasizing recitation aesthetics, vocal inflection, intonation, and emotional provocation of a live audience without costumes or props.

Prose

Written or spoken language that flows naturally without formal metrical structure.

Realistic Fiction

A fictional narrative consisting of events that could have plausibly occurred to humans or animals in a believable setting.

Fantastic Fiction

Fiction that subordinates reality to imagination, depicting a realm of marvels contrasting everyday reality and accepted norms.

Biography

A detailed written account of a person's life authored by someone else, encompassing life events and personal experiences beyond raw facts.

Autobiography

A written account of a person's life written by that person themself.

Farce

A nonsensical dramatic comedy marked by overacting, slapstick humor, and stereotyped, single-dimension characters.

Melodrama

A sensational dramatic genre that appeals directly to audience emotions through exaggerated plotlines and one-dimensional characters.

Flash Fiction

An extremely compressed form of fiction kept beneath a strict word limit (typically 100 to 1,000 words) featuring an emotional punch or surprise ending.

Speculative Fiction

An umbrella fictional genre focusing on "what if" concepts beyond the real world, encompassing science fiction, fantasy, dystopian realms, and magic realism.

Graphic Fiction

A visual storytelling format utilizing sequenced image panels, illustrations, and speech bubbles combined with written narrative.

Creative Nonfiction

Factually accurate narrative prose concerning real events and persons that utilizes literary craft and storytelling strategies.

Literary Journalism

A form of creative nonfiction that reports on actual events or historical cases using thorough research, investigation, and immersive literary narrative.

Personal Narrative

A creative nonfiction work detailing a true autobiographical incident to illustrate a broader insight.

Travelogue

A factual narrative recounting the experiences, sights, and encounters of a writer travelling through a specific destination.

Plot

The narrative arrangement of events within a story that emphasizes causal relationships rather than simple chronological time sequence.

Freytag's Pyramid

A classic dramatic structural model depicting the stages of a plot: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

Exposition

The introductory portion of a plot that establishes the setting, introduces characters, and prepares the audience for the narrative journey.

Climax

The peak of the dramatic action, serving as the central confrontation or turning point of the plot.

Dénouement

The resolution of a plot where central conflicts are settled and the narrative returns to a state of normalcy.

Direct Characterization

A characterization technique in which the narrator explicitly states a character's traits or moral nature to the reader.

Indirect Characterization

A characterization method requiring readers to deduce character traits from clues like appearance, dialogue, actions, and mannerisms.

Protagonist

The central character of a story who faces the primary conflict, not necessarily required to be morally good.

Antagonist

The primary entity, individual, or force that generates conflict for the protagonist.

Flat Character

A simple, predictable literary character defined by only one or two traits who remains unchanged throughout the story.

Round Character

A complex, multi-dimensional character with a detailed personality who evolves or grows in response to narrative events.

Setting as Metaphor

A narrative function where the physical surroundings symbolize the deeper internal situation or emotions of a character.

Setting as Atmosphere

The mood, feeling, or emotional tone evoked by the suggested physical environment of a story.

Omniscient Narrator

An all-knowing third-person narrator capable of moving across time, place, and minds to expose character thoughts.

Limited Narrator

A narrator whose knowledge is confined to a single vantage point and does not possess comprehensive insight into all events or minds.

Theme

The overarching idea about life and human nature explored by a story, distinct from an explicit moral lesson or didactic message.

Irony

A literary device highlighting incongruity or contrast between expectation and reality, or between literal utterance and true meaning.

Oxymoron

A figure of speech juxtaposing two contradictory or opposite terms to create a concise, evocative phrase.

Foreshadowing

The use of subtle clues or hints early in a text to suggest events that will occur later in the plot.

Symbolism

The literary device of using a tangible object, person, setting, or action to represent an abstract or deeper concept.

Imagery

Descriptive language appealing directly to the senses (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory) to evoke mental pictures.

Allusion

An indirect, unexplained reference to a prominent person, historical event, myth, or artistic work that the author expects the reader to identify.

Reader Response Criticism

A literary critical theory asserting that text meaning is created through the active emotional and cognitive engagement of the reader rather than existing solely within the text.

Close Reading

An analytical reading method focusing on the precise textual details of a work, including diction, figurative language, tone, and syntactic structures.

Textual Evidence

Direct citations, words, or passages drawn from a text to validate an interpretation following the Claim-Evidence-Explanation framework.