Literary Terms

Literary Terms

Allegory

  • Definition: A story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities.

  • Example: Animal Farm, Dante’s Inferno, Lord of the Flies.

Alliteration

  • Definition: The repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.

  • Example: “When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of the regiment had crumbled away, and the dejected remnant was coming slowly back.” – Stephen Crane (Note: the words regiment and remnant highlight the contrast between lost soldiers and those who remain).

Allusion

  • Definition: A reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or another branch of culture—an indirect reference.

Ambiguity

  • Definition: The deliberate suggestion of two or more different meanings in a work; involves events or situations that may be interpreted in multiple ways (intentional), as opposed to vagueness (unintentional).

Analogy

  • Definition: A comparison made between two things to illustrate how they are alike.

Anaphora

  • Definition: The repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row. A deliberate form of repetition that enhances coherence.

Anastrophe

  • Definition: The inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence, often for rhythm, emphasis, or euphony (a fancy term for inversion).

Anecdote

  • Definition: A brief story told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something; often reveals the character of an individual.

Antagonist

  • Definition: An opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero or protagonist in a story.

Antimetabole

  • Definition: The repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order.

  • Example: Moliere: “One should eat to live, not live to eat.” (In poetry, referred to as chiasmus).

Antithesis

  • Definition: Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often through grammatical structure.

Antihero

  • Definition: A central character who lacks the qualities traditionally associated with heroes, possibly missing courage, grace, intelligence, or moral scruples.

Anthropomorphism

  • Definition: Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object (similar to personification).

Aphorism

  • Definition: A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life, a principle, or an accepted general truth. Also called maxim, epigram.

Apostrophe

  • Definition: A direct calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place or thing, or to a personified abstract idea. When addressing a god or goddess for inspiration, it is termed an invocation.

  • Example: Josiah Holland: “Loacöon! Thou great embodiment/ Of human life and human history!”

Apposition

  • Definition: Placing two or more coordinate elements in immediate succession, the latter of which explains, qualifies, or modifies the first (often set off by a colon).

  • Example: Paine: “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Assonance

  • Definition: The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds, particularly in words that are close together.

Asyndeton

  • Definition: Punctuation (commas) used without conjunctions to separate a series of words, emphasizing each part equally. For example, instead of “X, Y, and Z…”, a writer may write “X, Y, Z…”.

Balance

  • Definition: Constructing a sentence so that both halves are of equal length and importance; unbalanced sentences can also serve a special effect.

Characterization

  • Definition: The process by which a writer reveals the personality of a character.

    • Indirect Characterization: Reveals what a character is like through descriptions of looks, dress, speech, thoughts, actions, and effects on others.

    • Direct Characterization: The author explicitly tells the reader what the character is like (e.g., sneaky, generous).

Static Character

  • Definition: A character who does not change much throughout the story.

Dynamic Character

  • Definition: A character who changes significantly as a result of the story’s action.

Flat Character

  • Definition: A character with only one or two personality traits, one-dimensional.

Round Character

  • Definition: A character with complexity and depth, resembling real people.

Chiasmus

  • Definition: In poetry, this is rhetorical balance where the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but with the order reversed.

  • Example: Coleridge: “Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike.” (In prose, this is termed antimetabole).

Cliché

  • Definition: A word or phrase, often a figure of speech, that has become lifeless due to overuse; writers should avoid them.

  • Note: “Avoid clichés like the plague” is self-referential.

Colloquialism

  • Definition: Informal language used in everyday conversation that is inappropriate for formal contexts.

  • Example: “He’s out of his head if he thinks I’m gonna go for such a stupid idea.”

Comedy

  • Definition: A story that ends with a happy resolution of conflicts faced by the main character(s).

Conceit

  • Definition: An elaborate metaphor comparing two astonishingly different things; often an extended metaphor.

Confessional Poetry

  • Definition: A twentieth-century term describing poetry that utilizes personal and intimate material from the poet’s life.

Conflict

  • Definition: The struggle between opposing forces or characters in a story.

    • External Conflict: Conflicts between two individuals, a person and nature, a machine, or society.

    • Internal Conflict: A struggle within a person’s mind.

Connotation

  • Definition: The associations and emotional overtones attached to a word or phrase, beyond its strict dictionary definition.

Couplet

  • Definition: Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.

Dialect

  • Definition: A manner of speaking characteristic of a certain social group or geographical area.

Diction

  • Definition: The choice of words by a speaker or writer.

Didactic

  • Definition: A form of fiction or nonfiction aiming to teach a specific lesson or moral, providing models of correct behavior or thought.

Elegy

  • Definition: A poem expressing mourning, typically about someone who has died.

  • Note: A eulogy is often a speech in praise or homage about someone who has died.

Epanalepsis

  • Definition: A repetition device where the same expression is repeated at both the beginning and end of a line, clause, or sentence.

  • Example: “Common sense is not so common.” – Voltaire.

Epic

  • Definition: A lengthy narrative poem written in elevated language recounting the deeds of a heroic character embodying societal values.

Epigraph

  • Definition: A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work, hinting at the theme.

Epistrophe

  • Definition: A repetition device where the same expression is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences (opposite of anaphora).

Epithet

  • Definition: An adjective or descriptive phrase emphasizing a characteristic quality. Examples include “Father of our country” or “the great Emancipator.”

    • Homeric Epithet: Compound adjectives used with a person or thing (e.g., “swift-footed Achilles”, “rosy-fingered dawn”).

Essay

  • Definition: A brief nonfiction prose piece where the writer discusses some aspect of a subject.

  • Essay Types to Know:

    • Argumentation: One of the four discourse forms using logic, ethics, and emotional appeals (logos, ethos, pathos) to convince readers.

    • Persuasion: Relies more on emotional appeals than facts.

    • Argument: A form of persuasion appealing to reason rather than emotion.

    • Causal Relationship: Claims one thing results from another, part of logical argumentation.

Description

  • Definition: A discourse form using language to create a mood or emotion.

Exposition

  • Definition: One of the four major discourse forms where something is explained or “set forth.”

Narrative

  • Definition: The discourse form relating a series of events.

Explication

  • Definition: The act of interpreting or discovering the meaning of a text, usually involving close reading and attention to figurative language.

Fable

  • Definition: A very short story in prose or poetry teaching a practical lesson on succeeding in life.

Farce

  • Definition: A comedic genre with ridiculous characters in silly, far-fetched situations.

Figurative Language

  • Definition: Language that is inaccurate if taken literally, often used descriptively; includes similes and metaphors.

Flashback

  • Definition: A scene that interrupts the chronological sequence to depict something from the past.

Foil

  • Definition: A character contrasting another character, often a humorous sidekick or a villain to the hero.

Foreshadowing

  • Definition: The use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in the plot.

Free Verse

  • Definition: Poetry that does not conform to regular meters or rhyme schemes.

Hyperbole

  • Definition: An exaggerated statement used for effect.

  • Example: “If I told you once, I’ve told you a million times…”

Hypotactic

  • Definition: Sentences marked by connecting words between clauses, showing logical relationships.

  • Example: “I am tired because it is hot.”

Imagery

  • Definition: Language that evokes a concrete sensation of a person, place, thing, or experience.

Inversion

  • Definition: The reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase.

Irony

  • Definition: A discrepancy between appearances and reality.

    • Verbal Irony: Saying one thing but meaning another.

    • Situational Irony: Discrepancy between expected outcomes and actual results.

    • Dramatic Irony: Audience knows something that a character does not.

Juxtaposition

  • Definition: A poetic and rhetorical device placing unassociated ideas next to each other, creating surprise and wit.

  • Example: Ezra Pound: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough.”

Litotes

  • Definition: A form of understatement emphasizing the positive through the negation of a negative.

  • Example: Hawthorne: “The wearers of petticoat and farthingale…stepping forth into the public ways…”

Local Color

  • Definition: Fiction or poetry emphasizing specific settings including customs, clothing, dialect, and landscape.

Loose Sentence

  • Definition: A sentence where the main clause comes first, followed by additional dependent grammatical units.

  • Example: Hawthorne: “Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half-fantastic curiosity…”

Lyric Poem

  • Definition: A poem expressing the speaker's personal feelings or thoughts, unlike a ballad which tells a story.

Metaphor

  • Definition: A figure of speech comparing two unlike things without using specific words such as like, as, than, or resembles.

    • Implied Metaphor: Comparison not explicitly stated (example: “I like to see it lap the miles”).

    • Extended Metaphor: A metaphor developed extensively throughout a piece (often termed a conceit if elaborate).

Dead Metaphor

  • Definition: A metaphor used so often that the comparison has lost its vividness, e.g., “the head of the house”, “the seat of the government”, “a knotty problem.”

Mixed Metaphor

  • Definition: A metaphor that has become confused, mixing terms incompatible with each other.

  • Example: “The President is a lame duck who is running out of gas.”

Metonymy

  • Definition: A figure of speech in which something is referred to by something closely associated with it.

  • Example: “We requested from the crown support for our petition.” (Here, crown represents the monarch).

Mood

  • Definition: The atmosphere created by a writer’s diction and selected details.

Motif

  • Definition: A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation in a work, unifying themes and linking current situations with past ones.

  • Example: Kurt Vonnegut’s use of “So it goes” in Slaughterhouse-Five.

Motivation

  • Definition: The reasons behind a character’s behavior.

Onomatopoeia

  • Definition: Words whose sounds echo their meanings, e.g., “Pop”, “Zap.”

Oxymoron

  • Definition: A figure of speech that combines contradictory terms.

  • Examples: “Jumbo shrimp”, “Pretty ugly”, “Bitter-sweet.”

Parable

  • Definition: A short story teaching a moral or lesson about leading a good life.

Paradox

  • Definition: A self-contradictory statement that reveals a kind of truth.

    • Koan: A paradox used in Zen Buddhism to gain intuitive knowledge (e.g., “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”).

Parallel Structure (Parallelism)

  • Definition: The repetition of words or phrases with similar grammatical structures.

Paratactic Sentence

  • Definition: A sentence structure simply juxtaposing clauses or sentences, e.g., “I am tired; it is hot.”

Parody

  • Definition: A work that imitates another work to make fun of aspects of the original style.

Periodic Sentence

  • Definition: A sentence placing the main idea or central thought at the end, following its introductory elements.

Personification

  • Definition: A figure of speech where an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.

Plot

  • Definition: A series of related events in a story or play; also known as the storyline.

    • Characteristics:

    • Exposition: Introduction of characters, situation, and setting.

    • Rising Action: Complications in conflict and situations.

    • Climax: The point of greatest intensity or suspense, often called the “turning point.”

    • Resolution: The conclusion where conflicts are settled; referred to as the denouement.

Point of View

  • Definition: The vantage point from which the writer narrates the story.

    • First Person Point of View: A character tells the story.

    • Third Person Point of View: An unknown narrator tells the story, focusing on the thoughts and feelings of only one character.

    • Omniscient Point of View: A narrator who knows everything about many characters tells the story.

    • Objective Point of View: A totally impersonal narrator tells the story without comment on characters or events.

Polysyndeton

  • Definition: A sentence using conjunctions without commas to separate items in a series (e.g., “X and Y and Z…”), enhancing rhythm and emphasis.

Protagonist

  • Definition: The central character of a story who initiates or drives the action; often referred to as the hero or anti-hero. A tragic hero may possess a hamartia or tragic flaw leading to downfall.

Pun

  • Definition: A play on words based on the multiple meanings of a single word or words that sound alike but have different meanings.

Quatrain

  • Definition: A poem consisting of four lines or four lines of a poem that is considered a unit.

Refrain

  • Definition: A word, phrase, line, or group of lines repeated for effect in a poem.

Rhythm

  • Definition: The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language, producing a rise and fall of the voice.

Rhetoric

  • Definition: The art of effective communication, particularly in persuasive discourse.

Rhetorical Question

  • Definition: A question posed for effect, not expecting an answer.

Romance

  • Definition: A story presenting an idealized hero or heroine undertaking a quest and achieving success.

Satire

  • Definition: A type of writing that mocks the shortcomings of people or institutions aiming to create change.

Simile

  • Definition: A figure of speech making an explicit comparison between two unlike things using like, as, than, or resembles.

Soliloquy

  • Definition: A long speech made by a character in a play while no other characters are present on stage.

Stereotype

  • Definition: A fixed idea or conception of a character or concept, not allowing for individuality, often arising from prejudices based on aspects like religion, social class, or race.

Stream of Consciousness

  • Definition: A writing style reflecting the inner (often chaotic) workings of a character’s mind.

Style

  • Definition: The distinctive use of language by a writer, including diction, tone, and syntax.

Suspense

  • Definition: A feeling of uncertainty and curiosity about what happens next in a story.

Symbol

  • Definition: A person, place, thing, or event that holds its own meaning and also signifies something greater.

Synecdoche

  • Definition: A figure of speech where part of something represents the whole.

  • Example: “If you don’t drive properly, you will lose your wheels.” (Wheels represent the entire car).

Syntactic Fluency

  • Definition: The ability to create varied sentence structures that are appropriately complex or simple, and varied in length.

Syntactic Permutation

  • Definition: Exceptionally complex and involved sentence structures, often difficult for readers to follow.

Tall Tale

  • Definition: An exaggerated, humorous story that is obviously unbelievable.

Telegraphic Sentence

  • Definition: A very short sentence containing fewer than five words.

Theme

  • Definition: The insight into human life offered in a literary work.

Tone

  • Definition: The writer’s attitude toward the subject, characters, or audience, conveyed through diction, figurative language, and structure.

Tragedy

  • Definition: A story featuring a heroic character who experiences death or an unhappy ending.

Tricolon

  • Definition: A sentence consisting of three parts of equal importance and length, typically composed of three independent clauses.

Understatement

  • Definition: A statement that says less than what is meant.

  • Example: During the Iraq war, a British commando remarked about a fierce sandstorm: “It’s a bit breezy.”

Unity

  • Definition: The relationship of writing parts to a central idea or organizing principle, which relies on coherence.

Vernacular

  • Definition: The language spoken by the local populace within a particular area.

Writing Movements and Styles to Know

  • Impressionism: A 19th-century literary movement prioritizing personal impressions over strict reality.

  • Modernism: Bold, experimental styles in arts during the early-20th century.

  • Naturalism: A 19th-century movement portraying life accurately without romanticizing.

  • Plain Style: A writing style emphasizing simplicity and clarity, historically utilized by Puritan writers.

  • Puritanism: Early American writing style emphasizing obedience to God, primarily through journals and sermons.

  • Rationalism: A 17th-century European movement valuing reason over authority.

  • Realism: A 19th-century writing style aiming for accurate depictions of life.

  • Regionalism: Literature focusing on a specific area, capturing its social dialect and behavior.

  • Romanticism: A late 18th-century revolt against rationalism manifesting in literature and art throughout the 19th century.

  • Surrealism: A 1920s movement in art and literature replacing conventional realism with the expression of the unconscious.

  • Symbolism: A late 19th-century movement rearranging appearances to reveal deeper truths.

  • Transcendentalism: A 19th-century Romantic movement emphasizing spiritual intuition beyond reason.

Timeline of Literary Movements

  • Puritanism: 1620 - 1770s

  • Neoclassic: 1770s - early 1800s

  • Romanticism: Early 1800s - 1870s

  • Realism: 1850s - early 1900s

  • Regionalism: 1884 - early 1900s

  • Naturalism: Late 1800s - mid-1900s

  • Modernism: 1920s - 1945

  • Post-Modernism: 1945 - present