LIT VOCAB
Adage: a saying or proverb containing a truth based on experience and often couched in metaphorical language. Similar to an aphorism or a maxim.
Allegory: a story in which the narrative or characters carry an underlying symbolic, metaphorical, or possibly ethical meaning. Similar to subtext.
Alliteration: the repetition of one or more initial consonants in a group of words or lines, used for ornament or for emphasis to enhance the aesthetic quality of the prose passage or poem.
Allusion: a reference to a person, place, or event meant to create an effect or enhance the meaning of an idea.
Ambiguity: a vagueness of meaning; a conscious lack of clarity meant to evoke multiple meanings and interpretations.
Anastrophe: the inversion of the usual order of words or clauses.
Antithesis: a rhetorical opposition or contrast of ideas by means of a grammatical arrangement of words, clauses, or sentences, such as "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
Apollonian: a phrase referring to the most noble, godlike qualities of human nature and behavior.
Apostrophe: a rhetorical device in which a speaker addresses a person or personified thing not present.
Archetype: an abstract or ideal conception of a type; a perfectly typical example; an original model or form.
Assonance: the repetition of two or more vowel sounds in a group of words or lines in poetry and prose. The repetition of two or more consonant sounds in a group of words or a line of poetry is called consonance.
Ballad: a simple narrative verse that tells a story that is sung or recited.
Bathos: the use of insincere or overdone sentimentality.
Blank Verse: poetry written in iambic pentameter, the primary meter used in English poetry and the works of Shakespeare and Milton. It is “blank” because the lines generally do not rhyme.
Bombast: inflated, pretentious language used for trivial subjects.
Burlesque: a work of literature meant to ridicule a subject; a grotesque imitation.
Cacophony: grating, inharmonious sounds.
Caesura: a pause somewhere in the middle of a verse, often (but not always) marked by punctuation.
Classicism: deriving from the orderly qualities of ancient Greek and Roman culture; implies formality, objectivity, simplicity, and restraint.
Coming-of-age-story: a tale in which a young protagonist experiences an introduction to adulthood. The character may develop understanding via disillusionment, education, doses of reality, or any other experiences that alter his or her emotional or intellectual maturity. Similar to a Bildungsroman, where a hero travels in a quest of a goal.
Conceit: a witty or ingenious thought; a diverting or highly fanciful idea, often stated in figurative language.
Couplet: a pair of rhyming lines in a poem. Two rhyming lines in iambic pentameter is sometimes called a heroic couplet.
Dénouement: the resolution that occurs at the end of a play or work of fiction.
Deus ex machina: in literature, the use of an artificial device or gimmick to solve a problem.
Diction: the choice of words in speech and writing. An author’s diction serves to create meaning, portray characters, convey tone, develop themes, and much more.
Dionysian: a phrase referring to sensual, pleasure-seeking impulses.
Elegy: a poem or prose selection that laments or meditates on the passing or death of something or someone of value.
Elliptical Construction: a sentence containing a deliberate omission of words. In the sentence “May was hot and June the same,” the verb was is omitted from the second clause.
End-stopped: a term that describes a line of poetry that ends with a natural pause often indicated by a mark of punctuation.
Enjambment: in poetry, the use of successive lines with no punctuation or pause between them.
Epic: an extended narrative poem that tells of the adventures and exploits of a hero that is generally larger than life and is often considered a legendary figure.
Epigram: a concise but ingenious, witty, and thoughtful statement.
Epithet: An adjective or phrase that expresses a striking quality of a person or thing, such as sun-bright topaz, sun-lit lake, or sun-bright lake.
Euphemism: a mild or less negative usage for a harsh or blunt term; pass away is a euphemism for die.
Exposition: the background and events that lead to the presentation of the main idea or purpose of a work of literature.
Fable: a short tale often featuring nonhuman characters that act as people whose actions enable the author to make observations or draw useful lessons about human behavior.
Farce: a comedy that contains an extravagant and nonsensical disregard of seriousness, although it may have a serious, scornful purpose.
Flashback: a return to an earlier time in a story or play in order to clarify present action or circumstances. An author may simply state: “There was a time when Henry loved June with great passion….” A flashback might also be a character’s account of the past, a dream, or a sudden association with past events.
Foil: a minor character whose personality or attitude contrasts with that of the main character. Juxtaposing one character against another intensifies the qualities of both, to advantage or sometimes to disadvantage.
Foot: a unit of stressed and unstressed syllables used to determine the meter of a poetic line.
Foreshadowing: providing hints of things to come in a story or play.
Frame: a structure that provides a premise or setting for a narrative.
Free Verse: a kind of poetry without rhymed lines, rhythm, or fixed metrical feet.
Gothic Novel: a novel in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown terrors pervades the action.
Harangue: a forceful sermon, lecture, or tirade.
Hubris: the excessive pride that often leads tragic heroes to their death.
Humanism: a belief that emphasizes faith and optimism in human potential and creativity.
Hyperbole: overstatement; gross exaggeration for rhetorical effect.
Image: a word or phrase representing that which can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or felt.
In medias res: a Latin term for a narrative that starts not at the beginning of events but at some other critical point.
Irony: an expression of meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. The three main types of irony are Situational Irony, where events or outcomes are in reverse of what might have been expected, Verbal Irony, where words or phrases have the opposite of their intended meaning, and Dramatic Irony, where the audience or reader knows more about a situation than a character.
Juxtaposition: the placement of two or more things side by side to highlight their differences or create a specific effect. It can be used to create contrast, draw comparisons, or make one element stand out.
Kenning: a device employed in Anglo-Saxon poetry in which the name of a thing is replaced by one of its functions or qualities, as in “ring-giver” for king and “whale-road” for ocean.
Lampoon: a mocking, satirical assault on a person or situation.
Litotes: a form of understatement in which the negative of the contrary is used to achieve emphasis or intensity.
Lyric Poetry: personal, reflective poetry that reveals the speaker’s thoughts and feelings about the subject.
Melodrama: a literary form in which events are exaggerated in order to create an extreme emotional response.
Metaphor: a figure of speech that compares unlike objects. When a series of comparisons are made between the same two objects, it is called an extended metaphor.
Metaphysical Poetry: the work of poets, particularly those of the seventeenth century, that uses elaborate conceits, is highly intellectual, and expresses the complexities of love and life.
Meter: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables found in poetry.
Metonymy: a figure of speech that uses the name of one thing to represent something else with which it is associated.
Mode: the general form, pattern, and manner of expression of a work of literature.
Montage: a quick succession of images or impressions used to express an idea.
Mood: the emotional tone in a work of literature evoked through the author’s diction, choice of details, themes, setting, events, and more.
Motif: a phrase, idea, or event that through repetition serves to unify or convey a theme in a work of literature.
Myth: an imaginary story that has become an accepted part of the cultural or religious tradition of a group or society. Myths are often used to explain natural phenomena. Almost every culture has some sort of myth to account for the creation of the world and its inhabitants.
Naturalism: a term often used as a synonym for realism; also a view of experience that is generally characterized as bleak and pessimistic. Characters in naturalistic works often struggle unsuccessfully to exercise free will.
Non sequitur: a statement or idea that fails to follow logically from the one before.
Novella: a work of fiction of roughly 20,000 to 50,000 words—longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel.
Ode: a lyric poem usually marked by serious, respectful, and exalted feelings toward the subject.
Onomatopoeia: the use of words whose sounds suggest their meaning.
Oxymoron: a term consisting of contradictory elements juxtaposed to create a paradoxical effect.
Parable: a story consisting of events from which a moral or spiritual truth may be derived.
Paradox: a statement that seems self-contradictory but is nevertheless true.
Parody: an imitation of a work meant to ridicule its style and subject.
Personification: a figure of speech in which objects and animals are given human characteristics.
Point of View: the relation in which a narrator or speaker stands to the story or subject matter of a poem. A story told in the first person has an internal point of view; an observer uses an external point of view. An omniscient narrator has unlimited awareness, understanding, and insight of characters, setting, background, and all other elements of the story.
Pun: a humorous play on words, using similar-sounding or identical words to suggest different meanings.
Quatrain: a four-line poem or a four-line unit of a longer poem.
Realism: the depiction of people, things, and events as they really are without idealization or exaggeration for effect.
Rhyme: a lyrical device akin to music that uses repetition of sound-–both consonants and vowels—to attract attention and please the ear. It also marks and defines verbal accents, thereby supporting the rhythm of a poem or piece of literature.
Rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that make up a line of poetry.
Satire: a literary style used to poke fun at, attack, or ridicule an idea, vice, or foible, often for the purpose of inducing change.
Setting: the total environment for the action in a novel or play. It includes time, place, historical milieu, and social, political, and even spiritual circumstances.
Simile: a figurative comparison using the words like or as.
Slant Rhyme: an imperfect rhyme that resembles a pure rhyme except for a slight variation, most often with a change in the sound of the vowel, as in noon/nine and bridge/grudge.
Sonnet: a popular form of verse consisting of fourteen lines and a prescribed rhyme scheme. Shakespeare wrote what has become known as the Elizabethan sonnet. Other poets follow a form called the Italian sonnet, attributed to Petrarch.
Stanza: a group of two or more lines in poetry combined according to subject matter, rhyme, or some other plan.
Stream of Consciousness: a style of writing in which the author tries to reproduce the random flow of thoughts in the human mind.
Style: the manner in which an author uses and arranges words, shapes ideas, forms sentences, and creates a structure to convey ideas.
Symbolism: the use of one object to evoke ideas and associations not literally part of the original object.
Synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part signifies the whole (fifty masts for fifty ships) or the whole signifies the part (days for life, as in He lived his days under African skies). When the name of a material stands for the thing itself, as in pigskin for football, that too, is synecdoche.
Syntax: the arrangement of the words in a sentence. It may refer specifically to the length of sentences, the organization of clauses, the type of sentence (declarative, interrogative, exclamatory), or its structure (loose, periodic, simple, compound, complex). The syntax of a sentence determines its meaning as well as its effect on the reader.
Title Character: a character whose name appears in the title of the novel or play; also known as the eponymous character.
Tone: the author’s attitude toward the subject being written about. The tone is the characteristic emotion that pervades a work or part of a work–in other words, the spirit or quality of the narrator or speaker.
Tragedy: a form of literature in which the hero is destroyed by some character flaw and a set of forces that cause the hero considerable anguish.
Verisimilitude: similar to the truth; the quality of realism in a work that persuades readers that they are getting a vision of life as it is.
Verse: a synonym for poetry. Also a group of lines in a song or poem; also a single line of poetry.
Villanelle: a French verse form calculated to appear simple and spontaneous but consisting of nineteen lines and a prescribed pattern of rhymes.
Volta: any shift or turning point in a work of prose or poetry. A volta may mark a shift in point of view, tone, mood, style, or any other manner of expression.