List of English Terms:
Abjection
that which is expelled to maintain a sense of identity or purity, yet continues to haunt the subject by threatening to blur boundaries. It is the unsettling state of the "abject" — what is cast out and rejected, such as bodily waste, decay, or "the other" — but which is paradoxically crucial to defining "the self" and maintaining social order.
Aesthetic / Aesthetics
Refers to the principles or philosophy of beauty and artistic taste. In literary studies, it concerns how a work’s form, style, and sensory qualities produce meaning or pleasure.
Aesthetic of irresolution
A mode or style that resists closure or clear resolution, leaving conflicts, meanings, or endings open-ended. It challenges conventional narrative satisfaction and invites reader interpretation.
Affect / Affective criticism
Affect concerns emotional experience or response. Affective criticism studies how texts evoke, shape, or manipulate readers’ emotions rather than focusing solely on form or ideology.
Affordances
The potential uses, interpretations, or effects that a form, medium, or genre allows. In literary analysis, it refers to what certain narrative techniques “make possible” within a text.
Alienation
A feeling of estrangement or disconnection, often used to describe characters’ separation from society or themselves. In Marxist terms, it also refers to workers’ loss of connection to their labor and humanity.
Allegory
A narrative in which characters, events, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral concepts. It operates on two levels—literal and symbolic (e.g., Animal Farm as an allegory of totalitarianism).
Alliteration
The repetition of initial consonant sounds in closely positioned words, often used for rhythm, emphasis, or musicality (e.g., “silver sea”).
Allusion
An indirect or passing reference to another text, event, or cultural element that enriches meaning through association.
Alterity
A philosophical or literary term meaning “otherness.” It denotes difference or the recognition of someone or something as distinct from the self or dominant culture.
Ambiguity
A quality of language or structure that allows multiple interpretations. Often used deliberately to create complexity or uncertainty.
Anachronism
An element (object, phrase, attitude) placed outside its proper historical time. Can be accidental or used deliberately for irony or commentary.
Analogy
A comparison highlighting similarity between two different things to clarify meaning or illustrate an idea.
Anonymity
The state of being unnamed or unidentified. In literature, it can suggest universality, collective voice, or suppression of identity (e.g., anonymous authorship in early texts).
Antagonist
The character or force opposing the protagonist, creating conflict and driving the plot.
Anthropomorphism
The attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman entities (animals, objects, gods). Differs from personification by implying literal human traits or consciousness.
Antithesis
A rhetorical or structural contrast of ideas in parallel form (e.g., “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”).
Atmosphere
The mood or emotional tone pervading a literary work, created through setting, imagery, and language.
Aurality
The quality of sound or hearing in literature. It refers to how a text evokes or performs sonic experience, often relevant in oral traditions or performance poetry.
Bildungsroman
A “coming-of-age” novel tracing a protagonist’s psychological and moral development from youth to maturity.
Breton lai / lay
A short narrative poem of medieval French origin, often involving romance, adventure, and supernatural elements. Popularized in English by Marie de France.
Canon
The body of works considered most important, influential, or exemplary within a culture or tradition. The literary canon is subject to debate and revision.
Chekhov’s gun
A dramatic principle that every element introduced in a story must serve a purpose; if a gun appears in Act I, it should be fired by Act III.
Classic story structure
The traditional narrative arc involving exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
Climax
The moment of greatest tension, conflict, or emotional intensity in a narrative; the turning point.
Comedy / Comic structure
A literary form emphasizing human folly, reconciliation, or renewal, typically moving from disorder to harmony. Comic structure often ends in resolution or marriage.
Conflict
The central struggle between opposing forces—internal (within a character) or external (against others, society, nature, fate).
Connotation
The emotional or associative meaning attached to a word beyond its dictionary definition (denotation).
Contrast
A rhetorical or structural device highlighting differences between characters, settings, ideas, or images.
Convention
An established technique, style, or thematic pattern recognized within a genre or tradition (e.g., soliloquy in drama).
Courtly love
A medieval European literary concept idealizing noble, often unattainable love, emphasizing chivalry and devotion.
Crime fiction
A genre centered on crime, investigation, and justice, often featuring detectives, mystery, or moral ambiguity.
Crisis
A moment of high tension or decision within the plot, often preceding the climax.
Dark comedy
A form of humor that treats serious, grim, or taboo subjects with irony or absurdity, highlighting human contradictions.
Defamiliarization
A concept from Russian Formalism (Shklovsky): presenting familiar things in unfamiliar ways to make readers perceive them anew.
Deixis
Words or expressions (like “here,” “now,” “you”) that depend on context or point of view for meaning.
Denotation
The literal, dictionary meaning of a word, as distinct from its connotations.
Dénouement
The final part of a narrative where conflicts are resolved and loose ends tied up after the climax.
Deus ex machina
A sudden, improbable intervention (often divine or artificial) that resolves a plot’s conflict.
Dialogue
The spoken exchanges between characters; a key means of characterization and plot development.
Dialogic / Monologic
From Bakhtin: Dialogic texts contain multiple voices or perspectives in interaction; Monologic ones express a single, authoritative voice.
Didactic
Intended to instruct or convey a moral, ethical, or educational message, sometimes at the expense of artistry.
Discovery
A narrative moment of revelation or recognition, often linked to the protagonist’s self-awareness or plot reversal.
Elegy / Elegiac
A poem or tone expressing mourning or reflection on loss, often meditative and solemn.
Emotive language
Language designed to evoke emotion rather than convey factual information.
Empathy
The reader’s or character’s imaginative identification with another’s feelings or situation.
Emplotment
The process of shaping events into a coherent plot structure; central to narrative theory (Hayden White).
Enargeia
A rhetorical quality of vivid, sensory description that makes a scene “present” to the reader’s imagination.
Endings
The closure or final state of a narrative, which can provide resolution, ambiguity, or open-endedness.
Epistolary fiction
A narrative composed of letters, diary entries, or other documents, creating intimacy and multiple perspectives.
Exemplum
A brief moral tale or illustrative story, common in medieval sermons and didactic literature.
Exposition
The introductory section of a narrative that establishes context—setting, characters, and initial situation.
Fable
A short moral tale, often featuring animals or inanimate objects that speak or act like humans, used to illustrate ethical lessons (e.g., Aesop’s fables).
Fabliau / Fabliaux
Brief, comic, often bawdy verse tales from medieval France, satirizing social norms and human folly. Known for earthy humor and ironic reversals.
Falling action
The part of the plot following the climax in which tensions decline and events move toward resolution or dénouement.
Feminist criticism
A critical approach examining how literature represents gender, power, and women’s experience, and how texts reinforce or challenge patriarchal ideologies.
Fiction
Narrative writing that originates from imagination rather than factual reporting, though it can still reveal psychological or social truths.
Figurative language
Language that departs from literal meaning to create comparisons, imagery, or effects—includes metaphor, simile, personification, and hyperbole.
First-person narration
A storytelling mode in which the narrator speaks as “I,” presenting the story through their personal perspective and subjectivity.
Flashback
A narrative technique that interrupts chronological sequence to depict earlier events, providing background or insight into characters and motives.
Flat and round characters
Terms from E. M. Forster: Flat characters are simple and unchanging; Round characters are complex, developed, and capable of growth.
Focalization
The perspective through which a narrative is presented—the “lens” of perception or knowledge that filters events and information.
Foreshadowing
Hints or clues about future events in a story, used to build anticipation or coherence.
Fourth wall
The imaginary barrier between a narrative’s world and its audience. Breaking the fourth wall occurs when characters acknowledge the viewer or reader directly.
Frame narrative
A story within a story, where an outer narrative provides context for one or more embedded tales (e.g., The Canterbury Tales).
Free indirect style
A narrative technique blending third-person narration with a character’s inner thoughts and language, creating a seamless shift between voices.
Freytag’s pyramid
A model of dramatic structure dividing a narrative into five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement.
Genre
A category or type of literary work characterized by shared conventions, style, or content (e.g., tragedy, romance, horror).
Ghost story
A tale involving supernatural apparitions or hauntings, often exploring guilt, repression, or the uncanny.
Gothic fiction
A genre blending horror, romance, and the supernatural, typically set in dark, mysterious environments and exploring themes of transgression and the sublime.
Heteronormativity
The assumption that heterosexuality is the default or natural mode of identity and relationships; literary analysis may critique how texts uphold or question this norm.
Historical present
The use of present tense to describe past events, giving immediacy or vividness to narrative action.
Horizon of expectations
A reader’s cultural and historical framework of understanding that shapes how a text is interpreted (Hans Robert Jauss).
Horror / Terror
In Gothic and horror studies, terror evokes fear through anticipation and uncertainty, while horror arises from shock or repulsion at the revealed.
Hyperbole
Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis, humor, or effect.
Ideology
A system of ideas, values, and beliefs shaping perception and power relations; literary criticism often examines how ideology is reinforced or challenged in texts.
Imagery
Descriptive language appealing to the senses (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.) to create vivid impressions.
Implied reader
A hypothetical reader “created” by the text, whose knowledge, attitudes, or responses the narrative seems to anticipate.
Indirection
A rhetorical or narrative strategy of suggesting meaning indirectly rather than stating it explicitly; associated with irony or subtle critique.
Inciting incident
The event that sets the main plot in motion by introducing conflict or change.
In medias res
A narrative technique beginning “in the middle of things,” with background details revealed later through flashback or dialogue.
Inscribed reader / Inscribed audience
The audience explicitly represented or addressed within a text, distinct from the actual reader.
Interior monologue
A literary mode presenting a character’s inner thoughts directly, often in fragmented or unstructured form.
Interpellation
A Marxist concept (Althusser): the process by which ideology “hails” individuals, shaping them as subjects who accept social roles and norms.
Intertextuality
The shaping of a text’s meaning through references, echoes, or relationships with other texts.
Intrusive narrator
A narrator who interrupts the story to address the reader directly or offer commentary, characteristic of 18th–19th century fiction.
Irony / Dramatic irony
A contrast between appearance and reality or expectation and outcome. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows more than the characters.
Journey
A narrative motif or structure involving movement through space and experience, often symbolizing psychological, moral, or spiritual development.
Legend
A traditional story, often rooted in historical fact but embellished with folklore or mythic elements, that explains cultural values or heroic deeds.
Litotes
A figure of speech that uses deliberate understatement, often through negation of the opposite (e.g., “not bad” meaning “good”).
Magical realism
A literary mode blending realistic depiction with fantastical or supernatural elements presented as ordinary, emphasizing coexistence of the magical and the mundane.
Manuscript
A handwritten or early textual version of a literary work, important in textual scholarship for studying variants, transmission, and authorship.
Marginality
The condition of being positioned outside or on the edges of dominant cultural, social, or political systems; a common theme in postcolonial, feminist, and queer theory.
Marxist criticism
An approach to literature that interprets texts through class struggle, material conditions, and ideology, viewing art as a product of socioeconomic forces.
Metafiction
Fiction that self-consciously draws attention to its own status as a constructed narrative, often breaking illusion or commenting on storytelling itself.
Metamorphosis
A transformation in form, character, or identity, often used metaphorically to explore themes of change, alienation, or renewal.
Metaphor
A figure of speech that describes one thing in terms of another, asserting an implicit comparison (e.g., “Time is a thief”).
Motif
A recurring element—image, symbol, phrase, or theme—that contributes to the development of the narrative’s larger meanings.
Myth
A traditional narrative explaining origins, natural phenomena, or cultural practices, often involving gods or archetypal figures; foundational to literary symbolism.
Narration
The act or process of telling a story, encompassing voice, perspective, and temporal structure.
Narrator
The voice or persona through whom a story is communicated; may be first-person, third-person, reliable, or unreliable.
Narrative arc
The structural progression of a story from beginning through conflict, climax, and resolution—essentially the shape of its emotional or thematic journey.
Novella
A prose fiction form longer than a short story but shorter than a novel, focusing on a single event, conflict, or character arc.
Orality
The qualities of spoken language and performance within literature; contrasts with textuality and emphasizes sound, memory, and communal exchange.
Orientalism
A term from Edward Said describing Western representations of the East (the “Orient”) as exotic, inferior, or other, reinforcing colonial power dynamics.
Parataxis
A stylistic arrangement in which phrases or clauses are placed side by side without clear subordination or connective words, creating a sense of immediacy or fragmentation.
Parody
An imitation of a particular style, genre, or work for comic or critical effect, exaggerating features to expose absurdity or critique conventions.
Performative utterance / Emotive
A performative utterance (J. L. Austin) is speech that enacts an action by being spoken (e.g., “I now pronounce you married”). The emotive dimension of language expresses emotion or feeling rather than describing a state of fact.
Performativity
From Judith Butler and linguistic theory: the idea that identity, especially gender, is constituted through repeated performances of social norms rather than inherent traits.
Persona
The voice or mask adopted by an author in a work, distinct from the author’s actual self; often used in poetry or dramatic monologue.
Personification
A figure of speech in which abstract concepts or inanimate objects are given human qualities or attributes.
Plot / Plot structure / Emplotment
The organized sequence of events in a narrative and the causal relationships between them. Emplotment refers to the shaping of raw events into meaningful structure.
Poetic justice
The fitting or ironic rewarding of virtue and punishment of vice within a narrative, affirming moral order.
Point of view
The perspective from which a story is told—first, second, or third person—and the degree of access to characters’ thoughts and feelings.
Postcolonialism
A critical approach examining literature and culture in relation to the history and legacy of colonialism, including power, identity, and representation of the “Other.”
Protagonist
The central character who drives the plot and through whom readers often experience the main conflict or transformation.
Queer theory
An approach that challenges fixed categories of gender and sexuality, reading texts for disruptions of heteronormative and binary identities.
Quest
A narrative pattern involving a journey or search for a goal (object, truth, or self-knowledge), typically combining physical adventure with moral or spiritual growth.
Reading against the grain / Resistant reading
An interpretive strategy that challenges or subverts the dominant meanings or ideologies a text appears to endorse.
Realism
A literary movement or mode that aims to depict life accurately and credibly, emphasizing everyday experience, social detail, and psychological depth.
Recognition / Epiphany
A moment of realization or discovery, often marking a character’s understanding of truth, identity, or moral insight.
Resolution
The point at which the conflicts in a narrative are settled or the plot concludes; may be conclusive or deliberately open-ended.
Rhetorical question
A question asked for effect or emphasis rather than to elicit an actual response.
Rising action
The series of events following the inciting incident that build tension and lead toward the climax.
Romance
A literary mode emphasizing adventure, idealized love, and the marvelous, distinct from realism and often focused on quests or moral testing.
Sarcasm
A form of verbal irony expressing contempt or ridicule, often through exaggerated praise or contrast between tone and meaning.
Satire
The use of humor, irony, or exaggeration to expose and criticize vice, folly, or social hypocrisy.
Second-person narration
A storytelling mode addressing the reader as “you,” creating intimacy, immediacy, or disorientation.
Sentimentality
Excessive or manipulative appeal to emotion, often criticized for oversimplifying complex experiences.
Setting
The time, place, and environment in which a story occurs; contributes to mood, symbolism, and theme.
Slapstick
A form of physical comedy characterized by exaggerated, often violent action—falls, blows, and accidents—for humorous effect.
Stream of consciousness
A narrative technique attempting to depict the continuous flow of a character’s thoughts and perceptions as they occur.
Subaltern
In postcolonial theory (Spivak), the marginalized or oppressed groups excluded from dominant power and unable to speak within hegemonic discourse.
Subplot
A secondary or parallel story that complements or contrasts with the main plot.
Subtext
Underlying or implicit meaning in dialogue or narrative that is not stated outright but inferred from tone, gesture, or context.
Suspense
A state of tension or uncertainty created by delaying the resolution of conflict or the revelation of crucial information.
Symbol
An object, image, or event that represents something beyond its literal meaning, often carrying cultural, thematic, or emotional significance.
Telling detail
A small, specific element in description or dialogue that reveals deeper character, mood, or theme through subtle implication.
Third-person limited narration
A narrative perspective in which the narrator is outside the story but confined to the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of one character.
Third-person omniscient narration
A narration by an all-knowing external voice with access to the thoughts, motives, and experiences of multiple characters.
Transformation
A significant change in character, situation, or understanding—often central to narrative structure and thematic development.
Trope
A recurring literary device, motif, or rhetorical figure (such as metaphor or irony); also refers to familiar thematic conventions or “story types.”
Turning point
The moment when the direction of the plot shifts decisively, often marking transition from rising action to falling action or leading to climax.
Unreliable narrator
A narrator whose credibility is compromised by limited knowledge, bias, self-deception, or deliberate manipulation of the reader.
Verse narrative
A story told through poetry rather than prose, combining narrative structure with rhythmic and formal qualities of verse (e.g., The Canterbury Tales).