literary terms

College Bound English:Literary Terms and Devices

Selected from

A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition

by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman

1. acronym

• A word formed by combining the initial letters or syllables of a series of words to for a name, as “radar,” from “radio detecting and ranging.”

1. acronym

2. act (as in drama)

• A major division of DRAMA. In varying degrees the fine-act structure corresponded to the fine main divisions of dramatic action: EXPOSITION, COMPLICATION, CLIMAX, FALLING ACTION, and CATASTROPHE.

2. act (as in drama)

Mel Gibson as Hamlet Kenneth

BranaghDerek Jacobi

3. adaptation

• The rewriting of a work from its original form to fit it for another medium; also the new form of such a rewritten work.

3. adaptation

4. aesthetics• The study or philosophy of the

beautiful in nature, art and literature. It has both a philosophical dimension—What is art? What is beauty? What is the relationship of the beautiful to other values?

4. aesthetics

(this is a painting by

Chuck Close, entitled

“Self-Portrait”)

4. aesthetics

Picasso’s“House-garden”

5. agrarian

• Literary people living in an agricultural society, or espousing the merits of such a society, as the Physiocrats did. In literary history and criticism, however, the term is usually applied to a group of Southern…

5. agrarian

…American writers who published in Nashville, Tennessee, between 1922 and 1925 The Fugitive, a LITTLE MAGAZINE of poetry and some criticism championing agrarian REGIONALISM but attacking “the old high-castle Brahmins of the Old South.”

5. agrarian

HamlinGarland

“Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.”

-Bernard Berenson

6. allegory• A form of extended METAPHOR in

which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. Thus, an allegory is a story in which everything is a symbol. RPM—rebellion, open thinking, manliness; Nurse—hate, control, judgment, conformity

6. allegory (cont.)• Samuel Coleridge: the

traditional distinction between a “symbol” and allegory is that “an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into picture-language,” whereas “a Symbol always partakes of the Reality which it makes intelligible.”

6. allegory

Wizard of Oz

George Orwell1984

Animal FarmWilliam Golding

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies

7. alliteration

• The repetition of initial identical consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in successive or closely associated syllables, especially stressed syllables.

7. alliteration

8. allusion• A figure of speech that makes

brief reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object. The effectiveness of allusion depends on a body of knowledge shared by writer and reader. A good example is T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the author’s notes to that poem.

8. allusion• RPM’s shorts refer to Moby Dick,

classic book by Melville (90).• Also, to the Bible and Pontius Pilate

—a patient says, “I wash my hands of the whole deal” (232).

• Harding makes reference to the Lone Ranger, Batman, or Zorro—saying RPM is a “masked man” superhero (258).

8. allusion

Babe the Blue Ox

9. anachronism

• Assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence.

9. anachronism

Back to the Future

10. analogy

• A comparison of two things, alike in certain aspects; particularly a method used in EXPOSITION an DESCRIPTION by which something unfamiliar is explained or described by comparing it to some thing more familiar.

Will Castle—Eliza : Dorothy :: Higgins : Wizard

10. analogy

1. find is to lose as construct is to:build demolish misplace materials

2. find is to locate as feign is to:pane pretend line mean

10. analogy

3. find is to kind as feign is to:pane pretend line mean

4. pane is to pain as weigh is to: scale pounds weight way

5. bring is to brought as sing is to: sang melody song record

10. analogy6. dime is to tenth as quarter is to:twenty-five fourth home coin

7. plates is to dishes as arms is to:Legs hands farms weapons

rhlschool.com

“Contemporary literature. Easier to shock than to convince.”

-Albert Camus

11. anapest

• A metrical FOOT consisting of three syllables, with two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one.

11. anapest

William Wordsworth

12. anecdote

• A short NARRATIVE detailing particulars of an interesting EPISODE or event. The term most frequently refers to an incident in the life of an important person and should lay claim to an element of truth.

12. anecdote

• Though anecdotes are often used as the basis for short stories, an anecdote lacks complicated PLOT and relates a single EPISODE.

12. anecdote

John Falstaff

13. annotation

• The addition of explanatory notes to a text by the author or an editor to explain, translate, cite sources, give bibliographical data, comment, GLOSS, or PARAPHRASE.

13. annotation

• A VARIOUM EDITION represents the ultimate in annotation. An annotated BIBLIOGRAPHY, in addition to the standard bibliographical data includes comments on the works listed.

13. annotation

Northrop Frye

14. antagonist

• The character directly opposed to the PROTAGONIST. A rival, opponent, or enemy of the PROTAGONIST.

–non-character entities can be antagonistic (settings or events)

14. antagonist

Nurse Ratched

15. anthology

• Literally “a gathering of flowers,” the term designates a collection of writing, either prose or poetry, usually by various authors.

15. anthology

“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism, what will be grasped at once.”

-Cyril Connolly

16. aside (as in drama)

• A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on the stage.

16. aside (as in drama)

Roderigo and Iago

17. assonance (as in poetry)• Same or similar vowel sounds in

stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds. Assonance differs from RHYME in that RHYME is a similarity of vowel and consonant. “Lake” and “fake” demonstrate RHYME; “lake” and “fate” assonance.

17. assonance (as in poetry)

John Donne

18. autobiography

• The story of a person’s life as written by that person.

18. autobiography

Maya Angelou

18. autobiographyCharles Bukowski

19. avant-garde

• Applied to new writing that shows striking (and usually self-conscious) innovations in style, form, and subject matter.

19. avant-garde

Frank O’Hara

John Ashbery

20. bard

• In modern use, simply a POET. Historically the term refers to poets who recited verses glorifying the deeds of heroes and leaders to the accompaniment of musical instrument such as the harp.

20. bard

Shakespeare

“Our literature is substitute for religion, and so is our religion.”

-T.S. Eliot

21. Bildungsroman

• A NOVEL that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical.

21. Bildungsroman

Pip

Great Expectations

22. biography• A written account of a person’s

life, a life history. LETTERS, MEMOIRS, DIARIES, JOURNALS, and AUTOBIOGRAPHIES ought to be distinguished from biography proper.

22. biography

• MEMOIRS, DIARIES, JOURNALS, and AUTOBIOGRAPHIES are closely related to each other in that each is recollection written down by the subject of the work.

22. biography

Paul BurrellPrincess Diana

23. black humor—Cuckoo’s Nest

• The use of the morbid and the ABSURD for darkly comic purposes in modern literature. The term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering, anxiety, and death.

23. black humor

Kurt Vonnegut

24. canon• In a figurative sense, a standard

of judgment; a criterion.

• In a literal sense, the absolute best—the “hall of fame”—as determined by the qualified readership.

24. canon

Harold Bloom

25. catharsis

• In the Poetics Aristotle, in defining TRAGEDY. Sees it objective as being “through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation [catharsis]of these emotions,”…

25. catharsis

• …but he does not explain what “proper purgation” means. Whatever Aristotle means thereby, catharsis remains one of the great unsettled issues.

25. catharsis

Irene Jacobin Othello

“To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.”

-Ernst Fischer

26. character

• It is a brief descriptive SKETCH of a personage who typifies dome definite quality.

26. character

Lennie Small

Don Quixote

27. cliché• From the French word for

stereotype plate; a block for printing. Hence, any expression so often used that its freshness and clarity have worn off is called a cliché, a stereotyped form.

27. cliché

Jerry Seinfeld George W. Bush

28. climax

• A rhetorical term for a rising order of importance in the ideas expressed, Such an arrangement is called climatic, and the item of greatest importance is called the climax.

28. climax

H.G. Wells

29. collage

• In the pictorial arts the technique by which materials not usually associated with one another, such as newspaper clippings, labels, cloth, wood , bottle tops, or theater tickets, are assembled and pasted together on a single surface.

29. collage

Edgar Allan Poe

confidant

• a close friend or associate to whom secrets are confided or with whom private matters and problems are discussed –could be the reader, if narrator

offers exclusive information

30. conflict

• The struggle that grows out of the interplay of two opposing forces. Conflict provides interest suspense, and tension.

• 1.) a struggle against nature2.) a struggle against another person, usually the ANTAGONIST3.) a struggle against society4.) a struggle for mastery by two elements within the person

30. conflict

30. conflict

William Faulkner

“In an incarcerate society, free literature can exist only as denunciation and hope.”

-Eduardo Galeano

31. consonance

• The relation between words in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables agree but the vowels that precede them differ, as “add-read,” “mill-ball,” and “torn-burn.”

31. consonance

John Milton T.S. Eliot

32. couplet

• Two consecutive lines of VERSE with END RHYMES.

32. couplet

T.S. EliotEzra Pound

33. denouement

• Literally, “unknotting.” The final unraveling of a plot; the solution of a mystery; an explanation or outcome.

• Denouement is sometimes used as a synonym for FALLING ACTION.

33. denouement

Scooby-Doo Stories

34. dialogue

• Conversation of two or more people. Embodies certain values1.)advances the action and is not mere ornament2.)consistent with the character of the speakers.

34. dialogue

• 3.)gives impression of naturalness without being verbatim record4.)presents the interplay of ideas and personalities5.)varies according to the various speakers6.)serves to give relief from passages

34. dialogue

Ernest Hemingway James Thurber

35. diction

• Choice and use of words in speech or writing.

35. diction

Shirley Jackson

“Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.”

-Goethe

36. didactic novel

• Any novel plainly designed to teach a lesson, it is properly used as a synonym for the EDUCATION NOVEL.

36. didactic novel

The JungleUpton Sinclair

37. dime novel

• A cheaply printed, paperbound TALE of adventure or detection, or originally selling for a bout ten cents; an American equivalent of the British PENNY DREADFUL.

37. dime novel

Malaeska

38. discourse

• Mode or category of expression, in grammar, we speak of discourse as direct or indirect. Discourse refers to ways of speaking that are bound by…

38. discourse

• …ideological, professional, political, cultural, or sociological communities. Way in which the use of language in a particular domain helps to constitute the objects it refers to.

38. discourse

Sandra Looney Augustana John Dudley USD

39. dynamic character

• A character who develops or changes as a result of the actions of the plot.

• Eliza Doolittle, Pip, Marguerite Johnson, Pi Patel, Esperanza Cordero…

39. dynamic character

Sandra Cisneros Don Quixote

40. dystopia

• Literally, “bad place.” the term is applied to accounts of imaginary worlds, usually in the futre, in which present tendencies are carried ou to their intensely unpleasant culminations. (George Orwell’s 1984, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed)

40. dystopia

George Orwell’s 1984

“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”

-Henry James

41. elegy

• A sustained and formal poem setting forth meditations on death or another solemn theme. The meditation often is occasioned by the death of a particular person, but it may be generalized observation or the expression of a solemn mood.

41. elegy

Oleg Liubkivsky

The Elegy of Far

Autumn, 1992

42. ellipsis

• The omission of one or more words that, while essential to a grammatic structure, are easily supplied.

• (…) only three periods!

43. epic• A long narrative poem in elevated

style presenting characters of high position in adventures forming and organic whole through their relation to a central heroic figure and through their development of episodes important to the history of a nation or race. The epic itself is the product of a single genius.

43. epic (cont.)

(1) The hero is of imposing nature

(2) The setting is vast

(3) The action consists of deeds of valor or superhuman courage

(4) The supernatural

(5) A style of sustained elevation

(6) The poet retains a measure of objectivity

43. epic

OdysseusTrojan Horse

44. epiphany

• Literally a manifestation or showing-forth, usually of some divine being. The Christian festival of Epiphany commemorates the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the form of the Magi.

45. euphemism

• A device in which indirectness replaces directness of statement, usually in an effort to avoid offensiveness.

45. euphemism

huskybig-bonedheftyportlyplumpfluffy

“National literature begins with fables and ends with novels.”

-Joseph Joubert

46. exposition (as in a story’s plot)

• Its purpose is to explain something. Identification, definition, classification, illustration, comparison, and analysis.

46. exposition (as in a story’s plot)

Harry Potter

47. Expressionism

• A movement affecting painting and literature, which followed and went beyond IMPRESSIONISM in its efforts to “objectify inner experience.” Expressionism was strongest in theater in the 1920s,…

47. Expressionism (cont.)

• …and its entry into other literary forms was probably though the stage. In the novel the presentation of the objective outer world as it expresses itself in the impressions or moods of a character is widely used device.

47. Expressionism (cont.)

• The ANTIREALISTIC NOVEL is also a genre in the expressionistic tradition. More recent novelists, such as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, and Ken Kesey, ca also be included in the expressionistic tradition.

47. Expressionism

“Lady and Her Cat”Millie Shapiro

“The Muse”

Jeff Buckley

48. falling action

• The second half or RESOLUTION of a dramatic plot. It follows the CLIMAX, beginning often with a tragic force, exhibits the failing fortunes of the hero (in a tragedy) and the successful efforts in the COUNTERPLAYERS, and culminates in the CATASTROPHE.

48. falling action

flat character

• a literary character whose personality can be defined by one or two traits and does not change in the course of the story

foil• A foil character is either one who is

opposite to the main character or nearly the same as the main character. The purpose of the foil character is to emphasize the traits of the main character by contrast only. A foil is a secondary character who contrasts with a major character.

49. foot (as in poetry)

• The unit of rhythm in verse, whether QUANTITATIVE or ACCENTUAL-SYLLABIC.

49. foot (as in poetry)

William Blake

50. foreshadowing• The presentation of material in

a work in such a way that later events are prepared for. Foreshadowing can result form the establishment of a mood or atmosphere, as in the opening of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or the first act of Hamlet.

50. foreshadowing (cont.)

• It can result from the appearance of physical objects or facts, as do the clues do in a detective story, or from the revelation of a fundamental and decisive character trait. In all cases, the purpose of foreshadowing is to prepare the reader or viewer for action to come.

50. foreshadowing

Ken KeseyOne Flew Over the

Cuckoo’s Nest

Maya Angelou’s Caged Bird Sings

50. foreshadowing

“Literature is a form of permanent insurrection. Its mission is to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep men in a constant state of dissatisfaction with themselves.”

-Mario Vargas Llosa

51. history play (as in Shakespeare)

• Strictly speaking, any drama whose time setting is in some period earlier than that in which it is written. It is most widely used, however, as a synonym for CHRONICLE PLAY.

51. history play (as in Shakespeare)

King John

52. hubris

• overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the PROTAGONIST of a tragedy. Hubris leads the protagonist to break a moral law, attempt vainly to transcend normal limitations, or ignore a divine warning with calamitous results.

52. hubris

Poseidon

53. hyperbole

• Exaggeration. The figure may be used to heighten effect or it may be used for humor.

53. hyperbole

Kurt Vonnegut

54. iamb (as in poetry)

• A foot consisting of an unaccented syllable and an accented ( ˘ T ). The most common rhythm in English verse.

54. iamb (as in poetry)

Shakespeare

55. idiom• A use of words peculiar to a given

language; an expression that cannot be translated literally. “To carry out” literally means to carry something out (of a room perhaps), but idiomatically it means to see that something is done, as to “carry out a command.”

55. idiom

James Thurber

“Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around.”

-David Lodge

56. imagery

• Imagery in its literal sense means the collection of IMAGES in a literary work. In another sense it is synonymous with TROPE or FIGURE OF SPEECH.

56. imagery

Ernest Hemingway F. Scott Fitzgerald

57. Imagism

• The objectives of Imagist are:

• 1.) to use the language of common speech but to employ always the exact word—not the nearly exact word;

• 2.) to avoid the cliché;

• 3.) to create new rhythms as the expressions of a new MOOD;

57. Imagism (cont.)• 4.) to allow absolute freedom in

the choice of subject;• 5.) to present an image (that is, to

be concrete, firm, definite in their pictures—harsh in outline);

• 6.) to strive always for concentration;

• 7.) to suggest rather than offer complete statements

57. Imagism (cont.)

William Carlos WilliamsSelected Poetry

Jack KerouacOn the Road

58. Impressionism

• A highly personal manner of writing in which the author presents materials as they appear to an individual temperament at a precise moment and from a particular vantage point rather than as they are presumed to be in actuality.

58. Impressionism

“Ninfee Bianche”Claude Monet

1899

59. in medias res

• A term from Horace, literally meaning “in the midst of things.” it is applied to the literary technique of opening a story in the middle of the action and then supplying information about the beginning of the action through flashbacks and other devices for exposition.

59. in medias res

60. internal rhyme (as in poetry)• Rhyme that occurs at some

place before the last syllables in a line. In the opening line of Eliot’s “Gerontion”—”Here I am, an old man in a dry month”—there is internal rhyme between “am” and “man” and between “I” and “dry.”

60. internal rhyme (as in poetry)

Li-Young Lee

“A great literature is …chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immoveable certainties of the nation.”

-H.L. Mencken

61. irony

• A broad term referring to the recognition of reality different from appearance. Verbal irony is a FIGURE OF SPEECH in which the actually intent is expressed in words that carry the opposite meaning.

61. irony

62. Künstlerroman

• A form of the APPRENCESHIP NOVEL in which the protagonist is an artist struggling from childhood to maturity toward an understanding of his or her creative mission. The most famous Künstlerroman in English is James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

62. Künstlerroman

Chaim Potok

63. limerick

• A form of light verse that follows a definite pattern: five anapestic lines of which the first,second, and fifth, consisting of three feet, rhyme; and the third and fourth lines, consisting of two feet, rhyme.

63. limerickThere once was a man from Nantucket,Who kept all of his cash in a bucket,But his daughter, named Nan,Ran away with a man,And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,The man and the girl with the bucket;And he said to the man,He was welcome to Nan,But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.

64. masque

• In medieval Europe there existed, partly as survivals or adaptations of ancient pagan seasonal ceremonies, species of games or SPECTACLES characterized by a procession of masked figures.

64. masque

Romeo and JulietEdgar Allan Poe

65. maxim

• A concise statement, usually drawn from experience and inculcating some practical advice; an ADAGE. Hoyle’s “When in doubt, win the trick” is a maxim in bridge.

65. maxim

“Ask not what your country can do for you— …ask what you can do for your country.”

John F. Kennedy

“Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes.”

-George Orwell

66. memoir

• A form of autobiographical writing dealing usually with the recollections of one who has been a part of or has witnessed significant events. Memoirs differ from AUTOBIOGRAPHY proper in that they are usually…

66. memoir

• …concerned with personalities and actions other than those of the writer, whereas autobiography stresses the inner and private life of its subject.

66. memoir

James Frey,

A Million Little Pieces

67. metaphysical

• Although sometimes used in the broad sense of philosophical poetry, the term is commonly applied to the work of the seventeenth-century writers called the “Metaphysical Poets.”

67. metaphysical

• They formed a school in the sense of employing similar methods and of revolting against the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry, in particular the PETRARCHAN CONCEIT.

67. metaphysical

John Donne

68. meter (as in poetry)

• The recurrence in poetry of a rhythmic pattern, or the RHYTHM established by the regular occurrence of similar units of sound. The four basic kinds of rhythmic patters are:

68. meter (as in poetry) (cont.)

1.) QUANTITIVE

2.) accentual

3.) syllabic

4.) accentual-syllabic

68. meter (as in poetry)

69. motif

• A simple element that serves as a basis for expanded narrative; or, less strictly, a conventional situation, device, interest, or incident. In literature, recurrent images, words, objects, phrases, or actions that tend to unify the work are called motives.

69. motif (cont.)

• Patterns of day and night, blonde and brunette, summer and winter, north and south, white and black; and the game of chess.

• In books, recurring themes, images, ideas, characters, etc.

69. motif

CervantesDon Quixote

70. mood

• In literary work the mood is the emotional-intellectual attitude of the author toward the subject.

70. mood

“Literature is both my joy and my comfort: it can add to every happiness and there is no sorrow it cannot console.”

-Pliny the Younger

71. muses• Nine goddesses represented as

presiding over the various departments of art and science. They are the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. In literature, their traditional significance I that of inspiring and helping poets.

71. Muses(1)Calliope (epic)

(2)Clio (history)

(3)Erato (lyrics andlove poetry)

(4)Euterpe (music)

(5)Melpomene(tragedy)

(6)Polyhymnia (sacred choric poetry)(7)Terpischore (choral dance and song)(8)Thalia (comedy)(9)Urania (astronomy)

71. Muses

http://shekinah.elysiumgates.com/muse/muses.jpg

72. Naturalism

• A term best reserved for a literary movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It draws its name from its basic assumption that everything real exists in NATURE, and…

72. Naturalism (cont.)• …conceived as the world of

objects, actions, and forces that yield their secrets to objective scientific inquiry. Naturalism is a response to the revolution in thought that science has produced. From Freud it gains a vielw of the determinism of the iner and subconscious self.

72. Naturalism (cont.)• Naturalist ic worlks tend to

emphasize either a biological or socioeconomic determinism. Pessimistic about human capabilities– life is a vicious trap; frank in portrayal of humans and animals being driven by fundamental urges—fear, hunger, and sex.

72. Naturalism

Stephen Crane

73. Nobel prize

• The Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Bernhard Nobel willed the income from practically his entire estate for the establishment of annual in the literature and other fields.

73. Nobel prize (cont.)

• Originally, the literature prize was to go to the person who had produced during the year the most eminent piece of work in the field of idealistic literature; in practice, however, the prize rewards recipient’s total career, and some of the literature is not notably idealistic.

73. Nobel prize

William Golding 1983

T.S. Eliot 1948

Ernest Hemingway 1954

74. noir

• An adjective taken over from the phrase FILM NOIR to apply to any work, especially one involving crime, that is notably dark, brooding cynical, complex, and pessimistic.

74. noir

http://www.slushpile.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/irish%20noir.jpg

75. novel (and nonfiction novel)

• Novel is used in its broadest sense to designate any extended fictional narrative almost always in prose.

• Nonfiction Novel is a classification offered by Truman Capote for his in Cold Blood,…

75. novel (and nonfiction novel)

• …when which a historical event is described in a way that exploits some of the devices of fiction, including an nonlinear time sequence and access to inner states of mind and feeling not commonly present in historical writing.

75. novel (and nonfiction novel)

J.D. Salinger Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”

-Ezra Pound

76. novella

• A short tale or short story, a book of 50-100 pages; longer than a short story, but not as long or involved as a NOVEL.

76. novella

77. ode

• A single, unified strain of exalted lyrical verse, directed to a single purpose, and dealing with one theme.

77. ode

John Keats

78. Oedipus Complex

• In psychoanalysis a libidinal feeling that develops in a child, especially a male child, between the ages of three and six, for the parent of the opposite sex. This attachment is generally accompanied by hostility to the parent of the child’s own sex.

78. Oedipus Complex (cont.)

Oedipus & the Sphinx

79. omniscient point of view

• The POINT OF VIEW in a work of fiction in which the narrator is capable of knowing, seeing, and telling all. It is characterized by freedom in the shifting from the exterior world to the inner selves of a number of…

79. omniscient point of view

• …characters. A freedom in movement in both time and place, and freedom of the narrator to comment on the meaning of actions.

79. omniscient point of view

Joseph StalinGeorge Orwell’s1984

79. omniscient point of view

79. omniscient point of view

79. omniscient point of view

“To my mind that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity.”

-Mark Twain

80. onomatopoeia

• Words that by their sound suggest their meaning: “hiss,” “buzz,” “whirr,” “sizzle.”

80. onomatopoeia

81. oxymoron

• A self-contradictory combination of worlds or smaller verbal units. “Oxymoron” itself is an oxymoron, from the Greek meaning “sharp-dull.”

81. oxymoron

82. palindrome

• Writing that reads the same for left to right and from right to left, such as the word “civic” or the statement attributed to Napoleon, “Able was I ere I saw Elba.”

82. palindrome

82. palindromeRacecar I did roll--or did I?

Hannah Poop

83. parallelism

• Such an arrangement that one element of equal importance with another is similarly developed and phrased, the principle of parallelism dictates that coordinate ideas should have coordinate presentation.

83. parallelism

84. paraphrase

• A restatement of an idea in such a way as to retrain the meaning while changing the diction and form. A paraphrase is often an amplification…

84. paraphrase

• …of the original for the purpose of clarity, though the term is also used for any rather general restatement of an expression or passage.

84. paraphrase

85. parody

• A composition imitating another, usually serious, piece. It is designed to ridicule a work or its style or author.

85. parody

“Ernest: What is the difference between literature and journalism?

Gilbert: Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.”

-Oscar Wilde

86. persona

• Literally, a mask. The term is widely used to refer to a “second half” created by an author and through whom the narrative is told….

86. persona

• …The persona can be not a character but “an implied author”; that is, a voice not directly the author’s but created by the author and through which the author speaks.

86. persona

John Berryman

87. personification• A figure that endows animals,

ideas, abstractions, and animate objects with human form; the representing of imaginary creatures or things as having human personalities, intelligence and emotions.

87. personification

88. Petrarchan Sonnet

• The ITALIAN SONNET –A SONNET divided into an

OCTAVE rhyming abbaabba and a SESTET rhyming cdecde.

88. Petrarchan Sonnet

Petrarch

89. plot

• Although an indispensable part of all fiction and drama, plot is a concept about which there has been much disagreement. A plot, Aristotle maintained, should have unity:

89. plot

• …it should “imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.”

89. plot

90. pragmatism

• A term, first used by C.S. Peirce in 1878, describing a doctrine that determines value through the test of consequences or utility.

90. pragmatism

“Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but molds it to its purpose.”

-Oscar Wilde

91. prelude• A short poem, introductory in

character, prefixed to a long poem or to a section of a long poem. Rarely, as in the case of Wordsworth’s famous Prelude, a poem so entitled may itself be lengthy, although Wordsworth’s Prelude was written as an introduction to a much longer but incomplete work.

91. prelude

92. prologue

• An introduction most frequently associated with drama and especially common in England in the plays of Restoration and the eighteenth century.

92. prologue

93. Prose poem

• A POEM printed as a PROSE, with both margins justified.

93. Prose poem

94. protagonist

• The chief character in a work. The word was originally applied to the “first” actor in early Greek drama. The actor was added to the CHORUS and was its leader; …

94. protagonist

• …hence the continuing meaning of protagonist and the “first” or chief player. In Greek drama AGON is contest, the protagonist and the ANTAGONIST, the second most important character, are contestants.

94. protagonist (cont.)

Batman/SpidermanPip from

Great Expectations

95. proverb

• A saying that briefly and memorably expresses some recognized truth about life; originally preserved by oral tradition, though it may be transmitted in written literature as well. Proverbs may owe their appeal to metaphor, antithesis, a play on words, rhyme, or alliteration or parallelism.

95. proverb

“One may recollect generally that certain thoughts or facts are to be found in a certain book; but without a good index such a recollection may hardly be more available than that of the cabin boy,who knew where the ship’s tea kettle was because he saw it fall overboard.”

-Horace Binney

96. Pulitzer Prize

• Annual prizes for journalism, literature, and music, awarded annually since 1917 by the School of Journalism and the Board of Trustees of Columbia University. The prizes are supported by a bequest from Joseph Pulitzer.

96. Pulitzer Prize

John Steinbeck 1940Grapes of WrathMargaret Mitchell 1937

Gone with the Wind

97. quatrain

• A stanza of four lines. Robert Frost’s “In a Disused Graveyard” consists of four quatrains, in iambic tetrameter, each in a different rhyme scheme.

97. quatrain

98. Realism• Realism is, in the broadest

literary sense, fidelity to actuality in its representation; a term loosely synonymous with VERISIMILITURD; and in this sense it has been a significant element in almost every school of writing.

98. Realism

99. refrain

• One or more words repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza. The most regular is the use of the same line at the close of each stanza (as is common in BALLAD).

99. refrain

100. Renaissance

• This word, meaning “rebirth,” is commonly applied to the period of transition from the medieval to the modern world in Western Europe.

100. Renaissance

Commonwealth Interregnum (1649-1660), Early Tudor Age (c. 1500-1557),Elizabethan Age (1558-1603),Jacobean Age (1603-1625),Caroline Age (1625-1642)

100. Renaissance

“The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.”

-Samuel Butler

101. requiem

• A chant embodying a preayer for the repse of the dead’ a dirge; a solemn mass beginning as in Requiem aeternam dona eis, Donime. In our time the word has been broadened to mean almost anything sad.

101. requiem

107. resolution (as in plot)

• The events following the CLIMAX. Synonym for FALLING ACTION.

• Shows what is resolved in the end of a work.

107. resolution (as in plot)

102. rhyme scheme

• The pattern in which RHYME sounds occur in a stanza. Rhyme schemes, for the purpose of analysis, are usually presented by the assignment of the same letter of the alphabet to each similar sound in a stanza.

102. rhyme scheme

103. rhythm (as in poetry)

• The passage of regular or approximately equivalent time intervals between definite events or the recurrence of specific sound or kinds of sound.

103. rhythm (as in poetry)

104. rising action

• The part of a dramatic PLOT that has to do with the COMPLICATION of the action. It begins with the EXCITING FORCE, gains the interest and power as the opposing groups come into CONFILICT (the hero usually being in the ascendancy), and proceeds to the CLIMAX.

104. rising action (cont.)

105. romance

• The term romance has had special meanings as a kind of fiction since the early years of the novel.

105. romance

“What one knows best is…what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.”

-Chamfort

106. Romanticism

• The freeing of the artist and writer from restraints and rules and suggesting that phase of individualism marked by the encouragement of revolutionary political ideas. The term designates a literary and philosophical theory…

106. Romanticism

• that tends to see the individual at the center of all life, and it places the individual, therefore, at the center of art, making literature valuable as an expression of unique feelings and particular attitudes.

106. Romanticism—William Worsdworth

round character• A round character is a major

character in a work of fiction who encounters conflict and is changed by it. Round characters tend to be more fully developed and described than flat, or minor characters.

round character—Chief Bromden

108. satire

• A work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity. In America, Eugene…

• the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

108. satire

• O’Neill, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, George Kaufman and Moss Hart, John P. Marquand, and Joseph Heller have commented satirically on human beings and their institutions. Two major types: FORMAL SATIRE and INDIRECT SATIRE.

108. satire

109. scansion

• A system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into FEET, indicating the locations of binomial ACCENTS, and counting the syllables.

109. scansion

110. schema

• The mental connections made in the mind—what controls learning and behavior.

• Psychologically, that which fascinates and compels.

110. schema (cont.)

Laurence Fishburnefrom Othello

“The easiest books are generally the best, for whatever author is obscure and difficult in his own language certainly does not think clearly.”

-Lord Chesterfield

111. science fiction

• A form of fantasy in which scientific facts, assumptions, or hypotheses form the basis, by logical extrapolation, of adventures in the future, on other planets in other dimensions in time or space, or under new variants of scientific law.

111. science fiction

Alien vs. Predator

111. science fiction

Ray Bradbury

112. semantics

• The study of meaning; sometimes limited to linguistic meaning; and sometimes used to discriminate between surface and substance.

112. semantics

Michel Foucault

113. semiotics

• The study of the rules that enable social phenomena, considered as SIGNS, to have meaning. When semiotics is used in literary criticism, it deals not with the simple relation…

113. semiotics

• …between sign and significance, but with literary conventions, such as those of prosody, genre, or received interpretations of literary devices at particular times.

113. semiotics

Jacques Derrida

114. Sentimentalism

• The term is used in two senses: (1) an overindulgence in emotion, especially the conscious effort to induce emotion in order to enjoy it; (2) an optimistic overemphasis of the goodness of humanity (SENSIBILITY).

114. Sentimentalism

115. Shakespearean Sonnet

• The ENGLISH SONNET, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. It is called the Shakespearean sonnet because Shakespeare was its most distinguished practitioner.

115. Shakespearean Sonnet

“Let us answer a book of ink with a book of flesh and blood.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

116. short story

• A short story is a relatively brief fictional NARATIVE in PROSE, it may range in length from the SHORT-SHORT STORY of 500 words up the the “long-short story” of 12,000 to 15,000 words.

116. short story

117. sonnet• A poem almost invariable of

fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. The two basic sonnet types are the ITALIAN or PETRARCHAN and the ENGLISH or SHAKESPEAREAN.

117. sonnet

Petrarch

118. stage directions

• Material that an author, editor, prompter, performer, or other person adds to a text to indicate movement, attitude, manner, style, or quality of a speech, character, or action. Some of the simplest and oldest are “enter,” “exit” or “exeunt,” and “aside.”

118. stage directions

119. static character

• A character who changes little if at all. Things happen to the static characters without modifying their interior selves. Opposite of dynamic.

119. static character

Henry Higgins

120. stanza• A recurrent grouping of two or

more verse lines in terms of length, metrical form, and, often, rhyme scheme. However, the division into stanzas is sometimes mad according to thought as well as form, in which case the stanza is a unit like a prose paragraph.

120. stanza

“I don’t like to read books; they muss up my mind.”

-Henry Ford

121. stock character

• Conventional character types. A high-thinking vengeance-seeking hero, disguised romantic heroine, melancholy man, a court fool, and a witty clownish servant are examples.

121. stock character

• Eliot's “Gerontion” is a gerontion—the world itself is the name of a favorite stock character of Greek (and later) comedy: the geezer, codger, “little old man.”

121. stock character

Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird

122. Stream of Consciousness

• The total range of awareness and emotive-mental response of an individual, form the lowest prespeech level to the highest fully articulated level of rational thought.

122. Stream of Consciousness

James Joyce

123. Surrealism

• A movement in art emphasizing the expression of the imagination as realized in dreams and presented without conscious control.

123. Surrealism

William Burroughs

124. symbolism• In its broad sense symbolism is the use

of one object to represent or suggest another; or, in literature, the serious and extensive use of SYMBOLS. Men = people in world; Nurse = oppression; Chief = oppressed peoples; McMurphy = change, hope, awareness; Control panel = ???; Ward = society; Monopoly = men’s attempt to control something

124. symbolism

125. symposium• A Greek world meaning “a

drinking together” or banquet. The world later came to mean discussion by different persons of a single topic or a collection of speeches or essays on a given subject.

125. symposium

“One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.”

-E.M. Forster

126. synopsis• A summary of the main points

of a composition so made as to show the relation of parts to the whole; an ABSTIACT. A synopsis is usually more connected than an outline, because it is likely to be given in complete sentences.

126. synopsis

127. syntax

• Syntax is the rule-governed arrangement of worlds in sentences. Syntax seems to be that level of language that most distinguishes poetry from prose.

127. syntax

128. tall tale• A kind of humorous tale,

common on the American frontier, that uses realistic detail a literal manner, and common speech to recount extravagantly impossible happenings, usually resulting form the superhuman abilities of a character.

128. tall tale

Pecos Bill and Slue-Foot Sue

128. tall tale

John Henry

129. Theatre of the Absurd• A term invented by Martin

Esslin for the kind of drama that presents a view of the absurdity of the human condition by abandoning of usual or rational devices and by the used of nonrealistic form.

129. Theatre of the Absurd

• It expounds and existential ideology and views its task as essentially metaphysical. The most widely acclaimed play of the school is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953).

129. Theatre of the Absurd

Samuel Beckett

130. theme• A central idea. Both theme and

thesis imply a subject and a predicate of some kind—not just vice in general, say, but some such proposition as “Vice seems more interesting than virtue but turns out to be destructive.”

130. theme

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.”

-Ernest Hemingway

131. thesis

• An attitude or position on a problem taken by a writer or speaker with the purpose of proving or supporting it. The term is also used for the paper written to support the thesis.

131. thesis

132. tone

• Tome has been used for the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in literary work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, sombre, playful, serious, ironic, condescending, or many another possible attitudes.

132. tone

133. tour de force

• A feat of strength and virtuosity. Tour de force is used in criticism to refer to works that make outstanding demonstrations of skill.

133. tour de force

134. tragedy

• A term with many meanings and applications. In drama it refers to a particular kind of play, the definition of which was established by Aristotle’s Poetics, in narrative, particularly in Middle Ages, it refers to a body of work recounting the fall of a persons of high degree.

134. tragedy

135. tragic flaw

• The theory that there is a flaw in the tragic hero that causes his or her downfall. The theory has been revised or refuted by criticism that considers the supposed flaw as an integral and even defining part to the protagonist's character.

135. tragic flaw

“I do not read a book: I hold a conversation with the author.”

-Elbert Hubbard

136. Transcendentalism

• A reliance of the intuition and the conscience, a form of idealism; a philosophical ROMANTICISM reaching America a generation or two…

136. Transcendentalism

• …after it developed in Europe. Transcendentalists believed in living close to nature and taught the dignity of manual labor and in democracy and individualism.

136. Transcendentalism

Thomas ColeThe Voyage of Life: Youth 1842

136. Transcendentalism

Ralph Waldo EmersonHenry David Thoreau

137. trope• In rhetoric a trope is a FIGURE

OF SPEECH involving a “turn” or change of sense—the use of a word in a sense other than the literal; in this sense figures of comparison as well as ironical expressions are tropes.

137. trope

Example of irony

137. trope

Example of irony

138. utopia• A fiction describing an

imaginary ideal world. DYSTOPIA, meaning “bad place,” is the term applied to unpleasant imaginary places, such as those in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984.

138. utopia

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

139. verse (as in poetry)

• Used in two senses: (1) as a unit of poetry, in which case it has the same significance as STANZA or LINE; and (2) as a name given generally to metrical composition.

139. verse (as in poetry)

Robert Lowell Sylvia Plath

140. vignette

• A SKETCH or brief narrative characterized by precision and delicacy. The term is also applied to SHORT-SHORT STORIES less than 500 words in length.

140. vignette

Sandra Cisneros

“Books are a narcotic.”

-Franz Kafka