Literary Terms
Tools of Analysis
Sources
• For Definitions
– Norton’s Anthology, textbook
– Encarta Dictionary, online
– The Happy Critic, Harvey Birenbaum
• For Examples
– Instructor, James Gonzales
Style
• The manner of a literary work is its style, the
effect of which is its tone. All of the elements
of literature working together in a particular
work constitute its distinctive style.
Connotation(s)
• The different associations that a word can
evoke.
• The word white suggests purity and innocence. In
“The Faerie Queene” Spenser tells us that Una rides
a palfrey “more white then snow” and leads “a milke
white lambe.” Yet Una is “much whiter . . . So pure
an innocent . . . She was in life.”
Denotation
• Basic factual definition of a word
• Words in older texts may be unfamiliar or have changed
meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary presents the meaning
of a word historically.
• The word elf according to Encarta denotes “a small lively
imaginary being resembling a human with pointed ears, often
consider to have a mischievous nature and magical powers.”
• This denotation fits Puck, Robin Goodfellow, from
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Alliteration
• Repetition of an initial consonant sound
• “Many a mournful man made mirth for his
sake.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Onomatopoeia
• Verbal sounds that imitate and evoke the
sounds they denote
• From Second Shepherds’ Play
Sely Copple, our hen,
Both to and fro
She cackles
But begin she to croak
To groan or to cluck
Rhyme
• The repetition of identical vowel sounds in
stressed syllables whose initial consonants
differ.
• From Second Shepherds’ Play
For ponder
These floods so they drown
Both in fields and in town
And bears all down
And that is a wonder
a
b
b
b
a
rhyme scheme
Allegory
• Allegory is a form of symbolism operating
through direct equivalences. The gentleman
in Dickinson’s carriage stands for death,
Goodman Brown’s wife for faith, Everyman for
every man, and so forth. Birenbaum
Euphemism
• (Greek “sweet saying”) the figure by which
something distasteful is described in less
repugnant terms.
• Referring to death as going to a better place is
a good example of euphemism and also a
modern example of kenning.
Hyperbole
• (Greek “throwing over”): overstatement,
exaggeration
• Shakespeare’s King Lear warns Kent “Come
not between the Dragon and his wrath.”
Lear, an eighty-year-old man, is exaggerating
his power.
Irony
• (Greek “dissimulation): saying one thing and
meaning the opposite
• Situational irony results when things turn out
the opposite of what might be expected
• In King Lear, Gloucester is unable to see which
of his sons is good until he is blinded.
Metaphor
• (Greek “carrying across”) the identification of
one thing with another with which it is not
literally identifiable
• When King Lear asks Cordelia how much she
loves him, she tells him, “I cannot heave my
heart into my mouth.” She is telling him that
she cannot put her love for him into words.
Paradox
• (Greek “contrary to received opinion) an
apparent contradiction that requires thought
to reveal an inner consistency
• It is paradoxical that something bad, like losing
his kingdom, can help King Lear to gain
something good, a clear sense of his own
position and an appreciation of the love of his
daughter.
Personification
• The attribution of human qualities to
nonhuman forces or objects
• Speaking to the thunder and rain, King Lear
tells them, “But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engendered battles against a head
So old and white as this.”
Pun
• A sometimes irresolvable doubleness of
meaning in a single word or expression.
• When Claudius refers to Hamlet as son and
seems concerned that “the clouds still hang”
over Hamlet, mourning the death of his father
too much. Hamlet responds, “Not so, my lord,
I am too much in the sun.”
Sarcasm
• (Greek “flesh tearing”) a wounding remark,
often expressed ironically
• Albany and Goneril in King Lear
Goneril: I have been worth the whistle.
Albany: Oh, Goneril, You are not worth the dust
which the rude wind blows in your face.
Simile
• (Latin “like”) comparison, usually using the
word “like” or “as,” of one thing with another
so as to produce surprising analogies.
• Like flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods.
They kill us for their sport.
Gloucester in King Lear
Symbol
• A symbol is an image that tends to generalize
itself, so that it evokes associations with
typical qualities of life. Birenbaum
• Clothing is a symbol in King Lear. As Lear
grows in self-awareness, rich clothing
becomes less important: “unaccommodated
man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked
animal as thou art. Off, off you lendings!
Come; unbutton here.”
Rhythm
• (Greek “to flow”) the patterns of sound within
the feet of verse lines.
• Chaucer’s description of the Clerk creates a
distinctive rhythm.
But al that he mighte of his freendes hente
On bookes and on lerning he it spente
And bisily gan for the soules praye
Of hem that yaf him wherewith to scoleye
Accent
• (stress) the special force devoted to the
voicing of one syllable in a word over others.
• Poets are aware of the accents of words as
they work out the meter and rhythm of a line.
Notice that accenting the first syllable yields a noun
but on the last syllable a verb.
In Lear’s CONflict with his daughters, his desires
conFLICT with theirs. They do not perMIT him to
party without a special PERmit.
Caesura
• (Latin “cut”) a pause or breathing space within
a line of verse, generally occurring between
syntactic units
• Anglo-Saxon poetry often indicates the
caesura with spaces, as in Caedmon’s Hymn:
Nu sculon herigean
Meotodes meathte
herofonrices Weard
and his modgeþanc
caesura
Iamb
• The basic foot of English verse; two syllables,
with pattern of a unstressed syllable followed
by a stressed syllable.
 Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
Pentameter
• (Greek “five measure”) in English verse, a fivestress line. Basic line for Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Milton
• From Sonnet 65, Shakespeare
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
Tetrameter
• (Greek “four measure”) a line with four
stresses
• Andrew Marvell uses iambic tetrameter
couplets in “To His Coy Mistress”
Had we but world enough and time
This coyness, lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day
Blank Verse
• Unrhymed iambic pentameter lines, as in
most of Shakespeare’s plays and Milton’s
epics.
Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man . . .
no rhymes
Couplet
• Two consecutive, rhyming lines usually
containing the same number of stresses.
Chaucer introduced the iambic pentameter
couplet in Canterbury Tales.
When that April with his showres soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
couplet
And bathed every veine in swich licour
Of which ertu engendred is the flowr
couplet
Quatrain
• A stanza of four lines, usually rhyming abcb,
abab, or abba.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, of few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
a
b
a
b
Refrain
• Usually a single line repeated as the last line of
consecutive stanzas with subtly different
working and ideally with subtly different
meaning as the poem progresses.
• In “Epithalamion” Spenser uses variations of
this refrain 23 times:
That all the woods may answer and your Eccho ring.
Sonnet
• Fourteen-line poem, usually in rhyming iambic
pentameter. Petrarchan sonnet (octave and
sestet) and Shakespearean sonnet (three
quatrains and couplet)
• Some of Shakespeare’s most famous poems
 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
 That time of year thou mayst in me behold
First-person Narration
• A narrative in which the voice narrating refers
to itself with forms of the first-person
pronoun (I, me, my, we, us, our) and in which
the narrative is determined by the limitations
of that voice.
 Chaucer’s frame narrative for The Canterbury Tales is
told in first person.
 Gulliver’s Travels is told in first person by fictional
character Lemuel Gulliver.
Third-person Narrative
• A narrative in which the narrator recounts a
narrative of characters referred to by third
person pronouns (he, she, they) without the
limits of a first-person narrative.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a third-person
narrative. The narrator is not part of the events and
rarely mentions himself, except to say that it would
“tax my wits” to describe something better.
Omniscient Narrator
• (Latin “all-knowing narrator”) A narrator who,
in the fiction of the narrative, has complete
access to both the deeds and the thoughts of
all the characters in the narrative.
The narrator of Paradise Lost, written by John
Milton, knows and tells all, even what is spoken and
done in Heaven and Hell, besides what is happening
in the Garden of Eden.
Frame Narrative
• A situation which provides a context in which
a collection of stories can be presented. (JG)
Chaucer goes on a pilgrimage and meets his twentynine fellow pilgrims as well as the host of the Tabard,
Harry Bailey. Their agreement to tell stories to make
the travelling more agreeable creates the frame
narrative structure of The Canterbury Tales.
Comedy
• Comedy deals with humorously confusing,
sometimes ridiculous situations in which the
ending is, nevertheless, happy.
Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well and
As You Like It are comedies. Their titles suggest
that the audience will enjoy a story with a happy
ending, often a wedding.
Dialogue
• (Greek “conversation”) Conversation
presented verbatim in novels and plays.
Lear: But goes thy heart with this?
Cordelia: Ay, my good Lord.
Lear: So young and so untender?
Cordelia: So young, my Lord, and true.
Lear: Let it be so. Then truth shall be thy dower.
Dramatic Monologue
• (Greek “single speaking”) a poem in which the
voice of a historical or fictional character
speaks, unmediated by any narrator to an
implied though silent audience.
• “Ulysses” by Tennyson is a prime example of a
dramatic monologue.
Elegy
• Poetry of loss, especially upon the death of a
loved person.
• Excerpt from Milton’s elegy for Shakespeare
What needs my Shakespear for his honour’d Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones . . .
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need’st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Epic
• Extended narrative poem celebrating a hero
who embodies the virtues most valued in his
culture. (JG)
Epithalamion
• (Greek “concerning the bridal chamber”) a
wedding poem, celebrating the marriage and
wishing the couple good fortune.
• Spenser’s “Epithalamion” p. 907
Fabliau
• (French “little story”) a short, funny, often
bawdy narrative in low style.
• Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Prologue and Tale” p.
239
Lyric
• (Greek “lyre”) Initially meaning a song, “lyric”
refers to a short poetic form, without
restriction in meter, but with expression of
personal emotion, often in first person.
Myth
• One version of reality (Birenbaum)
• The narrative of a protagonist with or subject
to superhuman powers. A myth expresses
some profound truth.
• Besides Greek myths, other myths such as the
Arthurian myths of the Round Table give us
stories which presents in an imaginative way
the stages of life that people, in general,
experience.
Novel
• Usually long prose works, giving high priority
to narration of events, novels are rooted in a
specific, often complex, social world, and are
often focused on one character or small circle
of central characters.
• Gulliver’s Travels can be considered as an
early example of a novel.
Ode
• (Greek “song”) A lyric poem in elevated style
often addressed to a natural force, a person,
or an abstract quality
• Keats “Ode to a Nightingale”
Pastoral
• (Latin “pastor, shepherd”) Pastoral is set
among shepherds and represents an idyllic,
idealized version of their world
Satire
• A genre in which the author, driven by
exasperation, targets social ills, hoping to
correct them by exposing them. (JG)
• Practically all of Swift’s works.
Tragedy
• A dramatic representation of a character, who
driven by hubris, precipitates a catastrophe,
which destroys his flawed sense of reality and
prompts a more accurate evaluation. (JG)
Allusion
• A passing but illuminating reference with a
literary text to another, well-known text, often
biblical or classical.
Apostrophe
• (Greek “turning away”) an address, often to
an absent person, a force, or a quality.
Canon
• (Greek “rule”) the group of texts regarded as
worthy of special respect or attention by a
given institution. Also, the group of texts
regarded as definitely having been written by
a certain author.
Catharsis
• (Greek “cleansing”) According to Aristotle, the
effect of tragedy on its audience, through
their experience of pity and fear, was a kind of
spiritual cleansing.
Character
• The [virtual] person, personified animal, or
other figure represented in a literary work.
Round or flat characters. Stock characters.
Convention
• A repeatedly recurring feature of works,
occurring in combination with other recurring
formal features.
• In Shakespeare’s plays, the convention of
disguises is absolute. In King Lear, once Edgar
disguises himself as Mad Tom, not even his
father would ever recognize him.
Decorum
• (Latin “that which is fitting”) a rhetorical
principle whereby each formal aspect of a
work should be in keeping with its subject
matter and or audience.
Dramatic Irony
• A feature of narrative and drama, whereby the
audience knows that the outcome of an action
will be the opposite of that intended by a
character.
Parody
• A work that uses the conventions of a
particular genre with the aim of comically
mocking a particular feature of a genre.
Persona
• (Latin “sound through”) originally the mask
worn in the Roman theater to magnify an
actor’s voice. In literary discourse persona
refers to the narrator or speaker of a text, by
whose voice the author may mask him- or
herself.
Protagonist
• (Greek “first actor”) The hero or heroine of a
drama or narrative
Rhetoric
• The art of verbal persuasion
Scene
• A sub division of an act. The action of a scene
usually occurs in one place.
Soliloquy
• (Latin “single speaking”) A convention of
drama, in which a character, alone or thinking
to be alone on stage, speaks so as to give the
audience access to his or her private thoughts.
Vernacular
• (Latin “verna” servant) the language of the
common people as distinguished from learned
and arcane languages.
Wit
• In Renaissance, “wit” became a literary ideal
of the brilliant play of the full range of mental
resources.
• Alexander Pope
True wit is Nature to advantage dressed
What oft was thought but ne’er so well
expressed.
Kenning
• A metaphoric expression, often a phrase, used
to denote another word in Old English poetry.
(Encarta Dictionary)
Epic Simile
• A lengthy simile developed over a number of
lines of verse in narrative poetry (Encarta
Dictionary)