English 1302
REVIEW LIST FOR LITERARY TERMS
1.
Allegory - story with two parallel and consistent levels of meaning, one literal
and one figurative, in which the figurative level offers a moral or political lesson;
John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young
Goodman Brown" are examples of moral allegory. An allegorical figure has only
one meaning (for instance, it may represent good or evil), as opposed to a
symbol, which may suggest a complex network of meanings. An allegorical
framework is the system of ideas that conveys the allegory's message.
2.
Alliteration - repetition of initial sounds in a series of words, as in Blake's "The
Chimney Sweeper": "So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep." Alliteration
may be reinforced by repeated sounds within and at the end or words.
3.
Allusion - reference, often to literature, history, mythology, or the Bible, that is
unacknowledged in the text but that the author expects a reader to recognize. An
example of allusion in a title is Charles Baxter's "Gryphon" (a mythical beast).
Some modern writers, notably T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, use allusions drawn
from their private reading, expecting few readers to understand them.
4.
Antagonist - character who is in conflict with or opposition to the protagonist;
the villain. Sometimes the antagonist may be a force or situation (war or poverty)
rather than a person.
5.
Apostrophe - figure of speech in which an absent character or a personified
force or object is addressed directly, as if it were present or could comprehend:
“O Rose, thou art sick!"
6.
Archetype - image or symbol that is so common or significant to a culture that it
seems to have a universal importance. The psychologist Carl Jung believed that
because archetypes are an inherent part of psyches, we recognize then
subconsciously when we encounter them and therefore give them a greater
meaning than they would otherwise possess. Many archetypes appear in
classical myths (for example, a journey to the underworld).
7.
Aside - brief comment spoken by the actor to the audience (such as, "'Here she
comes. I’ll play a fine trick on her now!), and assumed not to be heard by the
other characters. Chekhov's The Brute includes asides.
8.
Assonance - repetition of vowel sounds in a series of words: "creep three feet."
9.
Ballad - narrative poem, rooted in an oral tradition, usually arranged in quatrains
rhyming abcb and containing a refrain.
10.
Carpe diem - "Seize the day"; the philosophy that gave its name to a kind of
seventeenth-century poetry arguing that one should enjoy life today before it
passes one by, as seen in Herrick's “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."
1
Temple College
Sept. 7, 2000
English 1302
11.
Catharsis - Aristotle's term for the emotional reaction or '"purgation" that takes
place in an audience watching a tragedy. Aristotle theorized that when we see a
good tragedy, we feel both pity (and thus closeness to the protagonist) and fear
or revulsion from the action taking place on stage) because we recognize in
ourselves the potential for similar action. The purging of these emotions we
experience by seeing the dramatic action unfold before is catharsis.
12.
Character - fictional representation of a person, usually but not necessarily in a
psychologically realistic way. E. M. Forster classified characters as round (well
developed, closely involved in the action and responsive to it) or flat (static,
stereotypical, or operating as foils for the protagonist). Characters can also be
classified as dynamic (growing and changing in the course of the action) or
static (remaining unchanged). Also, a brief satirical sketch illustrating a type of
personality, popular in eighteenth-century England.
13.
Cliche' - overused phrase or expression.
14.
Climax - point of greatest tension or importance, where the decisive action of a
play or story takes place.
15.
Conflict - struggle between opposing forces (protagonist and antagonist) in a
work of literature.
16.
Connotation - meaning that a word suggests beyond its literal, explicit meaning,
carrying emotional associations, judgments, or opinions. Connotations can be
positive, neutral, or negative. For example, family has a positive connotation
when it describes a group of loving relatives; a neutral connotation when it
describes an organization of criminals.
17.
Denotation - dictionary meaning of a word; its explicit, literal meaning.
18.
Denouement - this is the final stage in the plot of a drama or work of fiction.
Here the action comes to an end and remaining loose ends are tied up.
19.
Dialect - particular regional variety of language, which differ from the more
widely used standard or written language in its pronunciation, grammar, or
vocabulary. Eliza Doolittle's cockney dialect in the George Bernard Shaw play
Pygmalion is an example.
20.
Diction - word choice of an author, which determines the level of language used
in a piece of literature. Formal diction Is lofty and elaborate (typical of
Shakespearean nobility); informal diction is idiomatic and relaxed (like the
dialogue in John Updike's "A&P”). Jargon is the specialized diction of a
professional or occupational group (such as computer hackers). Idioms are the
colloquial expressions, including slang, of a particular group or society.
21.
Elegy - poem commemorating someone's death, usually in a reflective or
mournful tone, such as A. E. Houseman's "To an Athlete Dying Young."'
2
Temple College
Sept. 7, 2000
English 1302
22.
Epiphany - term first applied to literature by James Joyce and now used
generally to describe a sudden moment of revelation about the deep meaning
inherent in common things, such as the boy's realization at the end of "Araby,"
23.
Euphemism - word consciously chosen for its pleasant connotations; often
used for subjects like sex and death whose frank discussion is somewhat taboo,
in our society. For example, a euphemism for “to die" Is "'to pass away" or "to go
to one's reward."
24.
Fantasy - nonrealistic piece of literature that depends on whimsical plot,
supernatural or mythical characters, and implausible actions, usually with a
happy ending.
25.
Farce – comedy in which stereotypical characters engage in boisterous
horseplay and slapstick humor, as in Checkov’s The Brute.
26.
Flashback - variation on chronological order that presents an event or situation
that occurred before the time in which the story's action takes place.
27.
Foreshadow - presentation early in a story of situations, characters, or objects
that seem to have no special importance but in fact are later revealed to have
great significance. For example, a casual mention of a character's unusually
accurate memory for faces may become significant only when his or her fate
turns out to hinge on recognizing a person from the distant past.
28.
Genre - category of literature. Fiction, drama, and poetry are the three major
genres; sub-genres include the novel, the farce, and the lyric poem.
29.
Hubris - tragic flaw of overwhelming pride that exists in the protagonist of a
tragedy.
30.
Imagery - words and phrases that describe the concrete experience of the five
senses, most often sight. A pattern of imagery is a group of related images
developed throughout a work. Synethesia is a form of imagery that mixes the
experience of the senses (hearing something visual, smelling something audible,
and so on): "He smelled the blue fumes of her scent." Static imagery freezes
the moment to give it the timeless quality of painting or sculpture. Kinetic
Imagery attempts to show motion or change.
31.
Irony:
 Dramatic - such as that found In Oedipus the King, depends on the
audience's knowing something the protagonist has not yet realized (and thus
experiencing simultaneously its own interpretation of the events and that of
the protagonist).
3
Temple College
Sept. 7, 2000
English 1302
 Situational - exists when what happens is at odds with what the story's
situation leads readers to expect will happen, as in Browning's "Porphyria's
Lover."
 Verbal - occurs when what is said is in contrast with what is meant. It can be
expressed as understatement, hyperbole, or sarcasm.
32.
Lyrical - ??? form of poetry, usually brief and intense, that expresses a poet's
subjective response to the world. In classical times, lyrics were set to music. The
Romantic poets, particularly Keats, often write lyrics about love, death, and
nature.
33.
Metaphor - concise form of comparison equating two things that may at first
seem completely dissimilar, often an abstraction and a concrete image – for
example, "My love's a fortress." Some people consider metaphor to be the
essential element of poetry. An extended metaphor, or conceit, is a comparison
used throughout a work; in Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing," the mother
compares her daughter to a dress waiting to be ironed, thus conveying her
daughter's passivity and vulnerability.
34.
Metonymy - figure of speech in which the term for one thing can be applied to
another with which it is closely associated - for example, using "defend the flag"
to mean "defend the nation."
35.
Monologue - extended speech by one character.
36.
Myth - anonymous story reflecting the religious and social values of a culture or
explaining natural phenomena, often involving gods and heros.
37.
Naturalism - nineteenth-century movement whose followers believed that life
should not be idealized when depicted in literature. Rather, literature should
show that human experience is a continual (and for the most part losing struggle
against the natural world. Emile Zola, Jack London, and Stephen Crane are
important practitioners of naturalism.
38.
Overstatement/ hyperbole - figurative language that depends on intentional
overstatement; Mark Twain often used it to create humor; Jonathan Swift used it
for satire.
39.
Persona / speaker - narrator or speaker of a poem or story; in Greek tragedy, a
persona was a mask worn by an actor.
40.
Personification - endowing inanimate objects or abstract ideas with life or
human characteristics: “the river wept."
41.
Plot - way in which the events of the story are arranged. When there are two
stories of more or less equal importance, the work has been a double plot;
when there is more than one story but one string of events is clearly the most
4
Temple College
Sept. 7, 2000
English 1302
significant, the other stories are called subplots. Plot in fiction often follows the
pattern of action in drama, rising to a climax and then failing to a resolution.
42.
Point of view - perspective from which a story is told. The storyteller may be a
character in the story (first-person narrator) or someone who does not figure in
the action (third-person narrator), in which case he or she may know the actions
and internal doings of everyone in the story (omniscient narrator) or some part
of these (limited omniscient narrator). Rarely, there may be a second-person
narrator who uses "you" and the imperative mood throughout the story.
The narrator may be an observer or a participant. If he or she is untrustworthy
(stupid or bad, for instance), one has an unreliable narrator. Narrators who
are unreliable because they do not understand what they are reporting (children,
for instance) are called naive narrators. If the perspective on the events is the
same as one would get by simply watching the action unfold on stage, the point
of view is dramatic or objective.
43.
Realism - writing that stresses careful description of setting and the trappings of
daily life, psychological probability, and the lives of ordinary people. Its
practitioners believe they are presenting life "as it really is"; Ibsen's A Doll House
is an example.
44.
Romanticism - eighteenth and nineteenth-century literary movement that valued
subjectivity, individuality, the imagination, nature, excess, the exotic, and the
mysterious.
45.
Sarcasm - form of irony in which apparent praise is used to convey strong, bitter
criticism.
46.
Satire - literary attack on folly or vanity by means of ridicule; usually intended to
improve society.
47.
Simile - comparison of two seemingly unlike things using the words like or as:
"'My love is like an arrow through my heart."
48.
Soliloquy - convention of drama in which a character speaks directly to the
audience, revealing thoughts and feelings, which other characters present on
stage are assumed not to hear. By convention, a soliloquy is taken to reflect a
character's sincere feelings and beliefs.
49.
Symbol - person, object, action, or idea whose meaning transcends its literal or
denotative sense in a complex way. For instance, if someone wears a rose in a
lapel to a dance, the rose may simply be a decoration, but in Blake's “The Sick
Rose"' it becomes a symbol because it takes on a range of paradoxical and
complementary meanings. A symbol is invested with significance beyond what it
could carry on its own: A swastika, for instance, is a powerful and frightening
symbol as a result of Hitler's Nazism. Universal symbols, such as the grim
reaper, may be called archetypes; conventional symbols, such as national
flags, evoke a general and agreed-upon response from most people. There are
5
Temple College
Sept. 7, 2000
English 1302
also private symbols, such as the "gyre" created by Yeats, which the poet
himself invested with extraordinary significance.
50.
Theme - central or dominant idea of a piece of literature, made concrete by the
details and emphasis in the work itself.
51.
Tone - attitude of the speaker or author of a work toward the subject itself or the
audience, as can be determined from the word choice and arrangement of the
piece.
52.
Tragedy - literary work, especially a play that recounts the downfall of an
individual. Greek tragedy demanded a noble protagonist whose fall could be
traced to a tragic personal flaw. Shakespearean tragedy also treats noble
figures, but the reasons for their tragedies may be less clear-cut than in Greek
drama. Domestic or modern tragedy tends to deal with the fates of ordinary
people.
53.
Understatement - intentional downplaying of a situation's significance, often for
ironic or humorous effect, as in Mark Twain's famous comment on reading his
own obituary, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
6
Temple College
Sept. 7, 2000