Literary Terms 3
2012- 2013
EXPLICATION
• The act of interpreting or discovering
the meaning of a text, usually involves
close reading and special attention to
figurative language.
• http://www.engl.unt.edu/~anne/explicat
ion/explication.html
Fable
• A very short story told in prose or
poetry that teaches a practical lesson
about how to succeed in life.
• Please read the following fable:
• http://www.eastoftheweb.com/shortstories/UBooks/AntGra.shtml
Farce
• A type of comedy in which ridiculous and
often stereotyped characters are
involved in silly, far-fetched situations.
• Please review list of farces:
• http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tm
ve/wiki100k/docs/Farce.html
Figurative language
• Words which are inaccurate if
interpreted literally, but are used to
describe. Similes and metaphors are
common forms.
Flashback
• A scene that interrupts the normal
chronological sequence of events in a
story to depict something that
happened at an earlier time.
Foil
• A character who acts as contrast to
another character. Often a funny side
kick to the dashing hero or a villain
contrasting the hero.
• Hamlet, Fortinbras, and Laertes
Foreshadowing
• The use of hints and clues to suggest
what will happen later in a plot.
• Tiresias in Oedipus: foreshadows
Oedipus’ downfall after Oedipus accuses
Tiresias of colluding with Kreon
Free Verse
• Poetry that does not conform to regular
meter or rhyme scheme.
Free verse
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg
Free verse
All truths wait in all things.
They neither hasten their own delivery nor
resist it.
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the
surgeon.
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
• Please listen to the following poem:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1y24
cKeQs0
• Take a line, several lines, or an idea
from the poem. Type a one- page
(minimum) reader response. Yes, you
should do this assignment or one of the
others that follow in the presentation.
Hyperbole
• A figure of speech that uses an
incredible exaggeration or
overstatement for effect.
• “If I told you once, I told you a
thousand times…”
Hyperbole
hypotactic
• An arrangement of phrases or clauses in
a dependent or subordinate relationship.
(Contrast with parataxis.) Adjective:
hypotactic.
hypotactic
•"One December morning near the end of
the year when snow was falling moist and
heavy for miles all around, so that the
earth and the sky were indivisible, Mrs.
Bridge emerged from her home and
spread her umbrella."
hypotactic
• And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries, and all
knowledge; and though I have all faith,
so that I could remove mountains, and
have not charity, I am nothing. (I
Corinthians 13)
Imagery
• The use of language to evoke a picture
or a concrete sensation of a person, a
thing, a place, or an experience.
Gustatory Imagery
This Is Just to Say
•
•
•
•
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
•
•
•
•
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
•
•
•
•
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams
“This Is Just to Say”
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d5bLf0g
q2Q
Alternative Assignment
• Write a one-page letter response to the
Williams’ poem. Assume a persona. Be
sure to use references from the poem
in your letter. Have fun!
Inversion
• The reversal of the normal word order
in a sentence or phrase.
• Also known as anastrophe, remember?
• •"In a hole in the ground there lived a
hobbit."
• (J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit, 1937)
Inversion
• •"Not until the seventeenth century did
the fork appear in England."
• (Henry Petroski, The Evolution of
Useful Things. Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)
Irony
• A discrepancy between appearance and
reality.
Irony
• Verbal irony – occurs when someone
says one thing but means another
• In Act III Scene V of Romeo and Juliet by
William Shakespeare, Juliet is upset at being told
that her father has promised her hand in
marriage to Paris rather than Romeo, whom she
loves. She has fully made up her mind to be
married to Romeo, so she ironically states to her
mother "...I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I
swear it shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,
rather than Paris ...".
Situational Irony
• Takes place when there is a discrepancy
between what is expected to happen, or
what would be appropriate to happen,
and what really does happen.
Situational irony
• An example would be a man who takes a
step aside in order to avoid getting
sprinkled by a wet dog and falls into a
swimming pool.
Dramatic Irony
• Often used on the stage.
• A character in the play or story thinks
one thing is true, but the audience or
reader knows better.
Dramatic Irony
When Oedipus attempts to find out the
cause of the plague in Thebes, the
audience knows that he is the cause.
Juxtaposition
• Poetic or rhetorical device I which
normally unassociated ideas, words, or
phrases are placed next to one another,
creating an effect of surprise and wit.
Juxtaposition
• “The apparition of these faces in the
crowd;/
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
Juxtaposition
• A form of contrast by which writers call
attention to dissimilar ideas or images
or metaphors.
• Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere
is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Juxtaposition
Litotes
• A form of understatement in which the
positive form is emphasized through the
negation of a negative form.
Litotes
• •They aren't the happiest couple
around.
• •He's not the ugliest fellow around!
• •She's not the brightest girl in the
class.
• •The food is not bad.
• •It is no ordinary city.
Litotes
litotes
Local Color
• A term applied to fiction or poetry
which tends to place special emphasis on
a particular setting ,including its
customs, clothing, dialect, and
landscape.
Local color
• For example, “We use a gas stove
anymore” means “We use a gas stove
nowadays.”
Loose Sentence
• One in which the main clause comes
first, followed by further dependent
grammatical units.
LOOSE SENTENCE
• Bells rang, filling the air with their
clangor, startling pigeons into flight
from every belfry, bringing people into
the streets to hear the news.
LOOSE SENTENCE
• I am willing to pay slightly higher taxes
for the privilege of living in Canada,
considering the free health care, the
cheap tuition fees, the low crime rate,
the comprehensive social programs, and
the wonderful winters.
Lyric Poem
• A poem that does not tell a story but
expresses the personal feelings or
thoughts of the speaker.
• A ballad tells a story.
LYRIC POEM
OH, Danny Boy, Oh, Danny Boy,
When all the bugles sound from far away,
Will you incline thy ear to hear me sing?
Oh, Danny Boy, Oh, Danny Boy .
Oh, Danny Boy, Oh, Danny Boy
The tulips bloom, by far and o’er here?
Will you incline thy heart and hear me sing?
Oh, Danny Boy, Oh, Danny Boy
Lyric Poem – Poe
To Helen
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•
•
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
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•
•
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•
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
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Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!
Edgar Allan Poe
“To Helen”
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFqceNl4
XNc
Metaphor
• A figure of speech that makes a
comparison between two unlike things
without the use of like, as, than, or
resembles.
Implied Metaphor
• Does not state explicitly the two terms
of the comparison.
• “I like to see it lap the miles” is an
implied metaphor in which the verb lap
implies a comparison between it and an
animal that laps up water.
IMPLIED METAPHOR
• John swelled and ruffled his plumage.
(versus John was a peacock)
IMPLIED METAPHOR
• The sunset turned leafy gold and red
(instead of saying the sunset was fall
foliage.).
Extended Metaphor
• Metaphor that is extended or developed
as far as the writer wants to take it
(conceit, if developed elaborately).
• See John Donne’s “A Valediction
Forbidding Mourning.”
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEwA
nO1rhK0
EXTENDED METAPHOR
Dead Metaphor
• One that has been used so often that
the comparison is no longer vivid.
DEAD METAPHOR
• •the arm of the chair, the legs of the
table, the foot of the bed, the hands of
the clock, the neck of the river, the eye
of the needle, the shoulder of the road
Mixed Metaphor
• A metaphor that has gotten out of
control and mixes its terms so that they
are visually or imaginatively
incompatible.
Mixed Metaphor
• A car comes up behind you, flashing his
horn.
• biting the hand that rocks the cradle
Mixed Metaphor
• Button your seat belts.
Rush Limbaugh
• Don't eat with your mouth full.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vVu
Vn1Yb8A