Literary
Terms
GeneralMisc.
Terms
ALLEGORY:
• a story in verse or prose with a double meaning: a primary
surface meaning and a secondary or under-the-surface
meaning
 A system of comparisons rather than one comparison
 Differs from symbolism in that it puts less emphasis
on the images for their own sake and more on their
ulterior meanings and the meanings are more fixed;
meanings do not ray out from allegory as they do
from symbols
– Example: the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is
an allegory for redemption and salvation
– Example: Moby-Dick is an allegory for man’s
quest to understand his existence
SYMBOL
METAPHOR
SYMBOL
METAPHOR
SYMBOL
METAPHOR
SYMBOL
METAPHOR
SYMBOL
ALLEGORY
Aesthetic:
• the study or philosophy of beauty
in art, literature, and nature
ALLUSION:
• a reference to another work of art, a piece of
literature [especially The Bible], mythology,
person, or event
 An appeal to the reader to share an
experience with the writer
–Example: In Heart of Darkness,
Conrad makes an implicit reference
to the myth of Orpheus and
Eurydice
Anachronism:
• Placing something in a time where it
does not belong to underline a universal
verisimilitude and timelessness
– Example: the clock in Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
Analogy:
• the comparison of two things
alike in some respects
ANALYSIS:
• a detailed separation and examination
of a work of literature into its
important parts and a discussion of
their significance
– A close study of the various elements
and the relationship between them
Antihero:
• a non-hero or the antithesis of a hero of
the old-fashioned kind who was capable
of heroic deeds, who was dashing,
strong, brave, and resourceful
– Example: Don Quixote-Holden
Caulfield
Antithesis:
• contrasting ideas sharpened by the use
of opposite or noticeably different
meanings
– Example: “Crafty men contemn
studies; simple men admire them; and
wise men use them” Bacon
Aphorism:
• a short witty statement of dogma or
truth
– Example: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes
a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Benjamin Franklin
– Example: “Man’s main task in life is to give
birth to himself.” Erich Fromm
ARCHETYPE:
• an image, story-pattern, or character
type which recurs frequently and evokes
strong, often unconscious, associations in
the reader
– Symbols existing universally and
instinctively in the collective unconscious of
the human race
• Example: the wicked witch-light = hoperenewal-intellectual illumination vs. darkness =
ignorance-unknown-despair
Connotation:
• the suggestion or implication evoked by
a word or phrase, over and above what
they mean or actually denote
– Example: cockroach [fear-derision
and scientific meanings]
Diction:
• the vocabulary or word choice of a
writer
Didactic:
• a teaching type of tone, usually
lesson-like or boring in nature
Deductive:
• logical reasoning from the general to the
specific
Denotation:
• the most literal and limited meaning of a
word, regardless of what one may feel
about it or the suggestions and ideas it
connotes
Deus Ex Machina:
• literally “god in the machine”
– Greek idea from when the gods would
come on stage to rescue the hero
– Applies to anytime the hero is saved
by a miraculous event
Ellipsis:
• the omission of one or more words with
the use of the symbol [ . . . ]
Epigram:
• a short, witty statement in verse or prose
which may be complimentary, satiric, or
aphoristic
– Example: “We think our fathers fools,
so wise we grow,/Our wiser sons, no
doubt, will think us so.” Alexander
Pope
Epiphany:
• In its simplest terms, the epiphany is a revelation of such power
and insight that it alters the entire world-view of the thinker who
experiences it. In this sense, it is similar to what a scientist might
call a "paradigm shift."
• Another definition proffered by Shelley, in his Defense of Poetry
(1821), describes epiphany as the “best and happiest moments . . .
arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, visitations of the
divinity” which poetry “redeems from decay.”
• James Joyce brought the term to modern art and literature when he
used it to designate an event in which the essential nature of
somethinga person, a situation, an objectwas suddenly
perceived. It is thus an intuitive grasp of reality achieved in a
quick flash of recognition in which something, usually simple and
commonplace, is seen in a new light, and, as Joyce says, “its soul,
its whatness leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance.” This
sudden insight is the epiphany.
Ethos:
• the character, emotions, disposition,
and-or attitude of the writer reflected in
the speech or writing
Figurative language:
• language that uses figures of speech
[any way of saying something other
than the ordinary way] [metaphorsimile-alliteration-symbol-etc.]
GENRE:
• A fancy word for literary type or class
– Major genres:
• epic
• tragedy
• lyric
• comedy
• satire
• novel
• short story
Homeric epithet:
• joining of adjectives and nouns to make
compound adjectives
– Use by Homer in the Iliad and the
Odyssey
• Example: “wine-dark sea” and
“rosy-fingered lawn”
Hyperbole-overstatement:
• to overstate or exaggerate an issue for
emphasis
– Example: AP English is the most
difficult and boring class ever
IMAGERY:
• the use of language to represent
objects, actions, feelings, thoughts,
ideas, states of mind and any sensory
or extra-sensory experience
– Example: Robert Browning,
"Meeting at Night"
Meeting at Night
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
Robert Browning
Inductive:
• reasoning from the specific to the
general
IRONY:
• a mode of expression, through words
[verbal irony] or events [irony of
situation], conveying a reality
different from and usually opposite to
appearance or expectation
– The ability to detect irony is
sometimes heralded as a test of
intelligence and sophistication
Techniques for creating irony are to:
•say the opposite of what one means
•create a reversal between expectation
and its fulfillment
•give the audience knowledge that a
character lacks
Verbal irony:
the writer’s meaning or even
his attitude may be different
from what he says
–Example: after Mr. Rishel gives a
very hard and very unfair exam, the
students proclaim as they walk out:
“Have a nice weekend Mr. Rishel!”
Situational irony:
a situation in which there is an incongruity
between actual circumstances and those that
would seem appropriate or between what is
anticipated and what actually comes to pass
–Example: if a professional pickpocket
had his own pocket picked just as he was
in the act of picking someone else’s
pocket
Dramatic irony:
where the audience has knowledge that gives
additional meaning to a character’s words
•Example: In Oedipus the King, King Oedipus,
who has unknowingly killed his father, says
that he will banish his father’s killer when he
finds him
HAROLD BLOOM’S
DEFINITIONS OF IRONY
• When a writer or character says one thing and
means another, often the opposite of what was
explicitly stated
• Juxtaposition of “antithetical ideas” or ideas that
are in direct opposition to one another
• Multiple, and sometimes differing, definitions of a
single subject
• The imaginative ideas that spark our interests and
curiosities as a reader; Remember Thoreau’s “free
and wild thinking”?
Literal:
• taking the meaning of a word in its
primary and nonfigurative sense
– an exact rendering of something
Lyrical:
• maintaining the qualities of song or
poetry
– Example: “So we beat on, boats
against the current, borne back
ceaselessly into the past.” F. Scott
Fitzgerald
METAPHOR:
• a figure of speech in which an implicit
comparison is made between two things
essentially unlike
– Differs from a symbol because it
represents a single object or idea
• Example: “Life's but a walking
shadow; a poor player,/That struts and
frets his hour upon the stage.”
Shakespeare, Macbeth
• Example: Frances Cornford, "The
Guitarist Tunes Up"
The Guitarist Tunes Up
With what attentive courtesy he bent
Over his instrument;
Not as a lordly conqueror who could
Command both wire and wood,
But as a man with a loved woman might,
Inquiring with delight
What slight essential things she had to say
Before they started, he and she, to play.
Frances Cornford
Mood-atmosphere:
• the emotional feeling of the setting,
something like tone but specifically
related to the setting
– Example: the use of the color yellow
in the various settings of St.
Petersburg to produce a feeling of
despair-sorrow-decay in Crime and
Punishment
Oxymoron:
• a self-contradictory combination of
words
– Example: jumbo shrimp
– Example: In Paradise Lost, Milton
describes hell as: “No light, but rather
darkness visible”
Parable:
• a short, simple story related to allegory
and fable, which points to a moral
PARADOX:
• an apparently self-contradictory, even
absurd, statement which, on closer
inspection, is found to contain a truth
reconciling conflicting opposites
– Example: “I must be cruel only to
be kind” Shakespeare, Hamlet
Parallelism:
• the coordination of sentence syntax,
word order, and ideas used for effect
and emphasis
– Example: “The people that walked in
darkness have seen a great light: they
that dwell in the land of the shadow of
death, upon them hath the light
shined.” Isaiah
Parody:
• the imitative use of the words, style,
attitude, tone and ideas of an author in
such a way as to make them ridiculous
Personification:
• the attribution of human qualities to an
inanimate object
– Example: In “To Autumn,” Keats
describes autumn as a harvester
“sitting careless on a granary floor”
POINT OF VIEW:
• the position of the narrator in relation to his
story; thus the outlook from which events are
related
 Four (4) variations of point of view:
– Omniscient:
 Third person; narrator’s knowledge
is unlimited
 Narrator can reveal as much or as
little as they please
 Most flexible and permits the widest
scope
– Limited omniscient:
 Third person; viewpoint of one character
 Approximates more closely than the omniscient the
conditions of real life
– First person:
 Author disappears into one of the characters
 Offers no opportunity . . . for direct interpretation by
the author
 Offers excellent opportunities for dramatic irony
 Must question narrator reliability
– Objective:
 Narrator disappears into a kind of roving sound
camera . . . the camera can go anywhere but can only
record what is seen and heard
 Readers are merely spectators
Rhetoric:
• the art of persuasion and employing the
devices to persuade
SATIRE:
• a technique used to expose, censure, and ridicule
the mistakes and vices of society in an attempt to
help people understand civilized, moral values
– Swift defined satire as “a sort of glass wherein
beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but
their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of
reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are
offended with it
– Example: In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Mark Twain satirizes the contradictions of religion
and slavery in Southern society
SETTING:
• the combination of place, historical time,
and social environment
– Provides the general background for
character and plot
– Determines the atmosphere of the text
– Can symbolize whole ways of life or value
systems
Simile:
• an explicit comparison between two
objects using the words like, as, than,
similar to, resembles, or seems
– Example: “The great blast furnaces of
Liège rose along the line like ancient
castles burning in a border raid.”
Graham Greene, Stamboul Train
Stream of consciousness:
• writing that reflects a character’s flow of
perceptions, thoughts, memories and
feelings; exemplifies the way the modern
mind attempts to make meaning in a
fragmented world
– Example: “I AM BELOVED and she is mine. I see her
take flowers away from leaves she puts them in a round
basket the leaves are not for her
she fills the
basket she opens the grass . . .” Toni Morrison,
Beloved
Structure
• The arrangement of ideas, images, and
thoughts
Syllogism:
• a form of deductive reasoning consisting
of a major premise, a minor premise,
and a conclusion
– Example: All men are mortal. Greeks
are men. Therefore, all Greeks are
mortal.
•
SYMBOL:
from the Greek meaning “to throw together” and “mark-emblemtoken-sign”
– Something that means more than what it is; an object, animate or
inanimate, which represents or “stands for” something else
– Suggests a great variety of specific meanings; meanings “ray out”
from a symbol
– Differs from allegory in that it has a real existence, whereas an
allegorical sign is arbitrary
– Differs from metaphor in that it represents multiple objects andor ideas, whereas a metaphor represents a single object and-or
idea
• Example: “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost
• Example: the green light in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott
Fitzgerald
Syntax:
• the physical arrangement of words in a
sentence or a line of verse
THEME:
• the controlling idea or its central insight; a unifying
generalization about life stated or implied by the story
 Readers must understand what view of life [the
text] supports or what insight into life it reveals
 To state the theme a reader must select the
“central insight” and explain the “greatest
number of elements”
 “the function of interpretive writers is not to
state a theme but to vivify it”
“We may know in our minds, for instance, that ‘War
is horrible’ or that ‘Old age is often pathetic and in
need of understanding,’ but these are insights that
need to be periodically renewed. Emotionally we
may forget them, and if we do, we are less alive and
complete as human beings. Story writers perform a
service for useinterpret life for uswhether they
give us new insights or refresh and extend old ones.”
Readers must value and weigh all themeseven
themes that appear irrelevant to us
personallybecause we can benefit from other
perspectives
To determine theme focus on:
 Changes in main character
 Knowledge gained by main character
 The nature of the central conflict and
its outcome
 The title
 Important words
Important principles for theme:
 Theme should be expressible in the form of a
statement with subject and predicate
 Theme should be stated as a generalization
about life
 Do not make broad generalizations (avoid
terms like every, all, always, etc.)
 Theme is the central and unifying concept of a
story
 There is not one way of stating the theme of a
story
 Avoid any statement that reduces the theme to
some familiar saying-cliché
Thesis:
• an attitude or position taken by the
speaker or writer
– Example: Dostoevsky communicates
that Hegel and Nietzche were not
exactly correct in their philosophical
stances
TONE-attitude:
• the reflection of a writer’s attitude,
manner, mood, and moral outlook in
her work; even the way his
personality pervades the work
P r o s e
T e r m s
Anadiplosis:
• the repetition of the last word of one clause
at the beginning of the following clause to
gain a special effect
– Example: “Labour and care are rewarded with
success, success produces confidence,
confidence relaxes industry, and negligence
ruins the reputation which diligence had
raised.” Dr. Johnson, Rambler No. 21
Anaphora:
• a rhetorical device involving the repetition
of a word or group of words in successive
clauses
– Example: “Said Sir Ector . . . Sir Lancelot . . .
thou wert never matched of earthly knight’s
hand; and thou wert the courteoust knight that
ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest friend
to thy lover that ever bestrad horse . . .”
Malory, Le Morte Darthur
ANTAGONIST:
• the force acting against the protagonist
– Example: In The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, Huck opposes his moralistic society
Asyndeton:
• a rhetorical device where conjunctions,
articles and even pronouns are omitted for
the sake of speed and economy
– Example:
The first sort by their own suggestion fell
Self-tempted, self-depraved; man falls, deceived
By other first; man therefor shall find grace
The other none . . .
Milton, Paradise Lost
Bildungsroman:
• a novel about upbringing, education, or
coming-of-age
– Deals with the youthful development of a hero
or heroine
– Describes the processes by which maturity is
achieved through various ups and downs of life\
• Example: Jane Austen, Emma
• Example: Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Chiasmus:
• a reversal of grammatical structures in
successive phrases or clauses
– Example: “His time a moment, and a point his
space.” Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
[Epistle 1]
Confidant[e]:
• a character who has little effect on the
action but whose fuction is to listen to the
intimate feelings and intentions of the
protagonist
– Confidant = male
– Confidante = female
• Example: Horatio in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
CONFLICT:
• the tension in a situation between
characters, or the actual opposition of
characters
– Conflicts can be external and internal
• Example: Hamlet predicament of wishing to
avenge his father and yet knowing when and how
to do it
Epigraph:
• a quotation on the title page of a book
– Example: from The Great Gatsby
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high bouncing lover,
I must have you!”
Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
Epistrophe:
• a figure of speech in which each sentence or
clause ends with the same word
Flashback:
• derives from the cinema, which is now also
used to describe any scene or episode in a
play, novel, story, or poem that show events
that happened at an earlier time
FORESHADOWING:
• the technique or arranging of events and
information in a narrative in such a way
that later events are prepared for or
shadowed forth beforehand
Hubris:
• the shortcoming or defect in a Greek tragic
hero that leads him to ignore the warnings
of the gods and to transgress their laws and
commands
Litotes-understatement:
• a figure of speech which contains an
understatement for emphasis, and is
therefore the opposite of hyperbole
– Example: “not bad” usually means “good”
MOTIF:
• one of the dominant ideas in a work of
literature that recurs throughout the
work; a part of the main theme
– May consist of a character, a recurrent
image, or a verbal pattern
• Example: cars in The Great Gatsby
• Example: music in Invisible Man
Polysyndeton:
• the repetition of conjuctions
– Example: Hemingway is addicted to the use of
the word “and” to create psuedo-biblical
rhythms
PROTAGONIST:
• the principal character in a work of
literature and equivalent to the hero
Zeugma:
• a figure of speech in which a verb or an
adjective is applied to two nouns, though
appropriate only to one of them
• Example: “Kills the poys and the luggage.”
Shakespeare, Henry V
Rhetorical Approaches:
Chronological
Anachronistic
Comparative
Persuasive
Frame story
Cause and effect
Propaganda technique
Ethos
Logos
Pathos
Inductive
Deductive
Conversational
Formal
Instructive
Prose Style Analysis:
• Idiom: a form of expression, construction or phrase
peculiar to a writer
• Major elements of style analysis:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
diction
point of view
tone
organization
narrative pace
imagery
shape of sentences
shape of paragraphs
Vocabulary:
tone
attitude
diction
language
figurative lang.
detail
imagery
point of view
organization
structure
irony
sentence structure
syntax
phrasing
FORM REFLECTS CONTENT
Poetry
Terms
Accent-stress:
• a syllable given more prominence in
pronunciation
– Example: re-hearse
APOSTROPHE:
• a figure of speech in which a thing, a
place, an abstract quality, an idea, a dead
or absent person, is addressed as if
present and capable of understanding
– Example: “Milton! Thou should’st be living
at this hour . . .”
Ballad:
• a fairly short narrative poem written in a
songlike stanza form
– Example: John Keats, “La Belle Dame sans
Merci”
Caesura:
• a break or pause in a line of poetry, dictated,
usually, by the natural rhythm of the
language
– Example:
With hinm ther was his sone,  a yong Squier
A lovyere  and a lusty bacheler,
With lokkes crulle  as they were leyd in presse.
Chaucer, Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
Conceit:
• a fairly elaborate figurative device of a
fanciful kind which often incorporates
metaphor, simile, hyperbole, or oxymoron
COUPLETS:
• two successive lines, usually in the same
meter, linked by rime
– Example:
Whilom ther was dwellynge in Lumbardye
A worthy knyght, that born was of Pavye,
In which he lyved in greet prosperitee;
And sixty yeer a wyflees man was hee,
And folwed ay his bodily delyt
On wommen, there as was his appetyt
Chaucer, The Merchant’s Tale
Dramatic monologue:
• a poem in which there is one imaginary
speaker addressing an imaginary audience
– Example: Robert Browning, “My Last
Duchess”
Elegy:
• a poem of mourning for an individual or a
lament for some tragic event
Enjambment:
• running on of the sense beyond the second line of one
couplet into the first line of the next
– Example:
Who, of men, can tell
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower or river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet
If human souls did never kiss and greet?
John Keats, Endymion
EPIC:
• a long narrative poem, on a grand scale, about the
deeds of warriors and heroes
– A polygonal, ‘heroic’ story incorporating myth,
legend, folk tale, and history
– Often of national significance in the sense that
they embody the history and aspirations of a
nation in a lofty or grandiose manner
• Example: Anonymous, Beowulf
• Example: Homer, Odyssey
Heroic couplets:
• comprises rimed decasyllables, nearly
always in iambic pentameters rimed in pairs
– Example: “All humane things are subject to
decay,/And, when Fate summons, Monarchs
must obey:” Dryden, Mac Flecknoe
Metonymy:
• a figure of speech in which some significant aspect or
detail of an experience is used to represent the whole
experience
– Example: we refer to the leadership of our nation as
“The White House
– Example: Robert Frost in his poem “Out, Out ”
describes an injured boy holding up his cut hand
“as if to keep/The life from spilling,” which
literally means keep the blood from spilling.
Ode:
• a lyric poem with an elaborate stanzastructure, a marked formality and stateliness
in tone and style, and lofty sentiments and
thoughts
– Example: John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
SONNET:
• a fixed form of fourteen lines, normally
iambic pentameter, with a rime scheme
conforming to or approximating on of
two main types:
ENGLISH-SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET:
• a sonnet riming ababcdcdefefgg
 The content or structure usually parallels the rime
scheme, falling into three quatrains [a four-line stanza]
and a concluding couplet [two successive lines, usually in
the same meter, linked by rime]
 The units marked off by the rimes correspond to the
development of thought
 Three quatrains present three examples or metaphorical
statements of an idea and the couplet a conclusion or
application
 The principal break in thought usually comes at the end
of the eighth line
 Example: William Shakespeare, “That Time of year”
ITALIAN-PETRARCHAN SONNET:
• a sonnet consisting of an octave [an eight-line stanza]
riming abbaabba and of a sestet [a six-line stanza] using
any arrangement of two or three additional rimes, such
as cdcdcd or cdecde
– The division in rime scheme corresponds to a
division of thought; the octave presents a situation
and the sestet a comment, or the octave an idea and
the sestet an example
– Example: John Keats, “On First Looking into
Chapman’s Homer”
STANZA:
• a group of lines whose metrical pattern
[and usually its rime scheme] is repeated
throughout the poem
Synecdoche:
• a figure of speech in which a part is used for
the whole
– Example: “Give us this day, our daily bread”
where bread = daily meals
– Example: In “Terence, this is stupid stuff,” A.
E. Housman’s narrator explains: “malt does
more than Milton can/To justify God’s ways to
man,” where malt = beer
Villanelle:
• a poem consisting of five three-lined
stanzas or tercets and a final quatrain
– Example: Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle
into That Good Night”
Poetry TermsMetrical Terms
ALLITERATION:
• the repetition at close intervals of the
initial consonant sounds of accented
syllables or important words
– Example: map-moon, kill-code, preachapprove
ASSONANCE:
• the repetition at close intervals of the
vowel sounds of accented syllables or
important words
– Example: hat-ran-amber-vein-made
BLANK VERSE:
• unrimed iambic pentameter
– Example: Shakespearean tragedies
CONSONANCE:
• the repetition at close intervals of the
final consonant sounds of accented
syllables or important words
– Example: book-plaque-thicker
Continuous form:
• The element of design is slight
• Lines follow each other without formal
grouping
• There are different degrees of pattern
End-stopped line:
• a line that ends with a natural speech pause,
usually marked by punctuation
Feminine rime:
• a rime in which the repeated accented vowel
is in either the second or third last syllable
of the words involved
– Example: ceiling-appealing, hurrying-scurrying
Fixed form:
• A traditional pattern that applies to a whole
poem
– Example: limerick, sonnet, haiku, lyric, terza
rima
FOOT:
• the basic unit used in the scansion or
measurement of verse
– Usually contains one accented syllable and
one or two unaccented syllables
• Example: The dewshall weepthey fallto night
Names of feet-meter:
•
•
•
•
•
Iamb [iambic]
Trochee [trochaic]
Anapest [anapestic]
Dactyl [dactylic]
Spondee [spondaic]
in - ter'
en' - ter
in - ter - vene'
en' - ter - prise
true' - blue'
Free verse:
• nonmetrical verse; contains no fixed
metrical pattern
IAMB:
• a metrical foot consisting of one
unaccented syllable followed by one
accented syllable
– Example: re-hearse
Internal rime:
• a rime in which one or both of the rimewords occur within the line
– Example: “ ‘Surely,’ said I, ‘surely that is
something at my window lattice; / Let me see,
then, what thereat is, and this mystery
explore” Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
Masculine rime:
• a rime in which the repeated accented vowel
sound is in the final syllable of the words
involved
– Example: dance-pants, scald-recalled
Meter:
• regularized rhythm; an arrangement of
language in which the accents occur at
apparently equal intervals in time
Onomatopoeia:
• the use of words that supposedly mimic
their meaning in their sound
– Example: boom-click-plop
Rhythm:
• any wavelike recurrence of motion or sound
Stanzaic form
• A series of stanzas; repeated units having
the same number of lines, usually the same
metrical pattern, and often an identical rime
scheme
Terza rima:
• an interlocking rime scheme with the
pattern aba bcb cdc, etc.
Drama
Terms
FREYTAG’S PYRAMID:
• the structure of most five-act plays follows
this pattern:
climax
rising action
exposition
falling action
resolution-denouement
CATHARSIS:
• Aristotle in Poetics explains that
“Tragedy through pity and fear effects a
purgation of such emotions
HAMARTIA:
• an error of judgement which may arise
from ignorance or some moral
shortcoming
– Aristotle explains that a tragic hero comes to
misfortune through no vice or depravity, but
some error usually in judgement
TRAGEDY:
• In his Poetics, Aristotle defined tragedy
as:
– The imitation of an action that is serious and
also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in
language with pleasurable accessories, each kind
brought in separately in the parts of the work;
in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with
incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to
accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.
SOLILOQUY:
• a speech in which a character alone on
the stage expresses his thoughts and
feelings
ASIDE:
• a few words or a short passage spoken in
an undertone or to the audience
Schools of
Literary
Criticism
Basic perspectives:
•
•
•
•
Textual
Social
Cultural
Topical
Textual perspective:
• New Critical Approach
• Focus on literary form; text only
Focus strictly on what the text is
Question the formarrangement, purpose, voice,
syntax, tone and audience
Compare to other texts of similar genre
Build an understanding of a genre, which helps to
develop a set of expectations and also informed
interpretations
Textual perspective:
Focus on how separate parts relate to the overall form (analysis)
Involves a careful examination of literary elements and devices
Excludes factors outside of the text (i.e. author’s background/reader
response)
 Intentional fallacy: it is impossible/irrelevant to determine an
author’s intention
 Affective fallacy: readers’ feelings are irrelevant to the meaning
Important to place your reading of a particular text within a network
of previous reading; readers can accomplish this by examining the
following elements:
 Roles: prototypical figures (i.e. “western cowboy)
 Settings: social or cultural world
 Problems: typical conflicts characters deal with
 Storyline: manner in which the problem is solved
Social perspective:
a.k.a. Reader response criticism
Focus on what we experience
Our own personal experience of the subject being
addressed
Readers test an artist’s ideas against personal
experience and review the validity of the argumenttheme
Encourages personal connections with text
Important to seek to expand social attitudes
Important to imagine an “implied audience” (e.g.
Huck Finn)
Social perspective:
Methods of formulating an informed social response:
 Map relationships to characters-“implied
audience”
 Examine character dialogue; use the following
questions:
• Is the dialogue relevant to the topic of
conversation?
• Does the character provide enough
information?
• If not, then what are the consequences?
Cultural perspective:
• Marxist-socialist: examine social-economic hierarchies in
a text
• Feminist: explore gender roles in a text
• Psychoanalytic: text as record of author psychology
• Pop culture: influence of popular culture on texts
• Multicultural: examine perspective of marginalized
cultural groups
• Postcolonial: literature of formerly colonized peoples;
locate texts in a global sense
Cultural perspective:
Focus on who we are as a culture and how we
came to be
Readers explore the affects of a text’s cultural
environment
Focus on the influence of peer groups, mass
media, family, school, religion, historical period,
and religious/social/political group
Examine the affects of cultural institutions on
the world the author creates
Topical perspective:
• Historical: text as historical document
• Biographical: emphasis on author
background
• Literary tradition: texts as representative
of ideological movements
Topical perspective:
Focus on what we know
Individual readers contribute personal
perspectives/knowledges in order to create larger,
composite meanings
Responses differ because of interest and background
knowledge of readers
Readers can carry away part of what the text means
Apply background knowledge of different academic
fieldsmath, science, etc.
Important to identify areas of expertise and contribute to
an open discourse
Most important areashistory, art, music and science
WORKS CITED
• Perrine, Laurence and Thomas A. Arp. Sound and Sense.
• Cuddon, J.A. Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd
ed.
• Potter, Nancy. "Bellevue High School Advanced Placement Institute."