Handbook of Literary Terms
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Handbook of Literary Terms
Abstract Language—A term used to describe
language that deals with generalities and
intangible concepts.
Allegory—A story or poem in which the
characters, settings, and events stand for other
people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Alliteration—The repetition of the same or
similar consonant sounds in words that are close
together.
Example
Allusion—A reference to someone or something
that is known from literature, history, religion,
mythology, politics, sports, science, or some other
branch of culture.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Ambiguity—A technique by which a writer
deliberately suggests two or more different, and
sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work.
American Dream—A uniquely American vision of
the country consisting of three central ideas.
Analogy—A comparison made between two
things to show how they are alike.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Anapest—A metrical foot that has two unstressed
syllables followed by one stressed syllable. The
word coexist (˘˘’) is an anapest.
Anecdote—A very brief story, told to illustrate a
point or to serve as an example of something.
Antagonist—The opponent who struggles
against or blocks the hero, or protagonist, in a
story.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Anthropomorphism—Attributing human
characteristics to an animal or inanimate object.
Aphorism—A brief, cleverly worded statement
that makes a wise observation about life.
Archetype—A very old imaginative pattern that
appears in literature across cultures and is
repeated through the ages. An archetype can be a
character, a plot, an image, a theme, or a setting.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Argument—A form of persuasion that appeals to
reason, rather than emotion, to convince an
audience to think or act in a certain way.
Assonance—The repetition of similar vowel
sounds followed by different consonant sounds,
especially in words close together.
Example
Handbook of Literary Terms
Atmosphere—The mood or feeling created in a
piece of writing.
Autobiography—An account of the writer’s own
life.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Ballad—A song or poem that tells a story.
More about ballads
Folk and literary ballads
Biography—An account of someone’s life written
by another person.
Blank Verse—Poetry written in unrhymed iambic
pentameter.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Cadence—The natural, rhythmic rise and fall of a
language as it is normally spoken.
Caesura—A pause or break within a line of
poetry. Some pauses are indicated by
punctuation; others are suggested by phrasing or
meaning.
Example
Catalog—A list of things, people, or events.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Character—An individual in a story or play. The
process of revealing the personality of a character
is called characterization.
Direct and indirect characterization
Static vs. dynamic character
Flat vs. round character
Cliché—A word or phrase, often a figure of
speech, that has become lifeless because of
overuse.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Climax—The point in a plot that creates the
greatest intensity, suspense, or interest.
Comedy—In general, a story that ends with a
happy resolution of the conflicts faced by the main
character or characters.
More about comedy
Handbook of Literary Terms
Conceit—An elaborate metaphor or other figure of
speech that compares two things that are
startlingly different.
Concrete Language—A term for language that
uses specific words and details to describe a
particular subject.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Confessional School—A group of poets who
wrote in the 1950s. The confessional poets wrote
frank and sometimes brutal poems about their
personal lives.
Conflict—The struggle between opposing forces
or characters in a story.
Internal and external conflict
Handbook of Literary Terms
Connotation—The associations and emotional
overtones that have become attached to a word or
phrase, in addition to its strict dictionary
definition, or denotation.
Consonance—The repetition of the same or
similar final consonant sounds on accented
syllables or in important words.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Couplet—Two consecutive rhyming lines of
poetry.
Closed couplet
Handbook of Literary Terms
Dactyl—A metrical foot of three syllables in which
the first syllable is stressed and the next two are
unstressed. The word tendency (’˘˘) is a dactyl.
Dark Romantics—A group of nineteenth-century
writers who explored the dark side of human
nature.
Deism—An eighteenth-century philosophy based
on rationalism.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Denouement—The conclusion (or resolution) of a
story.
Description—One of the four major forms of
discourse, in which language is used to create a
mood or an emotion. Description does this by
using words that appeal to our senses: sight,
hearing, touch, smell, and taste.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Dialect—A way of speaking that is characteristic
of a certain social group or the inhabitants of a
certain geographical area.
More about dialect
Dialogue—The directly quoted words of people
speaking to one another.
Diction—A speaker’s or writer’s choice of words.
More about diction
Handbook of Literary Terms
Dramatic Monologue—A poem in which a
character speaks to one or more listeners, whose
responses are not known.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Elegy—A poem of mourning, usually about
someone who has died.
Enjambment—The running on of sense from the
end of one line of verse into the next, without a
punctuated pause.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Epic—A long narrative poem, written in
heightened language, that recounts the deeds of a
heroic character who embodies the values of a
particular society.
Epithet—A descriptive word or phrase that is
frequently used to characterize a person or a
thing. For example, the epithet “the father of our
country” is often used to characterize George
Washington.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Essay—A short piece of nonfiction prose in which
the writer discusses some aspect of a subject.
Essays are sometimes classified as formal or
informal (or personal).
Exposition—One of the four major forms of
discourse, in which something is explained or set
forth.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Fable—A very short story told in prose or poetry
that teaches a practical lesson about how to
succeed in life.
Farce—A type of comedy in which ridiculous and
often stereotypical characters are involved in silly,
far-fetched situations.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Figure of Speech—A word or phrase that
describes one thing in terms of something else and
that is not meant to be taken literally. The most
common figures of speech are
• simile
• metaphor
• personification
• symbol
Handbook of Literary Terms
Fireside Poets—A group of nineteenth-century
poets from Boston including Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, and James Russell Lowell.
Flashback—A scene that interrupts the normal
chronological sequence of events in a story to
depict something that happened at an earlier time.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Foil—A character who acts as a contrast to
another character.
Foot—A metrical unit of poetry. An iamb is a
common foot in English poetry.
Meter
Foreshadowing—The use of hints and clues to
suggest what will happen later in a plot.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Frame Story—A literary device in which a story is
enclosed in another story, a tale within a tale.
Free Enterprise—The practice of allowing private
businesses to operate competitively for profit with
little government regulation.
Free Verse—Poetry that does not conform to a
regular meter or rhyme scheme.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Haiku—A short, unrhymed poem developed in
Japan in the fifteenth century.
More about haiku
Harlem Renaissance—A cultural movement of
the early 1920s led by African American artists,
writers, musicians, and performers, located in the
Harlem neighborhood in New York City.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Hyperbole—A figure of speech that uses an
incredible exaggeration, or overstatement, for
effect.
Example
Handbook of Literary Terms
Iamb—A metrical foot in poetry that has an
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable,
as in the word protect.
Iambic Pentameter—A line of poetry that
contains five iambic feet. The iambic pentameter is
most common in English and American poetry.
Example
Handbook of Literary Terms
Idiom—An expression particular to a certain
language that means something different from the
literal definitions of its parts. “I lost my head” is an
idiom of American English.
Imagery—The use of language to evoke a picture
or a concrete sensation of a person, a thing, a
place, or an experience.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Imagism—A twentieth-century movement in
European and American poetry that advocated the
creation of hard, clear images, concisely expressed
in everyday speech.
Impressionism—A nineteenth-century
movement in literature and art that advocated
recording one’s personal impressions of the world,
rather than attempting a strict representation of
reality.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Incongruity—The deliberate joining of opposites
or of elements that are not appropriate to each
other.
Interior Monologue—A narrative technique that
records a character’s internal flow of thoughts,
memories, and associations.
Internal Rhyme—Rhyme that occurs within a
line of poetry or within consecutive lines.
Example
Handbook of Literary Terms
Inversion—The reversal of the normal word order
in a sentence or phrase.
Irony—In general, a discrepancy between
appearance and reality. There are three main
types of irony:
• verbal irony
• situational irony
• dramatic irony
Handbook of Literary Terms
Lyric Poem—A poem that does not tell a story
but that expresses the personal feelings or
thoughts of a speaker.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Magic Realism—A genre developed in Latin
America that juxtaposes the everyday with the
marvelous or magical.
Marxism—The political and economic philosophy
developed by Karl Marx and his followers in the
mid-nineteenth century.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Memoir—A type of autobiography, or account of
the writer’s own life, that often focuses on a
specific time period or historical event.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Metaphor—A figure of speech that makes a
comparison between two unlike things without the
use of such specific words of comparison as like,
as, than, or resembles.
• Directly stated metaphor
• Implied metaphor
• Extended metaphor
• Dead metaphor
• Mixed metaphor
Handbook of Literary Terms
Meter—A pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables in poetry.
More about meter
Metonymy—A figure of speech in which a person,
place, or thing is referred to by something closely
associated with it. Referring to a car as “wheels” is
an example of metonymy.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Modernism—A term for the bold new
experimental styles and forms that swept the arts
during the first third of the twentieth century.
Mood—The overall emotion created by a work of
literature. Mood can usually be described in one or
two adjectives, such as bittersweet, playful, or
scary.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Motivation—The reasons for a character’s
behavior.
Myth—An anonymous traditional story that is
basically religious in nature and that serves to
explain a belief, ritual, or mysterious natural
phenomenon.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Narrative—One of the four major forms of
discourse in which a series of events is related.
Narrative Poem—A poem that tells a story—a
series of related events with a beginning, a
middle, and an end.
Narrator—In fiction the one who tells the story.
Types of narrators
Handbook of Literary Terms
Naturalism—A nineteenth-century literary
movement that was an extension of realism and
that claimed to portray life exactly as if it were
being examined through a scientist’s microscope.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Octave—An eight-line poem, or the first eight
lines of a Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet.
Ode—A lyric poem, usually long, on a serious
subject and written in dignified language.
Onomatopoeia—The use of a word whose sound
imitates or suggests its meaning. The word buzz is
onomatopoetic; it imitates the sound it names.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Oxymoron—A figure of speech that combines
opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.
Sweet sorrow, deafening silence, and living death
are common oxymorons.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Parable—A relatively short story that teaches a
moral, or lesson, about how to lead a good life.
Paradox—A statement that appears selfcontradictory but that reveals a kind of truth.
Parallel Structure—The repetition of words or
phrases that have similar grammatical structures
(also called parallelism).
Handbook of Literary Terms
Parody—A work that makes fun of another work
by imitating some aspect of the writer’s style.
Pastoral—A type of poem that depicts country life
in idyllic, idealized terms.
Personification—A figure of speech in which an
object or animal is given human feelings,
thoughts, or attitudes.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Persuasion—One of the four major forms of
discourse in which reason and emotional appeals
are used to convince a reader to think or act in a
certain way.
Plain Style—A way of writing that stresses
simplicity and clarity of expression.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Plot—The series of related events in a story or
play; sometimes called the story line.
Basic elements of plot
Plot in dramas and novels
Handbook of Literary Terms
Point of View—The vantage point from which the
writer tells a story. In broad terms there are four
main points of view:
• first person
• third person limited
• omniscient
• objective
Handbook of Literary Terms
Postmodernism—A term for the dominant trend
in the arts since 1945 characterized by
experiments with nontraditional forms and the
acceptance of multiple meanings.
Protagonist—The central character in a story, the
one who initiates or drives the action.
Proverb—A short, pithy statement that expresses
a common truth or experience.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Psychoanalysis—A method of examining the
unconscious mind, developed primarily by the
Austrian physician Sigmund Freud (1865–1939).
Pun—Play on the multiple meanings of a word or
on two words that sound alike but that have
different meanings.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Quatrain—A poem consisting of four lines, or four
lines of a poem that can be considered a unit.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Rationalism—The belief that human beings can
arrive at truth by using reason, rather than by
relying on the authority of the past, on religious
faith, or on intuition.
Realism—A style of writing, developed in the
nineteenth century, that attempts to depict life
accurately, as it really is, without idealizing or
romanticizing it.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Refrain—A word, phrase, line, or group of lines
that is repeated, for effect, several times in a
poem.
Regionalism—Literature that emphasizes a
specific geographic setting and that reproduces the
speech, behavior, and attitudes of the people who
live in that region.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Repetition—A unifying property of repeated
words, sounds, syllables, or other elements that
appear in a work.
Resolution—The conclusion of a story, when all
or most of the conflicts have been settled.
Rhetorical Question—A question that is asked
for effect and that does not actually require an
answer. Such questions assume the audience
agrees with the speaker on the answers.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Rhyme—The repetition of vowel sounds in
accented syllables and all succeeding syllables.
Example
Types of rhyme
Rhyme scheme
Rhythm—The alternation of stressed and
unstressed syllables in language.
Meter
Handbook of Literary Terms
Romance—In general, a story in which an
idealized hero or heroine undertakes a quest and
is successful. In a romance, beauty, innocence,
and goodness usually prevail over evil.
Romanticism—A revolt against rationalism that
affected literature and the other arts, beginning in
the late eighteenth century and remaining strong
throughout most of the nineteenth century.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Romantic Novel—A novel with a happy ending
that presents readers with characters engaged in
adventures filled with courageous acts, daring
chases, and exciting escapes.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Satire—A type of writing that ridicules the
shortcomings of people or institutions in an
attempt to bring about change.
Scanning—The analysis of a poem to determine
its meter.
More about scanning
Sestet—Six lines of poetry, especially the last six
lines of a Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Setting—The time and location in which a story
takes place.
More about setting
Short Story—A brief work of prose fiction.
More about the short story
Simile—A figure of speech that makes an explicit
comparison between two unlike things, using a
word of comparison, such as like, as, than, or
resembles.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Slant Rhyme—A rhyming sound that is not exact.
Follow/fellow and mystery/mastery are examples
of slant, or approximate, rhyme.
Soliloquy—A long speech made by a character in
a play while no other characters are onstage.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Sonnet—A fourteen-line poem, usually written in
iambic pentameter, that has one of the two basic
structures.
Petrarchan sonnet
Shakespearean sonnet
Sound Effects—The use of sounds to create
specific literary effects.
More about sound effects
Handbook of Literary Terms
Speaker—The voice that addresses the reader in
a poem.
Speech—A formal address delivered to an
audience, or the printed version of the same
address.
Spondee—A metrical foot consisting of two
syllables, both of which are stressed. The words
true-blue and nineteen are made of spondees.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Stanza—A group of consecutive lines that forms a
single structural unit in a poem.
Stereotype—A fixed idea or conception of a
character or a group of people that does not allow
for any individuality and is often based on
religious, social, or racial prejudice.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Stream of Consciousness—A style of writing
that portrays the inner (and often chaotic)
workings of a character’s mind.
Style—The distinctive way in which a writer uses
language.
More about style
Handbook of Literary Terms
Subjective and Objective Writing—
Subjectivity, in terms of writing, suggests that
the writer’s primary purpose is to express
personal experiences, feelings, and ideas.
Objectivity suggests that the writer’s purpose is
to report facts, avoiding personal judgments and
feelings.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Surrealism—A movement in art and literature
that started in Europe during the 1920s.
Surrealists wanted to replace conventional realism
with the full expression of the unconscious mind,
which they considered to be more real than the
“real” world of appearances.
Suspense—A feeling of uncertainty and curiosity
about what will happen next in a story.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Symbol—A person, a place, a thing, or an event
that has meaning in itself and that also stands for
something more than itself.
Types of symbols
Symbolism—A literary movement that originated
in late-nineteenth-century France, in which writers
rearranged the world of appearances in order to
reveal a more truthful version of reality.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Synecdoche—A figure of speech in which a part
represents the whole. The capital of the nation,
Washington, for example, is often spoken of as
though it were the government: “Talks are now
ongoing between Moscow and Washington.”
Synesthesia—The juxtaposition of one sensory
image with another image that appeals to an
unrelated sense. In “sweet laughter” an image of
sound is conveyed in terms of an image of taste.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Tall Tale—An outrageously exaggerated,
humorous story that is obviously unbelievable.
Theme—The insight about human life that is
revealed in a literary work.
More about theme
Handbook of Literary Terms
Tone—The attitude a writer takes toward the
subject of a work, the characters in it, or the
audience. Tone is conveyed through the writer’s
choice of words and details.
Tragedy—In general, a story in which a heroic
character either dies or comes to some other
unhappy end.
More about tragedy
Handbook of Literary Terms
Transcendentalism—A nineteenth-century
movement in the Romantic tradition, which held
that every individual can reach ultimate truths
through spiritual intuition, which transcends
reason and sensory experience.
Trochee—A metrical foot made up of an accented
syllable followed by an unaccented syllable, as in
the word taxi.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Understatement—A statement that says less
than what is meant. Understatement,
paradoxically, can make us recognize the truth of
something by saying that just the opposite is true.
Handbook of Literary Terms
Vernacular—The language spoken by the people
who live in a particular locality.
Villanelle—A nineteen-line poem consisting of
five tercets (three-line stanzas) with the rhyme
scheme aba and with a final quatrain (four-line
stanza) of abaa.