Transcript Document

College Bound English:
Literary Terms and Devices
Selected from
A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition
by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman
1. acronym
• A word formed by combining
the initial letters or syllables of
a series of words to for a name,
as “radar,” from “radio
detecting and ranging.”
1. acronym
2. act (as in drama)
• A major division of DRAMA. In
varying degrees the fine-act
structure corresponded to the fine
main divisions of dramatic
action: EXPOSITION,
COMPLICATION, CLIMAX,
FALLING ACTION, and
CATASTROPHE.
2. act (as in drama)
Mel Gibson
as Hamlet
Kenneth
Branagh
Derek
Jacobi
3. adaptation
• The rewriting of a work from its
original form to fit it for another
medium; also the new form of
such a rewritten work.
3. adaptation
4. aesthetics
• The study or philosophy of the
beautiful in nature, art and
literature. It has both a
philosophical dimension—
What is art? What is beauty?
What is the relationship of the
beautiful to other values?
4. aesthetics
(this is a
painting by
Chuck Close,
entitled
“Self-Portrait”)
4. aesthetics
Picasso’s
“Housegarden”
5. agrarian
• Literary people living in an
agricultural society, or espousing
the merits of such a society, as the
Physiocrats did. In literary history
and criticism, however, the term is
usually applied to a group of
Southern…
5. agrarian
…American writers who
published in Nashville, Tennessee,
between 1922 and 1925 The
Fugitive, a LITTLE MAGAZINE
of poetry and some criticism
championing agrarian
REGIONALISM but attacking
“the old high-castle Brahmins of
the Old South.”
5. agrarian
Hamlin
Garland
“Literature in its most
comprehensive sense is the
autobiography of humanity.”
-Bernard Berenson
6. allegory
• A form of extended METAPHOR in
which objects, persons, and actions
in a narrative are equated with
meanings that lie outside the
narrative itself. Thus, an allegory is
a story in which everything is a
symbol. RPM—rebellion, open
thinking, manliness; Nurse—hate,
control, judgment, conformity
6. allegory (cont.)
• Samuel Coleridge: the
traditional distinction between a
“symbol” and allegory is that “an
allegory is but a translation of
abstract notions into picturelanguage,” whereas “a Symbol
always partakes of the Reality
which it makes intelligible.”
Wizard of Oz
6. allegory
Lord of the Flies
William
Golding
Lord of the
Flies
7. alliteration
• The repetition of initial
identical consonant sounds or
any vowel sounds in successive
or closely associated syllables,
especially stressed syllables.
7. alliteration
8. allusion
• A figure of speech that makes
brief reference to a historical or
literary figure, event, or object.
The effectiveness of allusion
depends on a body of knowledge
shared by writer and reader. A
good example is T.S. Eliot’s The
Waste Land and the author’s
notes to that poem.
8. allusion
• RPM’s shorts refer to Moby Dick,
classic book by Melville (90).
• Also, to the Bible and Pontius
Pilate—a patient says, “I wash my
hands of the whole deal” (232).
• Harding makes reference to the
Lone Ranger, Batman, or Zorro—
saying RPM is a “masked man”
superhero (258).
8. allusion
Babe the
Blue Ox
9. anachronism
• Assignment of something to a
time when it was not in
existence.
9. anachronism
Back to the Future
10. analogy
• A comparison of two things, alike in
certain aspects; particularly a method
used in EXPOSITION an
DESCRIPTION by which something
unfamiliar is explained or described
by comparing it to some thing more
familiar.
Will Castle—
Eliza : Dorothy :: Higgins : Wizard
10. analogy
1. find is to lose as construct is to:
build demolish misplace materials
2. find is to locate as feign is to:
pane pretend
line mean
10. analogy
3. find is to kind as feign is to:
pane pretend
line mean
4. pane is to pain as weigh is to:
scale pounds weight way
5. bring is to brought as sing is to:
sang melody song record
10. analogy
6. dime is to tenth as quarter is to:
twenty-five fourth home coin
7. plates is to dishes as arms is to:
Legs hands farms weapons
rhlschool.com
“Contemporary literature.
Easier to shock than to
convince.”
-Albert Camus
11. anapest
• A metrical FOOT consisting of
three syllables, with two
unaccented syllables followed
by an accented one.
11. anapest
William
Wordsworth
12. anecdote
• A short NARRATIVE detailing
particulars of an interesting
EPISODE or event. The term
most frequently refers to an
incident in the life of an
important person and should lay
claim to an element of truth.
12. anecdote
• Though anecdotes are often used
as the basis for short stories, an
anecdote lacks complicated
PLOT and relates a single
EPISODE.
12. anecdote
John
Falstaff
13. annotation
• The addition of explanatory notes
to a text by the author or an
editor to explain, translate, cite
sources, give bibliographical
data, comment, GLOSS, or
PARAPHRASE.
13. annotation
• A VARIOUM EDITION
represents the ultimate in
annotation. An annotated
BIBLIOGRAPHY, in addition
to the standard bibliographical
data includes comments on the
works listed.
13. annotation
Northrop
Frye
14. antagonist
• The character directly opposed
to the PROTAGONIST. A
rival, opponent, or enemy of the
PROTAGONIST.
–non-character entities can be
antagonistic (settings or events)
14. antagonist
Nurse Ratched
15. anthology
• Literally “a gathering of
flowers,” the term designates a
collection of writing, either
prose or poetry, usually by
various authors.
15. anthology
“Literature is the art of writing
something that will be read
twice; journalism, what will be
grasped at once.”
-Cyril Connolly
16. aside (as in drama)
• A dramatic convention by
which an actor directly
addresses the audience but is
not supposed to be heard by the
other actors on the stage.
16. aside (as in drama)
Roderigo and Iago
17. assonance (as in poetry)
• Same or similar vowel sounds in
stressed syllables that end with
different consonant sounds.
Assonance differs from RHYME
in that RHYME is a similarity of
vowel and consonant. “Lake” and
“fake” demonstrate RHYME;
“lake” and “fate” assonance.
17. assonance (as in poetry)
John
Donne
18. autobiography
• The story of a person’s life as
written by that person.
18. autobiography
Maya
Angelou
Charles
Bukowski
18. autobiography
19. avant-garde
• Applied to new writing that
shows striking (and usually selfconscious) innovations in style,
form, and subject matter.
19. avant-garde
John Ashbery
Frank O’Hara
20. bard
• In modern use, simply a POET.
Historically the term refers to
poets who recited verses
glorifying the deeds of heroes
and leaders to the
accompaniment of musical
instrument such as the harp.
20. bard
Shakespeare
“Our literature is substitute
for religion, and so is our
religion.”
-T.S. Eliot
21. Bildungsroman
• A NOVEL that deals with the
development of a young person,
usually from adolescence to
maturity; it is frequently
autobiographical.
21. Bildungsroman
Great
Expectations
Pip
22. biography
• A written account of a person’s
life, a life history. LETTERS,
MEMOIRS, DIARIES,
JOURNALS, and
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES ought to
be distinguished from biography
proper.
22. biography
• MEMOIRS, DIARIES,
JOURNALS, and
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES are
closely related to each other in
that each is recollection written
down by the subject of the work.
22. biography
Paul Burrell
Princess Diana
23. black humor—Cuckoo’s Nest
• The use of the morbid and the
ABSURD for darkly comic
purposes in modern literature.
The term refers as much to the
tone of anger and bitterness as it
does to the grotesque and morbid
situations, which often deal with
suffering, anxiety, and death.
23. black humor
Kurt Vonnegut
24. canon
• In a figurative sense, a standard
of judgment; a criterion.
• In a literal sense, the absolute
best—the “hall of fame”—as
determined by the qualified
readership.
24. canon
Harold
Bloom
25. catharsis
• In the Poetics Aristotle, in
defining TRAGEDY. Sees it
objective as being “through pity
and fear effecting the proper
purgation [catharsis]of these
emotions,”…
25. catharsis
• …but he does not explain what
“proper purgation” means.
Whatever Aristotle means
thereby, catharsis remains one
of the great unsettled issues.
25. catharsis
Irene Jacob
in Othello
“To provoke dreams of terror
in the slumber of prosperity
has become the moral duty of
literature.”
-Ernst Fischer
26. character
• It is a brief descriptive
SKETCH of a personage who
typifies dome definite quality.
26. character
Lennie Small
Don Quixote
27. cliché
• From the French word for
stereotype plate; a block for
printing. Hence, any expression
so often used that its freshness
and clarity have worn off is
called a cliché, a stereotyped
form.
27. cliché
Jerry Seinfeld
George W. Bush
28. climax
• A rhetorical term for a rising
order of importance in the ideas
expressed, Such an arrangement
is called climatic, and the item
of greatest importance is called
the climax.
28. climax
H.G. Wells
29. collage
• In the pictorial arts the
technique by which materials
not usually associated with one
another, such as newspaper
clippings, labels, cloth, wood ,
bottle tops, or theater tickets,
are assembled and pasted
together on a single surface.
29. collage
Edgar Allan Poe
confidant
• a close friend or associate to
whom secrets are confided or
with whom private matters
and problems are discussed
–could be the reader, if narrator
offers exclusive information
30. conflict
• The struggle that grows out of
the interplay of two opposing
forces. Conflict provides
interest suspense, and tension.
30. conflict
• 1.) a struggle against nature
2.) a struggle against another
person, usually the
ANTAGONIST
3.) a struggle against society
4.) a struggle for mastery by
two elements within the person
30. conflict
William
Faulkner
“In an incarcerate society, free
literature can exist only as
denunciation and hope.”
-Eduardo Galeano
31. consonance
• The relation between words in
which the final consonants in
the stressed syllables agree but
the vowels that precede them
differ, as “add-read,” “millball,” and “torn-burn.”
31. consonance
John Milton
T.S. Eliot
32. couplet
• Two consecutive lines of
VERSE with END RHYMES.
32. couplet
T.S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
33. denouement
• Literally, “unknotting.” The
final unraveling of a plot; the
solution of a mystery; an
explanation or outcome.
• Denouement is sometimes used
as a synonym for FALLING
ACTION.
33. denouement
Scooby-Doo Stories
34. dialogue
• Conversation of two or more people.
Embodies certain values
1.)advances the action and is not mere
ornament
2.)consistent with the character of the
speakers.
34. dialogue
• 3.)gives impression of naturalness
without being verbatim record
4.)presents the interplay of ideas and
personalities
5.)varies according to the various
speakers
6.)serves to give relief from passages
34. dialogue
Ernest Hemingway
James Thurber
35. diction
• Choice and use of words in
speech or writing.
35. diction
Shirley
Jackson
“Literature decays only as
men become more and more
corrupt.”
-Goethe
36. didactic novel
• Any novel plainly designed to
teach a lesson, it is properly
used as a synonym for the
EDUCATION NOVEL.
36. didactic novel
The Jungle
Upton
Sinclair
37. dime novel
• A cheaply printed, paperbound
TALE of adventure or
detection, or originally selling
for a bout ten cents; an
American equivalent of the
British PENNY DREADFUL.
37. dime novel
Malaeska
38. discourse
• Mode or category of expression,
in grammar, we speak of
discourse as direct or indirect.
Discourse refers to ways of
speaking that are bound by…
38. discourse
• …ideological, professional,
political, cultural, or sociological
communities. Way in which the
use of language in a particular
domain helps to constitute the
objects it refers to.
38. discourse
Sandra Looney
Augustana
John Dudley USD
39. dynamic character
• A character who develops or
changes as a result of the actions of
the plot.
• Eliza Doolittle, Pip, Marguerite
Johnson, Pi Patel, Esperanza
Cordero…
39. dynamic character
Sandra Cisneros
Don Quixote
40. dystopia
• Literally, “bad place.” the term
is applied to accounts of
imaginary worlds, usually in the
futre, in which present
tendencies are carried ou to
their intensely unpleasant
culminations. (George Orwell’s
1984, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The
Dispossessed)
40. dystopia
George
Orwell’s
1984
“It takes a great deal of history
to produce a little literature.”
-Henry James
41. elegy
• A sustained and formal poem
setting forth meditations on death
or another solemn theme. The
meditation often is occasioned by
the death of a particular person,
but it may be generalized
observation or the expression of a
solemn mood.
41. elegy
Oleg
Liubkivsky
The Elegy
of Far
Autumn,
1992
42. ellipsis
• The omission of one or more
words that, while essential to a
grammatic structure, are easily
supplied.
• (…) only three periods!
43. epic
• A long narrative poem in elevated
style presenting characters of high
position in adventures forming and
organic whole through their relation
to a central heroic figure and through
their development of episodes
important to the history of a nation or
race. The epic itself is the product of
a single genius.
43. epic (cont.)
(1) The hero is of imposing nature
(2) The setting is vast
(3) The action consists of deeds of
valor or superhuman courage
(4) The supernatural
(5) A style of sustained elevation
(6) The poet retains a measure of
objectivity
43. epic
Odysseus
Trojan Horse
44. epiphany
• Literally a manifestation or
showing-forth, usually of some
divine being. The Christian
festival of Epiphany
commemorates the
manifestation of Christ to the
Gentiles in the form of the
Magi.
45. euphemism
• A device in which indirectness
replaces directness of statement,
usually in an effort to avoid
offensiveness.
45. euphemism
husky
big-boned
hefty
portly
plump
fluffy
“National literature begins
with fables and ends with
novels.”
-Joseph Joubert
46. exposition (as in a story’s plot)
• Its purpose is to explain
something. Identification,
definition, classification,
illustration, comparison, and
analysis.
46. exposition (as in a story’s plot)
Harry Potter
47. Expressionism
• A movement affecting painting
and literature, which followed
and went beyond
IMPRESSIONISM in its efforts
to “objectify inner experience.”
Expressionism was strongest in
theater in the 1920s,…
47. Expressionism (cont.)
• …and its entry into other literary
forms was probably though the
stage. In the novel the
presentation of the objective
outer world as it expresses itself
in the impressions or moods of a
character is widely used device.
47. Expressionism (cont.)
• The ANTIREALISTIC NOVEL
is also a genre in the
expressionistic tradition. More
recent novelists, such as Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr., Thomas Pynchon,
Joseph Heller, and Ken Kesey, ca
also be included in the
expressionistic tradition.
47. Expressionism
“The Muse”
“Lady and Her Cat”
Millie Shapiro
Jeff Buckley
48. falling action
• The second half or RESOLUTION
of a dramatic plot. It follows the
CLIMAX, beginning often with a
tragic force, exhibits the failing
fortunes of the hero (in a tragedy)
and the successful efforts in the
COUNTERPLAYERS, and
culminates in the CATASTROPHE.
48. falling action
flat character
• a literary character whose
personality can be defined by
one or two traits and does not
change in the course of the
story
foil
• A foil character is either one who
is opposite to the main character or
nearly the same as the main
character. The purpose of the foil
character is to emphasize the traits
of the main character by contrast
only. A foil is a secondary
character who contrasts with a
major character.
49. foot (as in poetry)
• The unit of rhythm in verse,
whether QUANTITATIVE or
ACCENTUAL-SYLLABIC.
49. foot (as in poetry)
William
Blake
50. foreshadowing
• The presentation of material in
a work in such a way that later
events are prepared for.
Foreshadowing can result form
the establishment of a mood or
atmosphere, as in the opening
of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
or the first act of Hamlet.
50. foreshadowing (cont.)
• It can result from the appearance of
physical objects or facts, as do the
clues do in a detective story, or from
the revelation of a fundamental and
decisive character trait. In all cases,
the purpose of foreshadowing is to
prepare the reader or viewer for action
to come.
50. foreshadowing
Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest
Maya Angelou’s
Caged Bird Sings
50. foreshadowing
“Literature is a form of
permanent insurrection. Its
mission is to arouse, to disturb,
to alarm, to keep men in a
constant state of dissatisfaction
with themselves.”
-Mario Vargas Llosa
51. history play (as in
Shakespeare)
• Strictly speaking, any drama
whose time setting is in some
period earlier than that in which
it is written. It is most widely
used, however, as a synonym
for CHRONICLE PLAY.
51. history play (as in
Shakespeare)
King John
52. hubris
overweening pride or insolence that
results in the misfortune of the
PROTAGONIST of a tragedy. Hubris
leads the protagonist to break a moral
law, attempt vainly to transcend
normal limitations, or ignore a divine
warning with calamitous results.
•
52. hubris
Poseidon
53. hyperbole
• Exaggeration. The figure may
be used to heighten effect or it
may be used for humor.
53. hyperbole
Kurt Vonnegut
54. iamb (as in poetry)
• A foot consisting of an
unaccented syllable and an
accented ( ˘ ́ ). The most
common rhythm in English
verse.
54. iamb (as in poetry)
Shakespeare
55. idiom
• A use of words peculiar to a given
language; an expression that cannot
be translated literally. “To carry
out” literally means to carry
something out (of a room perhaps),
but idiomatically it means to see that
something is done, as to “carry out a
command.”
55. idiom
James
Thurber
“Literature is mostly about
having sex and not much
about having children. Life is
the other way around.”
-David Lodge
56. imagery
• Imagery in its literal sense
means the collection of
IMAGES in a literary work. In
another sense it is synonymous
with TROPE or FIGURE OF
SPEECH.
56. imagery
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
57. Imagism
• The objectives of Imagist are:
• 1.) to use the language of common
speech but to employ always the
exact word—not the nearly exact
word;
• 2.) to avoid the cliché;
• 3.) to create new rhythms as the
expressions of a new MOOD;
57. Imagism (cont.)
• 4.) to allow absolute freedom in
the choice of subject;
• 5.) to present an image (that is, to
be concrete, firm, definite in their
pictures—harsh in outline);
• 6.) to strive always for
concentration;
• 7.) to suggest rather than offer
complete statements
57. Imagism (cont.)
Jack Kerouac
On the Road
William Carlos Williams
Selected Poetry
58. Impressionism
• A highly personal manner of
writing in which the author
presents materials as they appear to
an individual temperament at a
precise moment and from a
particular vantage point rather than
as they are presumed to be in
actuality.
58. Impressionism
“Ninfee
Bianche”
Claude
Monet
1899
59. in medias res
• A term from Horace, literally
meaning “in the midst of things.”
it is applied to the literary
technique of opening a story in the
middle of the action and then
supplying information about the
beginning of the action through
flashbacks and other devices for
exposition.
59. in medias res
60. internal rhyme (as in poetry)
• Rhyme that occurs at some
place before the last syllables in
a line. In the opening line of
Eliot’s “Gerontion”—”Here I
am, an old man in a dry
month”—there is internal
rhyme between “am” and
“man” and between “I” and
“dry.”
60. internal rhyme (as in poetry)
Li-Young Lee
“A great literature is
…chiefly the product of
doubting and inquiring
minds in revolt against the
immoveable certainties of
the nation.”
-H.L. Mencken
61. irony
• A broad term referring to the
recognition of reality different
from appearance. Verbal irony
is a FIGURE OF SPEECH in
which the actually intent is
expressed in words that carry
the opposite meaning.
61. irony
62. Künstlerroman
• A form of the APPRENCESHIP
NOVEL in which the protagonist
is an artist struggling from
childhood to maturity toward an
understanding of his or her creative
mission. The most famous
Künstlerroman in English is James
Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man.
62. Künstlerroman
Chaim Potok
63. limerick
• A form of light verse that
follows a definite pattern: five
anapestic lines of which the
first,second, and fifth,
consisting of three feet, rhyme;
and the third and fourth lines,
consisting of two feet, rhyme.
63. limerick
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who kept all of his cash in a bucket,
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.
64. masque
• In medieval Europe there
existed, partly as survivals or
adaptations of ancient pagan
seasonal ceremonies, species of
games or SPECTACLES
characterized by a procession of
masked figures.
64. masque
Romeo and Juliet
Edgar Allan Poe
65. maxim
• A concise statement, usually
drawn from experience and
inculcating some practical
advice; an ADAGE. Hoyle’s
“When in doubt, win the trick”
is a maxim in bridge.
65. maxim
“Ask not
what your
country can
do for you—
…ask what
you can do
for your
country.”
John F. Kennedy
“Literature is doomed if liberty
of thought perishes.”
-George Orwell
66. memoir
• A form of autobiographical
writing dealing usually with the
recollections of one who has
been a part of or has witnessed
significant events. Memoirs
differ from AUTOBIOGRAPHY
proper in that they are usually…
66. memoir
• …concerned with personalities
and actions other than those of
the writer, whereas
autobiography stresses the inner
and private life of its subject.
66. memoir
James Frey,
A Million
Little Pieces
67. metaphysical
• Although sometimes used in the
broad sense of philosophical
poetry, the term is commonly
applied to the work of the
seventeenth-century writers
called the “Metaphysical
Poets.”
67. metaphysical
• They formed a school in the
sense of employing similar
methods and of revolting
against the conventions of
Elizabethan love poetry, in
particular the PETRARCHAN
CONCEIT.
67. metaphysical
John Donne
68. meter (as in poetry)
• The recurrence in poetry of a
rhythmic pattern, or the
RHYTHM established by the
regular occurrence of similar
units of sound. The four basic
kinds of rhythmic patters are:
68. meter (as in poetry) (cont.)
1.)
2.)
3.)
4.)
QUANTITIVE
accentual
syllabic
accentual-syllabic
68. meter (as in poetry)
69. motif
• A simple element that serves as a
basis for expanded narrative; or,
less strictly, a conventional
situation, device, interest, or
incident. In literature, recurrent
images, words, objects, phrases,
or actions that tend to unify the
work are called motives.
69. motif (cont.)
• Patterns of day and night,
blonde and brunette, summer
and winter, north and south,
white and black; and the
game of chess.
• In books, recurring themes,
images, ideas, characters, etc.
69. motif
Cervantes
Don Quixote
70. mood
• In literary work the mood is the
emotional-intellectual attitude
of the author toward the subject.
70. mood
“Literature is both my joy and
my comfort: it can add to
every happiness and there is
no sorrow it cannot console.”
-Pliny the Younger
71. muses
• Nine goddesses represented as
presiding over the various
departments of art and science.
They are the daughters of Zeus
and Mnemosyne. In literature,
their traditional significance I
that of inspiring and helping
poets.
71. Muses
(1)Calliope (epic) (6)Polyhymnia
(sacred choric
(2)Clio (history)
poetry)
(3)Erato (lyrics and
(7)Terpischore
love poetry)
(choral dance
(4)Euterpe (music) and song)
(5)Melpomene
(8)Thalia (comedy)
(tragedy)
(9)Urania
(astronomy)
71. Muses
http://shekinah.elysiumgates.com/muse/muses.jpg
72. Naturalism
• A term best reserved for a literary
movement in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. It
draws its name from its basic
assumption that everything real
exists in NATURE, and…
72. Naturalism (cont.)
• …conceived as the world of
objects, actions, and forces that
yield their secrets to objective
scientific inquiry. Naturalism is a
response to the revolution in
thought that science has produced.
From Freud it gains a vielw of the
determinism of the iner and
subconscious self.
72. Naturalism (cont.)
• Naturalist ic worlks tend to
emphasize either a biological or
socioeconomic determinism.
Pessimistic about human
capabilities– life is a vicious trap;
frank in portrayal of humans and
animals being driven by
fundamental urges—fear, hunger,
and sex.
72. Naturalism
Stephen Crane
73. Nobel prize
• The Swedish chemist and
engineer Alfred Bernhard Nobel
willed the income from
practically his entire estate for
the establishment of annual in
the literature and other fields.
73. Nobel prize (cont.)
• Originally, the literature prize was
to go to the person who had
produced during the year the most
eminent piece of work in the field
of idealistic literature; in practice,
however, the prize rewards
recipient’s total career, and some of
the literature is not notably
idealistic.
73. Nobel prize
Ernest
Hemingway
1954
T.S. Eliot
1948
William
Golding
1983
74. noir
• An adjective taken over from
the phrase FILM NOIR to apply
to any work, especially one
involving crime, that is notably
dark, brooding cynical,
complex, and pessimistic.
74. noir
http://www.slushpile.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/irish%20noir.jpg
75. novel (and nonfiction novel)
• Novel is used in its broadest sense to
designate any extended fictional
narrative almost always in prose.
• Nonfiction Novel is a classification
offered by Truman Capote for his in
Cold Blood,…
75. novel (and nonfiction novel)
• …when which a historical event
is described in a way that
exploits some of the devices of
fiction, including an nonlinear
time sequence and access to
inner states of mind and feeling
not commonly present in
historical writing.
75. novel (and nonfiction novel)
J.D. Salinger
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“Great literature is simply
language charged with
meaning to the utmost possible
degree.”
-Ezra Pound
76. novella
• A short tale or short story, a
book of 50-100 pages; longer
than a short story, but not as
long or involved as a NOVEL.
76. novella
77. ode
• A single, unified strain of
exalted lyrical verse, directed to
a single purpose, and dealing
with one theme.
77. ode
John Keats
78. Oedipus Complex
• In psychoanalysis a libidinal feeling
that develops in a child, especially a
male child, between the ages of
three and six, for the parent of the
opposite sex. This attachment is
generally accompanied by hostility
to the parent of the child’s own sex.
78. Oedipus Complex (cont.)
Oedipus & the
Sphinx
79. omniscient point of view
• The POINT OF VIEW in a work of
fiction in which the narrator is
capable of knowing, seeing, and
telling all. It is characterized by
freedom in the shifting from the
exterior world to the inner selves of
a number of…
79. omniscient point of view
• …characters. A freedom in
movement in both time and
place, and freedom of the
narrator to comment on the
meaning of actions.
79. omniscient point of view
George Orwell’s
1984
Joseph Stalin
79. omniscient point of view
79. omniscient point of view
79. omniscient point of view
“To my mind that literature is
best and most enduring which
is characterized by a noble
simplicity.”
-Mark Twain
80. onomatopoeia
• Words that by their sound
suggest their meaning: “hiss,”
“buzz,” “whirr,” “sizzle.”
80. onomatopoeia
81. oxymoron
• A self-contradictory
combination of worlds or
smaller verbal units.
“Oxymoron” itself is an
oxymoron, from the Greek
meaning “sharp-dull.”
81. oxymoron
82. palindrome
• Writing that reads the same for
left to right and from right to
left, such as the word “civic” or
the statement attributed to
Napoleon, “Able was I ere I
saw Elba.”
82. palindrome
82. palindrome
Racecar
I did roll--or did I?
Hannah
Poop
83. parallelism
• Such an arrangement that one
element of equal importance
with another is similarly
developed and phrased, the
principle of parallelism dictates
that coordinate ideas should
have coordinate presentation.
83. parallelism
84. paraphrase
• A restatement of an idea in such
a way as to retrain the meaning
while changing the diction and
form. A paraphrase is often an
amplification…
84. paraphrase
• …of the original for the purpose
of clarity, though the term is
also used for any rather general
restatement of an expression or
passage.
84. paraphrase
85. parody
• A composition imitating
another, usually serious, piece.
It is designed to ridicule a work
or its style or author.
85. parody
“Ernest: What is the difference
between literature and
journalism?
Gilbert: Oh! journalism is
unreadable, and literature is not
read.”
-Oscar Wilde
86. persona
• Literally, a mask. The term is
widely used to refer to a “second
half” created by an author and
through whom the narrative is
told….
86. persona
• …The persona can be not a
character but “an implied author”;
that is, a voice not directly the
author’s but created by the author
and through which the author
speaks.
86. persona
John
Berryman
87. personification
• A figure that endows animals,
ideas, abstractions, and animate
objects with human form; the
representing of imaginary
creatures or things as having
human personalities,
intelligence and emotions.
87. personification
88. Petrarchan Sonnet
• The ITALIAN SONNET –A
SONNET divided into an
OCTAVE rhyming abbaabba
and a SESTET rhyming cdecde.
88. Petrarchan Sonnet
Petrarch
89. plot
• Although an indispensable part of
all fiction and drama, plot is a
concept about which there has been
much disagreement. A plot,
Aristotle maintained, should have
unity:
89. plot
• …it should “imitate one action
and that a whole, the structural
union of the parts being such
that, if any one of them is
displaced or removed, the
whole will be disjointed and
disturbed.”
89. plot
90. pragmatism
• A term, first used by C.S.
Peirce in 1878, describing a
doctrine that determines value
through the test of
consequences or utility.
90. pragmatism
“Literature always anticipates
life. It does not copy it, but
molds it to its purpose.”
-Oscar Wilde
91. prelude
• A short poem, introductory in
character, prefixed to a long poem or
to a section of a long poem. Rarely,
as in the case of Wordsworth’s
famous Prelude, a poem so entitled
may itself be lengthy, although
Wordsworth’s Prelude was written as
an introduction to a much longer but
incomplete work.
91. prelude
92. prologue
• An introduction most frequently
associated with drama and
especially common in England
in the plays of Restoration and
the eighteenth century.
92. prologue
93. Prose poem
• A POEM printed as a PROSE,
with both margins justified.
93. Prose poem
94. protagonist
• The chief character in a work. The
word was originally applied to the
“first” actor in early Greek drama.
The actor was added to the
CHORUS and was its leader; …
94. protagonist
• …hence the continuing
meaning of protagonist and the
“first” or chief player. In
Greek drama AGON is contest,
the protagonist and the
ANTAGONIST, the second
most important character, are
contestants.
94. protagonist (cont.)
Batman/Spiderman
Pip from
Great Expectations
95. proverb
• A saying that briefly and memorably
expresses some recognized truth
about life; originally preserved by
oral tradition, though it may be
transmitted in written literature as
well. Proverbs may owe their appeal
to metaphor, antithesis, a play on
words, rhyme, or alliteration or
parallelism.
95. proverb
“One may recollect generally that
certain thoughts or facts are to be
found in a certain book; but without
a good index such a recollection
may hardly be more available than
that of the cabin boy,who knew
where the ship’s tea kettle was
because he saw it fall overboard.”
-Horace Binney
96. Pulitzer Prize
• Annual prizes for journalism,
literature, and music, awarded
annually since 1917 by the
School of Journalism and the
Board of Trustees of Columbia
University. The prizes are
supported by a bequest from
Joseph Pulitzer.
96. Pulitzer Prize
John Steinbeck 1940
Margaret Mitchell 1937 Grapes of Wrath
Gone with the Wind
97. quatrain
• A stanza of four lines. Robert
Frost’s “In a Disused
Graveyard” consists of four
quatrains, in iambic tetrameter,
each in a different rhyme
scheme.
97. quatrain
98. Realism
• Realism is, in the broadest
literary sense, fidelity to
actuality in its representation; a
term loosely synonymous with
VERISIMILITURD; and in this
sense it has been a significant
element in almost every school
of writing.
98. Realism
99. refrain
• One or more words repeated at
intervals in a poem, usually at
the end of a stanza. The most
regular is the use of the same
line at the close of each stanza
(as is common in BALLAD).
99. refrain
100. Renaissance
• This word, meaning “rebirth,” is
commonly applied to the period of
transition from the medieval to the
modern world in Western Europe.
100. Renaissance
Commonwealth Interregnum (16491660),
Early Tudor Age (c. 1500-1557),
Elizabethan Age (1558-1603),
Jacobean Age (1603-1625),
Caroline Age (1625-1642)
100. Renaissance
“The oldest books are only just
out to those who have not read
them.”
-Samuel Butler
101. requiem
• A chant embodying a preayer
for the repse of the dead’ a
dirge; a solemn mass beginning
as in Requiem aeternam dona
eis, Donime. In our time the
word has been broadened to
mean almost anything sad.
101. requiem
107. resolution (as in plot)
• The events following the
CLIMAX. Synonym for
FALLING ACTION.
• Shows what is resolved in the
end of a work.
107. resolution (as in plot)
102. rhyme scheme
• The pattern in which RHYME
sounds occur in a stanza.
Rhyme schemes, for the purpose
of analysis, are usually
presented by the assignment of
the same letter of the alphabet
to each similar sound in a
stanza.
102. rhyme scheme
103. rhythm (as in poetry)
• The passage of regular or
approximately equivalent time
intervals between definite
events or the recurrence of
specific sound or kinds of
sound.
103. rhythm (as in poetry)
104. rising action
• The part of a dramatic PLOT that has
to do with the COMPLICATION of
the action. It begins with the
EXCITING FORCE, gains the
interest and power as the opposing
groups come into CONFILICT (the
hero usually being in the ascendancy),
and proceeds to the CLIMAX.
104. rising action (cont.)
105. romance
• The term romance has had
special meanings as a kind of
fiction since the early years of
the novel.
105. romance
“What one knows best is…what one
has learned not from books but as a
result of books, through the
reflections to which they have given
rise.”
-Chamfort
106. Romanticism
• The freeing of the artist and writer
from restraints and rules and
suggesting that phase of individualism
marked by the encouragement of
revolutionary political ideas. The
term designates a literary and
philosophical theory…
106. Romanticism
• that tends to see the individual
at the center of all life, and it
places the individual, therefore,
at the center of art, making
literature valuable as an
expression of unique feelings
and particular attitudes.
106. Romanticism—William
Worsdworth
round character
• A round character is a major
character in a work of fiction
who encounters conflict and is
changed by it. Round characters
tend to be more fully developed
and described than flat, or
minor characters.
round character—Chief Bromden
108. satire
• A work or manner that blends a
censorious attitude with humor and
wit for improving human institutions
or humanity. In America, Eugene…
• the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or
the like, in exposing, denouncing, or
deriding vice, folly, etc.
108. satire
• O’Neill, Edith Wharton,
Sinclair Lewis, George
Kaufman and Moss Hart, John
P. Marquand, and Joseph Heller
have commented satirically on
human beings and their
institutions. Two major types:
FORMAL SATIRE and
INDIRECT SATIRE.
108. satire
109. scansion
• A system for describing
conventional rhythms by
dividing lines into FEET,
indicating the locations of
binomial ACCENTS, and
counting the syllables.
109. scansion
110. schema
• The mental connections made
in the mind—what controls
learning and behavior.
• Psychologically, that which
fascinates and compels.
110. schema (cont.)
Laurence Fishburne
from Othello
“The easiest books are
generally the best, for whatever
author is obscure and difficult
in his own language certainly
does not think clearly.”
-Lord Chesterfield
111. science fiction
• A form of fantasy in which
scientific facts, assumptions, or
hypotheses form the basis, by
logical extrapolation, of
adventures in the future, on
other planets in other
dimensions in time or space, or
under new variants of scientific
law.
111. science fiction
Alien vs. Predator
111. science fiction
Ray Bradbury
112. semantics
• The study of meaning;
sometimes limited to linguistic
meaning; and sometimes used
to discriminate between surface
and substance.
112. semantics
Michel
Foucault
113. semiotics
• The study of the rules that enable
social phenomena, considered as
SIGNS, to have meaning. When
semiotics is used in literary
criticism, it deals not with the
simple relation…
113. semiotics
• …between sign and
significance, but with literary
conventions, such as those of
prosody, genre, or received
interpretations of literary
devices at particular times.
113. semiotics
Jacques Derrida
114. Sentimentalism
• The term is used in two senses:
(1) an overindulgence in
emotion, especially the
conscious effort to induce
emotion in order to enjoy it; (2)
an optimistic overemphasis of
the goodness of humanity
(SENSIBILITY).
114. Sentimentalism
115. Shakespearean Sonnet
• The ENGLISH SONNET,
rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. It is
called the Shakespearean
sonnet because Shakespeare
was its most distinguished
practitioner.
115. Shakespearean Sonnet
“Let us answer a book of ink
with a book of flesh and blood.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
116. short story
• A short story is a relatively
brief fictional NARATIVE in
PROSE, it may range in length
from the SHORT-SHORT
STORY of 500 words up the
the “long-short story” of 12,000
to 15,000 words.
116. short story
117. sonnet
• A poem almost invariable of
fourteen lines and following
one of several set rhyme
schemes. The two basic sonnet
types are the ITALIAN or
PETRARCHAN and the
ENGLISH or
SHAKESPEAREAN.
117. sonnet
Petrarch
118. stage directions
• Material that an author, editor,
prompter, performer, or other
person adds to a text to indicate
movement, attitude, manner,
style, or quality of a speech,
character, or action. Some of
the simplest and oldest are
“enter,” “exit” or “exeunt,” and
“aside.”
118. stage directions
119. static character
• A character who changes little
if at all. Things happen to the
static characters without
modifying their interior selves.
Opposite of dynamic.
119. static character
Henry Higgins
120. stanza
• A recurrent grouping of two or
more verse lines in terms of
length, metrical form, and, often,
rhyme scheme. However, the
division into stanzas is sometimes
mad according to thought as well
as form, in which case the stanza
is a unit like a prose paragraph.
120. stanza
“I don’t like to read books; they
muss up my mind.”
-Henry Ford
121. stock character
• Conventional character types. A
high-thinking vengeanceseeking hero, disguised
romantic heroine, melancholy
man, a court fool, and a witty
clownish servant are examples.
121. stock character
• Eliot's “Gerontion” is a
gerontion—the world itself is
the name of a favorite stock
character of Greek (and later)
comedy: the geezer, codger,
“little old man.”
121. stock character
Tom
Robinson in
To Kill a
Mockingbird
122. Stream of Consciousness
• The total range of awareness
and emotive-mental response of
an individual, form the lowest
prespeech level to the highest
fully articulated level of rational
thought.
122. Stream of Consciousness
James Joyce
123. Surrealism
• A movement in art emphasizing
the expression of the
imagination as realized in
dreams and presented without
conscious control.
123. Surrealism
William
Burroughs
124. symbolism
• In its broad sense symbolism is the use
of one object to represent or suggest
another; or, in literature, the serious and
extensive use of SYMBOLS. Men =
people in world; Nurse = oppression;
Chief = oppressed peoples; McMurphy
= change, hope, awareness; Control
panel = ???; Ward = society;
Monopoly = men’s attempt to control
something
124. symbolism
125. symposium
• A Greek world meaning “a
drinking together” or banquet.
The world later came to mean
discussion by different persons
of a single topic or a collection
of speeches or essays on a given
subject.
125. symposium
“One always tends to
overpraise a long book, because
one has got through it.”
-E.M. Forster
126. synopsis
• A summary of the main points
of a composition so made as to
show the relation of parts to the
whole; an ABSTIACT. A
synopsis is usually more
connected than an outline,
because it is likely to be given
in complete sentences.
126. synopsis
127. syntax
• Syntax is the rule-governed
arrangement of worlds in
sentences. Syntax seems to be
that level of language that most
distinguishes poetry from prose.
127. syntax
128. tall tale
• A kind of humorous tale,
common on the American
frontier, that uses realistic detail
a literal manner, and common
speech to recount extravagantly
impossible happenings, usually
resulting form the superhuman
abilities of a character.
128. tall tale
Pecos Bill and Slue-Foot Sue
128. tall tale
John Henry
129. Theatre of the Absurd
• A term invented by Martin
Esslin for the kind of drama that
presents a view of the absurdity
of the human condition by
abandoning of usual or rational
devices and by the used of
nonrealistic form.
129. Theatre of the Absurd
• It expounds and existential
ideology and views its task as
essentially metaphysical. The
most widely acclaimed play of
the school is Samuel Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot (1953).
129. Theatre of the Absurd
Samuel Beckett
130. theme
• A central idea. Both theme and
thesis imply a subject and a
predicate of some kind—not
just vice in general, say, but
some such proposition as “Vice
seems more interesting than
virtue but turns out to be
destructive.”
130. theme
“All good books are alike in
that they are truer than if they
had really happened.”
-Ernest Hemingway
131. thesis
• An attitude or position on a
problem taken by a writer or
speaker with the purpose of
proving or supporting it. The
term is also used for the paper
written to support the thesis.
131. thesis
132. tone
• Tome has been used for the
attitudes toward the subject and
toward the audience implied in
literary work. Tone may be
formal, informal, intimate,
solemn, sombre, playful,
serious, ironic, condescending,
or many another possible
attitudes.
132. tone
133. tour de force
• A feat of strength and
virtuosity. Tour de force is
used in criticism to refer to
works that make outstanding
demonstrations of skill.
133. tour de force
134. tragedy
• A term with many meanings and
applications. In drama it refers to a
particular kind of play, the
definition of which was established
by Aristotle’s Poetics, in narrative,
particularly in Middle Ages, it
refers to a body of work recounting
the fall of a persons of high degree.
134. tragedy
135. tragic flaw
• The theory that there is a flaw
in the tragic hero that causes his
or her downfall. The theory
has been revised or refuted by
criticism that considers the
supposed flaw as an integral
and even defining part to the
protagonist's character.
135. tragic flaw
“I do not read a book: I hold a
conversation with the author.”
-Elbert Hubbard
136. Transcendentalism
• A reliance of the intuition and the
conscience, a form of idealism; a
philosophical ROMANTICISM
reaching America a generation or
two…
136. Transcendentalism
• …after it developed in Europe.
Transcendentalists believed in
living close to nature and taught
the dignity of manual labor and
in democracy and
individualism.
136. Transcendentalism
Thomas Cole
The Voyage of Life: Youth
1842
136. Transcendentalism
Henry David Thoreau
Ralph Waldo Emerson
137. trope
• In rhetoric a trope is a FIGURE
OF SPEECH involving a “turn”
or change of sense—the use of
a word in a sense other than the
literal; in this sense figures of
comparison as well as ironical
expressions are tropes.
137. trope
Example of irony
137. trope
Example of irony
138. utopia
• A fiction describing an
imaginary ideal world.
DYSTOPIA, meaning “bad
place,” is the term applied to
unpleasant imaginary places,
such as those in Aldous
Huxley's Brave New World and
George Orwell’s 1984.
138. utopia
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
139. verse (as in poetry)
• Used in two senses: (1) as a unit
of poetry, in which case it has
the same significance as
STANZA or LINE; and (2) as a
name given generally to
metrical composition.
139. verse (as in poetry)
Robert Lowell
Sylvia Plath
140. vignette
• A SKETCH or brief narrative
characterized by precision and
delicacy. The term is also
applied to SHORT-SHORT
STORIES less than 500 words
in length.
140. vignette
Sandra Cisneros
“Books are a narcotic.”
-Franz Kafka