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Mid term Exam Intro to lit
Glossary Terms with definitions.
112
Literature
Undergraduate 2
03/03/2009

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Term
Allegory
Definition
A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities.
Term
Alliteration
Definition
The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood."
Term
Anapest
Definition
Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE
Term
Antagonist
Definition
A character or force against which another character struggles.
Term
Aside
Definition
Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play.
Term
Assonance
Definition
The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe."
Term
Aubade
Definition
A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover.
Term
Ballad
Definition
A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style.
Term
Blank verse
Definition
A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Term
Caesura
Definition
A strong pause within a line of verse. EX Off-hand-like--just as I--
Term
Catastrophe
Definition
The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play.
Term
Catharsis
Definition
The purging of the feelings of pity and fear that the audience experiences at the end of the play, following the catastrophe.
Term
Character
Definition
An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change).
Term
Characterization
Definition
The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions.
Term
Chorus
Definition
A group of characters in Greek tragedy (and in later forms of drama), who comment on the action of a play without participation in it. Their leader is the choragos.
Term
Climax
Definition
The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work.
Term
Closed form
Definition
A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern.
Term
Comedy
Definition
A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better. In comedy, things work out happily in the end. Comic drama may be either romantic or satiric.
Term
Comic relief
Definition
The use of a comic scene to interrupt a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments. The comedy of scenes offering comic relief typically parallels the tragic action that the scenes interrupt.
Term
Complication
Definition
An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work.
Term
Conflict
Definition
A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters.
Term
Connotation
Definition
The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation.
Term
Convention
Definition
A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. Literary conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ballad, sonnet, and play.
Term
Couplet
Definition
A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem.
Term
Dactyl
Definition
A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry.
Term
Denotation
Definition
The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications.
Term
Denouement
Definition
The resolution of the plot of a literary work. The denouement of Hamlet takes place after the catastrophe, with the stage littered with corpses.
Term
Deus ex machina
Definition
A god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention. The Latin phrase means, literally, "a god from the machine." The phrase refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play.
Term
Dialogue
Definition
The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.
Term
Diction
Definition
The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values.
Term
Dramatic monologue
Definition
A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener. As readers, we overhear the speaker in a dramatic monologue. Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess"
Term
Dramatis personae
Definition
Latin for the characters or persons in a play.
Term
Elegy
Definition
A lyric poem that laments the dead.
Term
Elision
Definition
The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry. Alexander uses elision in "Sound and Sense": "Flies o'er th' unbending corn...."
Term
Enjambment
Definition
A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line.
Term
Epic
Definition
A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values.
Term
Epigram
Definition
A brief witty poem, often satirical.I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Term
Exposition
Definition
The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided.
Term
Fable
Definition
A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. Fables typically include animals as characters.
Term
Falling action
Definition
In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution.
Term
Falling meter
Definition
Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable.
Term
Fiction
Definition
An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. may be based on actual historical individuals.
Term
Figurative language
Definition
A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole.
Term
Flashback
Definition
An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human time.
Term
Foil
Definition
A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story.
Term
Foot
Definition
A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one.
Term
Foreshadowing
Definition
Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story.
Term
Fourth wall
Definition
The imaginary wall of the box theater setting, supposedly removed to allow the audience to see the action.
Term
Free verse
Definition
Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad.
Term
Gesture
Definition
The physical movement of a character during a play. Gesture is used to reveal character, and may include facial expressions as well as movements of other parts of an actor's body.
Term
Hyperbole
Definition
A figure of speech involving exaggeration.
Term
Iamb
Definition
An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in to-DAY. See Foot.
Term
Image
Definition
A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot.
Term
Imagery
Definition
The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work.
Term
Irony
Definition
A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs. In dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters.
Term
Literal language
Definition
A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. See Figurative language, Denotation, and Connotation.
Term
Lyric poem
Definition
A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics.
Term
Metaphor
Definition
A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is "My love is a red, red rose,"
Term
Meter
Definition
The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems. See Foot and Iamb.
Term
Metonymy
Definition
A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." See Synecdoche.
Term
Monologue
Definition
A speech by a single character without another character's response. See Dramatic monologue and Soliloquy.
Term
Narrative poem
Definition
A poem that tells a story. See Ballad.
Term
Narrator
Definition
The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author.
Term
Octave
Definition
An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet.
Term
Ode
Definition
A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject but sometimes a more lighthearted work.
Term
Onomatopoeia
Definition
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic.
Term
Open form
Definition
A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure.
Term
Parable
Definition
A brief story that teaches a lesson often ethical or spiritual. Examples include "The Prodigal Son,"
Term
Parody
Definition
A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation.
Term
Pathos
Definition
A quality of a play's action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character. Pathos is always an aspect of tragedy, and may be present in comedy as well.
Term
Personification
Definition
The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze."
Term
Plot
Definition
The unified structure of incidents in a literary work. See Conflict, Climax, Denouement, andFlashback.
Term
Point of view
Definition
The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can be: first person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which the narrator knows everything about the characters; and limited omniscient, which allows the narrator to know some things about the characters but not everything.
Term
Props
Definition
Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play.
Term
Protagonist
Definition
The main character of a literary work
Term
Pyrrhic
Definition
A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables ("of the").
Term
Quatrain
Definition
A four-line stanza in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet.
Term
Recognition
Definition
The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is.
Term
Resolution
Definition
The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story. See Plot.
Term
Reversal
Definition
The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist.
Term
Rhyme
Definition
The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words.
Term
Rhythm
Definition
The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse.
Term
Rising action
Definition
A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax. See Climax, Denouement, and Plot.
Term
Rising meter
Definition
Poetic meters such as iambic and anapestic that move or ascend from an unstressed to a stressed syllable. See Anapest, Iamb, and Falling meter.
Term
Satire
Definition
A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies.
Term
Sestet
Definition
A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an Italian sonnet.
Term
Sestina
Definition
A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line.
Term
Setting
Definition
The time and place of a literary work that establish its context.
Term
Simile
Definition
A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose."
Term
Soliloquy
Definition
A speech in a play that is meant to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on the stage. If there are no other characters present, the soliloquy represents the character thinking aloud.
Term
Sonnet
Definition
A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean or English sonnet is arranged as three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming abba abba cde cde or abba abba cd cd cd.
Term
Spondee
Definition
A metrical foot represented by two stressed syllables, such as KNICK-KNACK.
Term
Stage direction
Definition
A playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play.
Term
Staging
Definition
The spectacle a play presents in performance, including the position of actors on stage, the scenic background, the props and costumes, and the lighting and sound effects.
Term
Stanza
Definition
A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another.
Term
Style
Definition
The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques.
Term
Subject
Definition
What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme.
Term
Subplot
Definition
A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot.
Term
Symbol
Definition
An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself.
Term
Synecdoche
Definition
A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand." See Metonymy.
Term
Syntax
Definition
The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted:

"Whose woods these are I think I know."
Term
Tale
Definition
A story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without detailed descriptions of character.
Term
Tercet
Definition
A three-line stanza
Term
Theme
Definition
The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization.
Term
Tone
Definition
The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example, Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony.
Term
Tragedy
Definition
A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the worse. In tragedy, catastrophe and suffering await many of the characters, especially the hero.
Term
Tragic flaw
Definition
A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero. Othello's jealousy and too trusting nature is one example. See Tragedy and Tragic hero.
Term
Tragic hero
Definition
A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and fate, suffers a fall from glory into suffering. Sophocles' Oedipus is an example. See Tragedy and Tragic flaw.
Term
Trochee
Definition
An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in FOOT-ball.
Term
Understatement
Definition
A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration.
Term
Unities
Definition
The idea that a play should be limited to a specific time, place, and story line. The events of the plot should occur within a twenty-four hour period, should occur within a give geographic locale, and should tell a single story.
Term
Villanelle
Definition
A nineteen-line lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition. The first and third lines alternate throughout the poem, which is structured in six stanzas --five tercets and a concluding quatrain.
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