A Glossary of Literary Terms
A
allegory: A story in which people, things, and events have another meaning. Examples of allegory are Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Spenr's Faerie Queene, and Orwell's Animal Farm.
alliteration: The repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginning of words. "Gnus never know pneumonia" is an example of alliteration, becau despite the spellings, all four words begin with the "n" sound.
allusion: A reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work. Lorraine Hansberry's title A Raisin in the Sun is an allusion to a phra in a poem by Langston Hughes. When T. S. Eliot writes, "To have squeezed the univer into a ball" in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," he is alluding to the lines "Let us roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball" in Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." In Hamlet, when Horatio says, "ere the mightiest Julius fell," the allusion is to the death of Julius Caesar.
ambiguity: Multiple meanings a literary work may communicate, especially two meanings that are incompatible.
apostrophe: Direct address, usually to someone or something that is not prent. Keats's "Bright star! Would I were steadfast" is an apostrophe to a star, and "To Autumn" is an apostrophe to a personified ason.
assonance: The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. "A land laid waste with all its young men slain" repeats the same "a" sound in "laid," "waste," and "slain."
attitude: A speaker's, author's, or character's disposition toward or opinion of a subject. For example, Hamlet's attitude toward Gertrude is a mixture of affection and revulsion, changing from one to the other within a single scene. Jane Austen's attitude toward Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice combines respect for his wit and intelligence with disapproval of his failure to take sufficient responsibility for the rearing of all of his daughters.
B
ballad meter: A four-line stanza rhymed abcb with four feet in lines one and three and three feet in lines two and four.
O mother, mother make my bed.
思故乡的诗句O make it soft and narrow.
Since my love died for me today,
I'll die for him tomorrow.
blank ver: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank ver is the meter of most of Shakespeare's plays, as well as that of Milton's Paradi Lost:
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell
From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements: from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve.
C
connotation: The implications of a word or phra, as oppod to its exact meaning (denotation). Both China and Cathay denote a region in Asia, but to a modern reader, the associations of the two
words are different.
convention: A device of style or subject matter so often ud that it becomes a recognized means of
expression. For example, a lover obrving the literary love conventions cannot eat or sleep and grows pale and lean. Romeo, at the beginning of the play is a conventional lover, while an overweight lover in Chaucer is consciously mocking the convention.
D
dactyl: A metrical foot of three syllables: an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables.
denotation: The dictionary meaning of a word, as oppod to connotation.
details: (also choice of details) Details are items or parts that make up a larger picture or story. Chaucer's "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales is celebrated for its u of a few details to bring the characters to life. The miller, for example, is described as being brawny and big-boned, able to win wrestling contests or to break a door with his head, and having a wart on his no on which grew a "tuft of hairs red as the bristles of a sow's ears."
devices of sound: The techniques of deploying the sound of words, especially in poetry. Among devices of sound are rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia. The devices are ud for many reasons, including creating a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, imitating another sound, or reflecting a meaning.
diction: Word choice — specifically, any word that is important to the meaning and the effect of a passage. Often veral words with a similar effect are worth noting, such as George Eliot's u in Adam Bede of "sunny afternoons," "slow waggons," and "bargains" to make the leisure of bygone days appealing. The words are also details.
didactic: Explicitly instructive. A didactic poem or novel may be good or bad. Pope's "Essay on Man" is didactic; so are the novels of Ayn Rand.
digression: The u of material unrelated to the subject of a work. The interpolated narrations in the novels of Cervantes or Fielding may be called digressions, and Tristram Shandy includes a digression on digressions.
E
elegy: A solemn, sorrowful poem or meditation about death in general or specifically for one who is dead.
end-stopped: A line with a pau at the end. Lines that end with a period, comma, colon, micolon, exclamation point, or question mark are end-stopped lines.
Enlightenment: A philosophical movement of the eighteenth century that celebrated reason — clarity of thought and statement, scientific thinking, and a person's ability to perfect onelf. Leading figures of the Enlightenment include Voltaire, Pope, Swift, and Kant.
epic: A long, narrative poem that describes the history of a nation, community, or race. The central figure is the epic hero who experiences legendary, mythical adventures where he displays extraordinary strength, courage, and moral fiber against supernatural forces. Epic poems include Beowulf, The Illiad, The Odysy, and Paradi Lost.
epigram: A pithy saying, often using contrast. The epigram is also a ver form, usually brief and pointed.
euphemism: A figure of speech using indi
rection to avoid offensive bluntness, such as "decead" for "dead" or "remains" for "corp."
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F
figurative language : Writing that us figures of speech (as oppod to literal language or that which is actual or specifically denoted) such as metaphor, simile, and irony. Figurative language us words to mean something other than their literal meaning. "The black bat night has flown" is figurative, with the metaphor comparing night and a bat. "Night is over" says the same thing without figurative language. No real bat is or has been on the scene, but night is like a bat becau it is dark.
foot: A single rhythmical unit of ver
free ver: Poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical. The poetry of Walt Whitman is perhaps the best known example of free ver.
G熟食配方
genre: The term ud to categorize art, film, music, poetry, and other literary works bad on style, content, or technique. Common literary genres include tragedy, comedy, lyric, and satire.
grotesque: Characterized by distortions or incongruities. The fiction of Poe or Flannery O'Connor is often described as grotesque.
H
heroic couplet: Two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit.
When tho fair suns shall t, as t they must,
And all tho tress shall be laid in dust,
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This lock, the Mu shall concrate to fame,
And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name.
hexameter: A line containing six feet.
hyperbole: Deliberate exaggeration, overstatement. As a rule, hyperbole is lf-conscious, without the intention of being accepted literally. "The strongest man in the world" and "a diamond as big as the Ritz" are hyperbolic.
I
iamb: A two-syllable foot with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. The iamb is the most common foot in English poetry.
imagery: The images of a literary work; the nsory details of a work; the figurative language of a work. Imagery has veral definitions, but the two that are paramount are the visual, auditory, or tactile images evoked by the words of a literary work or the images that figurative language evokes. When you are asked to discuss the images or imagery of a work, you should look especially carefully at the nsory details and the metaphors and similes of a passage. Some diction (word choice) is also imagery, but not all diction evokes nsory respons.
internal rhyme: Rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end.
"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the friends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou so?" — With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross.
Line three contains the internal rhyme of "so" and "bow."
irony: A figure of speech in which intent and actual meaning differ, characteristically prai for blame or blame for prai; a pattern of words that turns away from direct statement of its
own obvious meaning. The term irony implies a discrepancy. In verbal irony (saying the opposite of what one means), the discrepancy is between statement and meaning. Sometimes, irony may simply understate, as in "Men have died from time to time . . ." when Mr. Bennet, who loathes Wickham, says he is perhaps his "favorite" son-in-law, he is using irony.
J
jargon: The special language of a profession or group. The term jargon usually has pejorative associations, with the implication that jargon is evasive, tedious, and unintelligible to outsiders. The writings of the lawyer and the literary critic are both susceptible to jargon.
L
lament: A poem that express grief, not necessarily about death
literal: Not figurative; accurate to the letter; matter of fact or concrete.
lyrical: Songlike; characterized by emotion, subjectivity, and imagination.
M
metaphor: A figurative u of language in which a comparison is expresd without the u of a comparative term like "as," "like," or "than." A simile would say, "Night is like a black bat;" a metaphor would say, "the black bat night." When Romeo says, "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun," his metaphors compare her window to the east and Juliet to the sun.
meter: The pattern of repetition of stresd (or accented) and unstresd (or unaccented)syllables in a line of ver. Lines of ver that connect one or more feet.
motif: An element that rves as a theme, which is developed further and recurs throughout the work. This element can be an event, color, situation, object, tting, or character type. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, for example, motifs include sleep/sleeplessness, the weather, and blood.
N
narrative techniques: The methods involved in telling a story; the procedures ud by a writer of stories or accounts. Narrative technique is a general term (like "devices," or "resources of language")
that asks you to discuss the procedures ud in the telling of a story. Examples of the techniques you might u are point of view, manipulation of time, dialogue, or interior monologue.
O
omniscient point of view: The vantage point of a story in which the narrator can know, e, and report whatever he or she choos. The narrator is free to describe the thoughts of any of the characters, to skip about in time or place, or to speak directly to the reader. Most of the novels of Austen, Dickens, or Hardy employ the omniscient point of view.
onomatopoeia: The u of words who sound suggests their meaning. Examples are "buzz," "hiss," or "honk."
oxymoron: A combination of opposites; the union of contradictory terms. Romeo's line "feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health" has four examples of the device.
P
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parable: A story designed to suggest a principle, illustrate a moral, or answer a question. Parables are allegorical stories.
paradox: A statement that ems to be lf-contradicting but, in fact, is true. The figure in Donne's holy sonnet th
at concludes I never shall be "chaste except you ravish me" is a good example of the device.
parody: A composition that imitates the style of another composition normally for comic effect. Fielding's Shamela is a parody of Richardson's Pamela. A contest for parodies of Hemingway draws hundreds of entries each year.
富含哲理的诗句pentameter: A line containing five feet. The iambic pentameter is the most common line in English ver written before 1950.
窗花的剪法
personification: A figurative u of language that endows the nonhuman (ideas, inanimate objects, animals, abstractions) with human characteristics. Keats personifies the nightingale, the Grecian urn, and autumn in his major poems.
poetry: A form of expressive writing that us rhythm, meaning, and sound to convey the writer's experience and perceptions.
point of view: Any of veral possible vantage points from which a story is told. The point of view ma
灰姑娘歌词y be omniscient, limited to that of a single character, or limited to that of veral characters. And there are other possibilities. The teller may u the first person (as in Great Expectations or Wuthering Heights) or the third person (as in The Mayor of Casterbridge or A Tale of Two Cities). Faulkner's As I Lay Dying us the point of view of all the members of the Bundren family and others as well in the first person, while in Wuthering Heights, Mr. Lockwood tells us the story that Nelly Dean tells him, a first-person narration reported by a cond first-person narrator.
pro: Ordinary language that is written or spoken. Pro differs from poetry in that it has a variety of rhythms and reflects the patterns of everyday speech. Pro isn't divided into vers or stanzas.
R
reliability: A quality of some fictional narrators who word the reader can trust. There are both reliable and unreliable narrators, that is, tellers of a story who should or should not be trusted. Most narrators are reliable (Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway, Conrad's Marlow), but some are clearly not to be trusted (Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart," veral novels by Nabokov). And there are some about whom readers have been unable to decide (James's governess in The Turn of the Screw, Ford's The Good Soldier).
resources of language: A general phra for the linguistic devices or techniques that a writer can u. A question calling for the "resources of language" invites a student to discuss the style and rhetoric of a passage. Such topics as diction, syntax, figurative language, and imagery are all examples of resources of language.
rhetorical question: A question asked for effect, not in expectation of a reply. No reply is expected becau the question presuppos only one possible answer. The lover of Suckling's "Shall I wasting in despair / Die becau a lady's fair?" has already decided the answer is no.
rhetorical strategy: See strategy
rhetorical techniques: The devices ud in effective or persuasive language. The number of rhetorical techniques, like that of
the resources of language, is long and runs from apostrophe to zeugma. The more common examples include devices like contrast, repetitions, paradox, understatement, sarcasm, and rhetorical question.
rhyme royal: A ven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, ud by Chaucer and other medieval poets.
S
satire: Writing that eks to arou a reader's disapproval of an object by ridicule. Satire is usually comedy that expos errors with an eye to correct vice and folly. A classical form, satire is found in the ver of Alexander Pope or Samuel Johnson, the plays of Ben Jonson or Bernard Shaw, and the novels of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, or Joph Heller.
scansion: The act of scanning (or analyzing) a line of ver bad on feet and accent (strong and weak).
nsibility: An eighteenth century approach to truth that relied on one's feelings — not on reason. Jane Austen's Sen and Sensibility illustrates the opposing approaches two sisters take when it comes to love: Should you love someone bad on just your feelings, or does good n or reason play a role too?
tting: The background to a story; the physical location of a play, story, or novel. The tting of a narrative will normally involve both time and place. The tting of A Tale of Two Cities is London and Paris at the time of the French revolution, but the tting of Waiting for Godot is impossible to pin down specifically.
simile: A directly expresd comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with "like," "as," or "than." It is easier to recognize a simile that a metaphor becau the comparison is explicit: my love is like a fever; my love is deeper than a well; my love is as dead as a doornail. The plural of "simile" is "similes," not "similies."
soliloquy: A speech in which a character who is alone speaks his or her thoughts aloud. A monologue also has a single speaker, but the monologuist speaks to others who do not interrupt. Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" and "O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I" are soliloquies. Browning's "My Last Duchess" and "Fra Lippo Lippi" are monologues, but the hypocritical monk of his "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" cannot reveal his thoughts to others.
sonnet: Normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian, or Petrachan, sonnet is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg.
stanza: Usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.
stereotype: A conventional pattern, expression, character, or idea. In literature, a stereotype could apply to the unvarying plot and characters of some works of fiction (tho of Barbara Cartland, for ex
ample) or to the stock characters and plots of many of the greatest stage comedies.
strategy (or rhetorical strategy): The management of language for a specific effect. The strategy or rhetorical strategy of a poem is the planned placi
