Analogy
What is it?
Examples
Some people
live their lives like a sheet of scrapped paper blown along a windy street;
they are carried this way and that with no apparent effort or ability to
control their direction.
Answer
A longer, more
detailed comparison of two ideas or situations.
Allegory
What is it?
Examples
John Bunyan's
"Pilgrim's Progress", a prose narrative, is an allegory of man's
spiritual salvation.
Herbert
Spenser's poem "The Faerie Queene", besides being a chivalric
romance, is a commentary on morals and manners in 16th-century England as well
as a national epic.
Answer
A story that
is told to explain or teach something, especially a long and complicated story
with an underlying meaning different from the surface meaning of the story
itself. The parables in the Bible are allegories.
Alliteration
What is it?
Examples
The cold,
clammy hands grasped my neck.
The bloody
watchman told a tale of trouble and torture.
Answer
The same sound
starts a series of words or syllables.
Allusion
What is it?
Examples
Was the ticking package, gaily wrapped with ribbon and bright paper, a
Trojan gift?
Casual and confident, the West High team started the game that was to
prove their Waterloo.
Answer
A reference to a famous person or event in life or literature.
Anaphora
What is it?
Examples
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as [a] moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England
- John of Gaunt in Shakespeare's Richard II (2.1.40-51; 57-60)
Answer
Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of
successive clauses, sentences, or lines.
Anastrophe
What is it?
Examples
The verb before the subject-noun (normal syntax follows the order
subject-noun, verb):
Glistens the dew upon the
morning grass. (Normally: The dew glistens upon the morning grass)
The object preceding its verb (normal syntax is verb followed by its
object):
Troubles, everybody's got.
(Normally: Everybody's got troubles)
Adjective following the noun it modifies (normal syntax is adjective,
noun):
She looked at the sky dark and
menacing. (Normally: She looked at the dark and menacing sky)
Preposition following the object of the preposition (normal syntax is
preposition, object ["upon our lives"]):
It only stands / Our lives
upon, to use Our strongest hands
- Shakespeare, Antony and
Cleopatra 2.1.50-51
Answer
Departure from normal word order for the sake of emphasis. The
changing of the position of only a single word.
Aposiopesis
What is it?
Examples
O judgment! thou art fled
to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their
reason. Bear with me,
My heart is in the coffin
there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it
come back to me.
- Shakespeare, Julius
Caesar 3.2.104-107
"Whom I... but I
cannot go on."
Answer
Breaking off suddenly in
the middle of speaking, usually to portray being overcome with emotion.
Apostrophe
What is it?
Examples
O maiores, quid diceretis
de hac re?
Oh ancestors, what would
you say about this matter?
Antony addresses Caesar's
corpse immediately following the assassination in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these
butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 3.1.254-257
Answer
Turning from one audience
to another. Most often, apostrophe occurs when addressing an abstraction, an
inanimate object, or to the absent.
Asyndeton
What is it?
Examples
"Check this out. So
you meet this person. Boy, are they fine, kind, sensitive, loving, witty,
charming, intelligent...." -
Stevie Wonder
Be one of the few, the
proud, the Marines. - Marine Corps
Advertisement
"When we listen to
the better angels of our nature, we find that they celebrate the simple things,
the basic things -- such as goodness, decency, love, kindness." - Richard Nixon, Inaugural Address
Answer
Figure of omission in
which normally occurring conjunctions (and, or, but, for, nor, so, yet) are
intentionally omitted in successive phrases, or clauses; a string of words not
separated by normally occurring conjunctions.
Chiasmus
What is it?
Examples
But O, what damned minutes
tells he o'er Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strong loves.
- Shakespeare, Othello 3.3
The idea of affection
occurs in "dotes" and "strongly loves"; the idea of
doubting in "doubts" and "suspects". These two ideas occur
in the quotation in an A B B A order, thus repeated and inverted.
It is boring to eat; to
sleep is fulfilling. -The pattern is
present participle-infinitive; infinitive-present participle.
Answer
Repetition of ideas in
inverted order. "A-B-B-A" arrangement of words.
Climax
What is it?
Examples
The soldiers, clutching
their weapons, raced across the beaches, then scaled the cliffs, and met the
enemy, face to face.
Answer
A series of incidents of
increasing magnitude.
Accent: The emphasis, or stress, given a syllable in
pronunciation. We say "syllable" not "syllable,"
"emphasis" not "emphasis." Accents can also be used to
emphasize a particular word in a sentence: Is she content with the contents of
the yellow package? See also meter.
Act : A major
division in the action of a play. The ends of acts are typically indicated by
lowering the curtain or turning up the houselights. Playwrights frequently
employ acts to accommodate changes in time, setting, characters onstage, or
mood. In many full-length plays, acts are further divided into scenes, which
often mark a point in the action when the location changes or when a new
character enters. See also scene.
Allegory : A narration or description usually restricted to a single meaning
because its events, actions, characters, settings, and objects represent
specific abstractions or ideas. Although the elements in an allegory may be
interesting in themselves, the emphasis tends to be on what they ultimately
mean. Characters may be given names such as Hope, Pride, Youth, and Charity;
they have few if any personal qualities beyond their abstract meanings. These
personifications are not symbols because, for instance, the meaning of a
character named Charity is precisely that virtue. See also symbol.
Alliteration: The repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words,
usually at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable: "descending dew
drops"; "luscious lemons." Alliteration is based on the sounds
of letters, rather than the spelling of words; for example, "keen"
and "car" alliterate, but "car" and "cite" do
not. Used sparingly, alliteration can intensify ideas by emphasizing key words,
but when used too self-consciously, it can be distracting, even ridiculous,
rather than effective. See also assonance, consonance.
Allusion: A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in
history or literature. Allusions conjure up biblical authority, scenes from
Shakespeare’s plays, historic figures, wars, great love stories, and anything
else that might enrich an author’s work. Allusions imply reading and cultural
experiences shared by the writer and reader, functioning as a kind of shorthand
whereby the recalling of something outside the work supplies an emotional or
intellectual context, such as a poem about current racial struggles calling up
the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
Ambiguity : Allows for two or more simultaneous interpretations of a word, phrase,
action, or situation, all of which can be supported by the context of a work.
Deliberate ambiguity can contribute to the effectiveness and richness of a
work, for example, in the open-ended conclusion to Hawthorne’s "Young
Goodman Brown." However, unintentional ambiguity obscures meaning and can
confuse readers.
Anagram: A word or phrase made from the letters of another word or phrase, as
"heart" is an anagram of "earth." Anagrams have often been
considered merely an exercise of one’s ingenuity, but sometimes writers use
anagrams to conceal proper names or veiled messages, or to suggest important
connections between words, as in "hated" and "death."
Anapestic meter See foot.
Antagonist: The character, force, or collection of forces in fiction or drama
that opposes the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story; an
opponent of the protagonist, such as Claudius in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. See
also character, conflict.
Antihero: A protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional
attributes of a hero. He or she may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or
merely pathetic. Often what antiheroes learn, if they learn anything at all, is
that the world isolates them in an existence devoid of God and absolute values.
Yossarian from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is an example of an antihero. See also
character.
Apostrophe: An address, either to someone who is absent and therefore cannot hear
the speaker or to something nonhuman that cannot comprehend. Apostrophe often
provides a speaker the opportunity to think aloud.
Approximate rhyme See rhyme.
Archetype: A term used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and
sometimes unconscious responses in a reader. In literature, characters, images,
and themes that symbolically embody universal meanings and basic human
experiences, regardless of when or where they live, are considered archetypes.
Common literary archetypes include stories of quests, initiations, scapegoats,
descents to the underworld, and ascents to heaven. See also mythological
criticism.
Aside In drama, a speech directed to the audience that supposedly is
not audible to the other characters onstage at the time. When Hamlet first
appears onstage, for example, his aside "A little more than kin, and less
than kind!" gives the audience a strong sense of his alienation from King
Claudius. See also soliloquy.
Assonance: The repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not
end the same, for example, "asleep under a tree," or "each
evening." Similar endings result in rhyme, as in "asleep in the
deep." Assonance is a strong means of emphasizing important words in a
line. See also alliteration, consonance.
Ballad:
Traditionally, a ballad is a song, transmitted orally from generation to
generation, that tells a story and that eventually is written down. As such,
ballads usually cannot be traced to a particular author or group of authors.
Typically, ballads are dramatic, condensed, and impersonal narratives, such as
"Bonny Barbara Allan." A literary ballad is a narrative poem that is
written in deliberate imitation of the language, form, and spirit of the
traditional ballad, such as Keats’s "La Belle Dame sans Merci." See
also ballad stanza, quatrain.
Ballad: stanza A four-line
stanza, known as a quatrain, consisting of alternating eight- and six-syllable
lines. Usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme (an abcb pattern).
Coleridge adopted the ballad stanza in "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner."
All in a hot and copper sky
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Biographical criticism: An approach to literature which suggests
that knowledge of the author’s life experiences can aid in the understanding of
his or her work. While biographical information can sometimes complicate one’s
interpretation of a work, and some formalist critics (such as the New Critics)
disparage the use of the author’s biography as a tool for textual
interpretation, learning about the life of the author can often enrich a
reader’s appreciation for that author’s work. See also cultural criticism,
formalist criticism, new criticism.
Blank verse: Unrhymed
iambic pentameter. Blank verse is the English verse form closest to the natural
rhythms of English speech and therefore is the most common pattern found in
traditional English narrative and dramatic poetry from Shakespeare to the early
twentieth century. Shakespeare’s plays use blank verse extensively. See also
iambic pentameter.
Cacophony: Language that is discordant and difficult to pronounce, such as this
line from John Updike’s "Player Piano": "never my numb plunker
fumbles." Cacophony ("bad sound") may be unintentional in the
writer’s sense of music, or it may be used consciously for deliberate dramatic
effect. See also euphony.
Caesura: A
pause within a line of poetry that contributes to the rhythm of the line. A
caesura can occur anywhere within a line and need not be indicated by
punctuation. In scanning a line, caesuras are indicated by a double vertical
line (||). See also meter, rhythm, scansion.
Canon: Those works generally considered by scholars, critics, and teachers
to be the most important to read and study, which collectively constitute the
"masterpieces" of literature. Since the 1960s, the traditional
English and American literary canon, consisting mostly of works by white male
writers, has been rapidly expanding to include many female writers and writers
of varying ethnic backgrounds.
Carpe diem: The Latin phrase meaning "seize the day." This is a very
common literary theme, especially in lyric poetry, which emphasizes that life
is short, time is fleeting, and that one should make the most of present
pleasures. Robert Herrick’s poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of
Time" employs the carpe diem theme.
Catharsis: Meaning "purgation," catharsis describes the release of the
emotions of pity and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy. In his
Poetics, Aristotle discusses the importance of catharsis. The audience faces
the misfortunes of the protagonist, which elicit pity and compassion. Simultaneously,
the audience also confronts the failure of the protagonist, thus receiving a
frightening reminder of human limitations and frailties. Ultimately, however,
both these negative emotions are purged, because the tragic protagonist’s
suffering is an affirmation of human values rather than a despairing denial of
them. See also tragedy.
Character, characterization: A character is a person presented in a
dramatic or narrative work, and characterization is the process by which a
writer makes that character seem real to the reader. A hero or heroine, often
called the protagonist, is the central character who engages the reader’s
interest and empathy. The antagonist is the character, force, or collection of
forces that stands directly opposed to the protagonist and gives rise to the
conflict of the story. A static character does not change throughout the work,
and the reader’s knowledge of that character does not grow, whereas a dynamic
character undergoes some kind of change because of the action in the plot. A flat
character embodies one or two qualities, ideas, or traits that can be readily
described in a brief summary. They are not psychologically complex characters
and therefore are readily accessible to readers. Some flat characters are
recognized as stock characters; they embody stereotypes such as the "dumb
blonde" or the "mean stepfather." They become types rather than
individuals. Round characters are more complex than flat or stock characters,
and often display the inconsistencies and internal conflicts found in most real
people. They are more fully developed, and therefore are harder to summarize.
Authors have two major methods of presenting characters: showing and telling.
Showing allows the author to present a character talking and acting, and lets the
reader infer what kind of person the character is. In telling, the author
intervenes to describe and sometimes evaluate the character for the reader.
Characters can be convincing whether they are presented by showing or by
telling, as long as their actions are motivated. Motivated action by the
characters occurs when the reader or audience is offered reasons for how the
characters behave, what they say, and the decisions they make. Plausible action
is action by a character in a story that seems reasonable, given the
motivations presented. See also plot.
Chorus:
In Greek tragedies (especially those of Aeschylus and Sophocles), a group of
people who serve mainly as commentators on the characters and events. They add
to the audience’s understanding of the play by expressing traditional moral,
religious, and social attitudes. The role of the chorus in dramatic works
evolved through the sixteenth century, and the chorus occasionally is still
used by modern playwrights such as T. S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral. See
also drama.
Cliché:
An idea or expression that has become tired and trite from overuse, its
freshness and clarity having worn off. Clichés often anesthetize readers, and
are usually a sign of weak writing. See also sentimentality, stock responses.
Climax See plot.
Closet drama: A play that is written to be read rather than performed onstage. In
this kind of drama, literary art outweighs all other considerations. See also
drama.
Colloquial: Refers
to a type of informal diction that reflects casual, conversational language and
often includes slang expressions. See also diction.
Comedy: A work intended to interest, involve, and amuse the reader or
audience, in which no terrible disaster occurs and that ends happily for the
main characters. High comedy refers to verbal wit, such as puns, whereas low
comedy is generally associated with physical action and is less intellectual.
Romantic comedy involves a love affair that meets with various obstacles (like
disapproving parents, mistaken identities, deceptions, or other sorts of
misunderstandings) but overcomes them to end in a blissful union. Shakespeare’s
comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, are considered romantic comedies.
Comic relief: A humorous scene or incident that alleviates tension in an otherwise
serious work. In many instances these moments enhance the thematic significance
of the story in addition to providing laughter. When Hamlet jokes with the
gravediggers we laugh, but something hauntingly serious about the humor also
intensifies our more serious emotions.
Conflict: The struggle within the plot between opposing forces. The protagonist
engages in the conflict with the antagonist, which may take the form of a
character, society, nature, or an aspect of the protagonist’s personality. See
also character, plot.
Connotation: Associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a
word, which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the
associations people make with it. For example, the word eagle connotes ideas of
liberty and freedom that have little to do with the word’s literal meaning. See
also denotation.
Consonance: A common type of near rhyme that consists of identical consonant
sounds preceded by different vowel sounds: home, same; worth, breath. See also
rhyme.
Contextual symbol See symbol.
Controlling metaphor See metaphor.
Convention: A characteristic of a literary genre (often unrealistic) that is
understood and accepted by audiences because it has come, through usage and
time, to be recognized as a familiar technique. For example, the division of a
play into acts and scenes is a dramatic convention, as are soliloquies and
asides. flashbacks and foreshadowing are examples of literary conventions.
Conventional symbol See symbol.
Cosmic irony See irony.
Couplet: Two consecutive lines of poetry that usually rhyme and have the same
meter. A heroic couplet is a couplet written in rhymed iambic pentameter.
Crisis: A turning point in the action of a story that has a powerful effect
on the protagonist. Opposing forces come together decisively to lead to the
climax of the plot. See also plot.
Cultural criticism: An approach to literature that focuses on the historical as well as
social, political, and economic contexts of a work. Popular culture—mass
produced and consumed cultural artifacts ranging from advertising to popular
fiction to television to rock music—is given equal emphasis as "high
culture." Cultural critics use widely eclectic strategies such as new
historicism, psychology, gender studies, and deconstructionism to analyze not
only literary texts but everything from radio talk shows, comic strips,
calendar art, commercials, to travel guides and baseball cards. See also
historical criticism, marxist criticism, postcolonial criticism.
Dactylic meter See foot.
Deconstructionism: An approach to literature which suggests that literary works do not
yield fixed, single meanings, because language can never say exactly what we
intend it to mean. Deconstructionism seeks to destabilize meaning by examining
the gaps and ambiguities of the language of a text. Deconstructionists pay
close attention to language in order to discover and describe how a variety of
possible readings are generated by the elements of a text. See also new
criticism.
Denotation: The dictionary meaning of a word. See also connotation.
Dénouement: A French term meaning "unraveling" or
"unknotting," used to describe the resolution of the plot following
the climax. See also plot, resolution.
Dialect: A type of informational diction. Dialects are spoken by definable
groups of people from a particular geographic region, economic group, or social
class. Writers use dialect to contrast and express differences in educational,
class, social, and regional backgrounds of their characters. See also diction.
Dialogue: The verbal exchanges between characters. Dialogue makes the
characters seem real to the reader or audience by revealing firsthand their
thoughts, responses, and emotional states. See also diction.
Diction: A writer’s choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and
figurative language, which combine to help create meaning. Formal diction
consists of a dignified, impersonal, and elevated use of language; it follows
the rules of syntax exactly and is often characterized by complex words and
lofty tone. Middle diction maintains correct language usage, but is less
elevated than formal diction; it reflects the way most educated people speak.
Informal diction represents the plain language of everyday use, and often includes
idiomatic expressions, slang, contractions, and many simple, common words.
Poetic diction refers to the way poets sometimes employ an elevated diction
that deviates significantly from the common speech and writing of their time,
choosing words for their supposedly inherent poetic qualities. Since the
eighteenth century, however, poets have been incorporating all kinds of diction
in their work and so there is no longer an automatic distinction between the
language of a poet and the language of everyday speech. See also dialect.
Didactic poetry : Poetry designed to teach an ethical, moral, or religious lesson.
Michael Wigglesworth’s Puritan poem Day of Doom is an example of didactic
poetry.
Doggerel: A derogatory term used to describe poetry whose subject is trite and
whose rhythm and sounds are monotonously heavy-handed.
Drama: Derived from the Greek word dram, meaning "to do" or
"to perform," the term drama may refer to a single play, a group of
plays ("Jacobean drama"), or to all plays ("world drama"). Drama
is designed for performance in a theater; actors take on the roles of
characters, perform indicated actions, and speak the dialogue written in the
script. Play is a general term for a work of dramatic literature, and a
playwright is a writer who makes plays.
Dramatic monologue: A type of lyric poem in which a character (the speaker) addresses a
distinct but silent audience imagined to be present in the poem in such a way
as to reveal a dramatic situation and, often unintentionally, some aspect of
his or her temperament or personality. See also lyric.
Dynamic character See character.
Editorial omniscience See narrator.
Electra complex: The female version of the Oedipus complex. Electra complex is a term
used to describe the psychological conflict of a daughter’s unconscious rivalry
with her mother for her father’s attention. The name comes from the Greek
legend of Electra, who avenged the death of her father, Agamemnon, by plotting
the death of her mother. See also oedipus complex, psychological criticism.
Elegy: A mournful, contemplative lyric poem written to commemorate someone
who is dead, often ending in a consolation. Tennyson’s In Memoriam, written on
the death of Arthur Hallam, is an elegy. Elegy may also refer to a serious
meditative poem produced to express the speaker’s melancholy thoughts. See also
lyric.
End rhyme See rhyme.
End-stopped line: A poetic line that has a pause at the end. End-stopped lines reflect
normal speech patterns and are often marked by punctuation. The first line of
Keats’s "Endymion" is an example of an end-stopped line; the natural
pause coincides with the end of the line, and is marked by a period:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
English sonnet See sonnet.
Enjambment: In poetry, when one line ends without a pause and continues into the
next line for its meaning. This is also called a run-on line. The transition
between the first two lines of Wordsworth’s poem "My Heart Leaps Up"
demonstrates enjambment:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
Envoy See sestina.
Epic: A long narrative poem, told in a formal, elevated style, that focuses
on a serious subject and chronicles heroic deeds and events important to a
culture or nation. Milton’s Paradise Lost, which attempts to "justify the
ways of God to man," is an epic. See also narrative poem.
Epigram: A brief, pointed, and witty poem that usually makes a satiric or
humorous point. Epigrams are most often written in couplets, but take no
prescribed form.
Epiphany: In fiction, when a character suddenly experiences a deep realization
about himself or herself; a truth which is grasped in an ordinary rather than a
melodramatic moment.
Escape literature See formula literature.
Euphony Euphony ("good sound"): refers to language that is smooth and musically
pleasant to the ear. See also cacophony.
Exact rhyme See rhyme.
Exposition: A narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work, that
provides necessary background information about the characters and their
circumstances. Exposition explains what has gone on before, the relationships
between characters, the development of a theme, and the introduction of a
conflict. See also flashback.
Extended metaphor See metaphor.
Eye rhyme See rhyme.
Falling action See plot.
Farce: A form of humor based on exaggerated, improbable incongruities. Farce
involves rapid shifts in action and emotion, as well as slapstick comedy and
extravagant dialogue. Malvolio, in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, is a farcical
character.
Feminist criticism: An approach to literature that seeks to correct or supplement what
may be regarded as a predominantly male-dominated critical perspective with a
feminist consciousness. Feminist criticism places literature in a social
context and uses a broad range of disciplines, including history, sociology,
psychology, and linguistics, to provide a perspective sensitive to feminist
issues. Feminist theories also attempt to understand representation from a
woman’s point of view and to explain women’s writing strategies as specific to
their social conditions. See also gay and lesbian criticism, gender criticism,
sociological criticism.
Figures of speech: Ways of using language that deviate from the literal, denotative
meanings of words in order to suggest additional meanings or effects. Figures
of speech say one thing in terms of something else, such as when an eager
funeral director is described as a vulture. See also metaphor, simile.
First-person narrator See narrator.
Fixed form: A poem that may be categorized by the pattern of its lines, meter,
rhythm, or stanzas. A sonnet is a fixed form of poetry because by definition it
must have fourteen lines. Other fixed forms include limerick, sestina, and
villanelle. However, poems written in a fixed form may not always fit into
categories precisely, because writers sometimes vary traditional forms to
create innovative effects. See also open form.
Flashback : A narrated scene that marks a break in the narrative in order to
inform the reader or audience member about events that took place before the
opening scene of a work. See also exposition.
Flat character See character.
Foil: A character in a work whose behavior and values contrast with those
of another character in order to highlight the distinctive temperament of that
character (usually the protagonist). In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Laertes acts as a
foil to Hamlet, because his willingness to act underscores Hamlet’s inability
to do so.
Foot: The metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured. A foot
usually consists of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables. An iambic
foot, which consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed
syllable ("away"), is the most common metrical foot in English
poetry. A trochaic foot consists of one stressed syllable followed by an
unstressed syllable ("lovely"). An anapestic foot is two unstressed
syllables followed by one stressed one ("understand"). A dactylic
foot is one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones
("desperate"). A spondee is a foot consisting of two stressed
syllables ("dead set"), but is not a sustained metrical foot and is
used mainly for variety or emphasis. See also iambic pentameter, line, meter.
Foreshadowing: The introduction early in a story of verbal and dramatic hints that
suggest what is to come later.
Form: The overall structure or shape of a work, which frequently follows an
established design. Forms may refer to a literary type (narrative form, short
story form) or to patterns of meter, lines, and rhymes (stanza form, verse
form). See also fixed form, open form.
Formal diction See diction.
Formalist criticism: An approach to literature that focuses on the formal elements of a
work, such as its language, structure, and tone. Formalist critics offer
intense examinations of the relationship between form and meaning in a work,
emphasizing the subtle complexity in how a work is arranged. Formalists pay
special attention to diction, irony, paradox, metaphor, and symbol, as well as
larger elements such as plot, characterization, and narrative technique.
Formalist critics read literature as an independent work of art rather than as
a reflection of the author’s state of mind or as a representation of a moment
in history. Therefore, anything outside of the work, including historical
influences and authorial intent, is generally not examined by formalist
critics. See also new criticism.
Formula literature: Often characterized as "escape literature," formula
literature follows a pattern of conventional reader expectations. Romance
novels, westerns, science fiction, and detective stories are all examples of
formula literature; while the details of individual stories vary, the basic
ingredients of each kind of story are the same. Formula literature offers happy
endings (the hero "gets the girl," the detective cracks the case),
entertains wide audiences, and sells tremendously well.
Found poem: An unintentional poem discovered in a nonpoetic context, such as a
conversation, news story, or advertisement. Found poems serve as reminders that
everyday language often contains what can be considered poetry, or that poetry
is definable as any text read as a poem.
Free verse: Also called open form poetry, free verse refers to poems
characterized by their nonconformity to established patterns of meter, rhyme,
and stanza. Free verse uses elements such as speech patterns, grammar,
emphasis, and breath pauses to decide line breaks, and usually does not rhyme.
See open form.
Gay and lesbian criticism: An approach to literature that focuses on how homosexuals are
represented in literature, how they read literature, and whether sexuality, as
well as gender, is culturally constructed or innate. See also feminist
criticism, gender criticism.
Gender criticism: An approach to literature that explores how ideas about men and
women—what is masculine and feminine—can be regarded as socially constructed by
particular cultures. Gender criticism expands categories and definitions of
what is masculine or feminine and tends to regard sexuality as more complex
than merely masculine or feminine, heterosexual or homosexual. See also
feminist criticism, gay and lesbian criticism.
Genre: A French word meaning kind or type. The major genres in literature
are poetry, fiction, drama, and essays. Genre can also refer to more specific types
of literature such as comedy, tragedy, epic poetry, or science fiction.
Haiku: A style of lyric poetry borrowed from the Japanese that typically
presents an intense emotion or vivid image of nature, which, traditionally, is
designed to lead to a spiritual insight. Haiku is a fixed poetic form,
consisting of seventeen syllables organized into three unrhymed lines of five,
seven, and five syllables. Today, however, many poets vary the syllabic count
in their haiku. See also fixed form.
Hamartia: A term coined by Aristotle to describe "some error or
frailty" that brings about misfortune for a tragic hero. The concept of
hamartia is closely related to that of the tragic flaw: both lead to the
downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy. Hamartia may be interpreted as an
internal weakness in a character (like greed or passion or hubris); however, it
may also refer to a mistake that a character makes that is based not on a
personal failure, but on circumstances outside the protagonist’s personality
and control. See also tragedy.
Hero, heroine See character.
Heroic couplet See couplet.
High comedy See comedy.
Historical criticism: An approach to literature that uses history as a means of
understanding a literary work more clearly. Such criticism moves beyond both
the facts of an author’s personal life and the text itself in order to examine
the social and intellectual currents in which the author composed the work. See
also cultural criticism, marxist criticism, new historicism, postcolonial
criticism.
Hubris or Hybris: Excessive pride or self-confidence that leads a protagonist to
disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law. In tragedies,
hubris is a very common form of hamartia. See also hamartia, tragedy.
Hyperbole: A boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without in-tending
to be literally true, as in the statement "He ate everything in the
house." Hyperbole (also called overstatement) may be used for serious,
comic, or ironic effect. See also figures of speech.
Iambic meter See foot.
Iambic pentameter: A metrical pattern in poetry which consists of five iambic feet per
line. (An iamb, or iambic foot, consists of one unstressed syllable followed by
a stressed syllable.) See also foot, meter.
Image: A word, phrase, or figure of speech (especially a simile or a
metaphor) that addresses the senses, suggesting mental pictures of sights,
sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, or actions. Images offer sensory impressions
to the reader and also convey emotions and moods through their verbal pictures.
See also figures of speech.
Implied metaphor See metaphor.
In medias res See plot.
Informal diction See diction.
Internal rhyme See rhyme.
Irony: A literary device that uses contradictory statements or situations to
reveal a reality different from what appears to be true. It is ironic for a
firehouse to burn down, or for a police station to be burglarized. Verbal irony
is a figure of speech that occurs when a person says one thing but means the
opposite. Sarcasm is a strong form of verbal irony that is calculated to hurt
someone through, for example, false praise. Dramatic irony creates a
discrepancy between what a character believes or says and what the reader or
audience member knows to be true. Tragic irony is a form of dramatic irony
found in tragedies such as Oedipus the King, in which Oedipus searches for the
person responsible for the plague that ravishes his city and ironically ends up
hunting himself. Situational irony exists when there is an incongruity between
what is expected to happen and what actually happens due to forces beyond human
comprehension or control. The suicide of the seemingly successful main
character in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem "Richard Cory" is an
example of situational irony. Cosmic irony occurs when a writer uses God,
destiny, or fate to dash the hopes and expectations of a character or of
humankind in general. In cosmic irony, a discrepancy exists between what a
character aspires to and what universal forces provide. Stephen Crane’s poem
"A Man Said to the Universe" is a good example of cosmic irony,
because the universe acknowledges no obligation to the man’s assertion of his
own existence.
Italian sonnet See sonnet.
Limerick : A light, humorous style of fixed form poetry. Its usual form consists
of five lines with the rhyme scheme aabba; lines 1, 2, and 5 contain three
feet, while lines 3 and 4 usually contain two feet. Limericks range in subject
matter from the silly to the obscene, and since Edward Lear popularized them in
the nineteenth century, children and adults have enjoyed these comic poems. See
also fixed form.
Limited omniscience See point of view.
Line: A sequence of words printed as a separate entity on the page. In
poetry, lines are usually measured by the number of feet they contain. The
names for various line lengths are as follows:
monometer: one foot
dimeter: two feet
trimeter: three feet
tetrameter: four feet
pentameter: five feet
hexameter: six feet
et
octameter: eight feet
The number of feet in a line,
coupled with the name of the foot, describes the metrical qualities of that
line. See also end-stopped line, enjambment, foot, meter.
Literary ballad See ballad.
Literary symbol See symbol.
Lyric: A type of brief poem that expresses the personal emotions and
thoughts of a single speaker. It is important to realize, however, that
although the lyric is uttered in the first person, the speaker is not
necessarily the poet. There are many varieties of lyric poetry, including the
dramatic monologue, elegy, haiku, ode, and sonnet forms.
Marxist criticism: An approach to literature that focuses on the ideological content of
a work—its explicit and implicit assumptions and values about matters such as
culture, race, class, and power. Marxist criticism, based largely on the
writings of Karl Marx, typically aims at not only revealing and clarifying
ideological issues but also correcting social injustices. Some Marxist critics
use literature to describe the competing socioeconomic interests that too often
advance capitalist interests such as money and power rather than socialist
interests such as morality and justice. They argue that literature and literary
criticism are essentially political because they either challenge or support
economic oppression. Because of this strong emphasis on the political aspects
of texts, Marxist criticism focuses more on the content and themes of
literature than on its form. See also cultural criticism, historical criticism,
sociological criticism.
Masculine rhyme See rhyme.
Melodrama: A term applied to any literary work that relies on implausible events
and sensational action for its effect. The conflicts in melodramas typically
arise out of plot rather than characterization; often a virtuous individual
must somehow confront and overcome a wicked oppressor. Usually, a melodramatic
story ends happily, with the protagonist defeating the antagonist at the last
possible moment. Thus, melodramas entertain the reader or audience with
exciting action while still conforming to a traditional sense of justice. See
sentimentality.
Metaphor: A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two
unlike things, without using the word like or as. Metaphors assert the identity
of dissimilar things, as when Macbeth asserts that life is a "brief
candle." Metaphors can be subtle and powerful, and can transform people,
places, objects, and ideas into whatever the writer imagines them to be. An
implied metaphor is a more subtle comparison; the terms being compared are not
so specifically explained. For example, to describe a stubborn man unwilling to
leave, one could say that he was "a mule standing his ground." This
is a fairly explicit metaphor; the man is being compared to a mule. But to say
that the man "brayed his refusal to leave" is to create an implied metaphor,
because the subject (the man) is never overtly identified as a mule. Braying is
associated with the mule, a notoriously stubborn creature, and so the
comparison between the stubborn man and the mule is sustained. Implied
metaphors can slip by inattentive readers who are not sensitive to such
carefully chosen, highly concentrated language. An extended metaphor is a
sustained comparison in which part or all of a poem consists of a series of
related metaphors. Robert Francis’s poem "Catch" relies on an extended
metaphor that compares poetry to playing catch. A controlling metaphor runs
through an entire work and determines the form or nature of that work. The
controlling metaphor in Anne Bradstreet’s poem "The Author to Her
Book" likens her book to a child. Synecdoche is a kind of metaphor in
which a part of something is used to signify the whole, as when a gossip is
called a "wagging tongue," or when ten ships are called "ten
sails." Sometimes, synecdoche refers to the whole being used to signify
the part, as in the phrase "Boston won the baseball game." Clearly,
the entire city of Boston did not participate in the game; the whole of Boston
is being used to signify the individuals who played and won the game. Metonymy
is a type of metaphor in which something closely associated with a subject is
substituted for it. In this way, we speak of the "silver screen" to
mean motion pictures, "the crown" to stand for the king, "the
White House" to stand for the activities of the president. See also figures
of speech, personification, simile.
Meter: When a rhythmic pattern of stresses recurs in a poem, it is called
meter. Metrical patterns are determined by the type and number of feet in a
line of verse; combining the name of a line length with the name of a foot
concisely describes the meter of the line. Rising meter refers to metrical feet
which move from unstressed to stressed sounds, such as the iambic foot and the
anapestic foot. Falling meter refers to metrical feet which move from stressed
to unstressed sounds, such as the trochaic foot and the dactylic foot. See also
accent, foot, iambic pentameter, line.
Metonymy See metaphor.
Middle diction See diction.
Motivated action See character.
Mythological criticism: An approach to literature that seeks to identify what in a work
creates deep universal responses in readers, by paying close attention to the
hopes, fears, and expectations of entire cultures. Mythological critics
(sometimes called archetypal critics) look for underlying, recurrent patterns
in literature that reveal universal meanings and basic human experiences for
readers regardless of when and where they live. These critics attempt to
explain how archetypes (the characters, images, and themes that symbolically
embody universal meanings and experiences) are embodied in literary works in
order to make larger connections that explain a particular work’s lasting
appeal. Mythological critics may specialize in areas such as classical
literature, philology, anthropology, psychology, and cultural history, but they
all emphasize the assumptions and values of various cultures. See also
archetype.
Narrative poem: A poem that tells a story. A narrative poem may be short or long, and
the story it relates may be simple or complex. See also ballad, epic.
Narrator: The voice of the person telling the story, not to be confused with
the author’s voice. With a first-person narrator, the I in the story presents
the point of view of only one character. The reader is restricted to the
perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of that single character. For example, in
Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener," the lawyer is the first-person
narrator of the story. First-person narrators can play either a major or a
minor role in the story they are telling. An unreliable narrator reveals an
interpretation of events that is somehow different from the author’s own
interpretation of those events. Often, the unreliable narrator’s perception of
plot, characters, and setting becomes the actual subject of the story, as in
Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Narrators can be unreliable for
a number of reasons: they might lack self-knowledge (like Melville’s lawyer),
they might be inexperienced, they might even be insane. Naive narrators are
usually characterized by youthful innocence, such as Mark Twain’s Huck Finn or
J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield. An omniscient narrator is an all-knowing
narrator who is not a character in the story and who can move from place to
place and pass back and forth through time, slipping into and out of characters
as no human being possibly could in real life. Omniscient narrators can report
the thoughts and feelings of the characters, as well as their words and
actions. The narrator of The Scarlet Letter is an omniscient narrator.
Editorial omniscience refers to an intrusion by the narrator in order to
evaluate a character for a reader, as when the narrator of The Scarlet Letter
describes Hester’s relationship to the Puritan community. Narration that allows
the characters’ actions and thoughts to speak for themselves is called neutral
omniscience. Most modern writers use neutral omniscience so that readers can
reach their own conclusions. Limited omniscience occurs when an author
restricts a narrator to the single perspective of either a major or minor
character. The way people, places, and events appear to that character is the
way they appear to the reader. Sometimes a limited omniscient narrator can see
into more than one character, particularly in a work that focuses on two
characters alternately from one chapter to the next. Short stories, however,
are frequently limited to a single character’s point of view. See also persona,
point of view, stream-of-consciousness technique.
Neutral omniscience See narrator.
New Criticism: An approach to literature made popular between the 1940s and the
1960s that evolved out of formalist criticism. New Critics suggest that
detailed analysis of the language of a literary text can uncover important
layers of meaning in that work. New Criticism consciously downplays the
historical influences, authorial intentions, and social contexts that surround
texts in order to focus on explication—extremely close textual analysis.
Critics such as John Crowe Ransom, I. A. Richards, and Robert Penn Warren are
commonly associated with New Criticism. See also formalist criticism.
New historicism: An approach to literature that emphasizes the interaction between the
historic context of the work and a modern reader’s understanding and
interpretation of the work. New historicists attempt to describe the culture of
a period by reading many different kinds of texts and paying close attention to
many different dimensions of a culture, including political, economic, social,
and aesthetic concerns. They regard texts not simply as a reflection of the
culture that produced them but also as productive of that culture playing an
active role in the social and political conflicts of an age. New historicism
acknowledges and then explores various versions of "history,"
sensitizing us to the fact that the history on which we choose to focus is
colored by being reconstructed from our present circumstances. See also
historical criticism.
Objective point of view See point of view.
Octave: A poetic stanza of eight lines, usually forming one part of a sonnet.
See also sonnet, stanza.
Ode: A relatively lengthy lyric poem that often expresses lofty emotions
in a dignified style. Odes are characterized by a serious topic, such as truth,
art, freedom, justice, or the meaning of life; their tone tends to be formal.
There is no prescribed pattern that defines an ode; some odes repeat the same
pattern in each stanza, while others introduce a new pattern in each stanza.
See also lyric.
Oedipus complex: A Freudian term derived from Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King. It
describes a psychological complex that is predicated on a boy’s unconscious
rivalry with his father for his mother’s love and his desire to eliminate his
father in order to take his father’s place with his mother. The female
equivalent of this complex is called the Electra complex. See also electra
complex, psychological criticism.
Omniscient narrator See narrator.
One-act play: A play that takes place in a single location and unfolds as one
continuous action. The characters in a one-act play are presented economically
and the action is sharply focused. See also drama.
Onomatopoeia: A term referring to the use of a word that resembles the sound it
denotes. Buzz, rattle, bang, and sizzle all reflect onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia
can also consist of more than one word; writers sometimes create lines or whole
passages in which the sound of the words helps to convey their meanings.
Open form Sometimes called "free verse,": open form
poetry does not conform to established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza.
Such poetry derives its rhythmic qualities from the repetition of words,
phrases, or grammatical structures, the arrangement of words on the printed
page, or by some other means. The poet E. E. Cummings wrote open form poetry;
his poems do not have measurable meters, but they do have rhythm. See also
fixed form.
Organic form: Refers to works whose formal characteristics are not rigidly
predetermined but follow the movement of thought or emotion being expressed.
Such works are said to grow like living organisms, following their own
individual patterns rather than external fixed rules that govern, for example,
the form of a sonnet.
Overstatement See hyperbole.
Oxymoron: A condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used
together, as in "sweet sorrow" or "original copy." See also
paradox.
Paradox: A statement that initially appears to be contradictory but then, on
closer inspection, turns out to make sense. For example, John Donne ends his
sonnet "Death, Be Not Proud" with the paradoxical statement
"Death, thou shalt die." To solve the paradox, it is necessary to
discover the sense that underlies the statement. Paradox is useful in poetry
because it arrests a reader’s attention by its seemingly stubborn refusal to
make sense.
Paraphrase: A prose restatement of the central ideas of a poem, in your own
language.
Parody: A humorous imitation of another, usually serious, work. It can take
any fixed or open form, because parodists imitate the tone, language, and shape
of the original in order to deflate the subject matter, making the original
work seem absurd. Anthony Hecht’s poem "Dover Bitch" is a famous
parody of Matthew Arnold’s well-known "Dover Beach." Parody may also
be used as a form of literary criticism to expose the defects in a work. But
sometimes parody becomes an affectionate acknowledgment that a well-known work
has become both institutionalized in our culture and fair game for some fun.
For example, Peter De Vries’s "To His Importunate Mistress" gently
mocks Andrew Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress."
Persona: Literally, a persona is a mask. In literature, a persona is a speaker
created by a writer to tell a story or to speak in a poem. A persona is not a
character in a story or narrative, nor does a persona necessarily directly reflect
the author’s personal voice. A persona is a separate self, created by and
distinct from the author, through which he or she speaks. See also narrator.
Personification: A form of metaphor in which human characteristics are attributed to
nonhuman things. Personification offers the writer a way to give the world life
and motion by assigning familiar human behaviors and emotions to animals,
inanimate objects, and abstract ideas. For example, in Keats’s "Ode on a
Grecian Urn," the speaker refers to the urn as an "unravished bride
of quietness." See also metaphor.
Petrarchan sonnet See also sonnet.
Picture poem: A type of open form poetry in which the poet arranges the lines of
the poem so as to create a particular shape on the page. The shape of the poem embodies
its subject; the poem becomes a picture of what the poem is describing. Michael
McFee’s "In Medias Res" is an example of a picture poem. See also
open form.
Plausible action See character.
Plot: An author’s selection and arrangement of incidents in a story to
shape the action and give the story a particular focus. Discussions of plot
include not just what happens, but also how and why things happen the way they
do. Stories that are written in a pyramidal pattern divide the plot into three
essential parts. The first part is the rising action, in which complication
creates some sort of conflict for the protagonist. The second part is the
climax, the moment of greatest emotional tension in a narrative, usually
marking a turning point in the plot at which the rising action reverses to
become the falling action. The third part, the falling action (or resolution)
is characterized by diminishing tensions and the resolution of the plot’s
conflicts and complications. In medias res is a term used to describe the
common strategy of beginning a story in the middle of the action. In this type
of plot, we enter the story on the verge of some important moment. See also
character, crisis, resolution, subplot.
Point of view: Refers to who tells us a story and how it is told. What we know and
how we feel about the events in a work are shaped by the author’s choice of
point of view. The teller of the story, the narrator, inevitably affects our
understanding of the characters’ actions by filtering what is told through his
or her own perspective. The various points of view that writers draw upon can
be grouped into two broad categories: (1) the third-person narrator uses he,
she, or they to tell the story and does not participate in the action; and (2)
the first-person narrator uses I and is a major or minor participant in the
action. In addition, a second-person narrator, you, is also possible, but is
rarely used because of the awkwardness of thrusting the reader into the story, as
in "You are minding your own business on a park bench when a drunk steps
out and demands your lunch bag." An objective point of view employs a
third-person narrator who does not see into the mind of any character. From
this detached and impersonal perspective, the narrator reports action and
dialogue without telling us directly what the characters think and feel. Since
no analysis or interpretation is provided by the narrator, this point of view
places a premium on dialogue, actions, and details to reveal character to the
reader. See also narrator, stream-of-consciousness technique.
Postcolonial criticism: An approach to literature that focuses on the study of cultural
behavior and expression in relationship to the colonized world. Postcolonial
criticism refers to the analysis of literary works written by writers from
countries and cultures that at one time have been controlled by colonizing
powers—such as Indian writers during or after British colonial rule.
Postcolonial criticism also refers to the analysis of literary works written
about colonial cultures by writers from the colonizing country. Many of these
kinds of analyses point out how writers from colonial powers sometimes
misrepresent colonized cultures by reflecting more their own values. See also cultural
criticism, historical criticism, marxist criticism.
Problem play: Popularized by Henrik Ibsen, a problem play is a type of drama that
presents a social issue in order to awaken the audience to it. These plays
usually reject romantic plots in favor of holding up a mirror that reflects not
simply what the audience wants to see but what the playwright sees in them.
Often, a problem play will propose a solution to the problem that does not
coincide with prevailing opinion. The term is also used to refer to certain
Shakespeare plays that do not fit the categories of tragedy, comedy, or
romance. See also drama.
Prologue: The opening speech or dialogue of a play, especially a classic Greek
play, that usually gives the exposition necessary to follow the subsequent
action. Today the term also refers to the introduction to any literary work.
See also drama, exposition.
Prose poem: A kind of open form poetry that is printed as prose and represents
the most clear opposite of fixed form poetry. Prose poems are densely compact
and often make use of striking imagery and figures of speech. See also fixed
form, open form.
Prosody The overall metrical structure of a poem. See also meter.
Protagonist: The main character of a narrative; its central character who engages
the reader’s interest and empathy. See also character.
Psychological criticism: An approach to literature that draws upon psychoanalytic theories,
especially those of Sigmund Freud or Jacques Lacan to understand more fully the
text, the writer, and the reader. The basis of this approach is the idea of the
existence of a human unconscious—those impulses, desires, and feelings about
which a person is unaware but which influence emotions and behavior. Critics
use psychological approaches to explore the motivations of characters and the
symbolic meanings of events, while biographers speculate about a writer’s own
motivations—conscious or unconscious—in a literary work. Psychological
approaches are also used to describe and analyze the reader’s personal responses
to a text.
Pun: A play on words that relies on a word’s having more than one meaning
or sounding like another word. Shakespeare and other writers use puns
extensively, for serious and comic purposes; in Romeo and Juliet (III.i.101),
the dying Mercutio puns, "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a
grave man." Puns have serious literary uses, but since the eighteenth
century, puns have been used almost purely for humorous effect. See also
comedy.
Pyramidal pattern See plot.
Quatrain: A four-line stanza. Quatrains are the most common stanzaic form in
the English language; they can have various meters and rhyme schemes. See also
meter, rhyme, stanza.
Reader-response criticism: An approach to literature that focuses on the reader rather than the
work itself, by attempting to describe what goes on in the reader’s mind during
the reading of a text. Hence, the consciousness of the reader—produced by
reading the work—is the actual subject of reader-response criticism. These
critics are not after a "correct" reading of the text or what the
author presumably intended; instead, they are interested in the reader’s
individual experience with the text. Thus, there is no single definitive
reading of a work, because readers create rather than discover absolute meanings
in texts. However, this approach is not a rationale for mistaken or bizarre
readings, but an exploration of the possibilities for a plurality of readings.
This kind of strategy calls attention to how we read and what influences our
readings, and what that reveals about ourselves.
Recognition: The moment in a story when previously unknown or withheld information
is revealed to the protagonist, resulting in the discovery of the truth of his
or her situation and, usually, a decisive change in course for that character.
In Oedipus the King, the moment of recognition comes when Oedipus finally
realizes that he has killed his father and married his mother.
Resolution: The conclusion of a plot’s conflicts and complications. The
resolution, also known as the falling action, follows the climax in the plot.
See also dénouement, plot.
Revenge tragedy See tragedy.
Reversal: The point in a story when the protagonist’s fortunes turn in an
unexpected direction. See also plot.
Rhyme: The repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in
different words, most often at the ends of lines. Rhyme is predominantly a
function of sound rather than spelling; thus, words that end with the same
vowel sounds rhyme, for instance, day, prey, bouquet, weigh, and words with the
same consonant ending rhyme, for instance vain, feign, rein, lane. Words do not
have to be spelled the same way or look alike to rhyme. In fact, words may look
alike but not rhyme at all. This is called eye rhyme, as with bough and cough,
or brow and blow.
End rhyme: is the most common form of rhyme in poetry; the rhyme comes at the
end of the lines.
It runs through the reeds, And
away it proceeds,
Through meadow and glade, In sun
and in shade.
The rhyme scheme: of a poem describes the pattern of end rhymes. Rhyme schemes are
mapped out by noting patterns of rhyme with small letters: the first rhyme
sound is designated a, the second becomes b, the third c, and so on. Thus, the
rhyme scheme of the stanza above is aabb. Internal rhyme places at least one of
the rhymed words within the line, as in "Dividing and gliding and
sliding" or "In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud." Masculine
rhyme describes the rhyming of single-syllable words, such as grade or shade.
Masculine rhyme also occurs where rhyming words of more than one syllable, when
the same sound occurs in a final stressed syllable, as in defend and contend,
betray and away. Feminine rhyme consists of a rhymed stressed syllable followed
by one or more identical unstressed syllables, as in butter, clutter;
gratitude, attitude; quivering, shivering. All the examples so far have
illustrated exact rhymes, because they share the same stressed vowel sounds as
well as sharing sounds that follow the vowel. In near rhyme (also called off
rhyme, slant rhyme, and approximate rhyme), the sounds are almost but not
exactly alike. A common form of near rhyme is consonance, which consists of
identical consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds: home, same;
worth, breath.
Rhyme scheme See rhyme.
Rhythm: A term used to refer to the recurrence of stressed and unstressed
sounds in poetry. Depending on how sounds are arranged, the rhythm of a poem
may be fast or slow, choppy or smooth. Poets use rhythm to create pleasurable
sound patterns and to reinforce meanings. Rhythm in prose arises from pattern
repetitions of sounds and pauses that create looser rhythmic effects. See also
meter.
Rising action See plot.
Rising meter See meter.
Romantic comedy See comedy.
Round character See character.
Run-on line See enjambment.
Sarcasm See irony.
Satire: The literary art of ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or
correct it. The object of satire is usually some human frailty; people,
institutions, ideas, and things are all fair game for satirists. Satire evokes
attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation toward its faulty
subject in the hope of somehow improving it. See also irony, parody.
Scansion: The process of measuring the stresses in a line of verse in order to
determine the metrical pattern of the line. See also line, meter.
Scene In drama: a scene is a subdivision of an act. In modern plays, scenes usually
consist of units of action in which there are no changes in the setting or
breaks in the continuity of time. According to traditional conventions, a scene
changes when the location of the action shifts or when a new character enters.
See also act, convention, drama.
Script: The written text of a play, which includes the dialogue between
characters, stage directions, and often other expository information. See also
drama, exposition, prologue, stage directions.
Sentimentality: A pejorative term used to describe the effort by an author to induce
emotional responses in the reader that exceed what the situation warrants.
Sentimentality especially pertains to such emotions as pathos and sympathy; it
cons readers into falling for the mass murderer who is devoted to stray cats,
and it requires that readers do not examine such illogical responses. Clichés
and stock responses are the key ingredients of sentimentality in literature.
See also cliché, stock responses.
Sestet A stanza consisting of exactly six lines. See also stanza.
Sestina: A type of fixed form poetry consisting of thirty-six lines of any
length divided into six sestets and a three-line concluding stanza called an
envoy. The six words at the end of the first sestet’s lines must also appear at
the ends of the other five sestets, in varying order. These six words must also
appear in the envoy, where they often resonate important themes. An example of
this highly demanding form of poetry is Elizabeth Bishop’s "Sestina."
See also sestet.
Setting: The physical and social context in which the action of a story
occurs. The major elements of setting are the time, the place, and the social
environment that frames the characters. Setting can be used to evoke a mood or
atmosphere that will prepare the reader for what is to come, as in Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s short story "Young Goodman Brown." Sometimes, writers
choose a particular setting because of traditional associations with that
setting that are closely related to the action of a story. For example, stories
filled with adventure or romance often take place in exotic locales.
Shakespearean sonnet See sonnet.
Showing See character.
Simile: A common figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between
two things by using words such as like, as, than, appears, and seems: "A
sip of Mrs. Cook’s coffee is like a punch in the stomach." The
effectiveness of this simile is created by the differences between the two
things compared. There would be no simile if the comparison were stated this
way: "Mrs. Cook’s coffee is as strong as the cafeteria’s coffee."
This is a literal translation because Mrs. Cook’s coffee is compared with
something like it—another kind of coffee. See also figures of speech, metaphor.
Slant rhyme See rhyme.
Sociological criticism: An approach to literature that examines social groups, relationships,
and values as they are manifested in literature. Sociological approaches emphasize
the nature and effect of the social forces that shape power relationships
between groups or classes of people. Such readings treat literature as either a
document reflecting social conditions or a product of those conditions. The
former view brings into focus the social milieu; the latter emphasizes the
work. Two important forms of sociological criticism are Marxist and feminist
approaches. See also feminist criticism, marxist criticism.
Soliloquy: A dramatic convention by means of which a character, alone onstage,
utters his or her thoughts aloud. Playwrights use soliloquies as a convenient
way to inform the audience about a character’s motivations and state of mind.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet delivers perhaps the best known of all soliloquies, which
begins: "To be or not to be." See also aside, convention.
Sonnet: A fixed form of lyric poetry that consists of fourteen lines, usually
written in iambic pentameter. There are two basic types of sonnets, the Italian
and the English. The Italian sonnet, also known as the Petrarchan sonnet,
is divided into an octave, which typically rhymes abbaabba, and a sestet, which
may have varying rhyme schemes. Common rhyme patterns in the sestet are cdecde,
cdcdcd, and cdccdc. Very often the octave presents a situation, attitude, or
problem that the sestet comments upon or resolves, as in John Keats’s "On
First Looking into Chapman’s Homer." The English sonnet, also known as the
Shakespearean sonnet, is organized into three quatrains and a couplet, which
typically rhyme abab cdcd efef gg. This rhyme scheme is more suited to English
poetry because English has fewer rhyming words than Italian. English sonnets, because
of their four-part organization, also have more flexibility with respect to
where thematic breaks can occur. Frequently, however, the most pronounced break
or turn comes with the concluding couplet, as in Shakespeare’s "Shall I
compare thee to a summer’s day?" See also couplet, iambic pentameter,
line, octave, quatrain, sestet.
Speaker: The voice used by an author to tell a story or speak a poem. The
speaker is often a created identity, and should not automatically be equated
with the author’s self. See also narrator, persona, point of view.
Spondee See foot.
Stage directions: A playwright’s written instructions about how the actors are to move
and behave in a play. They explain in which direction characters should move,
what facial expressions they should assume, and so on. See also drama, script.
Stanza In poetry: stanza refers to a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that
usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme. See also line, meter, rhyme.
Static character See character.
Stock character See character.
Stock responses Predictable: conventional reactions to language, characters, symbols, or
situations. The flag, motherhood, puppies, God, and peace are common objects
used to elicit stock responses from unsophisticated audiences. See also cliché,
sentimentality.
Stream-of-consciousness technique: The most intense use of a central consciousness in narration. The
stream-of-consciousness technique takes a reader inside a character’s mind to
reveal perceptions, thoughts, and feelings on a conscious or unconscious level.
This technique suggests the flow of thought as well as its content; hence,
complete sentences may give way to fragments as the character’s mind makes
rapid associations free of conventional logic or transitions. James Joyce’s novel
Ulysses makes extensive use of this narrative technique. See also narrator,
point of view.
Stress: The emphasis, or accent, given a syllable in pronunciation. See also
accent.
Style: The distinctive and unique manner in which a writer arranges words to
achieve particular effects. Style essentially combines the idea to be expressed
with the individuality of the author. These arrangements include individual
word choices as well as matters such as the length of sentences, their
structure, tone, and use of irony. See also diction, irony, tone.
Subplot: The secondary action of a story, complete and interesting in its own
right, that reinforces or contrasts with the main plot. There may be more than
one subplot, and sometimes as many as three, four, or even more, running
through a piece of fiction. Subplots are generally either analogous to the main
plot, thereby enhancing our understanding of it, or extraneous to the main
plot, to provide relief from it. See also plot.
Suspense: The anxious anticipation of a reader or an audience as to the outcome
of a story, especially concerning the character or characters with whom
sympathetic attachments are formed. Suspense helps to secure and sustain the
interest of the reader or audience throughout a work.
Symbol: A person, object, image, word, or event that evokes a range of
additional meaning beyond and usually more abstract than its literal
significance. Symbols are educational devices for evoking complex ideas without
having to resort to painstaking explanations that would make a story more like
an essay than an experience. Conventional symbols have meanings that are widely
recognized by a society or culture. Some conventional symbols are the Christian
cross, the Star of David, a swastika, or a nation’s flag. Writers use
conventional symbols to reinforce meanings. Kate Chopin, for example,
emphasizes the spring setting in "The Story of an Hour" as a way of
suggesting the renewed sense of life that Mrs. Mallard feels when she thinks
herself free from her husband. A literary or contextual symbol can be a
setting, character, action, object, name, or anything else in a work that
maintains its literal significance while suggesting other meanings. Such
symbols go beyond conventional symbols; they gain their symbolic meaning within
the context of a specific story. For example, the white whale in Melville’s
Moby-Dick takes on multiple symbolic meanings in the work, but these meanings
do not automatically carry over into other stories about whales. The meanings
suggested by Melville’s whale are specific to that text; therefore, it becomes
a contextual symbol. See also allegory.
Synecdoche See metaphor.
Syntax: The ordering of words into meaningful verbal patterns such as
phrases, clauses, and sentences. Poets often manipulate syntax, changing
conventional word order, to place certain emphasis on particular words. Emily
Dickinson, for instance, writes about being surprised by a snake in her poem
"A narrow Fellow in the Grass," and includes this line: "His notice
sudden is." In addition to the alliterative hissing s-sounds here,
Dickinson also effectively manipulates the line’s syntax so that the verb is
appears unexpectedly at the end, making the snake’s hissing presence all the
more "sudden."
Terza rima: An interlocking three-line rhyme scheme: aba, bcb, cdc, ded, and so
on. Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Frost’s "Acquainted with the Night"
are written in terza rima. See also rhyme, tercet.
Theme: The central meaning or dominant idea in a literary work. A theme
provides a unifying point around which the plot, characters, setting, point of
view, symbols, and other elements of a work are organized. It is important not
to mistake the theme for the actual subject of the work; the theme refers to
the abstract concept that is made concrete through the images,
characterization, and action of the text. In nonfiction, however, the theme
generally refers to the main topic of the discourse.
Thesis: The central idea of an essay. The thesis is a complete sentence
(although sometimes it may require more than one sentence) that establishes the
topic of the essay in clear, unambiguous language.
Tone: The author’s implicit attitude toward the reader or the people,
places, and events in a work as revealed by the elements of the author’s style.
Tone may be characterized as serious or ironic, sad or happy, private or
public, angry or affectionate, bitter or nostalgic, or any other attitudes and
feelings that human beings experience. See also style.
Tragedy: A story that presents courageous individuals who confront powerful
forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and
depth of the human spirit in the face of failure, defeat, and even death.
Tragedies recount an individual’s downfall; they usually begin high and end
low. Shakespeare is known for his tragedies, including Macbeth, King Lear,
Othello, and Hamlet. The revenge tragedy is a well-established type of drama
that can be traced back to Greek and Roman plays, particularly through the
Roman playwright Seneca (c. 3 b.c.–a.d. 63). Revenge tragedies basically
consist of a murder that has to be avenged by a relative of the victim.
Typically, the victim’s ghost appears to demand revenge, and invariably madness
of some sort is worked into subsequent events, which ultimately end in the
deaths of the murderer, the avenger, and a number of other characters.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet subscribes to the basic ingredients of revenge tragedy,
but it also transcends these conventions because Hamlet contemplates not merely
revenge but suicide and the meaning of life itself. A tragic flaw is an error
or defect in the tragic hero that leads to his downfall, such as greed, pride,
or ambition. This flaw may be a result of bad character, bad judgment, an
inherited weakness, or any other defect of character. Tragic irony is a form of
dramatic irony found in tragedies such as Oedipus the King, in which Oedipus
ironically ends up hunting himself. See also comedy, drama.
Tragicomedy: A type of drama that combines certain elements of both tragedy and
comedy. The play’s plot tends to be serious, leading to a terrible catastrophe,
until an unexpected turn in events leads to a reversal of circumstance, and the
story ends happily. Tragicomedy often employs a romantic, fast-moving plot
dealing with love, jealousy, disguises, treachery, intrigue, and surprises, all
moving toward a melodramatic resolution. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is a
tragicomedy. See also comedy, drama, melodrama, tragedy.
Triplet: A tercet in which all three lines rhyme. See also tercet.
Understatement: The opposite of hyperbole, understatement (or litotes) refers to a
figure of speech that says less than is intended. Understatement usually has an
ironic effect, and sometimes may be used for comic purposes, as in Mark Twain’s
statement, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." See
also hyperbole, irony.
Verse: A generic term used to describe poetic lines composed in a measured
rhythmical pattern, that are often, but not necessarily, rhymed. See also line,
meter, rhyme, rhythm.
Villanelle: A type of fixed form poetry consisting of nineteen lines of any
length divided into six stanzas: five tercets and a concluding quatrain. The
first and third lines of the initial tercet rhyme; these rhymes are repeated in
each subsequent tercet (aba) and in the final two lines of the quatrain (abaa).
Line 1 appears in its entirety as lines 6, 12, and 18, while line 3 reappears
as lines 9, 15, and 19. Dylan Thomas’s "Do not go gentle into that good
night" is a villanelle. See also fixed form, quatrain, rhyme, tercet.
Well-made play: A realistic style of play that employs conventions including plenty
of suspense created by meticulous plotting. Well-made plays are tightly and
logically constructed, and lead to a logical resolution that is favorable to
the protagonist. This dramatic structure was popularized in France by Eugène
Scribe (1791–1861) and Victorien Sardou (1831–1908) and was adopted by Henrik
Ibsen. See also character, plot.
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