Allegory
A story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. In written narrative, this type of narrative involves a continuous parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning in a story, so that the pers
Alliteration
The repetition of the same sounds�usually initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables�in any sequence of neighboring words. A good example comes from Tennyson: "Landscape-lover, lord of language.
Allusion
an indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work, the nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader's familiarity with what is thus mentioned.
Anaphora
a rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences. These lines by Emily Dickinson illustrate the device:
Mine�by the Right of the White Election!
Min
Assonance
the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables (and sometimes in the following unstressed syllables) of neighboring words; it is distinct from rhyme in that the consonants differ although the vowels match. For example: sweet
Avant-garde
the French military and political term for the vanguard of an army or political movement, extended since the late 19th century to that body of artists and writers who are dedicated to the idea of art as experiment and revolt against tradition. Ezra Pound'
Bibliography
a systematic list of writings by a given author or on a given subject.
Bildungsroman
a kind of novel that follows the development of the hero or heroine from childhood or adolescence into adulthood, through a troubled quest for identity. It's also known as the "novel of education." Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is a good example.
Black comedy
A kind of drama (or, by extension, a non-dramatic work) in which disturbing or sinister subjects like death, disease, or warfare, are treated with bitter amusement, usually in a manner calculated to offend and shock.
Blank verse
unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, as in these final lines of Tennyson's "Ulysses":
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Canon
A body of writings recognized by authority. This is a body of writings especially approved by critics or anthologists and deemed suitable for academic study.
Character
a person in a narrative or dramatic work
Climax
any moment of great intensity in a literary work, especially in drama
Connotation
the range of further associations that a word or phrase suggests in addition to its straightforward, dictionary meaning
Consonance
the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different. For example: coming home, hot foot.
Couplet
a pair of rhyming verse lines, usually of the same length: one of the most widely used verse-forms in European poetry.
Denotation
The basic, dictionary definition of a word, independent of its emotional coloration or associations.
Dialogue
spoken exchanges between or among characters in a dramatic or narrative work; or a literary form in prose or verse based on a debate or discussion, usually between two speakers
Diction
The choice of words used in a literary work.
Drama
the general term for performances in which actors impersonate the actions and speech of fictional or historical characters (or non-human entities) for the entertainment of an audience, either on a stage or by means of a broadcast; or a particular example
Dramatic irony
A phenomenon that occurs when the audience knows more about a character's situation than the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character's expectations, and thus ascribing a sharply different sense to some of the character's own statem
Dramatic monologue
a kind of poem in which a single fictional or historical character other than the poet speaks to a silent 'audience' of one or more persons.
End-rhyme
a rhyme occurring at the ends of verse lines, as opposed to internal rhyme and head-rhyme (alliteration). This is the most familiar kind of rhyming.
Enjambment
the running over of the sense and grammatical structure from one poetic line or couplet to the next without a punctuated pause
Epic
a long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes, in a grand ceremonious style. The hero, usually protected by or even descended from gods, performs superhuman exploits in battle or in marvelous voyages, often saving or fo
Epiphany
the term used in Christian theology for a manifestation of God's presence in the world. It was taken over by James Joyce to denote secular revelation in the everyday world, and it usually involves a character having a grand realization about the nature of
Epistolary novel
a novel written in the form of a series of letters exchanged among the characters of the story, with extracts from their journals sometimes included
Essay
a short written composition in prose that discusses a subject or proposes an argument without claiming to be a complete or thorough exposition
Explication
the attempt to analyze a literary work thoroughly, giving full attention to its complexities of form and meaning.
Exposition
The opening part of a play or story, in which we are introduced to the characters and their situation, often by reference to preceding events.
First-person narrative
a narrative or mode of storytelling in which the narrator appears as the 'I' recollecting his or her own part in the events related, either as a witness of the action or as an important participant in it
Frame narrative, or frame story
a story in which another story is enclosed or embedded as a 'tale within the tale,' or which contains several such tales. Some examples include Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Free-verse
a kind of poetry that does not conform to any regular meter: the length of its lines is irregular, as is its use of rhyme�if any. It is now the most widely practiced verse form in English
Genre
the French term for a type, species, or class of composition. It is a recognizable and established category of written work employing such common conventions that will prevent readers or audiences from mistaking it for another kind. Some examples include
Half-rhyme, or slant rhyme
an imperfect rhyme in which the final consonants of stressed syllables agree but the vowel sounds do not match; thus a form of consonance (cape/deep)
Hyperbole
exaggeration for the sake of emphasis in a figure of speech not meant literally. An everyday example is the complaint, "I've been waiting here for ages.
Iamb
a metrical unit of verse, having one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable, as in the word 'beyond.'
Imagery
a rather vague critical term covering those uses of language in a literary work that evoke sense-impressions by literal or figurative reference to perceptible or 'concrete' objects, scenes, actions, or states, as distinct from the language of abstract arg
Intentional fallacy
the name given by the American New Critics W.K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley to the widespread assumption that an author's declared or supposed intention in writing a work is the proper basis for deciding on the meaning and the value of that work.
Internal Rhyme
a poetic device by which two or more words rhyme within the same line of verse, as in Kipling's poem 'The City of Brass':
Men swift to see done, and outrun, their extremest commanding�
Of the tribe which describes with a jibe the perversions of Justice�
P
Irony
a subtly humorous perception of inconsistency, in which an apparently straightforward statement or event is undermined by its context so as to give it a very different significance. At its simplest, it involves a discrepancy between what is said and what
K�nstlerroman
the German term (meaning 'artist-novel') for a novel in which the central character is an artist of any kind. A famous example is James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Lyric
in the modern sense, any fairly short poem expressing the personal mood, feeling, or meditation of a single speaker (who may sometimes be an invented character, not the poet). These poems may be composed in almost any meter and on almost every subject, al
Metaphor
the most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two. This resemblance is as
Metonymy
A figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it. For example, the bottle for alcoholic drink, the press for journalism, the Oval Office for the US presidency. A well-known example is the pe
Meter
the pattern of measured sound-units recurring more or less regularly in lines of verse
Monologue
an extended speech uttered by one speaker, either to others or as if alone
Motif
a situation, incident, idea, image, or character-type that is found in many different literary works, folktales, or myths; or any element of a work that is elaborated into a more general theme.
Narrator
one who tells, or is assumed to be telling, the story in a given narrative. This is the imagined 'voice' transmitting the story, and is distinguished from the real author
Novel
nearly always an extended fictional prose narrative, although some of them are very short, some are non-fictional, some have been written in verse, and some do not even tell a story. These exceptions show that this form as a literary genre is itself excep
Octave
A group of eight verse lines forming the first part of a sonnet (in its Italian or Petrarchan form)
Omniscient Narrator
an 'all-knowing' kind of narrator very commonly found in works of fiction written as third-person narratives. This type of narrator has a full knowledge of the story's events and of the motives and unspoken thoughts of the various characters.
Oxymoron
a figure of speech that combines two usually contradictory terms in a compressed paradox, as in the word bittersweet or the phrase jumbo shrimp. Shakespeare has his Romeo utter several in one speech:
Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything of
Parallelism
the arrangement of similarly constructed clauses, sentences, or verse lines in a pairing or other sequence suggesting some correspondence between them. These lines from Shakespeare's Richard II serve as an example:
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,
Parody
a mocking imitation of the style of a literary work or works, ridiculing the stylistic habits of an author or school by exaggerated mimicry.
Persona
the assumed identity or fictional 'I' (literally a 'mask') assumed by a writer in a literary work; thus the speaker in a lyric poem, or the narrator in a fictional narrative
Petrarchan sonnet
also known as the Italian sonnet. It is divided into an octave and a sestet, thus avoiding the final couplet found in the English or Shakespearean sonnet
Plot
the pattern of events and situations in a narrative or dramatic work, as selected and arranged both to emphasize relationships�usually of cause and effect�between incidents and to elicit a particular kind of interest in the reader or audience, such as sur
Prose Poem
a short composition employing the rhythmic cadences and other devices of free verse (such as poetic imagery and figures) but printed wholly or partly in a format with a right-hand margin instead of line breaks
Protagonist
the chief character in a play or story
Quatrain
a verse stanza of four lines, rhymed or (less often) unrhymed
Rhyme scheme
the pattern in which the rhymed line-endings are arranged in a poem or stanza
Scansion
the analysis of poetic meter in verse lines by displaying stresses, pauses, and rhyme patterns with conventional visual symbols
Sestet
a group of six verse lines forming the second part of a sonnet (in its Italian or Petrarchan form), following the opening octave
Short story
a fictional prose tale of no specified length, but too short to be published as a volume on its own, as novellas sometimes and novels usually are
Simile
an explicit comparison between two different things, actions, or feelings, using the words 'as' or 'like,' as in Wordsworth's line:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
Soliloquy
a dramatic speech uttered by one character speaking aloud while on the stage (or while under the impression of being alone)
Sonnet
a lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length; in English they are in iambic pentameter. Made popular by the Italian poet, Petrarch, and the English poet, William Shakespeare
Stanza
a group of verse lines forming a section of a poem and sharing the same structure as all or some of the other sections of the same poem, in terms of the lengths of its lines, its meter, and usually its rhyme scheme
Style
any specific way of using language, which is characteristic of an author, school, period, or genre. These may be defined by their diction, syntax, imagery, rhythm, and use of figures, or by any other linguistic feature
Subplot
a secondary sequence of actions in a dramatic or narrative work, usually involving characters of lesser importance (and often of lower social status)
Symbol
in the simplest sense, anything that stands for or represents something beyond it�usually an idea conventionally associated with it. Many novelists have used these in their work. For example, in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the White Whale becomes the foc
Synecdoche
a common figure of speech by which something is referred to indirectly, either by naming only some part or constituent of it (for example, 'hands' for manual laborers) or by naming some more comprehensive entity of which it is a part (for example, 'the la
Syntax
the way in which words and clauses are ordered and connected so as to form sentences; or the set of grammatical rules governing such word-order
Theme
a salient abstract idea that emerges from a literary work's treatment of its subject-matter. While the subject of work is described concretely in terms of its action (for example, 'the adventures of a newcomer in the big city'), this aspect of the work wi
Third-Person Narrative
a narrative or mode of storytelling in which the narrator is not a character within the events related, but stands 'outside' those events. In this type of narrative, all characters within the story are therefore referred to as 'he,' 'she,' or 'they.'
Tone
a very vague critical term usually designating the mood or atmosphere of a work, although in some more restricted uses it refers to the author's attitude toward the reader (for example, formal, intimate, pompous)
Tragedy
a serious play (or novel) representing the disastrous downfall of a central character, the protagonist
Trope
a figure of speech, especially one that uses words in senses beyond their literal meanings
Unreliable Narrator
a narrator whose account of events appears to be faulty, misleadingly biased, or otherwise distorted, so that it departs from the 'true' understanding of events shared between the reader and the author
Verisimilitude
the semblance of truth or reality in literary works; or the literary principle that requires a consistent illusion of truth to life