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Lit Crit UIL
terms that have appeared on official tests
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| apostrophe | A figure of speech in which someone (usually but not always absent), some abstract quality, or nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present. |
| aside | A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on the stage. |
| dramatic monologue | A poem that reveals a "soul in action." The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker's life. |
| harangue | A vehement speech designed to arouse strong emotions. |
| soliloquy | A speech delivered while the speaker is alone, calculated to inform the audience of what is passing in the character's mind. |
| caesura | A pause or break in a line of verse. |
| conceit | Originally implied something conceived in the mind; later applied to a type of poetic metaphor expressed through an elaborate analogy and pointing to a striking similarity between ostensibly dissimilar things. |
| kenning | A figurative phrase used in Old Germanic languages as a synonym for a simple noun. (often compound words like peace-bringer) |
| syllepsis | A grammatically correct construction in which one word is placed in the same grammatical relationship to two words but in quite different senses (stained her honor and her brocade); similar to zeugma |
| zeugma | synonym of syllepsis; an object-taking word has two or more objects on different levels, such as concrete and abstract (cultivate matrimony and your estate); or a grammatical irregularity such as "one or two years ago" (one and years don't match) |
| Cockney School | A derogatory title applied by Blackwood's Magazine to 19th century writers with an alleged poor taste in diction and rhyme (William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, John Keats) |
| Fleshly School of Poetry | A critical essay in the Contemporary Review 1871 by Thomas Maitland (Robert W Buchanan) in which Dante Rosetti took the brunt of the criticism. Also "Mutual Admiration School" |
| Graveyard School | A group of 18th century poets who wrote long poems on death and immortality. Atmosphere of pleasing gloom. Example is Thomas Parnell. |
| Kailyard School | A group of Scottish writers whose work dealt idealistically with village life in Scotland. (example is J.M. Barrie) |
| Spasmodic School | A phrase from W.E. Aytoun in 1854 to a group of contemporary English poets whose verse reflected discontent and unrest, marked by jerkiness and strained emphasis. |
| Postmodern Period | Period from 1965 to current. A time of continuance and contemplation. Spiritual malaise defined by Margaret Drabble in The Ice Age. (denial of order, fragmented universes) |
| Period of the Confessional Self | Period of American literature in 1960s to current. Find chief values in self rather than society; importance in introspection and confession. Anne Sexton, Theodore Roethke, John Updike. |
| Naturalistic and Symbolistic Period | Period of American literature between 1900 and 1930, divided by World War I. |
| Realistic Period (American) | Period of American literature 1865 - 1900. New turbulence and growing skepticism and disillusionment. Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James. |
| allonym | The name of an actual person other than the author that is signed by the author to a work. |
| eponym | a person after whom a discovery, invention, place, etc., is named or thought to be named. (Sandwich for Earl of Sandwich) |
| persona | A mask. Refers to a "second self" created by an author and through whom the narrative is told. |
| pseudonym | A false name sometimes assumed by writers and others (also known as nom de plume) |
| putative author | The fictional author of a work, supposedly written by someone other than its actual author (Lemuel Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels instead of Jonathan Swift) |
| euphemism | A device in which indirectness replaces directness of statement, usually in an effort to avoid offensiveness |
| grundyism | a prudish adherence to conventionality, esp. in personal behavior |
| malapropism | An inappropriateness of speech resulting from the use of one word for another, which resembles it. |
| spoonerism | An accidental interchange of sounds -- usually the initial sounds -- in two or more words, such as blushing crow for crushing blow. |
| Wellerism | A literal sense to a figurative expression "I've got you covered, as the rug said to the floor." |
| masque | In medieval Europe, partly as survivals or adaptations of ancient pagan seasonal ceremonies, a species of games or spectacles characterized by a procession of masked figures. |
| minstrel show | A form of vaudeville popular in America in the last half of the 19th century and early 20th. White men in blackface impersonated stereotypical characters where the white "straight man" typically won in a battle of wits. |
| miracle play | A nonscriptural play based on the legend of a saint or on a miracle performed by a saint or sacred object. |
| morality play | A poetic drama developed in the late 14th century; a dramatized allegory in which abstractions appear in personified form and struggle for a human soul. |
| mystery play | A medieval play based on biblical history; originated in the liturgy of the church. |
| Cavalier Lyricists | A group of followers of Charles I who composed lighthearted poems. Included Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling. |
| Goliardic Poets | Lilting Latin verse, usually satiric, composed by university students and wandering scholars in Germany, France and England in the 12th and 13th centuries. Celebrated wine, women, and song. |
| Lake Poets | This term came from the Edinburgh Review and used for poets such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey; lived in the same district in northwest England. |
| Pre-Raphaelites | Began in 1848 with Dante Rosetti, Holman-Hunt, and John Millais. Wanted to regain the spirit of simple devotion and adherence to nature. Characterized by pictorial elements, symbolism, sensuousness, metrical experimentation |
| ambivalence | mutually conflicting feelings or attitudes, usually describing contradictory attitudes an author takes towards characters or societies and describes a confusion of attitude or response called forth by a work. |
| assonance | Patterning of vowel sounds without regard to consonants. |
| consonance | The relation between words in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables agree but the vowels that precede them differ. |
| dissonance | harsh and inharmonious sounds |
| resonance | the quality in a sound of being deep, full, and reverberating: |
| epistolary novel | a novel in which the narrative is carried forward by letters written by one or more of the characters. |
| framework story | A story inside a story |
| metafiction | A work of fiction, a major concern of which is the nature of fiction itself. |
| objective correlative | T.S. Eliot's term for a pattern of objects, actions, or events or a situation that can serve effectively to awaken in the reader an emotional response without being a direct statement of that subjective emotion. |
| palimpsest | A writing surface, whether of vellum, papyrus, or other material, that has been used more than once for manuscript purposes. |
| Neoclassical Period | Period of English literature between the return of the Stuarts to the English throne in 1660 and the publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798. |
| Romantic Period (American) | 1830-1865 In American Literature. Between the "second revolution" of the Jacksonian Era and the close of the Civil War; testing of a national and development by ordeal. |
| pantoum | May consist of any number of 4 line stanzas but in any case, the 2nd and 4th lines of one must reappear as the 1st and 3rd lines in the following stanza. |
| rondeau | A set French verse pattern, 15 lines with the 9th and 15th being a short refrain. Only 2 rhymes outside of the refrain. aabba aabc aabbac |
| sestina | six 6 lined stanzas and a 3 lined envoy. Thought to be first written by Arnaut Daniel. Complex pattern of end words. |
| terza rima | 3 line stanza supposedly devised by Dante with rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc ded and so on. |
| villanelle | A fixed 19 line form, originally French, employing only 2 rhymes and repeating 2 of the lines according to a set pattern. |
| black humor | Use of the morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern literature. |
| fantasy | Designates a conscious breaking free from reality. Takes place in a nonexistent and unreal world. |
| surrealism | Emphasizes expression of the imagination as realized in dreams and presented without conscious control. Important feature of writers like Robert Lowell. |
| travesty | Writing that by its incongruity of treatment ridicules a subject inherently noble or dignified. (opposite of mock epic) |
| blood and thunder | A class of work specializing in bloodshed and violence. Many have to do with crime and high emotion. |
| Calvinism | emphasizes the rule of God over all things as reflected in its understanding of Scripture, God, humanity, salvation, and the church. |
| Gnosticism | The beliefs of various cults in late pre-Christian and early Christian times. Thought that human beings had an immediate knowledge of spiritual truth that was available to them through faith alone. |
| Philistinism | The worship of material and mechanical prosperity and the disregard of culture, beauty and spirit. |
| Stoicism | A group of Greek philosophers founded by Zeno in the late 4th century BC. Exalts endurance and self-sufficiency. Virtue is living in conformity to the laws of nature. |
| Transcendentalism | A reliance on the intuition and the conscience; living close to nature and taught the dignity of manual labor. |
| heroic couplet | Iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs. |
| hymnal stanza | also known as common measure or common meter. A stanza of 4 lines with the 1st and 3rd being iambic tetrameter (8 syllables) and the 2nd and 4th iambic trimeter (6 syllables), rhymed abab abcb |
| projection verse | A kind of free verse that regards meter and form as artificial; primarily through the content and the propulsive quality of breathing, which determines the line. |
| sapphic verse | A stanzaic pattern named for the Greek poet who wrote love lyrics of great beauty around 600 BC. It has 3 lines of 11 or 12 syllables and a 4th of 5 syllables. |
| Colonial Period | A period of American literature 1607-1765. Writing was generally utilitarian, polemical, or religious. Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin. |
| Federalist Period | A period of American literature between the formation of the national government and the "Second Revolution" of the Jacksonian Democracy. |
| Revolutionary Age | A period of American literature 1765-1790 between the Stamp Act and formation of the federal government. |
| antithesis | A figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences or ideas. Balancing one term against another. |
| hyperbole | Exaggeration for effect or used for humor |
| redaction | A revision or editing of a manuscript |
| tautology | The use of repetitious words without adding force or clarity |
| choree | Obsolete equivalent of trochee |
| iamb | A foot consisting of an unaccented syllable and an accented. |
| pyrrhic | A foot of unaccented syllables; most commonly variations in iambic verse |
| spondee | A foot composed of two accented syllables |
| trochee | A foot consisting of an accented and an unaccented syllable |
| Frankfurt School | a group of scholars known for developing critical theory and popularizing the dialectical method of learning by interrogating society's contradictions. Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. |
| Geneva School | A group of critics, including Georges Poulet, Marcel Raymond, Albert Beguin; a literary work as a series of existential expressions of the author's individual consciousness. |
| Satanic School | A phrase used by Southey in the preface to his Vision of Judgement to designate the members of the literary group made up of Byron, Shelley and Hunt. |
| cacophony | The opposite of euphony; a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds. |
| euphony | pleasing sounds; opposite of cacophony |
| sigmatism | refers to the use of the Greek letter sigma (Σ), which represents the “s” sound. |
| encomium | A composition in praise of a living person, object or event (not a god) delivered before a special audience |
| epithalamium | A poem written to celebrate a wedding. |
| eulogy | A dignified formal speech or form of writing that praises a person or a thing |
| ode | A single, unified strain of exalted lyrical verse, directed to a single purpose, and dealing with one theme. |
| Early Victorian Age | Period from 1832-1870; a time of gradual tempering of the romantic impulse and the steady growth of realism. |
| Elizabethan Age | 1558 - 1603 in England. Great nationalistic expansion, commercial growth, and religious controversy; English drama developed, lyric poetry, and new interest in criticism. |
| Interregnum | England had been dominated by Puritan literature and the intermittent presence of official censorship (for example, Milton's Areopagitica and his later retraction of that statement) |
| Late Victorian Age | Period of English literature 1870-1901; full flowering of movement to realism |
| Restoration Age | The period around the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660; reflects the reaction against Puritanism, receptiveness to French influence, and dominance of classical points of view. |
| analogue | Something that is analogous to or like another given thing; could be two versions of the same story, especially if no direct relationship can be established. |
| volta | The turn in thought -- from question to answer; problem to solution -- that occurs at the beginning of the seset in the Italian Sonnet (sometimes in Shakespearean sonnet between 12th and 13th line) marked by yet or but |
| leonine rhyme | the internal rhyming of the last stressed syllable before the caesura, with the last stressed syllable of the line. |
| assonance rhyme | end rhyme when the vowel components of the matched syllables are the same but the succeeding consonants are not (love/enough or produced/abused) |
| metonymy | The substitution of the name of an object closely associated with a word for the word itself (such as a monarch being called "the crown") |
| synaesthesia | The concurrent response of two or more of the senses to the stimulation of one. (such as loud shirt) |
| chiaroscuro | Contrasting light and shade |
| blank verse | Unrhymed but otherwise regular verse -- usually iambic pentameter. |
| quibbles | earlier term for a pun; now a verbal device for evading the point at issue. |
| paradox | A statement that although seemingly contradictory or absurd may actually be well-founded or true. |
| elision | The omission of part of a word |
| epenthesis | the insertion of a sound or letter within a word |
| metathesis | The interchange of position between sounds in a word (pretty as perty) |
| paragoge | The addition of an extra letter, syllable, or sound at the end of a word, as in dearie for dear. |
| prothesis | The addition of a syllable at the beginning of a word |
| haiku | A form of Japanese poetry in three lines of 5, 7, 5; deeply serious and profoundly conventional (usually about nature) |
| lai | a song or short narrative poem; based on earlier songs or verse tales sung by Breton minstrels from Celtic legend. |
| senryu | has the same form as the haiku (17 syllables in lines of 5,7,5) but relying on humor or satire rather than conventions related to the seasons. |
| tanka | Japanese poem similar to haiku consisting of 31 syllables in five lines, each is 7 syllables except the 1st and 3rd lines, which are 5 syllables each |
| triolet | A simple French verse of 8 lines. The first two are repeated as the last two and the first line also recurs as the fourth. There are only 2 rhymes. |
| melopoeia | A Greek term renovated by Ezra Pound, who used it for the whole articulatory-acoustic-auditory range of poetry. |
| Orientalism | A quality of thought or expression associated with the Orient, the East, or Asia, and sometimes even including Israel and Greece. May be condescending or contemptuous. |
| tone | Used for the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. |
| asyndeton | A condensed form of expression in which elements customarily joined by conjunctions are presented in series without the conjunctions. |
| pleonasm | The use of superfluous syllables or words; may consist of needless repetition or of the addition of unnecessary words. |
| polyptoton | The repetition in close proximity of words that have the same roots. (strong/strength) |
| polysyndeton | The use of more conjunctions than is normal. |
| symploce | A figure of speech combining anaphora and epistrophe resulting in the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, along with the repetition of another or the same word or phrase at the end of these successive clauses. |
| carpe diem | Seize the day. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die." |
| memento mori | a Latin phrase meaning “remember you must die.” |
| ubi sunt | "Where are those who were before us?" |
| vade mecum | An article that one keeps constantly on hand (usually means a book always at hand). Means "go with me." |
| verbum infans | "the unspeaking word" applied to the infant Christ, who incarnates the Word. |
| caudate sonnet | An Italian form in which a standard 14 line sonnet is augmented by the addition of other lines, including "tails" |
| Italian sonnet/Petrarchan sonnet | A sonnet divided into an octave (abbaabba) and a sestet (cdecde) |
| Miltonic sonnet | A variation on the Italian sonnet in which the rhyme scheme is kept, but the turn between the octave and sestet is eliminated. |
| Shakespearean sonnet | English sonnet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. |
| Spenserian sonnet | English sonnet with 3 quatrains and a couplet but uses linking rhymes: abab bcbc cdcd ee |
| neologism | A new word introduced into a language, especially for enhancing style |
| nonce word | A word for which there is a single recorded occurrence (one invented by an author for a particular usage or special meaning) |
| onomatopoeia | Words that by their sound suggest their meaning. |
| solecism | A violation of prescriptive grammatical rules; any error in diction, grammar, or propriety |
| discordia concors | A term used by Samuel Johnson for "a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult remembrances in things apparently unlike" in metaphysical poetry |
| syncopation | The effect produced by substitution and also the effect produced when the metrical accent and the rhetorical accent differ sufficiently to create the effect of two different metrical patterns existing concurrently. (omission of an expected syllable) |
| vorticism | A movement in modern poetry related to the manifestation of certain abstract developments and methods in painting and sculpture. (Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound) -- extension of imagism |
| analepsis | a literary device in narrative, in which a past event is narrated at a point later than its chronological place in a story. |
| anacoulthon | The failure -- accidental or deliberate -- to complete a sentence according to the structural plan on which it was started. |
| vernacular | the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region. |
| demotic | A term applied by Northrop Frye to a style shaped by the diction, rhythms, syntax, and associations of ordinary speech. |
| semiotic | the analysis of literature in terms of language, conventions, and modes of discourse. |
| baroque | A term applied first to the architectural style that flourished in Europe from late 16th century until 18th. Blends picturesque elements with more ordered and formal style of "high Renaissance." |
| Freytag's Pyramid | A diagram of the structure of a five-act tragedy, given in Technik des Dramas (1863) |
| festschrift | German for celebration and writing; a volume of miscellaneous learned essays by students, colleagues or admirers of a scholar and presented on some special occasion. |
| bref double | French poetic form consisting of 3 quatrains and a final couplet, making 14 lines. In all versions the scheme consists of three rhymes and 4-5 un-rhymed lines |
| quatern | sixteen line French poem composed of four quatrains. It has a refrain that is in a different place in each quatrain (1st line 1st stanza, 2nd line in 2nd and so on) |
| contrerime | A quatrain as named by Paul-Jean Toulet, in which an alternating syllabic scheme of 8-6-8-6 is opposed by a chiastic rhyme of abba |
| synaloepha | the blending into one syllable of two vowels of adjacent syllables (as by crasis, synaeresis, synizesis, elision) |
| metaplasm | The movement in any piece of language from its customary place; has been used as a general term for almost any alteration of words or patterns. |
| mock epic | Terms for a literary form that burlesques the epic by treating a trivial subject in the grand style or uses the formula to make a trivial subject ridiculous by ludicrously overstating it. |
| epyllion | A narrative poem usually presenting an episode from the heroic past and resembling an epic but much briefer and more limited. |
| elegy | A sustained formal poem setting forth meditations on death or another solemn theme (ex. "The Wanderer," Book of the Duchess, In Memoriam, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd") |
| anastrophe | Inversion of the usual, normal or logical order of the parts of a sentence. |
| morpheme | A minimal meaningful linguistic unit. (dismemberings is separated into dis-member-ing-s) |
| Great Vowel Shift | a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English |
| bacchius | A 3 syllable foot usually defined quantitatively as a short followed by two longs or qualitatively weak followed by two strongs. |
| anaphora | A device of repetition in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two more lines, clauses or sentences. |
| diacope | when a writer repeats a word or phrase with one or more words in between (ex. to be or not to be) |
| colloquialism | An expression used in informal conversation but not accepted universally in formal speech or writing. |
| verbal irony | a statement in which the speaker's words are incongruous with the speaker's intent. |
| sestet | The second, six-lined division of an Italian sonnet; it usually makes specific a general statement that has been presented in the octave or indicates the personal emotion of the author in a situation from the octave. |
| slant rhyme | near rhyme; usually the substitution of assonance or consonance for true rhyme (also oblique rhyme, off-rhyme, pararhyme) |
| couplet | Two consecutive lines of verse with end rhymes. |
| trimeter | A line of three feet |
| tetrameter | A line of four feet |
| pentameter | A line of five feet |
| hexameter | A line of six feet (conventional medium for epic and didactic poetry) |
| heptameter | A line of seven feet |
| Realistic period (English) | Period in England 1876 - 1914; a reaction to romanticism, a revolt against Victorian standards. Hardy, Kipling, Yeats, Bridges. |
| pentastitch | A poem or a stanza of five lines (also quintet or cinquain) |
| tetralogy | Four works constituting a group. Greek drama was presented like this with 3 tragedies followed by a satyr play. |
| chiasmus | A pattern in which the second part is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed (ex. Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike) |
| litotes | A form of understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite. |
| synecdoche | A trope in which a part signifies the whole or the whole signifies the part. (threads for clothes, wheels for car) |
| Bildungsroman | A novel that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity; frequently autobiographical |
| epistolary novel | A novel in which the narrative is carried forward by letters written by one or more of the characters. |
| novel of manners | A novel dominated by social customs, manners, conventions, and habits of a definite social class. The mores of a specific group become powerful controls over characters. |
| picaresque novel | A chronicle --usually autobiographical -- presenting the life story of a rascal of low degree engaged in menial tasks and making his living more through his wits than his industry. |
| psychological novel | Prose fiction that places unusual emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action that spring from and develop external action. |
| resonance | the quality in a sound of being deep, full, and reverberating. |
| novel of character | A novel that emphasizes character rather than exciting episode, as in the novel of incident or unity of plot. |
| novel of the soil | A special kind of regionalism in the novel, in which the lives of people struggling for existence in remote rural regions are starkly portrayed. |
| abecedarian | An acrostic so arranged that the initial letters of successive lines (or other units) form an alphabet. |
| grammatology | According to Derrida, writing has been erroneously considered as derivative from speech, making it a "fall" from the real "full presence" of speech and the independent act of writing. |
| trope | A figure of speech involving a "turn" or change of sense -- the use of a word in a sense other than the literal. |
| in medias res | A term from Horace literally meaning "in or into the middle parts of things." |
| Theater of Cruelty | A concept from the 1930s by Antonin Artaud; theater is a ceremonial act of magic purgation. Demonstrates human beings' inescapable enslavement to things and hoped to raise the the theater to a level of religious ceremony. |
| Theater of the Absurd | A term invented by Martin Esslin. Portrays not a series of connected incidents telling a story but a pattern of images presenting people as bewildered creatures in an incomprehensible universe. |
| tragedy of blood | An intensified form of revenge tragedy popular on the Elizabethan stage. Works out the theme of revenge and retribution through murder and mutilation. |
| tragicomedy | A play that seems to lead to a tragic catastrophe until an unexpected turn of events brings about a happy denouement. |
| well-made play | Certain problem plays, comedies of manners, and farces in 19th century. Eugene Scribe and Victorien Sardou. Tight, logical construction, with apparent inevitability. |
| motif | A simple element that serves as a basis for expanded narrative. |
| deism | The term is used chiefly of an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind. |
| Great Chain of Being | The belief that everything partakes of a hierarchical system, extending upward from inanimate matter to things that have life but do not reason, to the rational human being, to angels, and finally to God |
| hieronymy | The idea of sacred names and naming, more recently applied to any special name (or proper noun) for persons, places, gods, days, etc. |
| pantheism | the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. |
| Age of Johnson | Interval between 1750 and 1798. Neoclassicism was yielding to Romanticism. An interest in the past, in the primitive, and in the literature of the folk was developing. |
| Age of Milton | 1625-1660; also the Puritan Age, because during the period, Puritan standards prevailed in England, and also because the greatest literary figure it was named for was a Puritan. The puritans struggled for righteousness and liberty |
| Age of National Expansion | 1815 - 1860 in America; Rapid economic, territorial, and demographic changes in the first half of the nineteenth century challenged the new republic to define and extend the democratic ideals established in the previous century. |
| Age of Reason | A term generally used for the Enlightenment in the late 17th and 18th centuries; emphasized self-knowledge, self-control, rationalism, discipline, and rule of law, order and decorum. |
| Age of Romantic Movement | Period in England 1798-1832; Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads and ended in 1832 with the death of Scott. |
| aestheticism | A 19th century literary movement that rested on the credo of "art for art's sake." Dominated by Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater. |
| catechism | An exercise arranged as questions and answers, especially in use for religious instruction. |
| determinism | The belief that all ostensible acts of the will are actually the result of causes that determine them. |
| didacticism | Instructiveness in a work, one purpose of which is to give guidance, particularly in a moral, ethical, or religious matters. |
| humanism | Broadly, any attitude that tends to exalt the human element, as opposed to the supernatural, divine elements -- or as opposed to the grosser, animal elements. |
| digression | The insertion of material often not closely related to the subject in a work. |
| prolepsis | a device where future events are spoken of as though they are occurring or have occurred. This can be done either by referring to a future event as though it was in the past, or can be done using a flash forward. |
| Beat Generation | A group of American poets of the 1950s and 60s in a rebellion against the prevailing culture. Loose structure and slang diction. Leaders were Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac. |
| Black Mountain School | Writers like Charles Olson, Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan. A bold experiment in aesthetic education; highly influential in projective verse movement. |
| Harlem Renaissance | The first major literary movement of African American writers. Included Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay. Defining moment was publication of The New Negro in 1925 by Alain Locke. |
| Knickerbocker Group | A New York Group made famous by Washington Irving in first half of 19th century. Other members were James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant. |
| Lost Generation | A group of American writers born around 1900 who served in WWI. Very active in publication of little magazines. Reacted against tendences of older writers in 1920s. |
| Entwicklungsroman | A German term that emphasizes the development of the principal character. |
| Kunstlerroman | A form of apprenticeship novel in which the protagonist is an artist struggling from childhood to maturity toward an understanding of his or her creative mission. |
| roman a clef | A novel in which actual persons are presented under the guise of fiction. Examples are Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance and Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. |
| roman a these | From the French, a thesis novel -- intended to establish and illustrate a social doctrine. |
| Revolutionary and Early National Period | Ended with the "second revolution" and represented by the ascendency of Jacksonian democracy. 1765-1830. Revolutionary ideas gave way to Federalists. |
| syncope | A cutting short of words through the omission of a letter or a syllable. (usually the omission of elements inside a word instead of running words together). Example: ev'ry for every |
| epigram | A pithy saying; often antithetical |
| ballade | One of the most popular of the artificial French verse forms. Three stanzas and an envoy (typically 8 lines ababbcbc and an envoy bcbc). |
| abridgement | A shortened version of a work but one that attempts to preserve essential elements. |
| enjambment | The continuation of the sense and grammatical construction of a line onto the next verse or couplet. |
| inversion | The placing of a sentence element out of its normal position. |
| hypotaxis | Arrangement of clauses, phrases, or words in dependent or subordinate relationships. |
| truncation | In metrics, the omission of a syllable or syllables at the beginning or end of a line. (in general, to shorten) |
| Anglo-Italian sonnet | A sonnet combining the rhyme schemes of the English Sonnet and the Italian sonnet. (usually octave from the former and sestet from the latter) |
| boustrophedon | Running alternately from left to right and right to left; a term that describes the direction of writing in certain ancient inscriptions |
| amphigory | Verse that sounds well but contains little or no sense of meaning (nonsense verse, such as Edward Lear's) |
| heteroglossia | "different tongues" or "different speech"; a term introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin to designate the presence of more than one voice in a given narrative or other work. |
| verisimilitude | The semblance of truth |
| metalepsis | Adding of one trope or figure to another along with such extreme compression that the literal sense of the statement is eclipsed or reduced to anamoly or nonsense. |
| clerihew | A form of light verse that concerns an actual person, whose name is the first line of a quatrain with a strict aabb rhyme scheme, no regular rhyme or meter. |
| limerick | A form of light verse that follows a definite pattern: five anapestic lines. The 1st, 2nd, and 5th line have 3 feet and rhyme; the 3rd and 4th lines consist of 2 feet and rhyme |
| broken rhyme | The breaking of a word at the end of a line for the sake of a rhyme |
| compound rhyme | Rhyme between primary and secondary stressed syllables, as in such pairs as childhood and wildwood. |
| fused rhyme | A rhyme sound is begun at the end of a line but not completed until the beginning of the next |
| heteromerous rhyme | Also "mosaic"; typically one word is forced into a rhyme with two or more words. (intellectual and pecked-you-all) |
| macaronic verse | A type of verse that mingles two or more languages |
| gongorism | A highly affected style taking its name from the Spanish poet whose writings exhibited stylistic extravagances, such as neologism, innovations in grammar, bombast, puns, and more |
| chain rhyme | Incorporates elements of echo and identical rhyme so that the sound of the last syllable of one line recurs as the sound of the first syllable of the next but with a change of meaning |
| internal rhyme | Rhyme that occurs at some place before the last syllables in a line. |
| polyhypenation | The use of more than a usual number of hyphens (dapple-dawn-drawn) |
| double entendre | A statement that is deliberately ambiguous, one of whose possible meanings is risque or suggestive of some impropriety |
| xenoglossia | the intelligible use of a foreign language that one does not know |
| parody | A composition imitating another -- usually serious -- piece. It is designed to ridicule a work or its style or author. |
| enclosed rhyme | A term applied to the rhyme pattern pattern of the In Memoriam stanza: abba |
| rubaiyat | The plural of the Arabic word for quatrain; a collection of four lined stanzas |
| anapest | A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, with two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one |
| dactyl | A foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented |
| paronomasia | pun |
| portmanteau word | Words formed by telescoping two words into one, as the making of "squarson" from "squire" and "parson" |
| chanson de geste | A "song of great deeds" Applied to the early French epic. |
| jeremiad | A work that foretells destruction because of the evil of a group |
| madrigal | A short lyric, usually dealing with love or a pastoral theme and designed for a musical setting. |
| pastoral | A poetic treatment of shepherds and rustic life, after the Latin for "shepherd" |
| vision | the experience of seeing something by extraordinary sight |
| Contemporary Period | From 1945 to the present, this era followed the Modernist time period, and it is also known as the Postmodernism period. |
| Modernist Period | Period of English literature beginning in 1914 (WWI) and ended by 1965; strenuousness of WWI, then uncertainty. |
| gazebo | notably boring material that takes up time and space without advancing a plot, explaining a character, or even affording entertainment |
| gonzoism | a style of journalism marked by a lack of objectivity due to the writer's immersion in the subject and often participation in the activity being documented |
| Gothic | in literature, synonymous for "barbaric"; suggested medieval, natural, primitive, wild, free, authentic, romantic. |
| grotesque | an outgrowth of interest in the irrational, distrust of any cosmic order, and frustration at humankind's lot in the universe; distortion of natural to point of absurdity |
| Marinism | poetry that was a reaction against classicism, was marked by extravagant metaphors, hyperbole, fantastic word play, and original myths, all written with great sonority and sensuality, and with the aim to startle. |
| exposition | A type of composition, which purpose is to explain something; also introduction material in a drama |
| locus classicus | That place or passage invariably cited as the "classic example" o fa principle or type. |
| nekuia | A work having to do with the land of the dead, especially a visit by a living person |
| Edwardian literature | The period between the death of Victoria in 1901 and the beginning of WWI in 1914. Attitude of criticism and questioning. |
| Georgian literature | Period of English literature 1914-1940. Fiction that was a serious commentary on social and moral values |
| Jacobean literature | During the reign of James I of England 1603-1625. Breach between puritan and cavalier widened. Growth of cynicism. Followed Elizabethan age. |
| Restoration literature | Restoring of the Stuarts in 1660 in latter part of 17th century. Reaction against Puritanism, receptiveness to French influence, dominance of classical point of view. |
| Victorian literature | Literature between 1837 and 1901. Complacency, hypocrisy, squeamishness of the time period. |
| meliorism | A name applied to the belief that society has an innate tendency toward improvement and that that tendency can be furthered by conscious human effort. |
| Early Tudor Age | 1500 - 1557; Literary experimentation and importation from French and Italian; Tottel's Miscellany published; Saint Thomas More and Sir Thomas Elyot were important figures. |
| dizain | comprised of a single 10-line stanza which includes 8-10 syllables in every line and is written in accordance with this rhyme scheme: ababbccdcd. |
| virelay | A French verse form related to the lai of which the number of stanzas and number of lines to the stanza are unlimited. Each stanza has an indefinite number of tercets with aab then bbc, then ccd, etc |
| the Agrarians | People living in an agricultural society or espousing the merits of such a society. John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren. |
| the Fugitives | A group associated with Vanderbilt University and published a magazine for which they were named. Later associated with the Agrarians |
| The Hartford Wits | A group of Connecticut writers, active around the American Revolution. Most prominent were Joel Barlow, Timothy Dwight, and John Trumbull. aka Connecticut Wits |
| the Muckrackers | A group of American writers who between 1902 and 1911 worked to expose the dishonest methods and unscrupulous motives in big business and in city, state, and national government. |
| Arcadian Verse | Greek region for which it was named is the home of pastoral poetry, portrayed as an ideal land of rural contentment |
| bucolic verse | A term used for pastoral writing that deals with rural life ina manner rather formal and fanciful. |
| idyll | A term describing one or another of the poetic genres that are short and possess marked descriptive, narrative, and pastoral qualities. |
| kabuki | A popular form of theater in Japan since the mid-17th century. uses stories, scenes, dances, and music, All actors are men, though some portray women |
| noh | means "highly skilled or accomplished." harmonious combinations of dance, poetry, music, mime, and acting. Originally a part of the religious ritual of Japanese feudal aristocracy. |
| anthropomorphism | The ascription of human characteristics to non human objects (conceptual presentation of some nonhuman entity in human form) |
| pathetic fallacy | A phrase coined by Ruskin to denote the tendency to credit nature with human emotions. Any false emotionalism resulting in a too impassioned description of nature. |
| zoomorphism | a literary device that gives animal traits to non-animals, such as humans, gods, or objects. |
| syzygy | A term for two coupled feet serving as a unit. Refers to the use of consonant sounds at the end of one word and at the beginning of another that can be spoken together easily and harmoniously. |
| hiatus | A pause or break between two vowel sounds not separated by a consonant |
| free verse | Poems without rhyme, meter or regular rhythm |
| closed couplet | Two successive lines rhyming aa and containing a grammatically complete, independent statement. |
| heroic couplet | Iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs |
| short couplet | An octosyllabic pair: two rhyming lines of iambic or trochaic tetrameter |
| masculine rhyme | Rhyme that falls on the stressed concluding syllables of the rhyme words |
| feminine rhyme | A rhyme in which the rhyming stressed syllables are followed by an undifferentiated identical unstressed syllable, such as "waken" and "forsaken" |
| homeoteleuton | Sameness or similarity of endings of consecutive words or words near each other -- often considered or graceless but sometimes unavoidable as in adjacent adverbs, verbal forms, accidental sameness of affixes, or echoic names. |
| parataxis | An arrangement of sentences, clauses, phrases, or words in a coordinate rather than subordinate constructions, often without connectives. |
| transliteration | A character-by-character transfer of a word from one alphabet or writing system to another. |
| vignette | A sketch or brief narrative characterized by precision and delicacy; borrowed from that used for unbordered but delicate decorative designs for a book |
| carnivalesque | A term introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin to describe literature marked by fun, attention to the body, defiance of authority, variety, heteroglossia, and play. |
| philology | Scientific study of both language and literature. |
| synopsis | A summary of the main points of a composition so made as to show the relation of parts to the whole |
| typology | The study of allegorical symbols, especially with the Bible, in which much of the Old Testament is read as a type of the revelation to come in the New Testament |
| paean | A song of praise or joy; usually in praise of a deity (originally Apollo) |
| threnody | A song of death (dirge) |
| dandyism | A literary style used by the English and French decadent writers of the last quarter of the 19th century. Excessively refined emotion and preciosity of language |
| existentialism | A group of attitudes that emphasizes existence rather than essence and sees the inadequacy of human reason to explain the enigma of the universe as the basic philosophical question |
| diasporic | Writing having to do with any scattering of a population from a homeland to one or more alien environments |
| dystopian | Literally, 'bad place.' Applied to accounts of imaginary worlds, usually in the future, in which present tendencies are carried out to their intensely unpleasant culminations |
| utopian | A fiction describing an imaginary ideal world. Comes from Thomas More's book of that name. |
| kitsch | From German for "gaudy trash." shallow, flashy art designed to have popular appeal and commercial success |
| ananym | A word fabricated by spelling another word backwards |
| dead metaphor | A figure of speech used so long that it is taken in its denotative sense only, without any conscious comparison to a physical object it once conveyed. |
| archaism | Obsolete phrasing, idiom, syntax, or spelling |
| false etymology | an erroneous but plausible etymology forced onto a word by a common misconception |
| Hobson-Jobson | The process of transforming something foreign into a more familiar native article |
| silent correction | If an editor changes a text by correcting an indisputably obvious error with no indication tha a change has been made |
| de casibus | Latin concerning the falls (from greatness) |
| dolce stil nuovo | The "sweet new style" that flourished among lyric poets in certain Romance languages in the 13th century; premium on lucidity and complex musicality |
| chant royal | French verse form that calls for a dignified heroic subject; 60 lines in five stanzas of 11 lines and an envoy of 5 lines |
| bouts-rimes | A kind of literary game in which players are given lists of rhyming words and are expected to write impromptu verses with the rhymes in the order given |
| pastourelle | A medieval dialogue poem in which a shepherdess is wooed by a man of higher social rank |
| New York School | A group of American poets who flourished between 1950 and 1970, distinguished by urbanity, wit, learning, spontaneity, and exuberance. Led by Frank O'Hara |
| Bluestockings | A term applied to women of pronounced intellectual interests. Directed toward encouraging an interest in literature, fostering the recognition of literary genius, and hence helping to remove the odium that had attached to earlier "learned ladies." |
| Parnassians | 19th century French poets influenced by 'art for art's sake'; great objective clarity and precision of detail. Lead by Leconte de Lisle |
| P.E.N. | Abbreviation for International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists |
| odelet | A little ode (a single unified strain of exalted lyrical verse directed to a single purpose and dealing with one theme) |
| cinquain | Five line stanza; specifically one by Adelaide Crapsey (5 unrhymed lines of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables) |
| quatorzain | A stanza of 14 lines that doesn't conform to a sonnet pattern |
| hermeneutic circle | It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. |
| lipogram | a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided. |
| quintain | A stanza of 5 lines (or quintet) |
| Caroline Age | Age of Charles I of England (1625-1642) and the spirit of the court. Covers Cavalier/Puritan literature or the royalist group. |
| carmen figuratum | A figure poem, one so written that the form of the printed words suggests the subject matter |
| obelisk | Other names for the symbol usually called the dagger; names applied to other symbols used in manuscripts to mark dubious readings |
| wiki | An "open source" web page that can be edited by anyone |
| panegyric | A formal composition lauding a person for an achievement; a euology |
| upstaging | A stage movement in which one performer moves upstage of another, forcing the latter to turn away from the audience |
| ploce | A kind of repetition whereby different forms and senses of a word are "woven" through an utterance |
| transferred epithet | An adjective used to limit a noun that it really does not logically modify |
| objective correlative | TS Eliot's term for a pattern of objects, actions, or events or a situation that can serve effectively to awaken in the reader an emotional response without being a direct statement of that subjective emotion |
| asyndeton | A condensed form of expression in which elements customarily joined by conjunctions are presented in a series without the conjunctions |
| interpolation | to insert (words) into a text or into a conversation |
| wrenched accent | An alteration in the customary pronunciation of a word (a shift in word accent to accommodate the demands of metrical accent) |
| tag-line | 1) punchline 2)material placed under a document or illustration (caption) 3)matter printed under a headline to amplify, illustrate, or elaborate a main point |
| montage | French for "mounting" or "editing." A series of brief pictures or impressions following one another quickly without apparent order |
| mosaic | Another name for heteromerous rhyme; compositions consisting of quotations from one or more authors |
| Antirealistic Novel | The contemporary novel of fantasy, illogicality, and absurdity. |
| Magical Realism | The frame or surface of the work may be conventionally realistic, but contrasting elements invade the realism and change the whole basis of the art |
| agroikos | A character added by Northrop Frye; a rustic who is easily deceived, a form of the country bumpkin |
| Companion poem | poems designed to complement each other; each poem is complete by itself, but enriched and broadened when viewed with the other |
| exciting force | the force that starts the conflict of opposing interests and sets in motion the rising action of a play |
| fabulist | a person who composes or relates fables. |
| dime novel | A cheaply printed paperbound tale of adventure or detection originally selling for about 10 cents; equivalent to British penny dreadful |
| closet drama | A play (usually in verse) designed to be read rather than acted |
| cloak and dagger | A type of novel or play that deals with espionage or intrigue |
| curtal sonnet | A curtailed sonnet; octave shortened to 6 lines; sestet shortened to 4.5 lines. |
| allelograph | A variant form of a word used in the vicinity of the basic form itself (ne'er close to the word never) |
| palindrome | Writing that reads the same from left to right and right to left, such as "civic" |
| rhopalic progression | A sequence that "thickens" as it moves toward its end, with each word a syllable longer than the preceding one; also applies to a stanza in which each line is a foot longer than the preceding one. |
| decadence | A term denoting the decline that commonly marks the end of a great period. Qualities include self-consciousness, restless curiosity, oversubtilizing, refinement, confusion of genres, eccentricity and often moral perversity. |
| inscription | 1) symbols cut or scratched into a hard surface 2) the way some works have of inserting themselves into other works |
| patronage | A term for receiving benefits from wealthy benefactors because the authors could not make a living on the income from their work alone |
| deictic | A word -- usually a pronoun, adjective or verb -- that refers to another part of the discourse and not outward to a world or context |
| enantiosis | An utterance that says the opposite of what is meant; irony |
| altar verse | Another term for carmen figuratum, a poem in which the lines are so arranged that they form a design on the page, taking the shape of the subject -- frequently an altar or cross |
| concrete poetry | Poetry that exploits the graphic, visual aspect of writing; a specialized application of what Aristotle called opsis and Pound "phanopoeia." |
| echo verse | Poetry in which the closing syllables of one line are repeated in the following line -- usually making up that line -- with a different meaning and thus forming a reply or comment |
| shaped verse | A poem so constructed that its printed form suggests its subject matter |
| anacrusis | A term denoting one or more unaccented syllables at the beginning of a verse before the regular rhythm of the line makes its appearance. |
| analecta | literary gleanings, fragments, or passages from the writings of an author or authors |
| catalexis | Incompleteness of the last foot of a line; truncation by omission of one or two final syllables; opposite of anacrussi |
| homeoarchy | The occurrence of the same or similar unstressed syllables preceding rhyming stressed syllables |
| Anglo-Norman Period | Period in English literature 1100-1350 also called Early Middle English Period; frequently dated from the conquest in 1066; crusades and dominance of French literature |
| Middle English Period | Period in England between the replacement of French by Middle English as the language of court and early appearance of definitely Modern English writings 1350-1500 |
| Old English Period | Period in England between invasion by the Teutonic tribes around 428 and establishment of Norman rule around 1100 following conquest by William the Conqueror. |
| refrain | One or more words repeated at intervals in a poem. |
| cadence | In one sense, the sound pattern that precedes a marked presence or the end of a sentence, making it interrogatory, hortatory, pleading, etc. Rhythm established in the sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables in a phrasal unit. |
| Arts and Crafts Movement | A movement beginning in northern Europe in late 19th century that emphasized utility, individual craft, handiwork, simplicity, artistic versatility, and local native materials. |
| Commonwealth Interregnum | Period between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and restoration under Charles II in 1660. Only significant new drama was "The Siege of Rhodes" by Davenant; a lot of prose written, such as Milton and Hobbes |
| Enlightenment | Philosophical movement of 18th century; Celebrated reason, scientific method, human beings' ability to perfect themselves and their society. |
| Great Awakening | A phrase applied to a great revival of emotional religion in America; its height was 1740-1745 under Jonathan Edwards. Effort to reform religion and morals. |
| Renaissance | Means "rebirth" commonly applied to the period of transition from the medieval to the modern world in Western Europe. 1500-1642. Turned to classics for inspiration. Humans were glorious creatures capable of individual development. |
| aphaeresis | the omission of an initial, unstressed syllable at the beginning of a word as in "mid" for "amid" or "neath" for "beneath" |
| apocope | The omission of one or more sounds from a word; as in "even" for "evening" |
| nihilism | the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless |
| stoicism | Philosophy formed by Zeno in the late 4th century BC. Exalts endurance and self-sufficiency. Virtue consists in living in conformity to the laws of nature. |
| antibacchius | A metrical foot of 3 syllables, of which the first two are stressed and the third unstressed (or first two are long and third is short) |
| glee | A poem written as though to be sung by a group |
| projection verse | A kind of free verse that regards meter and form as artificial; a voice primarily through the content and propulsive quality of breathing, which alone determines the line. |
| exegesis | An explanation and interpretation of a text; close analysis |
| calligraphy | The art of beautiful writing; developed in Middle Ages when monks gave attention to copying ancient manuscripts |
| intertextuality | A term created by Julia Kristeva, "Every text builds itself as a mosaic of quotations, every text is absorption and transformation of another text" |
| epanalepsis | The repetition at the end of a clause of a word or phrase that occurred at its beginning |
| aphorism | A concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words. |
| acrostic | A composition, usually verse, arranged in such a way that it spells words, phrases, or sentences when certain letters are selected according to an orderly sequence. |
| rebus | A text in which ordinary verbal symbols are supplemented by pictures and other devices to suggest a total meaning |
| apposition | The placing in immediate succeeding order of two or more coordinate elements, one of which is an explanation, qualification, or modification of the first. |
| envoy | A conventionalized stanza appearing at the close of certain kinds of poems; particularly associated with the French ballade. (addressed to a person of importance; 4 lines; refrain repeated throughout; rhymes bcbc) |
| coda | A conclusion; usually restates or summarizes or integrates the preceding themes or movements |
| versicle | A short verse, verset; a short sentence from the Psalms recited in responsive readings |
| addendum | Matter to be added to a piece of writing |
| expletive | An interjection to lend emphasis to a sentence or, in a verse especially, the use of a superfluous word to make for rhythm (profanity is another type) |
| kenosis | an emptying or evacuation; also the deed or process by which Christ took on humble human form, surrendering divinity |
| prosopopoeia | Another name for personification; here, the abstraction is capable of speech |
| reification | The treatment of abstractions as concrete things. The representation of ideas as though they had concrete form |
| cubism | Poetry that takes the elements of an experience, fragments it, and rearranges it in a meaningful new synthesis. Example: Gertrude Stein, EE Cummings. |
| impressionism | A highly personal manner of writing in which the author presents materials as they appear to an individual temperament at a precise moment and from a particular vantage point rather than as they are presumed to be in actuality. |
| surrealism | Emphasizing the expression of the imagination as realized in dreamsand presented without conscious control. |
| Imagists | The name applied to a group of poets active in England and America between 1909 and 1918. Members included Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, and FS Flint. "An intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time" |
| bathos | The effect resulting from the unsuccessful effort to achieve dignity or sublimity of style; an unintentional anticlimax, dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous |
| ethos | The character of the speaker or writer as reflected in speech or writing; the quality or set of emotions that a speaker or writer enacts in order to affect an audience. |
| logos | Derived from a Greek word, means “logic.” A literary device that can be described as a statement, sentence, or argument used to convince or persuade the targeted audience by employing reason or logic. |
| mythos | myth or mythology; a pattern of beliefs expressing often symbolically the characteristic or prevalent attitudes in a group or culture |
| pathos | From the Greek root for feeling; quality in art and literature that stimulates pity, tenderness, or sorrow. |
| heteronym | A word spelled the same as another but pronounced and defined differently, such as "does" and "does" |
| dirge | A wailing song sung at a funeral or in commemoration of death; a short lyric of lamentation |
| lament | A poem expressing grief -- usually more intense and more personal than in a complaint. |
| scat | A vocal style developed during the 1920s with a singer improvising patterns of repetitive nonsense syllables that suggest the sound of a musical instrument. |
| barbarism | A mistake in the form of a word or a word that results from such a mistake |
| provincialism | A word, phrase, or manner of expression peculiar to a special region and not commonly used outside that region; therefore not fashionable or sophisticated |
| regionalism | Fidelity to a particular geographical area, the representation of its habits, speech, manners, history, folklore, or beliefs. |
| bowdlerize | To expurgate a piece of writing by omitting material considered offensive or indecorous, especially to female modesty |
| Augustan Age | Specifically refers to the age of the emperor that it was named after (27 BC to AD 14); notable for perfection of letters and learning; applied to other eras when literary culture was high |
| Fireside Poets | Suggested warmth and domesticity as well as their northern environment. Notable members: William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes |
| scansion | A system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into feet, indicating the locations of binomial accents, and counting the syllables |
| versification | The art and practice of writing verse. Includes all the mechanical elements making up poetic composition |
| reception theory | The historical application of reader-response criticism. Assumes a work has no determinate meaning and so needs to be approached via a present reader's response and by an examination of the history of the reception of the work through time. |
| Ciceronians | A group of Latin stylists in the Renaissance who would not use any word that could not be found in Cicero's writings. |
| Inkhornists | A group in the Renaissance who favored the introduction of heavy Latin and Greek words into the standard English Vocabulary |
| Pleiade | A term originally applied to an ancient group of 7 authors and later some others that flourished in France in 2nd half of 16th century. Native language to be enriched by coining words, borrow from Greek and Latin, and restoring lost native words |
| octapla | "eightfolds": 8 versions of a text in parallel columns; usually applied to ancient scriptural texts |
| octastitch | A group of 8 lines of verse |
| oxytone | Having an acute accent on the final syllable |
| ottava rima | A stanza consisting of 8 iambic pentameter lines rhyming abababcc. Boccaccio is credited with originating the stanza. |
| Celtic literature | produced by a people speaking any of the Celtic dialects ("Brythonic" and Goidelic) |
| wisdom literature | Literature in which literary elements plot, character, and so forth are subordinate to the direct formulaic expression of moral wisdom and truth. |
| frontier literature | Writing about the American frontier and frontier life. Realistic view of life, sanguine contemplation of violence, and immense gusto. |
| figure poem | A poem written so that its printed shape suggests its subject matter |
| asterism | Urbane humor, marked by subtle irony and polite mockery |
| Dadaism | A movement in Europe during and just after the WWI that ignored logical relationships between idea and statement, argued for absolute freedom, and delivered itself of numerous provocative manifestoes. |
| medievalism | A spirit of sympathy for the Middle Ages, along with a desire to preserve or revive certain qualities of medieval life. |
| primitivism | The doctrine that supposedly primitive peoples -- because they had remained closer to nature and had been less subject to the influences of society -- were nobler than civilized peoples. |
| reduplication | 1) rhetorical duplication of a word or phrase 2) repetition of material in a syllable -- common for diminutives |
| fin de siecle | "End of the Century", often applied to the last ten years of the 19th century. Usually a sense of decadence or preciosity |
| diminishing metaphor | A type of metaphor that utilizes a deliberate discrepancy of connotation between tenor and vehicle. Forces on the reader an intellectual reaction. |
| metaphysical conceit | Often exploits verbal logic to the point of the grotesque, and it sometimes achieves such extravagant turns on meaning that it becomes absurd. (telling and unusual analogies) |
| rhetorical accent | The accent determined by the meaning or intention of the sentence |
| satirical | A work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity. |
| pragmatic | Term first used by CS Peirce in 1878 that describes a doctrine that determines value through the test of consequences or utility. |
| quantitative verse | A system based on rhythm determined by quantity (relative length of duration of sound) |
| bard | in modern times, any poet. Historically, poets who recited verses glorifying the deeds of heroes and leaders. |
| braggadocio | A noisy braggart who is actually a coward |
| gleeman | A musical entertainer among the Anglo-Saxons; recited poetry composed by others (the scop) |
| scop | An Anglo-Saxon court poet; composer and reciter (the gleeman performed it) |
| troubadour | A name given to the lyric poets and composers of Provence in 12th and 13th century. Name means "to find"; regarded as an inventor and experimenter. |
| triple rhyme | Rhyme in which the rhyming stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed, undifferentiated syllables (meticulous and ridiculous) |
| hedonism | A doctrine that pleasure is the chief good of human beings |
| noble savage | The idea that primitive human beings are naturally good and that whatever evil they develop is the product of the corrupting action of civilization |
| empathy | The act of identifying ourselves with an object and participating in its physical and emotional sensations, even to the point of making our own physical responses |
| dynamic character | A character who develops or changes as a result of the actions of the plot |
| flat character | EM Forster's term for a character constructed around a single idea or quality |
| round character | A term used by EM Forster for a character sufficiently complex to be able to surprise the reader without losing credibility |
| static character | A character who changes little if at all |
| stock character | conventional character types |
| mixed metaphor | a figure of speech combining inconsistent or incongruous metaphors |
| doppleganger | German, "double goer." A mysterious double |
| dullahan | depicted as a headless rider, on a black horse, who carries his own head held high in his hand or under his arm. |
| ingenue | An innocent, artless, often virginal young girl, common in many literary forms as well as television. |
| miles gloriosus | The braggart soldier; a stock character in comedy |
| tritagonist | The actor taking the part third in importance in a Greek drama. |
| aesthetic distance | A term used to describe the effect produced when an emotion or an experience -- whether autobiographical or not -- is so objectified that it can be understood as being independent of the immediate experience of its maker. |
| affective fallacy | the judging of a work of art in terms of its results, especially its emotional effect. Introduced by WK Wimsatt and MC Beardsley to describe the "confusion between the poem and its result" |
| catharsis | The process by which an unhealthy emotional state produced by an imbalance of feelings is corrected and emotional health restored (any purging or purification) |
| hamartia | The error, frailty, mistaken judgment, or misstep through which the fortunes of the hero of a tragedy are reversed. |
| hubris | Overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the protagonist of a tragedy |
| canticle | A prose chant or hymn taken verbatim from a Biblical text |
| hagiography | Writing about saints; a biography that praises the virtues of its subject |
| lampoon | Writing that ridicules and satirizes a person in a bitter, scurrilous manner in verse or prose |
| burlesque | A form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion |
| ratiocination | A process of reasoning from data to conclusions |
| cultural primitivism | The belief that nature is preferable and fundamentally better than any aspect of human culture. |
| expressionism | It was marked by unreal atmosphere, nightmarish action, distortion and oversimplification, de-emphasis of the individual, antirealistic settings, and staccato telegraphic dialogue. |
| existentialism | A group of attitudes that emphasizes existence rather than essence and sees the inadequacy of human reason to explain the enigma of the unierse as the basic philosophical question |
| aubade | A lyric about dawn or a morning seranade -- a song of lovers parting at dawn. |
| blason | A rationally ordered poem of praise or blame, proceeding detail by detail. |
| tenor | the thing a metaphor describes. |
| leitmotif | A recurrent repetition of some word, phrase, situation or idea such as tends to unify a work through its power to recall earlier occurrences. |
| vehicle | The immediate subject, as opposed to the ultimate or ulterior intentional subject, of a metaphor. (the thing to which the tenor is compared.) |
| relativism | The denial of the validity of principles that are everlasting, ubiquitous, changeless and absolute. (truth depends on perspective) |
| eye rhyme | Rhyme that appears correct from the spelling, but is not so from the pronunciation (watch and match) |
| tercet | A stanza of three lines -- a triplet -- in which each line ends with the same rhyme |
| merism | Generally, a repetition of parts: specifically, the use of a pair of opposites to mean a whole (i.e. "the long and short of it" to mean "the whole story") |
| trivium | The three studies leading to the bachelor's degree in the medieval universities: grammar, logic and rhetoric |
| stichomythia | A form of repartee developed in classical drama and often employed by Elizabethan writers; a line for line verbal fencing match in which the principals retort sharply to each other in lines that echo and vary the opponent's words. |
| allegory | A form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, places and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings outside the narrative itself. |
| Romantic Period (English) | 1798-1870 in English Literature. Period between publication of Lyrical Ballads and the death of Dickens; value of the individual, nature and organic concept of art. |
| catch | 1) A round for at least three voices, 2) an extra unstressed syllable at the beginning of a line that is normally stressed 3) intermingling of strong and weak voices in songs that finish with a bawdy twist |
| peripety | The reversal of fortune for a protagonist -- either in a fall in tragedy or in a success in comedy |
| inciting moment | The name used by Freytag for the event or force that sets in motion the rising action of a play. |
| denouement | Literally "unknotting"; final unraveling of a plot; explanation or outcome |
| catastrophe | The conclusion of a play, particularly of a tragedy; the final stage in falling action, ending the dramatic conflict and consisting of the actions that result from the climax. |
| a priori | Latin: "from what comes before" for deductive reasoning; goes from general to specific. |
| vulgate | Latin word for "crowd" and means "common" or "commonly used" |
| nihil obstat | Latin for "nothing obstructs" used in Roman Catholic Church to grant permission to publish a book |
| auxesis | rhetorical augmentation, either a piling on of detail in no particular order or a climactic advancing from small to great. |
| acmeism | A movement in Russian poetry around 1912 by members of the Poets' Guild to promote precise treatment of realistic subjects. |
| scholasticism | the system of theology and philosophy taught in medieval European universities, based on Aristotelian logic and the writings of the early Church Fathers and having a strong emphasis on tradition and dogma. |
| surrealism | A movement emphasizing the expression of the imagination as realized in dreams and presented without conscious control. |
| repetend | A device marked by full or partial repetition of a word, phrase, or clause more or less frequently throughout a stanza or poem |
| stave | A stanza, particularly of a song |
| foot | A unit if rhythm in verse, whether quantitative or accentual-syllabic |
| meter | The recurrence in poetry of a rhythmic pattern or the rhythm established by the regular occurrence of similar units of sound |
| stich | A word or stem meaning "line" |
| pasquinade | A satire or lampoon hung up in a public place |
| caricature | Writing that exaggerates certain qualities of a person an produces a burlesque, ridiculous effect |
| palinode | A piece of writing recanting or retracting a previous writing |
| ultima thule | The farthest possible place; used often in the sense of a remote goal |
| coup de theatre | a surprising and usually unmotivated stroke in a drama that produces a sensational effect |
| tour de force | A feat of strength and virtuosity |
| deus ex machina | the employment of some unexpected and improbable incident to make things turn out right. |
| litotes | A form of understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite |
| antiquarianism | The study of the past through relics, usually literary or artistic. |
| paleography | the study of old forms of handwriting, important in textual studies for establishing texts and deciding authorship |
| epigraph | an inscription on a stone or on a statue or coin; a quotation on the title page of a book or a motto heading a section of a work |
| historicism | A set of concepts about works of literature and their relationships to the social and cultural contexts in which they were produced. |
| rime riche | Words with identical sounds but different meanings like "stair" and "stare" |
| oblique rhyme | Approximate but not true rhyme |
| pararhyme | An acoustic effect whereby the place of ordinary rhyme is taken by a combination of alliteration and consonance rhyme. |
| folio | A standard sized sheet of paper folded in half. Also the largest regular book size |
| quarto | A book size designating a book whose signatures result from sheets folded to four leaves (8 pages) |
| octavo | A book size designating a book whose signature results from sheets folded to 8 leaves or 16 pages |
| duodecimo | A book size, designating signatures that result from sheets folded to 12 leaves or 24 pages |
| canto | A section or division of a long poem; originally signified a section of a narrative poem of such length as to be sung by a minstrel in one singing |
| novel of sensibility | A novel in which the characters have a heightened emotional response to events, producing in the reader a similar response |
| libretto | The text or book, containing the story, tale, or plot of an opera or of any long musical composition |
| codex | A manuscript book, particularly of biblical or classical writing |
| lexicon | A word list or wordbook; a vocabulary; term for dictionary |
| apothegm | An unusually terse, pithy, witty saying, even more concise and pointed than an aphorism. |
| paragram | Generally, a word that resembles another and is used in its place for the sake of euphemism, apotropaic deformation, insult, avoidance of libel, or some other purpose. (ex. Gosh for "God") |
| femme inspiratrice | a type of real person or literary character: the woman who inspires an artist |
| femme fatale | a stock character type; the dangerously attractive woman |
| Graces | In Greek myth, the three sister goddesses who confer grace, beauty, charm and joy on human beings and nature |
| Fates | The Greeks and Romans believed that they controlled the birth, life and death of all human beings |
| Muses | Nine goddesses represented as presiding over the various departments of art and science. Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. They inspire and help poets |
| epitome | A summary or abridgement; 'miniature representation' of a subject |
| addenda | Matter to be added to a piece of writing |
| precis | An abstract or epitome of the essential facts or statements of a work, retaining the order of the original |
| Epicureanism | Named after the Greek who saw philosophy as the art of making life happy, with pleasure the highest goal and pain and emotional disturbance the greatest evils |
| Hedonism | A doctrine that pleasure is the chief good of human beings |
| Hellenism | the adoption of Greek culture, religion, language, and identity by non-Greeks. |
| ara | A lengthy and formal curse, imprecation, anathema, or malediction |
| invocation | An address to a deity for aid |
| malediction | A curse |
| parable | an illustrative story teaching a lesson |
| metastasis | A rapid transition from one point to another, sometimes for the sake of deception |
| metaplasm | The movement of any element in a piece of language from its customary place (also a general term for almost any alteration of words or patterns) |
| metanoia | A rhetorical figure whereby a speaker retracts or corrects something said (what is it but nightfall? no no, not night but death) |
| antimetabole | The repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order (one should eat to live, not live to eat) |
| repartee | A 'comeback' a quick ingenious response or rejoinder; a retort aptly twisted |
| parallelism | Such an arrangement that one element of equal importance with another is similarly developed and phrased |
| epilogue | A concluding statement |
| epitaph | An inscription used to mark burial places |
| epigram | A pithy saying |
| epithet | Strictly, an adjective used to point out a characteristic of a person or thing ('noisy mansions') |
| epithalamium | A poem written to celebrate a wedding. |
| occasional verse | Poetry written for some particular occasion |
| requiem | A chant embodying a prayer for the repose of the dead; a dirge |
| folk ballad | Anonymous and transmitted orally and usually existing in many variants |
| vers de circonstance | One French name for occasional verse |
| antistrophe | One of the three stanzaic forms of the Greek choral ode; the reciprocal conversion of the same words in succeeding phrases or clauses. |
| antiphrasis | Irony, the satirical or humorous use of a word or phrase to convey an idea exactly opposite to its real significance |
| antimeria | A species of enallage, using one part of speech for another, such as "but me no buts" where but (conjunction) is used as a verb then a noun. |
| Bloomsbury Group | A group of writers and thinkers, lead by Virginia Woolf in 1920s and 30s: the rational ends of social progress are "the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects" |
| allegory | A form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, places, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings outside the narrative itself. |
| symbolism | the use of one object to represent or suggest another |
| campus novel | a work, usually comic, set at a university |
| pluralism | a philosophical position that recognizes the possibility of multiple ultimate principles, contrasted with monism. |
| unanimism | a movement associated with "Jules Romains" in the first part of the 20th century, emphasizing the collective spirit in society and even in language |
| semiotic | the analysis of literature in terms of language, conventions, and modes of discourse |
| syntax | the rule-governed arrangement of words in sentences. |
| courtly makers | court poets of the reign of Henry VIII who introduced the "new poetry" from Italy and France into England. |
| topographical poetry | A type of poetry where the fundamental subject is some particular landscape. |
| translation | the rendering of work from one language to another |
| boasting poem | a poem in which characters boast of their exploits; common in oral literature, ballads, and epics |
| annals | Narratives of historical events recorded year by year; chronicles in England. |
| Wardour-Street English | A style strongly marked by archaisms; an insincere, artificial expression |
| Alexandrianism | The spirit prevailing in the literary and scientific work of Hellenistic writers flourishing in Alexandria for about 3 centuries after 325 BC. |
| adage | a proverb or saying made familiar by long use |
| enthymeme | a syllogism informally stated and omitting either the major or the minor premise. The omitted premise is to be understood. |
| ellipsis | the omission of one or more words that, while essential to a grammatical structure, are easily supplied. |
| stanza | a recurrent grouping of two or more verse lines in terms of length, metrical form, and often rhyme scheme |
| monostitch | A poem consisting of one line. Example: A.R. Ammon's "Coward" |
| verset | A verse or versicle, especially one of the short verses of a religious scripture |
| hemistitch | A half-line |
| School of Donne | Another name for the metaphysical poets |
| School of Night | A group of Elizabethan dramatists, poets, and scholars, with perhaps some of the nobility. Lead by Sir Walter Ralegh. |
| Tribe of Ben | A contemporary nickname for young poets and dramatists of the 17th century who acknowledged "rare Ben Johnson" as their master; chief was Robert Herrick. |
| Suspension of Disbelief | The willingness to withhold questions about truth, accuracy, or probability in a work. |
| Intentional Fallacy | the judging of the meaning of success or a work of art by the author's expressed or ostensible intention in producing it |
| Negative Capability | A celebrated phrase put forward in a letter (December 1817) by John Keats "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" |
| anthology | literally "a gathering of flowers," the term designates a collection of writing, usually by various authors |
| chrestomathy | A collection of choice passages to be used in the study of a language or a literature, and, thus, a kind of anthology |
| miscellany | A group of diverse items; a book that collects compositions by several authors, usually on a variety of topics |
| Digest | A systematic arrangement of condensed materials on some specific subject so that it summarizes the information on that subject |
| Compendium | A brief condensation of a longer work or of a whole field of knowledge; a systematic presentation of essentials |
| Confession | A form of autobiography that deals with customarily hidden or highly private matters. |
| Vatic | It was believed that some poets or bards were divinely inspired seers who spoke prophetic truth; they were called ______. An example was Sybil. |
| hypallage | a figure of speech in which an epithet is moved from the proximate to the less proximate group of nouns |
| enallage | the substitution of one grammatical form for another, as past for present, singular for plural, noun for verb. |
| ballad | a form of verse to be sung or recited and characterized by its presentation of an exciting episode in narrative or dramatic form. |
| chantey | Also, shanty. A sailors' song marked by strong rhythm and, in the days of sail, used to accompany certain forms of repetitious hard labor |
| emendation | A change made in a literary text by an editor for removing error or supplying a supposed correct reading that has been obscured or lost through textual inaccuracy or tampering. |
| dramatic irony | the words or acts of a character may carry a meaning unperceived by the character but understood by the audience. |
| satire | a work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity. |
| metanalysis | reinterpretation or misconstruction of the division between word or other units, as when "a nadder" becomes "an adder" |
| epiphany | literally, a manifestation or showing-forth, usually of some divine being. |
| transumption | another name for metalepsis |
| liminality | the state of being on a threshold in space or time |
| spoof | A light satirical parody of a work, style, or genre |
| philippic | any bitter speech or harangue |
| oxymoron | A self-contradictory combination of words or smaller verbal units |
| obiter dicta | things said "by the way"; incidental remarks |
| empiricism | the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. |
| tragedy | in drama, a work that recounts a causally related series of events in the life of a person of significance, culminating in an unhappy catastrophe |
| farce | a dramatic piece intended to excite laughter and depending less on plot and character than on improbable situations, gross incongruities, coarse wit, or horseplay |
| opera bouffe | a French term for a very light form of comic opera developed from vaudeville music |
| bourgeois tragedy | also, domestic tragedy; tragedy dealing with the domestic life of commonplace people. |
| alterity | the general idea of otherness, expressed most influentially in the philosophy of GWF Hegel |
| ambages | a form of circumlocution in which the truth is spoken in a way that tends to deceive or mislead |
| falling action | the second half or resolution of a dramatic plot; follows the climax and ends with the catastrophe |
| rising action | the part of a dramatic plot that has to do with the complication of the action; begins with exciting force and ends with the climax |
| plot | Aristotle termed it "the first principle" and "the soul of a tragedy" defining it variously as "the imitation of an action" and "the arrangement of incidents" |
| phanopoeia | term coined by Ezra Pound; the power of language to cast visual images onto the mind or imagination |
| logopoeia | term coined by Ezra Pound; deals with the mind and emotions; how poetry charges language with meaning. |
| strophe | a stanza; in pindaric ode, this is the first stanza and every subsequent third stanza |
| octave | an eight lined stanza |
| dysphemism | opposite of euphemism (a harsher word instead of a more mild one) |
| hyperbaton | a figure of speech in which normal sentence order is transposed or rearranged in a major way |
| preterition | in rhetoric, explicitly passing over something -- either to call attention to it or to slight it |
| ambiguity | the state of having more than one meaning, with resultant uncertainty as to the intended significance of the statement |
| amphibrach | a metrical foot consisting of three syllables -- the first and last unaccented, the second accented (like ar -RANGE- ment) |
| epistrophe | repetition at the end of successive clauses/sentences |
| anadiplosis | a kind of repetition in which the last word or phrase of one sentence or line is repeated at the beginning of the next |
| redux | an element in titles of works dealing with a restoration or return (usually follows a name) |
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