Glossary of literary terms
See also: Glossary of poetry terms, Literary criticism, Literary theory, and Index of literature articles
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The following is a list of literary terms; that is, those words used in discussion, classification, criticism, and analysis of poetry, novels, and picture books.
| Term | Description | Citation | Category | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abecedarius | ||||
| Acatalectic | ||||
| Accent | Noun used to describe the stress put on a certain syllable while speaking a word. Ex.- In Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” there has been much controversy over the pronunciation of “Abora” in line 41. According to Herbert Tucker of the website For Better For Verse, the accent is on the first and last syllable of the word, making its pronunciation: AborA. | [1][2] | ||
| Accentual verse | Accentual verse is common in children's poetry; nursery rhymes and the less well-known skipping-rope rhymes are the most common form of accentual verse in the English Language. | [3] | ||
| Acrostic | An acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. | [4] | ||
| Act | ||||
| Adjective | a word or phrase which modifies a noun or pronoun, grammatically added to describe, identify, or quantify the related noun or pronoun. | [5][6] | ||
| Adverb | A describing word used to modify a verb, adjective, or another adverb. Typically ending in -ly, adverbs answer the questions when, how, and how many times. | [1][7] | ||
| Aisling | ||||
| Allegory | A specific type of writing in which the settings, characters, and events stand for other specific people, events, or ideas. | [8] | ||
| Alliteration | Repetition of the initial sounds of words, as in “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” | [9] | ||
| Allusion | A figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. | [9] | ||
| Anachronism | Erroneous use of an object, event, idea, or word that does not belong to that time period. | [10] | ||
| Anacrusis | ||||
| Anadiplosis | ||||
| Anagnorisis | The point in a plot where a character recognizes the true state of affairs | [11] | ||
| Analects | ||||
| Analepsis | An interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached | [12] | ||
| Analogue | ||||
| Analogy | Comparison between two things that are otherwise unlike. H | [13][14] | ||
| Anapest | a version of the foot in poetry in which the first two syllables of a line are unstressed, followed by a stressed syllable. Ex. Intercept (the syllables in and ter are unstressed followed by cept which is stressed) | [15] | ||
| Anaphora | ||||
| Anastrophe | ||||
| Anecdote | a short account of a particular incident or event, especially of an interesting or amusing nature. | [16] | ||
| Annal | ||||
| Annotation | ||||
| Antagonist | the adversary of the hero or protagonist of a drama or other literary work: Iago is the antagonist[17] of Othello. | [17] | ||
| Antanaclasis | ||||
| Antecedent | A word or phrase referred to by any relative pronoun. | [5] | ||
| Antepenult | ||||
| Anthology | ||||
| Anticlimax | ||||
| Anti-hero | ||||
| Anti-masque | ||||
| Anti-romance | ||||
| Antimetabole | ||||
| Antinovel | ||||
| Antistrophe | ||||
| Antithesis | ||||
| Antithetical couplet | ||||
| Antonym | ||||
| Aphorism | ||||
| Apocope | ||||
| Apocrypha | ||||
| Apollonian and Dionysian | ||||
| Apologue | ||||
| Apology | ||||
| Apothegm | ||||
| Aposiopesis | ||||
| Apostrophe | A figure of speech in which the speaker addresses an object, concept, or person (usually absent) that is unable to respond. | [5] | ||
| Apron stage | ||||
| Arcadia | ||||
| Archaism | ||||
| Archetype | ||||
| Aristeia | ||||
| Argument | ||||
| Arsis | ||||
| Art for art's sake | ||||
| Asemic writing | ||||
| Aside | ||||
| Assonance | ||||
| Astrophic | stanzas having no particular pattern. | [1][7] | ||
| Asyndeton | The omission of conjunctions between clauses. An example is when John F. Kennedy said on January the 20th 1961 "...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." | [18] | ||
| Atmosphere | ||||
| Attitude | ||||
| Aube | ||||
| Aubade | ||||
| Audience | ||||
| Autobiography | ||||
| Autotelic | ||||
| Avant-garde | ||||
| Ballad | ||||
| Ballade | ||||
| Ballad stanza | ||||
| Bard | ||||
| Baroque | ||||
| Bathos | ||||
| Beast fable (beast epic) | ||||
| Beast poetry | ||||
| Beat Generation | ||||
| Beginning rhyme | ||||
| Belles-lettres | ||||
| Bestiary | ||||
| Beta reader | ||||
| Bibliography | ||||
| Bildungsroman | ||||
| Biography | ||||
| Black comedy | ||||
| Blank verse | Verse written in iambic pentameter without rhyme. | [7][19] | ||
| Bloomsbury Group | ||||
| Body | ||||
| Bombast (fustian) | ||||
| Boulevard theatre | ||||
| Bourgeois drama | ||||
| Bouts-Rimés | ||||
| Bowdlerize | ||||
| Breviloquence | ||||
| Broadside | ||||
| Burlesque | ||||
| Burletta | ||||
| Burns stanza | ||||
| Buskin | ||||
| Byronic hero | ||||
| Cadence | ||||
| Caesura | ||||
| Calligram | ||||
| Canon | ||||
| Canso | ||||
| Canticum | ||||
| Canto | ||||
| Canzone | ||||
| Capa y espada | ||||
| Captivity narrative | ||||
| Caricature | ||||
| Carmen figuratum | ||||
| Carpe diem | ||||
| Catachresis | ||||
| Catalectic | ||||
| Catalexis | ||||
| Catastrophe | ||||
| Catharsis | ||||
| Caudate sonnet | ||||
| Cavalier drama | ||||
| Cavalier poetry | ||||
| Celtic Renaissance | ||||
| Celtic Revival | ||||
| Celtic Twilight | ||||
| Caesura | ||||
| Chain of Being | ||||
| Chain verse | ||||
| Chanson de geste | ||||
| Chansonnier | ||||
| Chant royal | ||||
| Chantey | ||||
| Chanty | ||||
| Chapbook | ||||
| Character | ||||
| Characterization | ||||
| Charactonym | ||||
| Chaucerian stanza | ||||
| Chiasmus | ||||
| Chivalric romance | ||||
| Choriamb | ||||
| Choriambus | ||||
| Chorus | ||||
| Chronicle | ||||
| Chronicle play | ||||
| Cinquain | ||||
| Classicism | ||||
| Classification (literature) | ||||
| Classification of rhymes (Peter Dale) | ||||
| Clerihew | ||||
| Cliché | ||||
| Climax | ||||
| Cloak-and-sword play | ||||
| Close reading | ||||
| Closed heroic couplet | ||||
| Closet drama | ||||
| Collaborative poetry | ||||
| Colloquialism | ||||
| Comédie larmoyante | ||||
| Comedy | ||||
| Comedy of errors | ||||
| Comedy of humors | ||||
| Comedy of intrigue | ||||
| Comedy of manners | ||||
| Comedic relief | ||||
| Commedia dell'arte | ||||
| Comic relief | ||||
| Commedia erudita | ||||
| Common measure | ||||
| Commonplace book | ||||
| Common rhyme | ||||
| Comparative linguistics | ||||
| Compensation | ||||
| Complaint | ||||
| Conceit | ||||
| Concordance | ||||
| Concrete universal | ||||
| Confessional literature | ||||
| Confidant/confidante | ||||
| Conflict | ||||
| Connotation | ||||
| Consistency | ||||
| Consonance | ||||
| Contradiction | ||||
| Context | ||||
| Contrast | ||||
| Convention | ||||
| Copyright | ||||
| Counterplot | ||||
| Coup de théâtre | ||||
| Couplet | Two lines with rhyming ends. Shakespeare often used a couplet to end a sonnet. | [7] | ||
| Courtesy book | ||||
| Courtly love | ||||
| Cowleyan ode | ||||
| Cradle books | ||||
| Craft cycle | ||||
| Crisis | ||||
| Criticism | ||||
| Cross acrostic | ||||
| Crown of sonnets | ||||
| Curtain raiser | ||||
| Curtal sonnet | ||||
| Dactyl | ||||
| Dada | ||||
| Dale's classification of rhymes | ||||
| Dandyism | ||||
| Danrin school | School of haikai poetry founded by Nishiyama Sōin in 17th century Japan | [20] | ||
| Débat | ||||
| Death poem | ||||
| Death of the novel | ||||
| Debut novel | ||||
| Decadence | ||||
| Decasyllabic verse | ||||
| Decorum | ||||
| Denotation | ||||
| Dénouement | ||||
| Dependent Clause | A group of words containing a subject and a verb, but does not equate to a complete thought. | [5] | ||
| Description | ||||
| Descriptive linguistics | ||||
| Detective story | ||||
| Deus ex machina | ||||
| Deuteragonist | ||||
| Dialect | ||||
| Dialogic | A work primarily featuring dialogue; a piece of, relating to, or written in dialogue. | [10] | ||
| Dialogue | ||||
| Dibrach | ||||
| Diction | Also known as "lexis" and "word choice," the term refers to the words selected for use in any oral, written, or literary expression. Diction often centers on opening a great array of lexical possibilities with the connotation of words by maintaining first the denotation of words. | [21] | ||
| Didactic | Intended to teach, instruct, or have a moral lesson for the reader. | [10] | ||
| Digest | ||||
| Digression | ||||
| Dime novel | ||||
| Diameter | ||||
| Dimeter | A line of verse made up of two feet (two stresses). | [8] | ||
| Dipody | ||||
| Dirge | ||||
| Discourse | ||||
| Dissociation of sensibility | ||||
| Dissonance | ||||
| Distich | ||||
| Distributed Stress | ||||
| Dithyramb | ||||
| Diverbium | ||||
| Divine afflatus | ||||
| Doggerel | ||||
| Dolce stil nuove | ||||
| Domestic tragedy | ||||
| Donnée | ||||
| Doppelgänger | ||||
| Double | ||||
| Double rhyme | ||||
| Drama | ||||
| Drama of sensibility | Using ones senses as a medium for writing to relay emotion and the perception of sensations of oneself or of others and play upon those sensations to create a relatability stemming from the human condition. | [5] | ||
| Dramatic character | ||||
| Dramatic irony | ||||
| Dramatic lyric | ||||
| Dramatic monologue | ||||
| Dramatic proverb | ||||
| Dramatis personae | ||||
| Dramaturgy | ||||
| Dream allegory | ||||
| Dream vision | ||||
| Droll | ||||
| Dumb show | ||||
| Duodecimo | ||||
| Duologue | ||||
| Duple meter/duple rhythm | ||||
| Dystopia | ||||
| Dynamic Character | ||||
| Echo verse | ||||
| Eclogue | ||||
| Edition | ||||
| Ekphrasis | A vivid, graphic, or dramatic written commentary or description of another visual form of art. | [1][7] | ||
| Elegiac couplet | ||||
| Elegiac meter | ||||
| Elegy | ||||
| Elision | ||||
| Emblem | ||||
| Emblem book | ||||
| Emendation | ||||
| Emotive language | ||||
| Encomiastic verse | ||||
| End rhyme | ||||
| End-stopped line | A line in poetry that ends in a pause—indicated by a specific punctuation, such as a period or a semicolon. | [8] | ||
| English sonnet | ||||
| Enjambment | The continuing of a syntactic unit over the end of a line. Enjambment occurs when the sense of the line overflows the meter and line break. | [1] | ||
| Entr'acte | ||||
| Envoy/envoi | ||||
| Epanalepsis | ||||
| Épater la bourgeoisie | ||||
| Epic poetry | A long poem that narrates the victories and adventures of a hero. It can be identified by lofty or elegant diction. | [7] | ||
| Epic simile | ||||
| Epic Theater | ||||
| Epigraph | ||||
| Epilogue | ||||
| Epiphany | ||||
| Episode | ||||
| Episteme | ||||
| Epistle | ||||
| Epistolary novel | ||||
| Epistrophe | ||||
| Epitaph | ||||
| Epithalamion | ||||
| Epithet | ||||
| Epizeuxis | ||||
| Epode | ||||
| Eponymous author | ||||
| Equivalence | ||||
| Erotica | ||||
| Erziehungsroman | ||||
| Essay | ||||
| Ethos | ||||
| Eulogy | ||||
| Euphony | ||||
| Euphuism | ||||
| Evidence | ||||
| Exaggeration | ||||
| Exegesis | ||||
| Exemplum | ||||
| Existentialism | ||||
| Exordium | ||||
| Experimental novel | ||||
| Explication de texte | ||||
| Exposition (literary technique) | ||||
| Exposition (dramatic structure) | ||||
| Expressionism | ||||
| Extended metaphor | ||||
| Extension | ||||
| Extrametrical verse | ||||
| Extravaganza | ||||
| Eye rhyme | ||||
| Fable | ||||
| Fabliau | ||||
| Falling action | ||||
| Falling rhythm | ||||
| Fancy and imagination | ||||
| Fantasy | ||||
| Farce | ||||
| Feeling | ||||
| Feminine ending | ||||
| Feminine rhyme | A rhyme with two syllables. One is stressed, one is unstressed. Examples: “Merry”, “Coffee”. | [1][7] | ||
| Fiction | ||||
| Figurative language | ||||
| Figure of speech | ||||
| Fin de siècle | ||||
| Flashback | An interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached | [12] | ||
| Flashforward | An interjected scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media | [12] | ||
| Flat character | ||||
| Fleshly school | ||||
| Foil | ||||
| Folio | ||||
| Folk drama | ||||
| Folklore | ||||
| Folk tale | ||||
| Foot | ||||
| Foreshadowing | ||||
| Form | ||||
| Four levels of meaning | ||||
| Four meanings of a poem | ||||
| Fourteener | ||||
| Frame story | ||||
| Free indirect discourse | ||||
| Free verse | ||||
| French forms | ||||
| Freytag's pyramid | ||||
| Fugitives and Agrarians | ||||
| Fustian | ||||
| Future | Expresses a condition happening in the future by using shall, will, am, is, are and going to with a verb. Adverbs are also used with the present tense of the verb to show future tense. | [1][7] | ||
| Futurism | ||||
| Gallows humor | ||||
| Gamebooks | ||||
| Gathering (literature) | ||||
| Gay literature | ||||
| Genetic fallacy | ||||
| Genius and talent | ||||
| Genre | ||||
| Georgian poetry | ||||
| Georgics | ||||
| Gesta | ||||
| Ghazal | ||||
| Gloss | ||||
| Gnomic verse | ||||
| Golden line | ||||
| Goliardic verse | ||||
| Gongorism | ||||
| Gonzo journalism | ||||
| Gothic novel | ||||
| Grand Guignol | ||||
| Graveyard poetry | ||||
| Graveyard school | ||||
| Greek tragedy | ||||
| Grub Street | ||||
| Grundyism | ||||
| Guignol | ||||
| Gushi | ||||
| Hagiography | ||||
| Hagiology | ||||
| Haibun | Prose written in a terse, haikai style, accompanied by haiku | [22] | ||
| Haikai | Broad genre comprising the related forms haiku haikai-renga and haibun | [22] | ||
| Haiku | Modern term for standalone hokku | [22] | ||
| Half rhyme | ||||
| Hamartia | ||||
| Handwaving | ||||
| Headless line | ||||
| Head rhyme | ||||
| Hemistich | ||||
| Hendecasyllable | ||||
| Hendecasyllabic verse | ||||
| Heptameter | ||||
| Heptastich | ||||
| Heresy of paraphrase | ||||
| Heroic couplets | ||||
| Heroic drama | ||||
| Heroic quatrain | ||||
| Heroic stanza | ||||
| Hexameter | A line from a poem hat has six feet in its meter. Another name for hexameter is "The Alexandrine." | [7] | ||
| Hexastich | ||||
| Hiatus | ||||
| High comedy | ||||
| Higher criticism | ||||
| Historical linguistics | ||||
| Historical novel | ||||
| Historic present | ||||
| History play | ||||
| Hokku | In Japanese poetry, the opening stanza of a renga or renku (haikai no renga) | [23] | ||
| Holograph | ||||
| Homeric epithet | ||||
| Homily | ||||
| Horatian ode | ||||
| Horatian satire | ||||
| Hornbook | ||||
| Hovering accent | ||||
| Hubris | ||||
| Hudibrastic | ||||
| Humor | ||||
| Humours | ||||
| Hybris | ||||
| Hymn | ||||
| Hymnal stanza | ||||
| Hypallage | ||||
| Hyperbole | ||||
| Hypercatalectic | ||||
| Hypermetrical | ||||
| Hypocorism | ||||
| Hysteron-proteron | ||||
| Hypotactic | A term where different subordinate clauses are used in a sentence to qualify a single verb, or modify it. | [7] | ||
| Iambic pentameter | ||||
| Ideology | ||||
| Idiom | ||||
| Idyll | ||||
| Imagery | ||||
| Imagism | ||||
| Impressionism | ||||
| Incipit | ||||
| Indeterminacy | ||||
| Inference | ||||
| In medias res | ||||
| Innuendo | ||||
| Interjection | A word that’s tacked onto a sentence in order to add strong emotion. It’s grammatically unrelated to the rest of the sentence. They are usually followed by an exclamation point. | [7] | ||
| Internal conflict | ||||
| Internal rhyme | ||||
| Interpretation | ||||
| Intertextuality | Refers to the way in which different works of literature interact with and relate to one another in order to construct meaning. | [7] | ||
| Intuitive description | ||||
| Irony | ||||
| Jacobean era | ||||
| Jeremiad | ||||
| Ji-amari | The use of one or more extra syllabic units (on) above the 5/7 standard in Japanese poetic forms such as waka and haiku. | [24] | ||
| Jintishi | ||||
| Jitarazu | The use of fewer syllabic units (on) than the 5/7 standard in Japanese poetic forms such as waka and haiku. | [25] | ||
| Journal | ||||
| Judicial criticism | ||||
| Jueju | ||||
| Juggernaut | ||||
| Juncture (literature) | ||||
| Juvenalian satire | ||||
| Juxtaposition | ||||
| Kabuki | ||||
| Kafkaesque | ||||
| Katharsis | ||||
| Kenning | ||||
| Kigo | In Japanese poetry, a seasonal word or phrase required in haiku and renku | [26] | ||
| King's English | ||||
| Kireji | In Japanese poetry, a "cutting word" required in haiku and hokku | [27] | ||
| Kitsch | ||||
| Künstlerroman | ||||
| Lai | ||||
| Lake Poets | ||||
| Lament | ||||
| Lampoon | ||||
| L'art pour l'art | ||||
| Laureate | ||||
| Lay | ||||
| Leaf | ||||
| Legend | ||||
| Legitimate theater | ||||
| Leonine rhyme | ||||
| Lexis | ||||
| Letters | ||||
| Level stress (even accent) | ||||
| Libretto | ||||
| Light ending | ||||
| Light poetry | ||||
| Light rhyme | ||||
| Light stress | ||||
| Light poetry | ||||
| Limerick | ||||
| Linguistics | ||||
| Linked rhyme | ||||
| Link sonnet | ||||
| Literary ballad | ||||
| Literary criticism | ||||
| Literary epic | ||||
| Literary fauvism | ||||
| Literary realism | ||||
| Literary theory | ||||
| Literature | ||||
| Litotes | ||||
| Litterateur | ||||
| Liturgical drama | ||||
| Living Newspaper | ||||
| Local color | ||||
| Logaoedic | ||||
| Logical fallacy | ||||
| Logical stress | ||||
| Logos | ||||
| Long metre | ||||
| Long poem | ||||
| Loose sentence | ||||
| Lost Generation | ||||
| Low comedy | ||||
| Lullaby | ||||
| Lune | ||||
| Lushi | ||||
| Lyric | A short poem with a song-like quality, or designed to be set to music; often conveying feelings, emotions, or personal thoughts. | [8] | ||
| Macaronic language | ||||
| Madrigal (poetry) | ||||
| Magic realism | ||||
| Malapropism | ||||
| Maqama | ||||
| Märchen | ||||
| Marginalia | ||||
| Marinism | ||||
| Marivauge | ||||
| Marxist literary criticism | ||||
| Masculine ending | ||||
| Masculine rhyme | ||||
| Masked comedy | ||||
| Masque | ||||
| Maxim | ||||
| Meaning | ||||
| Medieval drama | ||||
| Meiosis | ||||
| Melic poetry | ||||
| Melodrama | A work that is characterized by extravagant theatricality and by the predominance of plot and physical action over characterization | [10] | ||
| Memoir | ||||
| Menippean satire | ||||
| Mesostic | ||||
| Metaphor | Making a comparison between two unlike things without using the words like, as, or than. | [8] | ||
| Metaphysical conceit | ||||
| Metaphorical language | ||||
| Metaphysical poets | ||||
| Meter | ||||
| Metonymy | ||||
| Metre | ||||
| Metrical accent | ||||
| Metrical foot | ||||
| Metrical structure | ||||
| Microcosm | ||||
| Middle Comedy | ||||
| Miles gloriosus | ||||
| Miltonic sonnet | ||||
| Mime | ||||
| Mimesis | ||||
| Minnesang | ||||
| Minstrel | ||||
| Mystery play (miracle play) | ||||
| Miscellanies | ||||
| Mise en scène | ||||
| Mixed metaphor | ||||
| Mock-heroic (mock epic) | ||||
| Mode | ||||
| Modernism | ||||
| Monodrama | ||||
| Monody | ||||
| Monogatari | ||||
| Monograph | ||||
| Monologue | ||||
| Monometer (monopody) | ||||
| Monostich | ||||
| Monograph | ||||
| Mood | ||||
| Mora | ||||
| Moral | ||||
| Morality play | ||||
| Motif | ||||
| Motivation | ||||
| Movement | ||||
| Mummery | ||||
| Muses | ||||
| Musical comedy | ||||
| Muwashshah | A multi-lined strophic verse form which flourished in Islamic Spain in the 11th century, written in Arabic or Hebrew | [28] | ||
| Mystery play | ||||
| Mythology | ||||
| Narrative point of view | ||||
| Narrator | ||||
| Naturalism | A theory or practice in literature emphasizing scientific observation of life without idealization and often including elements of determinism | [10] | ||
| Neologism | The creation of new words, some arising from acronyms, word combinations, direct translations, and the addition of prefixes or suffixes. | [5] | ||
| Non-fiction | ||||
| Non-fiction novel | ||||
| Novel | A genre of fiction that relies on narrative and possesses a considerable length, an expected complexity, and a sequential organization of action into story and plot distinctively. This genre is flexible in form, although prose is the standard, focuses around one or more characters, and is continuously reshaped and reformed by a speaker. | [1] | ||
| Novelette | ||||
| Novella | ||||
| Novelle | ||||
| Narrative poem | ||||
| Objective correlative | ||||
| Objective criticism | ||||
| Obligatory scene | ||||
| Octameter | ||||
| Octave | ||||
| Octet | An eight line stanza of poetry. | [7] | ||
| Ode | A lyrical poem, sometimes sung, that focuses on the glorification of a single subject and its meaning. Often has an irregular stanza structure. | [10] | ||
| Oedipus complex | ||||
| Onomatopoeia | the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent. | [29] | ||
| Open couplet | ||||
| Oulipo | ||||
| Orchestra | ||||
| Ottava rima | A verse form in which a stanza has eight iambic pentameter lines following the rhyme scheme abababcc. An ottava rima was often used for long narratives, especially epics and mock heroic poems. | [1] | ||
| Oxymoron | ||||
| Palinode | ||||
| Pantoum | ||||
| Pantun | ||||
| Parable | ||||
| Paraclausithyron | ||||
| Paradelle | ||||
| Paradox | ||||
| Paraphrase | ||||
| Pararhyme | ||||
| Paratactic | Combining of various syntactic units, usually prepositions, without the use of conjunctions to form short and simple phrases. | [8] | ||
| Partimen | ||||
| Pastourelle | ||||
| Past Perfect | a verb tense that expresses an idea that something [in the past] occurred before another action [also in the past]. This tense [requires] the helping, or auxiliary word "had". For example, "you had studied French before you went to Paris." | [7] | ||
| Past Tense | the grammatical form of a verb used to indicate that the time of the action occurred before the moment of writing. | [5][30] | ||
| Pathetic fallacy | ||||
| Pathya Vat | ||||
| Parallelism | ||||
| Parody | ||||
| Pastoral | A work depicting an idealized vision of the rural life of shepherds. | [7] | ||
| Pathos | ||||
| Pentameter | In poetry, a line of verse containing five metric feet or accents. | [10] | ||
| Phrase | A sequence of two or more words, forming a unit.In the poem “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Coleridge, the words “pleasure-dome” is a phrase read not only in this poem, but also in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” when she uses also uses the phrase. | [10] | ||
| Periodical literature | ||||
| Peripetia | ||||
| Perspective | ||||
| Persona | ||||
| Personification | ||||
| Phronesis | ||||
| Pièce bien faite | ||||
| Picaresque novel | ||||
| Plain Style | ||||
| Platonic | ||||
| Plot | ||||
| Poem | ||||
| Poem and song | ||||
| Poetic diction | ||||
| Poetic transrealism | ||||
| Poetry | ||||
| Point of view | ||||
| Polysyndeton | ||||
| Post-colonialism | ||||
| Postmodernism | ||||
| Pound's Ideogrammic Method | ||||
| Present Perfect | A verb tense that describes actions just finished or continuing from the past into the present. This can also imply that past actions have present effects. | [7] | ||
| Primal scene | ||||
| Procatalepsis | ||||
| Prolepsis | An interjected scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media | [12] | ||
| Prologue | ||||
| Progymnasmata | ||||
| Pronoun | Can be used in place of a noun or, in some cases, another pronoun. | [5] | ||
| Prose | ||||
| Prosimetrum | ||||
| Prosody (poetry) | ||||
| Protagonist | ||||
| Protologism | ||||
| Proverb | ||||
| Pruning poem | ||||
| Psalm | ||||
| Psychoanalytic literary criticism | ||||
| Psychoanalytic theory | ||||
| Pun | ||||
| Purple prose | ||||
| Purpose for Reading | ||||
| Pyrrhic | ||||
| Quatrain | ||||
| Quintain | A stanza of five lines. | |||
| Reader-response criticism | ||||
| Realism | ||||
| Redaction | ||||
| Red herring | ||||
| Refrain | ||||
| Regency novel | ||||
| Regionalism (literature) | ||||
| Renga | A genre of Japanese collaborative poetry | [31] | ||
| Renku | In Japanese poetry, a form of popular collaborative linked verse formerly known as haikai no renga, or haikai | [32] | ||
| Renshi | A form of collaborative poetry pioneered by Makoto Ooka in Japan in the 1980s | [33] | ||
| Repetition | ||||
| Resolution | ||||
| Reverse chronology | ||||
| Rhapsodes | ||||
| Rhetoric | ||||
| Rhetorical agency | ||||
| Rhetorical device | ||||
| Rhetorical operations | ||||
| Rhetorical question | ||||
| Rhetorical tension | ||||
| Rhyme | ||||
| Rhymed prose | ||||
| Rhyme royal | ||||
| Rhythm | A measured pattern of words and phrases arranged by sound, time, or events. These patterns are [created] in verse or prose by use of stressed and unstressed syllables. | [1][21] | ||
| Rising action | ||||
| Robinsonade | ||||
| Romance (heroic literature) | ||||
| Romance novel | ||||
| Romanticism | ||||
| Romanzo d' appendice | ||||
| Roman à clef | ||||
| Round character | ||||
| Round-robin story | ||||
| Ruritanian romance | ||||
| Russian formalism | ||||
| Saj' | ||||
| Satire | ||||
| Scanning | ||||
| Scansion | ||||
| Scene | ||||
| Scènes à faire | ||||
| Sea shanty | ||||
| Semiotic literary criticism | ||||
| Semiotics | ||||
| Senry. | ||||
| Serial | ||||
| Sestet | ||||
| Setting | ||||
| Shadorma | ||||
| Shakespearean sonnet | ||||
| Shanty | ||||
| Sicilian octave | ||||
| Simile | A comparison of two different things that utilizes “like” or “as”. | [7] | ||
| Slant rhyme | ||||
| Slice of life | ||||
| Skaz | ||||
| Sobriquet | ||||
| Soliloquy | ||||
| Sonnet | A 14 line poem written in iambic pentameter. There are two types of sonnets: Shakespearean and Italian. The Shakespearean sonnet is written with 3 quatrain and a couplet in abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhythmic pattern. An Italian sonnet is written in 2 stanzas with an octave followed by a septet in abba, abba, cdecde or cdcdcd rhythmic pattern. | [7] | ||
| Sonneteer | ||||
| Speaker | ||||
| Spondee | A foot consisting of two syllables of approximately equal stress. | [7] | ||
| Spenserian stanza | ||||
| Sprung rhythm | ||||
| Stanza | Group of lines offset by a space and then continuing with the next group of lines with a set pattern or number of lines. | [7] | ||
| Static character | ||||
| Stigma of print | ||||
| Stereotype | ||||
| Stichic | Adjective describing poetry with lines of the same meter and length throughout, but not organized into regular stanzas. Example: Form of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight" | [1] | ||
| Strambotto | ||||
| Stream of consciousness | ||||
| Structuralism | ||||
| Subjunctive | Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred. Subjunctive verbs are often found in "that" clauses. The verb requires "that" to follow it e.g. 'He insisted that was the wrong way'. | [5] | ||
| Sublime | Adjective meaning an immeasurable experience, unable to be rationalized. | [1] | ||
| Subplot | ||||
| Syllogism | ||||
| Symbolism | ||||
| Synecdoche | A term where an entire idea is expressed by something smaller, such as a phrase or a single word; one part of the idea expresses the whole. This concept can also be reversed. | [7] | ||
| Synaesthesia | ||||
| Syntax | The study of how words are arranged in a sentence. Ex.- Line 68 of Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode,” is difficult to determine its syntax because of the way the words are arranged: “Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower.” The word “wedding” could be seen as a verb or a noun. | [1] | ||
| Tautology | ||||
| Tableau | ||||
| Tail rhyme | ||||
| Tagelied | ||||
| Tale | ||||
| Tanka | In Japanese poetry, a short poem in the form 5,7,5,7,7 syllabic units | [34] | ||
| Tan-renga | In Japanese poetry, a tanka where the upper part is composed by one poet, and the lower part by another | [35] | ||
| Techne | ||||
| Telestich | A telestich is a poem or other form of writing in which the last letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. | [36] | ||
| Tenor | ||||
| Tension | ||||
| Tercet | ||||
| Terza rima | ||||
| Tetrameter | ||||
| Tetrastich | ||||
| Text | ||||
| Textual criticism | ||||
| Textuality | ||||
| Texture | ||||
| Theater of Cruelty | ||||
| Theater of the Absurd | ||||
| Theme | ||||
| Thesis | ||||
| Thesis play | ||||
| Third person narrative | ||||
| Threnody | ||||
| Tirade | ||||
| Tone | ||||
| Tornada | In Occitan lyric poetry, a final, shorter stanza (cobla), addressed to a patron, lady, or friend | [37] | ||
| Tract | ||||
| Tractarian Movement | ||||
| Tragedy | ||||
| Tragedy of blood | ||||
| Tragic flaw | ||||
| Tragic hero | ||||
| Tragic irony | ||||
| Tragicomedy | ||||
| Tranche de vie | ||||
| Transcendentalism | ||||
| Transferred epithet | ||||
| Transition | ||||
| Translation | ||||
| Travesty | ||||
| Tribe of Ben | ||||
| Tribrach | ||||
| Trimeter | ||||
| Triolet | ||||
| Triple rhyme | ||||
| Triple meter | ||||
| Triple rhythm | ||||
| Triplet | ||||
| Tristich | ||||
| Tritagonist | ||||
| Trivium | ||||
| Trobar clus | ||||
| Trochee | ||||
| Trochee | A two syllable foot with the accent syllable on the first foot. | [1][7] | ||
| Trope (literature) | A figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression (a figure of speech). Example: "I'll die of embarrassment" or "She has tons of money". | [13] | ||
| Troubadour | ||||
| Trouvère | ||||
| Tuckerization | ||||
| Truncated line | ||||
| Tumbling verse | ||||
| Type character | ||||
| Type scene | ||||
| Ubi sunt | ||||
| Underground culture | ||||
| Underground press | ||||
| Understatement | ||||
| Unities | ||||
| Unity | ||||
| Universality (disambiguation) | ||||
| University Wits | ||||
| Unobtainium | ||||
| Uta monogatari | ||||
| Utopia | ||||
| Utopian and dystopian fiction | ||||
| Unreliable narrator | ||||
| Variable syllable | ||||
| Variorum | ||||
| Varronian satire (Menippean satire) | ||||
| Vates | ||||
| Vaudeville | ||||
| Vehicle | ||||
| Verb displacement | ||||
| Verbal irony | ||||
| Verisimilitude | ||||
| Verism | ||||
| Vers de société | ||||
| Vers libre | ||||
| Verse | ||||
| Verse paragraph | ||||
| Versiprose | ||||
| Verso | ||||
| Victorianism | ||||
| Viewpoint | ||||
| Vignette | ||||
| Villain | ||||
| Villanelle | ||||
| Virelay | ||||
| Virgule | ||||
| Voice (of the writer) | ||||
| Voice (in phonetics) | ||||
| Volta | A turn or switch that emphasizes a change in ideas or emotions. It can be marked by the words “but” or “yet.” In a sonnet, this change separates the octave from the sestet. | [38] | ||
| Vorticism | ||||
| Vulgate | The use of informal, common speech, particularly of uneducated people. Similar to the use of vernacular. | [10] | ||
| Waka | ||||
| Wardour Street English | A pseudo-archaic form of diction affected by some writers, particularly those of historical fiction. | [39] | ||
| Weak ending | ||||
| Weak foot | ||||
| Well-made play | ||||
| Wellerism | ||||
| Western fiction | ||||
| Wit | ||||
| Word accent | ||||
| Wrenched accent | ||||
| Watermark | ||||
| Za | The site of a renga session; also, the sense of dialogue and community present in such a session | [40] | ||
| Zappai |
Further reading
- M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005. ISBN 1-4130-0456-3.
- Chris Baldick. The Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford Univ. Press, 2004. ISBN 0-19-860883-7.
- Chris Baldick. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001. ISBN 0-19-280118-X.
- Edwin Barton & G. A. Hudson. Contemporary Guide To Literary Terms. Houghton-Mifflin, 2003. ISBN 0-618-34162-5.
- Mark Bauerlein. Literary Criticism: An Autopsy. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8122-1625-3.
- Karl Beckson & Arthur Ganz. Literary Terms: A Dictionary. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989. ISBN 0-374-52177-8.
- Peter Childs. The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0-415-34017-9.
- J. A. Cuddon. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin Books, 2000. ISBN 0-14-051363-9 .
- Dana Gioia. The Longman Dictionary of Literary Terms: Vocabulary for the Informed Reader. Longman, 2005. ISBN 0-321-33194-X.
- Sharon Hamilton. Essential Literary Terms: A Brief Norton Guide with Exercises. W. W. Norton, 2006. ISBN 0-393-92837-3.
- William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature. Prentice Hall, 2005. ISBN 0-13-134442-0.
- X. J. Kennedy, et al. Handbook of Literary Terms: Literature, Language, Theory. Longman, 2004. ISBN 0-321-20207-4.
- V. B. Leitch. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W. W. Norton, 2001. ISBN 0-393-97429-4.
- Frank Lentricchia & Thomas McLaughlin. Critical Terms for Literary Study. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0-226-47203-5.
- David Mikics. A New Handbook of Literary Terms. Yale Univ. Press, 2007. ISBN 0-300-10636-X.
- Ross Murfin & S. M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006. ISBN 0-312-25910-7.
- John Peck & Martin Coyle. Literary Terms and Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. ISBN 0-333-96258-3.
- Edward Quinn. A Dictionary of Literary And Thematic Terms. Checkmark Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8160-6244-7.
- Lewis Turco. The Book of Literary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, and Scholarship. Univ. Press of New England, 1999. ISBN 0-87451-955-1.
Citations
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Stephen Greenblatt et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, volume D, 9th edition (Norton, 2012)
- ↑ "For Better For Verse". University of Virginia.
- ↑ Cuddon, John Anthony (1998). A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Wiley. p. 7. ISBN 9780631202714.
- ↑ "Acrostic Poetry". OutstandingWriting.com. Retrieved 2011-04-30.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Jack Lynch. "Guide to Grammar and Style". Retrieved January 28, 2013.. Online edition of the book The English Language: A User's Guide by Jack Lynch.
- ↑ "Writing Centre". University of Ottawa.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 "The Norton Anthology of Poetry". W. W. Norton.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Glossary of Terms". Gale Cengage.
- 1 2 Hirsch, E.D. Jr. et al., eds. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002. ISBN 9780618226474 p148
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Merriam-Webster Dictionary". Merriam-Webster.
- ↑ Baldick, Chris. Oxford Dictionary Of Literary Terms, 3rd edition. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 9780199208272 p12
- 1 2 3 4 Jung, Berenike. Narrating Violence In Post-9/11 Action Cinema: Terrorist Narratives, Cinematic Narration, and Referentiality. Springer, 2010. ISBN 9783531926025 p67
- ↑ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/analogy
- ↑ http://www.literarydevices.com/analogy/
- ↑ http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/Anapest
- ↑ "the definition of anecdote". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
- 1 2 "the definition of antagonist". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2016-08-06.
- ↑ Keller, Stefan Daniel. The Development of Shakespeare's Rhetoric: A Study of Nine Plays. Volume 136 of Schweizer anglistische Arbeiten. Narr Francke Attempto, 2009. ISBN 9783772083242. p54
- ↑ Hirsch, E.D. Jr. et al., eds. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002. ISBN 9780618226474 p149
- ↑ Sargent, G.W. and Ihara Saikaku. The Japanese Family Storehouse; Or the Millionaires Gospel Modernised; Nippon Eitai-Gura or Daifuku Shin Choja Kyo 1688. Cambridge University Press, 1959 xv
- 1 2 Cuddon, J. A., and Claire Preston. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1998.
- 1 2 3 Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford University Press, 1998. ISBN 9780804730990 p294
- ↑ Blyth, Reginald Horace. Haiku. Volume 1, Eastern culture. The Hokuseido Press, 1981. ISBN 0-89346-158-X p123ff.
- ↑ Mostow, Joshua S. Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image. University of Hawaii Press, 1996. ISBN 9780824817053 p12
- ↑ Crowley, Cheryl. Haikai Poet Yosa Buson and the Bashō Revival. Brill, 2006. ISBN 978-9004157095 p54
- ↑ Keene, Donald. World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867 Henry Holt, 1976. ISBN 9780030136269 p575
- ↑ Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford University Press, 1998. ISBN 9780804730990 p100ff.
- ↑ Bleiberg, Germán et al. Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula: A-k. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993. ISBN 9780313287312 p900
- ↑ "the definition of onomatopoeia". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
- ↑ "Purdue Online Writing Lab". The Writing Lab, The Owl at Purdue, Purdue University.
- ↑ Carter, Steven D. Three Poets at Yuyama, University of California, 1983, ISBN 0-912966-61-0 p.3
- ↑ Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford University Press, 1998. ISBN 9780804730990 p297
- ↑ Look Japan Volume 48, issues 553-564. 2002, p4
- ↑ Vos, Jos. Eeuwige reizigers: Een bloemlezing uit de klassieke Japanese literatuur. De Arbeiderspers, 2008. ISBN 9789029566032 p45
- ↑ Shirane, Haruo. Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings To 1600. Columbia University Press, 2008. ISBN 9780231136976 p874
- ↑ TalkTalk Dictionary of Difficult Words - telestich "Dictionary of Difficult Words". TalkTalk. Retrieved 2013-10-13.
- ↑ Chambers, Frank M. An Introduction to Old Provenc̦al Versification: Volume 167 of Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society. American Philosophical Society, 1985. ISBN 9780871691675 p32ff.
- ↑ Cuddon, J. A. "A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory." Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1998. ISBN 978-0140513639.
- ↑ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th ed. (2007). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 3575
- ↑ Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford University Press, 1998. ISBN 9780804730990 p299
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