Harbert Writing Center
Literary Terms
By Mary Jo Buff
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Allegory
A
story illustrating an idea or a moral principle
in which objects take on symbolic meanings. In
Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Dante,
symbolizing humankind, is taken by Virgil the
poet on a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and
Paradise in order to teach him the nature of sin
and its punishments and the way to salvation.
Alliteration
Used
for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial
sounds of several words in a group. The
following line from Robert Frost's poem Acquainted
with the Night provides us with an example
of alliteration:
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet.
The repetition of the 's' sound creates a sense of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the line.
Allusion
A
reference in one literary work to a character or
theme found in another literary work. T. S.
Eliot, in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
alludes (refers) to the biblical figure John
the Baptist in the line,
Though
I have seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought in upon a
platter . . .
In the New Testament, John the Baptist's head was presented to King Herod on a platter.
Ambiguity
A
statement which can contain two or more
meanings. For example, when the oracle at Delphi
told Croesus that if he waged war on Cyrus he
would destroy a great empire, Croesus thought
the oracle meant his enemy's empire. In fact,
the empire Croesus destroyed by going to war was
his own.
Analogy
The
comparison of two things, which are alike in
several respects, for the purpose of explaining
or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea
or object by showing how the idea or object is
similar to some familiar one. While simile and
analogy often overlap, the simile is generally a
more artistic likening, done briefly for effect
and emphasis, while analogy serves the more
practical purpose of explaining a thought
process or a line of reasoning or the abstract
in terms of the concrete, and may therefore be
more extended:
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables. --Samuel Johnson
Antagonist
A
person or force which opposes the protagonist in
a literary work. In Stephen Vincent Benet's The
Devil and Daniel Webster, Mr. Scratch
is Daniel Webster's antagonist at the trial of
Jabez Stone. The cold, in Jack London's To
Build a Fire is the antagonist which defeats
the man on the trail. The antagonist may not be
obvious, in which case you could choose a
candidate and discuss why he or she deserves to
be thought of as the antagonist. An antagonist
may not even be a person - or may be the same
person as the main character. (See also
Protagonist.)
Assonance
The
repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work,
especially in a poem. Edgar Allen Poe's
"The Bells" contains numerous
examples:
Hear the mellow wedding bells . . . and From the molten-golden notes. The repetition of the short 'e' and long 'o' sounds denotes a heavier, more serious bell than the bell encountered in the first stanza where the assonance included the 'i' sound in examples such as tinkle, sprinkle, and twinkle.
Bathos
Writing
is bathetic when it strives to be serious
(impassioned or elevated) but achieves only a
comic effect because it is anti-climactic.
"Anticlimax" is synonymous with
bombast but can also refer to a bathetic effect
which is intentional. In Tom Thumb the Great (1731),
Fielding uses anticlimax for the purposes of
satire, as when King Arthur observes the signs
of love in his daughter: "Your eyes spit
fire, your cheeks grow red as beef." Here
figurative language that begins with an
ennobling (though bombastic) fire metaphor then
descends to the mean level of raw steak.
Blank Verse
An
unrhymed, metered poem, usually written in
iambic
pentameter. Consider the following from The Ball Poem
by John Berryman:
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over-there it is in the water!
Carpe Diem
A
Latin phrase which translated means "Seize
(Catch) the day," meaning "Make the
most of today." The phrase originated as
the title of a poem by the Roman Horace (65-8
B.C.) and caught on as a theme with such English
poets as Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell.
Consider these lines from Herrick's To the
Virgins, to Make Much of Time:
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
To-morrow will be dying.
Character
(1)
Any of the persons involved in a story. (2) The
distinguishing moral qualities and personal
traits of a character. They may perform actions,
speak to other characters, be described by the
narrator, or be remembered (or even imagined) by
other characters. Characters to notice in a
story are the story's Narrator, the Main
Character or Protagonist, the Antagonist,
characters who are Parallel or Foils for each
other, and sometimes Minor Characters.
Developing (or dynamic) character. A character who during the course of a story undergoes a permanent change in some aspect of his/her personality or outlook.
Flat character. A character who has only one outstanding trait or feature, or at the most a few distinguishing marks.
Round character. A character who is complex, multi-dimensional, and convincing.
Stock character. A stereotyped character: one whose nature is familiar from prototypes in previous fiction.
Static character. A character who is the same sort of person at the end of a story as s/he was at the beginning.
Characterization
The
method a writer uses to reveal the personality
of a character in a literary work. Personality
may be revealed (1) by what the character says
about himself or herself; (2) by what others
reveal about the character; and (3) by the
character's own actions.
Connotation and Denotation
The
denotation of a word is its dictionary
definition. The word 'wall', therefore, denotes
an upright structure which encloses something or
serves as a boundary. The connotation of a word
is its emotional content. In this sense, the
word 'wall' can also mean an attitude or actions
which prevent becoming emotionally close to a
person. In Robert Frost's Mending Wall,
two neighbors walk a property line each on his
own side of a wall of loose stones. As they
walk, they pick up and replace stones that have
fallen. Frost thinks it's unnecessary to replace
the stones since they have no cows to damage
each other's property. The neighbor only says,
"Good fences make good neighbors." The
wall, in this case, is both a boundary
(denotation) and a barrier that prevents Frost
and his neighbor from getting to know each
other, a force prohibiting involvement
(connotation).
Consonance
The repetition of consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry. Consider the following example from Theodore Roethke's Night Journey"
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
The repetition of the 'r' sound in 'rush', 'rain', and 'rattles', occurring so close to each other in these two lines, would be considered consonance.
Couplet
A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. The following by Andrew Marvell is an example of a rhymed couplet:
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
Crisis or Climax
The moment or event in the Plot in which the conflict is most directly addressed: the main character "wins" or "loses"; the secret is revealed; the ending of the story becomes inevitable, etc. Example: In Cinderella, the climactic moment of the plot occurs when Cinderella fits her foot into the glass slipper, thereby "winning" marriage with the Prince. In many stories, there are several points in the plot which are plausible crises. This is especially true when there are several almost-equal major characters. Try finding the moment which you think is the most important and discussing why it deserves to be thought of as the crisis of the plot. Or you could also try explaining why this particular story seems to have no crisis (if that is how you see it).
An author's choice of words. Since words have specific meanings, and since one's choice of words can affect feelings, a writer's choice of words can have great impact in a literary work. The writer, therefore, must choose his words carefully. Discussing his novel A Farewell to Arms during an interview, Ernest Hemingway stated that he had to rewrite the ending thirty-nine times. When asked what the most difficult thing about finishing the novel was, Hemingway answered, "Getting the words right."
The first section of the typical Plot, in which Characters are introduced, the Setting is described, and any necessary background information is given. Example: Every fairy tale begins with expository information: "There once was a king and queen who wanted a child . . ." or "Once upon a time there lived a merchant with one daughter and two stepdaughters . . . " and so forth. The characters are described and sometimes named; their family relationships are specified. Think about how much information the story gives at the beginning. Sometimes there is a lot, and the exposition stretches out; sometimes the story starts in the middle (or, if you want to use an impressive Latin term, in medias res) and the expository information is tucked in unobtrusively as people talk to each other or inside the narrator's descriptions. What does this author do with the exposition and why did he or she make that choice?
The part of the Plot after the Climax, containing events caused by the climax and contributing to the Resolution. Example: In most fairy tales, there is not much falling action: "So they were married and lived happily ever after" combines the falling action of the marriage and the resolution of everlasting happiness into one sentence. But in some versions of Snow White, the wicked queen comes to Snow White's marriage and is punished: the prince has ordered someone to make iron shoes, and they have been heated in an oven; the queen is forced to wear them to dance at the wedding feast, and so she dies. These events are falling action. Depending on where you place the story's crisis, there may not appear to be much falling action. What events are required to finish the conflict once and for all? Try to name the events of the falling action, or explain why the crisis and resolution do not require much (or any) falling action.
Figurative Language
In literature, a way of saying one thing and meaning something else. Take, for example, this line by Robert Burns, "My luv is a red, red rose." Clearly Mr. Burns does not really mean that he has fallen in love with a red, aromatic, many-petalled, long, thorny-stemmed plant. He means that his love is as sweet and as delicate as a rose. While figurative language provides a writer with the opportunity to write imaginatively, it also tests the imagination of the reader, forcing the reader to go below the surface of a literary work into deep, hidden meanings.
Figure of Speech
An example of figurative language that states something that is not literally true in order to create an effect. Similes, metaphors and personification are figures of speech which are based on comparisons. Metonymy, synecdoche, synesthesia, apostrophe, oxymoron, and hyperbole are other figures of speech.
Flashback
A reference to an event which took place prior to the beginning of a story or play. In Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilamanjaro," the protagonist, Harry Street, has been injured on a hunt in Africa. Dying, his mind becomes preoccupied with incidents in his past. In a flashback Street remembers one of his wartime comrades dying painfully on barbed wire on a battlefield in Spain.
Foil
A character in a play who sets off the main character or other characters by comparison. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet and Laertes are young men who behave very differently. While Hamlet delays in carrying out his mission to avenge the death of his father, Laertes is quick and bold in his challenge of the king over the death of his father. Much can be learned about each by comparing and contrasting the actions of the two. Finding character foils and explaining the contrasts between them is a standard type of assignment, though the term may not be used. "Compare and contrast X and Y" (with characters' names instead of "X" and "Y") usually means either "discuss why X and Y are character foils" or "discuss why X and Y are parallel characters."
Foreshadowing
A method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come.
Free Verse
Unrhymed Poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us with many examples. Consider the following lines from Song of Myself:
I celebrate myself and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
A literary type or form. Drama is a genre of literature. Within drama, genres include tragedy, comedy and other forms.
A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs as in the following lines from Act 2, scene 2 of Shakespeare's Macbeth. In this scene, Macbeth has murdered King Duncan. Horrified at the blood on his hands, he asks:
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Literally, it does not require an ocean to wash blood from one's hand. Nor can the blood on one's hand turn the green ocean red. The hyperbole works to illustrate the guilt Macbeth feels at the brutal murder of his king and kinsman.
A metrical pattern in poetry which consists of five iambic feet per line. (An iamb, or iambic foot, consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, i.e. "away.")
Imagery
A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. Consider the following example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
This example uses images of pain and sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself represents society and the psychology of Prufrock, himself.
Indeterminacy
Several modern approaches to language and literature propose that the meaning of a text can never be fully determined or fixed because the immediate meaning of a text is the result of the particular cultural and social background of the reader; further, the nature of language itself is such that the author's original "intention" cannot itself have been fixed and definite when the work was originally created, quite apart from the tendency of language to generate its own meaning over time. That a text is inevitably indeterminate does not mean that all readings are of equal validity; it does mean, however, that all meanings we draw from it are partial and provisional, and that what we write about it is itself a text, open to further interpretation.
Irony
Irony takes many forms. In irony of situation, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Macbeth murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will achieve great happiness. Actually, Macbeth never knows another moment of peace, and finally is beheaded for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the mystery is solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as "brilliant," while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.
A figure of speech wherein a comparison is made between two unlike quantities without the use of the words "like" or "as." Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," has this to say about the moral condition of his parishioners:
There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your
heads, full of the dreadful storm and big with thunder.
The comparison here is between God's anger and a storm. Note that there is no use of "like" or "as" as would be the case in a simile (See also Simile.)
Metonymy
A figure of speech in which a word represents something else which it suggests. For example in a herd of fifty cows, the herd might be referred to as fifty head of cattle. The word "head" is the word representing the herd.
Motif
A motif, or topos, is a recurring concept or story element in literature. It includes concepts such as types of incident or situation, as in the parting of lovers at dawn; plot devices, such as the lady's love token, which inspires courage in her lover, or the recognition tokens in plots of mistaken identity; or plot formulas,) such as the "loathly lady" who later becomes a beautiful princess, or the "femme fatale" whose attraction proves deadly; and character types, such as the despairing lover, conquering hero, or wicked stepmother. In a more narrow sense, "motif" is also used to describe recurring elements within particular works, such as phrases, descriptions, or patterns of imagery.
Myth
An unverifiable story based on a religious belief. The characters of myths are gods and goddesses, or the offspring of the mating of gods or goddesses and humans. Some myths detail the creation of the earth, while others may be about love, adventure, trickery, or revenge. In all cases, it is the gods and goddesses who control events, while humans may be aided or victimized. It is said that the creation of myths was the method by which ancient, superstitious humans attempted to account for natural or historical phenomena. In Homer's, The Odyssey, the Greek hero, Odysseus, is thwarted in his attempt to reach home by an angry Poseidon, god of the sea and patron of Troy. The Trojan horse, the trick the Greeks used to gain entrance into the city of Troy when a ten-year siege had failed, was the plan of Odysseus' creation. Poseidon, in his anger, kept Odysseus from reaching home for ten years after the war ended.
The voice telling the story. This voice might belong to a Character in the story whom other characters can see, hear, interact with, etc.; or the voice might appear to belong to the author. The narrator may fit into one or more of these categories:
First-person narrator: stands out as a character and refers to himself or herself, using "I." Example: Jane Eyre narrates Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre, which allows Bronte to let her readers know just how the limitations of Jane's life galled her, and how Jane secretly fell in love with her employer, Mr. Rochester.
Second-person narrator: addresses the reader and/or the Main Character as "you" (and may also use first-person narration, but not necessarily). Example: This technique is rarely used, except briefly; Beatrix Potter addresses the readers near the end of Peter Rabbit in order to underline the "proper" moral which the bulk of the story undermines. Another brief example is the opening of each of Rudyard Kipling's Just-So Stories, in which the narrator refers to the child-listener as "O Best-Beloved."
Third-person narrator: not a character in the story; refers to the story's characters as "he" and "she." This is probably the most common form of narration, so I won't give a specific example.
Limited Narrator: can only tell what one person is thinking or feeling. Example: in Peter Rabbit, we don't find out what Mr. McGregor thinks about, or what Mother rabbit thinks about, or what Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail thought about - only what Peter thinks about.
Omniscient narrator: not a character in the story; can tell what any or all characters are thinking and feeling. Example: In Cinderella, several important plot events, such as the finding of the glass slipper, take place when Cinderella herself is not present; in these scenes, the audience sometimes knows what other characters, like the Prince or the stepmother, are thinking.
Reliable narrator: everything this narrator says is true, and the narrator knows everything that is necessary to the story.
Unreliable narrator: may not know all the relevant information; may be intoxicated or mentally ill; may lie to the audience. Example: Edgar Allan Poe's narrators are frequently unreliable. Think of the delusions that the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart has about the old man, or consider the lying narrator in Poe's Black Cat.
he type of narrator telling the story can be vitally important to you as the reader or interpreter, especially if the narrator is unreliable. Not every unreliable narrator is as easy to spot as Poe's in The Tell-Tale Heart; there may be a lot of scholarly debate about whether a given narrator is reliable or not, and obviously you need to know how much of the narration you can trust. If you cannot trust the narrator to tell you what happened, then just summarizing the events of the story can be very challenging. A first-person narrator may easily be a little unreliable, since everyone wants to tell his/her own story in a way which shows himself or herself in a good light. If the narration is limited, why has the author chosen to show readers only this person's thoughts? If the narrator addresses the reader directly, does that draw you in or alienate you? All these issues and more arise when discussing the narrators. (See also Point of View.)
A literary device wherein the sound of a word echoes the sound it represents. The words "splash." "knock," and "roar" are examples. The following lines end Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill:
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
The word "whinnying" is onomatopoetic. "Whinny" is the sound usually selected to represent that made by a horse.
Oxymoron
A combination of contradictory terms, such as used by Romeo in Act 1, scene 1 of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity;
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
A situation or a statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. These lines from John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10 provide an example:
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me.
The poet paradoxically asks God to knock him down so that he may stand. What he means by this is for God to destroy his present self and remake him as a holier person.
Parallel Character
A
person whose role in the story is mostly
important because of his or her likeness to
another Character, especially the Main
Character. Example: In the children's
novel The Secret Garden by Frances
Hodgson Burnett, the main character Mary Lennox
is a spoiled, neglected child who eventually
learns to care for a garden and to feel sympathy
for others. Partly, she is able to change
because of her interactions with her cousin
Colin Craven, who is even more spoiled and even
more neglected. Colin's role in the story is to
show Mary and the reader how badly she needs to
change, before she becomes as friendless and
helpless as Colin. Parallel characters often
have Subplots of their own, which reflect the
main Plot and its Themes. Understand the
parallel characters, and the main character and
the overall theme(s) of the story will be easier
to understand.
Parody
A
literary work that imitates the style of another
literary work. A parody can be simply amusing or
it can be mocking in tone, such as a poem which
exaggerates the use of alliteration in order to
show the ridiculous effect of overuse of
alliteration. (See also Satire.)
Pathos
A
Greek term for deep emotion, passion, or
suffering. When applied to literature, its
meaning is usually narrowed to refer to tragic
emotions, describing the language and situations
which deeply move the audience or reader by
arousing sadness, sympathy, or pity. There are
many examples in Shakespeare's King Lear,
such as Cordelia's acceptance of defeat:
We are not the first / Who with best meaning have incurred the worst.
Pathos which seems excessive or exaggerated becomes melodramatic or sentimental, and when its disproportion to its subject results from anticlimax, pathos becomes bathetic. Modern tastes usually prefer pathetic effects achieved through understatement and suggestion, rather than an extended focus upon suffering, though some movies still attract large audiences by offering a good cry.
Persona
The
persona was the mask worn by an actor in Greek
drama. In a literary context, the persona is the
character of the first-person narrator in verse
or prose narratives, and the speaker in lyric
poetry. The use of the term "persona"
(as distinct from "author") stresses
that the speaker is part of the fictional
creation, invented for the author's particular
purposes in a given literary work. The persona
may be completely different from the author, as
in the naive narrator of Swift's Gulliver's
Travels (1726), or may seem to be
identifiable with the author, as in the lyric
poems of Wordsworth and Keats. But even in the
latter case the persona can only be an aspect of
the author - a mood or attitude adopted for the
purposes of a particular work, and which changes
subtly or drastically from one work to another.
Personification
A
figure of speech in which something nonhuman is
given human characteristics. Consider the
following lines from Carl Sandburg's Chicago:
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the big shoulders.
Carl Sandburg description of Chicago includes shoulders. Cities do not
have shoulders, people do. Sandburg personifies
the city by ascribing to it something human,
"shoulders." "Justice is
blind" is another example.
Plot
The structure of a story. Or the sequence in which the author arranges events in a story. The structure of a five-act play often includes the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution. The plot may have a protagonist who is opposed by antagonist, creating what is called, conflict. A plot may include flashback or it may include a subplot which is a mirror image of the main plot. For example, in Shakespeare's, King Lear, the relationship between the Earl of Gloucester and his sons mirrors the relationship between Lear and his daughters.
Point of View
Point
of view is the perspective from which a
narrative is presented; it is analogous to the
point from which the camera sees the action in
cinema. The two main points of view are those of
the third-person (omniscient) narrator,
who stands outside the story itself, and the first-person
narrator, who participates in the story. The
first type always uses third-person pronouns
("he," "she,"
"they"), while the latter narrator
also uses the first-person ("I"). The
all-knowing third-person narrator may choose to
guide the reader's understanding of characters
and the significance of their story. This type
of narrator may be intrusive (commenting and
evaluating, as in the novels of Austen, Dickens,
and Tolstoy), or unintrusive (describing without
much commentary, as in Flaubert's Madame
Bovary [1857] and Hemingway's short
stories). Another possibility is the limited
omniscient narrator, who describes in the
third-person only what is experienced by a few
characters or one alone. The first-person
narrator is a character within the story and
therefore limited in understanding. He or she
might be an observer who happens to see the
events of the story (as in Conrad's Heart of
Darkness [1902]), or play a minor role in
the action (as in Melville's Moby-Dick [1851]),
or might be a protagonist (as in Salinger's The
Catcher in the Rye [1951]). Other points of
view include the self-conscious narrative, which
draws attention to its own fictional nature (as
in Fielding's Tom Jones [1749]); its
cousin the self-reflexive narrative, which
describes an act of fictional composition within
its story (like a play-within-a-play); and the
fallible or unreliable narrator, as in Henry
James' The Turn of the Screw (1898). (See
also Narrator.)
Protagonist
The
hero or central character of a literary work. In
accomplishing his or her objective, the
protagonist is hindered by some opposing force
either human (one of Batman's antagonists is The
Joker), animal (Moby Dick is Captain Ahab's
antagonist in Herman Melville's Moby Dick),
or natural (the sea is the antagonist which must
be overcome by Captain Bligh in Nordhoff and
Hall's Men Against the Sea," the
second book in the trilogy which includes Mutiny
on the Bounty). There may be more than one
character who is important enough to be called
"main"; there may not be any character
who seems to qualify. In those cases, figuring
out whether there is a main character and who it
is may be an interesting and even difficult
interpretive job. (See also Antagonist.)
Pun
A play on words wherein a word is used to convey two meanings at the same time. The line below, spoken by Mercutio in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, is an example of a pun. Mercutio has just been stabbed, knows he is dying and says:
"Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man."
Mercutio's use of the word "grave' renders it capable of two meanings: a serious person or a corpse in his grave.
A rhetorical question implies that the answer is obvious - the kind of question that does not need actually to be answered. It is used for rhetorically persuading someone of a truth without argument, or to give emphasis to a supposed truth by stating its opposite ironically. Rhetorical question is often used for comic effect, as in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 (1597) when Falstaff lies about fighting off eleven men single-handedly, then responds to the prince's doubts, "Art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth?"
On the other hand, Iago uses rhetorical question for sinister ends, persuading Othello that his loving wife is a whore. Iago hints with questions ("Honest, my lord?" "Is't possible, my lord?"), encouraging Othello to view his own unjustified suspicions as foregone conclusions.
Resolution
The
part of a story or drama which occurs after the
climax and which establishes a new norm, a new
state of affairs - the way things are going to
be from then on. Shakespeare's Romeo and
Juliet climaxes with the death of the two
lovers. Their deaths resolve the feud between
the two families. In the play's resolution,
Lords Capulet and Montague swear to end their
feud and build golden monuments to each other's
dead child. In the resolution of the film Star
Wars," Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and
Chewbacca are given medals by Princess Lea for
destroying the death star and defeating the
empire. Is there a resolution section in the
story you are examining? If so, what needs to be
explained or re-evaluated? If not, why doesn't
the story need resolution - or why has the
author chosen to leave certain matters in the
story unresolved? Answering questions like this
can often be useful and interesting. (See also
Plot.)
Rising Action
The
second section of the typical Plot, in which the
Main Character begins to grapple with the
story's main conflict; the rising action
contains several events which usually are
arranged in an order of increasing importance. Example:
In most versions of Cinderella, Cinderella finds
out about the ball, is forbidden to go by her
stepmother, gets magical help, acquires at least
one beautiful dress, goes to the ball, dances
with the prince, and runs away before the ball
is over. These events are all part of the rising
action. Another example of rising action is in a
mystery novel: the events that take place in
between the initial crime and the capture of the
criminal (in most cases) are the rising action,
which is also the section in which the clues are
placed. Not all the events of a long or
complicated story are part of the rising action.
Some events belong to Subplots; or in the case
of the mystery novel, may exist only to distract
you from the really important rising action.
Identifying the events that are really part of
the rising action can in some cases be a
rewarding interpretive activity. (See also
Plot.)
Satire
A
piece of literature designed to ridicule the
subject of the work. While satire can be funny,
its aim is not to amuse, but to arouse contempt.
Jonathan swift's Gulliver's Travel
satirizes the English people, making them seem
dwarfish in their ability to deal with large
thoughts, issues, or deeds. Satire arouses
laughter or scorn as a means of ridicule and
derision, with the avowed intention of
correcting human faults. Common targets of
satire include individuals (personal satire),
types of people, social groups, institutions,
and human nature. Like tragedy and comedy,
satire is often a mode of writing introduced
into various literary forms; it is only a genre
when it is the governing principle of a work. In
direct satire, a first-person speaker
addresses either the reader or a character
within the work (the adversarius) whose
conversation helps further the speaker's
purposes, as in Alexander Pope's Epistle to
Dr. Arbuthnot (1735). Indirect satire
uses a fictional narrative in which characters
who represent particular points of view are made
ridiculous by their own behaviour and thoughts,
and by the narrator's usually ironic commentary.
In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726)
the hero narrating his own adventures appears
ridiculous in taking pride in his Lilliputian
title of honour, "Nardac"; by making
Gulliver look foolish in this way, Swift
indirectly satirizes the pretensions of the
English nobility, with its corresponding titles
of "Duke" and "Marquess."
(See also Irony.)
Setting
The
place(s) and time(s) of the story, including the
historical period, social milieu of the
characters, geographical location, descriptions
of indoor and outdoor locales, etc.
Short Story
A
short fictional narrative. It is difficult to
set forth the point at which a short story
becomes a short novel (novelette), or the page
number at which a novelette becomes a novel.
Here are some examples which may help in
determining which is which: Ernest Hemingway's Big
Two-Hearted River is a short story; John
Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is a
novelette; and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The
Scarlet Letter is a novel.
The
short story, or tale, has many of the same
characteristics as the novel. Generally, all
details of a short story are arranged to achieve
a single effect. The action moves rapidly, with
minimal complication or detail of setting, and
the significant characteristics of the
protagonist's life are revealed economically
through a central incident. Short stories range
from the short short-story (as few as five
hundred words in length) to the novelette or
novella (a more complex story but still lacking
the breadth of a novel). An example of the
latter type is Joseph Conrad's Heart of
Darkness (1902). In between these two types
is the
short story proper, which Edgar Allan Poe (one of its originators) described as "the prose tale." The
fable and folk tale are precursors of the short story form.
Simile
A
figure of speech which takes the form of a
comparison between two unlike quantities for
which a basis for comparison can be found, and
which uses the words "like" or
"as" in the comparison, as in this
line from Ezra Pound's "Fan-Piece, for Her
Imperial Lord": "clear as frost on the
grass-bade"; In this line, a fan of white
silk is being compared to frost on a blade of
grass. Note the use of the word "as."
(See also Metaphor.)
Sonnet
A
lyric poem of fourteen lines whose rhyme scheme
is fixed. The rhyme scheme in the Italian form
as typified in the sonnets of Petrarch is
abbaabba cdecde. The Petrarchian sonnet has two
divisions: the first is of eight lines (the
octave), and the second is of six lines (the
sestet). The English, or Shakespearean sonnet is
divided into three quatrains (four-line
groupings) and a final couplet. The rhyme scheme
is abab cdcd efef gg. The meter is iambic
pentameter. The change of rhyme in the English
sonnet is coincidental with a change of theme in
the poem. The structure of the English sonnet
explores variations on a theme in the first
three quatrains and concludes with an
epigrammatic couplet. In Shakespeare's Sonnet
29, the subject shifts towards a conclusion in
the third quatrain and ends with the epigram:
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
In sonnet sequences, or cycles, a series of sonnets are linked by a common theme. Though sonnets began as love poetry and were introduced to England as such by Thomas Wyatt, the form was extended to other subjects and other structures by Donne, Milton and later writers such as Shelley, Keats, Dylan Thomas, and e. e. cummings.
Subplot
A
smaller story embedded in the main story you are
reading. Often subplots have important
likenesses to the main Plot, which will help you
understand the story better as a whole; in other
stories, subplots fill in what would otherwise
be logical gaps in the main plot.
Subtext
A term denoting what a character means by what (s)he says when there is a disparity between diction and intended meaning. In irony a character may say one thing and mean something entirely different. The real meaning of the speech is the subtext.
Symbolism
A
device in literature where an object represents
an idea. In Willaim Blake's The Lamb, the
speaker tells the lamb that the force that made
him or her is also called a lamb:
Little lamb, who made thee?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Little lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little lamb, I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a lamb.
The symbol of the lamb in the above lines corresponds to the symbolism of the lamb in Christianity wherein Christ is referred to as "The Lamb of God."
Synecdoche
A
figure of speech wherein a part of something
represents the whole thing. In this figure, the
head of a cow might substitute for the whole
cow. Therefore, a herd of fifty cows might be
referred to as "fifty head of cattle."
In Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ulysses,
Ulysses refers to his former companions as
"free hearts, free foreheads."
Theme
An
ingredient of a literary work which gives the
work unity. The theme provides an answer to the
question, "What is the work about?"
Each literary work carries its own theme(s). The
main theme of Robert Frost's Acquainted with
the Night is loneliness. Shakespeare's King
Lear contains many themes, among which are
blindness and madness. Unlike plot, which deals
with the action of a work, theme concerns itself
with a work's message or contains the general
idea of a work.
Tone
Tone expresses the author's attitude toward his or her subject. Since there are as many tones in literature as there are tones of voice in real relationships, the tone of a literary work may be one of anger or approval, pride or piety - the entire gamut of attitudes toward life's phenomena. Here is one literary example: The tone of John Steinbeck's short novel Cannery Row is nonjudgmental. Mr. Steinbeck never expresses disapproval of the antics of Mack and his band of bums. Rather, he treats them with unflagging kindness.Utopia
A type of fiction that describes an
ideal, imaginary world. The term comes
from Sir Thomas More's novel Utopia which
describes a perfect political state.
examples of Utopian fiction include Bacon's New
Atlantis and H.G. Well's A Modern Utopia.
A dystopia is the term applied
to unpleasant imaginary places such as the world
described in George Orwell's 1984.
Volta
The turn in thought-- from question
to answer, problem to solution-- that occurs at
the beginning of the sestet in the Italian
sonnet. The volta also occurs sometimes in
the Shakespearen sonnet between the twelfth and
the thirteenth lines. It is often marked
by "but," "yet," or
"and yet."
Zeugma
A term used to describe the
"yoking" together of an elevated and
an ordinary object. In The Rape of the Lock,
Alexander Pope uses zeugma to show flaws in the
main character Belinda's priorities when her
guardian sylphs wonder if she will:
"lose her heart, or necklace,
at a ball" (line 109).