GLOSSARY OF BASIC LITERARY TERMS
Allegory. A story or image in which a literal meaning carries a secondary, metaphorical meaning. In Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, for example, the Red Cross Knight is a heroic knight in the literal narrative, but also a figure representing Everyman in the Christian journey. In John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress the road on which the main character travels stands for the spiritual road towards salvation. Many works contain allegories or are allegorical in part, but not many are entirely allegorical.
Alliteration. The matching or repetition of consonants or the repeating of the same letter (or sound) at the beginning of words following each other immediately or at short intervals. Medieval poets often used alliteration instead of rhyme; in Beowulf there are three alliterations in every line. For example:
Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings, / Leader beloved, and long he ruled / In fame with all folk since his father had gone . . .
Modern poets also avail themselves of alliteration, especially as a substitute for rhyme. Edwin Markham's “Lincoln, the Man of the People” is in unrhymed blank verse, but there are many lines as alliterative as:
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down / To make a man to meet the mortal need / A man to match the mountains and the sea / The friendly welcome of the wayside well
Like rhyme, alliteration is a great help to memory. It is the alliteration which makes us remember such phrases as: “sink or swim,” “do or die,” “fuss and feathers,” “the more the merrier,” “watchful waiting,” “poor but proud,” “green as grass,” “live and learn,” “money makes the mare go.”
Anaphora. The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs.
Apostrophe. A figure of speech wherein the speaker speaks directly to an absent person, an abstract concept, or an important object. In these lines from John Donne's poem “The Sun Rising,” the poet scolds the sun for interrupting his nighttime activities:
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Blank Verse. A poem written in unrhymed 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!
Blank verse is suitable for poetic drama and other long narrative or reflective poems because of its closeness to natural speech rhythms, its lack of rhyme, and its rhythmic flexibility. See Iamb and Foot and Metre for more information.
Burlesque. A work designed to ridicule a style, literary form, or subject matter either by treating the exalted in a trivial way or by discussing the trivial in exalted terms (that is, with mock dignity). Burlesque concentrates on derisive imitation, usually in exaggerated terms. Literary genres (like the tragic drama) can be burlesqued, as can styles of sculpture, philosophical movements, schools of art and so forth.
Caesura. A pause within a line of poetry which may or may not affect the metrical count. When the verse is analysed for metre, a caesura is usually indicated by the following symbol (//). Here's an example by Alexander Pope:
Know then thyself, // presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind // is Man
Conceit. An elaborate, usually intellectually ingenious poetic comparison or image, such as an analogy or metaphor in which, say, a beloved is compared to a ship, planet, etc. The comparison may be brief or extended. “Conceit” is an old word for “concept”. English metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century were especially fond of conceits.
Elegy. A formal poem written on the occasion of someone's death or a general contemplation of the tragic aspects of existence, its futility and mortality.
Enjambement. The running over of a sentence or thought into the next couplet or line without a pause at the end of the line; a run-on line. Opposite of end-stopped lines. For example, the first two lines here are enjambed:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove. . . .— William Shakespeare
Epic. An extended narrative poem recounting actions, travels, adventures, and heroic episodes and written in a high style. It may be written in hexameter verse, especially dactylic hexameter, and it may have twelve or twenty four books. The general characteristics of the classical epic include:
The main character or protagonist is heroically larger than life, often the source and subject of legend or a national hero.
The deeds of the hero are presented without favouritism, revealing his failings as well as his virtues.
The action, often in battle, presents the super-human strength of the heroes as they engage in acts of heroism and courage.
The setting covers several nations, the whole world, or even the universe.
The episodes, even though they may be fictional, provide an explanation for some of the circumstances or events in the history of a nation or people.
The gods and lesser divinities play an active role in the outcome of actions.
All of the various adventures form an organic whole, where each event relates in some way to the central theme.
Typical in epics is a set of stylistic conventions (also called the “epic machinery”). Among them are the following:
The poem begins with a statement of the theme, as in Virgil's Aeneid: “Arms and the man I sing”.
It may start with an invocation to the muse or other deity, as in Homer's Iliad: “Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles”.
The story begins in medias res (in the middle of things).
Previous episodes in the story are later recounted.
Histories and descriptions of significant items (who made a sword or shield, how it was decorated, who owned it from generation to generation) feature prominently.
Catalogues (of participants on each side, ships, sacrifices) fill the narative.
Long, formal speeches are made by important characters.
Epic similes occur (long comparisons where the image becomes an object of art in its own right as well as serving to clarify the subject).
Epithets are frequently used (“Aeneas the true”; “rosy-fingered Dawn”; “tall-masted ship”).
Patronymics appear (calling a son by the father's name): “Anchises' son”.
A journey to the underworld is a popular motif.
The number three has an important function (attempts are made three times, etc.).
Examples: Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey,Virgil, The Aeneid, Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, Milton, Paradise Lost.
Epistolary novel. A novel consisting of letters written by a character or several characters. The form allows for the use of multiple points of view in the story and the ability to dispense with an omniscient narrator. Examples: Samuel Richardson, Pamela, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
Epithet. In literature, a word or phrase preceding or following a name which serves to describe the character. Consider the following from Book 1 of Homer's “The Illiad”:
Zeus-loved Achilles, you bid me explain
The wrath of far-smiting Apollo.
Euphemism. The substitution of a mild or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one, as in the use of “pass away” instead of “die.” The basic psychology of euphemistic language is the desire to put something bad or embarrassing in a positive (or at least neutral light). Thus many terms referring to death, sex, crime, and excremental functions are euphemisms. Since the euphemism is often chosen to disguise something horrifying, it can be exploited by the satirist through the use of irony and exaggeration.
Euphuism. A highly ornate style of writing popularized by John Lyly's Euphues, characterized by balanced sentence construction, rhetorical tropes, and multiplied similes and allusions.
Fabliau. A short narrative tale in verse, comic and obscene. Fabliaux originated in France in the twelfth century. They often satirized women and priests. The plot was organized around one or two practical jokes, often brutal and scatological. The genre typified the plebeian culture of medieval European towns. The fabliaux were essentially anti-romantic, but this does not mean that they were very realistic. The plots are often as wildly improbable as those of the romances. Most of the situations in which husbands are victimized or thieves and adulterers punished could not by any stretch of the imagination be conceived as occurring in real life. Chaucer's Miller's Tale and Reeve's Tale exemplify the fabliau in English literature.
Figurative Language. In literature, a way of saying something not literally but using figures of speech, usually metaphors. Take, for example, this line by Robert Burns, “My love is like a red, red rose.” Burns does not really mean that he has fallen in love with a red, aromatic, 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, apostrophe, oxymoron, and hyperbole are other figures of speech.
Flashback. A reference to an event which took place before 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 in Spain.
Foot. The basic unit of metre consisting of a group of two or three syllables. Scanning or scansion is the process of determining the prevailing foot in a line of poetry, of determining the types and sequence of different feet.
Types of feet: / = a stressed syllable, U = unstressed
Iamb: U / Trochee: / U
Anapest: U U / Dactyl: / U U
Spondee: / / Pyrrhic: U U
See also versification, below.
Free verse. Verse that has neither regular rhyme nor regular metre. Contemporary poetry is full of such verse. Here is the opening of Ted Hughes' “The River in March”:
Now the river is rich, but her voice is low.
It is her Mighty Majesty the sea
Travelling among the villages incognito.
Gothic novel. A novel in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown terror pervades the action. The setting is often a dark, mysterious castle, where ghosts and sinister humans roam menacingly. Horace Walpole invented the genre with his Castle of Otranto. Gothic elements include these:
An ancient prophecy, especially mysterious, obscure, or hard to understand.
Mystery and suspense
High emotion, sentimentalism, but also pronounced anger, surprise, and especially terror
Supernatural events (e.g. a giant, a sighing portrait, ghosts or their apparent presence, a skeleton)
Omens, warnings, dream visions
Fainting, frightened, screaming women
Women threatened by a powerful, impetuous male
The setting in a castle, especially with secret passages
The atmosphere of gloom and horror (wind, rain, doors grating on rusty hinges, howls in the distance, distant sighs, footsteps approaching, lights in abandoned rooms, gusts of wind blowing out lights or blowing suddenly, characters trapped in rooms or imprisoned)
Special vocabulary (use of words indicating fear, mystery, etc.: apparition, devil, ghost, haunted, terror, fright).
Examples: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto; William Beckford, Vathek; Anne Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Bram Stoker, Dracula.
Heroic Couplet. Two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter. Most of Alexander Pope's verse is written in heroic couplets. In fact, it is the most favoured verse form of the eighteenth century. Example:
u / u / u / u / u /
`Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
u / u / u / u / u /
Appear in writing or in judging ill. . . . — Alexander Pope
Note that in the second line “or” should be a stressed syllable if the metre were perfectly iambic. Iambic = a two-syllable foot of one unstressed and one stressed syllable, as in the word “begin.” Pentameter = a line of five feet. Thus, iambic pentameter has ten syllables, that is five feet of two-syllable iambs. See Foot and Versification.
Hyperbole. A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs.
Example: I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. He's as big as a house.
Consider, too, 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. See Understatement to study the opposite of hyperbole.
Image is language that evokes one or all of the five senses: seeing, hearing, taste, smell and touch.
Irony is an implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. Three kinds of irony exist:
1. verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something else.
2. dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know.
3. irony of situation is a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results.
Kenning. A metaphoric compound word or phrase used as a synonym for a common noun and ususally denoting the function of that noun. Kennings are characteristic of Old English poetry. E.g. “Ring-bestower” - king, “whale road” - sea.
Litotes. A figure of speech which contains an understatement for emphasis, and is therefore the opposite of hyperbole. An affirmation is made indirectly by denying its opposite: e.g. not averse to a drink (liking a drink), not bad (very good).
Metaphor. A comparison of two unlike things using the verb “to be” and not using “like” or “as” as in a simile.
All poetry is founded on two chief means of comparing things: simile and metaphor. We heighten our ordinary speech by the continual use of such comparisons as “to fit like a glove,” “to fight like mad,” “fresh as a daisy,” “tough as leather,” “pretty as a picture.” These are all recognizable similes; they use the words “like” or “as.”
A metaphor is another kind of comparison. It is actually a condensed simile, for it omits “as” or “like.” A metaphor establishes a relationship at once; it leaves more to the imagination. It is a shortcut to the meaning; it sets two unlike things side by side and makes us see the likeness between them. When Robert Burns wrote “My love is like a red, red rose” he used a simile. When Robert Herrick wrote “You are a tulip” he used a metaphor. Because of comparison and association, familiar objects become strange and glamorous. It might be said that a poet is a man who sees resemblances in all things.
Metaphysical poetry. The term “metaphysical” was applied to a style of 17th-century poetry first by John Dryden and later by Dr. Samuel Johnson because of the highly intellectual and often abstruse imagery involved. Chief among the metaphysical poets are John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughan. While their poetry is widely varied (the metaphysicals are not a thematic or even a structural school), there are some common characteristics:
1. Argumentative structure. The poem often engages in a debate or persuasive presentation; the poem is an intellectual exercise as well as or instead of an emotional effusion.
2. Dramatic and colloquial mode of utterance. The poem often describes a dramatic event rather than being a reverie, a thought, or contemplation. The vocabulary is simple and direct. The verse is occasionally rough, like speech, rather than written in perfect metre, resulting in a dominance of thought over form.
3. Acute realism. The poem often reveals a psychological analysis; images advance the argument rather than being ornamental. There is a learned style of thinking and writing; the poetry is often highly intellectual.
4. Metaphysical wit. The poem contains unexpected, even striking or shocking analogies, offering elaborate parallels between apparently dissimilar things. The analogies are drawn from widely varied fields of knowledge, not limited to traditional sources in nature or art. Analogies from science, mechanics, housekeeping, business, philosophy, astronomy, etc. are common. These “conceits” reveal a play of intellect, often resulting in puns, paradoxes, and humorous comparisons. Unlike other poetry where the metaphors usually remain in the background, here the metaphors sometimes take over the poem and control it.
Metaphysical poetry represents a revolt against the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry and especially the typical Petrarchan conceits (like rosy cheeks, eyes like stars, etc.).
Metre. A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line or lines of poetry. See Foot and Versification.
Metonymy is a figure of speech substituting a word for another word closely associated with it, e.g. “the bottle” for “alcohol.” In the British press “Crown” is often substituted for “monarchy.”
Mock Epic. Treating a frivolous or minor subject seriously, especially by using the machinery and devices of the epic (invocations, descriptions of armour, battles, extended similes, etc.). Examples: Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Rape of the Lock .
Onomatopoeia. A Greek word meaning “name-making.” A literary device in which the sound of a word echoes the sound it represents. The sounds can literally make the meaning in such words as “buzz,” “crash,” “whirr,” “clang” “hiss,” “purr,” “squeak,” “mumble,” “hush,” “boom.” Poe lets us hear the different kinds of sounds made by different types of bells in his famous poem “The Bells.” His choice of the right word gives us the right sound when he speaks of “tinkling” sleigh bells; “clanging” fire bells; mellow “chiming” wedding bells; “tolling,” “moaning,” and “groaning” funeral bells.
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!
Other examples: hot ice, cold fire, wise fool, sad joy, military intelligence, eloquent silence,
Paradox reveals a kind of truth which at first seems contradictory.
Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage. — Richard Lovelace
Periphrasis. A rhetorical device that substitutes many words for a single word or proper name. Also known as circumlocution. Many or very long words are used where a few or simple words will do. For example: Her olfactory system was suffering from a temporary inconvenience (i.e. Her nose was blocked).
Personification. A figure of speech in which something nonhuman, e.g. an animal or an object, is given human characteristics: a smiling tiger, a jovial sun.
In John Keats' “To Autumn,” the season is personified as “sitting careless on a granary floor” and “drowsed with the fume of poppies”.
Rhyme. The similarity between syllable sounds at the end of two or more lines. Some kinds of rhyme include:
Couplet: a pair of lines rhyming consecutively.
Eye rhyme: words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough, though, hiccough. Or: love, move, prove. Or: daughter, laughter.)
Feminine rhyme: two syllable rhyme consisting of a stressed syllable followed by unstressed.
Masculine rhyme: similarity between terminally stressed syllables.
In end rhyme, the rhyme is at the end of the line.
When one of the rhyming words occurs in a place in the line other than at the end, it is called internal rhyme.
Half rhyme occurs when the final consonants rhyme, but the vowel sounds do not (chill-Tulle; Day-Eternity).
Rhythm. Recurrences of stressed and unstressed syllables at equal intervals, similar to metre. However, although two lines may be of the same metre, the rhythms of the lines may be different. For example, if one were to read the last two lines of Robert Frost's, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” with equal speed, the lines would be the same in metre and rhythm. However, if one were to read the last line more slowly (as it should be read), the metre would be the same but the rhythm different. This is because while the metre of a line is identified by the pattern within each foot, the rhythm is accounted for by larger units than individual feet.
Satire. A literary mode based on criticism of people and society through ridicule. The satirist aims to reduce the practices attacked by laughing scornfully at them - and being witty enough to allow the reader to laugh, too. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present. The satirist may insert serious statements of value or desired behaviour, but most often he relies on an implicit moral code, understood by his audience and paid lip service by them. The satirist's goal is to point out the hypocrisy of his target in the hope that either the target or the audience will return to a real following of the code. Thus, satire is inescapably moral even when no explicit values are promoted in the work, for the satirist works within the framework of a widely spread value system. Many of the techniques of satire are devices of comparison, to show the similarity or contrast between two things. A list of incongruous items, an oxymoron, metaphors, and so forth are examples.
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. See Metaphor for examples.
An epic simile or a Homeric simile is an extended, elaborated, ornate simile developed in a lengthy descriptive passage.
Soliloquy. In drama, the moment when a character is alone and speaks his or her thoughts aloud. In the line “To be, or not to be, that is the question,” which begins the famous soliloquy from Act 3, scene 1 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet questions whether or not life is worth living and speaks of the reasons why he does not end his life.
Sonnet. A poem of fourteen lines, mostly in iambic pentameter. Two varieties are usually distinguished: Italian (or Petrarchan) and English (or Shakespearian). The sonnet was first practised in early Renaissance Italy, notably by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). The Italian sonnet consists of an octave a sestet rhyming abbaabba cdecde or abbaabba cdcdcd. The English sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Naturally, poets experimented with the rhyme pattern, producing their own unique versions; for instance, Edmund Spenser used this pattern: abab bcbc cdcd ee. All English sonnets, however, rely on the rhymed couplet in the closure.
Symbol. Something that stands for something else, usually by association, esp. a material object used to represent something abstract; an object, person, idea, etc., used in a literary work, film, etc., to stand for or suggest something else with which it is associated either explicitly or in some more subtle way. A rose, a voyage or an animal may have symbolic or allegorical meanings. The difference is that a symbol can usually be interpreted in a number of ways, while an allegory has one sense which depends on convention.
Synecdoche. A figure of speech wherein a part of something represents the whole thing. For instance “hands” may refer to labourers or sailors, as in the command: “All hands on deck!” In Alfred Lord Tennyson's “Ulysses” Ulysses calls his former companions “free hearts”. Synecdoche is usually seen as a kind of metonymy.
Understatement see Litotes.
Versification. Generally, the structural form of a verse as revealed by scansion. Identification of verse structure includes the name of the metrical type and the name designating the number of feet:
Monometer: 1 foot
Dimeter: 2 feet
Trimeter: 3 feet
Tetrameter: 4 feet
Pentameter: 5 feet
Hexameter: 6 feet
Heptameter: 7 feet
Octameter: 8 feet
Nonameter: 9 feet
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