Four levels of meaning:
Literal - common meaning, the facts are seen in the same way they are written. The easiest way of understanding the text.
Typological - the analysis of symbolism.
Tropological - figurative style of writing; interpretation of the writing with stressing figurative nature of language.
Anagogical - interpretation of the word, passage or text that detects allusions to heaven or the afterlife
Genre - division of a particular form of art according to criteria specific to that form.
Epic - lengthy, revered narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.
Lyric - poetry that has the form and musical quality of a song, or a usually short poem that expresses personal feelings, which may or may not be set to music.
Convention - pattern, model to follow, principle, certain element that you expect, eg sonnet.
Decorum - connected with the cannons of property, a matter of behavior on the part of the poem and his poem. Action, character, thought, and language all need to be appropriate to each other.
Mimesis - a form of a drama in which actors tell a story by gestures (Plato, Aristotle works).
Verisimilitude - defined as the fact or quality of being verisimilar, the appearance of being true or real, likeness or resemblance of the truth, reality or a fact's possibility. The name comes from Latin `verum' meaning truth and similis meaning similar.
Verism - artistic preference of contemporary everyday subject matter instead of the heroic or legendary in art and literature; a form of realism. The word comes from Latin `verus' (true). Its primary exponents were the Sicilian novelists Luigi Capuana and Giovanni Verga.
Archetype - idealized model of a person, object or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned or emulated. Basic model from which copies are made, therefore a prototype.
Exemplum - used in srmon. Short story which makes message more obvious, with moral. A moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point.
Parable - brief story, in prose or verse, which illustrates a moral or religious lesson. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors while parables generally are stories featuring human actors or agents.
Fable - brief story, in prose or verse, which features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson, which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.
Palimpsest - writing material, such as a scroll or a page that has been used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased or partly erased. Cheaper to erase and use again than make another one.
Imagery - used to refer to descriptive language that evokes sensory experience. Such images can be created by using figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, personification and assonance. Imagery can also involve the use of relatable action words or onomatopoeias that trigger images in a reader's mind. Imagery is not limited to visual imagery; it also includes auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic sensation (movement).
Symbol - objects, pictures or other concrete representations of ideas, concepts, or other abstractions.
Emblem - pictorial image, abstract or representational, that epitomizes a concept - e.g., a moral truth, or an allegory - or that represents a person, such as a king or saint. Examples include the blasted trees and brown-grass in “The Hollow of the Three Hills” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Myth - sacred story usually concerning the origins of the world or how the world and the creatures in it came to be in their present form. The active beings in myths are generally gods and heroes. Myths are often said to take place before recorded history begins. A myth is a sacred narrative in the sense that it contributes to systems of thoughts and values, and that people attach religious or spiritual significance to it.
Mythopoeia - narrative genre in modern literature and film where a fictional mythology was created by the author or screenwriter. The word mythopoeia and description was coined and developed by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1930s. The authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction. Mythopoeia is also the act of making (creating) such mythologies.
Solecism - grammatical mistake or absurdity. What is considered a solecism in one modality if a language may be acceptable usage in another. For example: “The world keeps turning for you and I” is acceptable as a song lyric but is considered a solecism in standard English.
Allusion - figure of speech referring to a person, place, event, literary work of art. Play on words. It is left to the reader or hearer to make the connection. In a freer informal definition allusion is a passing or casual reference; an incidental mention of something, either directly or by implication. Allusion is distinguished from such devices as direct quote and imitation or parody.
Diction - oratorical style, literally, the act of speaking. Choice of words, especially with regard to correctness, clearness or effectiveness. Any of the four generally accepted levels of diction - formal, informal, colloquial, or slang - may be correct in a particular context, but incorrect in another when mixed unintentionally.
Motif - subject of a painting, reason, cause. A usually recurring salient thematic element, especially a dominant idea or central theme. Recurring structures, contrasts or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's major themes. The narrative motif is the vehicle of means by which the narrative theme is conveyed.
Pun - humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest different meanings or applications, or a play on words. Common as jokes and in riddles, puns may be used seriously, as in John Donne's “A Hymn to God the Father”
Comedy - dramatic work that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone and that usually contains a happy resolution of the thematic conflict. The subject of comedy is often the weakness of human ambition of the pretences of characters who think they are better than others.
Four humors - theory of the makeup and workings of the human body adopted by ancient Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers. Essentially, it holds that the human body is filled with four basic substances, called humors, which are held in balance when a person is healthy. All diseases and disabilities result from an excess or deficit in one of these four humors (four elements of earth, fire, water and air) were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood respectively.
Comedy of humors - a form of drama which became fashionable at the very end of the 16th cent., so called because it presented humorous characters whose actions were ruled by a characteristic passion. Focuses on a character or range of characters, each of whom has one overriding trait or `humor' that dominates their personality and conduct.
Satire - literary technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. Art of ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it. The object of satire is usually some human frailty; people, institutions, ideas, and things are all fair game for satirists.
Farce - comedy written for the state or film which aims to entertain the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humor of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include sexual innuendo and word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases, culminating in an ending which often involves an elaborate chase scene. Farce is also characterized by physical humor, the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense, and broadly stylized performances.
Burlesque - refers to theatrical entertainment of broad and parodic humor, which usually consists of comic skits (and sometimes a striptease). Burlesque means `in an upside down style'. Like it cousin comedia dell'arte, burlesque turns social norms head over heels. Burlesque is a style of live entertainment that encompasses pastiche, parody and wit.
Travesty - form of musical parody in which a piece is rearranged into a style very different from that for which it was originally known. This usually takes the form of a serious work (e.g. opera) being presented in a more populist style such as a ragtime.
Comedy of manners - form of musical parody satirizing the manners of a social class, for example an old person pretending to be young. The plot of the comedy, often concerned with an illicit love affair or some other scandal, is generally less important than its witty and often bawdy dialogue.
Tragicomedy - experimental literary work (a play or prose piece of fiction) containing elements common to both comedies and tragedies. The genre is marked by characters of both high and low degree, even though classical drama required upper-class characters for tragedy and lower-class characters for comedy. Tragicomedies were of some interest in the Renaissance, but some modern dramas might be considered examples as well.
Melodrama - refers to theatre in which music is used to increase the spectator's emotional response or to suggest character types. In a more neutral and technical sense of the term is a play, film or other work in which plot and action are emphasized in comparison to the more character-driven emphasis within drama.
Slapstick - type of comedy involving exaggerated physical violence. The style is common to those genres of entertainment in which the audience is supposed to understand the very hyperbolic nature of such violence to exceed the boundaries of common sense and thus license non-cruel laughter.
Theatre of the Absurd - style of play for the theatre that was developed in the 1950s by writers such as Beckett, whose work expresses the belief that there's no God, and that human existence has no meaning or purpose. These plays are very different from traditional theatre. The characters do not communicate effectively with each other and often their words don't make sense.
Interlude - the time between, a kind of break, pause or a short play or, in general, any representation between parts of larger stage performances.
Pageant - a splendid public show or ceremony, usually out of doors, in which there is a procession of people in rich dress or in which historical scenes are acted. But it can also be a splendid show that looks grand but has no meaning or power.
Mise-en-scene - `to put on stage'; scenery, furniture, surroundings, background.
Tragedy - serious play that ends sadly, especially with the main character's death, and is often intended to teach a moral lesson. Connected with Dionisos, sense of doom, the main character is doomed whether he/she does is wrong, we need a tragic hero.
Catharsis - in drama refers to a sudden emotional climax that evokes overhelming feelings of great sorrow, pity, laughter or any other extreme change in emotion, resulting in restoration, renewal and revitalization in members of the audience.
Vicarious participation - it is when the audience experiences and participates in the tragedy indirectly and emotionally. The audience can identify with the hero and experience indirectly the emotions displayed on the scene. It heads to catharsis.
Tragic hero - is a literary character who makes errors in judgment, usually in his or her actions, that inevitably leads to his or her own demise (death). He doesn't fall because he or she is bad; he/she makes a mistake which leads to tragic end. There is a kind of supernatural force which tempts him/her. A figure of tragic hero is extraordinary; a tragic hero is very often an individualist who can't find himself in this world.
Revenge tragedy - Renaissance genre of drama in which the plot revolves around the hero's attempt to avenge a previous wrong by killing the perpetrator of the deed, commonly with a great deal of bloodshed and incidental violence. A famous example is Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy.
Hamartia - term developed by Aristotle in his work Poetics. The term can simply be seen as character's flaw or error. The word hamartia is rooted in the motion of missing the mark and covers a broad spectrum that includes accident or mistake, as well as wrongdoing, error or sin.
Hubris - term meaning excessive pride, self-confidence or arrogance, often resulting in fatal retribution. In Ancient Greece, `hubris' referred to actions taken in order to shame and humiliate the victim, thereby making one seem superior. It was most evident when looking at those in charge and how they used hubris when making decisions in their justice system and personal lives.
Tragic flaw - the character defect that causes the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy; hamartia.
Disintegrated soul - a soul which has lost its cohesion and unity; reduced to particles, fragments, or parts; broken up or destroyed the cohesion of a soul.
Comic relief - inclusion of a humorous character or scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension.
Deux ex machine - literally `god out of machine' is an improbable contrivance in a story. The phrase describes an artificial, or improbable, character, device or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (such as an angel suddenly appearing to solve problems). The term Is a negative one, and it often implies a lack of skill on the part of the writer.
Prologue - prefatory piece of writing usually composed to introduce a drama, The Greek prologos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance, embracing any kind of preface. The prologue is usually in the beginning of a book.
Epilogue - piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work. The writer or the person may deliver a speech speaking directly to the reader, hen bringing the piece to a close, or the narration may continue normally to closing scene. Epilogues are short end chapters that reveal the fates of the characters.
Complication - a person who doesn't fit in with the main scheme of things; process of getting worse.
Crisis - decisive moment in the course of the action of a play or other work of fiction.
Resolution - point in a play or other work of literature at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out.
Aside - literary device in that an actor speaks to the audience; he/she is not heard by the other characters. It is similar to a monologue and soliloquy.
Anti-hero - protagonist who is lacking the traditional heroic attributes and qualities, and instead possesses character traits that are antithetical to heroism.
Villain - character in a story or play who opposes the hero. A villain is also known as an antagonist. “Evil” character in a story. The villain usually is the bad guy, the character who fights against a hero.
Versification - making of verse, the term is often used as another name for prosody. This refers to the technical aspect of making poems as opposed to purely theoretical and aesthetic poetic concerns.
Rhythm - (Greek: flowing) in verse or prose, the movement or sense of movement communicated by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables and by the duration of the syllables. In verse the rhythm depends on the metrical pattern. In verse the rhythm is regular; in prose it may or may not be regular.
Meter - pattern of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress. Composition written in meter are said to be in verse. There are many possible patterns of verse.
Doggerel - roughs, badly made verse, monotonous in rhythm and clumsy.
Foot - basic unit of meter consisting of a set number of strong stresses and light stresses.
Iambic - two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable following the short or unstressed syllable.
Trochaic - two syllables, with the short or unstressed syllable following the long or stressed syllable.
Anapestic - three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long and stressed.
Dactylic - three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed.
Dimeter - line consisting of two metrical feet or two dipodies.
Trimeter - line of three feet (as in modern English verse) or pairs of feet (as in classical iambic verse). A line of pure iambic trimester is scanned U unstressed, -stressed -U-U-U-U-
Tetrameter - a line of four metrical units, four feet (as in modern English verse).
Hexameter - line of six metrical feet, usually dactyls. The oldest known from Greek poetry and is the preeminent meter of narrative and didactic poetry in Greek and Latin, in which its position is comparable to that of iambic pentameter in English versification.
Masculine rhyme - rhyme on a single stressed syllable at the end of a line of poetry. Also called a single rhyme. Often used by John Donne.
Feminine rhyme - matches two or more syllables, usually at the end of respective lines. Often the final syllable is unstressed. The last word has the stress on on the initial syllable, as in William Shakespeare's Sonnets.
Perfect rhyme - also called: full rhyme, exact rhyme and true rhyme, is when the latter part of the word or phrase is identical sounding to another.
Slant rhyme - sometimes called half, sprung or near rhyme is consonance on the final consonants of the words involved. Widely used in Irish, Scottish, welsh and Icelandic verse.
Internal rhyme - occurs in the middle of a line
Eye rhyme - also called visual rhyme and sight rhyme, is a similarity in spelling between words that are pronounced differently and hence, not an auditory rhyme.
Couplet - pair of lines of verse. It consists of two lines that usually rhyme and have the same meter.
Triplet - three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or complete poem. A three line stanza. Haiku is an example of an unrhymed triplet poem.
Quatrain - poem or a stanza within a poem, that consist always of four lines. It is the most common of all stanza forms in European poetry. The rhyming patterns include aabb, abab, abba, abcb.
Blank verse - type of poetry, distinguished by having regular meter, but no rhyme. In English the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter.
Free verse - term describing various styles in poetry that are written without using strict meter or rhyme, but that still are recognizable as poetry by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers will perceive to be part of a coherent whole.
Verse paragraphs - stanzas with no regular number of lines or groups of lines that make up units of sense. They are usually separated by blank lines. Frequently used in blank verse and in free verse.
Alliteration - repetition of consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables. In the most common form of alliteration, the initial sounds are the same, thus the alternate name head rhyme.
Assonance -repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse.
Consonance - stylistic device often used in poetry characterized by repetition of two or more consonants using different vowels. It repeats the consonant sounds but not vowel sounds.
Onomatopoeia - word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as `click', `bunk', `clang', `buzz', or animal noises such as `oink', `slurp', or `meow'.
Figure of speech - word or phrase that departs from straightforward, literal language. Figures of speech are often used and crafted for emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity.
Trope -1. A rhetorical device or figure of speech involving shifts in the meaning of word; 2. A short dialogue inserted into the church mass during the early Middle Ages as a sort of mini-drama.
Anti-climax - something which would appear to be difficult to solve in a plot is solved through something trivial. For example, destroying a heavily guarded facility would require advanced technology, teamwork and weaponry for a climax, but in an anti-climax it may just consist of pushing a red button which says “Emergency Self Destruct”. The effect of anti-climax may be comic.
Antithesis - the direct opposite, contrast. Hell is the antithesis of Heaven; disorder is the antithesis of order.
Apostrophe - figure of speech in which an address is made to an absent or deceased person or a personified thing rhetorically, as in William Cowper's “Verses Supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk”.
Climax - part of a story of a play at which crisis is reached and resolution achieved. Point of the highest tension in the writing. Turning point.
Conceit - figure of speech characterized by unusual, cleverly expressed, but not very serious comparison in poetry.
Euphemism - Greek “fair speech”; substitution of a mild and pleasant expression for a harsh and blunt one, such as to pass away = to die.
Exclamation - figure of speech in which words expressing a sudden, strong feeling used to emphasize something, a main point turn in action.
Hyperbole - figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, and is not meant to be taken literally. A way of describing something in order to make it sound bigger/smaller than it really is. (These books weight a ton. I could sleep for a year.).
Irony - use of words which are clearly opposite to one's meaning, usually either in order to be amusing or to show annoyance. Irony can be funny, but it does not have to be.
Litotes - figure of speech which contains an understatement for emphasis and is therefore the opposite of hyperbole. Often used in everyday speech with ironic, laconic intentions. (not bad = very good; that was no big deal = that was nothing)
Metaphor - describing something as something else with similar qualities (My friend, the swift mule. Friend is compared to a mule to indicate that the speaker sees traits from that animal in his friend.
Metonymy - (Greek: name change) a figure of speech in which the name of an attribute or a thing is substituted and the counterpart of stressed and unstressed syllables. In the hands of a gifted poet it can acquire rhythms and melodies of its own. It has no clear metrical pattern and no clear stress pattern (stress on certain words is subtle).
Synesthesia - combining different senses, for example mixing colors with numbers, mixing length with numbers (1980 is farther than 1981)
Oxymoron - figure of speech combining words which seem to contradict each other, such as `cruel kindnesses'.
Paradox - apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or it can be, seemingly opposite, an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth. Paradox of water and diamonds - we need water to live, but it's cheap, and we don't need diamonds to live, but they are expensive.
Personification - figure of speech that gives an inanimate object or abstract idea human traits and qualities, such as emotions, desires, sensations, physical gestures and speech (The flowers were suffering from intense heat. The web browser really loves to crash)
Rhetorical question - figure of speech in the form of a question posed for rhetorical effect rather than to receive an answer, through statement. Rhetorical questions encourage the listener to reflect on what the implied answer to the question must be. (Does Jack Palmer ever learn?).
Simile - a figure of speech used to make a comparison between two things, usually with the words “like”, “than”, or “as”. (He ate like an animal. His mind is like a samurai's sword).
Synecdoche - (Greek: taking up together) a figure of speech in which the part stands for the whole and thus something else is understood within the thing mentioned, for example: Poland won the game.
Sonnet -means little song form Italian. By the 13th century it had come to signify a poem of 14 lines following a strict rhyme scheme and logical structure. Traditionally English poets usually use iambic pentameter when writing sonnets. The convention associated with the sonnet has evolved over its history.
Lament -song or poem expressing grief, regret or mourning. Many of the oldest and most lasting poems in human history have been laments.
Dirge - a song of lament usually of a lyrical mood. The name derives from the beginning of the antiphon of the Office of the Dead: Dirge, Domine… (Direct, O Lord…). As a literary genre it comes from the Greek epicedium which was a mourning song sung over the dead and threnody sung in memory of the dead.
Ubi sunt - (Latin: Where are they?) The opening words of a number mediaeval poems, they are now used to classify a particular kind of poem that dwells on and laments the transitory nature of life and beauty. Sometimes the words open a poem or begin each stanza, or serve as a refrain. The motif is present in many elegies. (The Wanderer)
Elegy - (Greek: lament) - in classical literature was a poem which subjects were various: death, war, love. It was also used for epitaphs and commemorative verses and very often there was a mourning strain in them. Since the 16th century an elegy has come mean a poem of mourning for an individual, or a lament for some tragic event. Later the term came to be applied more and more to a serious meditative poem.
Ode - (Greek: song) a lyric poem whose main features are an elaborate stanza structure; a marked formality and stateliness in tone and style (which makes it ceremonious), and lofty sentiments and thoughts.
Haiku - a Japanese verse form consisting of 17 syllables in 3 lines of five, seven and five syllables respectively. It expresses a single idea, image or feeling. Usually there is a central image or two contrasting images. The meaning can be very unclear. It is connected with mysticism, evocative.
Limerick - a type of light verse and a particularly popular fixed form in English. It usually consists of five predominantly anapaestic lines rhyming AABBA. The first, second and fifth lines are trimesters and the third and fourth are dimeters. It is nonsense, comic, children poetry.
Paean - any song of praise, joy, or triumph. A hymn of invocation or thanksgiving to Apollo or some other ancient Greek deity.
Ballad - A narrative poem, often of folk origin and intended to be sung, consisting of simple stanzas and usually having a refrain. The music for such a poem.
Objective collative - correlation: relating two things. It is hard to express something directly in literature that is why there must be something else (metaphor) that will help to express it. Objective: every reader should see the author's intentions clearly. T. S. Elliot: the only way of expressing emotions in the form of art is by finding an objective collative - a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion. A successful artistic creation requires an exquisite balance between, and coalescence of, form and matter.
Poetic licence - the liberty allowed to the poet to wrest the language according to his needs, in the use of figurative speech, archaism, rhyme, strange syntax, etc. But this liberty depends on the end justifying means. The poet can break linguistic rules.
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