ACCENT the emphasis placed upon a syllable in pronunciation. The term is often used as a synonym for stress, although some theorists prefer to use ‘stress’ only for metrical accent. There are 3 kinds of accents:etymological accent (or ‘word accent’) , rhetorical accent (or ‘sense accent’) , metrical accent (or stress).
ACT - a major division in the action of a play, comprising one or more scenes. A break between acts often coincides with a point at which the plot jumps ahead in time.
AESTHECISM - the doctrine or disposition that regards beauty as an end in itself, and attempts to preserve the arts from subordination to moral,Late 19th-century European arts movement that centred on the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone - writings of Oscar Wilde
ALLIENATION EFFECT - Idea central to the dramatic theory of the German dramatist-director Bertolt Brecht. It involves the use of techniques designed to distance the audience from the action of the play and to provoke the audience’s awareness that it is watching a performanceExamples of such techniques include explanatory captions or illustrations projected on a screen; actors disengaging themselves from the scene to summarize, lecture, or sing songs; and stage designs that, by exposing the lights and ropes, keep the spectators aware of being in a theater. EG – Behan – The Hostage
Alliteration - Repetition of consonant sounds in two or more neighbouring words or syllables. In the most common form of alliteration, the initial sounds are the same. As a poetic device, alliteration is often discussed with assonance and consonance. Alliteration is found in many common phrases, such as “pretty as a picture” and “dead as a doornail.”
Allusion - Figure of speech referring to a person, place, event, literary work, or 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. Most are based on the assumption that there is a body of knowledge that is shared by the author and the reader and that therefore the reader will understand the author’s referent. Allusions to biblical figures and figures from classical mythology are common in Western literature. WB.Yeats – The Statues
AMBIGUITY - Use of words that allow alternative interpretations; often functions to increase the richness of the original statement ;openness to different interpretations; or an instance in which some use of language may be understood in diverse ways. EG William Empson, in Seven Types of Ambiguity
ANACHRONISM - Neglect or falsification, intentional or not, of chronological relation; e.g., a clock in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Anti-climax - A figure of speech that consists of the usually sudden transition in discourse from a significant idea to a trivial or ludicrous idea. 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; "Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends." Woody Allen
Anti-hero - Protagonist who is lacking the traditional heroic attributes and qualities, and instead possesses character traits that are antithetical to heroism. Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote
Antithesis – The direct opposite, contrast, sounds like a paradox. Hell is the antithesis of Heaven; disorder is the antithesis of order - phrase “they promised freedom and provided slavery.”


Apostrophe – Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character. Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again. - The sound of silence – Simon&Garfunkel
Archetype - Basic model from which copies are made, therefore a prototype. In general terms, the abstract idea of a class of things which presents the most typical and essential characteristics shared by the class - rebel, wise grandparent, generous thief, and prostitute with a heart of gold. module of behaviour, statement or symbol established universally in the subconsciousness; is often used in myths, legends etc. The father: Stern, powerful, controlling The mother: Feeding, nurturing, soothing
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. An actor’s speech heard by the audience but supposedly not by other characters EG William Shakespeare, Pericles. Act II, scene five)
Assonance - Also called vowel rhyme - “quite like.” Repetition of stressed vowel sounds within words with different end consonants, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighbouring words. e.g The seargant asked him to bomb the lawn with hotpots.
BATHOS- The unsuccessful, and therefore ludicrous, attempt to portray pathos in art, i.e., to evoke pity, sympathy, or sorrow; EG Dryden - Annus MiraUlis
BEAST EPIC- A long verse narrative with climactic epic construction comprising beast tales, or stories of animals represented as acting with human feelings and motives; e.g. the basis of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
BELLES LETTRES - The term is the literary counterpart of “beaux art”. It is applied to almost exclusively to literary arts, the aesthetic of literature and conceivably what may be described as “light” literature, but not fiction or poetry. Aldons Huxley “Music and Night”
BILDUNGSROMAN - Novel that deals with the formative years the main character. Dickens’‘Great Expectations”
Blank verse - Type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. The meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter. EG – Shakespeare - Macbeth
Burlesque – Very strong parody. It is often used as a generic term to describe any imitative work that derives humour from an incongruous contrast between style and subject; Tom Robbins – „The sky was the colour of Edgar Alan Poe's pajamas”
CANON - A sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works. Canonical novels, short stories and plays are studied in academic circles, and they are often considered representative of a period or genre. EG - Thirty-seven plays by William Shakespear
CARICATURE - Description of sb that exaggerates appearance or behaviour in a humorous or critical way EG Dickens – American Notes
Catharsis - purification of the spectators’ emotions (especially pity and fear) primarily through art; derived from the medical term catharsis (“purgation” or “cleansing”), After the build up culmination point, leads to therapeutic feeling of release.
CEASURA- pause within a poetic line that breaks the regularity of the metrical pattern; In Germanic and Old English alliterative poetry, the caesura was a formal device dividing each line centrally into two half lines. EG. Beowulf (it was used by bards to catch a breath during telling a story)


Climax - part of a story of a play at which crisis is reached and resolution achieved. Point of the highest tension in the writing. EG – Harry Potter
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. Shake speare's All's Well That Ends Well, As You Like It.
Comedy of humours - 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. EG William Wycherley The Country-Wife,
Comedy of manners - Main subject is the behaviour of men and women living under specific social codes - usage and the ability (or inability) of certain characters to meet social standards. Often the governing social standard is morally trivial. The plot of such a comedy, usually concerning an illicit love affair or similarly scandalous matter, is subordinate to the play’s brittle atmosphere, witty dialogue, and pungent commentary on human foibles. EG – Moliere – Le Misantrophe
Comic relief - A release of emotional or other tension resulting from a comic episode or item interposed in the midst of serious or tragic elements (as in drama); also, something that causes such relief. EG Shakespeare – Hamlet, Macbeth
Complication -An intensification of the confilct in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work. Frank O'Connor's story "Guests of the Nation"
Conceit – an unusual, cleverly expressed comparison, - “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” John Donne compares two lovers’ souls to a draftsman’s compass
CONFESSIONEL- Relating to, or being intimately autobiographical writing or fiction. EG Sylvia Plath – Ariel
Consonance the repetition of the final consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words. Do not go gentle into that good night – Dylan Thomas
Convention - A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of achorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. Literary conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ballad, sonnet, and play./ Every feature fits with the character and meaning e.g. WHITE cowbous symbolizes a good cowboy whereas BLACK symbolizes bad cowboy
|Couplet - Pair of lines of verse that usually rhyme and have the same meter. EG Shakespeare "How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,/If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!"
Crisis - Decisive moment in the course of the action of a play or other work of fiction.
CYCLE- A group or series of works (such as poems, plays, novels, or songs) that treat the same theme. The lord of The Rings – Tolkien
Decorum - A term describes the mutual appropriateness of genre, style, action, subject matter, and character.Consistency with the canons of propriety, a matter of behaviour on the part of the poet and his poem,. Action, character, thought and language all need to be appropriate to each other Characters, for example, should speak in a manner befitting their social position.
DENOUEMENT-The events following the climax of the plot. The final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a play or other work of literature. William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet comes just after the Romeo and Juliet take their own lives. When the families find their dead bodies
DETECTIVE STORY- Type of popular literature dealing with the step-by-step investigation and solution of a crime, usually murder. EA Poe – The murders in the Rue Morgue
Deus ex machina - The term is a negative one, and it often implies a lack of skill on the part of the writer. A person or thing that appears or is introduced into a situation suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial or contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty. at the end of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Sam and Frodo are rescued by eagles.
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 or when mixed unintentionally. Children,” “kids,” “youngsters,” “youths,” and “brats,” for example, all have different evocative values.
DIDACTIC – from Greek “that which teaches”; any work of literature which sets out to instruct may be called didactic.
DIRGE- a slow sad song about dead person, especially at a funeral Dirge by William Shakespeare
Doggerel - Rough, badly made verse, monotonous in rhythm and clumsy. EG – Chaucer, Canterbury tales, Tale of Sir Topas
DRAMATIC IRONY- Involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. The character’s words and actions therefore take on a different meaning for the audience than they have for the play’s characters. This may happen when, for example, a character reacts in an inappropriate or foolish way because of false assumptions. Shakespeare's Othello offers example of dramatic irony, as he blames Desdemona for cuckolding him
ELEGY- is a mournful poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead; It less lament and more reflect. Thomas Gray – Elegy written in a country Churchyard
ELLIPSIS- The omission of one or more words that are understood but that must be supplied to make a construction complete. "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."
(Plato)
Emblem - pictorial image that epitomizes a concept — e.g., a moral truth, or an allegory — or that represents a person, such as a king or saint. Nathaniel Hawthorne also refers to private symbols as tokens. E.g. the pink ribbon belonging to Faith in "Young Goodman Brown."
Epic - In its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry, (a) a long narrative about a serious subject, (b) told in an elevated style of language, (c) focused on the exploits of a hero, semi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group in which the hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people or nation; (d) begins with the invocation of a muse to inspire the poet, (e) focuses on highborn kings and great warriors rather than peasants and commoners. Lengthy, revered narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Homer’s Iliad, Beowulf, Paradise Lost [John Milton]
EPIGRAPH- A quotation set at the beginning of a literary work (such as a novel) or a division of a work to suggest its theme.EG Dante – Inferno
Epilogue - A conclusion added to a literary work such as a novel, play, or long poem. Epilogues are short end chapters that reveal the fates of the characters. It is the opposite of a prologue. Sometimes, it is a speech made by one of the actors at the end of a play asking for the indulgence of the critics and the audience. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
EPIPHANY -A term in literary criticism for a sudden realization--a flash of recognition in which someone or something is seen in a new light. Eg, In the Bible - Paul on the road to Damascus
EPISODIC - chronological structure, it consists of a series of loosely related incidents, usually of chapter length, tied together by a common theme and/or characters. Episodic plots work best when the writer wishes to explore the personalities of the characters, the nature of their existence, and the flavor of an era. - eg. Casablanca
EPISTLE- A composition in prose or poetry written in the form of a letter to a particular person or group. E.g. the letters of Paul the Apostle
EPISTOLARY NOVEL- A novel told through the medium of letters written by one or more of the characters, the presentation of events from several points of view, it shows an intimate view of the character’s thoughts and feelings without interference from the author EG Dostoevsky – Poor Folk
EPITAPH- An inscription in verse or prose upon a tomb; anything written as if to be inscribed on a tomb. Epitaphs may take the form of appeals from the dead to passers-by, or of descriptions of the dead person's merits. Many ancient Greek epitaphs survive in the Greek Anthology
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 the words expressing a sudden, strong feeling used to emphasize sth, 'O Richard! York is too far gone with grief (Shakespeare, Richard II).
Exemplum - used in sermon. Short story which makes message more obvious, with moral. A moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point – Chaucer – The Pardoner's tale
EXISTENTIALISM- According to existentialists, human beings care, desire, manipulate, and, above all, choose and act; the individual is not a detached observer of the world, but “in the world.” A person “exists”, a human being is “open” to the world and to objects in it. Existentialism inspired a large body of imaginative literature. EG, Works of Dostoyevski, Kafka.
Fable - Brief story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim. Ambrose Bierce, "The Fox and the Grapes." Fantastic Fables,
Farce -A form of humour based on exaggerated, improbable incongruities. Farce involves rapid shifts in action and emotion. It is to entertain the audience by unlikely extravagant and improbable situations, mistaken identity, and verbal humour (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. EG Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest"
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE - is the use of words or phrases in a manner where the literal meaning of the words is not true or does not make sense, but implies a non-literal meaning which does make sense or that could be true - I’ve told you a million times to clean your room!
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 - I am going to crown you = I am going to place a literal crown on your head OR I am going to punch you in the head with my clenched fist. - an example of the figurative use of words, which is use of language or writing, characterized by figures of speech (such as metaphor and simile) or elaborate expression, as opposed to literal language
FLASHBACK - A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary; it can be used to delay important details until just before a dramatic moment EG Arthur Koestler,Darkness at Noon , when Rubashov is in his cell
FLAT CHARACTER: (static character) - a simplified character who does not change or alter his/her personality over the course of a narrative, one without extensive personality and characterization EG Mr. Collins in Austen's Pride and Prejudice. 
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.
Anapaestic - three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed.
Dactylic - three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed.
FORESHADOWING - The organization of the literary work which prepares the reader to some degree for what occurs later in the work, it may be a specific scene or object that gives a clue or hint to a later events of the plot. e.g Witches to Macbeth - You will die by an unborn woman.
Four humours – Goes back to Hipocrates – Human traits are determined by four fluids in the body: black bile – melancholic, yellow bile- choleric, agressive, phlegm- phlegmatic, too calm, blood – sanguine, passionate. EG Shakespearean characters – Macbeth etc


Four levels of meaning - literal, typological, topological, and anagogical.
Literal – common meaning, the facts are seen in the same way they are written. The easiest way of understanding the text.
Analogical – the analysis of symbolism.
Topological - figurative style of writing; interpretation of the writing with stressing figurative nature of language.
Anagogical - interpretation of a word, passage, or text that detects allusions to heaven or the afterlife.
Free verse - Poetry based on the natural rhythms of phrases and normal pauses rather than the artificial constraints of metrical feet. After the Sea-Ship by Walt Whitman 
Genre is a division of a particular form of art according to criteria particular to that form. The most general genres in literature are epic, tragedy,comedy, novel, short story, and creative nonfiction.They can all be in the genres of prose or poetry.
GOTHIC NOVEL- Pseudo medieval fiction having a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror; such novels were expected to be full of ghosts, madness, outrage, superstition, and revenge. The settings were often castles or monasteries e.g. Shelley’s Frankenstein
GREEK TRAGEDY- The form of drama produced in ancient Greece; had a strict structure consisting of an introductory prologos; a parodos, which marks the entrance of the chorus; several episodes constituting the main action of the play; and the exodus, or conclusion, which follows the last song of the chorus. Catharsis, Decorum were important; Illiad – Homer
HAIKU- A style of lyric poetry borrowed from the Japanese that typically presents an intense emotion or vivid image of nature, consisting of seventeen syllables organized into three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables EG Matsuo Basho
Hamartia - it`s a mistake that a hero makes because if his hubris (fault), and that leads him to a downfall. Bible – David falls for Batsheba
HISTORICAL NOVEL- A novel that has as its setting a period of history and that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic details. EG Umberto Eco – The Name of the rose
Hubris - The term can simply be seen as a character’s flaw or error. It means "missing the mark.", In Greek tragedy, the protagonist frequently possesses some sort of fault that causes catastrophic results after he fails to recognize some fact or truth that could have saved him if he recognized it earlier. The idea of hubris is often ironic; Macbeth and his ambition;
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 sth in order to make it sound bigger/smaller than it really is. I could sleep for a year
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 the 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 kinaesthetic sensation (movement). EG 'A tale of two cities' by Charles Dickens
IN MEDIAS RES - is a narrative technique in which the story begins at the midpoint, rather than at the beginning, establishing setting, character, and conflict via flashback eg. Starting with a dream or conversation eg. Homer – Odyssey.
INTERIOR MONOLOGUE - The author presents the interior thoughts of a single individual in the same order these thoughts occur inside that character's head. The author does not attempt to provide (or provides minimally) any commentary, description, or guiding discussion to help the reader untangle the complex web of thoughts, e.g. "Lestrygonian" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses
Interlude –Early form of English dramatic entertainment, sometimes considered as the transition between medieval morality plays and Tudor dramas; They were performed at intervals between some other form of entertainment
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, bitter; The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.e.g Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."
JEREMIAD –poem or prose which bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and often contains a prophecy, eg. Martin Luther King speeches
KUNSTLERROMAN - Literally, artist novel Class of BILDUNGSROMAN that deals with the youth and development of an individual who becomes a painter, musician, or poet. EG James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Lament - in other words lamentation, it's a poem or a song expressing grief or regret. Eg. Jan Kochanowski – Laments
LEITMOTIF - A dominant recurring phrase or sentence within a work, such as the repetition of the phrase “only connect” in E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End. The word was originally applied to repeated musical phrases associated with a particular character or situation in Richard Wagner’s music dramas.
LIMERIC – a type of a light verse and a particularly popular fixed verse form in England, usually consists of 5 predominantly anapaestic lines rhyming AABBA EG  Edward Lear from A Book of Nonsense 
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, Deliberate(celowy) understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite. e.g.It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.
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. In lyric poetry, the mood is musical and emotional. The writer of a lyric poem uses words that express his state of mind, his perceptions, or his feelings. EG Italian Sonnet by James DeFord
MALAPROPISM - Misusing words to create a comic effect or characterize the speaker as being too confused or flustered to use correct diction. Typically, it involves the confusion of two words that sound somewhat similar but have different meanings. In Sheridan, we find pineapple instead of pinnacle EG "He is the very pineapple of politeness."
MASQUE - A short, allegorical dramatic entertainment of the 16th and 17th centuries performed by masked actors. Most likely originating in pre-Christian religious rites and folk ceremonies known as disguising, or mummery, masques evolved into elaborate court spectacles that, under various names, entertained royalty throughout Europe.
Melodrama - A dramatic form characterized by excessive sentiment, exaggerated emotion, thrilling action, and an artificially happy ending. EG Sweeney Todd
Metaphor - A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is "My love is a red, red rose,"

Meter - Systematically arranged and measured rhythm in verse - a fixed metrical pattern, or a verse form.Eg dimiter, trimiter etc

PENTAMETER a line of five metrical feet. In English verse the preferred foot is the iamb—i.e., an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Chaucer The Canterbury Tales Iambic pentameter

TRIMETER In prosody a line of three feet

TETRAMETER In prosody a line of four metrical units

HEXAMETER In classical prosody, a line of six metrical feet

METONYMY -Using a suggestive, physical object to embody a more general idea. The term metonym also applies to the object itself used to suggest that more general idea. For instance crown in reference to royalty or the entire royal family. "We have always remained loyal to the crown."

Mimesis - imitation, the idea that art imitates nature, that it is a realistic depiction(opis) of life, natural objects, and human action e.g. The enemy said, "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them."

Miseen-scene - To put on stage – everything you need to play in visual way

MODERNISM- Refers to the art, poetry, literature, architecture, and philosophy of Europe and America in the early twentieth-century. Under the general umbrella of Modernism, we find several art movements such as surrealism, formalism, and various avant-gardes French movements EG James Joyse - Ulysses

Motif - A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident or a device which appears frequently in works of literature. E.g. the "Ubi sunt?"

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. In modern literature  The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri 

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 the 1930s. The authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction.

NARRATIVE VERSE -A verse or poem that tells a story. It is often contrasted with lyric verse and verse drama. The main forms of narrative verse are the epic and the ballad, both of which are products of the oral tradition.

NARRATOR - The "voice" that speaks or tells a story. First person,  the narrator uses "I" to refer to himself/herself): the narrator is a character in the story, often, but not necessarily, the protagonist. This narrative point of view allows for a very personal touch in the story telling. EG -Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Second person,  is a narrative mode in which the main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun “you". EG. Opening lines of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City 
Third person selective singular, includes the thoughts and perspective of one main character
Third person selective multiple, includes the thoughts of more than one main character but only one at a time. The scene break--*****--indicates a change from one POV to the other
Third person dual, includes the thoughts of two main characters
Third Person omniscient, is a method of storytelling in which the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of all of the characters in the story, , an all-knowing narrator, EG. Anna in Anna Karenina
Third person detached – no thoughts, it is usually uses as the point of view of screenplays

NATURALISM- A literary movement seeking to present life as accurately as possible, without artificial distortions. EG. Emile Zola

NOVEL OF MANNERS -Work of fiction that re-creates a social world, conveying with finely detailed observation the customs and values of a highly developed and complex society. The conventions of the society dominate the story, and characters are differentiated by the degree to which they measure up to or fall below the uniform standard of behavior. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

NOVEL- Any extended fictional prose narrative focusing on a few primary characters but often involving scores of secondary characters. For instance: Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’.

OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE -The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion;T.S. ELIOT in the essay “Hamlet and His Problems”

Onomatopoeia - The naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it (such as buzz or hiss, meow, click)

Oxymoron –figure of speech combining words which seem to contradict each other, such as “cruel kindness” A word or group of words that is self-contradicting, as in bittersweet or plastic glass. creates humor or additional meaning by using two contradictory terms together. “wise fool”

PAEAN - Among the earliest Greeks, the word paean signifies "a dance and hymn with a specific rhythm which is endued with an absolving in healing power”. In later usage, any song of praise to a deity is called a paean. Homer - Paeon

Pageant –a wagon used as a mobile stage on which were performed mystery plays and related dramas in the Middle Ages

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.

Parable - Brief story, in prose or verse, that 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. New Testament – The Prodigal son
Paradox - Paradox of water and diamonds - we need water to live, but it's cheap, and we don't need diamonds do live, but they are expensive. An apparently self-contradictory statement, the underlying meaning of which is revealed only by careful scrutiny. The purpose of a paradox is to arrest attention and provoke fresh thought. The statement “Less is more” is an example. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm

PARODY -A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of them. The humorist achieves parody by exaggerating certain traits common to the work. EG Chaucer's "Sir Thopas"

PASTICHE - A literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work.

PATHETIC FALLACY -Poetic practice of attributing human emotion or responses to nature, inanimate objects, or animals. The practice is a form of personification - T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound

PATHOS -(Greek, "emotion"): In its rhetorical sense it is a writer’s attempt to inspire an emotional reaction in an audience--usually a deep feeling of suffering, but sometimes joy, pride, anger etc. In its critical sense, pathos signifies a scene or passage designed to evoke the feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow in a reader or viewer.

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 dream of the Rood

PICARESQUE NOVEL -An early form of the novel, usually a first-person narrative, relating the adventures of a lowborn adventurer who drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in an effort to survive. Umberto Eco's Baudolino

PLOT - The structure and relationship of actions and events in a work of fiction. - episodic plot chronological structure, it consists of a series of loosely related incidents, usually of chapter length, tied together by a common theme and/or characters. Episodic plots work best when the writer wishes to explore the personalities of the characters, the nature of their existence, and the flavor of an era. - eg. Casablanca
- unified plot it leads through character's problems, how he faces it, and how the hero overcomes it. Consists of exposition, crising action, and climax. eg. Pride and Prejudice - Austen

Poetic licence - The freedom of a poet or other literary writer to depart from the norms of common discourse, literal reality, or historical truth in order to create a special effect in or for the reader. When applied to prose writers, the term is often called "artistic license."

Prologue - A section of any introductory material before the first chapter or the main material of a prose work, or any such material before the first stanza of a poetic work Wilder’s Our Town.

PROTAGONIST -The principal character in a novel, story, drama, or poem.

Pun -form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect . Space – spice – The Space Girls.

Quatrain - Poem or a stanza within a poem, that consists always of four lines. It is the most common of all stanza forms in European poetry. The rhyming patterns include aabb, abab, abba, abcb. Tiger!Tiger!

REALISM - Developed out of naturalism. It is a theory or tendency in writing to present events in a matter-of-fact, straightforward manner; It is an attempt to reflect life "as it actually is"; it focuses on everyday life and details George Elliot - Middlemarch

REFRAIN -Separate stanza that is repeated alternating with each stanza in the poem.

Resolution -The point in a play or other work of literature at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out.

Revenge tragedy - Drama in which the dominant motive is revenge for a real or imagined injury William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Rhetorical question - Figure of speech in the form of a question posed for rhetorical effect rather than to receive an answer. Rhetorical questions encourage the listener to reflect on what the implied answer to the question must be. EG Is the Pope Catholic?

Rhymes - Masculine rhyme - In verse, a monosyllabic rhyme, or a rhyme that occurs only in stressed final syllables (such as claims, flames or rare, despair). - rhyme on a single stressed syllable at the end of a line of poetry. Feminine rhyme - a rhyme involving two or more syllables (as in motion and ocean or willow and billow, exciting and inviting). Perfect rhyme - true rhyme, is when the later part of the word or phrase is identical sounding to another. (sky - high). Slant rhyme - sometimes called half or near rhyme is on the final consonants of the words involved. Widely used in Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Icelandic verse. (soul - all). Internal rhyme - occurs in the middle of a line. In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud Whiles all the night through fog-smoke white (Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"). Eye rhyme - an imperfect rhyme in which two words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently (such as move and love, bough and though, come and home, and laughter and daughter).

Rhythm - The variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events.

ROMAN A CLEF -a novel that has the extra literary interest of portraying identifiable, sometimes real people more or less thinly disguised as fictional characters. Victor Hugo, Le Roi s'amuse

ROMANTICISM- is characterized chiefly by a reaction against the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism with their stress on reason, order, balance, harmony, rationality, and intellect. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental EG Goethe - he Sorrows of Young Werther

ROUND CHARACTER -Is depicted with such psychological depth and detail that he or she seems like a "real" person. If the round character changes or evolves over the course of a narrative is also dynamic. Eg Harry Potter

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. Criticism of any stupidity in the form of scathing humour, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards. Swift's Gulliver's Travels,
SCIENCE FICTION - Literature in which speculative technology, time travel, alien races, intelligent robots, gene-engineering, space travel, experimental medicine, dimensional portals, or altered scientific principles contribute to the plot or background. Julius Verne – A Journey to the center of the earth

SENTIMENTAL NOVEL -Broadly, any novel that exploits the reader’s capacity for tenderness, compassion, or sympathy to a disproportionate degree by presenting unrealistic view of its subject. The sentimental novel exalted feeling above reason and raised the analysis of emotion to a fine art. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela

Simile -An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as, in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing. He ate like an animal.

Slapstick - Charlie Chaplin comedies. Low comedy in which humour depends almost entirely on physical actions and sight gags; 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.

Solecism - Grammatical mistake or absurdity. What is considered a solecism in one modality of a language may be acceptable usage in another. For example, "The world keeps turning for you and I"

SOLILOQUY - In drama, a monologue that gives the illusion of being a series of unspoken reflections. The actor directly addresses the audience or speaks thoughts aloud, either alone upon the stage or with the other actors keeping silent. William Shakespeare`s “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Hamlet.

Sonnet – By the thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem of fourteen lines following a strict rhyme scheme and logical structure. Traditionally, English poets usually use iambic pentameter when writing sonnets. Shakespeare Sonnet 18

STICHOMYTHIA - A dialog of alternate single lines, especially in drama. Usually a kind of verbal parrying accompanied by antithesis and repetitive patterns. Example Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.

STOCK CHARACTER - A character in a drama or fiction that represents a type and that is recognizable as belonging to a certain genre. Most of the characters in the commedia dell’arte are stock characters. In Elizabethan drama there is usually a fool; in fairy tales a prince charming; and in melodrama a scheming villain.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS - Writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. James Joyce's Ulysses

SUBLIME - In literary criticism, grandeur of thought, emotion, and spirit that characterizes great literature. It is the topic of ON THE SUBLIME, an incomplete treatise attributed to Longinus.

Symbol - Objects, pictures, or other concrete representations of ideas, concepts. For example, a red octagon is a symbol for "STOP". All languages are made up of symbols.

SYNECDOCHE - A part for the whole or a whole for the part. The use of synecdoche enables the writer to replace generalities and abstractions with concrete and vivid images e.g. The US won 3 medals

Synaesthesia - The evocation or transposition of one sense (such as sound) by another (such as vision). The device is much used in both poetry and common speech.

TALL TALE - Narrative that depicts the extravagantly exaggerated wild adventures of North American folk heroes.

TERCET - A unit or group of three lines of verse, usually containing rhyme, as in William Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and the Turtle”

Theatre of the Absurd – Style of play for the theatre that was developed in the 1950’s 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. Absurdist playwrights ignored most of the logical structures of traditional theatre. Dramatic action as such is negligible; what action occurs only serves to underscore the absence of meaning in the characters’ existence. In Beckett’s En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), plot is eliminated, and a timeless, circular quality emerges as two lost creatures spend their days waiting—but without any certainty of whom they are waiting for or of whether that person will ever come.

THREE UNITIES OF DRAMA - unity of action (realistic events following a single plotline and a limited number of characters encompassed by a sense of verisimilitude). unity of time, meaning that the events should be limited to the two or three hours it takes to view the play, or at most to a single day of twelve or twenty-four hours compressed into those two or three hours. unity of space, meaning the play must take place in a single setting or location.

Tragedy - A serious play that ends sadly, especially with the main character’s death, and is often intended to teach a moral lesson. Connected with Dionysus, sense of doom, the main character is doomed whether he/she does is wrong, we need a tragic hero, catharsis, decorum;

Tragic flaw –Other name for hubris - also called tragic flaw. An inherent defect of character, or the error, guilt, or sin of the tragic hero in a literary work.

Tragic hero –A figure of tragic hero is extraordinary, a tragic hero is very often an individualist who can’t find himself/herself in this world. Doesn’t fall because he or she is bad but because he/she makes needs to make a decision which is tragic, as none of the solutions is good for him and inevitably leads to his death.

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.

Travesty - Form of musical parody in which a piece is re-arranged 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 ragtime.

Triplet - Three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or complete poem. A three line stanza. Haiku is an example of an unrhymed tercet poem.

Trope -has two meanings:(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.

Verisimilitude - The concept implies that either the action represented must be acceptable or convincing according to the audience’s own experience or knowledge or, as in the presentation of science fiction or tales of the supernatural, the audience must be enticed into willingly suspending disbelief and accepting improbable actions as true within the framework of the narrative. - similar to reality, it was to be believable The lord of the rings

Verism - A form of realism. The word comes from Latin verus (true). Doctrine that literature should approve not matter how upset, ugly it is.

Verse paragraphs - A group of lines (often blank verese) which forms a unit.

Versification -Literally, the making of verse, the term is often used as another name for prosody. This refers to the technical and practical aspect of making poems as opposed to purely theoretical and aesthetic poetic concerns.

Vicarious participation - to experience indirectly; audience have to care, need to be concerned, participate emotionally

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 the hero.