Term
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Definition
| A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. |
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Term
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Definition
| The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood." |
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Term
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Definition
| Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE |
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Term
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Definition
| A character or force against which another character struggles. |
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Term
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Definition
| Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play. |
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Term
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Definition
| The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." |
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Term
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Definition
| A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover. |
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Term
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Definition
| A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. |
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Term
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Definition
| A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter. |
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Term
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Definition
| A strong pause within a line of verse. EX Off-hand-like--just as I-- |
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Term
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Definition
| The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play. |
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Term
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Definition
| The purging of the feelings of pity and fear that the audience experiences at the end of the play, following the catastrophe. |
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Term
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Definition
| An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). |
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Term
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Definition
| The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions. |
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Term
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Definition
| A group of characters in Greek tragedy (and in later forms of drama), who comment on the action of a play without participation in it. Their leader is the choragos. |
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Term
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Definition
| The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better. In comedy, things work out happily in the end. Comic drama may be either romantic or satiric. |
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Term
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Definition
| The use of a comic scene to interrupt a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments. The comedy of scenes offering comic relief typically parallels the tragic action that the scenes interrupt. |
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Term
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Definition
| An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work. |
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Term
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Definition
| A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters. |
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Term
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Definition
| The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. |
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Term
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Definition
| A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus 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. |
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Term
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Definition
| A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem. |
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Term
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Definition
| A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry. |
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Term
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Definition
| The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. |
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Term
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Definition
| The resolution of the plot of a literary work. The denouement of Hamlet takes place after the catastrophe, with the stage littered with corpses. |
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Term
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Definition
| A god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention. The Latin phrase means, literally, "a god from the machine." The phrase refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play. |
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Term
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Definition
| The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names. |
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Term
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Definition
| The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener. As readers, we overhear the speaker in a dramatic monologue. Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" |
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Term
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Definition
| Latin for the characters or persons in a play. |
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Term
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Definition
| A lyric poem that laments the dead. |
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Term
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Definition
| The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry. Alexander uses elision in "Sound and Sense": "Flies o'er th' unbending corn...." |
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Term
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Definition
| A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line. |
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Term
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Definition
| A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values. |
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Term
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Definition
A brief witty poem, often satirical.I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? |
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Term
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Definition
| The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. |
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Term
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Definition
| A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. Fables typically include animals as characters. |
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Term
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Definition
| In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution. |
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Term
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Definition
| Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable. |
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Term
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Definition
| An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. may be based on actual historical individuals. |
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Term
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Definition
| A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole. |
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Term
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Definition
| An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human time. |
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Term
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Definition
| A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story. |
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Term
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Definition
| A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. |
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Term
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Definition
| Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story. |
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Term
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Definition
| The imaginary wall of the box theater setting, supposedly removed to allow the audience to see the action. |
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Term
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Definition
| Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. |
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Term
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Definition
| The physical movement of a character during a play. Gesture is used to reveal character, and may include facial expressions as well as movements of other parts of an actor's body. |
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Term
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Definition
| A figure of speech involving exaggeration. |
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Term
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Definition
| An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in to-DAY. See Foot. |
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Term
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Definition
| A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. |
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Term
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Definition
| The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. |
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Term
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Definition
| A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs. In dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters. |
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Term
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Definition
| A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. See Figurative language, Denotation, and Connotation. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics. |
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Term
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Definition
| 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," |
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Term
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Definition
| The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems. See Foot and Iamb. |
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Term
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Definition
| A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." See Synecdoche. |
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Term
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Definition
| A speech by a single character without another character's response. See Dramatic monologue and Soliloquy. |
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Term
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Definition
| A poem that tells a story. See Ballad. |
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Term
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Definition
| The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. |
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Term
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Definition
| An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet. |
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Term
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Definition
| A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject but sometimes a more lighthearted work. |
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Term
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Definition
| The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. |
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Term
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Definition
| A brief story that teaches a lesson often ethical or spiritual. Examples include "The Prodigal Son," |
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Term
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Definition
| A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation. |
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Term
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Definition
| A quality of a play's action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character. Pathos is always an aspect of tragedy, and may be present in comedy as well. |
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Term
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Definition
| The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." |
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Term
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Definition
| The unified structure of incidents in a literary work. See Conflict, Climax, Denouement, andFlashback. |
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Term
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Definition
| The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can be: first person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which the narrator knows everything about the characters; and limited omniscient, which allows the narrator to know some things about the characters but not everything. |
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Term
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Definition
| Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play. |
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Term
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Definition
| The main character of a literary work |
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Term
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Definition
| A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables ("of the"). |
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Term
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Definition
| A four-line stanza in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet. |
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Term
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Definition
| The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. |
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Term
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Definition
| The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story. See Plot. |
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Term
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Definition
| The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. |
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Term
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Definition
| The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. |
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Term
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Definition
| The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. |
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Term
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Definition
| A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax. See Climax, Denouement, and Plot. |
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Term
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Definition
| Poetic meters such as iambic and anapestic that move or ascend from an unstressed to a stressed syllable. See Anapest, Iamb, and Falling meter. |
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Term
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Definition
| A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. |
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Term
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Definition
| A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an Italian sonnet. |
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Term
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Definition
| A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line. |
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Term
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Definition
| The time and place of a literary work that establish its context. |
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Term
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Definition
| A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose." |
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Term
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Definition
| A speech in a play that is meant to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on the stage. If there are no other characters present, the soliloquy represents the character thinking aloud. |
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Term
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Definition
| A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean or English sonnet is arranged as three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming abba abba cde cde or abba abba cd cd cd. |
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Term
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Definition
| A metrical foot represented by two stressed syllables, such as KNICK-KNACK. |
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Term
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Definition
| A playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play. |
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Term
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Definition
| The spectacle a play presents in performance, including the position of actors on stage, the scenic background, the props and costumes, and the lighting and sound effects. |
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Term
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Definition
| A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another. |
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Term
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Definition
| The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques. |
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Term
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Definition
| What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme. |
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Term
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Definition
| A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot. |
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Term
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Definition
| An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself. |
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Term
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Definition
| A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand." See Metonymy. |
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Term
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Definition
The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted:
"Whose woods these are I think I know." |
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Term
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Definition
| A story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without detailed descriptions of character. |
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Term
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
| The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. |
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Term
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Definition
| The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example, Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the worse. In tragedy, catastrophe and suffering await many of the characters, especially the hero. |
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Term
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Definition
| A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero. Othello's jealousy and too trusting nature is one example. See Tragedy and Tragic hero. |
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Term
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Definition
| A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and fate, suffers a fall from glory into suffering. Sophocles' Oedipus is an example. See Tragedy and Tragic flaw. |
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Term
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Definition
| An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in FOOT-ball. |
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Term
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Definition
| A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. |
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Term
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Definition
| The idea that a play should be limited to a specific time, place, and story line. The events of the plot should occur within a twenty-four hour period, should occur within a give geographic locale, and should tell a single story. |
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Term
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Definition
| A nineteen-line lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition. The first and third lines alternate throughout the poem, which is structured in six stanzas --five tercets and a concluding quatrain. |
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