Lit Crit Terms

Asynartete

"Not connected" said of a verse measure in which rhythmic members consist of two unrelated patterns, as in choriambic verse, which combines trochees and iambs

Apotropaic

"Warding off evil" in some cases, an unattractive ___ name will be given to a child, so as to avoid the wrath of a god. Or a word may undergo ____ deformation to avoid a taboo or delicate subject

Critique

A critical examination of a work of art with a view to determining its nature and assessing its value according to some established standards. More serious and judicious than a review

Double Dactyls

A form of light verse consisting of two stanzas, each having four lines of two dactyls. The rules are complex. The first line must be a jingle, such as "jiggery-pokery" the second line must be a name. The last lines of each stanza must rhyme, and the second stanza must have one line that is a single word.

Clerihew

A form of light verse invented by and named for Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who also wrote detective fiction. In its proper form, the term concerns an actual person, whose name makes up the first line of a quatrain with a strict aabb rhyme scheme and no regularity of rhythm or meter.

Drame

A form of play between tragedy and comedy developed by the French in the eighteenth century and later introduced into England, where it is often called a drama. Serious play

Drawing Room Comedy

A form of the comedy of manners that deals with high society. It is called such because it is usually a well made play with its actions centered indoors, often literally in a drawing room

Companion

A reference work intended to help the reader of a certain text, set of texts, or field of study. Usually covers more ground than a dictionary, but less comprehensive than an encyclopedia

Diasyrm

A rhetorical disparaging- of another or of oneself- as in Richard III's lengthy descanting on his own deformities.

Apophasis

A rhetorical figure in which one makes an assertion while seeming or pretending to repress or deny it

Antanagoge

A rhetorical figure, variously defined, sometimes as answering a charge with a countercharge: sometimes a compensatory balancing of positive and negative

Apodictic

A rhetorical term for the sort of argument that is clearly subject to demonstration and proof

Attemperation

A rhetorical term revived by Frank Kermode that designates a restriction or softening of something said earlier in the passage

Chantey

A sailors song marked by strong rhythm and, in the days of sail, used to accompany certain forms of repetitious hard labor, performed by seamen working in a group.

Arabesque

A style of decorative design favored by moors Z a means of giving play to their aesthetic creativity without violating the Islamic prohibition against reproducing natural forms.

Action-Adventure

A style of entertainment popular in film and television productions after 1950 Plot is basic with basic characters and language, focus on action and special effects

Direct Camera

A style of objective, essentially nonnarrative, nonstaged filmmaking used in producing documentary films since the early 1960's. uses highly light, mobile equipment

Coup de Théâtre

A surprising and unusually unmotivated stroke in a drama that produces a sensational effect; by extension, anything designed solely for effect

Conspectus

A survey, summary, or outline

Dramatism

A system for analyzing literature developed by Kenneth Burke. It assumes that literature is a form of action, based on four elements, who, what, where, when, and why

Digest

A systematic arrangement of condensed materials in some specific subject, so that it summarizes the information on that subject. By extension, ______ is often applied to a journal that publishes condensations or abridgments of material previously published elsewhere.

Demotic Style

A term applied by Northrop Frye to a style shaped by the diction, rhythms, syntax, and associations of ordinary speech

Autotelic

A term applied to a nondidactic work- that is, one whose end lies within itself, and does not depend on the achievement of objectives outside the work.

Absolute

A term applied to anything totally independent of conditions, limitations, controllers, or modifiers

Comedy of Morals

A term applied to comedy that uses ridicule to correct abuses- hence, a form of dramatic satire aimed at the moral state of a people or special class of people.

Crossed Rhyme

A term applied to couplets in which the words preceding the caesura rhyme. Such a couplet tends to break into four short lines, rhyming abab

Analytical Criticism

A term applied to criticism that views the work of art as an autonomous whole and believes that its meaning, nature, and significance can be discovered by applying rigorous and logical systems of analysis to its several parts and their organization. The work of New Critics

Apocalyptic

A term applied to literature that predicts the ultimate destiny- usually destruction- of the world, often through complex symbolism. This writing has also the character of imminent catastrophe, is likely to be grandiose or wild, and often suggests a terrible final judgement. American fiction is said to have an _____ tradition

Critical Realism

A term applied to realistic fiction in the late nineteenth century, particularly in America. The muckrakers belonged to this school.

Discordia Concors

A term used by Samuel Johnson for "a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike" in metaphysical poetry.

Bucolic

A term used for pastoral writing that deals with rural life in a manner rather formal and fanciful. The plural refers collectively to the pastoral literature of such writers as Theocritus and Virgil. In the present loose usage, the term connotes simply poetry with a rustic background

Age of Reason

A term used for the enlightenment in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often specifically applied to the neoclassic period in English literature and the revolutionary and early national period in American literature because these periods emphasized self knowledge and rationalism

Dionysian

A term used for the spirit in Greek tragedy associated with Dionysius, the god of wine. It refers to the states of the ecstatic, orgiastic, or irrational. Associated with lunar-nocturnal creative and imaginative power and contrasted with the critical and rational qualities represented by the solar-diurnal apollonian

Cross Cutting

A term used in film criticism to describe repeated movements within connected sequence from one subject to another

Analytic Editing

A term used in film making and film criticism for a special process by which a director and an editor of a film so select the details in a scene that an emphatic meaning is imposed on the viewer. Refers to a directors fundamental approach to cinematic expression

Artificiality

A term used to characterize a work that is consciously and deliberately mannered, affected, elaborate, conventional, studied, or self-conscious

Chronique scandaleuse

A body apocalypse scandalous gossip, usually informal and unofficial, but sometimes achieving written form

Breviora

A brief collection of writings or sayings

Compendium

A brief condensation of a longer work or of a whole field of knowledge. It is a systematic presentation of essentials. It differs from an abridgment in that it does not attempt to present the general characteristics of the work.

Agroikos

A character added by Northrop Frye to the traditional three stock characters of Greek old comedy. A rustic who is easily deceived, a form of the country bumpkin

Choral Character

A character in a play or novel who stands aside from the action and comments on it or speaks about it as a communal voice.

Dynamic Character

A character who develops or changes as a result of the actions of the plot

Confidant

A character who takes little part in the actions but is close to the protagonist and receives the confidences and intimate thoughts of the protagonist. This character permits the revelation of the thoughts and intentions of the protagonist without the use of asides or soliloquy, or the point of view of an omniscient author

Aesthetic Distance

A term used to describe the effect produced when an emotion or an experience, whether autobiographical or not, is so objectified that it can be understood as being independent of the immediate experience of its maker Also applies to the reader or audiences awareness that art and reality are separate

Counterpoint Rhyme

A term used to describe the superimposing of a different rhythm on one already established.

Anagram

A word or phrase made by transposing the letters of another. Writers sometimes use them to cones, proper names or to veil messages.

Catchword

A word so often repeated that it is identified with a person or object

Deictic

A word- usually a pronoun, adjective, or adverb, that refers to another part of the discourse and not outward to a world or context

Dramedy

A work combining drama and comedy, specifically a comedy that relies on dramatic means rather than stock characters and situations, farce, and slapstick.

Companion Piece

A work designed to accompany another

Campus Novel

A work, usually comic, set at a university. Lucky Jim, One Fat Englishman, Jake's Thing Pnin, Pale Fire, Pictures from an Institution

Curse

An invocation that calls on a supernatural being to visit evil on someone. In this sense, it is a malediction; or, if a formal and solemn imprecation, an anathema.

Comic Opera

An operetta stressing spectacle and music but employing spoken dialogue

American Academy of Arts and Letters

An organization created in 1904 to recognize accomplishment in literature, art, or music

Dip

An unstressed syllable in alliterative verse

Apothegm

An unusually terse, pithy, witty saying, even more concise and pointed than an aphorism. Francis Bacon- Queen Elizabeth "Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper"

Cauda

Another name for the tail, or short line found in certain verse forms

Altar Poem

Another term for a Carmen Figuratum, a poem in which the lines are so arranged that they form a design on the page, often an altar or a cross

Periods of American Literature

Any division of literary history is an arbitrary oversimplification. ____ is treated in a chronological pattern set against the dominant English movements Colonial Period- 1607-1765 Revolutionary and Early National Period- 1765-1830 Romantic Period- 1830-1865 Realistic Period- 1865-1900 Naturalistic and Symbolistic Period- 1900-1930 Period of Conformity and Criticism- 1930-1960 Period of the Confessional Self- 1960-1989 Post Modern Period- 1990-

Dingbat

Any piece of type other than standard characters, numerals, and punctuation marks, such as an asterisk or ampersand.

Caroline

Applied in general to the age of Charles I of England, (1625-1642) and in particular the spirit of the court. Might cover all of the literature of the time, and might simply cover writings of the royalist groups, such as the cavalier lyricists. In some sense a carryover from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Melancholy not only characterized the works of metaphysical poets, but also permeated the other works. Drama was decadent, romanticism was in decline, classicism was advancing, the scientific spirit was growing in spite of violent religious controversies. The last segment of the Renaissance in England

Classicism

As a critical term, a body of doctrine thought to be derived from or to reflect the qualities of Ancient Greek and Roman culture, particularly in literature, philosophy, art, or criticism. Stands for certain definite ideas and attitudes, mainly drawn from the critical utterances of the Greeks and Romans or developed through an imitation of ancient art and literature. These include restraint, restricted scope, dominance of reason, sense of form, unity of design and aim, clarity, simplicity, balance, attention to structure and logical organization, chasteness in style, severity of outline, moderation, self control, intellectualism, decorum, respect for tradition, imitation, conservatism, maturity, and good sense

Academic

As a neutral term, it refers to schools and academies in general, as a negative term, it means aridly theoretical in ideas or pedantic, conventional and formalistic in style

Deconstruction

As the linguistic model, it is extended to describe other systems, concepts of thing, substance, event, and absolute recede, to be superseded by concepts of relation- All covered by difference

Anacoenisis

Asking a question as though to seek the opinion of one's hearer, reader, opponent, or judge

Anachronism

Assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence. Shakespeare is guilty of many. Can be used as comedic devices

Academies

Associations devoted to the advancement of special fields of interest

Cratylism

Holds that there is a necessary, essential, mimetic connection between signifier and signified

Commedia dell'Arte

Improvised comedy; a form of Italian low comedy dating from very early times in which the actors improvised their dialogue, thought a plot or scenario was provided. A harlequin interrupted the action at times with low buffoonery. Relationship to English came with the appearance of pantomime

Choris

In Ancient Greece, the groups of dancers and singers who participated in religious festivals and dramatic performances. In Elizabethan drama, the role was often taken up by a single actor, who recited the prologue, epilogue, and inter act comments used to link the acts and foreshadow upcoming events. Can also include a dumbshow

Displacement

In Freudian analysis of dreams and other expressions. One of the devices for coping with a challenging problem. A desire to kill someone, for example, can undergo _______ and become a desire to insult that person. Also refers to a process whereby critical issues are removed from one arena of analysis to another.

Adonic Verse

In Greek and Latin prosody, the measure that consists of a dactyl and a spondee, or a dactyl and a trochee

Anagogy

In biblical and allegorical interpretation, the mystical of spiritual meaning

Archaism

Obsolete phrasing, idiom, syntax, or spelling. An ____ style can recreate the atmosphere of the past

Anaphora

One of the devices of repetition, in which the same expression is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences. Walt Whitman, Old Testament

Argumentation

One of the four chief forms of discourse, the others being exposition, narration, and description

Cyberpunk

Science fiction in the mode popular after 1975, with elements from cybernetics, robotics, and advanced computing on one hand and punk rock culture on the other. Both components involve violence, velocity, brightness, flatness, and a blurring of boundaries between human beings and machines Blade Runner, Total Recall

Crown of Sonnets

Seven sonnets interlinked by having the last line of the first form the first line of the second, and so forth with the last line of the seventh making the first line of the first

Arcadian

The Greek region of Arcadia, the home of pastoral poetry, was portrayed as an ideal land of rural contentment. Suggesting simple happiness, it is applied to any person or place with idealized rural simplicity

Connotation

The emotional implications and associations that words may carry, as distinguished from their denotative meanings. May be private and personal, group, or universal

Couplet

Two consecutive lines of verse with end rhymes. Usually written in octosyllabic and decasyllabic lines. Shakespeare always ended his sonnets with one of these

Closed Couplet

Two successive lines rhyming aa and containing a grammatically complete, independent statement. Almost all instances in English are in iambic tetrameter or pentameter

Cork Opera

obsolete name for a minstrel show

Abbey Theatre

outgrowth of the Irish Literary Theatre, founded by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1899, later moved to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin Major Playwrights: Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge, Sean O'Casey, and Lord Dunsay

Adage

A proverb or saying made familiar by long use

Contrerime

A quatrain in which an alternated syllabic scheme of 8-6-8-6 is opposed by a chiastic rhyme scheme of abba

Antipophora

A strategy whereby a question or objection is answered by another question or objection

Academic Drama

Plays written and performed in schools and colleges in the Elizabeth age

Anglo-Saxon

A Teutonic tribal group resident in England in post-Roman times. In the fifth and sixth centuries, the Angles and Saxons invaded and conquered Britain. From the angles came the name England. Later, the term came to be used to distinguish the residents of England from the continental Saxons.

Corrigenda

Plural of corrigendum, an item to be corrected. A list of ______ may be appended to a text after publication

Cahier

A French word related to quire, now generally applied to an exercise book, pamphlet, or fascicle

A Priori

A Latin phrase (from what comes before) for deductive reasoning, which proceeds from the general to the specific. In literary criticism, a priori is usually pejorative, implying arbitrary judgements based on preconceived postulates

A Posteriori

A Latin phrase (from what comes later) for inductive reasoning, which proceeds from the specific to the general

Alba

A Provençal lament over the parting of lovers at the break of day- the name comes from the Provençal word for dawn. It has no fixed metrical form, but each stanza usually ends in "alba"

Curtal Sonnet

A Sonnet that has been curtailed. The challenge was to shorten the octave to a sestet while preserving the numerical ratio of the first subdivision to the second. Is divided into parts with a set of six and a set of four and a half. The octave is shortened to a sestet and rhymes abcabc. The sestet is shortened to an augmented quatrain and rhymes either dbcd or dcbd. A half line rhyming c ends the poem.

Dime Novel

A cheaply printed, paperbound take of adventure or detection, originally selling for about ten cents; an American equivalent of the British penny dreadful. They were short novels that dealt with the American Revolution, the Civil War, the frontier, lurid crime and spectacular detection, and sometimes exemplary actions for moral instruction of the young.

Burden

A chorus or refrain

Courtesy Books

A class of books that, flourishing in late Renaissance times, dealt with the training of the courtly person. Often in dialogue form, this discussed such questions as the qualities of a gentleman or court lady, the etiquette of courtly love, the education of the future courtier or prince, and the duties of a state counselor

Blood and Thuner

A class of work specializing in bloodshed and violence. Many of these have to do with crime and high emotion.

Commonplace Books

A classified collection of quotations or arguments prepared for reference purposes. Thus, a reader interested in moral philosophy might collect thoughts and quotations under such heads as truth, virtue, or friendship. The term is also sometimes applied to private collections of favorite pieces of literature

Allusion Book

A collection of allusions to a writer or a writer's works, sometimes for a specific period

Chrestomathy

A collection of choice passages to be used in the study of a language or a literature, and, thus, and kind of anthology. Today, may signify a volume of selected passages or stories by a single author

Breviary

A collection of lessons, calendars, and outlines for services to aid Roman Catholic priests in reciting the divine offices for each day and in discharging other churchly responsibilities.

Comedy of Intrigue

A comedy in which the manipulation of the action by one or more characters to their own ends is of more importance that the characters themselves are. Also comedy of situation

Clown

A comic character with a marked rustic quality, much like the hick, bumpkin, or yokel. Later, in performances that call for a high degree of skill, the _______ emerged as a character whose ineptitude parodies the virtuosity of the central personage

Buffoon

A comic character- akin to the clown, fool, and jester- given to raillery, boasting, and indecency

Analogy

A comparison of two things, alike in certain aspects; particularly a method used in exposition by which something unfamiliar is explained by being compared to something more familiar. A simile is an expressed _ while a metaphor is an implied _

Analyzed Rhyme

A complex form of rhyme that involves breaking down or analyzing components. It is an interlocked combination of two types of rhyme, usually assonance and consonance, although true rhyme sometimes appears.

Bull

A composition marked by such thoroughgoing incongruity and contradictions that it is at best ridiculous, and at worst, chaotically nonsensical

Acrostic

A composition, usually verse, arranged in such a way that it spells words, phrases, or sentences when certain letters are selected according to an orderly sequence

Disability Studies

A comprehensive academic field having to do with people with disabilities.

Baring the Device

A concept introduced by Victor Slovskij, it is the opposite of verisimilitude.; instead of making beholders forget or ignore the fact that they are encountering an artifact, much art does this, and admits that it is not transparent, but opaque, not life or even lifelike. Once this occurs, the work is free to concern itself with proper business, such as the probing of its own genesis and nature

Theater of Cruelty

A concept originated in the 1930's whereby the theater becomes a ceremonial act of magical purgation. Meant a theater that could demonstrate human beings inescapable enslavement to things and circumstance. Hoped to raise the theater to a level of religious ceremony. In doing so, subordinated words to action, gesture, and sound in order to overwhelm the spectator and liberate instinctual preoccupations with crime, cruelty, and eroticism. Called such because it employs all means of shock to make the spectator aware of the fundamental cruelty of life

Aphorism

A concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words. Usually implies specific authorship and compact, telling expression

Coda

A conclusion. Usually restates or summarizes or integrates the preceding themes or movements. Also applied to a tailpiece added to a caudate Sonnet, and the last element of a syllable

Asyndeton

A condensed form of expression in which elements usually joined by conjunctions are presented in series, without the conjunctions (I came, I saw, I conquered). Though usually affecting the coordinated conjunction, can also omit subordinating conjunctions, (a man I know)

Colloquy

A conversation, especially a formal discussion or a conference

Distich

A couplet. Any two consecutive lines in similar form. An epigram or maxim completely expressed in couplet form

Diary

A day by day chronicle of events, a journal. Usually a personal and intimate record of events and thoughts kept by an individual. Not avowedly intended for publication Evelyn, Pepys, Whitelock, Fox, Swift, Wesley Sewall, Knight, Byrd As a literary device, furnishes a resilient format and the engaging illusion of privileged access to confidential materials

Cockney School

A derogatory title applied by Blackwood's Magazine to a group of nineteenth century writers, including Hazlitt, Hunt, and Keats, because of their alleged poor taste in matters such as diction and rhyme

Dualism

A doctrine that recognizes the possibility of the co existence of antithetical or complementary principles. In monistic schemes, mind is reducible to matter or matter is reducible to mind; in dualism mind and matter both exist

Aside

A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not supposed to be heard by other actors onstage. In Renaissance drama, this device was widely used in order to allow inner feelings to be expressed. In the nineteenth century, the convention was used for melodramatic and comedic effect. An aside is assumed to be truthful

Begging the Question

A fallacious form of argument in which a conclusion is presented although a premise has not been proved. The ______ of the major premise has been ________. Also called petitio principii

Column

A feature article that appears periodically in a newspaper or a magazine and is written by a single author. It may be comic, literary, religious, recreational, instructive, polemical, or gossipy

Dialogism

A feature of certain literature that permits the polyphonic interplay of many different voices rather than allowing a single voice to dominate

Antanaclasis

A figure in which two sharply different senses of a single word are exploited

Antithesis

A figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas. It is a balancing of one term against another. True __ structure demands not only that there be an opposition of ideas but that the opposition in different parts be manifested through similar grammatical structures

Antonomasia

A figure of speech in which a proper name is substituted for a general idea that it represents. Also used to describe the substitution of an epithet for a proper name, such as "Prince of Peace" for Christ. It is a form of periphrasis

Apostrophe

A figure of speech in which someone (usually but not always absent) some abstract quality, or a non existent personage is directly addressed as though present

Allusion

A figure of speech that makes brief reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object. By tapping the knowledge and memory of the reader, it seeks to secure a resonant emotional effect from the associations already existing in the reader's mind.

Dead Metaphor

A figure of speech used so long that it is taken in its denotative sense only, without any conscious comparison to a physical object it once conveyed. Many abstract terms are _________

Carmen Figure

A figure poem, one so written that the form of the printed words suggests the subject matter. Because any piece of writing looks like something, and has a graphic, visual aspect, any kind of writing may partake of figuration

Dogme 95

A filmmaking collective established in Denmark in 1995 led by Lars van Trier and Thomas Vinterberg and devoted to radical principles that subvert the dominance of fiction, illusion, and gimmickry. Their "Vow of Chastity" lists ten rules, including: shooting on location without imported props or sets: a handheld camera: natural light: and no identification of the director,

The American Dream

A fixture of American life and thought for many decades, it- positively or ironically- has to do with the grand ideal of the sort of success made possible by the charters and habits of the USA since its establishment in 1776. Includes freedom, success, wealth, and fulfillment. Ben Franklin, Fitzgerald, George O'Neil, Edward Albee, Norman Mailer, Langston Hughes, August Wilson, Toni Morrison

Dactyl

A foot consisting of one unaccented syllable followed by two unaccented

Choriambus

A foot in which two accented syllables flank two unaccented syllables. long short short long

Confession

A form of autobiography that deals with customarily hidden or highly private matters. Usually has a theoretical or intellectual emphasis in which religion, politics, art, or some ideological interest is important. The term is often applied to fictional works that place an emphasis oh the introspective view of a character in the process of developing new attitudes.

Ambages

A form of circumlocution in which the truth in spoken in a way that intends to deceive or mislead

Burlesque

A form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion: the sublime may be made absurd; honest emotions may be turned to sentimentality; a serious subject may be treated frivolously and vice versa. The essential quality that creates this term is the discrepancy between the style and the subject matter. The difference between this and parody, is that this is a travesty of a literary form, while a parody is a travesty of a particular work

Allegory

A form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, places, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings outside the narrative itself

Documentary Novel

A form of fiction in which there is an elaborate piling up of factual data, frequently including such materials as newspaper articles, popular songs, legal reports, and trial transcripts. Usually written by naturalistic novelists such as Zola, Dreiser, Passos, and Farrell. After World War II, the tradition was carried on by Mailer.

Chronicle

A form of historical writing. Differ from annals in their concern with larger aspects of history.

Ballad

A form of verse to be sung or recited and characterized by its presentation of an exciting episode in narrative or dramatic form. Though it is a form still much written, the so called popular ______ in most literatures belongs to the early periods. In early ______ the supernatural is likely to play a part; physical courage and love are frequent themes; concern common people. The term has also been applied to any slow, sentimental pop song

Anathema

A formal and solemn denunciation or imprecation, particularly as pronounced by the Greek or Roman Catholic Church against an individual, an institution, or a doctrine

Dissertation

A formal exposition written to clarify some scholarly problem. Sometimes used interchangeably with thesis, but the usual practice is to reserve ______ for the more elaborate projects written "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctor's degree" and to limit the use of thesis to smaller enterprises submitted for the bachelor's or master's degree. Both thesis and ______ are commonly used off college campuses simply to signify careful, thoughtful discussions on almost any serious problem

Dictamen

A formal pronouncement or dictate

Celtic Renaissance

A general term for a movement aimed at the preservation of the Gaelic language, the reconstruction of early Celtic history and literature, and the stimulation of a new literature authentically Celtic in spirit. From early in the nineteenth century, interest in Celtic antiquities grew. There also developed the practice of collecting and printing folk tales passed on in the oral tradition. In the 1890's came the Gaelic movement, which stressed the use of the Gaelic language. Irish literary theater established.

Antimasque

A grotesque, usually humorous dance interspersed among the beautiful and serious actions and dances of a masque. Often performed by professional actors and dancers, it serves as a foil to the masque proper, performed by courtly amateurs

Chicago Critics

A group associated with the University of Chicago who in 1952 published Critics and Criticism; also used to mean the followers of the group. They had theories about the history of criticism and about practical literary criticism. As historians, they were pluralists who valued critical systems. They were Neo-Aristotelian, concerned with the criticism of individual works. Crane, Olson, Mckeon, Booth, Maclean, Keast, Wright

Beat Generation

A group of American poets and novelists of the 1950's and 60's in rebellion against the prevailing culture. They expressed their revolt through literary works of loose structure and slang diction. They advocated an anti intellectual freedom, often associated with religious ecstasy, visionary states, or the effect of drugs. Included some measure of primitivism, orientalism, experimentation, eccentricity, and reliance on inspiration from modern jazz. Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Burroughs

Angry Young Men

A group of British writers in the 1950's and 1960's who demonstrated a particular bitterness in their attacks on outmoded, bourgeois values. The phrase comes from the title of Leslie Paul's autobiography, The Angry Young Man. The protagonists in their works see examples of the anti-hero. Look Back in Anger, Room at the Top, Lucky Jim, Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Ciceronians

A group of Latin stylists in the Renaissance who would not use any word that could not be found in Cicero's writings

Decadents

A group of late nineteenth century writers principally in France, who held that art was superior to nature and that the finest beauty was that of dying or decaying things

Bloomsbury Group

A group of writers and thinkers, many of whom lived in Bloomsbury, a residential district near central London. These writers, with Virginia Woolf as their unofficial leader, began meeting in the early 20th century and became a powerful force in British literary and intellectual life. Their philosophy was derived from G.E. Moore's Principal Ethica, which asserts that "the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects" are the rational ends of social progress

Black Letter

A heavy typeface with angular outlines and thick ornamental serifs. Also called "Gothic" "church text" and "Old English" it was widely used in early printing. The term implies an early work

Comic Relief

A humorous scene, incident, or speech in the course of a serious fiction or drama, introduced to heighten the seriousness of the story

Bouts-rimés

A kind of literary game in which players are given lists of rhyming words and are expected to write impromptu verses with the rhymes in the order given. The game has been popular in France since the seventeenth century and was a popular pastime of the bluestockings in England

Anadiplosis

A kind of repetition in which the last word or phrase of one sentence or line is repeated at the beginning of the next

Camera Eye Narration

A kind of storytelling in which the writer gives the appearance or impression of being thoroughly objective, realistic, and anatomical

Black Mountain School

A label applied to certain writers- Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan among them- associated with the Black Mountain College, an experimental school in North Carolina. They published the Black Mountain Review, which was highly influential in the projective Verse movement. The school itself was a bold experiment in aesthetic education, which included architecture and the graphic arts as well as literature

Della Cruscans

A late eighteenth century group of poets, including Robert Merry, Hannah Cowley, and Hester Thrale. Merry created the pen name after an academy in Florence. Enjoyed short lived success

Ara

A lengthy and formal curse, imprecation, anathema, or malediction

Dimeter

A line of verse consisting of two feet

Convention

A literary _____ is any device or style or subject matter which has become a recognized means of literary expression; an accepted element in technique

Th Celtic Revival

A literary movement that, in the last half of the eighteenth century, stressed the use of historical, literary, and mythological traditions of the ancient Celts, particularly the Welsh. Was a part of the romantic movement in that it stressed the primitive, the remote, the strange, and the mysterious, and it revolted against the pseudoclassicism by substituting a new mythology for classical myths and figures. Specifically characterized by interest in the druids and early Welsh Bards. Gray, Macpherson

Cento

A literary patchwork- usually in verse- made up of scraps from one or many authors.

Dandyism

A literary style used by the English and French decadent writers of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The term is derived from dandy; one who gives exaggeratedly fastidious attention to dress and appearance. Is marked by excessively refined emotion and precious thank you of language. Reflects a preference for culture over nature, city over country, manner over matter, surface over substance, and art over life.

Dramaticle

A little drama. The term ordinarily disparages and dismisses a miniature work, but Samuel Beckett applied it to his own play

Canzonet

A little song; specifically a solo with more than one movement.

Children's Literature

A loosely defined body of work consisting of books written for children; also loosely defined but usually understood as applying to children up to twelve. The field has grown robustly, and now includes work designed for children enjoyed by adults, and work designed for adults but enjoyed by children

Aubade

A lyric about dawn or a morning serenade- a song of lovers parting at dawn

Complaint

A lyric poem common in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in which the poet laments the unresponsiveness of his mistress or bemoans his unhappy lot and seeks to remedy it or regrets the sorry state of the world. Blues may seem a modern counterpart

Codex

A manuscript book, particularly of biblical or classical writing. There are more than twelve hundred biblical manuscripts that exist as this.

Axiom

A maxim or aphorism whose truth is held to be self evident. In logic, it is a premise accepted as true without need for demonstration and is used in building an argument

Breton Romance

A medieval French metrical romance that emphasizes love as the central force in the plot. They drew on the tradition of courtly love and frequently dealt with legends

Beast Epic

A medieval literary form consisting of a series of linked stories grouped around animal characters and often presenting satirical commentary on the church or court by means of human qualities attributed to beast characters. The various forms have one episode generally treated as the nucleus of the story. Roman de Renart

Alliterative Prose

A medieval tradition of giving dignity to prose by adding prosodic devices from alliterative verse

Anisobaric

A meteorological term having to do with unequal weight or atmospheric pressure; also used in prosody for rhyming syllables that bear significantly different levels of accent, as in the rhyme of appear and reindeer

Analysis

A method by which a thing is separated into parts, and those parts are given rigorous, logical, and detailed scrutiny, resulting in a consistent and relatively complete account of the elements of this thing and the principles of their organization

Cinéma Vérité

A method of filmmaking that relies on portable equipment and small camera crews, used primarily in the making of documentary films

Anapest

A metrical foot consisting of three syllables with two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one. short short long

Amphimacer

A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, the first and last accented, the second unaccented. Ex: nevermore

Amphibrach

A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, the first and last unaccented and the second accented. Ex: arrangement the pattern is short-long-short

Antibacchius

A metrical foot of three syllables, of which the first two are stressed and the third unstressed

Alliterative Romance

A metrical romance written in alliterative verse, especially produced during the revival of interest in alliterative poetry in the fourteenth century

Avant-Garde

A military metaphor drawn from the French vanguard and applied to new writing that shows striking innovations in form and subject matter

Barbarism

A mistake in the form of a word, or a word that results from such a mistake

Blackwood's Magazine

A monthly periodical published between 1817 and 1980, at first as a Tory reaction against the Whig Edinburgh Review. Although notorious for its attacks on the Cockney School, the magazine supported such radical poets as Shelley and Coleridge

Apologue

A moral fable such as that in C. Day Lewis's "A Country Comet"

Arts and Crafts Movement

A movement beginning in Northern Europe in the later nineteenth century that emphasized utility, individual craft, handiwork, simplicity, artistic versatility, and local native materials. Although it had to do chiefly with practical and decorative arts, it had an effect on literature as well. Ruggedness of design and execution

Apocalyptics

A movement in English poetry flourishing between 1935 and 1950, led by Henry Treece and J.R. Hendry, editors of the anthologies The New Apocalypse, and The White Horseman. Resembling surrealism in theme and technique, the movement favored extreme imagery, such as that attending Armageddon and Apocalypse

Colophon

A publisher's symbol or device formerly placed at the end of a book, but now more generally used on the title page or elsewhere near the beginning. Incorporated one or more of these items- title and author of the book, the printer, the date and place of manufacture. The term is also applied to any device that marks the conclusion of a printed work

Dadaism

A movement in Europe during and just after World War I that ignored logical relationships between idea and statement, argued for absolute freedom, and delivered itself of numerous provocative manifestoes. Founded in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan Tzara with the ostensibly destructive purpose of demolishing art and philosophy, intending to replace them with conscious madness as a protest against the insanity of war.

Acmeism

A movement in Russian poetry, begun around 1912 by members of the Poet's Guild, to promote precise treatment of realistic subjects Founders: Nikolai Gumilev, Sergei Girodetski

Doppelgänger

A mysterious double. A common figure in literature

Colliteration

A name suggested for the effect, similar to alliteration, of beginning accented syllables with similar consonants

Bourgeois Drama

A nearly obsolete term applied to plays that show the life of the common folk and the middle class rather than that of the courtly or rich.

Aestheticism

A nineteenth century literary movement that rested on the credo of "art for art's sake"

Braggadocio

A noisy braggart who is actually a coward

Bildungsroman

A novel that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical. Great Expectations and The Way of All Flesh and Children of Violence. Virtually synonymous with apprentice novel

Apprenticeship Novel

A novel that recounts the youth and young adulthood of a protagonist who is attempting to learn the nature of the world. Wilhelm Meister, The Way Of All Flesh, Of Human Bondage

Chiasmus

A pattern in which the second part is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed. In general, any elements subject to arrangement can be applied in this term. There is also phonemic ______ which is where the sounds are reversed (rain has fallen all the day)

Dieresis

A pause in a line of verse falls at the end of a foot; now usually called a caesura

Caesura

A pause or break in a line of verse. Originally, in classical literature, it divided a foot between two words, usually near the middle of a line. Some poets, however, have sought diversity of rhythmical effect by placing the it anywhere. Becomes a feminine _______ when placed after an unstressed syllable

The Dial

A periodical published in Boston from 1840-1844 as the organ of the New England transcendentalists.

Compositor

A person who sets type by hand or machine and carries out other chores in printing

Anti-Intellectualism

A philosophic doctrine that, assigning reason or intellect to a subordinate place, questions or denies the ability of the intellect to comprehend the true nature of things. Pragmatism, positivism, and bergsonism are all systems that represent this term

Courtly Love

A philosophy of love and a code of lovemaking that flourished in chivalric times

The Great Awakening

A phrase applied to a great revival of emotional religion in America, the movement being at it height in the early 40's under the leadership of Johnathan Edwards. It arose as an effort to reform religion and morals. The faculties of Harvard and Yale protested against the excesses of the movement, and by 1750, a reaction to the movement was underway

Cover Story

A piece in a periodical related to material shown on the cover

Closet Drama

A play (usually in verse) designed to be read rather than acted.

Cavalier Lyric

A poem characteristic of the Cavalier Lyricists. Lighthearted in tone, graceful, melodious, and polished in manner, artfully showing Latin classical influence, sometimes licentious and cynical or epigrammatic and witty. Many of the poems were occasional. The themes were love, war, chivalry, and loyalty to the king. Also applied to a later poem that illustrates the spirit of the times of the cavalier lyricists

Boasting Poem

A poem in which characters boast of their exploits; frequently found in oral literatures and in works such as ballads and epics. Beowulf

Chanson d'aventure

A poem recounting a romantic adventure, often involving a journey on horseback or a sea voyage

Country Song

A poem related to country life, customarily having to do with young love

Almanac Poem

A poem suitable for inclusion in an old fashioned almanac, with advice for farmers and astrological information

Dramatic Monologue

A poem that reveals "a soul in action" through the speech of one character in a dramatic situation. The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker's life. The circumstances surrounding the conversation are made clear by implication, and an insight into the character of the speaker may result

Crux

A point of decision in textual editing

Aporia

A point of doubt and indecision. Used to describe a species of irony in which a speaker expresses uncertainty but really intends none. Has also been recently used to indicate a point of undecidability.

Contaminatio

A practice which involved using material from one play to rewrite another

Charm

A primordial formulaic utterance- related to the spell, the curse, and the riddle- designed to have magical influence in the conduct of life

Binary Opposition

A principal originating in linguistics around 1915 that elements of a system do not exist as absolute substances, but only as entities defined in structural opposition to something else, such as the pairs long/short, front/back.

Antihero

A protagonist of a modern play or novel who has the converse of most of the traditional aspects of a hero. This hero is graceless, inept, and sometimes stupid or dishonest

Anastomosis

A scientific term for the interconnection between two entities, such as vessels, channels, or cavities. Also applied to the folding of a word between two parts of another, as in Joyce's underdarkneath in Ulysses, or a vernacular phrase such as "my own self" extended to mean the interrelation, interconnection, intercommunication, or intersubjectivity of persons

Canto

A section or division of a long poem. Derived from the Latin cantus, the word originally signified a section of a narrative poem of such length as to be sung by a minstrel in one singing

Abstract

A severe abridgment that summarizes the principal ideas or arguments advanced in a much longer work

Droll

A short dramatic piece cultivated on the Commonwealth Interregnum stage in England as a substitute for full length or serious plays that were not permitted by the government. Likely to be a short, racy, comic scene selected from some popular play and completed by dancing.

Anecdote

A short narrative detailing particulars of an interesting episode or event. Most frequently referring to the life of an important person, the term should lay claim to an element of truth. Though they are often used as the basis for short stories, they lacks complications of plot and subtleties of character.

Comedietta

A short or slight comedy.

Curtain Raiser

A short play presented before the principal dramatic production on a program, by analogy, anything preliminary.

Canzone

A short poem consisting of equal stanzas and an envoy shorter than the stanza. It is impossible to be specific about the verse form because different writers have varied the structure. The number of lines per stanza ranges from about seven to twenty, and the envoy from about three to ten. Frequent subjects were love, nature, and a wide range of emotional reactions to life

Condensation

A shortened form of a longer work but one that attempts to retain its salient characteristics, including style. Very much like abridgment in basic meaning, however, it is usually applied to a shortened version of a work of fiction, whereas the application of abridgment is broader

Abridgment

A shortened version of a work, but one that attempts to preserve essential elements

Chapbook

A small book or pamphlet- usually a single signature of sixteen or thirty two pages- sold in England and America through the eighteenth century by peddlers, or chapman. Dealt with all sorts of topics and incidents. The term has been revived as the name for miscellaneous small books and pamphlets.

Chanson de geste

A song of great deeds. A term applied to the early French epic. The earliest and best existing example dates from 1100. The early versions are written in ten syllable lines marked by assonance and grouped in strophes of varying length.

Coronach

A song of lamentation, a funeral dirge. A Gaelic word reflecting a custom of Ireland and in the Scottish Highlands. The word means a wailing together, and is typically sung by women

Chanson

A song. Originally composed of two line stanzas of equal length (couplets), each stanza ending in a refrain, this term is now more broadly interpreted to include almost any simple poem intended to be sung

Ditty

A song: refrain. The term is used for any short, simple, popular melody. The term is also used to refer to any short, apt saying or idea running through a composition. In Shakespeare, often means the words or theme of a song as distinct from the music

Anglo-Italian Sonnet

A sonnet combining the rhyme schemes of the English Sonnet (ababcdcdefefgg) and the Italian Sonnet (abbaabbacdecde), most often with an octave from the former and a sestet from the latter. Thomas Harry's "Hap" (abab cdcd efeffe) Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" (abab cdcd efgefg) Auden's "Who's Who" (ababcdcd efggfe)

Cryptarithm

A sophisticated puzzle in which letters of the alphabet are assigned a numerical value such that a spelled out formula is true of both the words and the numbers.

Ballad-Opera

A sort of burlesque opera that flourished on the English stage for several years following the appearance of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, still the best known example. Modeled on Italian Opera, which is burlesqued, it told its story in songs set to old tunes and appropriated various elements from farce and comedy

Antimeria

A species of enallage, using one part of speech for another, as in "but me no buts" but, a conjunction, is used here as first a verb, then a noun

Alternative History

A species of fiction in which much depends on some major reversal of known geography or history Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine, Phillip K. Dick's The Man In The High Castle

Ambo

A stage direction meaning both. Exuent Ambo- both go out

Canon

A standard of judgement or criterion. Applied to the authorized or accepting list of books belonging in the Christian bible. Use of romantic _____ excluded many female authors of the age, one of the most formative influences on the study of literature since 1965

Common Meter

A stanza of four lines, with the first and third being iambic tetrameter and the second and fourth iambic trimeter. Rhymed abab or abcb

Double Entendre

A statement that is deliberately ambiguous, in of whose possible meanings is risqué or suggestive of some impropriety.

Diegesis

A statement, description, or narration without explanation, conclusion, or judgement; an obsolescent theological term recently resurrected by critical theorists.

Detective Story

A story in which a crime is solved by a detective through a logical assembling and interpretation of palpable evidence, known as clues. Originated in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

Adventure Story

A story in which action- often exterior, usually physical, and frequently violent- is the predominant material, stressed above characterization, motivation, or theme

Boulevard Drama

A term applied to sophisticated comedy and melodrama popular in the French theater in the nineteenth century. It is centered around the opera house, where the operettas of Offenbach and frequently books by Meilhac and Halévy- with their extravagance and violent behavior- presented dramatic pictures of the irreverence, prankishness, and material practicality of the French Second Empire. In its present day usage, the term is sometimes applied to brittle, sophisticated comedy aimed at a popular audience

Amphibology

A term applied to statements capable of two different meanings- a kind of ambiguity. In literature it is usually intentional. The witches prophecies in Macbeth and Fedallah's deceptive assurances to captain Ahab in Moby Dick are well known examples

Anglo- Latin Literature

A term applied to the learned literature produced in Latin by English writers or others dwelling in England during the old English and Middle English periods. Largely in prose, it includes chronicles, serious treatises on theology, philosophy, law, and science- though satire and light verse were also written- as well as hymns, prayers, and religious plays

Confessional Poetry

A term applied to the work of a group of modern poets whose work features a public and sometimes painful display of private, personal matters. In this, the author seems to address the audience directly, without the intervention of a persona Ginsberg, Plath, Sexton, Lowell

Alliterative Verse

A term applied to verse forms, usually Germanic or Celtic in origin in which the metrical structure is based on patterned repetition of initial sounds within lines. The most common form in old English and Middle English poetry

Bluestockings

A term applied to women of pronounced intellectual interests. It gained currency after 1750 as a result of its application to a London group of women of literary and intellectual tastes who held assemblies to which literary and ingenious men were invited. The group's activities were directed towards encouraging an interest in literature, fostering the recognition of literary genius, and hence helping to remove the odium that had been attached to previous "learned ladies" it has been used by men as a term of opprobrium to describe pretentiously intellectual and pedantic women

Anacrusis

A term denoting one or more extra unaccented syllables at the beginning of a verse before the regular rhythm of the line makes its appearance. Literally an upward or back beat

Decadence

A term denoting the decline that commonly marks the end of a great period. _____ qualities include self consciousness, restless curiosity, oversubtilizing refinement, confusion of genres, eccentricity, and often moral perversity. Term is used to describe a period or work of art in which a deteriorating purpose or loss of adequate subject matter is combined with an increasing skill and even hypertrophied virtuosity of technique to produce an exaggerated sensationalism.

Comedy of Manners

A term designating the realistic, often satirical comedy of the Restoration, as practiced by Congreve and others. It is also used for the revival of this comedy a hundred years later by Goldsmith and Sheridan as well as another revival late in the nineteenth century. Likewise, also refers to the realistic comedy of the Elizabethan and Jacobean times. In the stricter sense of the term, the type concerns the manners and conventions of an artificial, highly sophisticated society. The stylized fashions and manners of this group dominate the surface and determine the pace and tone of this sort of comedy. Characters are more likely to be types than individuals. Plot is less important than atmosphere, dialogue, and satire. Emphasis on a illicit love duel

Auteur Theory

A term drawn from the French politique des auteurs, that is used in film criticism, where it is applied to a critical method by which a film is viewed as the product of its director, and is judged by the quality of expression of the director's personality or worldview

Art Epic

A term employed to distinguish such an epic as Milton's Paradise Lost from so-called folk epics, such as Beowulf. The _____ is supposed to be more sophisticated and more consciously moral in purpose than a folk epic

Baroque

A term first applied to the architectural style that flourished in Europe from the late sixteenth century until well into the eighteenth century. It is a blending of picturesque elements with the more formal style of the high Renaissance. Stressed movement, energy, and realistic treatment This age is often used to designate the period between 1580-1680

Carnivalesque

A term introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin to describe a spirit of carnival in literature, marked by fun, attention to the body, defiance of authority, variety, heteroglossia, and play

Theater of the Absurd

A term invented by Martin Esslin for the kind of drama that presents a view of the absurdity of the human condition by the abandoning of usual or rational devices and by the use of non realistic form

Decorum

A term loosely describing what is proper to a character, subject, or setting. By classical standards, the unity and harmony of a work could be maintained by the observance of dramatic propriety. Style should suit the speaker, the occasion, and the subject. Beginning in the Renaissance, the type to which a character belonged was regarded as an important determinant of his or her qualities; age, rank, and status were often held as fundamental

Artificial Comedy

A term sometimes used for comedy reflecting an artificial society, such as the comedy of manners

Dramatic Poetry

A term that, logically, should be restricted to poetry employing dramatic form or some element of dramatic technique. However, the term is indefinite enough to include compositions that may be more properly classed as poetic drama or are more commonly called closet dramas.

Dissociation of Sensibility

A term to describe a disjunction of thought and feeling in the writers of the seventeenth and later centuries. Earlier writers had a "direct sensuous apprehension of thought." To them, a thought was an experience and thus affected their sensibility. For these writers, mind and feeling so functioned together that sensibility devoured any experience. Later, a ____________ set in. The result was poets who thought but neither felt their thoughts nor fused thought and feeling in their poetry or, in other words, poets who suffered from a ____________

Agnomination

A term used between 1600 and 1800 to mean any play on words, especially as such as involved names of a person

American Language

A term used to designate certain idioms, pronunciations, and forms peculiar to the English language in America. These differences arise in several ways: some forms originate in America independently of English speech (gerrymander), some expressions that were once native to England have been brought here and have lived after they had died out in England (soccer)' and certain English forms have taken on modified meanings in America (store for shop). Also differs in syntax, intonation, slang, idiom, grammar, and pronunciation

Art Ballad

A term used to distinguish the literary ballad of known authorship from the early ballads of unknown authorship. La Belle Dame sans Merci- Keats Rosabelle- Scott Sister Helen- Dante Gabriel

Apollonian

A term used, along with Dionysian, in Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy for contrasting elements in Greek tragedy. Apollo, the god of youth and light, stood for reason, culture, and rectitude; Dionysus, the god of wine, for the irrational and undisciplined. These contrasting terms connote much the same opposition as classicism and romanticism

Cycle

A term, originally meaning circle, applied to a collection of poems or romances centering on some outstanding event or character. Cyclic narratives are traditional accumulations given literary form by a succession of authors rather than by a single writer

Buskin

A thick soled boot reaching halfway to the knee worn by Greek tragedians to increase their stature, even as comedians wore socks for the same purpose. By association, the term has come to mean tragedy

Bacchius

A three syllable foot usually defined quantitatively as a short followed by two longs, or qualitatively as a weak followed by two strongs. Applicable mostly to writing in classic antiquity and to Latin more than Greek, it has not been transferred to English, nor has its counterpart

Clinamen

A trope meaning a "swerving away" latterly adopted in Bloom's criticism to describe to inaugural gesture of a typical "strong" post enlightenment lyric

Débat

A type of composition usually in verse- highly popular in the Middle Ages- and in which two contestants debate a topic and refer it to a judge. Particularly popular in France, where the subjects ranged over most human interests, such as theology, morality, politics, courtly love, and social questions. In England, tended to be religious and moralistic.

City Comedy

A type of drama flourishing around 1588-1642, mostly in the form of satire set in the London of the playwright's day with low life characters engaged in various crimes, follies, and misdeeds. Typically avoids any hint of romance, patriotism, or the supernatural.

Chronicle Play

A type of drama flourishing in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, which drew its English historical materials from the sixteenth century chronicles, and stressed the patriotism of the times. Enjoyed increasing popularity with the outburst of nationalistic feeling following the defeat of the Spanish Armada and served as a medium for teaching English history. The structure of the early versions was very loose, with serious action often relieved by comic scenes or subplots. The term history play is often applied to a restricted group of these, which are unified, but are neither comedy, nor tragedy

Bestiary

A type of literature popular during the medieval period in which the habits of beasts, birds, and reptiles were made the text for allegory. These often ascribed human attributes to animals and were designed to moralize and to expound church doctrine. The fabulous natural history has given popularity to such creatures as the Phoenix, siren, and unicorn

Diminishing Metaphor

A type of metaphor that utilizes a deliberate discrepancy of connotation between tenor and vehicle. It's special quality lies in its use of a pejorative vehicle in reference to a tenor of value and desirability. Thus, the function seems to lie in forcing on the reader an intellectual reaction.

Calypso

A type of music that originated in the West Indies, particularly Trinidad. It is a ballad like improvisation in African rhythms. The singers, who compose as they sing, often deal satirically with current topics

Country House Poem

A type of poem that used an actual country house as the center of a meditation on life and society

Allelograph

A variant form of a word used in the vicinity of the basic form itself

Affix

A verbal element added before, inside, or after a base to change the meaning

Douzain

A verse of twelve lines

Brachycatalectic

A verse that lacks two syllables, normally unstressed. Usually what is omitted is the unstressed part of an anapest or dactyl

Alexandrine

A verse with six iambic feet. The form- that of heroic verse in France- received its name possibly from its use in old French romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries describing the adventures of Alexander The Great, or possibly from the name of Alexandre Paris, a French poet. Its appearance in England has been credited to Wyatt and Surrey

Différance

A virtually untranslatable French neologism introduced by Jacques Derrida to combine various denotations and connotations of difference, differing, deferring, and deferral. "A structure and a movement that cannot be conceived on the basis of the opposition presence/absence. The systematic play of differences, of traces of differences, of the spacing by which the elements relate to one another"

Dirge

A wailing song sung at a funeral or in commemoration of death, a short lyric of lamentation.

Bon Mot

A witty repartee or statement. A clever saying

Ananym

A word fabricated by spelling another word backwards

Acronym

A word formed by combining the initial letters or syllables of a series of words to form a name

Causerie

An informal essay, usually on a literary topic, and frequently in a series. The term is applied to such essays, because of their similarity to Causeries du lundi by Charles Augustine Sainte-Beuve. In the strictest sense, it should probably be limited to the kind of combined biographical and critical treatments for which Saint-Beuve was noted.

Cabaret

An establishment, such as a restaurant or a nightclub, with entertainment for customers seated at tables; also the entertainment itself, ordinarily singing, dancing, and comedy routines

Catechism

An exercise arranged as questions and answers, especially for use in religious instruction, occasionally adapted for non religious purposes

Colloquialism

An expression used in informal conversation, but not accepted universally in formal speech or writing. May differ from formal language in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, syntax, imagery, or connotation

Controlling Image

An image or metaphor that runs throughout and determines the form or nature of a literary work

Bad Quartos

A.W. Pollard's term for certain notably corrupt, garbled, and nearly incoherent early editions of Shakespeare's plays.

Aet., Aetat.

Abbreviations for the Latin aetatis suae, of his or her age. The term is used to designate a year of a persons life

Business

Action distinct from dialogue, scene work

Agitprop

Agitational Propaganda. Originally in behalf of the Soviet Union and communist ideology

Cross Alliteration

Alliteration of two separate consonants or clusters arranged as xyxy or xyyx.

Age of Sensibility

Alternate name for the Age of Johnson

Age of the Romantic Movement in England

Although a major Romantic poet, Robert Burns had died in 1796, William Blake's Songs of Innocence had appeared in 1789, and Romanticism had been apparent in English literature throughout much of the eighteenth century, the publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 is often regarded as the beginning of a period in which romanticism triumphed in British Literature, a period that is said to have ended in 1832 with the death of Scott During this period Scott created the historical novel, Jane Austen wrote her novels of manners, Mary Shelley uncannily combined the gothic novel and science fiction, and Lamb, DeQuincy, and Hazlitt raised the personal essay to a high level

Conversation Piece

Although rather relaxed, this term develops only among cultivated writers in periods of marked refinement. The typical example represents only one side of a conversation

Didactic Novel

Although the term is often applied to any novel plainly designed to teach a lesson, it has chiefly figured as a synonym for the education novel, and eighteenth century form presenting an ideal education for some young person

Blues

An African American folk song developed in the southern United States. It is characteristically short (three line stanza), melancholy, marked by frequent repetition, and sung slowly in a minor mode. The classic three line stanza is much like a heroic couplet, with the first line repeated and frequently with a conspicuous caesura after the second foot of each line.

Asclepiad

An Ancient Greek measure, normally following quantitative series: spondee, two or three choriambs, and an iamb

Aristophanic

An Ancient Greek measure, usually consisting of three quantitative feet: dactyl, trochee, trochee (or spondee). The measure, considered a variant of the pherecratic, is mentioned in Sidney's Arcadia

Definition Poem

An Elizabethan mode defined by Martz as "a rapid sequence of analogies"

Caudate Sonnet

An Italian form, rarely adopted into English, in which a standard fourteen line sonnet is augmented by the addition of other lines, including tails. The first fourteen lines are in iambic pentameter, with the rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet, abbaabbacdedec. There are six additional lines, continuing the rhyme scheme as cfffgg; the fifteenth and eighteenth lines are trimeter, and the rest are pentameter.

Anabasis

An account of a military movement or advance

Doctrinaire

An adjective applied to one whose attitude is controlled by preconception and disregards other points of view as well as practical considerations. This view is likely to be theoretical, dogmatic, narrow, and one sided, as compared with practical and broad minded.

Concordance

An alphabetical index of most or all of the words in a text or in the works of an author

Anticlimax

An arrangement of details such that the lesser appears at the point where something greater is expected.

Cultural Studies

An emerging field with elements of political economy, sociology, literary theory, anthropology, philosophy, and other fields devoted generally to the study of cultural phenomena. Radically different from the Chicago Critics and new critics of the mid twentieth century, but resembling the participants in new historicism, the diverse practitioners of ________ have been diligent in considering aesthetic and critical works as they relate to various social contexts, especially economic conditions and power relations among classes and groups

Annuals

Books appearing in successive numbers at intervals of one year and usually reviewing the events of the year within specified fields of interest, such as college _. The term is also sometimes applied to compendiums embracing historical data and miscellaneous statistics covering a long range of years. In nineteenth century England and America, the term was used to designate yearly compilations of tales, poems, and essays that were illustrated with plates and handsomely bound and issued in the fall of the year for sale around Christmas as gift books. Significant in American literature history because they were the best market for short fiction.

Block Books

Books printed from engraved blocks of wood, as in Flanders and Germany in the early 15th century. The printing was on only one side of the sheet, and in being bound together to make a book, the sheets were often glued together to form pages printed on both sides

Assonance

Generally, patterning of vowel sounds without regard to consonants. The patterning may be successive (knee-deep) (salt marsh), alternating (left my necktie), or chiastic (rain has fallen all the day). Sometimes refers to the same or similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds. Differs from full rhyme in that it doesn't dictate consonant sounds. Used extensively for musical effect

Album Verse

Casual verse designed to be included in a keepsake album, especially popular in the early nineteenth century. Alexander Pushkin was an expert at it. It subsequently fell from favor and remained only as a term of contempt

Counterplayers

Characters who plot against the hero or heroine

Court of Comedy

Comedy written to be performed at a royal court

Chiaroscuro

Contrasting light and shade. Originally applied to painting, the term is used in the criticism of various literary forms involving the contrast of light and darkness. Is patently important in film noir

Blason

Generally, a rationally ordered poem of praise or blame, proceeding detail by detail. Specifically, in the form called blason du corps feminin, an encomium for one's beloved

Apo koinou

Greek: in common. Describing a peculiar construction in which two distinct clauses share an unrepeated element in common, so that the element serves two grammatical functions.

Dramatic Conventions

Devices that are employed as substitutions for reality in the drama and that the audience accepts as real although it knows them to be false.

Cynicism

Doubt of the generally accepted standards or of the innate goodness of human action. In literature, the term characterizes writers or movements distinguished by dissatisfaction. Any highly individualistic writer scornful of accepted social standards and ideals can be called this. Theater of the Absurd, Theater of the Cruel, and antirealistic novels The Way of All Flesh, Of Human Bondage

Defamiliarization

English rendering of Russian ostraenie, used by Russian formalists to indicate a property of great art, which, instead of representing an outside reality by transparent means, is directed at the human means of perceiving and communicating information. Because our senses are forever falling into rigid habits and empty routines, we need art to wake us up by making the familiar seem strange

Atellan

Farcical and sometimes indecent works

Double Rhyme

Feminine rhyme, that is, rhyme in which the similarly stressed syllables are followed by identically unstressed syllables

Conte

French for tale, this is used in several and sometimes conflicting senses. It came in the nineteenth century to be used for short stories of tightly constructed plot and great concision. In this sense, it designates a work shorter and more tight than a nouvelle. However, in England, the term is sometimes used for a work longer than a short story and shorter than a novel

Condition of England

From about the middle of the nineteenth century, many of the most serious writers in England addressed grave problems of society, culture, class, and education.

Colonial Period in American Literature

From the founding of the colony at Jamestown until the Stamp Act in 1765 finally forced the colonists to see themselves as separate from their motherland, the writing produced in America was generally utilitarian, polemical, or religious. Three major figures emerged in this period: Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, and Benjamin Franklin. Belles-lettres flourished. The seventeenth century was the age of travel and personal records, diaries, historical and descriptive accounts, sermons, and a little verse. In the eighteenth century, religious controversy was prevalent, newspapers and almanacs flourished

Dipody

In classical prosody, a measure consisting of two metrical feet, usually slightly different from each other. In a loose sense- applied to varied qualitative scansion- dipody recognizes more than one level of stress on accented syllables. Much verse in nursery rhymes and ballads is ______. In these cases, the term refers to succeeding feet with strong stress in one and a weaker stress in the other, with such feet functioning as a measure

Absurd

In contemporary literature and criticism, a term applied to the sense that human beings, cut off from their roots, live in meaningless isolation in an alien universe

Anagnorisis

In drama, the discovery or recognition that leads to the peripety of reversal

Deep Focus

In film, a method by which objects both near and far away are simultaneously in focus. Widely used in realistic film making.

Anthem

In its earlier sense, an arrangement of words from the Bible, usually from the Psalms, planned for church worship, with music arranged for responsive singing. In its common and popular use, any song of praise, rejoicing, or reverence

Catharsis

In medical terms, referred to the discharge from the body of the excess of elements produced by a state of sickness and thus the return to bodily health. Viewed in this sense, catharsis is the process by which an unhealthy emotional state produced by an imbalance of feelings is corrected and emotional health restored. In religious terms, it is the process of purification in which the soul collects its elements, brings itself together from all parts of the body, and can exist by itself. Essential part of Greek tragedy

Carol

In medieval France, it was a dance. The term was later applied to the accompanying song. The leader sang the stanzas, the other dancers sang the refrain. Became very popular, instrumental in extending the influence of the French lyric. Later came to mean any joyous song, then a hymn of religious joy, and finally, a Christian hymn in particular.

Almanac

In medieval times, a permanent table showing the movement of heavenly bodies, form which calculations for any year could be made. Later calendars for single years were made, along with the inclusion of useful information. features marginally in literature. By the latter part of the eighteenth century, contained coarse ate,pots at literature and jokes

Comedy

In medieval times, the word was applied to non dramatic literary works marked by a happy ending and a less exalted style than in tragedy. Compared with tragedy, is a lighter form that aims primarily to amuse. Differs from farce and burlesque by having a more sustained plot, weightier and subtler dialogue, more lifelike characters, and less boisterous behavior.

Arsis

In metrics, the term is usually applied today to a stressed syllable, however in Greek usage, it referred to the unstressed syllable

Catch

In music, a round for at least three voices. A popular musical form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it still occurs predominately in children's songs. Now usually called a round. In metrics, the term is a form of anacrusis, applied to an extra unstressed syllable at the beginning of a line that would normally begin with a stressed syllable

Cadence

In one sense, the sound pattern that precedes a marked pause or the end of a sentence, making it interrogatory, hortatory, pleading, and so forth. In another sense, it is the rhythm established in the sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables in a phrasal unit. In a third and broader sense, it is the rhythmical movement of writing when it is read aloud

Collage

In pictorial arts, the technique by which materials not usually associated with one another are assembled and pasted together on a single surface. By analogy, the term is applied in literature to works incorporating quotations, allusions, foreign expressions, and nonverbal elements

Antispast

In prosody, a foot consisting of four syllables, with the accents falling on the two middle syllables, or a verse pattern in which an iambic foot is followed by a trochaic foot, beyond going

Diastole

In quantitative scansion, the lengthening of a syllable usually scanned as short. Spenser also applied the term to occasions when a word conventionally scanned as one syllable counts as two

Accidental

In textual criticism, any element of a text not essential to the meaning of the words; capitalization, spelling, and punctuation

Apophrades

In the Ancient Greek calendar, unlucky or unclean days that fell at the end of the month. Recently, the term has been appropriated in Harold Bloom's criticism as the name of a "revisionary ratio" in which a dead precursor returns

Dialectic

In the broadest sense, simply the art of argumentation or debate, but the term is customarily applied in one of its more restricted senses. In classical literature, it refers to the tradition of continuing debate or discussion of eternally unresolved issues. In philosophy, it is applied to a systematic analysis of a problem or an idea. In criticism, the term is applied to the ideas, logic, or reasoning that gives structure to certain works

Classic

In the singular, it is usually applied to a piece of literature that by common consent has achieved a recognized superior status in literary history: also an author of similar standing.

Catalexis

Incompleteness of the last foot of a line: truncation by omission of one or two final syllables; the opposite of anacrusis. Also applied to the truncation of an initial unstressed syllable

Anaptyxis

Insertion of a vowel sound between two consonant sounds, as in pronunciation (decathalon vs decathlon)

Didacticism

Instructiveness in a work, one purpose of which is to give guidance, particularly in moral, ethical, or religious matters. Because all art communicates something- an idea, a teaching, a precept, an emotion, an attitude, a fact, an autobiographical incident, a sensation- the question of _________ in a literary work appears to be one of the author 's actual or ostensible purpose. If instruction is selected as the primary goal, then the work is ______

Anastrophe

Inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence. Can apply to the usual order of adjectives in a sentence, the adjective noun succession, and the standard subject verb object order of syntax.

Antiphrasis

Irony, the satirical or humorous use of a word or phrase to convey an idea exactly opposite to its real significance. Julius Caesar, Antony's speech, honorable men

Dubia

Items of uncertain or disputed authority

Anime

Japanese adaptation of the French for "animated cartoon" applied to styles of film and television productions, frequently tales of fantasy, science fiction, or horror, and drawn with extreme stylization and asymmetric design. Most of the figures have large eyes, unkempt hair, and exaggerated anatomies.

Catena

Latin "chain". A series of quotations used decoratively

Addubitatio

Latin counterpart of diaporesis, in which a speaker expresses doubt

Apologia

Latin form of apology

De Casibus

Latin, concerning the falls from greatness.

Anceps

Latin- two headed, in classical quantitative prosody, a syllable that can be counted as long or short

Arthurian Legend

Legends of Arthur and his knights of the round table. Began in about 500 BC, climaxed in 1485, and still influences works to this day

Diectasis

Lengthening a word by the interpolation of a syllable

Agon

Literally a contest of any kind. In Greek tragedy it was a long dispute Leading characters are classified according to their relation to this conflict: protagonist, antagonist

Anthology

Literally a gathering of flowers, the term designates a collection of writing, either prose or poetry, usually by various authors.

Donnée

Literally a given, the term is based in an analogy to a problem in geometry in which certain data are given, out of which one works out the meaning or solution. Can be setting, characters, situation, or idea. In any case, it is the raw material with which an artist starts.

Dystopia

Literally bad place. The term is applied to accounts of imaginary worlds, usually in the future, in which present tendencies are carried out to their intensely unpleasant culminations

Ancilla

Literally maidservant, an ancillary aid in the study of a subject

Dénouement

Literally unknotting. The final unraveling of a plot; the solution of a mystery; an explanation or outcome

Aristotelian Criticism

Literally, criticism by Aristotle, or criticism that follows the Aristotle's methods. Chief contribution is a closely reasoned argument in favor of a complex relation, cause and effect, means and end, form and matter, among six qualitative elements of the literary art, particularly as they figure in tragic drama: plot (mythos) character (ethos) thought and feeling (dianoia) diction (lexis) sound (melos) and spectacle (opsis). Other contributions are such terms and concepts as hamartia, catharsis.

Dithyramb

Literary expression characterized by wild, excited, passionate language. It's lyric power relates it most nearly to verse, although it's unordered sequence and development- its seemingly improvised quality- often give it the form of prose. Probably originally meant to be accompanied by music and was historically associated with Greek ceremonial worship of Dionysus. It formed the model for the choral element in Greek verse, later developing into the finer quality we know in Greek tragedy. Most closely related to the ode.

Analects

Literary gleanings, fragments, or passages from the writings of an author or authors.

Belles-Lettres

Literature comprising drama, poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays that lives because of inherent imaginative and artistic rather than scientific, philosophical, or intellectual qualities. Now sometimes used to characterize light or artificial writing

Celtic Literature

Literature produced by a people speaking any of the Celtic dialects. Linguistically, the Celts are divided into two main groups: the Brythonic Celts include Ancient Britons, Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons, and the Gaelic Celts include the Irish, the Manx, and the Scottish Gaels. The Continental Celts left no literature, however the Celts of Great Britain and Ireland have produced much literature of interest to students of English and American Renaissance

Anglo-Irish Literature

Literature produced in English by Irish writers, especially those living in Ireland. Usually actuated by a conscious effort to use Celtic materials and a style flavored by Irish idioms, called "Hibernian English"

Chant

Loosely used to mean a song, but more particularly, the term signifies the intoning of words to a monotonous musical measure of few notes. The words of these in the English Church come from such biblical sources as the Psalms. Cadence is an important aspect, and usually one note is used for a series of successive words or syllables. Generally considered less melodious than songs.

Addenda

Matter to be added to a piece of writing Usually items inadvertently omitted or received too late for inclusion

Compensation

Means of making up for omissions in a line; a form of substitution. Such omissions are usually unstressed syllables; the customary means of compensating for their absence is a pause

Corpus Christi Plays

Medieval religious lays based on the Bible and performed by town guilds on movable wagons or pageants as part of the procession on Corpus Christi day

Brahmins

Members of the highest caste among the Hindus. The name is applied to certain socially exclusive families of New England, particularly in the nineteenth century. Customarily used derisively

Claque

Mercenaries employed to applaud a work or performance

Acatalectic

Metrically complete; applied to lines that carry out the basic metrical and rhythmic pattern of a poem

Apolelymenon

Milton's term for the monostrophic design of such choruses as those in his Samson Agonistes. Milton also used the term in Greek script in a note to a jesting Latin ode

Alloeostropha

Milton's term for the variable divisions of the Choric Odes into what he called irregular stanzas or pauses

Ana

Miscellaneous saying, anecdotes, gossip, and scraps of information about a person, or a book that records such sayings and anecdotes

Ambivalence

Mutually conflicting feelings or attitudes. The term is often used to describe the contradictory attitudes an author takes towards characters or societies and also to describe a confusion of attitude or response called forth by a work

Amphisbaenic Rhyme

Named for the monster in Greek fable that has a head at each end and can go either direction, the term is used to describe backward rhyme- that is, two rhyme words or syllables, the second of which inverts the order of the first ( step and pets)

Anonymous

Nameless, applied to a work of which the name of the author is unknown or withheld

Annals

Narratives of historical events recorded year by year. Anglo-Saxon monks in the seventh century recorded important events in ecclesiastical calendars. This practice developed into records. The term in modern times is used rather loosely for historical narrative not necessarily recorded by years and for digests and records of deliberative bodies and of scientific and artistic organizations

Chant Royal

One of the most complicated French verse forms. The tradition calls for a dignified, heroic subject. Consists of sixty lines arranged in five stanzas of eleven lines each and an envoy of five lines, with the envoy ordinarily started with an invocation in the manner of a ballad. The usual rhyme scheme is ababccddedE in the stanza, and ddedE in the envoy. The capital e indicates the recurrence of a complete line as a refrain at the end of each stanza and at the close of the envoy. All stanzas must follow the same rhyme pattern, and no rhyme word may appear twice, except in the envoy

Ballade

One of the most popular artificial French verse forms, not to be confused with the ballad. Has been rather liberally interpreted. Early usage most frequently demanded three stanzas and an envoy, though the number of lines and syllables have varied. Traditional earmarks are the refrain, the envoy (a message of importance addressed to the patron), and the use of only three or four rhymes in the entire poem, with no rhyme words repeated except for the refrain

Antistrophe

One of the three stanzaic forms of the Greek choral ode, with the others being strophe and epode. It is identical in meter to the strophe, which precedes it. As the chorus sang the strophe, they moved from right to left, as they sing the antistrophe they retraced these steps, moving back to the original position. In rhetoric, it is the reciprocal conversion of the same words in succeeding phrases or clauses, as in T.S. Elliot's "the desert in the garden, the garden in the desert"

Analytic-Prefixal

One term for the practices of altering verbal units by means of adding a separate element at the beginning. English creates the infinitive by adding to to the base verb

Critic

One who estimates and passes judgement on the nature, value, and quality of artistic works

Cynghanedd

Originally a medieval Welsh term covering a wide and sophisticated range of verse devices, the term was revived in the late nineteenth century to refer to various harmonious patterns of interlaced multiple alliteration

Cinquain

Originally applied to a medieval five line stanza of varying meter and rhyme scheme, now often used for any five line stanza. More precisely however, it is applied to the five line stanza used by Adelaide Crapsey, consisting of five unrhymed lines of two, four, six, eight, and two syllables

Apocryoha

Originally meant "hidden or secret things" came to denote books of the Bible not regarded as inspired and hence excluded from the sacred canon. In a non biblical sense, writings that have been attributed to authors but have not been generally accepted into the canon of their works

Blog

Originally weblog, a technical record of internet activities; later a site on the internet maintained by a person or group for diaries, opinions, stories, and other sorts of material that is presented in the online equivalent of a commonplace book.

Canticle

Originally, a prose chant or hymn taken directly from bible verse; later applied to any chant, and, in modern usage, to any poem, with its explicit genesis in the rhythms and symbols of religion

Bombast

Originally, any sort of ornamental but unnecessary padding; pleonasm. Now mostly limited to ranting, insincere, and extravagant language, and outlandish grandiloquence. Elizabethan tragedy contains much of this style

Conceit

Originally, the term implied something conceived in the mind. Its later application to a type of poetic metaphor retains the original sense in that it implies ingenuity. The term designates fanciful notion, usually expressed through an elaborate analogy and pointing to a striking parallel between ostensibly dissimilar things. In English there are two basic kinds; the Petrarchan, most often found in love poems, in which the subject is compared extensively and elaborately to some object, such as a rose, and the metaphysical version, in which complex, startling, paradoxical, and highly intellectual analogies abound.

Amoebean Verses

Pastoral verses in matched strophes or stanzas spoken by two speakers alternately

Accentualism

Paul Fussell's term for "the theory of the line which considers the number of stresses to be its fundamental prosodic skeleton"

Companion Poems

Pens designed to complement each other. Each is complete by itself, but each is enriched and broadened when viewed with its _______

Agrarians

People living in an agricultural society or espousing the merits of such a society. The term is usually applied to a group of southern American writers who published The Fugitive, a little magazine of poetry and some criticism, associated with Vanderbilt University Among the founders of New Criticism

Chain Verse

Poetry in which the stanzas are linked through some pattern of repetition. The last line of one stanza may be the first of the next, producing a linked group of stanzas that may be considered a chain. The linkage may also be secured by a repetition of rhyme. The villanelle, a nineteen lined poem in tercets followed by a quatrain and having only two rhymes and frequent repetitions of lines is a complex example

Cubist poetry

Poetry that attempts to do in verse what cubist painters do on canvas- that is, take the elements of an experience, fragment them, and then rearrange them in a meaningful new synthesis

Concrete Poetry

Poetry that exploits the graphic, visual aspect of writing. A poem that is also a work of graphic art

Apocryphon

Rare singular of apocrypha, meaning a single apocryphal work

Asian-American Literature

Reflecting the increasing diversity of the population of the US, a large and growing body of literature is produced by writers with an Asian-American Background

Auxesis

Rhetorical augmentation, either a piling on of detail in no particular order, or a climactic arrangement advancing from small to great

Aparithmesis

Rhetorical enumeration

Compound

Rhyme between primary and secondary stressed syllables (childhood, wildwood)

Cross Compound Rhyme

Rhyme between the first syllable of one word and the second syllable of another

Apocopated Rhyme

Rhyme in which the final stressed syllable of a word is rhymed with the stressed syllable of a word ending in a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Crazy and say

Beginning Rhyme

Rhyme that occurs within the first syllable or syllables of lines. Few examples can be found in serious literature

Circumlocution

Roundabout or evasive speech or writing, in which many words are used where a few would have served

Doggerel

Rude verse. Any poorly executed attempt at poetry. Characteristic of this term are monotony of rhyme and rhythm, cheap sentiment, and trivial, trite subject matter.

Boustrophedon

Running alternately from left to right and right to left; a term, literally ox plowing, that describes the direction of writing in certain ancient inscriptions. The term has also been applied to supersede amphisbaenic as it relates to such a rhyme as loop and pool.

Analogue

Something that is like another given thing. May mean a cognate. In literary history, two versions of the same story may be called this, especially if no direct relationship can be established

Documentary Film

Sometimes called actualities in the early twentieth century, began during the 1920's, avoids actors, studios, stories, special effects, and other aspects of filmed fiction

Broadside Ballad

Soon after the development of printing in England, ballads were prepared for circulation on folio sheets. Encompassed many styles of literary ballads

Augustan

Specifically refers to the age of Emperor Augustus of Rome. But because the time of Augustus was notable for the perfection of letters and learning, the term has, by analogy, been applied to other epochs in world history when literary culture was high. English ____ Age applies to the ring of Queen Anne (1702-1714) sometimes given to the dates of the Pope (1688-1744). Writers were self consciously _____ , aware of their parallels of their writing to Latin literature and London to Rome

Catachresis

Strictly, any misuse or misapplication or a word. Limited by Quintilian to cases in which there is a figurative name but no likely expression. Sometimes used for a mixed figure (blind mouth)

Bob and Wheel

Term invented during the nineteenth century to describe a phenomenon peculiar to the revival of alliterative verse in the later Middle English period; after a strophe of unrhymed alliterative lines, the poem shifts into a set of rhymed lines, the first, or bob, very short, with the remainder, or wheel, typically a short lined rhymed quatrain ababa

Burletta

Term used in the late eighteenth century for a variety of musical dramatic forms somewhat like the ballad opera, the extravaganza, and the pantomime A drama in rhyme, entirely musical- a short comic piece consisting of recitative and singing, wholly accompanied, more or less, by the orchestra

Adversarius

The "straight" character in a formal satire who is addressed by the persona and who functions to elicit and shape that speaker's remarks

Dolce Stil Nuovo

The "sweet new style" that flourished among lyric poets in certain Romance languages during the thirteenth century, with a premium on lucidity and complex musicality. This style was the chief precursor and exemplar of rhymed verse in Indo-European Languages

Anglo-French

The French language used in England between 1100 and 1350

Doric

The _____ dialect in Ancient Greece was thought of as lacking in refinement, and ______ architecture was marked by simplicity and strength rather than by beauty of detail. Perhaps the best single synonym is simple

Anaphone

The acoustic counterpart of the anagram. The sounds composing a word or phrase are rearranged to make another word or phrase

Annotation

The addition of explanatory notes to a text by the author or an editor to explain, translate, cite sources, give bibliographical data, comment, gloss, or paraphrase. A variorum edition represents the ultimate. In addition to the standard data, an _ bibliography includes comments on he works listed

Contrapuntal

The adjective of counterpoint. In music, the term refers to the combination of parts or voices. By analogy, it is represented in literature in which elements are played against each other by being presented simultaneously or in very close sequence.

Anthropomorphism

The ascription of human characteristics to nonhuman objects. Personification is a limited form of this

Denotation

The basic meaning of a word, independent of its emotional coloration or associations

Determinism

The belief that all ostensible acts of the will are actually the result of causes that determine them. When used to describe a doctrine in a literary work, it has a wide range of philosophical possibilities, and the potential determining forces are many. In classical literature, it may be fate or necessity. In Christian learnings it may be the will of God. In naturalistic it may be scientific law. Actions are determined from without rather than from their own free will.

Cultural Primitivism

The belief that nature is preferable and fundamentally better than any aspect of human culture. It is a belief that distrusts artifice, logic, social and political organizations, rules, and conventions

Chronological Primitivism

The belief that, on the whole, the lives and actions of human beings were most admirable and desirable at an earlier stage of history than at the present

Alazon

The braggart or imposter in Greek Comedy. Usually a man, he takes many forms- anyone pretentious who is held up to ridicule. He enters English Literature through Plautus's Miles Gloriosus, where he is a stock character. Widely used in other literary forms, including the novel

Broken Rhyme

The breaking of a word at the end of a line for the sake of a rhyme. The novelty and disruption of this rare device have limited its use to various sorts of comic verse, including satire or doggerel

Antagonist

The character directly opposed to the protagonist

Dramatic Personae

The characters in a drama, a novel, or a poem. The term is also applied to a listing of the characters in the program of a play, at the beginning of a printed version of a play, or sometimes at the beginning of a novel

Coincidence

The coinciding of events so that the movement of a plot is determined or significantly altered without a sense of necessity or casual relationship among the events

Diminishing Age in English Literature

The coming of World War II in 1939 profoundly changed British life. A beleaguered nation struggling desperately for survival devoted most of its energies for six years to defeating its military enemies. Then, with many of its finest young people dead, its major cities in shambles, and its economy greatly weakened, it had to spend another decade reestablishing itself.

Catastrophe

The conclusion of a play, particularly a tragedy. Because it is used mostly in connection with a tragedy and involves the death of the hero, it is sometimes used by extension to mean an unhappy ending in non dramatic fiction and also in life

Antirealistic Novel

The contemporary novel of fantasy, illogicality, and absurdity. A fictional counterpart of the theater of the absurd and other modern movements that are extreme manipulations and often the elimination of expected and customary forms. The writer abandons coherent plot, setting, motivation, characterization, cause and effect, and even syntax and logic on occasion.

Quarrels of the Ancients and Moderns

The controversy that took place in France and England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries over the relative merits of classical and contemporary cultures. Stimulated by renaissance

Distance

The degree of dispassionateness with which reader or audience can view the people, places, and events in a literary work; the degree of disinterest that the author displays toward his or her characters and actions.

"Art for Art's Sake"

The doctrine that art is its own excuse for being and that its values are aesthetic, not moral, political, or social

Augustinianism

The doctrines of St. Augustine, author of Confessions- the first extended, honest self analysis. He strongly defended the orthodox view of god and human beings against the heresies of Pelagius. He exalted the glory of God, stressed original sin, and asserted the necessity of divine grace

Dream Allegory

The dream was a conventional narrative frame that was widely used in the Middle Ages and is still employed on occasion. The narrator falls asleep and while sleeping dreams a dream that is the actual story told in the dream frame.

Bathos

The effect resulting from the unsuccessful effort to achieve dignity or sublimity of style, an unintentional anticlimax, dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous

Deus Ex Machina

The employment of some unexpected and improbable incident to make things turn out right. In the Ancient Greek theater, when gods appeared, they were lowered from a "machine" or structure, above the stage. Such abrupt but timely appearance of a god was referred to as _________. The term now characterizes any device whereby and author solves a difficult situation by a forced invention

Anacoluthon

The failure- accidental or deliberate- to complete a sentence according to the structural plan with which it was started. In literary practice, this device can work as an index of anxiety or disturbed coherence

Cavalier Lyricists

The followers of Charles I were called cavaliers, as opposed to the supporters of the parliament, who were called roundheads. The _______, a group of the former who composed lighthearted poems, included a Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling. These were soldiers and courtiers first, and Lyricists only incidentally.

Alterity

The general idea of otherness, expressed most influentially in the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, who argued that much Western thought defined itself by reference to opposition to something alien or other. Much explored in postmodern literary and cultural theory

Cyclic Drama

The great cycles of medieval religious drama

Digression

The insertion of material often not closely related to the subject in a work. In a well-knit plot, a _______ violates unity. In the familiar essay, it is a standard device, and it was sometimes used in the epic. If it is lengthy and formal, it is sometimes called an excursus

Aposiopesis

The intentional failure to complete a sentence, to convey extreme exasperation or to imply a threat

Biographical Fallacy

The interpretations of a work of art through heavy reliance on aspects of the maker's life in the basis for understanding

Age of Johnson

The interval between 1759 and 1798 marked a transition in English Literature. the Neoclassicism that dominated the first half of the century was yielding in many ways to romanticism. The novel continued to flourish, with sentimental attitudes and gothic horrors becoming significant elements. Little was accomplished in drama except for the creation of laughing comedy in response to sentimental comedy Also called the Age of Sensibility

Affective Fallacy

The judging of a work of art in terms of its results, especially its emotional effect

Apparatus

The means by which the document is presented for textual study. With a critical edition of a poem, say, an editor will choose one version to serve as the definitive text; the ____ will provide alternative readings with their sources, along with other information related to the text

Choliambus

The most important variety of scazon because it has to do with the iambic rhythm that is most important in English. In English, all that matters is that the last foot in a prevalently iambic line is not an iamb, anapest, amphibrach, or spondee, it is a dactyl or a trochee. In commonest form, the fifth foot of a line that is basically iambic pentameter is supplanted by a trochee. Differs radically from the common feminine line ending, which means that the final iamb is replaced with an amphibrach, or is simply augmented by one or more unaccented syllables

Allonym

The name of an actual person, other than the author that is signed by the author to the work

Aphaeresis

The omission of an initial unstressed syllables at the beginning of a word

Apocope

The omission of one or more sounds from a word, as "even" for evening, or "bod" for body.

Dysphemism

The opposite of a euphemism. If one starts with a more or less neutral word such as die, then a euphemism would be pass away, and a __________ would be croak

Cacophony

The opposite of euphony, a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds. Used in the criticism of poetry to indicate any disagreeable sound effect

Comstockery

The overzealous and prudish censorship of literature and other arts because of their supposed immorality. The term is derived from Anthony Comstock, a nineteenth and early twentieth century American Social Reformer, crusader against vice, and relentless censor of suspect books and pictures

Complication

The part of a plot in which the entanglement caused by the conflict of opposing forces is developed. In the five part dramatic structure, it is synonymous with the rising action

Commonwealth Interregnum

The period between the execution of Charles I in 1649, and the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660, during which the empire was controlled by Parliament led by a Puritan leader, Oliver Cromwell. Although theatre was closed, it was a period of major prose works.

Anglo-Norman Period

The period in English literature between 1100 and 1350, so called because of the dominance of Norman French culture. The period is also called the Early Middle English Period and is frequently dated until 1066. Oxford and Cambridge rose, English rose as the language of the upper class, displacing French. Latin was used for learned works, French for courtly literature, and English chiefly for popular works.

Apposition

The placing in immediately succeeding order of two or more coordinate elements, one of which is always an explanation, qualification, or modification of the first. My uncle, a man of honor

Crisis

The point at which the opposing forces that create the conflict interlock in the decisive action on which a plot will turn. Applied to the episode of incident wherein the situation of the protagonist is certain either to improve or worsen

Antiphon

The verse or verses of a psalm, traditional passage, or portion of the liturgy changed or sung by alternating choirs during the divine office in the Roman Catholic Church. Drama grew from additions to ___ chants in the liturgy. Originally synonymous with anthem

Characterization

The presentation of imaginary persons so that they seem lifelike. Three fundamental elements. The explicit presentation by the author of the character through direct exposition. The presentation of the character in action. The representation within a character of the impact of actions and emotions on the characters inner self

Demotion

The reduction of stress on a syllable caused by the rhythmic environment. Usually involves monosyllables of which the stress depends on the context

Consonance

The relation between words in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables where but the vowels that precede them differ (mill, ball). Most so called eye rhymes are instances of consonance Shelley, Dickinson

Alliteration

The repetition of initial identical consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in successive or closely associated syllables

Antimetabole

The repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order. It is much like chiasmus, which reverses grammatical order, but not the same words

Archive

The repository for historical documents or public records; also the documents and records stored there

Adaptation

The rewriting of a work from its original form to fit it for another medium

Deuteragonist

The role second in importance to the protagonist in Greek drama. Sometimes applied to a character who serves as a foil to the leading character

Action

The series of events that constitute a plot; coherent action differs from aimless or episodic activity

Canonical Hours

The seven periods of the day set aside for prayers of a specified sort: matins, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, and complin

Charade

The silent acting out of the meaning of a syllable or homonym.

Comedy of Humours

The special type of realistic comedy that was developed in the closing years of the sixteenth century by Ben Jonson and George Chapman and that derives its comic interest largely from the exhibition of characters whose conduct is controlled by one characteristic or humour. Some single psychophysiological humour or exaggerated trait of character gave the important figures in the action a definite bias or disposition, and supplied the chief motive for their actions. Influence comedy of the restoration period

Alexandrianism

The spirit prevailing in the literary and scientific work of Hellenistic writers flourishing in Alexandria for about three centuries after 325 BC. The literature is distinguished by originality, novelty, learning, and devotion to ancestral models.

Ballad Stanza

The stanza of a popular or folk ______- usually consisting of four lines rhyming abcb, with the first and third lines carrying four accents and the second and fourth carrying three. The rhyme is sometimes approximate, with assonance and consonance frequently appearing. A refrain is common

Ambiguity

The state of having more than one meaning, with resulting uncertainty as to the intended significance of the statement. The chief causes of unintentional _ are undue brevity and compression, "cloudy" reference of pronoun, faulty or inverted sequence, and the use of a word with two or more meanings. In literature of the highest order there is another form, which results from the capacity for suggesting two or more equally suitable senses in a given context. Because modern English lacks certain inflections, syntactic ambiguity arises in clauses that depart from the usual subject-verb-object arrangement

Comparative Literature

The study of literatures of different languages, nations, and periods. Several different approaches to the examination of this term have been developed: the study of popular forms, such as legends, myths, epics; the study of literary genres and forms; the study of sources; the study of mutual influences; and the study of aesthetic and critical theories and methods

Antiquarianism

The study of the past through relics, usually literary or artistic. An organized effort in England, usually associated with the sixteenth and later centuries. Much Renaissance literature reflects this movement

Aesthetics

The study or philosophy of the beautiful in nature and art. It has both a philosophical dimension and a psychological dimension The attempt to bridge the gap between the material and spiritual

Anglo-Norman Language

The term ___ also Anglo-French, is applied to the French language as it was used in England in the period following the Norman Conquest, and also to the literature written in Anglo-Norman

Breton Lay

The term refers to the relatively brief form of the medieval French romances, professed to have been sung by Breton minstrels on Celtic themes, and to the English medieval poems written in imitation of such French works

Black Humor

The use of the morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern literature. The term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering, anxiety, and death. A substantial element in the antinovel, and the theater of the absurd. Also tragic farce Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Grass, Richler, Pynchon, Vonnegut

Apology

The word often appears in literature, especially in titles, in its older sense of defense. The Latin form is also used in this sense

Dramatic Irony

The words or acts of a character may carry a meaning unperceived by the character but understood for the audience. Usually, the character's own interests are involved in a way that he or she cannot understand. The irony resides in the contrast between the meaning intended by the speaker and the different significance seen by others.

Classical Tragedy

This term may refer to the tragedy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, such as Sophocles' Antigone, or to tragedies with Greek or Roman subjects; or to modern tragedies modeled on Greek or Roman tragedy, or written under the influence of the critical doctrines of classicism

Alienation Effect

This term was put forward by the playwright Bertolucci Brecht as a desirable quality of the theater by means of which the audience is kept at such a distance that unthinking emotional and personal involvement is inhibited while political messages are delivered

Collate

To compare in detail two or more texts, versions, states, editions, impressions, or printings to determine and record the points of agreement and disagreement; also to verify the order of the sheets or signatures of a book before binding

Bowdlerize

To expurgate a piece of writing by omitting material considered offensive or indecorous, especially to female modesty

Domestic Tragedy

Tragedy dealing with the domestic life of commonplace people. The English stage at various periods has produced tragedies based on the lives not of high ranking historical personages, but of everyday contemporary people. The Death of a Salesman, All My Sons

Blank Verse

Unrhymed but otherwise regular verse- usually in iambic pentameter. Generally accepted as that best adapted to dramatic verse in English, this form is commonly used for long poems, whether dramatic, philosophic, or narrative. The freedom gained by lack of rhyme is usually offset by the demands for variety. It appears to have found general favor in England first as a medium for dramatic expression, but with Milton, it was turned to epic use and since then has been employed in the writing of idylls and lyrics. Marlowe passed to Shakespeare and Milton

Anatomy

Used as early as Aristotle in the sense of logical dissection or analysis, this term- which has meant dissection in a medical sense- came into common use in England in the late 16th century in the meaning explained in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy

Chicano Literature

Used for literature having to do with the distinctive experience of Mexican Americans, especially in the American southwest Cisneros, Cervantes, Anzaldua, Villarreal, Soto, Salinas

Anacreontic Poetry

Verse in the mood and manner of the lyrics of the Greek poet Anacreon; that is, poems characterized by an erotic or amatory spirit. The characteristic line consists of a pyrrhic foot, two trochees, and a spondee, for which the nearest English counterpart would be trochaic tetrameter. Tend to always be in tetrameter

Amphigory

Verse that sounds well but contains little or no sense or meaning. Either nonsense verse, or nonsensical parody

Correlative Verses

Verses that take the form of abbreviated sentences having a linear correlative relationship Air, water, earth By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked

Coined Words

Words consciously manufactured, as opposed to those entering the language as a result of some more usual process of language development

Attic

Writing characterized by a clear, simple, polished, and witty style. Denotes grace, culture, and the classic in art

Diasporic Literature

Writing having to do with any scattering of a population from a homeland to one or more alien environments. Originally referring the dispersion of the Jews among the Gentiles

Diatribe

Writing or discourse characterized by bitter invective or abusive argument, a harangue.

Caricature

Writing that exaggerates certain qualities of a person and produces a burlesque, ridiculous effect. More frequently associated with drawing than with writing because the associated literary terms, satire, burlesque, and parody, are more common. Is likely to treat merely personal qualities, though like satire, it lends itself to the ridicule of political, religious, and social foibles

Chorography

Writing that has to do with the specific natural features of a particular place, sometimes accompanied by maps and other illustrations.

Assonance Rhyme

a common substitution for end rhyme in the popular ballad. Nursery rhymes rely on such rhymes, in which the vowel components are matched, but the succeeding consonants are not. Found more frequently in modern poetry, but has never been a common device

Accismus

a form of irony: a pretended refusal that is insincere or hypocritical

Chivalry

a system of manners and morals

Bagatelle

a work explicitly identified or labeled as a trifle

Abecedarian

an acrostic arranged so the initial letters of successive lines form an alphabet

African-American Literature

began in the eighteenth century with the poetry of two slaves: Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley nineteenth century saw flood of autobiographical slave narratives, the most famous of which is by Frederick Douglass Modern Age sees skillful writers in every field Gwendolyn Brooks- Pulitzer Prize 1949

Acrophony

calling a written symbol by the name of something that has that symbol at its beginning

Chain Rhyme

uncommon in English, this device incorporates elements of echo and identical rhyme so that the sound of the last syllable of one line recurs as the sound of the first syllable of the next, but with a different meaning. (weight and wait)

Asterism

urbane humor, marked by subtle irony and polite mockery

Accentual-Syllabic Verse

verse that depends for its rhythm both on the number of syllables per line and the pattern of accented syllables. Basic measures in English poetry

Alcaics

verses written according to the manner of the odes of Alcaeus- usually a four stanza poem with each stanza composed of four lines: the first two being eleven syllables, the third being nine syllables, and the fourth having ten syllables. Because the classical pattern is based on quantitative dactyls and trochees, exact English versions are practically impossible

Attic Salt

writing distinguished by its classic refinement, its intellectual sharpness, and its elegant but stinging wit