Literary Conventions & Devices

Ode

A long lyric poem with a serious and dignified tone written in an elevated style.

Paradox

A statement or thought that contradicts itself, but still seems to make sense or rings true.

Unreliable First Person Narrator

This is a narrator who does not understand the full significance of the events s/he describes and comments on.

Hubris

This is a unique type of tragic flaw that means excessive pride, self-assurance, and arrogance. The character portraying hubris may have just gained a huge amount of power and possesses the false belief that he is "untouchable." It is often associated with a lack of humility, though not always with the lack of knowledge. In literature, portrayal of hubristic characters serves to achieve a moralistic end.

Climax

This is the moment of great emotional intensity or crisis in the plot.

Antagonist

This is the source of the conflict and it doesn't necessarily have to be another character.

Third Person Limited

This narrator is also outside the action, and is not usually much more than a voice communicating with the reader.

Third Person Objective

This narrator sees everything from the outside and can only offer external hints about the inner lives of characters.

Apostrophe

This technique is used to address a particular person, quality, or a thing as if it were present.

Second Person

This type of narrator speaks directly to the reader and will address the reader as "you."

Tone

Tone refers to the expression of attitude or mindset of a writer toward his subject and audience at a particular moment.

Third Person Omniscient

"Omniscient" means "all-knowing" so this type of narrator exists outside of the action and knows everything about everybody.

Intertextuality

"The conversation among texts across time" (Foster). The concept of intertextuality reminds us that each text exists in relation to those that came before it. By borrowing texts, movements or objects from other movie, texts are able to send out messages that enhance or further develop central themes.

Context

"The soup in which a text swims" and refers to anything beyond the specific words of a literary work that may be relevant to understanding the meaning. Contexts may be economic, social, cultural, historical, literary, biographical, etc.

The Trochee

1 stressed syllable followed by 1 unstressed syllable.

The Dactyl

1 stressed syllable followed by 2 unstressed syllables.

The Iamb

1 unstressed syllable followed by 1 stressed syllable.

Anachrony

A departure from the chronology in the primary narrative.

Allusion

A direct or indirect reference to something which is presumably commonly known, such as an event, book, myth, place, or work of art.

The Spondee

2 accented syllables.

The Pyrrhus

2 unaccented syllables.

The Anapest

2 unstressed syllables followed by 1 stressed syllable.

Static Character

A "flat" character who remains the same throughout the course of a narrative.

Dynamic Character

A "round" character - often the protagonist - who undergoes an emotional or psychological change and has his or her outlook on life altered in a lasting way.

Foil

A character that shows qualities that are in contrast with the qualities of another character with the objective to highlight the traits of the other character.

Aside

A comment that only one other character or the audience is supposed to hear.

Inciting Incident

A common component of plot and refers to the event or decision that begins a story's problem.

Metaphor

A comparison of two things that share a certain quality.

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which one thing is represented by another that is commonly and often physically associated with it.

Meiosis

A figure of speech that contains an understatement.

Cinquain

A five-line stanza

Quatrain

A four-line stanza

Sonnet

A fourteen-line, single stanza poem that follows a set rhyme scheme and features iambic pentameter for meter.

Stanza

A group or cluster of lines within a poem.

Comic Relief

A humorous scene, incident, or speech in the course of a serious fiction or drama. Such comic intrusions are usually introduced by the author to provide relief from emotional intensity and, by contrast, to heighten the seriousness of the story. When properly employed, they can enrich and deepen the tragic implications of the action.

Satire

A kind of writing that sharply criticizes something (a person, a group, humanity, social institutions, government, etc.) with humor and irony in order to reveal a weakness. The aim of satire is to inspire some type of social or psychological change for the better.

Iambic Pentameter

A line of poetry composed of five iambs. It is by far the most common verse line in English poetry and is the type of meter used in sonnets and most of Shakespeare's plays. Other than free verse, it is the poetic meter that sound the most like natural speech.

Juxtaposition

A literary technique in which two or more ideas, places, characters and their actions are placed side by side in a narrative or a poem for the purpose of developing comparisons and contrasts. The comparison drawn adds vividness to a given image, controls pacing of poem or a narrative and provides a logical connection between two various concepts.

Narrative Poetry

A narrative poem is a poem that tells a story while employing the features common to poetry.

Villanelle

A nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets, each with the rhyme scheme aba, and a final quatrain with the rhyme scheme abaa.

Bidungsroman

A novel that focuses on the experiences that incite Jane's psychological and emotional growth from youth to adulthood. In this type of "coming of age" novel, the writer creates situations that allow the reader to see the young protagonist grow and endure struggles in the journey from innocence to experience.

Epigraph

A passage printed on the title page or at the beginning of a literary work, which may set the tone or establish a theme. It can serve different purposes such as it can be used as a summary, introduction, an example, or an association with some famous literary works, so as to draw comparison or to generate a specific context to be presented in the piece.

Tragic Flaw

A personality defect or imperfection that overpowers the hero and leads to his or her downfall (which often means death). Any regular character trait can become a tragic flaw if it is overblown and magnified.

Oxymoron

A phrase that contains a contradiction or a paradoxical state of being.

Allegory

A piece of writing than can be understood on multiple levels because the characters, settings, and events stand for historical people, events and/or concepts. While this may be the case, though, an allegory usually transcends the specific and offers much broader commentary about society and human nature.

Lyric Poetry

A poem that expresses intense personal thoughts, moods, emotions, or observations about life.

Epic

A poem that tells the adventure of a great hero, usually operating on a large scale and told with elevated language.

Pathos

A quality of an experience in life or a work of art that stirs up emotions of pity, sympathy and sorrow. Writers introduce pathos in their works to touch upon our delicate sensations such as pity, sympathy, sorrow and, consequently, try to develop an emotional connection with readers.

Motif

A recurring something in a text; that something could be an image, a detail, an allusion, an action, a word or phrase, an idea, a structural element, a sound - anything really.

First Person Secondary (or First Person Detached)

A secondary or minor character within the narrative is the one telling the story; this could be a sidekick or a friend to the main character.

Septet

A seven-line stanza

Sestet

A six-line stanza

Hyperbole

A statement of often humorous and extreme exaggeration used to emphasize a point.

Caesura

A strong pause within a line of poetry which helps to control pacing and moderate rhythm.

External Conflict

A struggle taking place between a character and an outside force.

Internal Conflict

A struggle taking place within a character's mind, centering around making important decisions or confronting powerful emotions.

Euphony

A succession of harmonious and pleasant sounds used in poetry or prose.

Symbol

A symbol is something which exists literally withing the world of the story, but which comes to have an abstract meaning beyond itself.

Scansion

A system for analyzing and marking poetical meters.

Metafiction

A term given to fictional works which draw attention to itself as a work of fiction, often dissolving the illusion, reminding the audience that this is indeed a story, though the line between story and reality are often blurred. It is a style of writing that uses the act of writing as subject... a story about a story.

Genre

A term used in literary criticism to designate the distinct type or categories into which literary works are grouped according to form or technique. Traditional genres include tragedy, comedy, epic, and lyric.

Tercet

A three-line stanza

Couplet

A two-line stanza

Sibilance

A type of consonance involving repetition of the consonant sound "s" to produce a soft or hissing sound.

Ballad

A type of folk poetry that was originally meant to be sung, coming out of the oral tradition of story-telling where literature was passed along orally from generation to generation.

Dead Metaphor

A type of metaphor that is so overused and outdated that the meaning has been lost in time.

Elegy

A type of poem that focuses on death and questions of death and asks readers to ponder issues related to mortality.

Metered Poetry

A type of poetry that has a distinct and repeating rhythm and features a rhyme scheme.

Free Verse

A type of poetry without regular patterns of rhyme and rhythm.

Simile

A unique type of metaphor that uses the words like, as, than, or resembles to construct a comparison.

Refrain

A verse, line, or phrase which repeats throughout a song or poem at regular or irregular intervals.

Double Entendre

An utterance with two intended meanings, the less obvious of which suggests something indelicate or risque.

Ambiguity

A word, phrase, or statement which contains more than one meaning. Ambiguity in literature serves the purpose of lending a deeper meaning to a literary work.

Exposition

All background information usually provided at the beginning of a narrative regarding the characters, the setting, or central conflicts.

Extended Metaphor

Also known as a conceit, and extended metaphor occurs when an author continues a single metaphor at length over the course of a few sentences or succeeding lines of poetry.

Run-Ons

An abundance of independent clauses joined without punctuation or conjunctions.

Organic Imagery

An appeal to internal sensation.

Kinesthetic Imagery

An appeal to the sense of movement.

Visual Imagery

An appeal to the sense of sight.

Olfactory Imagery

An appeal to the sense of smell.

Auditory Imagery

An appeal to the sense of sound.

Gustatory Imagery

An appeal to the sense of taste.

Thermal Imagery

An appeal to the sense of temperature.

Tactile Imagery

An appeal to the sense of touch.

Octave

An eight-line stanza

Idiom

An expression, often cultural, where the understood meaning is wholly different from the literal meaning of its individual words.

Fragments

An incomplete thought.

Personification

Another unique type of implicit metaphor where human qualities or attributes are given to things that are not human.

First Fundamental Quality of Archetypes

Archetypes are primordial; they are located within the human preconscious, though it is not present in the conscious mind.

Third Fundamental Quality of Archetypes

Archetypes are recurrent.

Second Fundamental Quality of Archetypes

Archetypes are universal; they are unaffected by time or situation, community or culture.

Peripeteia

Aristotle wrote that tragedy involves a change from the hero's exalted state to its opposite. He called this change peripeteia, meaning "a sudden reversal." In classical tragedy, the reversal is that moment in which the protagonist's fortunes change irrevocably for the worse. Frequently, the very trait we admire in a tragic hero is the same trait that brings about the hero's downfall.

Dash

Breaks continuity and signals an abrupt change in thought.

Antihero

Central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes; may lack courage, grace, intelligence, or moral scruples.

Character Traits

Character traits are the specific qualities, attributes, and characteristics that define a character's personality and give him or her an identity.

Imperative

Commands, requests

Catharsis

Conceived by Aristotle as the cleansing effect of emotional release that tragic drama has on its audience, catharsis stems from a Greek verb meaning "to purify, purge." The audience experiences catharsis at the end of the play, following the catastrophe. After observing a hero of high status and basically moral character make one or more self-destructive decisions, viewers and readers feel pity for the fallen hero, mingled with fear that such a downfall could occur in their own lives.

Denotation

The definition of a word that is given in a dictionary.

Detail

Detail refers to the use of facts, observations and incidents to develop a subject and impart voice.

Diction

Diction refers to the author's choice of words.

Cacophony

Harsh, awkward, or dissonant sounds used deliberately in poetry or prose.

Parallelism or Parallel Structure

Equivalent items must be placed in comparable grammatical structures.

Euphemism

Euphemism is the use of an indirect, mild, delicate, or inoffensive word or expression in place of something thought to be crude, offensive, blunt, or otherwise unpleasant.

Parallel Episodes

Events, scenes, or situations that repeat in a story, often with differing results.

Direct Characterization

Explicitly tells the audience what the personality of the character is.

Exclamatory

Expresses strong feeling and uses an exclamation mark.

Figurative Language

Figurative language refers to the use of words to express more than their ordinary, literal meaning.

Imagery

Imagery refers to vivid details that entice and activate the senses.

Monologue

In Latin, "monologue" means one person talking. Therefore, it is a long speech by one character to one or more other characters onstage.

Prologue

In Latin, "prologue" means "the talking that come before." It comes before the main action of the play to introduce the story, situate the readers, and foreshadow events.

Soliloquy

In Latin, "soliloquy" means talking alone. Therefore, it is one character alone onstage speaking his or her thoughts aloud for the benefit of the audience.

Cosmic Irony

In essence, "cosmic irony" occurs when divine forces conspire against human beings to destroy them.

Stream of Consciousness

In literature, stream of consciousness is a method of narration that describes in words the flow of thoughts in the minds of the characters.

Ellipse

Indicates an incomplete thought or that something has been omitted.

Irony

Irony occurs when there is a contrast between what is expected and what actually happens.

Colon

Is used to introduce a list or when the first part of a sentence creates a sense of anticipation about what follows in the second part of a sentence.

Epiphany

Literally, "a manifestation" or "showing forth." James Joyce gave credence to the term when he defined it as suddenly perceived insight into the essential nature of something: a person, a situation, an object.

Mood

Mood is the atmosphere or overall feeling created by a passage or text.

Passive Voice

Occurs when the subject is the recipient of the action of the verb.

Active Voice

Occurs when the subject performs the action of the verb.

Semicolon

Offers a strong pause, but links closely related ideas which could be separate sentences.

Complex Sentence

One independent clause and one dependent clause joined by a subordinating conjunction.

Simple Sentence

One independent clause.

Apposition

Placing two nouns side by side, the second of which serves as an explanation of the first.

Blank Verse

Poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Prolepsis

Presents what will happen in the future with respect to "now" in the story, like a flash forward.

Interrogative

Question

Voice

Refers to an author's unique style. It is like an artist's fingerprint, making his or her work distinctive, singular, and individual.

Form

Refers to the categories according to which literary works are commonly classified and may imply a set of conventions related to a particular genre.

Characterization

Refers to the process by which the writer reveals and develops a character.

Character Motivation

Refers to the reasons that explain why character behaves or thinks a certain way.

Prosody

Refers to the rhythmic elements in poetry.

Setting

Refers to the time and place of a narrative.

Punctuation

Reinforces or emphasizes meaning.

Meter

Responsible for the rhythm, beat, and musicality of a poem. This results from the regular arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables. Metered verse has prescribed rules as to the number and placement of syllables used per line. Each unit of rhythm is called a "foot" or poetry.

Indirect Characterization

Shows things that reveal the personality of a character; therefore, the reader must make inferences.

Comedy

Simply a play that ends happily. Many people define it as a funny play, and in fact, the expressed purpose of most popular comedies is to make us laugh. They can have other, more important purposes as well, including making readers think about issues and question things that we take for granted.

Loaded Words

Some words are considered "loaded words" because they carry very strong connotations and can elicit an intense emotional response within a reader or an audience.

Declarative

Statement

Structure

Structure refers to the way in which the writer develops and arranges his or her ideas within a work.

Syntax

Syntax refers to the way in which words are arranged within sentences.

Analepsis

Tells what has happened in the past with respect to the present, like a flashback or retrospection.

Protagonist

The "hero" or main character with whom the reader identifies.

Ellipsis

The act of leaving out one or more words that are not necessary for a phrase to be understood.

Versimilitude

The appearance or semblance of truth and actuality; used to indicate the degree to which a writer faithfully creates the semblance of truth or the "real world."

Implied Metaphor

The comparison is indirect and disguised.

Direct or Explicit Metaphor

The comparison is stated clearly and plainly.

Falling Action

The events that take place after the climax.

Foreshadowing

The hints or clues that a writer provides that suggest future events in a story or novel.

Vernacular

The language spoken by the people who live in a particular locality.

Dialect

The language used by the people of a specific area, class, district or any other group of people. The term dialect involves the spelling, sounds, grammar and pronunciation used by a particular group of people and it distinguishes them from other people around them.

First Person Central

The main character of the narrative is the one telling the story.

Speaker

The narrator of a poem.

Cadence

The natural, rhythmic rise and fall of a language as it is normally spoken. Cadence is different from meter in that the rhythm is not necessarily regular or counted.

Resolution (Denouement)

The new set of circumstances that exists at the end of the story.

Tragedy

The presentation of serious and important actions that end unhappily.

Tragic Hero

The protagonist at the center of a tragedy. First, they are all "exceptional beings" in that they are persons of high degree or public importance. They are often kings or military leaders; thus, their downfalls have great consequences, affecting often the welfare of whole nations. Secondly, Shakespearean heroes cause their own downfalls. The calamities in a Shakespearean tragedy do not just happen by accident, nor are they sent from above. Rather, they proceed from the hero's own actions. Lastly, Shakespearean tragic heroes all possess a tragic flaw.

Anagnorisis

The recognition by the tragic hero of some truth about his or her identity or actions that accompanies the reversal of the situation in the plot, the peripiteia.

Consonance

The repetition of beginning, internal, or ending consonant sounds in words that are clustered together.

Alliteration

The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are clustered together.

Assonance

The repetition of internal vowel sounds in words that are clustered together.

Anaphora

The repetition of words at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences.

Plot

The series of events that make up a narrative.

Conflict

The struggle between opposing forces, usually stemming from the antagonist.

Defamiliarization

The technique of making the familiar seem strange so that our readers experience something in a new way, from a new angle, and offer a new understanding of it. It denotes a process in which a writer can make a reader perceive something in a new way, sometimes making them feel uncomfortable.

Intentional Fallacy

The term "fallacy" means "misleading notion" or mistaken belief. The intentional fallacy, then, is basing an interpretation of a work of literature on the author's intention rather than on one's critical understanding of the actual work.

Archetype

The word archetype refers to any recurring image, character type, plot formula, or pattern of action.

Theme

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work that convey valuable insights about human experience, human relationships, and human nature.

Compound Sentence

Two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction or a semicolon.

Heroic Couplet

Two lines of poetry that rhyme and are written in iambic pentameter.

Compound-Complex Sentence

Two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.

Polysyndeton

Using many conjunctions for emphasis in order to achieve an overwhelming effect.

Asyndeton

Using no conjunctions to create an effect of speed or simplicity.

In Medias Res

Usually describes a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle - usually at some crucial point in the action.

Dramatic Irony

When an audience perceives or knows something that the characters on stage do not.

Verbal Irony

When an author says one thing but means something else, much like sarcasm.

Enjambment

When one line ends without pause and continues to the next line.

Situational Irony

When something happens that is the opposite of what you expect or anticipate.

Internal Rhyme

When two or more rhyming words occur within the same line.

Rising Action

Where the complications occur, major events take place, and conflicts become more complex and well-defined.

Onomatopoeia

Word that seek to imitate sounds.

Approximate or Slant Rhyme

Words that almost rhyme.

Eye Rhyme

Words that appear as though they should rhyme, but do not.

Exact Rhyme

Words that have the exact same sound.

End Rhyme

Words that rhyme at the ends of lines of poetry.

Rhyme

Words that share the same ending sound.