Literary Terms and Genres for Praxis 5038

Inversion

(Anastrophe), is a literary technique in which the normal order of words is reversed in order to achieve a particular effect of emphasis or meter. Think Yoda

Humanism

A Renaissance intellectual movement in which thinkers studied classical texts and focused on human potential and achievements

Malapropism

A blunder in speech caused by the substitution of a word for another that is similar in sound but different in meaning. "She will indite (for invite) him to supper."

Essay

A brief examination of a subject in prose, usually expressing a personal or limited view of the topic.

Fable

A brief story that leads to a moral, often using animals as characters

Archtype

A character, action, or situation that is a prototype, or pattern, of human life generally; a situation that occurs over and over again in literature, such as a quest, an initiation, or an attempt to overcome evil.

Mixed Metaphor

A combination of metaphors that produces a confused or contradictory image, such as "The company's collapse left the mountains of debt in its wake."

Idiom

A common expression that has acquired a meaning that differs from its literal meaning, such as "it's raining cats and dogs" or "a bolt from the blue"

Analogy

A comparison of two different things that are similar in some way

Paradox

A contradictory statement that makes sense. Examples: - Man learns from history that man learns nothing from history Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, "All men kill the thing they love."

Irony

A contrast between expectation and reality

Caricature

A description or characterization that exaggerates or distorts a character's prominent features, usually to elicit mockery. For example, in Candide, Voltaire portrays the character of Pangloss as a mocking caricature of the optimistic rationalism of philosophers like Leibniz.

Apostrophe

A direct address to an absent or dead person, or to an object, quality, or idea. Walt Whitman's poem "O Captain, My Captain," written upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, is an example of apostrophe.

Anticlimax

A disappointing end to an exciting or impressive series of events. (Letdown, disappointment, comedown, bathos)

Monologue

A dramatic monologue is any speech addressed by a character to a second person. A soliloquy is when a character directly addressed an audience or speaks his thoughts aloud while alone or while the other actors keep silent.

Conceit

A fanciful expression, usually in the form of an extended metaphor or surprising analogy between seemingly dissimilar objects. The metaphysical poets are especially known for their conceits, as in John Donne's "The Flea."

Limerick

A fanciful five-line poem with an AABBA rhyme scheme in which the first, second, and fifth lines have three feet and the third and fourth have two feet.

Noir

A fiction genre, popularized in the 1940s, with a cynical, disillusioned, loner protagonist. Noir often involves crime or the criminal underworld. Examples: - Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep - Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

Allegory

A figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary, symbolic or metaphorical meaning. Examples: * Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene * John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress c* Dante, The Divine Comedy * William Golding, Lord of the Flies * Herman Melville, Moby Dick * George Orwell, Animal Farm

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept. For example, "suits" instead of "businessmen." OR

Figure of Speech

A form of expression (as a simile or metaphor) used to convey meaning or heighten effect often by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning or connotation familiar to the reader or listener. For example, "falling in love," or "hitting a salestarget."

Horatian Satire

A gentler, more good humored and sympathetic kind of satire, somewhat tolerant of human folly even while laughing at it. Horatian satire tends to ridicule human folly in general or by type rather than attack specific persons.

Ballad

A iambic/rhyming narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style.

Novel

A long fictional narrative written in prose, usually having many characters and a strong plot.

Epic

A long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds. Examples: - Homer, Iliad - Homer, Odyssey - Milton, Paradise Lost

Elegy

A lyric poem that laments the dead. Example: - Percy Bysshe Shelly's "Adonais" (mourns the death of John Keats)

Flashback

A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events

Apologue

A moral fable, usually featuring personified animals or inanimate objects which act like people to allow the author to comment on the human condition. Examples - Aesop's Fables - George Orwell, Animal Farm - Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

Legend

A narrative handed down from the past, containing historical elements and usually supernatural elements.

Frame

A narrative structure that provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative in a novel. Examples of novels with frames: - Mary Shelley Frankenstein - Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter

Caesura

A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line.

Epistle

A novel consisting of letters written by a character or several characters. The form allows for the use of multiple points of view toward the story and the ability to dispense with an omniscient narrator. Examples: - Samuel Richardson, Pamela - Fanny Burney, Evelina - C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters - Hannah W. Foster, The Coquette

Existentialist Novel

A novel pointing out the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence. Example: - Albert Camus, The Stranger

Historic Novel

A novel where fictional characters take part in actual historical events and interact with real people from the past. Examples: - Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, & Waverly - James Fenimore Cooper, Last of the Mohicans - Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe

Multicultural Novel

A novel written by a member of or about a cultural minority group, giving insight into non-Western or non-dominant cultural experiences and values, either in the United States or abroad. - Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart - Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife - Forrest Carter, The Education of Little Tree - James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain - Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Antithesis

A person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else. Example, "Love is the antithesis of selfishness."

Aphorism

A pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Comedy

A play that ends happily.

Closet drama

A play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group.

Novella

A prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. Examples: - Henry James, Daisy Miller - Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Motif

A recurring structure, contrast, or other device that develops or informs a work's major themes. A motif may relate to concrete objects, like Eastern vs. Western architecture in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, or may be a recurrent idea, phrase, or emotion, like Lily Bart's constant desire to move up in the world in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.

Appeal to Ethics

A rhetorical strategy based on making the morally correct decision

Epilogue

A section or speech at the end that serves as a conclusion

Ode

A serious lyric poem, often of significant length, that usually conforms to an elaborate metrical structure. Example: - William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality."

Parable

A short narrative that illustrates a moral by means of allegory.

Lyric

A short poetic composition that describes the thoughts of a single speaker. Most modern poetry is lyrical (as opposed to dramatic or narrative), employing forms, such as the ode or sonnet.

Argument

A statement of the meaning or main point of a literary work.

Dactyl

A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables: "diff i cult" Dactyllic words: fantasy, alchemy, penetrate

Epiphany

A sudden, powerful, and often spiritual or life changing realization that a character reaches in an otherwise ordinary or everyday moment.

Dramatic Irony

A technique in which the author lets the audience or reader in on a character's situation while the character himself remains in the dark. Example: Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, when Oedipus vows to discover his father's murderer, not knowing, as the audience does, that he himself is the murderer.

Myth

A traditional story about gods, ancestors, or heroes, told to explain the natural world or the customs and beliefs of a society.

Dramatic monologue

A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener. As readers, we overhear the speaker in a dramatic monologue.

Appositive

A word or group of words that concisely identifies or renames another word in a sentence. For example: "Og, the King of Bashan, was saved from the flood by climbing onto the roof of the ark."

Dystopian/ic

An anti-utopian novel where, instead of a paradise, everything has gone wrong in the attempt to create a perfect society. Examples: - George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Foreshadowing

An author's deliberate use of hints or suggestions to give a preview of events or themes that do not develop until later in the narrative

Memoir

An autobiographical work. Rather than focus exclusively on the author's life, it pays significant attention to the author's involvement in historical events and the characterization of individuals other than the author. A famous example is Winston Churchill's Memoirs of the Second World War.

Catharsis

An emotional discharge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from anxiety or stress. Greek for cleansing - used for the cleansing of emotions of the characters.

Hyperbole

An excessive overstatement or conscious exaggeration of fact: "I've told you about it a million times already."

Cliché

An expression such as "turn over a new leaf" that has been used so frequently it has lost its expressive power.

Connotation

An idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning. For example, "A possible connotation of 'home' is 'a place of warmth, comfort, and affection.'"

Allusion

An implicit reference within a literary work to a historical or literary person, place, or event

Colloquialism

An informal expression or slang, especially in the context of formal writing, as in Philip Larkin's "Send No Money": "All the other lads there / Were itching to have a bash."

Iambic Foot

An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: "to DAY " Iambic words: about, event, infuse, persuade

Fantasy

Any novel that is disengaged from reality. Example: - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Argument with Logical Fallacies

Arguments that look rational, fair, and valid but aren't

Iambic Pentameter

Each line of verse has five feet (pentameter), each of which consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (iamb).

Hubris

Excessive pride or arrogance that results in the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy

Adventure Novel

Exciting events are more important than character development and are sometimes described as "fiction" rather than "literature" in order to distinguish books designed for mere entertainment rather than thematic importance. Examples: - H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines - Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel - Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Deus ex machina

Greek for "God from a machine." The phrase originally referred to a technique in ancient tragedy in which a mechanical god was lowered onto the stage to intervene and solve the play's problems or bring the play to a satisfactory conclusion. Now, the term describes more generally a sudden or improbable plot twist that brings about the plot's resolution.

Haiku

Japanese poetry written in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables

Metaphysical Poetry

Refers to the work of poets like 17th century John Donne who explore highly complex, philosophical ideas through extended metaphors and paradox.

Gothic Novel

Supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown terror pervades the action. The setting is often a dark, mysterious castle, where ghosts and sinister humans roam menacingly. Examples: - Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto - William Beckford, Vathek - Anne Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein - Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Grotesque

The Grotesque is both an artistic and literary term, and is primarily concerned about the distortion and transgression of boundaries, be they physical boundaries between two objects, or psychological boundaries, or anything in-between. Examples: - "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka - Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose"

Appeal to Emotion

The argument appeals to emotion rather than reason

Oxynoron

The association of two contrary terms, as in the expressions "same difference" or "wise fool"

Foot

The basic unit of meter consisting of a group of two or three syllables.

Anecdote

The brief narration of a single event or incident.

Antagonist

The character, group of characters, or institution that represents the opposition against which the protagonist or protagonists must contend. In other words, an antagonist is a person or a group of people who oppose the main character(s).

Metaphor

The comparison of one thing to another that does not use the terms "like" or "as." Shakespeare is famous for his metaphors, as inMacbeth: "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage."

Exposition

The exposition is the part of a book that sets the stage for the drama to follow: it introduces the theme, setting, characters, and circumstances at the story's beginnings. To identify the exposition, find in the first few chapters (or pages) where the author gives a description of the setting and the mood before the action takes place.

Catasrophe

The final action that completes the unraveling of the plot in a play, especially in a tragedy. Synonym of denouement (conclusion after the climax of a narrative in which the complexities of the plot are unraveled and the conflict is finally resolved).

Denouement

The final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained and resolved.

Anastrophe

The inversion of the usual order of words or clauses. A figure of speech, think Yoda...potatoes I like vs. I like potatoes.

Cosmic Irony

The perception of fate or the universe as malicious or indifferent to human suffering, which creates a painful contrast between our purposeful activity and its ultimate meaninglessness. Thomas Hardy's novels abound in cosmic irony.

Alliteration

The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants, at the beginning of words. For example, Robert Frost's poem "Out, out—" contains the alliterative phrase "sweet scented stuff."

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sequence of nearby words.

Meter

The rhythmic pattern produced when words are arranged so that their stressed and unstressed syllables fall into regular sequence, resulting in repeated patterns of accent (called feet).Types - Monometer: One foot - Dimeter: Two feet - Trimeter: Three feet - Tetrameter: Four feet - Pentameter: Five feet - Hexameter: Six feet - Heptameter: Seven feet - Octameter: Eight feet

Denotation

The strict dictionary meaning of a word. Whereas connotation uses the emotional weight of a word, comparing cheap to inexpensive

Euphemism

The substitution of a mild or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one, as in the use of "pass away" instead of "die."

Onomatopoeia

The use of words, such as "pop," "hiss," and "boing," that sound like the thing they refer to.

Heroic Couplet

Two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter. Example: u/u/u/u/u/ 'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill u/u/u/u/u/ Appear in writing or in judging ill. . . . --Alexander Pope

Couplet

Two successive rhymed lines that are equal in length. A heroic couplet is a pair of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter. Example, Shakespeare's Hamlet: "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!"

Anapest Foot

Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable: "it is TIME" Anapestic words: underneath, introduce

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's plays are largely blank verse, as are other Renaissance plays. Blank verse was the most popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England.

Free Verse

Verse that has neither regular rhyme nor regular meter. Free verse often uses cadences rather than uniform metrical feet. I cannot strive to drink dry the ocean's fill since you replenish my gulps with your tears

Discourse

Written or spoken compunction or debate

Consonance

a poetic device characterized by the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in "pitter patter" or in "all mammals named Sam are clammy."

Burlesque

ludicrous parody or grotesque caricature; humorous and provocative stage show. Example: Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock

Diction

style of speaking or writing as dependent upon choice of words

Appeal to Logic

uses facts, statistics, etc. that appeal to listeners' minds