World Literature Final

Cosmogonies

Stories about how the world began. These stories have been told by almost every culture in the world. The word "cosmos" comes from the Greek, which means beauty and order.

Allusion

A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature. Allusions conjure up biblical authority, scenes from Shakespeare's plays, historic figures, wars, great love stories, and anything else that might enrich an author's work.

Dénouement

A French term meaning "unraveling" or "unknotting," used to describe the resolution of the plot following the climax.

Genre

A French word meaning kind or type. The major genres in literature are poetry, fiction, drama, and essays. Genre can also refer to more specific types of literature such as comedy, tragedy, epic poetry, or science fiction.

Oedipus complex

A Freudian term derived from Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus the King. It describes a psychological complex that is predicated on a boy's unconscious rivalry with his father for his mother's love and his desire to eliminate his father in order to take his father's place with his mother. The female equivalent of this complex is called the Electra complex.

Hyperbole

A boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without intending to be literally true, as in the statement "He ate everything in the house." (also called overstatement)

Foil

A character in a work whose behavior and values contrast with those of another character in order to highlight the distinctive temperament of that character (usually the protagonist). In The Book of Job, Job's "friends" all act as foils.

Character (characterization)

A character is a person presented in a dramatic or narrative work, and characterization is the process by which a writer makes that character seem real to the reader. A hero or heroine, often called the protagonist, is the central character who engages the reader's interest and empathy. The antagonist is the character, force, or collection of forces that stands directly opposed to the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story. A static character does not change throughout the work, and the reader's knowledge of that character does not grow, whereas a dynamic character undergoes some kind of change because of the action in the plot. A flat character embodies one or two qualities, ideas, or traits that can be readily described in a brief summary. They are not psychologically complex characters and therefore are readily accessible to readers. Round characters are more complex than flat or stock characters, and often display the inconsistencies and internal conflicts found in most real people. They are more fully developed, and therefore are harder to summarize. Authors have two major methods of presenting characters: showing and telling. Showing allows the author to present a character talking and acting, and lets the reader infer what kind of person the character is. In telling, the author intervenes to describe and sometimes evaluate the character for the reader. Characters can be convincing whether they are presented by showing or by telling, as long as their actions are motivated. Motivated action by the characters occurs when the reader or audience is offered reasons for how the characters behave, what they say, and the decisions they make. Plausible action is action by a character in a story that seems reasonable, given the motivations presented.

Convention

A characteristic of a literary genre (often unrealistic) that is understood and accepted by audiences because it has come, through usage and time, to be recognized as a familiar technique. For example, the division of a play into acts and scenes is a dramatic convention, as are soliloquies and asides. Flashbacks and foreshadowing are examples of literary conventions.

Simile

A common figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two things by using words such as like, as, than, appears, and seems. The effectiveness of this simile is created by the differences between the two things compared.

Verse

A generic term used to describe poetic lines composed in a measured rhythmical pattern, that are often, but not necessarily, rhymed. See also line, meter, rhyme, rhythm.

Comic relief

A humorous scene or incident that alleviates tension in an otherwise serious work. In many instances these moments enhance the thematic significance of the story in addition to providing laughter. When Hamlet jokes with the gravediggers we laugh, but something hauntingly serious about the humor also intensifies our more serious emotions.

Irony

A literary device that uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal a reality different from what appears to be true. It is ironic for a firehouse to burn down, or for a police station to be burglarized. Verbal irony is a figure of speech that occurs when a person says one thing but means the opposite. Sarcasm is a strong form of verbal irony that is calculated to hurt someone through, for example, false praise. Dramatic irony creates a discrepancy between what a character believes or says and what the reader or audience member knows to be true. Tragic irony is a form of dramatic irony found in tragedies such as Oedipus the King, in which Oedipus searches for the person responsible for the plague that ravishes his city and ironically ends up hunting himself. Situational irony exists when there is an incongruity between what is expected to happen and what actually happens due to forces beyond human comprehension or control. Cosmic irony occurs when a writer uses God, destiny, or fate to dash the hopes and expectations of a character or of humankind in general. In cosmic irony, a discrepancy exists between what a character aspires to and what universal forces provide.

Epic poem

A long narrative poem, told in a formal, elevated style that focuses on a serious subject and chronicles heroic deeds and events important to a culture or nation. The epic of Gilgamesh, for example, defines the qualities of heroism for the Sumerians. Likewise, Homer's Odyssey chronicles Odysseus' heroic deeds.

Act

A major division in the action of a play. Playwrights frequently employ acts to accommodate changes in time, setting, characters onstage, or mood.

Allegory

A narration or description usually restricted to a single meaning because its events, actions, characters, settings, and objects represent specific abstractions or ideas. Although the elements in an allegory may be interesting in themselves, the emphasis tends to be on what they ultimately mean. Characters may be given names such as Hope, Pride, Youth, and Charity; they have few if any personal qualities beyond their abstract meanings. These personifications are not symbols because, for instance, the meaning of a character named Charity is precisely that virtue.

Exposition

A narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work, that provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances. Exposition explains what has gone on before, the relationships between characters, the development of a theme, and the introduction of a conflict. See also flashback.

Metaphor

A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, without using the word like or as. Metaphors assert the identity of dissimilar things. Metaphors can be subtle and powerful, and can transform people, places, objects, and ideas into whatever the writer imagines them to be. An implied metaphor is a more subtle comparison; the terms being compared are not so specifically explained. Implied metaphors can slip by inattentive readers who are not sensitive to such carefully chosen, highly concentrated language. An extended metaphor is a sustained comparison in which part or all of a poem consists of a series of related metaphors. A controlling metaphor runs through an entire work and determines the form or nature of that work. Synecdoche is a kind of metaphor in which a part of something is used to signify the whole, as when a gossip is called a "wagging tongue," or when ten ships are called "ten sails." Sometimes, synecdoche refers to the whole being used to signify the part, as in the phrase "Boston won the baseball game." Clearly, the entire city of Boston did not participate in the game; the whole of Boston is being used to signify the individuals who played and won the game. Metonymy is a type of metaphor in which something closely associated with a subject is substituted for it. In this way, we speak of the "silver screen" to mean motion pictures, "the crown" to stand for the king, "the White House" to stand for the activities of the president. See also figures of speech, personification, and simile.

Romanticism

A movement in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries which reacted against virtually all of the values of the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism. It's values included a revived interest in the medieval, a love of nature, individualism, the imaginative and the free (as opposed to the reasonable and the structured), subjectivity, cultivation of the emotions, and a restless aspiration for union in love or with nature or God, culminating in a desire for transcendence. Bronte is the best representative of Romanticism in our readings.

Flashback

A narrated scene that marks a break in the narrative in order to inform the reader or audience member about events that took place before the opening scene of a work.

Symbol

A person, object, image, word, or event that evokes a range of additional meaning beyond and usually more abstract than its literal significance. Symbols are educational devices for evoking complex ideas without having to resort to painstaking explanations that would make a story more like an essay than an experience. Conventional symbols have meanings that are widely recognized by a society or culture. Some conventional symbols are the Christian cross, the Star of David, a swastika, or a nation's flag. Writers use conventional symbols to reinforce meanings. Kate Chopin, for example, emphasizes the spring setting in "The Story of an Hour" as a way of suggesting the renewed sense of life that Mrs. Mallard feels when she thinks herself free from her husband. A literary or contextual symbol can be a setting, character, action, object, name, or anything else in a work that maintains its literal significance while suggesting other meanings. Such symbols go beyond conventional symbols; they gain their symbolic meaning within the context of a specific story. For example, the white whale in Melville's Moby-Dick takes on multiple symbolic meanings in the work, but these meanings do not automatically carry over into other stories about whales. The meanings suggested by Melville's whale are specific to that text; therefore, it becomes a contextual symbol. See also allegory.

Stream-of-consciousness

A phrase invented by William James to describe the mixture of sensations, thoughts, memories, associations, and reflections that occupy our consciousness at any given moment. As a literary technique it involves efforts to capture this flow in words and images, thus coming closer than traditional narrative to the way reality actually impinges on the individual consciousness.

Pun

A play on words that relies on a word's having more than one meaning or sounding like another word. Shakespeare and other writers use puns extensively, for serious and comic purposes; in Romeo and Juliet (III.i.101), the dying Mercutio puns, "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man." Puns have serious literary uses, but since the eighteenth century, puns have been used almost purely for humorous effect. See also comedy.

Anti-hero

A protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero. He or she may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely pathetic. Often what antiheroes learn, if they learn anything at all, is that the world isolates them in an existence devoid of God and absolute values. While this term is usually applied to character in postmodern literature, Gilgamesh, especially at the beginning of the story, could be considered anti heroic, as he is an awful king—the people plead to the gods to send someone to "occupy" him.

Invocation

A request from the poet to the Muses to aid him/her in the act of writing. Hesiod's Theogony begins in such fashion, but it was Homer who made the device a standard convention.

Yoga

A set of disciplined practices designed to focus complete attention on God so as to achieve identity. Krishna redefines yoga in the Bhagavad Gita as action.

Paradox

A statement that initially appears to be contradictory but then, on closer inspection, turns out to make sense. For example, in the story of Cain and Able, after Cain murders his brother, Yahweh places a "mark" on his forehead to protect Cain from harm. This seems a paradoxical gesture, given Cain's crime. To "solve" the paradox, it is necessary to discover the sense that underlies the statement. Perhaps Cain is given passage because he will now go and spread the word of God.

Tragedy

A story that presents courageous individuals who confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in the face of failure, defeat, and even death. Tragedies recount an individual's downfall; they usually begin high and end low. Shakespeare is known for his tragedies, including Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, and Hamlet. The revenge tragedy is a well-established type of drama that can be traced back to Greek and Roman plays, particularly through the Roman playwright Seneca (c. 3 B.C.-63 A.D.). Revenge tragedies basically consist of a murder that has to be avenged by a relative of the victim. Typically, the victim's ghost appears to demand revenge, and invariably madness of some sort is worked into subsequent events, which ultimately end in the deaths of the murderer, the avenger, and a number of other characters. Shakespeare's Hamlet subscribes to the basic ingredients of revenge tragedy, but it also transcends these conventions because Hamlet contemplates not merely revenge but suicide and the meaning of life itself. A tragic flaw is an error or defect in the tragic hero that leads to his downfall, such as greed, pride, or ambition. This flaw may be a result of bad character, bad judgment, an inherited weakness, or any other defect of character. Tragic irony is a form of dramatic irony found in tragedies such as Oedipus the King, in which Oedipus ironically ends up hunting himself. See also comedy, drama.

Hamartia

A term coined by Aristotle to describe "some error or frailty" that brings about misfortune for a tragic hero. The concept of hamartia is closely related to that of the tragic flaw: both lead to the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy. Hamartia may be interpreted as an internal weakness in a character (like greed or passion or hubris); however, it may also refer to a mistake that a character makes that is based not on a personal failure, but on circumstances outside the protagonist's personality and control.

Realism

A term used in art and literature for a philosophical approach that began as a conscious movement in the mid-19th Century. The movement rejects the values of Romanticism, avoiding the exoticism and idealizing of the past that defined that movement. Instead, it embraces objectivity and a faith in science. In terms of narrative strategies, the Realist author tried to remove himself or herself from the book, making it seem a "universal" vision of the world.

Archetype

A term used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and sometimes unconscious responses in a reader. In literature, characters, images, and themes that symbolically embody universal meanings and basic human experiences, regardless of when or where they live, are considered archetypes. Common literary archetypes include stories of quests, initiations, scapegoats, descents to the underworld, and ascents to heaven.

Crisis

A turning point in the action of a story that has a powerful effect on the protagonist. Opposing forces come together decisively to lead to the climax of the plot. See also plot.

Dramatic monologue

A type of lyric poem in which a character (the speaker) addresses a distinct but silent audience imagined to be present in the poem in such a way as to reveal a dramatic situation and, often unintentionally, some aspect of his or her temperament or personality. See also lyric.

Image

A word, phrase, or figure of speech (especially a simile or a metaphor) that addresses the senses, suggesting mental pictures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, or actions. Images offer sensory impressions to the reader and also convey emotions and moods through their verbal pictures.

Comedy

A work intended to interest, involve, and amuse the reader or audience, in which no terrible disaster occurs and that ends happily for the main characters. High comedy refers to verbal wit, such as puns, whereas low comedy is generally associated with physical action and is less intellectual. Romantic comedy involves a love affair that meets with various obstacles (like disapproving parents, mistaken identities, deceptions, or other sorts of misunderstandings) but overcomes them to end in a blissful union. Shakespeare's comedies, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, are considered romantic comedies.

Diction

A writer's choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language, which combine to help create meaning. Formal diction consists of a dignified, impersonal, and elevated use of language; it follows the rules of syntax exactly and is often characterized by complex words and lofty tone. Middle diction maintains correct language usage, but is less elevated than formal diction; it reflects the way most educated people speak. Informal diction represents the plain language of everyday use, and often includes idiomatic expressions, slang, contractions, and many simple, common words. Poetic diction refers to the way poets sometimes employ an elevated diction that deviates significantly from the common speech and writing of their time, choosing words for their supposedly inherent poetic qualities.

Tanakh

An acronym for the Hebrew Bible, made up of the first letters of the Hebrew words for "law," "prophets," and "writings."

Apostrophe

An address, either to someone who is absent and therefore cannot hear the speaker or to something nonhuman that cannot comprehend. Apostrophe often provides a speaker the opportunity to think aloud.

Plot

An author's selection and arrangement of incidents in a story to shape the action and give the story a particular focus. Discussions of plot include not just what happens, but also how and why things happen the way they do. Stories that are written in a pyramidal pattern divide the plot into three essential parts. The first part is the rising action, in which complication creates some sort of conflict for the protagonist. The second part is the climax, the moment of greatest emotional tension in a narrative, usually marking a turning point in the plot at which the rising action reverses to become the falling action. The third part, the falling action (or resolution) is characterized by diminishing tensions and the resolution of the plot's conflicts and complications. In medias res is a term used to describe the common strategy of beginning a story in the middle of the action. In this type of plot, we enter the story on the verge of some important moment. See also character, crisis, resolution, subplot.

Novel

An extended prose narrative. In its earliest form, the novel attempted to give a realistic account of people, manners, and life by avoiding the conventions usually associated with poetry or drama and substituting for them a depiction of the world "as it really is," or to use an Aristotelian term, to employ verisimilitude. Don Quixote, for example, is the first Western novel in the canon.

Drama

Derived from the Greek word dram, meaning "to do" or "to perform," the term drama may refer to a single play, a group of plays ("Jacobean drama"), or to all plays ("world drama"). Drama is designed for performance in a theater; actors take on the roles of characters, perform indicated actions, and speak the dialogue written in the script. Play is a general term for a work of dramatic literature, and a playwright is a writer who makes plays.

Hubris or Hybris

Excessive pride or self-confidence that leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law.

Chorus

In Greek tragedies (especially those of Aeschylus and Sophocles), a group of people who serve mainly as commentators on the characters and events. They add to the audience's understanding of the play by expressing traditional moral, religious, and social attitudes. The role of the chorus in dramatic works evolved through the sixteenth century, and the chorus occasionally is still used by modern playwrights such as T. S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral. See also drama.

Scene

In drama, a scene is a subdivision of an act. In modern plays, scenes usually consist of units of action in which there are no changes in the setting or breaks in the continuity of time. According to traditional conventions, a scene changes when the location of the action shifts or when a new character enters. See also act, convention, drama.

Epiphany

In fiction, a moment when a character suddenly experiences a deep realization about himself or herself; a truth which is grasped in an ordinary rather than a melodramatic moment.

Stanza

In poetry, stanza refers to a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme. See also line, meter, rhyme.

Theogony

Its literal translation reads, "the birth of the gods"

In medias res

Latin for "in the middle of something." This is a literary technique where the story starts in the middle of the action and then flashes back to fill in background information. Homer was probably the first to use this technique, and it has been popular ever since.

Catharsis

Meaning "purgation," catharsis describes the release of the emotions of pity and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy. In his Poetics, Aristotle discusses the importance of catharsis. The audience faces the misfortunes of the protagonist, which elicit pity and compassion. Simultaneously, the audience also confronts the failure of the protagonist, thus receiving a frightening reminder of human limitations and frailties. Ultimately, however, both these negative emotions are purged, because the tragic protagonist's suffering is an affirmation of human values rather than a despairing denial of them.

Yahweh

One of the Hebrew names for God.

Point of view

Refers to who tells us a story and how it is told. What we know and how we feel about the events in a work are shaped by the author's choice of point of view. The teller of the story, the narrator, inevitably affects our understanding of the characters' actions by filtering what is told through his or her own perspective. The various points of view that writers draw upon can be grouped into two broad categories: (1) the third-person narrator uses he, she, or they to tell the story and does not participate in the action; and (2) the first-person narrator uses I and is a major or minor participant in the action. In addition, a second-person narrator, you, is also possible, but is rarely used because of the awkwardness of thrusting the reader into the story, as in "You are minding your own business on a park

Carpe diem

The Latin phrase meaning "seize the day." This is a very common literary theme, especially in lyric poetry, which emphasizes that life is short, time is fleeting, and that one should make the most of present pleasures.

Tone

The author's implicit attitude toward the reader or the people, places, and events in a work as revealed by the elements of the author's style. Tone may be characterized as serious or ironic, sad or happy, private or public, angry or affectionate, bitter or nostalgic, or any other attitudes and feelings that human beings experience. See also style.

Epic hero

The central character of an epic, typically larger-than-life in nature (Odysseus, for example), who defines the cultural traits and values of the country of the hero's origin.

Theme

The central meaning or dominant idea in a literary work. A theme provides a unifying point around which the plot, characters, setting, point of view, symbols, and other elements of a work are organized. It is important not to mistake the theme for the actual subject of the work; the theme refers to the abstract concept that is made concrete through the images, characterization, and action of the text. In nonfiction, however, the theme generally refers to the main topic of the discourse.

Antagonist

The character, force, or collection of forces in fiction or drama that opposes the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story; an opponent of the protagonist.

Resolution

The conclusion of a plot's conflicts and complications. The resolution, also known as the falling action, follows the climax in the plot. See also dénouement, plot.

Style

The distinctive and unique manner in which a writer arranges words to achieve particular effects. Style essentially combines the idea to be expressed with the individuality of the author. These

Foreshadowing

The introduction early in a story of verbal and dramatic hints that suggest what is to come later.

Satire

The literary art of ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it. The object of satire is usually some human frailty; people, institutions, ideas, and things are all fair game for satirists. Satire evokes attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation toward its faulty subject in the hope of somehow improving it. See also irony, parody.

Protagonist

The main character of a narrative; its central character who engages the reader's interest and empathy. See also character.

Recognition

The moment in a story when previously unknown or withheld information is revealed to the protagonist, resulting in the discovery of the truth of his or her situation and, usually, a decisive change in course for that character. In Oedipus the King, the moment of recognition comes when Oedipus finally realizes that he has killed his father and married his mother.

Climax

The most exciting and important point of something

Prologue

The opening speech or dialogue of a play, especially a classic Greek play, that usually gives the exposition necessary to follow the subsequent action. Today the term also refers to the introduction to any literary work. See also drama, exposition.

Syntax

The ordering of words into meaningful verbal patterns such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. Poets often manipulate syntax, changing conventional word order, to place certain emphasis on particular words. Emily Dickinson, for instance, writes about being surprised by a snake in her poem "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," and includes this line: "His notice sudden is." In addition to the alliterative hissing s-sounds here, Dickinson also effectively manipulates the line's syntax so that the verb is appears unexpectedly at the end, making the snake's hissing presence all the more "sudden."

Prosody

The overall metrical structure of a poem.

Setting

The physical and social context in which the action of a story occurs. The major elements of setting are the time, the place, and the social environment that frames the characters. Setting can be used to evoke a mood or atmosphere that will prepare the reader for what is to come, as in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown." Sometimes, writers choose a particular setting because of traditional associations with that setting that are closely related to the action of a story. For example, stories filled with adventure or romance often take place in exotic locales.

Reversal

The point in a story when the protagonist's fortunes turn in an unexpected direction. See also plot.

Subplot

The secondary action of a story, complete and interesting in its own right, that reinforces or contrasts with the main plot. There may be more than one subplot, and sometimes as many as three, four, or even more, running through a piece of fiction. Subplots are generally either analogous to the main plot, thereby enhancing our understanding of it, or extraneous to the main plot, to provide relief from it. See also plot. For example, Telemachus' journey to "manhood" is the subplot of Homer's Odyssey.

Conflict

The struggle within the plot between opposing forces. The protagonist engages in the conflict with the antagonist, which may take the form of a character, society, nature, or an aspect of the protagonist's personality.

Canon

Those works generally considered by scholars, critics, and teachers to be the most important to read and study, which collectively constitute the "masterpieces" of literature.

Modernism

The term is used to designate writing which makes a deliberate break with traditional forms of expression. It particularly denotes early 20th century writers who were trying in various ways to reject all aspects of Victorianism (Dickens, for example), moral as well as literary. Its techniques include an extreme subjectivity, a sense that the external world is as it is perceived by the individual, and such devices as interior monologue, broken chronology, stream-of-consciousness, and the Magical Realism of writers like Kafka, Joyce, and Conrad. It also involves a rejection of many traditional values and assumptions, based on the word of such thinkers as Darwin, Marx, Freud, and is enhanced by the sense that traditional values had been proven inadequate by World War I.

Dialogue

The verbal exchanges between characters. Dialogue makes the characters seem real to the reader or audience by revealing firsthand their thoughts, responses, and emotional states.

Narrator

The voice of the person telling the story, not to be confused with the author's voice. With a first-person narrator, the I in the story presents the point of view of only one character. The reader is restricted to the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of that single character. For example, in Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener," the lawyer is the first-person narrator of the story. First-person narrators can play either a major or a minor role in the story they are telling. An unreliable narrator reveals an interpretation of events that is somehow different from the author's own interpretation of those events. Often, the unreliable narrator's perception of plot, characters, and setting becomes the actual subject of the story, as in Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Narrators can be unreliable for a number of reasons: they might lack self-knowledge (like Melville's lawyer), they might be inexperienced, they might even be insane. Naive narrators are usually characterized by youthful innocence, such as Mark Twain's Huck Finn or J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield. An omniscient narrator is an all-knowing narrator who is not a character in the story and who can move from place to place and pass back and forth through time, slipping into and out of characters as no human being possibly could in real life. Omniscient narrators can report the thoughts and feelings of the characters, as well as their words and

Romance

The word derives from Roman and, during the Middle Ages, the term came to be used primarily for stories about knights-errant and their adventures, which could include events and characters which violated the rules of reality by using sorcery, magicians, and other fabulous events. "The Wife of Bath's Tale," in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is a romance, and Cervantes' Don Quixote parodies the genre.

Figures of speech

Ways of using language that deviate from the literal, denotative meanings of words in order to suggest additional meanings or effects. Figures of speech say one thing in terms of something else, such as when an eager funeral director is described as a vulture. See also metaphor, simile.

Frame

a narrative structure which contains within it other stories, making the stories themselves "stories-within-a-story." This device allows characters within the frame to tell the narratives, thereby allowing the author to distance himself/herself from the accounts.

Karma

a person's "deed" or "act." In Hinduism and Buddhism, it stands for the totality of one's actions in any single lifetime, the consequence of which has to be lived out and worked off in successive rebirths and lifetimes.

Picaresque

a story that was coined by the Spanish in the 16th Century. It refers to a kind of story, usually about a somewhat lovable rogue, who travels from place to place getting in and out of scrapes. The picaro, in playing pranks on local authorities, gives the author opportunity for satire. The episodes of a picaresque story are generally loosely connected: the picaro simply leaves one place and winds up in another. Don Quixote is an example of this style of storytelling.

Heroic epithet

an adjective or adjectival phrase uses frequently with a character's name, such as "grey-eyed Athena," "swift-footed Achilles," or "Odysseus, the tactician."