Literary and Dramatic Terms

Rising Action

An event, conflict or crisis or set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's plot leading up to the climax.

Character

An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Dramatic _____ may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change).

Props

Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play. _____ can also take on a significant or even symbolic meaning.

Details

Catch-all word for any aspects of a literary work you choose to focus on.

Exposition

"The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided". In most drama the characters have to expose the background to the action indirectly while talking in the most natural way. What any person says must be consistent with his character and what he knows generally. _____ frequently empty ploys devices such as gestures, glances, "asides" etc.

In media res

"in the midst of things"; refers to opening a story in the middle of the action, necessitating filling in past details by exposition or flashback.

Theme

A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work. The theme can take the form of a brief insight or a comprehensive vision of life; it is not a message or a moral. A ____ must be expressible in the form of a statement - not "motherhood", but "Motherhood sometimes has more frustration than reward", and as such is the author's way of communicating and sharing ideas, perceptions, and feelings with readers. A _____ must be stated as a generalization about life; names of characters or specific situations in the plot are not part of the theme. It must account for all the major desenttails of the play and be reflected in its core aspects of character, setting and plot. The ______ reflects the author's perspective of what it means to be human in the circumstances of the play, unifying and controlling it. There is no one "correct" way of expressing the ____ of a play.

Dramatic Irony:

A device in which a character holds a position or has an expectation reversed or fulfilled in a way that the character did not expect but that the audience or readers have anticipated because their knowledge of events or individuals is more complete than the character's.

Static Character

A dramatic character who does not change.

Comedy:

A dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion. can be divided into visual or verbal. Within these 2 divisions there are further sub-divisions. For example visual includes farce and slapstick. Verbal includes satire, black _____ and _______ of manners.

Stage Direction

A playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (as well as actors and directors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play. Modern playwrights tend to include substantial stage directions, while earlier playwrights typically use them more sparsely, implicitly, or not at all. (See gesture).

Tragic hero

A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and/or fate, suffers a fall from a higher station in life into suffering.

Soliloquy

A speech meant to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on the stage (as opposed to a monologue which addresses someone who does not respond). In a _____ only the audience can hear the private thoughts of the characters.

Subplot

A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot that coexists with the main plot. Example: The story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern forms a _____ within the overall plot of Hamlet.

Irony

In general, a term with a range of meanings, all of them involving some sort of discrepancy or incongruity between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant. _____ is used to suggest the difference between appearance and reality, between expectation and fulfillment, and thus, the complexity of experience.

Prologue

(1) In original Greek tragedy, the ____ is either the action or a set of introductory speeches before the first entry of the chorus. Here, a single actor's monologue or a dialogue between two actors would establish the play's background events. (2) In later literature, the ______ serves as explicit exposition introducing material before the first scene begins.

Antagonist

A character or force against which another character struggles. Examples: Creon is Antigone's ______ in Sophocles' play Antigone; Tiresias is the _____ of Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King.

Satire

A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. Example: Joan Littlewood's Oh! What a Lovely War about World War I. Even the title indicates this is a satire.

Act

A major division in a play. can be subdivided into scenes. (See scene). Greek plays were not divided into ___ .The five ___ structure was originally introduced in Roman times and became the convention in Shakespeare's period. In the 19th century this was reduced to four ___ and 20th century drama tends to favor three ___.Allusion

Foil

A secondary character whose situation often parallels that of the main character while his behavior or response or character contrasts with that of the main character, throwing light on that particular character's specific temperament. Examples: In Hamlet, Laertes', father is murdered. His situation parallels Hamlet's situation but his response is very different. In Othello, Emilia and Bianca are foils for Desdemona.

Allusion

A special kind of metaphor; A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature._____ 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. There are three main types —classical, biblical, and literary.

Monologue

A speech by a single character without another character's response. The character however, is speaking to someone else or even a group of people.

Linear Plot

A traditional plot sequence in which the incidents in the drama progress chronologically; in other words, all of the events build upon one another and there are no flashbacks. ______ are usually based on causality (that is, one event "causes" another to happen) occur more commonly in comedy than in other forms.

Scene

A traditional segment in a play. ____ are used to indicate (1) a change in time (2) a change in location, (3) provides a jump from one subplot to another, (4) introduces new characters (5) rearrange the actors on the stage. Traditionally plays are composed of acts, broken down into ___.

Tragedy

A type of drama in which the characters experience reversal of fortune, usually for the worse. In ____, suffering awaits many of the characters, especially the hero.

Tragic flaw

A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero.

Diction:

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, ____ is "the manner in which words are pronounced." ______, however, is more than that: it is a style of speaking. In drama ______ can (1) reveal character, (2) imply attitudes, (3) convey action, (4) identify themes, and (5) suggest values. We can speak of the ____ particular to a character.

Complication:

An intensification of the conflict in a play

flashback

An interruption of a play's chronology (timeline) to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time-frame of the play's action. Examples: In Shakespeare's Othello, Othello recalls how he courted Desdemona.

foreshadowing

Anton Chekhov best explained the term in a letter in 1889: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." Chekhov's gun, or ______ is a literary technique that introduces an apparently irrelevant element is introduced early in the story; its significance becomes clear later in the play. Examples: At the beginning of the Ibsen's A Doll's House, the protagonist Nora goes against the wishes of her husband in a very minor way. This action _________ her later significant rebellion and total rejection of her husband. In Synge's Riders to the Sea the mother's vision of her recently drowned son foreshadows the death of her remaining son.

Syntax

The arrangement—the ordering, grouping, and placement—of words within a sentence. _____ is the study of the way that sequences of words are ordered into phrases, clauses, and sentences. ____ controls verbal pacing and focus. (more terms to follow)

Plot

The sequence of events that make up a story. According to Aristotle, "The _____ must be 'a whole' with a beginning, middle, and end" (Poetics, Part VII). This needs a motivating purpose to drive the story to its resolution, and a connection between these events.

Climax:

The turning point of the action in the plot of a play and the point of greatest tension in the work.

Dynamic Character:

Undergoes an important change in the course of the play- not changes in circumstances, but changes in some sense within the character in question -- changes in insight or understanding or changes in commitment, or values.

Aside

Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, but not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play. Example: In Shakespeare's Othello, Iago voices his inner thoughts a number of times as "_____" for the audience.

Round Characters

_____ is depicted with such psychological depth and detail that he or she seems like a "real" person. ______ contrasts with the flat character who serves a specific or minor literary function in a text, and who may be a stock character or simplified stereotype. If ______ changes or evolves over the course of a narrative or appears to have the capacity for such change, the character is also dynamic. In longer plays, there may be several round characters.

Comic Relief:

does not relate to the genre of comedy. It serves a specific purpose: it gives the spectator a moment of "relief " with a light-hearted scene, after a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments. Typically these scenes parallel the tragic action that they interrupt. It is lacking in Greek tragedy, but occurs regularly in Shakespeare's tragedies. Example: The opening scene of Act V of Hamlet, in which a gravedigger banters with Hamlet.

connotative diction

emotional meaning (wedding gown, cop, bureaucrat)

inciting incident

event that introduces the central conflict

cacophonous diction

harsh sounding words (Maggot)

visual imagery

imagery of sight

gustatory imagery

imagery of taste

tactile imagery

imagery of touch

Plot Structure/Freytag's Pyramid

is a modification of Aristotle's structure where he transformed the triangle into a pyramid and added two other levels, the first is the rising action (or complication) placed between the lowest left and the highest middle and the second is the falling action placed between the highest middle and the lowest right end. These five parts to analyze the structure: lowest left -exposition, left middle-rising action, highest-climax, right middle-falling action and right lowest-resolution.

abstract diction

not material; representing a thought (pleasant tasting)

Dramatic irony

the contrast between what a character believes and/or says and what the audience knows to be true. ___ may be used to refer to a situation in which the character's own words come back to haunt him or her. However, it usually involves a discrepancy between a character's perception and what audience (or reader) knows to be true. They reader possess some material information that the character lacks, and it is the character's imperfect information that motivates or explains his or her discordant response.

Verbal irony

the opposite is said from what is intended. It should not be confused with sarcasm which is simply language designed to wound or offend. ____, also called rhetorical irony, is sometimes viewed as a figure of speech, since it is a rhetorical device that involves saying one thing but meaning the opposite. _____ is the most common kind of irony and is characterized by a discrepancy between what a speaker (or writer) says and what he or she believes to be true. More specifically, a speaker or writer using this will say the opposite of what he or she actually means.

Denouement / Resolution:

Literally the action of untying. This is the final outcome of the main complication in a play. Usually this occurs AFTER the climax (the turning point or "crisis"). It is sometimes referred to as the explanation or outcome of a drama that reveals all the secrets and misunderstandings connected to the plot.

Recognition

See denouement.

Hubris

The Greek term ___ is difficult to translate directly into English. This negative term implies both arrogant, excessive self-pride or self-confidence, and a lack of some important perception or insight due to pride in one's abilities. This overwhelming pride inevitably leads to a downfall. Example: In Sophocles Oedipus, Oedipus' refusal to listen to anyone illustrates _____. He believes he knows best - even better than the prophet Tiresias - and his refusal to listen leads to his downfall.

Dialogue:

The conversation of characters in a literary work. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.

Protagonist

The main character of a literary work.

Reversal or Peripeteia

The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist- from failure to success or success to failure.

Catharsis

The purging of the feelings of pity and fear. You pity what happens to the hero and fear the same thing happening to you if you make the same mistake. According to Aristotle the audience should experiences ______ at the end of a tragedy.

Resolution

The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story.

Motivation

The thought(s) or desire(s) that drives a character to actively pursue a want or need. This want or need is called the _____ objective . A character generally has an overall objective or long- term goal in a drama but may change his or her objective, and hence ______, from scene to scene when confronted with various obstacles.

Conflict:

There is no drama without this. This between opposing forces in a play can be external (between characters) or internal (within a character) and is usually resolved by the end of the play.

Convention:

These are defining features or common agreement upon strategies and/or attributes of a particular literary genre..

falling action

This is when the events and complications begin to resolve themselves and tension is released. We learn whether the conflict has or been resolved or not.

Oxymoron

a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. faith unfaithful kept him falsely true ).

Flat Characters

are often, but not always, relatively simple minor characters. They tend to be presented though particular and limited traits; hence they become stereotypes. For example, the selfish son, the pure woman, the lazy child, the dumb blonde, etc. These characters do not change in the course of a play.

Situational Irony

discrepancy between appearance and reality, or between expectation and fulfillment, or between what is and what would seem appropriate. This includes both dramatic & cosmic irony. The term dramatic irony (sometimes referred to as tragic irony when this occurs in a tragedy) may be used to refer to a situation in which the character's own words come back to haunt him or her. However, it usually involves a discrepancy between a character's perception and what audience (or reader) knows to be true. They reader possess some material information that the character lacks, and it is the character's imperfect information that motivates or explains his or her discordant response.

Simile

explicit comparison between two things of unlike nature

Specific diction

gaze, stride, slump, weep, hurl, black Labrador retriever, tall boy

olfactory imagery

imagery of sma=ell

aural imagery

imagery of sound

General Diction

look, walk, sit, cry, throw, dog, boy

euphonious diction

pleasant sounding words (butterfly)

concrete diction

real or actual; specific, not general(sour tasting)

Tone

the manner of expression showing the author's attitude toward characters, events, or situations. ___ is reflected in the author's "voice." ____ is the author's attitude toward the writing (his characters, the situation) and the readers. A work of writing can have more than one ____. An example of ____ could be both serious and humorous. ____ is set by the setting, choice of vocabulary (diction) and other details.

Parallelism

two or more words, phrases, or clauses have the same grammatical form and an identical grammatical relationship to the same thing.

imagery

visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work.

denotative diction

words that are meant to be taken literally