Literary Terms
Free Verse
Poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme. Poets writing in free verse try to capture the natural rhythms of ordinary speech. To create its music, free verse may use internal rhyme, alliteration, onomatopoeia, reirain and parallel structure. For an example of a poem written in free verse, read "Daily" (page 41 0).
Allegory
A narrative in which characters and settings stand for abstract ideas or moral qualities. In addition to the literal meaning of the story, an allegory contains a symbolic, or allegorical, meaning. Characters and places in allegories often have names that indicate the abstract ideas they stand for: Justice, Deceit, Vanity. George Orwell's novel Animal Farm is a well-known modern allegory.
Dramatic Monologue
A poem in which a speaker addresses one or more silent listeners, often reflecting on a specific problem or situation. Though the person addressed in dramatic monologue does not speak, we often can discover something about the listener or listeners--as well as the speaker-by paying close attention to the speakers words. The speaker in Edgar Lee Masters's monologue "Lucinda Matlock" is an outspoken old woman who addresses the younger generation from the graveyard in Spoon River:
Flash-forward
A scene in a movie, play, short story, novel, or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to shift into the future. Writers may use a flash-forward to create dramatic irony. By means of the flash-forward, we know the future, but the story characters do not.
Mood
A story's atmosphere or the feeling it evokes. Mood is often created by a story's setting. A story set in a wild forest at night, with wolves howling in the distance, will probably convey a mood of terror, tension, or uneasiness. A story set in a cozy cottage or garden full of sunlight and the chirps of birds will probably create a mood of peace.
Diction
A writer's or speaker's choice of words. Diction is an essential element of a writer's style. Some writers use simple, down-to-earth, or even slang words (house, home, digs); others use ornate official-sounding, or even flowery language (domicile, residence, abode). The connotations of words are an important aspect of diction.
Epithet
Adjective or descriptive phrase that is regularly used to characterize a person, place, or thing. We speak of "Honest Abe," for example, and "America the Beautiful." Homer created so many epithets in his Iliad and Odyssey that his name is permanently associated with a type of epithet. The Homeric epithet in most English translations consists of a compound adjective that is regularly used to modify a particular noun. Three famous examples from the Odyssey are "wine-dark sea," "rosyfingered dawn,'' "the gray-eyed goddess Athena
Connotation
All the meanings, associations, or emotions that have come to be attached to some words, in addition to their literal dictionary definitions, or denotations. For .example, skinny and slender have the same literal definition, or denotation-"thin." But their connotations are completely different. If you call someone skinny, you are saying something unflattering. If you call someone slender, you are paying him or her a compliment. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell once gave a classic example of the different connotations of words: "I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pigheaded fool." Connotations, or the suggestive power of certain words, play an important role in creating mood or tone.
Biography
An account of a person's written or told by another person. A classic American biography is Carl Sandburg's multivolume of Abraham Lincoln. Today biographies are written about movie stars, TV personalities, politicians, sports figures, self-made millionaires, even underworld figures.Biographies are among the most popular forms of temporary literature. On page 184 is an excerpt Kenneth Silverman's biography of Edgar Allan Poe.
Autobiography
An account of the writer's own life. An example of a book-length autobiography is When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago (see page 543). Judith Ortiz Cofer's "Volar" (page 573) is an example of an autobiographical essay.
Ambiguity
An element of uncertainty in a text, in which something can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Ambiguity adds a layer of complexity to a story, for it presents us with a variety of possible interpretations, all of which are valid. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (page 173) is ambiguous because we don't know if we should trust the narrator's claims. Subtleties, or fine distinctions in meaning, in a text help create ambiguity. The significance of these subtleties is open to question.
Analogy
Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike in some respects. During the Revolutionary War the writer Thomas Paine drew an analogy between a thief breaking into a house and the king of England interfering in the affairs of the American Colonies (The Crisis, No. I). Similes are a kind of analogy. However, an analogy usually clarifies something, while a simile shows imaginatively how two different things are alike in some unusual way.
Tone
Attitude a writer takes toward a subject, a character, or the audience. Tone is conveyed through the writer's choice of words and details. For example, Gary Seta's "The Grandfather" (page 359) is affectionate and nostalgic in tone. James Thurber's "The Princess and the Tin Box" (page 332) is humorous and lightly mocking in tone.
Theme
Central idea of a work of literature. A theme is not the same as a subject. The subject of a work can usually be expressed in a word or two: love, childhood death. The theme is the idea the writer wishes to reveal about that subject. The theme is something that can be expressed in at least one complete sentence. For example, one theme of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (page 787) might be stated in this way: "Love is more poweriul than hatred." Theme is not usually stated directly in a work of literature. Most often, the reader has to think about all the elements of the work and use them to make an inference, or educated guess, about what its theme is. Some themes are so commonly found in the literature of all cultures and all ages that they are called universal themes. Here are some universal themes found in stories throughout the ages and expressed in the Odyssey (page 650): "Heroes must undergo trials and endure losses before they can claim their rightful kindom." "Arrogance and pride can bring destruction." "Love will endure and iriumph over evil."
Foil
Character who is used as a contrast to another character. A writer uses a foil to accentuate and clarify the distinct qualities of two characters. The word foil is also used for a thin sheet of shiny metal that is placed beneath a gem to intensify its brilliance. A character who is a foil, like the metal behind the gem, sets off or intensifies the qualities of another character. In Shakespeare's Romeo ond juliet (page 787), the cynical, sophisticated Mercutio is a foil to the romantic, naive Romeo.
Comic Relief
Comic scene or event that breaks up a serious play or narrative. Comic relief allows writers to lighten the tone of a work and show the humorous side of a dramatic theme. In Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet (page 787), the nurse and Mercutio provide comic relief.
Irony
Contrast between expectation and reality-between what is said and what is really meant, between what is expected to happen and what really does happen, or between what appears to be true and what is really true. In verbal irony, a writer or speaker says one thing but really means something completely different If you call a clumsy basketball player the new Michael Jordan, you are using verbal irony. The murderer in Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Cask of Amontillado" (page 173) is using verbal irony when he says to his unsuspecting victim, "Your health is precious." Situational irony occurs when there is a contrast between what would seem appropriate and what really happens or when there is a contradiction between what we expect to happen and what really does take place. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience or the reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know .. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (page 787), we know, but Romeo does not, that when he finds Juliet in the tomb, she is drugged, not dead. Thus we feel a terrible sense of dramatic irony as we watch Romeo kill himself upon discovering her body.
Idiom
Expression peculiar to a particular language that means something different from the literal meaning of each word. "It's raining cats and dogs" and "We heard it through the grapevine" are idioms of American English. One of the difficulties of translating a work from another language is translating the idioms.
Simile
Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, resembles, or than. Shakespeare, in one of his famous sonnets, uses a simile with an ironic twist, comparing two things that are not alike: We would expect a love poem to compare the light in a lover's eyes to the bright sun. But instead, Shakespeare puts a twist into a common comparison order to make a point about the extravagant similes found in most love poems of his day.
Hyperbole
Figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion or to create a comic effect. Writers often use hyperbole, also called overstatement, to intensify a description or to emphasize the essential nature of something. If you say that a limousine is as long as an ocean liner, you are using hyperbole.
Tall Tale
Exaggerated, far-fetched story that is obviously untrue but is told as though it should be believed. Most tall tales are humorous. Tall tales are especially popular in the United States. As tall tales are passed on, they often get taller and taller-more and more exaggerated. The tales told about Paul Bunyan, the superheroic logger of the Northern forests, are tall tales.
Novel
Fictional prose narrative usually consisting of more than fifty thousand words. In general, the novel uses the same basic literary elements as the short story (plot, character, setting, theme, and point of view) but develops them more fully. Many novels have several subplots, for instance. Modern writers often do away with one or more of the novel's traditional elements. Some novels today are basically character studies, with only the barest, stripped-down story lines.
Metaphor
Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, in which one thing becomes another thing without the use of the word like, as, than, or resembles. The poet Robert Burns's famous comparison "0 my love is like a red, red rose" is a simile. If he had written, "0 my love is a red, red rose" or "0 my love bursts into bloom," he would have been using a metaphor. Notice that the comparison in the second metaphor above is implied, or suggested, rather than directly stated, as it is in the first metaphor. An implied metaphor does not tell us directly that one thing is something else. Instead, it uses words that suggest the nature of the comparison. The phrase "bursts into bloom" implies that the feeling of love is like a budding flower.
Sonnet
Fourteen-line lyric poem that is usually written in iambic pentameter and that has one of several rhyme schemes. The oldest kind of sonnet is called the Italian sonnet, or Patrachan sonnet, after the fourteenthcentury Italian poet Petrarch. The first eight lines, or octet or octave, of the Italian sonnet pose a question or problem about love or some other subject. The concluding six lines, or the sestet, are a response to the octet. The octet has the rhyme scheme abba abba; the sestet has the rhyme scheme cde cde. Another important sonnet form, widely used by Shakespeare, is called the Shakespearean s<mO>et. It has three four-line units, or quatrains, followed by a concluding two-line unit, or couplet. The most common rhyme scheme for the Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.
Climax
Moment of great emotional intensity or suspense in a plot. The major climax in a story or play usually marks the moment when the conflict is decided one way or another.
Meter
Generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry. When we want to indicate the metrical pattern of a poem, we mark the stressed syllables with the symbol (') and the unstressed syllables with the symbol (v). Indicating the metrical pattern of a poem in this way is called scanning the poem, or scansion (skan'shan). Notice the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in the first four lines of this poem:
Stanza
Group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a single unit. A stanza in a poem is something like a paragraph in prose: It often expresses a unit of thought. A stanza may consist of any number of lines. The word stanza is Italian for "stopping place" or "place to rest." Emily Dickinson's poem "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" (page 435) consists of three four-line stanzas, or , quatrains, each one expressing a unit of thought.
Comedy
In general, a story that ends happily. The hero or heroine of a comedy is usually an ordinary character who overcomes a series of obstacles that block what he or she wants. Many comedies have a boy-meets girl plot, in which young lovers must face obstacles to their marrying. At the end of such comedies, the lovers marry, and everyone celebrates, as in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. In structure and characterization, a comedy is the opposite of a tragedy.
Haiku
Japanese verse form consisting of three lines and, usually, seventeen syllables (five in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third). The writer of a haiku uses association and suggestion to describe a particular moment of discovery or enlightenment. A haiku often presents an image of daily life that relates to a particular season.
Personification
Kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human. Here are a few lines in which poetry itself is personified-that is, it is described as behaving and feeling the way people do:
Imagery
Language that appeals to the senses. Most images are visual-that is, they create pictures in the reader's mind by appealing to the sense of sight. Images can also appeal to the senses of sound, touch, taste, or smell or even to several senses at once. Imagery is an element in all types of writing, but it is especially important in poetry. The following lines contain images that make us see, hear, and even smell what the speaker experiences as he travels to meet someone he loves.
Iambic Pantameter
Line of poetry that contains five iambs. An iamb is a metrical foot, or unit of measure, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (- '). Pentameter comes from the Greek penta (five) and meter (measure). Here is one iamb: arise. Here is a line measuring five iambs:
Soliloquy
Long speech in which a character who is onstage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud The soliloquy is a very old dramatic convention, in which the audience is supposedly overhearing the private thoughts of a character. Perhaps the most famous soliloquy is the "To be or not to be" speech in Shakespeare's play Hamlet. There are also several soliloquies in Romeo and juliet, including Friar Laurence's soliloquy at the opening of Act II, Scene 3
Epic
Long story told in elevated language (usually poetry), which relates the great deeds of a larger-than-life hero who embodies the values of a particular society. Most epics include elements of myth, legend, folk tale, and history. Their tone is serious and their language is grand. Most epic heroes undertake quests to achieve something of tremendous value to themselves or their people. Often parts of the hero's quest are set in both heaven and hell. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (page 650) are the best-known epics in Western civilization. The great epic of ancient Rome is Virgil's Aeneid, which, like the Iliad and Odyssey, is based on events that happened during and immediately after the Trojan War. The great epic of India is the Mahabharata. The great epic of Mali in Africa is Sundiata. Spain's epic is El Cid.
Protagonist
Main character in fiction or drama. The protagonist is the character we focus our attention on, the person who sets the plot in motion The character or force that blocks the protagonist is the antagonist. Most protagonists are rounded, dynamic characters who change in some important way by the end of the story, novel, or play. The antagonist is often but not always the villain in the story. Similarly, the protagonist is often but not always the hero.
Persona
Mask or voice assumed by a writer. Authors often take on other identities in their works. In a short story a writer may assume a persona by using a first-person narrator. When a poet is not the speaker of a poem, the poet is creating a persona.
Rhythm
Musical quality in language produced by repetition. Rhythm occurs naturally in all forms of spoken and written language. The most obvious kind of rhythm is produced by meter, the regular repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables found in some poetry. But writers can also create rhythm by using rhymes, by repeating words and phrases, and even by repeating whole lines or sentences. This stanza by Walt Whitman is written in free verse and so does not follow a metrical pattern. Yet the lines are rhythmical because of Whitman's repeated use of certain sentence structures, words, and sounds.
Character
Person in a story, poem, or play. Sometimes, as in George Orwell's novel Animal Farm, the characters are animals. In myths the characters are divinities or heroes who have superhuman powers, such as Poseidon and Athena and Odysseus in Odyssey (page 650). Most often a character is an ordinary human being, like Mme. Loisel in Guy Maupassant's "The Necklace" (page 160). The process of revealing the personality of a character in a story is called characterization. A writer can reveal a character by I . letting us hear the character speak 2. describing how the character looks and dresses 3. letting us listen to the character's inner thoughts and feelings 4. revealing what other characters in the story thirik or say about the character
Symbol
Person, place, thing, or event that stands for itself and for something beyond itself as well. For example, a scale has a real existence as an instrument for measuring weights, but it also is used as a public symbol of justice. Other familiar public symbols are the Cross that symbolizes Christianity, the six-pointed star that symbolizes Judaism, the. star and crescent that symbolizes Islam, and the bald eagle that symbolizes the United States. These are public symbols that most people know, but in literature, writers sometimes create new, private symbols that can be understood only from their context. One of the great symbols in literature is Herman Melville's great white whale, used as a symbol of the mystery of evil in the novel Moby-Dick
Pun
Play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings. Most often puns are used for their humorous effects; they are used in jokes all the time. ("What has four wheels and flies?" Answer: "A garbage truck.") Shakespeare was one of the great punsters of all time. The servants in Romeo and juliet (page 787) make crud puns as they clown around at the start of the play. Later, Romeo and his friend Mercutio trade wits in a series of more sophisticated puns. Since word meanings change so quickly, some of Shakespeare's puns are barely understandable to us today, just as puns popular today may be puzzling to people a hundred years from noW.
Tragedy
Play that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unhappy end. In a tragedy the main character is usually dignified and courageous. His or her downfall may be caused by a character flaw, or it may result from forces beyond human control. The tragic hero usually wins some self-knowledge and wisdom, even though he or she suffers defeat, perhaps even death.
Lyric Poetry
Poetry that does not tell a story but is aimed only at expressing a speaker's emotions or thoughts. Most lyrics are short, and they usually imply, rather than directly state, a single strong emotion. The term lyric comes from the Greek. In ancient Greece, lyric poems were recited to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument called a lyre. Today poets still try to make their lyrics "sing," but they rely only on the musical effects they create with words (such as rhyme, rhythm, and onomatopoeia).
Blank Verse
Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank means the poetry is not rhymed. Iambic pentameter means that each line tains five iambs, or metrical feet that consist of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed. Blank verse is the most important poetic form English epic and dramatic poetry. It is the major form used in Shakespeare's plays.
Nonfiction
Prose writing that deals with real people, things, events, and places. The popular forms of nonfiction are biography and auto-biography. Other examples include essays, newspaper, stories, magazine articles, historical writing, scientific-, reports, and even personal diaries and letters.
Allusion
Reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, science, or pop culture. In calling one of his stories "The Gift of the Magi" (page 287), 0. Henry uses an allusion to the wise men from the East called the Magi, who presented the infant Jesus with the first Christmas gifts.
Short Story
Short, concentrated, fictional prose narrative. Some say Edgar Allan Poe was the first short-story writer. He was also one of the first to attempt to define the short story. He said "unity of effect" is crucial, meaning that a short story ought to concentrate on a single purpose. Short stories are usually built on a plot that consists of these "bare bones": the basic situation or exposition, complications, climax, and resolution. Years ago, most short stories were notable for their strong plots. Today's shortstory writers tend to be more interested in character.
Rhyme
Repetition of accented vowel sounds, and all sounds following them, in words that are close together in a poem. Choice and voice are rhymes, as are tingle and jingle. End rhymes occur at the ends of lines. In this poem the words defense/tense, know/go, and Spain/Maine are end rhymes: Internal rhymes occur in the middle of a line. This line has an internal rhyme (dreary rhymes with weary): When two words have some sound in common but do not rhyme exactly, they are called approximate rhymes (or half rhymes, off rhymes, or slant rhymes). In Brooks's poem on this page, the words now and know are approximate rhymes. The pattern of end rhymes in a poem is called a rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme of a stanza or a poem is indicated by the use of a different letter of the alphabet for each new rhyme. For example, the rhyme scheme of Brooks's poem is aabbcc.
Assonance
Repetition of similar vowel sounds that are followed by different consonant sounds, especially in words that ·are close together in a poem. The words base and fade and the words young and love contain examples of assonance. The lines that follow are especially musical because of assonance:
Alliteration
Repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds usually at the beginnings of words that are close together in a poem. In this example the sound "fl" is repeated in line I, and the "s" sound is repeated in line 2:
Parallelism
Repetition of words, phrases, or sentences that have the same grammatical structure or that state a similar idea. Parallelism, or parallel structure, helps make lines rhythmic and memorable and heightens their emotional effect:
Inversion
Reversal of the normal word order of a sentence. The elements of a standard English sentence are subject, verb, and complement, and in most sentences that is the order in which they appear. (Ray rowed the boat.) Writers use inversion for emphasis and variety. They may also use it for more technical reasons-to create end rhymes or to accommodate a given meter. In a statement about Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, the historian Bruce Catton wrote, "Daring and resourcefulness they had too. . .." Catton inverts the order of the parts of the sentence so that the important words (daring and resourcefulness) come first.
Flashback
Scene in a movie, play, short story, novel, or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to flash backward and tell what happened at an earlier time, That is, a flashback breaks the normal time sequence of events in a narrative, usually to give the readers or viewers some background information that helps them make sense of a story. Much of the Odyssey (page 650) is told in the form of a flashback, as Odysseus describes his previous adventures to the Phaeacian court of King Alcinous. Hwang SunwOn successfully incorporates flashbacks into his short story "Cranes" (page 222). As SOngsam recalls scenes from his childhood, we are transported to the past so that we can fully understand SOngsam's present conflict. Flashbacks are extremely common storytelling devices in movies. In fact, the word fashback comes from film criticism, and it has spread to the rest of literature.
Plot
Series of related events that make up a story or drama. Plot is what happens in a story, novel, or play. An outline showing the "bare bones" of a plot would include the story's basic situation, or exposition; the conflict, or problem; the main events (including complications); the final climax, or moment of great emotional intensity or suspense, when we learn what the outcome of the conflict is going to be; and the resolution, or denouement.
Scene Design
Sets, lights, costumes, and props, which bring a play to life onstage. Sets are the furnishings and scenery that suggest the time and place of the action. Props (short for properties) are all the objects that the actors use onstage, such as books, telephones, suitcases.
Essay
Short piece of nonfiction that examines a single subject from a limited point of view. Most essays can be categorized as either personal or formal. A personal essay (sometimes called an informal essay) generally reveals a great deal about the writer's personality and tastes. Its tone is often conversational, sometimes even humorous. A formal essay is usually serious, objective, and impersonal in tone. Its purpose is to inform its readers about some topic of interest or to persuade them to accept the writer's views. The statements in a formal essay are supported by facts and logic.
Description
Type of writing intended to create a mood or emotion or to re-create a person, a place, a thing, an event, or an experience. Description is one of the four major techniques used in writing. (The others are narration, exposition, and persuasion.) Description works by creating images that appeal to the senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing, or touch. Writers use description in all forms of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Ballad
Song that tells a story. Folk ballads are composed by unknown singers and are passed on for generations before they are written down. Literary ballads, on the other hand, are poems composed by known individuals and are written in imitation of old folk ballads. "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall (page 464) is a modern literary ballad. usually tell sensational stories of tragedy or adventure. They use simple language and a great deal of repetition and usually have regular rhythm and rhyme schemes which make them easy to memorize
Paradox
Statement or situation that seems to be a contradiction but reveals a truth. Paradoxes in literature are designed to make readers stop and think. They often express aspects of life that are mysterious, surprising, or difficult to describe. When 0. Henry, in "The Gift of the Magi" (page 287), refers to the impoverished Della and Jim as "one of the richest couples on earth," he is stating a paradox.
Folk Tale
Story that has no known author and was originally passed on from one generation to another by word of mouth. Unlike myths, which are about gods and heroes, folk tales are usually about ordinary people. Folk tales tend to travel, and you'll often find the same motifs-elements such as characters, images, and story lines-in the tales of different cultures. For example, there are said to be nine hundred versions of the folk tale about Cinderella
Drama
Story that is written to be acted for an audience. The action of a drama is usually driven by a character who wants something and takes steps to get it. The elements of a dramatic plot are complications, climax, and resolution. The term drama also used to describe a serious play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy.
Conflict
Struggle or clash between opposing characters or opposing forces. In an external conflict, a character struggles against an outside force. This outside force might be another character, or society as a whole, or something in nature. "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell (page 5) is about the external conflict between the evil General Zaroff and the hunter Rainsford. By contrast, an internal conflict takes place entirely within a character's own mind. An internal conflict is a struggle between opposing needs or desires or emotions within a singl·e person. In James Hurst's "The Scarlet Ibis" (page 343), the young narrator struggles with an internal conflict-b!itween love for his brother and hatred of his brother's disabilities. Many works, especially longer ones, contain both internal and external conflicts, and an external conflict often leads to internal problems.
Genre
The category that a work of literature is classified under. Five major genres in literature are nonfiction, fiction, poetry, drama, and myth. Collections 7, I 0, and I I of this book are organized by genre: by poetry, by epic and myth, and by drama.
Dialogue
The conversation between characters in a story or play. Dialogue is an important factor in characterization and in moving the plot forward. Dialogue forms the structure of most plays. The following dialogue is taken from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (page 173):
Style
The particular way in which a writer uses language. Style is created mainly through diction (word choice), use of figurative language, and sentence patterns. Style can be described as plain, ornate, formal, ironic, conversational, and so on.
Setting
The time and place of a story or play. Most often the setting of a narrative is established early in the story. For example, in the fourth paragraph of "The Cask of Amontillado" (page 173), Edgar Allan Poe tells his readers, "It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season. . . ." Setting often contributes to a story's emotional effect. In "The Cask of Amontillado" the descriptions of the gloomy Montresor palace, with its damp catacombs full of bones, help create the story's mood of horror. Setting can also contribute to the conflict in a story, as the harsh environment does in Eugenia W. Collier's "Marigolds" (page I 19). Setting can also be used to reveal character, as it does in Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" (page 51).
Foreshadowing
The use of clues to hint at events that will occur later irl a plot. Foreshadowing is used to build suspense and, sometimes, anxiety in the reader or viewer. In a drama the gun found in a bureau drawer in Act I is likely to foreshadow violence later in the play. In "The Cask of Amontillado" (page 173), Poe uses foreshadowing skillfully. For example, when Montresor produces a trowel from beneath his cloak, Poe is foreshadowing the means Montresor will use to murder his enemy. When later he begins to build a wall around Fortunato, we remember that troweL
Narrator
The voice telling a story. The choice of a narrator is very important in storytelling. For example, Edgar Allan Poe chose the murderer himself to tell, the story "The Cask of Amontillado" (page 173). This choice of a narrator not only increases our sense horror but also raises many questions, which make us uneasy. For one thing we wonder whether this narrator is telling the truth. We also wonder whom the narrator is talking to as he relates the details of his crime.
Author
The writer of a literary work.
Voice
The writer's or speaker's distinctive use of language in a text. Voice is created by a writer's tone and choice of words. Some writers have such a distinctive voice that you can identify their works on the basis of voice alone. The detached, objective tone and simple language in "Old Man at the Bridge" (page 140), for example, make it instantly recognizable as one of Ernest Hemingway's short stories.
Myth
Traditional story that is rooted in a particular culture, is basically religious, and usually serves to explain a belief, a ritual, or a mysterious natural phenomenon. Most myths grew out of religious rituals, and almost all of them involve the influence of gods on human affairs. Every culture has its own mythology. For many centuries the myths of ancient Greece and Rome were very influential in the Western world. "The Fenris Wolf' (page 728) is a story from Norse mythology, the system of myths developed thousands of years ago by the people of Scandinavia The myths were part of an oral tradition; the oldes surviving written versions of these ancient tales came from Iceland in the thirteenth century. There are variations in the Norse myths, as there are in the myths of most cultures.
Complet
Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme. Alexander Pope wrote this sarcastic couplet for a dog's collar (Kew is a place in England): Couplets work nicely for humor and satire because the punch line comes so quickly. However, they are most often used to express a completed thought. In Shakespeare's plays an important speech or scene often ends with a couplet.
Poetry
Type of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery to appeal to the reader's emotions and imagination. The major forms of poetry are the lyric poem and narrative poem. Two types of narrative poetry are the epic and the ballad. One popular type of lyric poetry is the sonnet. Beyond this, poetry is difficult to define, though many readers feel it is easy to recognize. The poet Wallace Stevens, for example, once described poetry as "a search for the inexplicable."
Narration
Type of writing or speaking that tells about a series of related events. Narration is one of the four major techniques used in writing. (The others are description, exposition, and persuasion.) Narration can be any length, from a brief paragraph to an entire book. It is most often found in short stories, novels, epics, and ballads. But narration is used in any piece of nonfiction that relates a series events that tell what happened-such as a biography, an essay, or a news story-and even in a scientific analysis or a report of a business meeting.
Exposition
Type of writing that explains, gives information, defines, or clarifies an idea. Exposition is one of the four major techniques used in writing. (The others are narration, description, and persuasion.) We find exposition in news articles, in histories, in biographies (and even in cookbook recipes). In fact, each entry in this Handbook of Literary Terms is an example of exposition. Exposition is also the term for that beginning · part of a plot that gives information about the characters and their problems or conflicts.
Satire
Type of writing that ridicules something-a person, a group of people, humanity at large, an attitude or failing, a social institution order to reveal a weakness. Most satires are an attempt to convince us of a point of view or to persuade us to follow a course of action. They do this by pointing out how the opposite point of view or action is ridiculous or laughable. Satire often involves exaggeration-the act of overstating something to make it look worse than it is.
Suspense
Uncertainty or anxiety the reader feels about what is going to happen next in a story. In "The Most Dangerous Game" (page 5) our curiosity is aroused at once when we hear about ShipM Trap Island and sailors' fear of it. When Rainsford lands on that very island and is hunted by the sinister General Zaroff, suspense keeps us on the edge of our seats. We wonder: Will Rainsford be another victim who is hunted down and killed by the evil and weird Zaroff?
Onomatopoeoa
Use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning. Onomatopoeia is so natural to us that we begin using it instinctively as children. Crackle, pop, (lzz, click, zoom, and chirp are examples of onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is an important element in the music of poetry.
Point of View
Vantage point from which a writer tells a story. In broad terms there are three possible points of view: omniscient, first person, and third person limited. In the omniscient (or "all-knowing") point of view, the person telling the story knows everything there is to know about the characters and their problems. This all-knowing narrator can tell us about the past, the present, and the future of all the characters. He or she Can even tell us what the characters are thinking. The narrator can also tell us what is happening in other places. In the omniscient point of view, the narrator is not in the story at all. In fact, the omniscient narrator is like a god telling the story. In the first-person point of view, one of the characters is telling the story, using the pronoun f. We get to know this narrator very well, but we can know only what this character knows, and we can observe only what this character observes. All of our information about the events in the story must come from this one character. When a story is told from the first· person point of view, readers often must ask if the narrator is unreliable. An unreliable narrator does not always know what is happening in the story, or he or she might be lying or telling us only part of the story. In the third-person-limited point of view, the narrator, who plays no part in the story, zooms in on the thoughts and feelings of just one character. With this point of view, we observe the action through the eyes and with the feelings of this one character.
Fable
Very brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral, or a practical lesson about how to get along in life. The characters in most fables are animals that behave and speak like human beings. Some of the most popular fables are those attributed to Aesop, who scholars believe was a slave in ancient Greece
Anecdote
Very, very brief story, usually told to make a point. Historians and other writers of nonfiction often use anecdotes to clarify their texts or to provide human interest.
Speaker
Voice that is talking to us in a poem. Sometimes the speaker is identical with the poet, but often the speaker and the poet are not the same. The poet may be speaking as a child, a woman, a man, a whole people, an animal, or even an object. For example, the speaker of Maya Angelou's poem "Woman Work" (page 409) is a hard-working woman with several children, who cuts cane and cotton and lives in a hut-not Maya Angelou at all.
Dialect
Way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or a particular group of people. Dialects may have a distinct vocabulary, pronunciation system, and grammar. In a sense, we all speak dialects; but one dialect usually becomes dominant in a country or culture and becomes accepted as the standard way of speaki)1g. In the United States, for example, the formal language is known as standard English. (This is what you usually hear spoken by TV newscasters on the national channels.)
Figure of Speech
Word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of another and is not meant to be understood on a literal level. Most figures of speech, or figurative language, involve some sort of imaginative comparison between seemingly unlike things. Some 250 different types of figures of speech have been identified. The most common are the simile ("I wandered lonely as a cloud"), the metaphor ("Fame is a bee"), and personification ("The wind stood up and gave a shout").
Aside
Words that are spoken by a character in a play to the audience or to another character but that are not supposed to be overheard by the others onstage. Stage directions usually tell when a speech is an aside. For example, in Shakespeare's Romeo and juliet (page 787), there are two asides in the opening scene. Sampson speaks to Gregory in an aside, and Gregory responds to him in another aside as they pick a fight with the servants of the house of Montague. Sampson and Gregory. hear each other's asides, and so do we in the audience, but Montague's servants do n