Literary Terms glossary

Affective fallacy “the error of evaluating a poem by its effects—especially its emotionaleffects—on the reader.” – defined by W.K Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in 1946--Abrams  
Aristotle’s  The following elements are emphasized by Aristotle in The Poetics: The elevated prescriptions for stature of the protagonist, a tragic flaw, a reversal involving a downfall, a tragedyrealization (coming too late) stemming from the reversal, catharsis, thein The Poeticsrestoration of order in the community.
Autotelic    When applied to literature, it means that the work of art is an end in itself 
Allegory  "A narrative fiction in which the agents and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived to make coherent sense on the 'literal,' or primary, level of signification, and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of agents, concepts, and events." - M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms
Alliteration:  Repetition of initial sounds in a series of words
Allusion "Reference, often to literature, history, mythology, or the Bible, that  is unacknowledged in the text but that the author expects a reader  to  recognize." (Kirszner and Mandell—hereafter K&M)
Anagnorisis“A term used by Aristotle in his Poetics (c. 330 B.C.) to refer to the moment in a drama when the protagonist “discovers” something that either leads to or explains a reversal of fortune—that is, the protagonist gains some crucial knowledge that he or she did not have” - Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
Antagonist: “The character pitted against the protagonist—the main character—of a work.”- Bedford Glossary; "Character who is in conflict with or opposition to the protagonist; the villain. Sometimes the antagonist may be a force or situation (war or poverty) rather than a person" (K&M)
Antistrophe:   (1) The second stanza of the classical Greek choral ode. It followed the strophe, which was sung while the chorus walked from right to left; singing the antistrophe, the chorus moved back from left to right before beginning the epode. (2) The second stanza in a Pindaric ode. – Bedford Handbook
Apostrophe"Figure of speech in which an absent character or a personified force or object is addressed directly, as if it were present or could comprehend: 'O Rose, thou art sick!'" (K&M)
Archetype   "Image or symbol that is so common or significant to a culture that it seems to have a universal importance. The psychologist Carl Jung felt that because archetypes are an inherent part of psyches, we recognize them subconsciously when we encounter them and therefore give them a greater meaning than they would otherwise possess." (K&M)
Anticlimax    “A rhetorical lapse, usually sudden, that involves a descent from a higher to a lower emotional point. . . .” – Bedford Glossary
Aside     "Brief comment spoken by the actor to the audience . . . and assumed not to be heard by the other characters." (K&M); “A convention in drama whereby a character onstage addresses the audience to reveal some inner thought or feeling that is presumed inaudible to any other characters onstage who might be in earshot” -Bedford
Assonance Repetition of vowel sounds in a series of words.Ballad  “A song, transmitted orally, which tells a story” – A Handbook of LiteratureBildungsroman "A novel that deals with the development of a young person, usually  from adolescence to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical." A Handbook  to Literature.
Blank verse   Unrhymed iambic pentameter
Burlesque   "A form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion . . .  the essential quality that makes for burlesque is the discrepancy between subject matter and style. That is, a style ordinarily dignified may be used for nonsensical matter, or a style very nonsensical may be used to ridicule a weighty subject. . . . a serious subject may be treated frivolously or a frivolous subject seriously." Harmon and Holman, A Handbook to Literature
Caricature     "A character defined by a single idea or quality"
Carpe diem A literary convention in which a person is encouraged to "seize the day," to make the most out of life, which is perceived to be short and fleeting.
Catastrophe  “The culmination of a play’s falling action, which in turn follows the climaxor the crisis of a drama.” – Bedford Glossary
Catharsis    “The emotional effect a tragic drama has on its audience.” – Bedford Glossary
Chorus   “In Green drama, a group of people who sang and danced, commenting on the action of the play.” – Bedford Glossary
Climax   “The point of greatest tension or emotional intensity in a plot.” – Bedford Glossary
Closet drama     “A drama, often written in verse, that is meant to be read rather thanperformed. . . .” – Bedford Glossary
Comedy "Any literary work, but especially a play, in which events end happily, a character's fortunes are reversed for the better, and a community is drawn more closely together, often by the marriage of one or more protagonists at the end." (K& M)
Connotation “Meaning that a word suggests beyond its literal, explicit meaning, carrying emotional associations, judgments, or opinions." (K&M)
Courtly love      "A doctrine of love, together with an elaborate code governing the   relations between aristocratic lovers, which was widely represented in   lyric poems, chivalric romances of Western Europe during the Middle Ages."- M.H. Abrams
Denouement   The resolution or final stage of a story or play in which loose ends are tied up.
Deus ex Machina    Liiterally,"the god out of the machine": any improbable resolution of plot involving the intervention of some force or agent hitherto extraneous to the story" (K&M) ;  ” a phrase referring specifically to the intervention of a nonhuman force to resolve a seemingly unresolvable conflict in a literary work” (Bedford)
Dialectic “In classical literature it refers to the tradition of continuing debate or discussion of eternally unresolved issues, such as ‘beauty versus truth’ or ‘the individual versus the state.’” Handbook to Literature
Diction  Word choice of an author
Didactic writingWriting "whose purpose is to make a point or teach a lesson, particularly common in the eighteenth century" (K&M); Didactic: refers  to the expectation that a work of literature will teach or instruct or make us better persons.
Dionysus    The Greek god of wine DithyrambOriginally a choral song in honor of Dionysus . . . .Now  the  word applies to any literary expression characterized by  wild, passionate, excited, impetuous language.” – Bedford GlossaryDouble entendre:   “A statement that is deliberately ambiguous, one of whose possible     meanings is risqué or suggestive of some impropriety” – A Handbook   to LiteratureDramatic irony:    “A special kind of suspenseful expectation, when the audience or readers foresee the oncoming disaster or triumph but the character    does not” (Abrams); “The words or acts of a character may carry a meaning   unperceived by the character but understood by the audience”- Handbook to   Literature
Dramatic Monologue    “A poem that reveals ‘a soul  in action’ through the speech of one character in a      dramatic situation. The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker’s life. The circumstances surrounding the conversation . . . are made clear by implication, and an insight into the character    of the speaker may result.” – Handbook to Literature
Dramatis PersonaeThe list of characters who play a role in a drama Dynamic character A character that grows and changes in the course of the action
Elegy "Poem commemorating someone's death, usually in a reflective or mournful tone, such as A.E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young" (K&M)
End-stopped Line    "Line of poetry that has a full pause at the end, typically indicated by a period or semicolon." (K&M)
Enjambed line    Also called "run-on line." "Line of poetry that ends with no punctuation or natural pause and consequently runs over into the next line." (K&M) 
Epic"A long and formal narrative poem written in an elevated style that recounts the adventures of of a hero of almost mythic proportions who often embodies the traits of a nation or people." Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
Epiphany    Term created by James Joyce and now used generally to describe a sudden moment of revelation about the deep meaning inherent in common things." (K&M)
Epistolary novel A novel written in the form of a series of letters or documents.
Exposition  "First stage of a plot, where the author presents the information a reader or viewer will need to understand the characters and subsequent action."
Farce:    "A type of low comedy that employs improbable or otherwise ridiculous situations and mix-ups, slapstick and horseplay, and crude and even bawdy dialogue." - Bedford Glossary
Flashback   "Variation on chronological order that presents an event or situation that occurred before the time in which the story's action takes place" (K&M)
Flat character    A character that is barely developed or stereotypical
Foil "A character who, by his contrast with the main character . . . serves to accentuate that character's distinctive qualities or characteristics." - Bedford Glossary
Foreshadowing "Presentation early in a story of situations, characters, or objects that seem to have no special importance but in fact are later revealed to have great significance." (K&M)
Genre  A category of literature.
GothicOf or relating to a style of fiction that emphasizes the grotesque, mysterious, and desolate.
Heroic couplet   A set of two lines of iambic pentameter
Humours   “In an old theory of physiology the four chief liquids of the human body—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—were called humours. They were closely allied with the four ELEMENTS. Thus, blood, like air,  was hot and moist; yellow bile, like fire, was hot and dry; phlegm, like water, was cold and moist; black bile, like earth was cold and dry. . . . Disease resulted from the dominance of some element within a single humour or from a lack of balance among the humours themselves.  . . . .
The sanguine person, with a dominance of blood, was beneficent, joyful, amorous.The choleric person was easily angered, impatient, obstinate, vengeful.The phlegmatic person was dull, pale, cowardly.The melancholic person was gluttinous, backward, unenterprising, thoughtful, sentimental, affected.” – Handbook to Literature
Hubris     “excessive pride that constitutes the protagonist’s tragic flaw and leads to a downfall” – Bedford Handbook
Hyperbole "Figurative language that depends on deliberate overstatement" (K&M)
Imagery Words or phrasing designed to appeal to the senses
In medias res     Latin phrase, evidently originating with Horace,  that means "in the middle of things," describing literary works that begin in the middle of the action.
Intentional Fallacy     "the critic or reader makes the mistake of not divorcing the literary work from any intention that the author might have had for the work" - Handbook of Critical Approaches
Irony "A discrepancy between what is said and what readers believe to be true. Irony may be dramatic, situational, or verbal." (K&M)
Juxtaposing  Placing two things side by side for purposes of comparison and contrast.
Kenning A "picturesque metaphorical compound," such as "swan's road" for the sea, often used in Anglo-Saxon writing.- Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
Kunstlerroman  "A form of the apprenticeship novel [or Bildungsroman] in which the protagonist is an artist struggling from childhood to maturity towards an understanding of his or her creative mission." A Handbook to Literature
Lay“A song or short narrative poem”  Handbook
LimerickA form of light verse with five lines and a specific rhyme scheme, with the first, second and fifth lines rhyming, and the third and fourth rhyming with one another.
Literary Canon   "Group of literary works generally acknowledged to be the best and most significant to have emerged from our history" (K&M)
Malapropism     “An inappropriateness of speech resulting from the use of one word for another, which resembles it. The term is derived from a character, Mrs. Malaprop, in Sheridan’s The Rivals. – Handbook to Literature
Masque “The chief development of the masque came in the latter part of Elizabeth I’s reign. . . . The masque . . . makes an appeal to the eye and the ear, with a succession of rapidly changing scenes and tableaux crowded with beautiful figures.” – Handbook to Literature
Melancholy     "nervous instability, rapid and extreme changes of feeling and mood and the disposition to be for the time absorbed in a dominant feeling or mood, either joyous or depressed" Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature
Metaphor  A comparison of two dissimilar things.
Mot juste   “French for ‘apt or proper word’.” Handbook to Literature
Muses  “Nine goddesses represented as presiding over the various departments of art and science. They are the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory). In    literature, their traditional significance is that of inspiring and helping poets.” Handbook to Literature
The Novel of Manners    "A novel dominated by social customs, manners, conventions, and habits of a definite social class" - A Handbook to LiteratureObjective Correlative  "A set of objects, a situation, or chain of events which shall be the formula of a particular emotion such that, when the external facts are given the emotion is immediately invoked." - T.S. Eliot  in Guerin et al
Oedipal complex"In psycholanalytic theory, the desire a young child feels for the |opposite-sex parent and the hostility the child correspondingly feels towards the same-sex parent" -- Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
Ode A relatively long lyric poem
Onomatopoeia "Word whose sound resembles what it describes." (K&M)
Organic form     The idea that “a given literary experience takes a shape proper to itself, or at   the least that the shape and the experience are functions of each  other.” Guerin et al
Oxymoron A compressed blending of opposites: "deafening silence," for example
Pastoral “A poem treating of shepherds and rustic life” – Handbook to Literature
Persona “Literally, a mask. The term is widely used to refer to a ‘second self’ created by an author and through whom the narrative [or poem] is told [or presented]” – Handbook to Literature
Personification“A figure that endows animals, ideas, abstractions, and inanimate objects with human form. . . .” – Handbook to Literature
Picaresque novel  A novel in which the protagonist, a social underdog, has a series of episodic adventures in which he sees much of the world around him and comments satirically upon it. The name comes from the Spanish word picaro, which also implies a “rogue” quality, a feature this kind of character shares with the anti-hero protagonists of many modern and contemporary works. The episodic adventures—usually misadventures—lead the protagonist to take to the road; hence, the picaresque novel is usually a novel “of the road.” Banished from the comforts of the mainstream, the picaro experiences a cross-section of society. Since he (or she, as in Defoe’s Moll Flanders) is looking at different social institutions as an outsider, he is often able to offer a penetrating critique that might not be available to someone immersed in the situation himself. Thus, this kind of novel becomes an excellent vehicle for social criticism, which is a mainstay of the genre of the novel itself.
Poetic justice: “A term coined by Thomas Rymer . . . to signify the distribution, at the  end of a literary work, of earthly rewards and punishments in proportionto the virtue or vice of the various characters” (Abrams)
Point of View     “Perspective from which a story is told." (K&M)
ProtagonistPrincipal character of a drama or fiction; the hero. (K&M)
Quatrain A four-line stanza of poetry, which is the most common stanza form inEnglish verse
Repartee    “A contest of wit, in which each person tries to cap the remark of   the other, or to turn it to his or her own advantage” (Abrams)Revenge Tragedy   A type of tragedy particularly popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean    ages, modeled loosely on the plays of first-century A.D. Roman   playwright Seneca and centered on the pursuit of vengeance" -    Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature Rhetoric   "Organization, strategy, and development of literary works, guided by an eye   to how such elements will further the writer's intended effect on the   reader." (K&M)
Roman à Clef    "A novel in which actual persons are presented under the guise of fiction." 
Romance    The term refers to "a variety of fictional works involving some combination of the following: high adventure, thwarted love, mysterious circumstances, arduous quests, and improbable triumphs." Bedford Guide; "In common usage, it refers to works with extravagant characters, remote and exotic places, highly exciting and heroic events, passionate love, or mysterious and supernatural experiences. In another, and more sophisticated sense, romance refers to works relatively free of the more restrictive aspects of realistic verisimilitude." - Handbook to Literature
Romanticism "[Late] Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary movement that valued subjectivity, individuality, the imagination, nature, excess, the exotic, and the mysterious." (K&M )
Round character   A well developed character who is "closely involved in the action and responsive to it" (K&M)
Satire     Literary attack on folly or vanity by means of ridicule; usually intended to improve society." (K&M)
Scop An Anglo-Saxon court poetSestet  “The second, six-line division of an Italian sonnet” – Handbook
Shanty“A sailor’s working song” - Handbook
Simile  Comparison of two unlike things using "like" or "as."
Situational Irony  This occurs "when what happens is at odds with what readers are  led to expect" (K&M)
Soliloquy “Convention of drama in which a character speaks directly to the audience, revealing thoughts and feelings which other characters present on stage are assumed not to hear” (K&M)
SonnetFourteen-line poem with a strict rhyme scheme.
Static character    A character who remains essentially unchanged by the action
Stock characters  “character types that occur repeatedly in a particular literary genre, and so are recognizable as part of the conventions of the form” (Abrams)
Symbol “Person, object, action, or idea whose meaning transcends its literal or denotative sense in a complex way." (K&M)
SynecdocheFigure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole, or the whole represents one of the parts. Example: "wheels" stands for "car"; "Wall Street" stands for the stock market.
Tone "Attitude of the speaker or author of a work towards the subject itself or the audience, as can be determined from the word choice and arrangement of the piece." (K&M)
Touchstone“A term used metaphorically as a critical standard by Matthew Arnold in “The Study of Poetry”
Tragedy “Literary work, especially a play, that recounts the downfall of an individual. Greek tragedy demanded a noble protagonist whose fall could be traced to a tragic personal flaw.” K&M
Tragicomedy A type of drama containing elements of tragedy and comedy
Ubi sunt A Latin phrase meaning “Where are they now?”
Unreliable narrators  Narrators who "whether intentionally or unintentionally, misrepresent events and misdirect readers." "Sometimes first-person narrators are self-serving, mistaken, confused, unstable, or even insane." (K&M)
The “Unities”:
Unity of place =  “that the action represented by limited to a single location”Unity of time =  “that the time represented be limited to the two or three hours it takes        to act the play, or at most to a single day of either twelve or    twenty-four hours”Unity of action =   “the plot is apprehended by the reader or auditor as a   complete and ordered structure of actions, directed towards the  intended effect, in which none of the important component parts,   or incidents, is non-functional” Together, they are referred to as  “the Unities”. (Abrams)
Utile et dulce     The expectation, arising with Horace, that literature should be    "delightful and instructive"
Verbal irony     This occurs when a person or character "says one thing but actually means another" (K&M)
Verisimiltude “The semblance of truth. The term indicates the degree to which a work creates the appearance of the truth” – A Handbook to Literature
Advanced Terminology - Poetry
Heroic couplet   A set of two lines of iambic pentameter
Terza rima  Refers to poetry “composed of tercets [three-line stanzas] which are   interlinked, in that each one is joined to the one following by a    common rhyme: aba, bcb, cdc, and so on.” Abrams
Quatrain A four-line stanza of poetry, which is the most common stanza form inEnglish verse
Quintain A five-line stanza of poetry. (The limerick is a five-line stanza.)
Sestina “A poem of six six-line stanzas in which the end words of the lines of the first stanza are repeated, in a set order of variation, as the end    words of the stanzas that follow. The sestina concludes with a three- line “envoy” [send-off] which incorporates, in the middle and at the end of the lines, all six of these end words.” Abrams, A Glossary of      Literary Terms
Rime royal   A seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter, rhyming ababbcc. Chaucer  uses it in his Troilus and Cresiyde
Ottava rima An eight-line stanza rhyming abababcc. “Like terza rima and the   sonnet, it was brought from Italian into English by Sir Thomas Wyatt  in the first half of the sixteenth century.” – Abrams
Spenserian stanza    - a nine-line stanza devised by Edmund Spenser for The Faerie Queene (1590-1596). The first eight lines are iambic pentameter. The last is iambic hexameter (called an Alexandrine). The          rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc
Villanelle     A nineteen-line form of poetry, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain. “Line 1 is repeated as lines 6, 12, and 18; line 3 as lines 9,   15, and 19.” The rhyme scheme is aba aba aba aba aba aba abaa.