Literary Terms a Literatus** Should Know (Literatus - a literary person; pl., literati)
Mitchell – IB Literature
1. Allegory - an extended metaphor in which a person, abstract idea, or event stands for itself and for something else, usually a moral or spiritual concept more significant than the actual narrative
2. Alliteration - the repetition of consonant sounds in a sequence of words (“dew drops”)
3. Allusion - a brief, indirect reference to a historical or literary (or other artistic) figure, event, or object
4. Ambiguity - the state of having more than one possible meaning
5. Anapest - a foot where a stressed syllable follows two unstressed syllables (“understand”)
6. Anaphora - a type of parallelism created when successive phrases or lines begin with the same words; the repetition can be as simple as a single word or as long as an entire phrase
7. Antagonist - the character or force which opposes the protagonist
8. Anti-hero - a protagonist who lacks the characteristics that would typically make him/her a hero/ heroine
9. Apostrophe - a figure of speech in which someone or some entity (usually absent), some abstract quality or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present (“Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!”) 10. Archaism - a word or phrase (or a particular meaning of a word or phrase) that is no longer in common use and is considered extremely old fashioned; can also be a literary style modeled on older works to achieve a desired effect
11. Archetype - an image, descriptive detail, plot pattern, or character type that frequently occurs in literature, myth, folklore, or religion and can be universally recognized
12. Aside - a remark directed to the audience that characters onstage don’t hear
13. Assonance - the repetition of internal vowel sounds (“each evening”)
14. Aubade - a poem about dawn; a morning love-song; or a poem about the parting of lovers at dawn
15. Ballad - a narrative poem that tells a story and imitates traditional folk styles
16. Bildungsroman - a novel dealing with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity
17. Blank verse - unrhymed iambic pentameter
18. Cacophony - language that is harsh-sounding and difficult to pronounce
19. Cadence - the rhythmical movement of writing when it is read aloud
20. Caesura - a pause within a line of poetry that contributes to the line’s rhythm
21. Canon - works generally considered by scholars to be essential for study
22. Catastrophe - the conclusion of a tragedy which involves the death of the hero (usually after the climax)
23. Catharsis - the release of emotions by the audience at the end of a tragedy
24. Chorus - a group of characters in Greek tragedy who comment on the action of a play without participation in it
25. Cinquain - a five line stanza
26. Climax - the moment of great tension in a story which marks the turning point
27. Comic relief - a humorous scene or incident that alleviates tension in a serious work
28. Complication - the part of the plot in which the entanglement caused by the conflict develops; the knot to be untied during the resolution
29. Conceit - an extended metaphor with complex logic that governs an entire poem or passage
30. Conflict - the struggle within the plot between two opposing forces
31. Connotation - the emotional implications and associations that a word may carry
32. Consonance - repetitive sounds of consonants within a sentence or phrase; in poetry, it can manifest as slant rhyme (words like “worth”/“breath” or “poem/same”)
33. Couplet - two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme and have the same meter
34. Crisis - a turning point in the action of a story that leads to the climax
35. Criticism - the analysis, study, and evaluation of individual works of art, as well as the formulation of general principles for the examination of such works
36. Dactyl - one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (“desperate”)
37. Denouement - French word used to describe the falling action of a story
38. Deus ex machina - an improbable means by which an author too easily resolves a story
39. Diction - simply put, word choice
40. Dirge - a song expressing mourning or grief (as would be performed at a funeral)
41. Dissonance - harsh and inharmonious sounds which cause a marked breaking of the poetry
42. Dramatic irony - a discrepancy between what a character believes/says and what the audience knows
43. Dynamic character - a character who undergoes some kind of change due to the action in the plot
44. Elegy - a mournful lyric poem written to commemorate someone who has died
45. Ellipsis - the deliberate omission of a word or of words which are readily implied by the context (“And he to England shall along with you” -from Hamlet)
46. End rhyme - rhyme that comes at the end of lines
47. End-stopped line - a poetic line that has a pause at the end, often with punctuation
48. English sonnet - a type of poem that consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet (written in abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme; also known as Shakespearean sonnet
49. Enjambment - when a thought in poetry continues to the next line; also called a “run-on line”
50. Epic - a long narrative poem characterized by elevated language and heroic deeds
51. Epilogue - a concluding statement in a play made to the audience
52. Epiphany - an event in which the essential truth or nature of something (person/situation/object) is suddenly perceived
53. Epithet - adjective expressing a quality/attribute considered characteristic of a person/thing (“swift-footed Achilles”)
54. Euphony - language that is pleasing to hear (“cellar door”)
55. Exposition - narrative device that provides background and information about characters
56. External rhyme - a rhyme scheme composed of lines using end rhyme
57. Farce - a form of humor featuring slapstick comedy and extravagant dialogue
58. Feminine rhyme - words that rhyme and are both stressed on the first syllable (“butter/gutter”)
59. Flat character - a character with only one or two qualities; not psychologically complex
60. Foil - a character who, by contrast, illuminates the distinctive traits of another
61. Foot - the metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured
62. Foreshadowing - Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story
63. Free verse - a poetic style that doesn’t follow established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza
64. Haiku - Japanese poem consisting of three phrases of 5, 7, then 5 syllables, usually involving nature or the juxtaposition of two different images or ideas
65. Hamartia - the tragic flaw or misfortune that brings about a hero’s downfall
66. Heptastich - a seven line stanza
67. Hero - the central character who engages the reader’s interest and empathy
68. Hubris - excessive pride or self-confidence that leads to a character’s downfall
69. Hyperbole - a bold exaggeration
70. Iamb - a poetic foot where one stressed syllable follows an unstressed syllable (“Nicole”)
71. Imagery - words, phrases, or figures of speech that address the senses
72. In medias res - the common strategy of beginning a story in the middle of the action
73. Internal rhyme - where words rhyme within the line (“Sam McGee was from Tennessee…”)
74. Italian sonnet - a type of poem which is divided into two parts: an octave (rhyming abba abba) and a sestet (rhyming cde cde); the octave raises the question, states a problem, or presents a brief narrative, and the sestet answers the question, solves the problem, or comments on the narrative (also known as a Petrarchan sonnet)
75. Juxtaposition - arrangement of two or more ideas/characters/actions/settings/phrases/words side-by-side for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development
76. Litotes - an understatement meant for rhetorical effect (“I was not a little upset”)
77. Lyric - type of poem that expresses the emotions/thoughts of a single speaker
78. Masculine rhyme - words that rhyme and are both stressed on the 2nd syllable (“contend/defend”)
79. Measure - a metrical grouping (such as a type of foot)
80. Metaphor - a direct comparison of two unlike things (“my love is a red, red rose”)
81. Meter - rhythmic patterns of stress in a poem
82. Metonymy - substitution of one word for another object/ idea to symbolize that object/idea (“the pen is mightier than the sword”)The substitution of one word for another object or idea which it
83. Monologue - a speech by one person directly addressing an audience
84. Motif - a pattern in literature, specifically the recurrent presence of certain character types, objects, settings, or situations
85. Neologism - a newly coined word or expression
86. Octave - a poetic stanza of eight lines, usually forming part of a sonnet
87. Ode - a formal lyric poem that expresses lofty emotions about a serious subject
88. Onomatopoeia - words that are spelled how they sound
89. Oxymoron - the combination of contradictory terms to produce a paradoxical effect (“jumbo shrimp”)
90. Paradox - a statement that seems to be contradictory but actually makes sense
91. Parallelism - the use of phrases, clauses, or sentences that are similar or complementary in structure or in meaning
92. Parody - a literary or artistic work that imitates the style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule
93. Pastiche - an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period
94. Pastoral - a poem involving rustic people or a rural setting; in a contemporary sense, a means of expressing complex ideas in a simple way
95. Pentameter - a line of poetry consisting of five feet
96. Persona - a speaker created by the writer to tell a story or speak in a poem
97. Personification - endowing animals, ideas, abstractions, and inanimate objects with human qualities or human form
98. Picaresque - a usually structureless and episodic chronicle marked by realism and uninhibited expression
99. Poetic justice - when the outcome is the logical and necessary result of the actions and principles of major characters; an apt symmetry of fortune (“the hangman is hanged”)
100. Point of view - the vantage point from which the author tells a story
101. Prologue - the opening speech or dialogue of a play that provides an exposition
102. Prose - the ordinary language people use in speaking and writing (as opposed to verse) 103. Protagonist - the chief character in a work (also known as the hero/heroine)
104. Pun - a play on words where a word or phrase has two different meanings at the same time (“If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately”)
105. Pyrrhic foot - a foot of two unaccented syllables, occurring most often as variants in iambic verse (in “the evil that men do”, “-il that” is pyrrhic)
106. Quatrain - a four line stanza
107. Refrain - one or more words repeated at intervals in a poem (“nevermore” in “The Raven”)
108. Repetition - the repeating of lines to create a certain effect
109. Reversal - the point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist
110. Round character - a complex, fully developed character who reflects human experience
111. Satire - a literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies
112. Scansion - the process of measuring stresses in a line to find a metrical pattern
113. Sestet - a stanza with exactly six lines
114. Sestina - a fixed form of poetry consisting of 36 lines made famous by E. Bishop
115. Slant rhyme - refers to words that almost rhyme (farm, yard) or appear to the eye to do so (said, paid); also known as approximate rhyme, imperfect rhyme, near rhyme, half rhyme, oblique rhyme, and off rhyme
116. Simile - comparison between two unlike things using like or as
117. Soliloquy - a dramatic speech in which a character “thinks aloud”
118. Spondee - a poetic foot consisting of two stressed syllables (“death row”)
119. Stanza - a grouping of lines in poetry
120. Static character - a character who doesn’t change or grow throughout the work
121. Stock character - a flat, stereotypical character, such as the “dumb blonde”
122. Strophe - a structural division of a poem with stanzas of varying line-length, usually in an ode or free verse poem
123. Symbolism - the use of a word/phrase/description which represents a deeper meaning than the word itself
124. Synecdoche - figure of speech where the whole signifies the part or part signifies the whole (“Nice wheels!”)
125. Synesthesia - a technique adopted by writers to present ideas, characters or places in such a manner that they appeal to more than one sense (hearing, seeing, smell, etc.) at a given time
126. Syntax - the ordering of words into meaningful patterns of language
127. Syzygy - two coupled feet serving as a unit, usually as part of iambic pentameter (“land’s_sharp”)
128. Tableau - an interlude during a scene when all performers on stage freeze in position, then resume action as before
129. Tercet - a three line stanza
130. Theme - a message or truth about life conveyed by the author through events in the story; not simply the subject of a literary work, but rather a statement that the text seems to be making about that subject
131. Thesis - an assertion put forward as a premise to be proved with supporting evidence; must be arguable and not merely factual (also known as a claim)
132. Tone - the attitudes implied in a literary work toward the subject and the audience
133. Tragedy - traditionally a story that recounts an important individual’s downfall
134. Tragic flaw - often used interchangeably with the term hamartia; leads to hero’s downfall
135. Trochee - a poetic foot consisting of one stressed then one unstressed syllable (“Mitchell”)
136. Trope - the use of a word or phrase in a sense other than the literal (metaphor, irony, etc.)
137. Verbal irony - a figure of speech where a person says the opposite of what she means (sarcasm)
138. Verisimilitude - the semblance of truth or reality in literary works
139. Verse - a line of metrical writing, a stanza, or poetry in general
140. Villanelle - form of poetry used by Thomas in “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”
141. Volta - the turn in thought from problem to solution in a sonnet