Literary Devices and Techniques: A Comprehensive Glossary, Lecture notes of Literature

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A GL O SSARY O F

L ITERARY TERMS

ABSTRACTION is the process of removing an element from its unifying design. e.g. a discussion of the disease images in Hamlet.

ABSURDISM a philosophy based on the belief that man exists in an irrational and meaningless universe and that his search for order brings him into conflict with his universe.

ACCENT is the stress thrown upon a syllable. e.g. ad dréss (verb); ád dress (noun)

AESTHETIC (also ESTHETIC) suggests an appreciation of that which is beautiful; sensitive to beauty. Literature, drama, music, and ballet are termed aesthetic arts.

ALLEGORY is a derivative of the Greek allegoria, meaning to imply something else. Thus an allegory is a story, essay, play, or poem in which specific characters in concrete situations are intended to represent wider, general truths about human experience. In short, the story is symbolic. e.g. Bunyan s Pilgrim s Progress; the parables of Jesus, Aesop s fables

ALLITERATION is the repetition of the first consonant sound in a consecutive series of words, usually for the purpose of heightening rhythmic effect or suggesting an emotion or sensation. e.g. round the rugged rocks; the sun sank slowly

ALLUSION is a casual reference to a work, person, place, or event which is assumed to be familiar to the reader, and which depends on this familiarity for its significance. e.g. You ve met your Waterloo alludes to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. e.g. the face that launched a thousand ships refers to Helen of Troy

BIBLICAL ALLUSION has reference to the Holy Bible. e.g. another flood is coming requires a familiarity with the story of Noah for clarity

AMBIGUITY is a vagueness or lack of clarity of meaning or expression which makes possible more than one interpretation.

AMERICAN DREAM, THE , based on both the Puritan work ethic that hard work and industry breed success and the promise of a brave new world, The American Dream is at once an elusive and illusory aspiration. The works of such writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Arthur Miller illustrate the number of treatments of the theme, ranging from a bitter indictment of American values, to the sham and shame of a false and unattainable promise, to the cultural barrenness, moral and spiritual emptiness of 20 th^ -century America. (Benét s Readers Encyclopedia)

APHORISM (1) a terse, pithy statement in poetry or prose expressing a general thought, maxim, or proverb; (2) a concise and perceptive statement of principle, lacking the witty quality of the epigram but gaining effectiveness from its blunt expression. e.g. This above all: to thine own self be true.

APOSTROPHE is a figure of speech in which animate or inanimate objects are addressed in the second person (thou, you) as though present. e.g. Rise you rugged rocks and do battle in my cause The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

ARCHAISM is an antiquated word or expression. e.g. in sooth, methinks, forswear, forsooth

ARCHETYPE is an original type which others imitate. A literary archetype is a character or theme that recurs frequently. e.g. the heroic adventurer, the death and re-birth idea in mythology; and the isolation and self-recognition motif in tragedy

ARGUMENT is a mode of writing intended to influence a person to believe differently through reason

ASIDE is a brief, often sarcastic or revealing comment made by an actor to the audience and not meant to be heard by the other stage characters. It allows the spectators to hear significant and sometimes foreshadowing comments. e.g. Iago s aside in Othello: With as little a web as this will I/Ensnare as great a fly as Cassio.

ASPIRATES are sounds designated by the letters h , w , and wh.

ASSONANCE is the repetition of the vowel sounds in a series of words e.g. The winds that will be howling at all hours,/And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; the words howling , hours , now , and flowers have the same vowel sound and so are said to have assonance.

ATMOSPHERE is the emotional tone and overall effect of a narrative or descriptive passage. e.g. Poe creates an atmosphere of pervading horror through his lavishly described settings.

ATTITUDE is the feeling that a writer has toward his subject; conveyed to the reader through the writer s tone. e.g. One writer may feel awe toward the subject of mountains; another writer may feel terror.

BALANCED SENTENCE is one in which phrases or clauses balance each other by virtue of their likeness of structure, their direct contrast or similarity in meaning and their approximate equality of length. e.g. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures/He leadeth me beside the still waters

BALLAD , a NARRATIVE of unknown authorship passed on in the oral tradition. It often makes use of repetition and DIALOGUE. A ballad whose author is known is called a literary ballad.

BALLAD STANZA , a STANZA usually consisting of four alternating lines of IAMBIC TETRAMETER and TRIMETER and rhyming the second and fourth lines. We cross the prairie as of old / The Pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, / The homestead of the free. Whittier, The Kansas Emigrants

BATHOS refers to a sudden comedown from the grand to the ridiculous. (Also used to refer to overly sentimental presentations or passages as in soap operas and many Hollywood films play on the word pathos ). e.g. highly implausible and artificial speeches of Macduff s children before they are murdered in Macbeth

BIOGRAPHY , an account of a person s life. (See Ulibarri s My Grandmother Smoked Cigars .) Autobiography is the story of all of a person s life written by the person who lived it. (See Hansberry s To Be Young, Gifted and Black .)

BLANK VERSE is unrhymed iambic pentameter. e.g. Night s candles are burnt out, and jocund day / Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top. Shakespeare

BURLESQUE (see SATIRE)

CACOPHONY is a series of unpleasant, discordant sounds. e.g. I wish my tongue were a quiver the size of a huge cask / packed and crammed with long black venomous rankling darts Poe, The Bells (see also EUPHONY)

CADENCE is the rhythm of a series of sounds, determined by the pattern of accented and unaccented sounds. The fall of voice in reading or speaking.

CLIMAX is the highest point of emotional response when the conflict is being resolved favourably or unfavourably; the high point, the decisive confrontation in any play or novel. A novel or play may have many minor climaxes.

COHERENCE is the clarity given to a piece of writing through a definite method of development and transitional devices.

COMEDY is a play written largely for entertainment; in its broadest meaning, a drama which ends happily.

COMEDY OF MANNERS form ridiculing social rather than individual faults. The characters are laughed at because they represent social types with characteristic foibles of fashion and morality (The Importance of Being Earnest)

FARCE type of comedy wherein situations or behaviour are so ludicrous as to be incredible. Farce is achieved by placing one-dimensional characters in highly amusing situations which ignore all standards of probability (some television comedies).

COMPARISON is the similarity between two or more objects or situations.

COMPLICATION is an event which introduces or intensifies conflict. e.g. in the play Macbeth, Duncan s naming of his son Malcolm as a potential successor to the throne is a complication to Macbeth.

CONCEIT is an elaborate image or metaphor in which two dissimilar objects or situations are compared. e.g. in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock , T. S. Eliot compares the evening sky to a patient etherized upon a table

CONCRETE , not theoretical or abstract.

CONFLICT is a clash between two opposing forces. The clash may be physical, mental, emotional, moral, social, etc. Conflict is the struggle between two opposing forces. The four basic kinds of conflict are:

1. a person against another person ( The Cask of Amontillado );
2. a person against nature ( The Bear );
3. a persona against society ( Harrison Bergeron ); and
4. two elements within a person struggling for mastery ( The Haunted Boy ). More than one kind of conflict can be and often is present in a work. As Robert Penn Warren put it, no conflict, no story.

CONNOTATION, CONNOTATIVE MEANING is the suggested meaning of words because of personal or cultural experience as opposed to DENOTATION which is the dictionary meaning. e.g. portly , corpulent , and obese all mean fleshy, but portly connotes dignity, corpulent connotes bulk, and obese connotes an unpleasant excess of fat.

CONSONANCE is the repetition of a consonant sound within a series of words to produce a harmonious effect. e.g. And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds from Owen s Anthem for Doomed Youth. The repetition of the d and s sounds here produces a slow weighted line appropriate to the poem s mood of mourning.

CONTINUANTS are the sounds designated by letters m , n , r , and l. Continuants tend to slow the pace in a prose passage or the rhythm in a poem.

CONTRAST is the dissimilarity between two or more objects or situations, pointed out directly or implicitly. Such literary devices as paradox, juxtaposition, antithesis, character foils, and irony are all means of producing contrasts.

CONVENTION is any established literary practice which, although often unrealistic, is accepted by the reader or audience. e.g. omniscient narrator, soliloquy, walls removed from stage rooms, symbolic scenery, manipulated time sequences; in movies or television, full orchestral accompaniment to singing by persons ostensibly alone

CRISIS is the turning point in the fortunes of the protagonist. There may be several minor crises in a play or novel. e.g. Fleance s escape in Macbeth; Antony s speech in Julius Caesar

DEDUCTION is the reasoning from the general to the particular; reasoning from a generalization or a universal law to prove a specific case.

DENOTATION is the specific dictionary meaning of words.

DENOUEMENT (from the French verb denouer, meaning to untie ) is sometimes used to refer to the entire unravelling sequence which follows the climax of a novel or drama. More commonly, however, it refers simply to the final rounding off of the action.

DESCRIPTION is writing in which sensory details are used to evoke the scene of the action or an impression.

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE is a poem involving an uninterrupted speech by a character to a silent second figure. It is meant to reveal the personality of the speaker through his manner of speech, the attitudes his remarks disclose, and the implied reactions of his listener. e.g. Robert Browning s My Last Duchess

DRAMATIC POETRY is theatrical drama in a poetic form. e.g. Shakespeare s plays; T. S. Eliot s Murder in the Cathedral

DRAMATIS PERSONAE are the dramatic characters in a play.

ELEGY is a formal song or poem which expresses sorrow and usually praise for the one who is dead. e.g. Milton s Lycidas ; Shelley s Adonais When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom d is Walt Whitman s elegy written on the death of Abraham Lincoln.

ELLIPSIS is the omission of words or phrases grammatically necessary to a sentence. The omitted words, however, are implied. e.g. I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;/Am an attendant lord

EMANCIPATION , the act or process of freeing from control, restraint, or the power of another; to free from bondage; to free from any controlling influence such as traditional mores or beliefs.

EMPATHY is the projecting of oneself into the personality of a character and thereby understanding him/her.

END RHYME , the rhyming of words at the ends of lines of poetry. (See also INTERNAL RHYME)

END-STOPPED LINE , a line of poetry that contains a complete thought, thus necessitating the use of a semicolon or period at the end. The ship, becalmed, at length stands still; The steed must rest beneath the hill; Thoreau, Though All the Fates (See also RUN-ON LINE)

ENJAMBEMENT is the running together of cadence and thought in two consecutive lines of poetry. e.g. Porphyria s Lover: she guessed not how / Her darling one wish would be heard.

EPIC is a long narrative poem, written in an elevated style and recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero. Epics are characterized by an invocation; a setting of immense proportions; in medias res beginning; great battle or long journey; intervention of supernatural forces; catalogues of descriptive detail. e.g. Homer s The Iliad; Virgil s The Aeneid; Beowulf; Milton s Paradise Lost

EPICUREANISM is a philosophy advocating that happiness and active enjoyment is life s highest good, that pleasure is the proper end of man s efforts, but that true pleasures depend upon self-control, moderation, and honourable behaviour.

EPIGRAM is a terse and witty poem or statement, usually ending with an ingenious turn of thought, a wry twist. e.g. There is no sin except stupidity , Oscar Wilde; Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel , Samuel Johnson Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with. Artemus Ward

(Compare with MAXIM and PROVERB)

EPIGRAPH is a quotation at the beginning of a literary work for the purposes of illuminating the theme of the work. e.g. the quotation from T. S. Eliot s The Hollow Men appears at the beginning of Shute s On the Beach

EPILOGUE (literally to say in addition ) is a section following the actual plot conclusion of a narrative or drama. Of no fixed length, it usually sums up or rounds out the overall design of the work. e.g. G. B. Shaw s Saint Joan

EPITHET is a descriptive expression, adjective, noun, or even a clause, expressing some quality or attribute. e.g. crafty in crafty Ulysses ; Lion Hearted in Richard the Lion Hearted

ESSAY , a prose composition that presents a personal point of view. An essay may present a viewpoint through formal analysis and argument, as in Civil Disobedience : by Thoreau, or it may be informal in style, as in The Two-Wheeled ATV.

EUPHEMISM is an inoffensive expression used in place of one which is clearer, but disagreeable. e.g. gifted underachiever is a euphemism for a perpetually lazy student; pass away for die

FEMININE RHYME occurs when the last syllable of rhyming words is unaccented. Both the accented and unaccented syllables must rhyme. e.g. row / ing , flow / ing ; pil / low , wil / low

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE , language used in a nonliteral way to express a suitable relationship between essentially unlike things. When Twain compares the jaw of a bulldog to the fo castle of a steamboat or says that a frog whirled in the air like a doughnut, he is using a figure of speech or figurative language. The more common figures of speech are SIMILE, METAPHOR, PERSONIFICATION, HYPERBOLE, and SYNECDOCHE.

FLASHBACK is the recounting, in fleeting or extended form, of past incident(s) in a character s life, usually for the purpose of clarifying present events. Films often use the flashback technique. e.g. Steinbeck s Molly Morgan ; Faulkner s The Sound and the Fury

FOIL is any character who by his contrast to another character brings out the personality of the latter. e.g. Banquo to Macbeth in Macbeth; Fortinbras and Laertes to Hamlet in Hamlet

FOLKLORE , the customs, proverbs, legends, superstitions, songs, and tales of a people or nation. Literature often borrows elements from folklore. For instance, the belief that the devil can assume human form and the old legend (common to the folklore of many countries) of someone who strikes a bargain with the devil were incorporated into The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving.

FOOT , in verse, a group of syllables usually consisting of one accented syllable and all unaccented syllables associated with it. (A foot may occasionally, for variety, have two accented syllables. See SPONDEE.) In the following lines feet are divided by slashes: At mid / night in / the month / of June, I stand / beneath / the mys / tic moon. Poe, The Sleeper

FORESHADOWING is an indication or hint of a later event. e.g. gathering rocks in The Lottery

FREE VERSE is poetry which has rhythm but no consistent pattern of stresses (meter), usually rich in poetic devices, and possessing, as all good poetry does, aesthetic qualities and a universal appeal. e.g. Ferlinghetti s Junkman s Obbligato ; Arnold s Dover Beach

GENRE is a type or class of literature. The term is a very loose one, however, so that subheadings under these would themselves also be called genres, for instance, the MYTH and the epic. e.g. the Elizabethan revenge play, the modern detective story, novel, poetry.

GOTHIC FICTION is fiction which concentrates on the eerie and the grotesque for the purpose of evoking terror. e.g. most tales of Edgar Allen Poe

GOTHIC ROMANCE is a romance which takes place in an eerie setting, generally an old mansion. e.g. the novels of Mary Stewart

GUTTURALS are the sounds designated by the letters g , k , and ch (as in Machiavelli)

HAIKU POETRY is an ancient Japanese verse form of three unrhymed lines containing seventeen syllables in all (five, seven, five). e.g. The falling flower/I saw drift back to the branch/Was a butterfly.

HAMARTIA is the Greek word for the tragic flaw of a character, a flaw which leads to his eventual downfall or destruction. e.g. Macbeth s ambition

HEROIC COUPLET , a pair of rhymed verse lines in IAMBIC PENTAMETER. Trust not yourself: but your defects to know, Make use of every friend and every foe. Pope, from An Essay on Criticism

HEXAMETER a verse line of six feet.

HUBRIS is a Greek word meaning excessive or overbearing pride. In tragedy, hubris is often the tragic flaw which causes the hero s downfall by pushing him beyond the bounds of moral or divine law. e.g. this flaw of pride is present in King Lear

HYPERBOLE is a figure of speech employing deliberate exaggeration. e.g. he drank oceans of tea.

IAMB , a two syllable metrical FOOT consisting of one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable, as in the word decide.

IDYLL (meaning literally little picture ) is a short pastoral poem whose description suggests a mood of innocence and peace. The term has also come to be applied to longer narrative poems which are idealized in content and serious in theme. e.g. Wordsworth s The Solitary Reaper ; Tennyson s Idylls of the King

INTERIOR MONOLOGUE , a technique used by writers to present the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS of a fictional character, either directly by presenting what is passing through the character s mind or indirectly by the author s selection of and comments upon the character s thoughts.

INTERNAL MONOLOGUE refers to the words of a literary character who is talking or thinking to himself. While the soliloquy is the convention in drama for such self-addresses, the internal monologue is the convention employed in short stories, novels, and poems. The monologue may proceed in more or less conventional speech patterns or it may reflect the jumbled structure of the imaginative processes, in which case it is referred to as stream of consciousness. e.g. Salinger s Catcher in the Rye; Tennyson s Ulysses; Joyce s novels

INTERNAL RHYME is rhyme within a single line, serving to speed up the poem s rhythm or enhance its lyrical quality. e.g. Robert Service s The Cremation of Sam Magee ; Alfred Noyes The Highwayman e.g. I spy a fly upon the rye.

INVECTIVE is vigorous verbal denunciation and abuse. e.g. Hamlet s angry cry against Claudius; Bloody, bawdy villain./Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain.

INVERSION is a rhetorical device in which normal sentence pattern is altered or reversed to create an emphatic or rhythmic effect. The placement of the verb before the subject is that standard form of inversion. e.g. Tender is the night; Blessed are the meek (See ANASTROPHE)

INVOCATION is the direct addressing of a divine power by a writer, in the process of his composition. Invocation usually occurs at the beginning of a poem (as in most epics) where the author requests the inspiration and guidance of the appropriate muses. e.g. Milton s Paradise Lost; Homer s The Iliad

IRONY is the result of a statement saying one thing while meaning the opposite, or of situations developing contrary to expectation.

VERBAL IRONY refers to a statement in which the opposite of what is said is meant. e.g.. Mark Twain: It s easy to quit smoking. I ve done it hundreds of times.

DRAMATIC IRONY is based on the same principle of opposition between appearance and reality, but here the speaker is unaware of the opposition, and thus his ironic statements are not intentional as they are with verbal irony. The audience, though, often recognizes the ironic implications of such speech. e.g. When Brutus says, And for Mark Antony, think not of him,/For he can do no more than Caesar s arm/When Caesar s head is cut off. , it is not until much later that he discovers the opposite to be true.

SITUATIONAL IRONY is a discrepancy between expectation and realization. e.g. a man who develops an elaborate plot to kill his wife is trapped in his own device

JARGON is language that is either incoherent or ugly sounding because of its excessive use of circumlocution, technical terms, Latinate terms, slang, or general fuzziness of expression. e.g. meanwhile, in general proximity with the area of the development commonly given over to the dispensation of spirituous liquors, there sat, projecting an aura at the same time ebullient and lubricious, a noble gentleman, known to his peer group as Dangerous Dan McGrew.

JUSTIFICATION , to prove right or reasonable.

JUXTAPOSITION is a poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise, wit, or irony. e.g. foolish, mulish, religious donkeys (Dylan Thomas); irreverent juxtaposition of religious with words of stubbornness and stupidity

KENNING is a compound metaphor common to early Germanic literature in which a figurative name is used to present an object. e.g. In the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the expression ring-giver is used for king , swan-road for sea , and twilight-spoiler for dragon

LEGEND , a traditional anonymous story which may have some basis in fact. There are many legends about Johnny Appleseed, for example, who was a real person named John Chapman, but about whom relatively little is actually known. Both Betsy Ross and George Washington figure in legends. Places, too, sometimes prompt legends cliffs from which unhappy lovers are said to have leaped, for instance. (See MYTH)

LITOTES (a form of irony) is a rhetorical device wherein a claim is deliberately played down or understated. The effect is usually one of wit. e.g. Mark Twain: The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

METONYMY is a figure of speech in which one object is named which replaces another object closely associated with it. e.g. In Scepter and crown must tumble down (James Shirley), the words scepter and crown replace king or monarch

MIRACLE AND MORALITY PLAYS were a form of medieval verse drama. The miracle play dramatized a famous Biblical event or saintly feat, while the morality play was, as the term suggests, a play with a Christian moral, usually in an allegorical framework. e.g. Everyman presents on stage the trials and lessons of a man after he has been summoned by death

MOCK EPIC is a literary form meant to ridicule a situation by using the epic form. The situation becomes trivial in terms of the importance of situations in epics. e.g. Alexander Pope s The Rape of the Lock ridicules a young woman s anger over the loss of a lock of her hair.

MODERNISM , a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature of the early 20 th century. Modernist writers (such as William Faulkner, James Joyce, Virgina Woolf, T. S. Eliot, et. al.) rejected 19 th^ -century traditions and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles (i.e. upsetting of chronology, stream-of-consciousness style, fragmentary images, themes of urban cultural dislocation). ( Oxford Dictionary)

MONOLOGUE , an extended speech given by one speaker. Sometimes a distinction is made between a SOLILOQUY and a monologue, with the term soliloquy describing the extended speech of a character on stage who is in effect talking to himself or herself and expressing inner thoughts aloud. Gene, in I Never Sang For My Father:, expresses his inner thoughts when he speaks resentfully of his father and labels himself a gentleman who gave way at intersections. : These musings are supposed to be known only to the audience and not to other characters. The term monologue is usually used to express any rather long speech given by one person a character in a story or a real person. Amanda s lengthy speech about her social life in her youth, made to Laura as they await the arrival of Tom and Jim for dinner in The Glass Menagerie , is a monologue.

MOOD is the unifying attitude of any work. It is conveyed in literature through description of setting, nature of incident and characterization, rhythm of language, diction, and so on. It differs from atmosphere in that it refers to the author s state of mind rather than to the outside world. e.g. A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy display a strong mood of pessimism in much of their writing.

MOTIF is any recurring image or idea in an artistic work which serves to unify its diverse elements. Many motifs are adapted from lore, such as the man fatally caught in the spell of a lady in Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Often a work s motif is indicated by the author s deliberate repetition of a significant phrase (repetition of evermore in Poe s The Raven ). e.g. the images of rebirth in Steinbeck s The Grapes of Wrath

MOTIVATION , the portrayal of circumstances and aspects of personality that makes a character s actions and reactions plausible or believable. In A New England Nun , Louisa Ellis decision not to marry Joe seems plausible because of the author s description of events and Louisa s thoughts about her future.

MYTH , a traditional tale of unknown authorship involving gods and goddesses or other supernatural beings. A myth often attempts to explain aspects of nature such as the seasons or creation.

NARRATION is writing in which a series of events are related.

NARRATIVE , a story or account of an event or a series of events. It may be told either in poetry or prose; it may be either fictional or true. Amy Lowell s Patterns, Sara Kemble Knight s account, and April 2005: Usher II, are all examples of narratives.

NARRATOR , the teller of a story. The Teller may be a character in the story, as in The Cask of Amontillado ; the author himself, as in Escape: A Slave Narrative : or an anonymous voice outside the story, as in A Worn Path. A narrator s attitude toward his or her subject is capable of much variation; it can range from one of apparent indifference to one of extreme conviction and feeling. When a narrator appears to have some bias regarding his or her subject, as in Soldiers of the Republic, it becomes especially important to determine whether the narrator and the author are to be regarded as the same person. (See also PERSONA and POINT OF VIEW)

NATURALISM , writing that depicts events as rigidly determined by the forces of heredity and environment. Stephen Crane has been called a naturalist because his writing expounds the philosophy that the world can be understood by examining cause-and-effect relationships and that all events are determined by antecedent causes.