A Glossary Of Literary Terms

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Alexandrine

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-A line of iambic hexameter
-the final line of a spenserian stanza is an alexandrine
EX:"A needless alexandrine ends the song, that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along." 2nd line (from Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticism" is an alexandrine.)

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Allusion

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Ex: "Call me Ishmael." From Moby Dick-alludes to biblical figure Ishmael.
Ex: Title of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury"-allusion to Shakespeare's Macbeth

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Antagonist

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Usually the villain, opposing the pro(tagonist).
Ex: Iago from Othello

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Anthromorphism

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-assignning human elements to non humans
-Different from personification (intrinsic premise/ongoing pattern) applied to a nonhuman character throughout a work.
EX: Narnia, Animal Farm

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Apostrophe

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A speech directed to someone not present or to an abstraction

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Buldungsroman

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-German for "novel of education."
-Follows a (young) person over number of years, from naivete and inexperience through first struggles with harsher realities.
-EX: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by james Joyce. "Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger.

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Decorum

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-One of the neoclassical principles of drama
-the relation of style to content in the speech of dramatic characters
EX: Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest."

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Doggerel

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-A derogatory term used to describe poetry with little to no literary value
EX: Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors" uses this for comedic effect, between Dromio twins

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Epithalamamium

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A work, esp. poem, written to celebrate wedding.
EX: Edmund Spenser's "Epithalamium."

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Euphuism

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-word derived from Lyly's "Euphues (1580)" to characterize writing self consciously laden with elaborate speech.
-popular in the late 16th century.
EX: Polonius in Hamlet:
To thine own self be true.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
Brevity is the soul of wit.

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Feminine rhyme

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-Lines rhymed by their final two syllables.
-

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Flat and Round characters

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-terms coined by E.M. Forster
-character built around a single dominant trait (flat) vs. those shaded with greater complexity (round).
EX: Mrs. Micawber in Dicken's "David Copperfield.: is flat vs. Anna Kerenina in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Kernina (round).

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spenserian stanza

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-stanza consisting of eight lines of iambic pentameter followed by an alexandrine
-first used by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem "The Faerie Queen."

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Pastoral Poetry

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-Idealizes life in the countryside

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Georgic

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-poems that deal with people laboring in the countryside, pushing plows, raising crops, etc.
EX: derived from Virgil's "Georgic," a poem about the virtues of the farming life

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Hamartia

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-Aristotle's term for "the tragic flaw"
-diff from tragic flaw in that hamartia implies fate vs. tragic flaw imples a psychological flaw in the tragic character
EX: Oedipus (hasty temper)=tragically flawed. Macbeth (lust for power)= tragically flawed

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Homeric Epithet

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a repeated descriptive phase, like in Homer's epics

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Hudibrastic

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-term derived from Samuel Butler's Hudibras
-couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines
-or to any deliberate ill rhymed, humorous, ill rhythmed couplets (bad poetry)

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Hyperbole

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-A deliberate exaggeration
-EX: Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The concord Hymn"
fired the shot heard round the world

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Litotes

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-understatement created through double negative
-ex" the bible, book of acts: Paul answered I am a Jew....a citizen of no ordinary city
-EX: I knock so no one home will hear me

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masculine rhyme

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-rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable
-EX: R. Frost "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening"

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Metonymy

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term for a phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature
-EX: "pen is mightier than the sword" from Edward Bulwer-Lyttons play "Richelieu."

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Neoclassical Unities def

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-Principles of dramatic structure from Aristotle's poetics.
-Called this bc of popularity in neoclassical movement (17th/18th cent.)
-Essential unities are of time, place, action:

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actual Neoclassical unities

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-To observe unity of time, a work should take place within the span of one day
-To observe unity of place, a work should take place within the confines of a single locale
-To observe unity of action, a work should contain a single dramatic plot, no subplot
-KEYWORD: single

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Pastoral Elegy

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-poem in form of elegy (lament for dead) sung by shepard
-shepard who sings is a stand in
-elegy is for another poet
EX: Miltons "Lycidas" and Shelly's "Adonais" (lament for J. Keats

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Pastoral lit

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-deals with lives of people, esp. shepards, in country or nature (not to be confused with georgic).
-EX: Christopher Marlowe's poem "The Passionate SHepard to his Love"

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Pathetic Fallacy

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-Coined by John Ruskin
-ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects
EX: Ruskins famous line "The cruel crawling foam."

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Personification

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Giving inanimate object human qualities or form (not to be confused with anthromorphism, which is usually a plant or animal).
-EX: "The Train" by Dickenson

I like to see it lap the miles,
and lick the valleys up
and stop the feed itself at tanks
and then, prodigious, step

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Picaresque

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A nove constructed along incident-incident basis
-typically follows a rogue whose primary concerns are filling belly and staying out of jail
EX: Mark Twain's Huckelberry Finn

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Protagonist

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main character, usually hero
-EX: Shakespeare's Othello

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Skeletonics

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-form of humorous poetry, using short line, ryhmed lines and pronounced rhytm, made pop by john skeleton
-EX: from Skeleton's "How the Doughty Duke of ALbany"
O ye wretched scots
ye puant pisspots
it shall be your lots
t be knit up with knots

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Sprung Rhythm

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-created in 19th cent. by Gerard Manley Hopkins
-like old english verse, rhythm fits a varying # of unstressed syllables ina line, only the stresses count in scansion
EX: from "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manly Hopkins

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Synechode

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a phrase that refers to person or object by a single important feature of that object or person
-EX: TS Elliots "Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock"
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
bc the ragged claws means the whole animal

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Voice

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perspective from which story is written. (1st/3rd person)