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43 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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End-stopped
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A line that has a natural pause at the end (period, comma, etc.).
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Enjambed
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The running over of a sentence or thought into the next couplet or line without a pause at the end of the line; a run-on line. For example, the first two lines:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds Or bends with the remover to remove. . . . --Shakespeare |
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Epistolary novel
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A novel consisting of letters written by a character or several characters. The form allows for the use of multiple points of view toward the story and the ability to dispense with an omniscient narrator.
Ex: • C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters **think epistles!! |
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Existentialist novel
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A novel written from an existentialist viewpoint, often pointing out the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence.
Ex: • Albert Camus, The Stranger |
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Fantasy novel
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Any novel that is disengaged from reality. Often such novels are set in nonexistent worlds, such as under the earth, in a fairyland, on the moon, etc. The characters are often something other than human or include nonhuman characters.
Ex: • J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit |
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Foot
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The basic unit of meter consisting of a group of two or three syllables. Scanning or scansion is the process of determining the prevailing foot in a line of poetry, of determining the types and sequence of different feet.
Types of feet: U (unstressed); / (stressed syllable) Iamb: U / Trochee: / U Anapest: U U / Dactyl: / U U Spondee: / / Pyrrhic: U U See also versification. |
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Free verse
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Verse that has neither regular rhyme nor regular meter; often uses cadences (more like rhythm, as in music or dancing) rather than uniform metrical feet.
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Heroic couplet
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Two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter
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Historical novel
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A novel where fictional characters take part in actual historical events and interact with real people from the past.
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Horatian Satire
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In general, a gentler, more good humored and sympathetic kind of satire, somewhat tolerant of human folly even while laughing at it; named after the poet Horace, whose satire epitomized it; tends to ridicule human folly in general or by type rather than attack specific persons.
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Humanism
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The new emphasis in the Renaissance on human culture, education and reason, sparked by a revival of interest in classical Greek and Roman literature, culture, and language. Human nature and the dignity of man were exalted and emphasis was placed on the present life as a worthy event in itself (as opposed to the medieval emphasis on the present life merely as preparation for a future life).
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Humours
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In medieval physiology, four liquids in the human body affecting behavior. Each one was associated with one of the four elements of nature. In a balanced personality, none predominated. Predomination of one causes a particular personality. Here is a chart of them, the corresponding elements and personality characteristics:
•blood = air: sanguine, kind, happy, romantic •phlegm = water: sedentary, sickly, fearful •yellow bile = fire: ill-tempered, impatient,stubborn •black bile = earth: melancholy, gluttonous, contemplative The Renaissance took the doctrine of humours quite seriously--it was their model of psychology--so knowing that can help us understand the characters in the literature. Falstaff, for example, has a dominance of blood, while Hamlet seems to have an excess of black bile. |
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Hypertext novel
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A novel that can be read in a nonsequential way; often in CD form
aka hyperfiction or interactive novel |
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Invective
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Speech or writing that abuses, denounces, or attacks. It can be directed against a person, cause, idea, or system. It employs a heavy use of negative emotive language.
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Lampoon
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A crude, coarse, often bitter satire ridiculing the personal appearance or character of a person
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Literary quality
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A judgment about the value of a novel as literature. At the heart of this issue is the question of what distinguishes a great or important novel from one that is less important. Certainly the feature is not that of interest or excitement, for pulp novels can be even more exciting and interesting than "great" novels. Usually, books that make us think--that offer insight into the human condition--are the ones we rank more highly than books that simply titillate us.
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Meter
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The rhythmic pattern produced when words are arranged so that their stressed and unstressed syllables fall into a more or less regular sequence, resulting in repeated patterns of accent (called feet). See feet and versification.
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Mock epic
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Treating a frivolous or minor subject seriously, especially by using the machinery and devices of the epic (invocations, descriptions of armor, battles, extended similes, etc.). The opposite of travesty.
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Multicultural novel
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A novel written by a member of or about a cultural minority group, giving insight into non-Western or non-dominant cultural experiences and values, either in the United States or abroad.
Ex: Alice Walker, The Color Purple |
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Novel
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an extended prose fiction narrative of 50,000 words or more, broadly realistic--concerning the everyday events of ordinary people--and concerned with character. "People in significant action" is one way of describing it.
Another definition might be "an extended, fictional prose narrative about realistic characters and events." It is a representation of life, experience, and learning. Action, discovery, and description are important elements, but the most important tends to be one or more characters--how they grow, learn, find--or don't grow, learn, or find. |
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Novella
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A prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. There is no standard definition of length, but since rules of thumb are sometimes handy, we might say that the short story ends at about 20,000 words, while the novel begins at about 50,000.
Ex: Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Henry James, Turn of the Screw |
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Novel of manners
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A novel focusing on and describing in detail the social customs and habits of a particular social group. Usually these conventions function as shaping or even stifling controls over the behavior of the characters.
Ex: Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice William Makepeace Thackery, Vanity Fair |
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Parody
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A satiric imitation of a work or of an author with the idea of ridiculing the author, his ideas, or work; exploits the peculiarities of an author's expression--his propensity to use too many parentheses, certain favorite words, or whatever; may also be focused on, say, an improbable plot with too many convenient events.
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Persona
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The person created by the author to tell a story. Whether the story is told by an omniscient narrator or by a character in it, the actual author of the work often distances himself from what is said or told by adopting a persona--a personality different from his real one. Thus, the attitudes, beliefs, and degree of understanding expressed by the narrator may not be the same as those of the actual author
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Petrarchan conceit
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The kind of conceit (see above) used by Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch and popular in Renaissance English sonnets; Oxymorons are also common, such as freezing fire, burning ice, etc.
Ex: Eyes like stars or the sun, hair like golden wires, lips like cherries |
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Picaresque novel
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An episodic, often autobiographical novel about a rogue or picaro (a person of low social status) wandering around and living off his wits. The wandering hero provides the author with the opportunity to connect widely different pieces of plot, since the hero can wander into any situation; tend to be satiric and filled with petty detail.
Ex: Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote |
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Pulp fiction
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Novels written for the mass market, intended to be "a good read,"--often exciting, titillating, thrilling. Historically they have been very popular but critically sneered at as being of sub-literary quality. The earliest ones were the dime novels of the nineteenth century, printed on newsprint and sold for ten cents. Westerns, stories of adventure, even the Horatio Alger novels, all were forms.
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Regional novel
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A novel faithful to a particular geographic region and its people, including behavior, customs, speech, and history.
Ex: • Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird |
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Rhyme schemes
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•Couplet: a pair of lines rhyming consecutively.
•Eye rhyme: words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough, though, hiccough. Or: love, move, prove. Or: daughter, laughter.) •Feminine rhyme: two syllable rhyme consisting of stressed syllable followed by unstressed. •Masculine rhyme: similarity between terminally stressed syllables. |
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Roman a clef
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[French for "novel with a key," pronounced roh MAHN ah CLAY] A novel in which historical events and actual people are written about under the pretense of being fiction.
Ex: •Aphra Behn, Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister •Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises |
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Romance
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An extended fictional prose narrative about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people. Knights on a quest for a magic sword and aided by characters like fairies and trolls would be examples of things found in romance fiction.
Ex: •Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote |
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Science fiction novel
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A novel in which futuristic technology or otherwise altered scientific principles contribute in a significant way to the adventures. Often the novel assumes a set of rules or principles or facts and then traces their logical consequences in some form. For example, given that a man discovers how to make himself invisible, what might happen?
Ex: •H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man •Aldous Huxley, Brave New World |
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Sentimental novel
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A type of novel, popular in the eighteenth century, that overemphasizes emotion and seeks to create emotional responses in the reader; The type also usually features an overly optimistic view of the goodness of human nature.
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Setting
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The total environment for the action of a fictional work; includes time period (such as the 1890's), the place (such as downtown Warsaw), the historical milieu (such as during the Crimean War), as well as the social, political, and perhaps even spiritual realities; is usually established primarily through description, though narration is used also.
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Sonnet
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A fourteen line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme. The two main types of sonnet are the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean. The Petrarchan Sonnet is divided into two main sections, the octave (first eight lines) and the sestet (last six lines). The octave presents a problem or situation which is then resolved or commented on in the sestet. The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-B-A A-B-B-A C-D-E C-D-E, though there is flexibility in the sestet, such as C-D-C D-C-D.
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Shakespearean sonnet
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contains three quatrains and a couplet, with more rhymes (because of the greater difficulty finding rhymes in English). The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-G. In Shakespeare, the couplet often undercuts the thought created in the rest of the poem.
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Spenserian Stanza
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A nine-line stanza, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter (called an Alexandrine). The rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B B-C-B-C C.
Ex: Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene |
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Style
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The manner of expression of a particular writer, produced by choice of words, grammatical structures, use of literary devices, and all the possible parts of language use.
General Ex: scientific, ornate, plain, emotive. |
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Tone
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The writer's attitude toward his readers and his subjects: his mood
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Travesty
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A work that treats a serious subject frivolously-- ridiculing the dignified. Often the tone is mock serious and heavy handed.
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Utopian novel
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A novel that presents an ideal society where the problems of poverty, greed, crime, and so forth have been eliminated.
Ex: •Thomas More, Utopia •Samuel Butler, Erewhon •Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward |
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Verisimilitude
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How fully the characters and actions in a work of fiction conform to our sense of reality. To say that a work has a high degree of verisimilitude means that the work is very realistic and believable--it is "true to life."
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Versification
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Generally, the structural form of a verse, as revealed by scansion.
•Monometer: 1 foot •Dimeter: 2 feet •Trimeter: 3 feet •Tetrameter: 4 feet •Pentameter: 5 feet •Hexameter: 6 feet •Heptameter: 7 feet •Octameter: 8 feet •Nonameter: 9 feet The most common in English poetry is iambic pentameter |
