Lit

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Chorus

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In Greek tragedies (especially those of Aeschylus and Sophocles), a group of people who serve mainly as commentators on the characters and events.

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Complication

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Intensification of conflict.

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Convention

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A characteristic of a literary genre (often unrealistic) that is understood and accepted by audiences because it has come, through usage and time, to be recognized as a familiar technique.

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Crisis

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A turning point in the action of a story that has a powerful effect on the protagonist. Opposing forces come together decisively to lead to the climax of the plot. See also plot.

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Criticism

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the act or art of analyzing and evaluating or judging the quality of a literary or artistic work, musical performance, art exhibit, dramatic production, etc.

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Denotation

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The dictionary meaning of a word.

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Dialogue

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The verbal exchanges between characters. Dialogue makes the characters seem real to the reader or audience by revealing firsthand their thoughts, responses, and emotional states.

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Dramatic unities

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the three unities of time, place, and action observed in classical drama as specified by Aristotle in his Poetics.

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Epilogue

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a concluding part added to a literary work, as a novel.

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Figurative

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of the nature of or involving a figure of speech, esp. a metaphor; metaphorical; not literal

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Foil

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A character in a work whose behavior and values contrast with those of another character in order to highlight the distinctive temperament of that character (usually the protagonist).

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Frame story

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a secondary story or stories embedded in the main story.

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Incident

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one specific thing which happens in a plot.

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in medias res

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narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning

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irony

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A literary device that uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal a reality different from what appears to be true.

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soliloquy

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A dramatic convention by means of which a character, alone onstage, utters his or her thoughts aloud.

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Stichomythy (ia)

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Dialogue consisting of one-line speeches designed for rapid delivery and snappy exchanges.

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Gothic novel

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A type of romance wildly popular between 1760 up until the 1820s that has influenced the ghost story and horror story. The stories are designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural.

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Kenning

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In this poetic device, the poet creates a new compound word or phrase to describe an object or activity. Specifically, this compound uses mixed imagery (catachresis) to describe the properties of the object in indirect, imaginative, or enigmatic ways.

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Legend

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A legend is a story purported to be historical in nature, but without substantiation.

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Mock-heroic

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way of writing in which the poet adopts a heroic style for satirical effect, usually on a very unheroic subject

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Myth

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a traditional story, which may describe the origins of the world and/or of a people. Tries to explain supernatural

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Narrative

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the act of telling a sequence of events, often in chronological order. Alternatively, the term refers to any story, whether in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do.

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Naturalism

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A literary movement seeking to depict life as accurately as possible, without artificial distortions of emotion, idealism, and literary convention. t asserts that human beings exist entirely in the order of nature.

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Novel

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any extended fictional prose narrative focusing on a few primary characters but often involving scores of secondary characters.

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Novelette

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English extended prose narratives shorter than a short story but not quite as long as a novel.

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Occasional poem

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A poem written or recited to commemorate a specific event such as a wedding, an anniversary, a military victory or failure, a funeral, a holiday, or other notable date. It may be light or serious.

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Pastoral

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An artistic composition dealing with a simple, rural existence. Describes the simplicity, charm, and serenity attributed to country life, or any literary convention that places kindly, rural people in nature-centered activities.

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Picaresque

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A humorous novel in which the plot consists of a young knave's misadventures and escapades narrated in comic or satiric scenes

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Poetic justice

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The phrase and the idea was coined by Thomas Rymer in the late 1600s. He claimed that a narrative or drama should distribute rewards and punishments proportionately to the virtues and villainies of each character in the story.

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Poetic license

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The freedom of a poet or other literary writer to depart from the norms of common discourse, literal reality, or historical truth in order to create a special effect in or for the reader.

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Problem play

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refers to any play in which the main character faces a personal, social, political, environmental, or religious problem common to his or her society at large. In a narrower sense, Shakespearean scholars apply the term to a group of Shakespeare's plays

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Prologue

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the action or a set of introductory speeches before the first entry (parados) of the chorus.

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Propaganda

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n its original use, the term referred to a committee of cardinals the Roman Catholic church founded in 1622. The term is today used to refer to information, rumors, ideas, and artwork spread deliberately to help or harm another specific group, movement, belief, institution, or government.

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Narrative poetry

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a poem that tells a story

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Epic

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a poem that is (a) a long narrative about a serious subject, (b) told in an elevated style of language, (c) focused on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group (d) in which the hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people or nation

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Mock epic

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a long, heroicomical poem that merely imitates features of the classical epic. The poet often takes an elevated style of language, but incongruously applies that language to mundane or ridiculous objects and situations. The mock epic focuses frequently on the exploits of an antihero whose activities illustrate the stupidity of the class or group he represents.

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Folk or popular ballad

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a relatively short, usually anonymous narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action. Usually Impersonal

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Literary ballad

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a narrative poem that is written in deliberate imitation of the language, form, and spirit of the traditional ballad

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Metrical romance

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a poem which tells a story that ends happily, whether love is involved or not.

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Dramatic poetry

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When the poet lets one or more of the story's characters act out the story.

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Lyric poetry

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Poetry that expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts or feelings

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Lyric

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A type of brief poem that expresses the personal emotions and thoughts of a single speaker.

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Song

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A lyric poem with a number of repeating stanzas (called refrains), written to be set to music in either vocal performance or with accompaniment of musical instruments.

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Ode

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A long, often elaborate stanzaic poem of varying line lengths and sometimes intricate rhyme schemes dealing with a serious subject matter and treating it reverently.

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Sonnet

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A lyric poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a single, complete idea or thought with a reversal, twist, or change of direction in the concluding lines.

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Elegy

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any poem dealing with the subject-matter common to the early Greco-Roman elegies--complaints about love, sustained formal lamentation, or somber meditations.

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Ballade

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A French verse form consisting most often of three eight-line stanzas having the same rhyme pattern, followed by a four-line envoy

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Meter

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A recognizable though varying pattern of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress.

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Rhythm

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term used to refer to the recurrence of stressed and unstressed sounds in poetry.

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Accent

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The emphasis, or stress, given a syllable in pronunciation

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Foot

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A basic unit of meter consisting of a set number of strong stresses and light stresses.

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Scansion

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he act of "scanning" a poem to determine its meter.