Literary Terms

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Abecedarius

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An abecedarius is an acrostic in which the first letter of every word, strophe or verse follows the order of the alphabet. Abecedarius is also a generic term for an alphabet book, which dates back to Biblical writings such as the Psalms, which used successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet as the first letter of each stanza.

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Academic drama

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Academic drama, also called school drama, is a dramatic tradition which arose from the Renaissance, in which the works of Plautus, Terence, and other ancient dramatists were performed in schools and colleges. At first, these dramas were performed in Latin, but later also in vernacular adaptations composed by schoolmasters under the influence of humanism. This tradition produced the earliest English comedies, notably Ralph Roister Doister (c. 1552) by the schoolmaster Nicholas Udall.

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Acatalexis

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An acatalectic line of verse is one having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final foot. When talking about poetry written in English the term is arguably of limited significance or utility, at least by comparison to its antonym, catalectic, for the simple reason that acatalexis is considered to be the "usual case" in the large majority of metrical contexts and therefore explicit reference to it proves almost universally superfluous.

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Accent (poetry)

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In poetry, accent refers to the stressed syllable of a polysyllabic word, or a monosyllabic word that receives stress because it belongs to an "open class" of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) or because of "contrastive" or "rhetorical" stress.

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Accentual verse

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Accentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line or stanza regardless of the number of syllables that are present. It is common in languages that are stress-timed, such as English—as opposed to syllabic verse, which is common in syllable-timed languages, such as French.

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Acrostic

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An acrostic is ap oem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable, or word of each line, paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message.

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Aisling

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The aisling (Irish for 'dream, vision', pronounced ASH-ling), or vision poem, is a poetic genre that developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries in Irish language poetry. The word may have a number of variations in pronunciation, however, in the Irish language the first syllable always includes a [ʃ] ("sh") sound.

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Allegory

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Allegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying meaning other than the literal. Simply put, an allegory is a device used to present an idea, principle or meaning, which can be presented in literary form, such as a poem or novel, or in visual form, such as in painting or sculpture.

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Anacrusis

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In poetry, anacrusis (Ancient Greek: ἀνάκρουσις "pushing back") is the lead-in syllables, collectively, that precede the first full measure.

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Anadiplosis

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Anadiplosis (pronounced /ænədɨˈploʊsɨs/, AN-ə-di-PLOH-sis; from the Greek: ἀναδίπλωσις, anadíplōsis, "a doubling, folding up") is the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause. The word is used at the end of a sentence and then used again at the beginning of the next sentence.

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Anagnorisis

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Anagnorisis (pronounced /ˌænəɡˈnɒrɨsɨs/; Ancient Greek: ἀναγνώρισις) is a moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery. Anagnorisis originally meant recognition in its Greek context, not only of a person but also of what that person stood for. It was the hero's sudden awareness of a real situation, the realisation of things as they stood, and finally, the hero's insight into a relationship with an often antagonistic character in Aristotelian tragedy.

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Analects

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Lunyu (English: Analects)[1] (simplified Chinese: 论语; traditional Chinese: 論語; pinyin: Lún Yǔ), also known as the Analects of Confucius, are considered a record of the words and acts of the central Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius and his disciples, as well as the discussions they held.

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Analepsis

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A flashback; an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached.

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Analogue

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The term analogue is used in literary history in two related senses:
--a work which resembles another in terms of one or more motifs, characters, scenes, phrases or events.
--an individual motif, character, scene, event or phrase which resembles one found in another work.

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Analogy

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Analogy (from Greek "ἀναλογία" – analogia, "proportion"[1][2]) is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, where at least one of the premises or the conclusion is general

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Anaphora

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In rhetoric, an anaphora (Greek: ἀναφορά, "carrying back") is a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis. For example:
In time the savage bull sustains the yoke,
In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure,
In time small wedges cleave the hardest oak,
In time the flint is pierced with softest shower.

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Anastrophe

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Anastrophe (from the Greek: ἀναστροφή, anastrophē, "a turning back or about") is a figure of speech involving an inversion of a language's ordinary order of words; for example, saying "smart you are" to mean "you are smart". In English, with its settled natural word order, departure from the expected word order emphasizes the displaced word or phrase: "beautiful" is emphasized in the City Beautiful urbanist movement; "primeval" comes to the fore in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's line "This is the forest primeval" (from Evangeline). Where the emphasis that comes from anastrophe is not an issue, "inversion" is a perfectly suitable synonym.

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Anecdote

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An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident[1] involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote to a fictional piece, one that is retold but is "too good to be true". Sometimes humorous, anecdotes are not jokes, because their primary purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait in such a light that it strikes in a flash of insight to its very essence.

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Annals

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Annals (Latin annālis, yearly from annus, a year) are a concise form of historical representation which record events chronologically, year by year. The Oxford English Dictionary defines annals as "a narrative of events written year by year."

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Antagonist

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An antagonist (from Greek ἀνταγωνιστής - antagonistes, "opponent, competitor, rival")[1] is a character, group of characters, or an institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend. In other words, 'A person, or a group of people who oppose the main character, or the main characters.'[2] In the classic style of story where in the action consists of a hero fighting a villain, the two can be regarded as protagonist and antagonist, respectively.[3] The antagonist may also represent a major threat or obstacle to the main character by their very existence, without necessarily actively targeting him or her.

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Annotation

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An annotation is basically a note that is made while reading information in a book, document, online record, video, software code or other information, "in the margin". This can be as simple as underlined or highlighted passages.

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Antanaclasis

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In rhetoric, antanaclasis (pronounced /æntəˈnækləsɨs/ ant-ə-NAK-lə-sis[1] or /ˌæntænəˈklæsɨs/ ANT-an-ə-KLAS-iss; from the Greek: ἀντανάκλασις, antanáklasis, meaning "reflection"[2]) is the stylistic trope of repeating a single word, but with a different meaning each time. Antanaclasis is a common type of pun, and like other kinds of pun, it is often found in slogans. "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

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Anthology

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An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts. In genre fiction anthology is used to categorize collections of shorter works such as short stories and short novels, usually collected into a single volume for publication.

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Anti-climax

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An anti-climax is where something which would appear to be difficult to solve in a plot is solved through something trivial. For example, destroying a heavily guarded facility would require advanced technology, teamwork and weaponry for a climax, but in an anti-climax, it may just consist of pushing a red button which says "Emergency Self-Destruct", or even more so, simply filling out an eviction notice and destroying the building.

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Anti-masque

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An anti-masque (also spelled antimasque) is a comic or grotesque dance presented before or between the acts of a masque, a type of dramatic composition. The anti-masque is a spectacle of disorder which usually starts or precedes the masque itself. It is characterized by impropriety and is transformed by the masque into goodness, propriety, and order, typically by the King's presence alone. It was also contrased with the masque by the use of the lower class as characters. This then was supposed to harmonize with the king and the higher class.

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Anti-romance

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An anti-romance, sometimes referred to as a satire, is a type of story characterized by having an apathetic or self-doubting anti-hero cast as the protagonist, who fails in the object of his journey or struggle. Most anti-romances take place in urban settings, and frequently feature insanity, depression, and the meaning of reality as major themes. An anti-romance is the antithesis of a romance.

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Antihero

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In fiction, an antihero[1] (sometimes antiheroine as feminine) is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis. Some consider the word's meaning to be sufficiently broad as to additionally encompass the antagonist who (in contrast to the archetypal villain) elicits considerable sympathy or admiration. The term dates to 1714,[2] although literary criticism identifies the term in earlier literature.[3]

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Antimetabole

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In rhetoric, antimetabole (pronounced /æntɨməˈtæbəliː/ AN-ti-mə-TAB-ə-lee) is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed grammatical order (e.g., "I know what I like, and I like what I know"). It is similar to chiasmus although chiasmus does not use repetition of the same words or phrases.

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Antinovel

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An antinovel is any experimental work of fiction that avoids the familiar conventions of the novel. The term was coined by the French philosopher and critic Jean-Paul Sartre.
The antinovel usually fragments and distorts the experience of its characters, forcing the reader to construct the reality of the story from a disordered narrative.

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Epistrophe

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Epistrophe (Greek: ἐπιστροφή, "return"), also known as epiphora (and occasionally as antistrophe), is a figure of speech and the counterpart of anaphora. It is the repetition of the same word or words at the end of successive phrases, clauses or sentences. It is an extremely emphatic device because of the emphasis placed on the last word in a phrase or sentence. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. — The Apostle Paul, in the Bible, 1 Cor 13:11 (King James Translation)

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Antithesis

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Antithesis (Greek for "setting opposite", from ἀντί "against" + θέσις "position") is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition. In setting the opposite, an individual brings out a contrast in the meaning (e.g., the definition, interpretation, or semantics) by an obvious contrast in the expression.

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Antonym

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The term antonym (and the related antonymy) has also been commonly used as a term that is synonymous with opposite; however, the term also has other more restricted meanings. One usage has antonym referring to both gradable opposites, such as long : short, and (non-gradable) complementary opposites, such as male : female, while opposites of the types up : down and precede : follow are excluded from the definition.

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Aphorism

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An aphorism (literally "distinction" or "definition", from the Greek: ἀφορισμός, aphorismós, from ἀπό + ὁρίζειν, apo + horizein, "from/to bound") is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.[1] The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, one of the earliest collections. Hippocrates includes such often invoked phrases as, "Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience misleading, judgment difficult." [2] The term was applied later to other sententious statements of physical science, and later still to statements of all kinds of philosophical, moral, or literary principles.
In modern usage an aphorism is generally understood to be a concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation cleverly and pithily written.

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Apocope

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In phonology, apocope (pronounced /əˈpɒkəpiː/, from the Greek apokoptein "cutting off", from apo- "away from" and koptein "to cut") is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel. English photograph > photo

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Apocrypha

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In the context of fiction, apocrypha includes those fictional stories that do not belong within a fictional universe's canon, yet still have some authority relating to that fictional universe. The boundaries between canon and apocrypha can often be blurred.
The word "Apocrypha" is sometimes used to describe works set in a fictional universe that may not belong in the canon.

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Apollonian and Dionysian

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The Apollonian and Dionysian is a philosophical and literary concept, or dichotomy, based on certain features of ancient Greek mythology. In Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus. Apollo is the god of the Sun, dreams, reason, and plastic visual arts while Dionysus is the god of wine, music, ecstasy, and intoxication. In the modern literary usage of the concept, the contrast between Apollo and Dionysus symbolizes principles of individualism versus collectivism, light versus darkness, or civilization versus primitivism. The ancient Greeks did not consider the two gods to be opposites or rivals. However, Parnassus, the mythical home of poetry and all art, was strongly associated with each of the two gods in separate legends.

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Apologue

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An apologue (from the Greek "απολογος," a "statement" or "account") is a brief fable or allegorical story with pointed or exaggerated details, meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for a moral doctrine or to convey a useful lesson without stating it explicitly. Unlike a fable, the moral is more important than the narrative details. As with the parable, the apologue is a tool of rhetorical argument used to convince or persuade.

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Apologetics

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Apologetics (from Greek απολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (usually religious) through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers (c. 120-220) who defended their faith against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called apologists.[1]

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Apothegm

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An adage (pronounced /ˈædɨdʒ/), or adagium (Latin), is a short but memorable saying which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people, or that has gained some credibility through its long use. It often involves a planning failure such as "don't count your chickens before they hatch" or "don't burn bridges behind you." Adages may be interesting observations, practical or ethical guidelines, or sceptical comments on life.

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Aposiopesis

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Aposiopesis (pronounced /ˌæpəsaɪ.əˈpiːsɪs/ from Classical Greek, ἀποσιώπησις, "becoming silent") is a rhetorical device wherein a sentence is deliberately broken off and left unfinished, the ending to be supplied by the imagination, giving an impression of unwillingness or inability to continue. An example would be the threat "Get out, or else—!" This device often portrays its users as overcome with passion (fear, anger, excitement) or modesty. To mark the occurrence of aposiopesis with punctuation an em dash or an ellipsis may be used.

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Apostrophe

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Apostrophe (Greek ἀποστροφή, apostrophé, "turning away"; the final e being sounded)[1] is an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea. In dramatic works and poetry written in or translated into English, such a figure of speech is often introduced by the exclamation "O".
It is related to personification, although in apostrophe, objects or abstractions are implied to have certain human qualities (such as understanding) by the very fact that the speaker is addressing them as he would a person in his presence.
This rhetorical device addresses things which are personified; absent people or gods.

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Apron stage

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The apron is any part of the stage that extends past the proscenium arch and into the audience or seating area. The Elizabethan stage, which was a raised platform with the audience on three sides, is the outstanding example.

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Arcadia (utopia)

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Arcadia (Greek: Ἀρκαδία) refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an idyllic vision of unspoiled wilderness. Arcadia is associated with bountiful natural splendor, harmony, and is often inhabited by shepherds. The concept also figures in Renaissance mythology. Commonly thought of as being in line with Utopian ideals, Arcadia differs from that tradition in that it is more often specifically regarded as unattainable. Furthermore, it is seen as a lost, Edenic form of life, contrasting to the progressive nature of Utopian desires.

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Archaism

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In language, an archaism (from the Greek: ἀρχαϊκός, archaïkós, 'old-fashioned, antiquated', ultimately ἀρχαῖος, archaîos, 'from the beginning, ancient') is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately (to achieve a specific effect) or as part of a specific jargon (for example in law) or formula (for example in religious contexts). Many nursery rhymes contain archaisms. Archaic elements that occur only in certain fixed expressions (for example 'be that as it may') are not considered to be archaisms.

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Archetype

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An archetype (pronounced /ˈɑrkɪtaɪp/) is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior.

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Aristeia

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An aristeia or aristia (Ancient Greek: ἀριστεία, IPA: [aristéːa], "excellence"; English: /ærɨˈstiː.ə/) is a scene in the dramatic conventions of such works as the Iliad in which a hero in battle has his finest moments (aristos = best). It is usually associated with men but can be expanded also to encompass women (as in the case of Andromache). In the latter case the aristeia is of a different sort, grief. Such is the high quality of the hero's offensive, an Aristeia scene usually results in the death of all those standing in his way. The elements of the scene and the order in which they appear in the "Iliad" are:
Arming scene
Brilliance of armor/hero
Exhortation to followers
Initial exploit
Setback (wounding)
Divine inspiration
Renewed exploits
Double simile
The kill
Taunting the victim

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Argument

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In logic, an argument is a set of one or more meaningful declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the premises along with another meaningful declarative sentence (or "proposition") known as the conclusion. A deductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises; an inductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is supported by the premises. Deductive arguments are valid or invalid, and sound or not sound. An argument is valid if and only if the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises and (consequently) its corresponding conditional is a necessary truth. A sound argument is a valid argument with true premises.

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Arsis and thesis

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In music and prosody, arsis and thesis refer to the stronger and weaker parts of a musical measure or poetic foot. Arsis and thesis were the raising and lowering of the foot in beating of time, or the raising and lowering of the voice in pitch or stress. Accordingly, in music and in Greek scansion arsis is an unaccented note (upbeat),[1] but in Latin and modern poetry it is the stressed syllable (ictus).[2] In English, poetry is based on stress, and therefore arsis and thesis refer to the accented and unaccented parts of a foot.

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Art for art's sake

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"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, ''l'art pour l'art'', and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function. Such works are sometimes described as "autotelic", from the Greek autoteles, “complete in itself”, a concept that has been expanded to embrace "inner-directed" or "self-motivated" human beings.

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Asemic writing

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Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means "having no specific semantic content".[1] With the nonspecificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art. The open nature of asemic works allows for meaning to occur trans-linguistically; an asemic text may be "read" in a similar fashion regardless of the reader's natural language. Multiple meanings for the same symbolism are another possibility for an asemic work.

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Aside

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An aside is a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience. By convention the audience is to realize that the character's speech is unheard by the other characters on stage. It may be addressed to the audience expressly (in character or out) or represent an unspoken thought. An aside is usually a brief comment, rather than a speech, such as a monologue or soliloquy. Unlike a public announcement, it occurs within the context of the play. An aside is, by convention, a true statement of a character's thought; a character may be mistaken in an aside, but may not be dishonest.
A little more than kin, and less than kind.

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Assonance

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Assonance is the refrain of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the /uː/ ("o"/"ou"/"ue" sound) is repeated within the sentence and is assonant.
Assonance is found more often in verse than in prose. It is used in (mainly modern) English-language poetry, and is particularly important in Old French, Spanish and Celtic languages.

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Attitude

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An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event—this is often referred to as the attitude object. People can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object, meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative attitudes toward the item in question.

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Aubade

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An aubade is a poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn.[1]

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Audience

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An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called the "reader"), theatre, music or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art; some events invite overt audience participation and others allowing only modest clapping and criticism and reception.

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Autobiography

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An autobiography (from the Greek, αὐτός-autos self + βίος-bios life + γράφειν-graphein to write) is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.

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Autotelic

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Autotelic[1] is defined by one "having a purpose in and not apart from itself". It is a broad term that can be applied to missionaries, scientists, and innumerable other vocations.
Autotelic [2] is used to describe people who are internally driven, and as such may exhibit a sense of purpose and curiosity. This determination is an exclusive difference from being ex

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Avant-garde

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Avant-garde (French pronunciation: [avɑ̃ɡaʁd]) means "advance guard" or "vanguard".[1] The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

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Ballad

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A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and the term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad.

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Ballade

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The ballade (pronounced /bəˈlɑːd/; not to be confused with the ballad) is a verse form typically consisting of three eight-line stanzas, each with a consistent metre and a particular rhyme scheme. The last line in the stanza is a refrain, and the stanzas are followed by a four-line concluding stanza (an envoi) usually addressed to a prince. The rhyme scheme is therefore usually 'ababbcbC ababbcbC ababbcbC bcbC', where the capital 'C' is a refrain.

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Ballad stanza

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In poetry, a Ballad stanza is the four-line stanza, known as a quatrain, most often found in the folk ballad. This form consists of alternating four- and three-stress lines. Usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme (in an a/b/c/b pattern). Assonance in place of rhyme is common. Samuel Taylor Coleridge adopted the ballad stanza in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, alternating eight and six syllable lines.
All in a hot and copper sky!
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

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Bard

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In medieval Gaelic and British culture (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Brittany and Cornwall) a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.
Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland and Highland Scotland, the term "bard", with the decline of living bardic tradition in the modern period, acquired generic meanings of an epic author/singer/narrator, comparable with the terms in other cultures: minstrel, skald/scop, rhapsode, udgatar, griot, ashik) or any poets, especially famous ones. For example, William Shakespeare is known as The Bard.[1]

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Baroque

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Baroque (pronounced /bəˈroʊk/ bə-rohk in American English or /bəˈrɒk/ in British English) is an artistic style prevalent from the late 16th century to the early 18th century in Europe.[1] It is most often defined as "the dominant style of art in Europe between the Mannerist and Rococo eras, a style characterized by dynamic movement, overt emotion and self-confident rhetoric".[2]
The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement.[3] The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence.

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Bathos

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Bathos (Greek βάθος, meaning depth)is the discovery or expression of humor in a linguistic phrase through some ironic combination of ideas. It may be deliberate, through the use of an incongruous combination of ideas in order to provide a seemingly unintended humorous aspect, or unintentional, providing fun for the critical reader. If bathos is overt, it may be described as Burlesque or mock-heroic. As used in English bathos originally referred to a particular type of bad poetry, but it is now used more broadly to cover any seemingly ridiculous artwork or lame performance. It should not be confused with pathos, a mode of persuasion within the discipline of rhetoric, intended to arouse emotions of sympathy and pity.

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Beast fable

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The beast fable or beast epic, usually a short story or poem in which animals talk, is a traditional form of allegorical writing[1]. It is a type of fable in which human behaviour and weaknesses are subject to scrutiny by reflection into the animal kingdom.

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Beast poetry

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Beast poetry, in the context of European literature and Medieval studies, refers to a corpus of poems written in Latin from the 8th to the 11th century.
These poems draw upon an ancient literary tradition of anthropomorphic animals dating back into antiquity and exemplified by Aesop. They are the immediate foundation for the flowering of Reynard literature that occurred in the 12th century. Elements from beast poetry have been adapted into subsequent works ranging from the Canterbury Tales to contemporary movies made with computer animation.

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Belles-lettres

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Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist. However, the boundaries of that category vary in different usages.
Literally, belles-lettres is a French phrase meaning "beautiful" or "fine" writing. In this sense, therefore, it includes all literary works — especially fiction, poetry, drama, or essays — valued for their aesthetic qualities and originality of style and tone (usually with regard to the language used, but sometimes even in terms of the visual typography employed), rather than for written as a means to informative, moral or some other end. The term thus can be used to refer to literature generally. The Nuttall Encyclopedia, for example, described belles-lettres as the "department of literature which implies literary culture and belongs to the domain of art, whatever the subject may be or the special form; it includes poetry, the drama, fiction, and criticism," while the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition describes it as "the more artistic and imaginative forms of literature, as poetry or romance, as opposed to more pedestrian and exact studies."

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Bestiary

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A bestiary, or Bestiarum vocabulum is a compendium of beasts. Bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks. The natural history and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson. This reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word of God, and that every living thing had its own special meaning. For example, the pelican, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young to life with its own blood, was a living representation of Jesus. The bestiary, then, is also a reference to the symbolic language of animals in Western Christian art and literature.

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Beta reader

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A beta reader (also spelled betareader, or shortened to beta) is a person who reads a written work, generally fiction, with what has been described[1] as "a critical eye, with the aim of improving grammar, spelling, characterization, and general style of a story prior to its release to the general public."

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Bibliography

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Bibliography (from Greek βιβλιογραφία, bibliographia, literally "book writing"), as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology[1] (from Greek -λογία, -logia). On the whole, bibliography is not concerned with the literary content of books, but rather the "bookness" of books – how they were designed, edited, printed, circulated, reprinted and collected.[2]

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Bildungsroman

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The Bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.ʁoˌmaːn]; German: "formation novel") is a genre of the novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood.[1] Change is thus extremely important.[2] The genre is further characterized by a number of formal, topical and thematic features.[3] The term coming-of-age novel is sometimes used interchangeably with Bildungsroman, but its use is usually wider and less technical.

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Bouts-Rimés

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Bouts-Rimés, literally (from the French) "rhymed-ends", is the name given to a kind of poetic game defined by Addison, in the Spectator, as
lists of words that rhyme to one another, drawn up by another hand, and given to a poet, who was to make a poem to the rhymes in the same order that they were placed upon the list.

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Black Comedy

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Black humour (from the French humour noir) is a term coined by Surrealist theoretician André Breton in 1935,[1][2] to designate the sub-genre of comedy and satire[3][4] in which laughter arises from cynism and skepticism.[1] Black humour is often a satire on the topic of death.[5][6] Breton identified the originator of Black humour in Jonathan Swift, particularly in his pieces Directions to Servants (1731) A Modest Proposal (1729), A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick (1710), and a few aphorisms.[2]

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Blank verse

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Blank verse is a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter (as used in Shakespearean plays).

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Bloomsbury Group

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The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century.[1] This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half of the twentieth century. Their work deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.[2] Its best known members were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey.

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Biography

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A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. A biography is more than a list of impersonal facts (education, work, relationships, and death), it also portrays the subject's experience of those events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents the subject's story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experiences, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

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Fustian

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Fustian (also called bombast) is a term for a variety of heavy woven, mostly cotton fabrics, chiefly prepared for menswear. It is also used to refer to pompous, inflated or pretentious writing or speech, from at least the time of Shakespeare. This literary use is because the cloth type was often used as padding, hence, the purposeless words are 'bombast'.

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Boulevard theatre

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Boulevard theatre is a theatrical aesthetic which emerged from the boulevards of Paris's old city.
Starting from the second half of the 18th century, popular and bourgeois theatre alike took up residence on the boulevard du Temple, then nicknamed crime boulevard due to the many melodramas and murder stories shown there.

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Broadside

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A broadside is the side of a ship; the battery of cannon on one side of a warship; or their simultaneous (or near simultaneous) fire in naval warfare.

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Burletta

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A burletta (Italian, meaning little joke), also sometimes burla or burlettina, is a musical term generally denoting a brief comic Italian (or, later, English) opera. The term was used in the 18th century to denote the comic intermezzos between the acts of an opera seria, but was sometimes given to more extended works; Pergolesi's La serva padrona was designated a 'burletta' at its London premiere in 1750.

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Burns stanza

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The Burns stanza is a verse form named after the Scottish poet Robert Burns. It was not, however, invented by Burns, and prior to his use of it was known as the standard Habbie, after the poet Habbie Simpson (1550-1620). It is also sometimes known as the Scottish stanza or six-line stave.

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Burlesque

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Burlesque (also called travesty) is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. Before burlesque became associated with striptease, it was a form of musical and theatrical parody in which an opera or piece of classical theatre was treated in a broad, often risqué style very different from the original form.

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Buskin

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A buskin is a knee- or calf-length boot made of leather or cloth which laces closed, but is open across the toes. It was worn by Athenian tragic actors, hunters and soldiers in Ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Roman societies.
The word buskin, only recorded in English since 1503 meaning "half boot", is of unknown origin, perhaps from Old French brousequin (in modern French brodequin) or directly from its Middle Dutch model brosekin "small leather boot". Figurative senses relating to tragedy are from the word being used (since 1570) to translate Greek kothurnos or Latin cothurnos, the high, thick-soled boot worn in Athenian tragedy; contrasted with sock (from Latin soccus), the low shoe worn by comedians.

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Byronic hero

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The Byronic hero typically exhibits several of the following traits:[citation needed]
a strong sense of arrogance
high level of intelligence and perception
cunning and able to adapt
suffering from an unnamed crime
a troubled past
sophisticated and educated
self-critical and introspective
mysterious, magnetic and charismatic
struggling with integrity
power of seduction and sexual attraction
social and sexual dominance
emotional conflicts, bipolar tendencies, or moodiness[citation needed]
a distaste for social institutions and norms
being an exile, an outcast, or an outlaw
disrespect of rank and privilege
jaded, world-weary
cynicism
self-destructive behavior

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Calligram

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A calligram is a poem, phrase, or word in which the typeface, calligraphy or handwriting is arranged in a way that creates a visual image. The image created by the words expresses visually what the word, or words, say. In a poem, it manifests visually the theme presented by the text of the poem. Guillaume Apollinaire was a famous calligram writer and author of a book of poems called Calligrammes. His poem written in the form of the Eiffel Tower is an example of a calligram.

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Caesura

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In meter, a caesura (alternative spellings are cæsura and cesura) is a complete stop in a line of poetry. The plural form of caesura is caesuras or caesurae.
There are two types of caesurae: masculine and feminine. A masculine caesura is a pause that follows a stressed syllable; a feminine caesura follows an unstressed syllable. Another distinction is by the position of the caesura in a line. An initial caesura describes a break close to the beginning of a line, a medial denotes a pause in the middle and a terminal occurs at the very end. Initial and terminal caesurae were rare in formal, Romance, and Neoclassical verse, which preferred medial caesurae. In scansion, the "double pipe" sign ("||") is used to denote the position of a caesura in a line.

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Western canon

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The Western canon is a term used to denote a canon of books, and, more widely, music and art, that has been the most influential in shaping Western culture. It asserts a compendium of the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the development of "high culture". Although previously held in high regard, it has been the subject of increasing contention through the latter half of the 20th century. In practice, debates and attempts to actually define the canon in lists are essentially restricted to books of various sorts: literature, including poetry, fiction and drama, autobiographical writings and letters, philosophy and history. A few accessible books on the sciences are usually included.

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Canso

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The cansó or cançó is a song style used by the troubadours. It consists of three parts. The first stanza is the exordium, where the composer explains his purpose. The main body of the song occurs in the following stanzas, and usually draw out a variety of relationships with the exordium. The canso can end with either a tornada or envoi. This part usually bring the piece to some form of resolution. A tornada is a shortened stanza, containing only a latter part of the standard stanza used up to that point. Some cansós contain more than one tornada.
The cansó became, in Old French, the grand chant.

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Breviloquence

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A brief and pertinent mode of speaking.

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Canticum

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Part of an ancient Roman drama chanted or sung and accompanied by music.

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Canto

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The canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, from the Latin canto, meaning "I cant" Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Lord Byron's Don Juan, Valmiki's The Ramayana (500 cantos[1]), Dante's The Divine Comedy (100 cantos[2]), and Ezra Pound's The Cantos (120 cantos).

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Canzone

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Literally "song" in Italian, a canzone (plural: canzoni) (cognate with English to chant) is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal. Sometimes a composition which is simple and songlike is designated as a canzone, especially if it is by a non-Italian; a good example is the aria "Voi che sapete" from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

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Captivity narrative

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Captivity narratives are stories of people captured by "uncivilized" enemies. The narratives often include a theme of redemption by faith in the face of the threats and temptations of an alien way of life. Barbary captivity narratives, stories of Englishmen captured by Barbary pirates, were popular in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. As British colonists in North America became subject to capture, some published captivity narratives, which were popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the colonies.
The first American Barbary captivity narrative was by Abraham Browne (1655). The most popular was that of Captain James Riley, entitled An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the Brig Commerce (1817).

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Caricature

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A caricature can refer to a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.[1]
Caricatures can be insulting or complimentary and can serve a political purpose or be drawn solely for entertainment. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.

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Carmen figuratum

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Carmen figuratum (plural: carmina figurata) is a poem that has a certain shape or pattern formed either by all the words it contains or just by certain ones therein. An example is France Prešeren's Zdravljica, where the shape of each stanza resembles a wine cup. The term derives from the carmina figurata of Renaissance texts - works in which a sacred image was picked out in red letters against a field of black type so that a holy figure could be seen and meditated on during the process of reading.

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Carpe diem

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Carpe diem ('seize the day') is a phrase from a Latin poem by Horace (see "Source" section below) that has become an aphorism. It is popularly translated as "seize the day". Carpe literally means "to pick, pluck, pluck off, cull, crop, gather", but Ovid used the word in the sense of, "To enjoy, seize, use, make use of". Though it is a misconception that it says "seize the day" this may be because it is an imperfect translation.

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Acatalexis

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An acatalectic line of verse is one having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final foot. When talking about poetry written in English the term is arguably of limited significance or utility, at least by comparison to its antonym, catalectic, for the simple reason that acatalexis is considered to be the "usual case" in the large majority of metrical contexts and therefore explicit reference to it proves almost universally superfluous.

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Catachresis

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Catachresis (from Greek κατάχρησις, "abuse") is "misapplication of a word, especially in a mixed metaphor" according to the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Another meaning is to use an existing word to denote something that has no name in the current language.[1]. Catachresis is a very common habit, and can have both positive and negative effects on language: on the one hand, it helps a language evolve and overcome poverty of expression; on the other, it can lead to miscommunications or make the language of one era incompatible with that of another.[original research?] Catachresis is more a linguistic phenomenon than a figure of speech.

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Caudate sonnet

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A caudate sonnet is an expanded version of the sonnet. It consists of 14 lines in standard sonnet forms followed by a coda (Latin cauda meaning "tail", from which the name is derived).

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Catastrophe

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In drama, particularly the tragedies of classical antiquity, the catastrophe is the final resolution in a poem or narrative plot, which unravels the intrigue and brings the piece to a close. In comedies, this may be a marriage between main characters; in tragedies, it may be the death of one or more main characters. It is the final part of a play, following the protasis, epitasis, and catastasis.

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Celtic Revival

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Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art. Although the revival was complex and multifaceted, occurring across many fields and in various countries in North-West Europe, its best known incarnation is probably the Irish Literary Revival also called the Celtic Twilight. Here, Irish writers including William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, "AE" Russell, Edward Martyn and Edward Plunkett (AKA Lord Dunsany) stimulated a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature and Irish poetry in the late 19th and early 20th century.

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Catharsis

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Catharsis or katharsis (Ancient Greek: κάθαρσις) is a Greek word meaning "cleansing" or "purging". It is derived from the verb καθαίρειν, kathairein, "to purify, purge," and it is related to the adjective καθαρός, katharos, "pure or clean."

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Cavalier poet

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Cavalier poets is a broad description of a school of English poets of the 17th century, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War. Much of their poetry is light in style, and generally secular in subject. They were marked out by their lifestyle and religion from the Roundheads, who supported Parliament and were often Puritans (either Presbyterians or Independents).
The best known of the Cavalier poets are Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling.

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Great chain of being

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The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, literally "ladder or stair-way of nature"), is a classical Christian and Western medieval concept detailing a strict, hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God.[1]

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Chain Verse

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Similar to chain rhyme, but links words, phrases, or lines (instead of rhyme) by repeating them in succeeding stanzas, as in the pantoum, but there are many variations.

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Chanson de geste

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The chansons de geste, Old French for "songs of heroic deeds [or lineages]", are the epic poems that appear at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, nearly a hundred years before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères (troubadours) and the earliest verse romances. The French chanson gave rise to the Old Spanish tradition of the cantar de gesta.

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Chant royal

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The Chant Royal is a poetic form that is a variation of the ballad form and consists of five eleven-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d-e-d-E and a five-line envoi rhyming d-d-e-d-E or a seven-line envoi c-c-d-d-e-d-E. To add to the complexity, no rhyming word was used twice[1][2]It was introduced into French poetry in the 14th century by Christine de Pizan and Charles d'Orléans and was introduced into England towards the end of the 19th century as part of a general revival of interest in French poetic forms. The complexity of the form caused William Caswell Jones to describe it as "impractical" for common use [2] The Chant Royal was the most complicated form of poetry in Northern France during the 14th century, though not as complex as the sestina, which was more popular in Southern France. [1] The form was often used for stately, or heroic subjects.

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Sea shanty

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Sea shanties (singular "shanty", also spelled "chantey"; derived from the French word "chanter", 'to sing') were shipboard working songs. Some speculate that shanties may have been sung as early as the 15th century though there is little evidence to support this claim. The shanties that survived to be collected and preserved date from the 19th century through the days of steam ships in the first half of the 20th century.

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Charactonym

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A charactonym is a name which suggests the personality traits of a fictional character. In other words; it is the name given to a literary character that especially fits his or her personality.

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Chapbook

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A Chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet.

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Characterisation

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Characterisation or characterization is the process of conveying information about characters in narrative or dramatic works of art or everyday conversation. Characters may be presented by means of description, through their actions, speech, or thoughts.

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Rhyme royal

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The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b-c-c. In practice, the stanza can be constructed either as a terza rima and two couplets (a-b-a, b-b, c-c) or a quatrain and a tercet (a-b-a-b, b-c-c). This allows for a good deal of variety, especially when the form is used for longer narrative poems; and along with the couplet, it was the standard narrative metre in the late Middle Ages.

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Chiasmus

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In rhetoric, chiasmus (from the Greek: χιάζω, chiázō, "to shape like the letter Χ") is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism. Chiasmus was particularly popular both in Greek and in Latin literature, where it was used to articulate balance or order within a text. As a popular example, many long and complex chiasmoi have been found in Shakespeare and the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible.[1][2] It is also used various times in the Book of Mormon.

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Choriamb

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In Greek and Latin poetry, choriamb refers to a prosodic foot of four syllables, of the pattern long-short-short-long, i.e. trochees alternating with iambs: for example, "over the hill", "under the bridge", and "what a mistake!".

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Romance

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As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about the marvelous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight errant, often of super-human ability, who often goes on a quest. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, and history to suit tastes, but by c.1600 they were out of fashion and Miguel de Cervantes famously satirised them in his novel Don Quixote. Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the standard image of medieval invokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and other romantic tropes.

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Greek chorus

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A Greek chorus (Greek: χορός, khoros) is an homogenous, non-individualised group of performers in the plays of classical Greece, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action.[1] It numbers twelve or fifteen members in tragedies and twenty-four members in comedies, and performs using several techniques, including singing, dancing, narrating, and acting.[2] In Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the chorus comprises the elderly men of Argos, whereas in Euripides' The Bacchae, they are a group of eastern bacchants, and in Sophocles' Electra, the chorus is made up of the women of Argos.

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Cinquain

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Cinquain (pronounced /ˈsɪŋkeɪn/) is the general term for a class of poetic forms that employ a 5-line pattern. Within the class, there are several forms that are defined by specific rules and guidelines.

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Classicism

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Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted repertoire of visual images."[1] Classicism, as Clark noted, implies a canon of widely accepted ideal forms, whether in the Western canon that he was examining in The Nude (1956), or the Chinese classics.

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Chronicle

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Generally a chronicle (Latin: chronica, from Greek χρονικά, from χρόνος, chronos, "time") is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line.[1] Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the chronicler. This is in contrast to a narrative or history, which sets selected events in a meaningful interpretive context and excludes those the author does not see as important.

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Classification

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Classification is a figure of speech linking a proper noun to a common noun using the or other articles.

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Clerihew

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A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The lines are comically irregular in length, and the rhymes, often contrived, are structured AABB. One of his best known is this (1905):
Sir Christopher Wren
Went to dine with some men
He said, "If anyone calls,
Say I'm designing Saint Paul's."

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Climax

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The climax (from the Greek word “κλῖμαξ” (klimax) meaning “staircase” and “ladder”) or turning point of a narrative work is its point of highest tension or drama or when the action starts in which the solution is given.[1][2]

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Cliché

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A cliché or cliche (pronounced UK: /ˈkliːʃeɪ/, US: /klɪˈʃeɪ/) is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, rendering it a stereotype, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. The term is frequently used in modern culture for an action or idea which is expected or predictable, based on a prior event. Typically a pejorative, "clichés" are not always false or inaccurate;[1] a cliché may or may not be true.[2] Some are stereotypes, but some are simply truisms and facts.[3] Clichés are often for comic effect, typically in fiction.

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Closet drama

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A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. A related form, the "closet screenplay," developed during the 20th century.

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Comedy of errors

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A comedy of errors is dramatic work (often a play) that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone, in which the action usually features a series of comic instances of mistaken identity, and which typically culminates in a happy resolution of the thematic conflict.

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Comédie larmoyante

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Comédie larmoyante (French: tearful comedy) was a genre of French drama of the 18th century. In this type of sentimental comedy, the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Plays of this genre that ended unhappily nevertheless allowed the audience to see that a "moral triumph" had been earned for the suffering heroes and heroines.

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Comedy

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Comedy (from the Greek: κωμῳδία, kōmōidía), as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was remarkably influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters.[1] The theatrical genre can be simply described as a dramatic performance which pits two societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye famously depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old",[2] but this dichotomy is seldom described as an entirely satisfactory explanation. A later view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes; in this sense, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse to ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.[3] Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres of comedy.

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Comedy of humours

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The comedy of humours refers to a genre of dramatic comedy that focuses on a character or range of characters, each of whom has one overriding trait or 'humour' that dominates their personality and conduct. This comic technique may be found in Aristophanes, but the English playwrights Ben Jonson and George Chapman popularized the genre in the closing years of the sixteenth century. In the later half of the seventeenth century, it was combined with the comedy of manners in Restoration comedy.

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Comedy of manners

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The comedy of manners is a genre of play/television/film which satiraizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young. The plot of the comedy, often concerned with an illicit love affair or some other scandal, is generally less important than its witty and often bawdy dialogue.

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Comic relief

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Comic relief is the inclusion of a humorous character, scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension.

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Commedia dell'arte

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Commedia dell'arte (Italian pronunciation: [komˈmɛːdja delˈlarte]), the closest translation being "comedy of art", (shortened from commedia dell'arte all'improviso, or "comedy through the art of improvisation")[1][2][3] is a form of theatre that began in Italy in the year 1560[citation needed], characterized by masked "types", the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios.

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Common metre

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Common metre or Common measure[1], abbreviated C. M., is a poetic meter consisting of four lines which alternate between iambic tetrameter (four metrical feet per line, with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) and iambic trimeter (three metrical feet per line, with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable), rhyming in the pattern a-b-a-b.

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Commonplace book

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Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They became significant in Early Modern Europe.

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Compensation

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In psychology, compensation is a strategy whereby one covers up, consciously or unconsciously, weaknesses, frustrations, desires, feelings of inadequacy or incompetence in one life area through the gratification or (drive towards) excellence in another area. Compensation can cover up either real or imagined deficiencies and personal or physical inferiority. The compensation strategy, however does not truly address the source of this inferiority. Positive compensations may help one to overcome one’s difficulties. On the other hand, negative compensations do not, which results in a reinforced feeling of inferiority. There are two kinds of negative compensation:
Overcompensation, characterized by a superiority goal, leads to striving for power, dominance, self-esteem and self-devaluation.
Undercompensation, which includes a demand for help, leads to a lack of courage and a fear for life.

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Confessional writing

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In literature, confessional writing is a first-person style that is often presented as an ongoing diary or letters, distinguished by revelations of a person's heart and darker motivations.

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Confidant

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In media, the confidant (pronounced /ˈkɒnfɪdænt/ or /ˌkɒnfɪˈdɑːnt/; feminine: confidante, same pronunciation) character is usually someone the lead character confides in and trusts. Typically, these consist of the best friend, relative, doctor or boss. The confidant character is most common in romantic comedy films but often appears in other genres.

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Concordance

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A concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts. Because of the time and difficulty and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Vedas[1] , Bible, Qur'an or the works of Shakespeare, had concordances prepared for them.

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Conceit

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In literature, a conceit[1] is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison. Extended conceits in English are part of the poetic idiom of Mannerism, during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century.

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Complaint

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A complaint, in legal terminology, is a formal legal document that sets out the facts and legal reasons (see: cause of action) that the filing party or parties (the plaintiff(s)) believes are sufficient to support a claim against the party or parties against whom the claim is brought (the defendant(s)) that entitles the plaintiff(s) to a remedy (either money damages or injunctive relief). For example, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that govern civil litigation in United States courts provide that a civil action is commenced with the filing or service of a pleading called a complaint. Civil court rules in states that have incorporated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure use the same term for the same pleading.

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Literary consonance

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Consonance is a stylistic device, most commonly used in poetry and songs, characterized by the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in "pitt patter" or in "all mammals named Sam are clammy".

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Consistency

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In logic, a consistent theory is one that does not contain a contradiction.[1] The lack of contradiction can be defined in either semantic or syntactic terms. The semantic definition states that a theory is consistent if it has a model; this is the sense used in traditional Aristotelian logic, although in contemporary mathematical logic the term satisfiable is used instead. The syntactic definition states that a theory is consistent if there is no formula P such that both P and its negation are provable from the axioms of the theory under its associated deductive system.

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Conflict

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Conflict is a necessary element of fictional literature. It is defined as the problem in any piece of literature and is often classified according to the nature of the protagonist or antagonist.

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Contradiction

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In classical logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical, usually opposite inversions of each other. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle’s law of noncontradiction states that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”

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Convention

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A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms or criteria, often taking the form of a custom.

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Copyright

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Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression. In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Uses covered under limitations and exceptions to copyright, such as fair use, do not require permission from the copyright owner. All other uses require permission and copyright owners can license or permanently transfer or assign their exclusive rights to others.

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Contrast

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In literature, an author writes contrast when he or she describes the difference(s) between two or more entities. For example, in the first four lines of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, Shakespeare contrasts a mistress to the sun, coral, snow, and wire.

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Subplot

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A subplot is a secondary plot strand that is a supporting side story for any story or the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or in thematic significance. Subplots often involve supporting characters, those besides the protagonist or antagonist.

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Courtesy book

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A Courtesy book or Book of Manners was a book dealing with issues of etiquette, behaviour and morals, with a particular focus on the life at princely courts. Courtesy literature can be traced back to 13th Century German and Italian writers.

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Courtly love

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Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration.[1] Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility.[2] It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife.

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Couplet

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A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter. While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets. The Poetic epigram is also in the couplet form. Couplets can also appear in more complex rhyme schemes. For example, Shakespearean sonnets end with a couplet.

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coup de théâtre

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A sudden or unexpected event in a play, pulled off by the author, the director, or even an actor.
A theatrical trick or gesture, something staged for dramatic effect.

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Incunable

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Incunable, or sometimes incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively) is a book, pamphlet, or broadside,[1] that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe. "Incunable" is the anglicised singular form of "incunabula", Latin for "swaddling clothes" or "cradle"[2] which can refer to "the earliest stages or first traces in the development of anything."[3] A former term for "incunable" is "fifteener," referring to the fifteenth century.

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Curtain raiser

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A curtain raiser is a performance, stage act, show, actor or performer that opens a show for the main attraction. The term is derived from the act of raising the stage curtain. The first person on stage has "raised the curtain".

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Crown of sonnets

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A crown of sonnets or sonnet corona is a sequence of sonnets, usually addressed to some one person, and/or concerned with a single theme.
Each of the sonnets explores one aspect of the theme, and is linked to the preceding and succeeding sonnets by repeating the final line of the preceding sonnet as its first line, and by having its final line be the first line of the succeeding sonnet.

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Crisis

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A crisis (plural: "crises"; adjectival form: "critical") (from the Greek κρίσις, krisis) is any unstable and dangerous social situation regarding economic, military, personal, political, or societal affairs, especially one involving an impending abrupt change. More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or 'emergency event'.

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Dada

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Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922.[1] The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Its purpose was to ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world. In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and anarchist in nature.

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Dactyl

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A dactyl (Gr. δάκτυλος dáktulos, “finger”) is a foot in meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight. In accentual verse, such as English, it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—the opposite is the anapaest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable).

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Decorum

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Decorum (from the Latin: "right, proper") was a principle of classical rhetoric, poetry and theatrical theory that was about the fitness or otherwise of a style to a theatrical subject. The concept of decorum is also applied to prescribed limits of appropriate social behavior within set situations.

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Decadence

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Decadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society (or segment of it). Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence". Oscar Wilde gave a curious definition: "Classicism is the subordination of the parts to the whole; decadence is the subordination of the whole to the parts."

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Death poem

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A death poem (絶命詩) is a poem written near the time of one's own death. It is a tradition for literate people to write one in a number of different cultures, especially in Joseon Korea and Japan with the jisei no ku (辞世の句?).

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Deus ex machina

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A deus ex machina (pronounced /ˈdeɪ.əs ɛks ˈmɑːkiːnə/ or /ˈdiː.əs ɛks ˈmækɨnə/,[1] DAY-əs eks MAH-kee-nə) (Latin for "god out of the machine"; plural: dei ex machina) is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new character, ability, or object.

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Deuteragonist

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In literature, the deuteragonist (from Greek: δευτεραγωνιστής, deuteragonistes, second actor) is the second most important character, after the protagonist and before the tritagonist.[1] The deuteragonist may switch from being with or against the protagonist depending on the deuteragonist's own conflict/plot.

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Detective fiction

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Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction in which a detective (or detectives), either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.

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Dénouement

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The dénouement (pronounced /deɪnuːˈmɑ̃ː/, /deɪnuːˈmɒn/) comprises events between the falling action and the actual end of the drama or narrative and thus serves as the conclusion of the story.

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Pyrrhic

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A pyrrhic is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of two unaccented, short syllables.[1] It is also known as a dibrach.

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Diction

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Diction (Latin: dictionem (nom. dictio) "a saying, expression, word")[1], in its original, primary meaning, refers to the writer's or the speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story.[2] A secondary, common meaning of "diction" is more precisely expressed with the word enunciation—the art of speaking clearly so that each word is clearly heard and understood to its fullest complexity and extremity. This secondary sense concerns pronunciation and tone, rather than word choice and style.

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Dirge

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A dirge is a sombre song expressing mourning or grief, such as would be appropriate for performance at a funeral. The English word "dirge" is derived from the Latin Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam ("Direct my way in your sight, O Lord my God"), the first words of the first antiphon in the Matins of the Office for the Dead. The original meaning of "dirge" in English referred to this office.

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Dime novel

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Dime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different (but related) forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction, including “true” dime novels, story papers, five- and ten-cent weekly libraries, “thick book” reprints, and sometimes even early pulp magazines.[1] The term was being used as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp Western Dime Novels. Dime novels are, at least in spirit, the antecedent of today’s mass market paperbacks, comic books, and even television shows and movies based on the dime novel genres. In the modern age, "dime novel" has become a term to describe any quickly written, lurid potboiler and as such is generally used as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized yet superficial piece of written work.

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Didacticism

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Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art.

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Dithyramb

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The dithyramb (διθύραμβος – dithurambos) was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god:[1] Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb."[2] Plato also remarks of dithyrambs in the Republic (394c) that they are the clearest example of poetry in which the poet is the only speaker.

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Dissociation of sensibility

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Dissociation of sensibility is a literary term first used by T. S. Eliot in his essay “The Metaphysical Poets”[1] It refers to the way in which intellectual thought was separated from the experience of feeling in seventeenth century poetry.

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Doppelgänger

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In fiction, folklore, and popular culture, a doppelgänger (pronounced [ˈdɔpəlˌgɛŋɐ] ( listen)) is a tangible double of a living person that typically represents evil. In the vernacular, the word doppelgänger has come to refer (as in German "doppelt(e)") to any double or look-alike of a person.

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Domestic tragedy

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In English drama, a domestic tragedy is a play in which the tragic protagonists are ordinary middle-class or lower-class individuals. This subgenre contrasts with classical and Neoclassical tragedy, in which the protagonists are of kingly or aristocratic rank and their downfall is an affair of state as well as a personal matter.

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Dolce stil nuove

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A movement among 13th and 14th century Italian and Florentine poets, who wrote sonnets, cantos and ballads on an idealized view of love and women.

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Doggerel

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Doggerel is a derogatory term for verse considered of little literary value. The word probably derived from dog, suggesting either ugliness, or unpalatability (as in food fit only for dogs).[1] There are popular forms which are in themselves essentially prescriptions for doggerel, including the limerick, double dactyl and sonnet.

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Dramatis personæ

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Dramatis personæ (Latin: "persons or characters of the drama") is a phrase used to refer collectively, in the form of a list, to the main characters in a dramatic work —- commonly employed in various forms of theater, and also on screen. Typically, off-stage characters are not considered part of the dramatis personæ. It is said to have been recorded in English since 1730, and is also evident in international use.[1] However, the term is closely associated with the works of William Shakespeare and appears in the original publication of the First Folio, published in 1623.

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Dramatic monologue

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A dramatic monologue is a piece of performed writing that offers great insight into the feelings of the speaker. Not to be confused with a soliloquy in a play (which the character speaking speaks to themselves), dramatic monologues suggest an auditor or auditors. The dramatic monologue is now understood to include short pieces of prose written for performance.

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Dramatic irony

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Dramatic irony is the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. Dramatic irony has three stages - installation, exploitation, and resolution (often also called preparation, suspension, and resolution) - producing dramatic conflict in what one character relies or appears to rely upon, the contrary of which is known by observers (especially the audience; sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true. In summary, it means that the reader/watcher/listener knows something that one or more of the characters in the piece is not aware of.

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Sensibility

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Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered. It also became associated with sentimental moral philosophy.

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Drama

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Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.[1] The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek: δρᾶμα, drama), which is derived from "to do" (Classical Greek: δράω, drao). The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.[2] The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BC) by Sophocles are among the supreme masterpieces of the art of drama.[3]

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Dystopia

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A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: δυσ-: bad-, ill- and Ancient Greek: τόπος: place, landscape) (alternatively, cacotopia,[1] or anti-utopia) is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence. A dystopia, thus, is regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence. Dystopias often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and how humans individually and collectively cope with technology that has evolved too quickly. A dystopian society is also often characterized by mass poverty and brutal political controls such as a large military-like police.

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Masque

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The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in sixteenth and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). Masque involved music and dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Often, the masquers who did not speak or sing were courtiers: James I's Queen Consort, Anne of Denmark, frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Henry VIII and Charles I performed in the masques at their courts. In the tradition of masque, Louis XIV danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Lully.

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Droll

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A droll is a short comical sketch of a type that originated during the Puritan Interregnum in England. With the closure of the theatres, actors were left without any way of plying their art. Borrowing scenes from well-known plays of the Elizabethan theatre, they added dancing and other entertainments and performed these, sometimes illegally, to make money. Along with the popularity of the source play, material for drolls was generally chosen for physical humor or for wit.

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Dream vision

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A dream vision is a literary genre, literary device or literary convention in which the narrator falls asleep and dreams. In the dream there is usually a guide, who imparts knowledge (often about religion or love) that the dreamer could not have learned otherwise. After waking, the narrator usually resolves to share this knowledge with other people.

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Dramaturgy

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Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three.[1] Some dramatists combine writing and dramaturgy when creating a drama. Others work with a specialist, called a dramaturg, to adapt a work for the stage.

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Envoi

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In poetry, an envoi is a short stanza at the end of a poem used either to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.

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Homeric simile

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Homeric simile, also called epic simile, is a detailed comparison in the form of a simile that is many lines in length. The word "Homeric" is based on the Greek author, Homer, who composed the two famous Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Many authors continue to use this type of simile in their writings.

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Epic theatre

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Epic theatre (German: episches Theater) was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht. Although many of the concepts and practices involved in Brechtian epic theatre had been around for years, even centuries, Brecht unified them, developed the style, and popularized it. Epic theatre incorporates a mode of acting that utilises what he calls gestus. The epic form describes both a type of written drama and a methodological approach to the production of plays: "Its qualities of clear description and reporting and its use of choruses and projections as a means of commentary earned it the name 'epic'."[1] Brecht later preferred the term "dialectical theatre."

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Epigraph

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In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional context.

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Epilogue

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An epilogue, or epilog, is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work. The writer or the person can deliver a speech, speaking directly to the reader, when bringing the piece to a close, or the narration may continue normally to a closing scene.

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Epiphany

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An epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, "manifestation, striking appearance") is the sudden realization or comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something. The term is used in either a philosophical or literal sense to signify that the claimant has "found the last piece of the puzzle and now sees the whole picture," or has new information or experience, often insignificant by itself, that illuminates a deeper or numinous foundational frame of reference.

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Episode

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An episode is a part of a dramatic work such as a serial television or radio program. An episode is a part of a sequence of a body of work, akin to a chapter of a book. The term sometimes applies to works based on other forms of mass media as well, as in Star Wars. Episodes of news programs are also known as editions.

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Epistle

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An epistle (pronounced /ɪˈpɪs.l/; Greek ἐπιστολή, epistolē, 'letter') is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as part of the scribal-school writing curriculum. The letters in the New Testament from Apostles to Christians are usually referred to as epistles. Those traditionally attributed to Paul are known as Pauline epistles and the others as catholic (i.e., "general") epistles.

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Epistolary novel

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An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use. The word epistolary comes from the Latin word epistola, meaning a letter.
The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story, because it mimics the workings of real life. It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator.

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Epistrophe

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Epistrophe (Greek: ἐπιστροφή, "return"), also known as epiphora (and occasionally as antistrophe), is a figure of speech and the counterpart of anaphora. It is the repetition of the same word or words at the end of successive phrases, clauses or sentences. It is an extremely emphatic device because of the emphasis placed on the last word in a phrase or sentence.

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Epitaph

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An epitaph (from Greek ἐπιτάφιον epitaphion "a funeral oration" from ἐπί epi "at, over" and τάφος taphos "tomb"[1]) is a short text honouring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. Some are specified by the dead person beforehand, others chosen by those responsible for the burial. An epitaph may be in verse; poets have been known to compose their own epitaphs prior to their death, as W.B. Yeats did.

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Epithalamium

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Epithalamium (Latin form of Greek ἐπιθαλάμιον epithalamion from ἐπί epi "upon," and θάλαμος thalamos nuptial chamber) refers to a form of poem that is written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber. This form continued in popularity through the history of the classical world; the Roman poet Catullus wrote a famous epithalamium, which was translated from or at least inspired by a now-lost work of Sappho.

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Epithet

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An epithet (from Greek language ἐπίθετον – epitheton, neut. of ἐπίθετος – epithetos, "attributed, added"[1]) is a descriptive term (word or phrase) accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title. For example, Frederick the Great.

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Epizeuxis

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In linguistics, an epizeuxis is the repetition of words in immediate succession, for vehemence or emphasis. "O horror, horror, horror." (Macbeth)

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Epode

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Epode, in verse, is the third part of an ode, which followed the strophe and the antistrophe, and completed the movement.

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Moral equivalence

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Moral equivalence is a term used in political debate, usually to criticize any denial that a moral hierarchy can be assessed of two sides in a conflict, or in the actions or tactics of two sides. The term originates from a 1906 address by William James entitled The Moral Equivalent of War, subsequently published in essay form in 1910.

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Eponymous author

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The eponymous author of a literary work, often a work that is meant to be prophetic or homiletic, is not really the author. An anonymous author chooses to write in the name of another. This eponymous author is not merely a pen name for the real author, but someone with a completely different identity. The author is often

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Essay

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An essay is a short piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition of an essay is vague, overlapping with those of an article and a short story. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g. Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population provide counterexamples.

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Ethos

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Ethos (pronounced /ˈiːθɒs/ or /ˈiːθoʊs/) is an English word based on a Greek word and denotes the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterise a community, a nation or an ideology. Its use in rhetoric is closely based on the Greek terminology used by Aristotle.

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Eulogy

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A 'eulogy' (Classical Greek for "good words") is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially one recently deceased or retired.[1][2][3] Eulogies may be given as part of funeral services. However, some denominations either discourage or do not permit eulogies at services to maintain respect for traditions. Eulogies can also praise a living person or people who are still alive, which normally takes place on special occasions like birthdays etc. Eulogies should not be confused with elegies, which are poems written in tribute to the dead; nor with obituaries, which are published biographies recounting the lives of those who have recently died; nor with obsequies, which refer generally to the rituals surrounding funerals. Catholic priests are prohibited by the rubrics of the Mass from presenting a eulogy for the deceased in place of a homily during a funeral Mass.[4]

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Phonaesthetics

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Phonaesthetics (from the Greek: φωνή, phōnē, "voice-sound"; and αἰσθητική, aisthētikē, "aesthetics") is the claim or study of inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain words and sentences. Poetry is considered euphonic, as is well-crafted literary prose. Important phonaesthetic devices of poetry are rhyme, assonance and alliteration. Closely related to euphony and cacophony is the concept of consonance and dissonance.

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Euphuism

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Euphuism is a mannered style of English prose, taking its name from works by John Lyly who, however, did not invent the term. It took the form of a preciously ornate and sophisticated style that employed a wide range of literary devices such as antitheses, alliterations, repetitions, rhetorical questions and others. Classical learning and remote knowledge of all kinds were displayed. Euphuism was fashionable in the 1580s,especially in the Elizabethan Court but never previously or subsequently.

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Evidence

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Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either (a) presumed to be true, or (b) were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth. Evidence is the currency by which one fulfills the burden of proof.

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Exegesis

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Exegesis (from the Greek ἐξήγησις from ἐξηγεῖσθαι 'to lead out') is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used for greater specificity. The goal of Biblical exegesis is to explore the meaning of the text which then leads to discovering its significance or relevance.

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Exemplum

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An exemplum (Latin for "example", pl. exempla, exempli gratia = "for example", abbr.: e.g.) is a moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point.

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Existentialism

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Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of philosophers since the 19th century who, despite large differences in their positions,[1][2] generally focused on the condition of human existence, and an individual's emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts, or the meaning or purpose of life.[3][4] Existential philosophers often focused more on what is subjective, such as beliefs and religion, or human states, feelings, and emotions, such as freedom, pain, guilt, and regret, as opposed to analyzing objective knowledge, language, or science.

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Exordium

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In Western classical rhetoric, the exordium was the introductory portion of an oration. The term is Latin and the Greek equivalent was called the Proem or Prooimion.

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Explication de Texte

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Explication de Texte is a French formalist method of literary analysis that allows for limited reader response, similar to close reading in the English-speaking literary tradition. The method involves a detailed yet relatively objective examination of structure, style, imagery, and other aspects of a work. It was particularly advocated by Gustave Lanson.
It is primarily a pedagogical tool, similar to a formal book report.
A simple format for writing an Explication de Texte is this:
A brief summary of the literal, not the figurative, content;
A description of the text's type and structure (e.g. Was it a sonnet? What kind?) and its tone;
The poetic devices used in the text (e.g. personification)
Conclusion

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Expressionism

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Expressionism was a cultural movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the start of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world in an utterly subjective perspective, radically distorting it for emotional effect, to evoke moods or ideas.[1][2] Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of "being alive"[3] and emotional experience rather than physical reality.

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Extended metaphor

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An extended metaphor, also called a conceit, is a metaphor that continues into the sentences that follow. It is often developed at great length, occurring frequently in or throughout a work, and are especially effective in poems and fiction.

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Extension (semantics)

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In any of several studies that treat the use of signs - for example, in linguistics, logic, mathematics, semantics, and semiotics - the extension of a concept, idea, or sign consists of the things to which it applies, in contrast with its comprehension or intension, which consists very roughly of the ideas, properties, or corresponding signs that are implied or suggested by the concept in question.

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Extravaganza

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An extravaganza is a literary or musical work (often musical theatre) characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime.[1] Extravaganza may more broadly refer to an elaborate, spectacular, and expensive theatrical production.

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Eye rhyme

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Eye rhyme, also called visual rhyme and sight rhyme, is a similarity in spelling between words that are pronounced differently and hence, not an auditory rhyme. An example is the pair slaughter and laughter.
Many older English poems, particularly those written in Middle English or written in The Renaissance, contain rhymes that were originally true or full rhymes, but as read by modern readers they are now eye rhymes because of shifts in pronunciation. An example is prove and love.

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Fable

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A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.
A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech and other powers of humankind.

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Fabliau

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A fabliau (plural fabliaux) is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between ca. 1150 and 1400. They are generally bawdy in nature, and several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decamerone and by Geoffrey Chaucer for his Canterbury Tales. Some 150 French fabliaux are extant, the number depending on how narrowly fabliau is defined. According to R. Howard Bloch, fabliaux are the first expression of literary realism in Europe.[1]
Fabliaux originally come from the Orient and were brought to the West by returning crusaders; from fabliaux comes the French drama.[2]

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Falling action

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During the falling action, or resolution, which is the moment of reversal after the climax, the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist unravels, with the protagonist winning or losing against the antagonist. The falling action might contain a moment of final suspense, during which the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt. Summary: The falling action is that part of the story in which the main part (the climax) has finished and you're heading to the conclusion.

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Fantasy

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Fantasy is a genre that uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, and/or setting. Many works within the genre take place in fictional worlds where magic is common. Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction in that it does not provide a logical (or pseudo logical) explanation for the scientifically impossible events that occur, though there is a great deal of overlap between the two (both are subgenres of speculative fiction).

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Farce

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In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims to entertain the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include sexual innuendo and word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases, culminating in an ending which often involves an elaborate chase scene. Farce is also characterized by physical humor, the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense, and broadly stylized performances. Farces have been written for the stage and film.
Many farces move at a frantic pace toward the climax, in which the initial problem is resolved one way or another, often through a deus ex machina twist of the plot. Generally, there is a happy ending. The convention of poetic justice is not always observed: The protagonist may get away with what he or she has been trying to hide at all costs, even if it is a criminal act.

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Feeling

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Feeling is the nominalization of "to feel". The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of warmth".[1] In psychology, the word is usually reserved for the conscious subjective experience of emotion.[2] Phenomenology and heterophenomenology are philosophical approaches that provide some basis for knowledge of feelings. Many schools of psychotherapy depend on the therapist achieving some kind of understanding of the client's feelings, for which methodologies exist. Some theories of interpersonal relationships also have a role for shared feelings or understanding of another person's feelings.

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Meter (poetry)

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In poetry, metre (British English) or meter (American English) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a certain set of meters alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody. (Within linguistics, "prosody" is used in a more general sense that includes not only poetical meter but also the rhythmic aspects of prose, whether formal or informal, which vary from language to language, and sometimes between poetic traditions.)

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Feminine rhyme

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A feminine rhyme is a rhyme that matches two or more syllables, usually at the end of respective lines, in which the final syllable or syllables are unstressed.

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Fiction

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Fiction is any form of narrative which deals, in part or in whole, with events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary and invented by its author(s). Although fiction often describes a major branch of literary work, it is also applied to theatrical, cinematic, and musical work. In contrast to this is non-fiction, which deals exclusively in factual events (e.g.: biographies, histories).

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Literal and figurative language

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Literal and figurative language is a distinction in traditional systems for analyzing language. Literal language refers to words that do not deviate from their defined meaning. Figurative language refers to words, and groups of words, that exaggerate or alter the usual meanings of the component words. Figurative language may involve analogy to similar concepts or other contexts, and may involve exaggerations. These alterations result in figures of speech.

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Figure of speech

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A figure of speech is a use of a word diverging from its usual meaning, or a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it, such as a metaphor, simile, hyperbole, or personification. Figures of speech often provide emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use, as any figure of speech introduces an ambiguity between literal and figurative interpretation. A figure of speech is sometimes called a rhetoric or a locution.

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Fin de siècle

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Fin de siècle (French pronunciation: [fɛ̃ də sjɛkl]) is French for "end of the century".[1] The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning.[2]
“Fin de siècle” is most commonly associated with French artists, especially the French symbolists, and was affected by the cultural awareness characteristic of France at the end of the 19th century. However, the expression is also used to refer to a European-wide cultural movement.[3] The ideas and concerns of the fin de siècle influenced the decades to follow and played an important role in the birth of modernism.

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Flashback (narrative)

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Flashback (also called analepsis, plural analepses) is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory. Character origin flashbacks specifically refers to flashbacks dealing with key events early in a character's development. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. The technique is used to create suspense in a story, or develop a character. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to before the narrative started.

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Flashforward

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A flashforward (also spelled flash-forward; also called a prolepsis) is an interjected scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media.[1] Flashforwards are often used to represent events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future. They may also reveal significant parts of the story that have not yet occurred, but soon will in greater detail. In the opposite direction, a flashback (or analepsis) reveals events that have occurred in the past.

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Fleshly School

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The Fleshly School is the name given by Robert Buchanan to a realistic school of poets, to which Rossetti, William Morris, and Swinburne belong.

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Foil (literature)

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In fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist) in order to highlight various features of that other character's personality, throwing these characteristics into sharper focus.

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Folio (printing)

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Folio (abbreviated fo or 2°) is a technical term describing the format of a book, which refers to the size of pages, or leaves, produced from folding a full sheet of paper on which multiple pages of text were printed. A folio is a book or pamphlet made up of one or more full sheets of paper on which four pages of text were printed, which sheets were then folded once to produce two leaves. Each leaf of a folio book thus represents one half the size of the original sheet. Ordinarily, additional printed folio sheets would be inserted inside another to form a group or "gathering" of leaves prior to binding the book. Other common book formats are quartos and octavos. Famous folios include the Gutenberg Bible, printed in about 1455, and the First Folio collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, printed in 1623. Folio also is used as a general description of size of books that are about 15 inches tall, and as such does not necessarily indicate the actual printing format of the books, which may even be unknown as is the case for many modern books.

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Folk play

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Folk plays such as Hoodening, Guising, Mumming and Soul Caking are generally verse sketches performed in countryside pubs in European countries, private houses or the open air, at set times of the year such as the Winter or Summer solstices or Christmas and New Year. Many have long traditions, although they are frequently updated to retain their relevance for modern audiences.

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Folklore

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Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics. The word 'folklore' was first used by the English antiquarian William Thoms in a letter published by the London Journal in 1846.[1] In usage, there is a continuum between folklore and mythology. Stith Thompson made a major attempt to index the motifs of both folklore and mythology, providing an outline into which new motifs can be placed, and scholars can keep track of all older motifs.

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Fairy tale

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Fairy tale is an English language term for a type of short narrative corresponding to the French phrase conte de fée, the Spanish phrase cuento de hadas, the German term Märchen, the Italian fiaba, the Polish baśń or the Swedish saga. Fairy tales typically feature such folkloric characters as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories thus designated explicitly refer to fairies. The stories may nonetheless be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described)[1] and explicitly moral tales, including beast fables.

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Foot (prosody)

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In verse, many meters use a foot as the basic unit in their description of the underlying rhythm of a poem. Both the quantitative meter of classical poetry and the accentual-syllabic meter of most poetry in English use the foot as the fundamental building block. A foot consists of a certain number of syllables forming part of a line of verse. A foot is described by the character and number of syllables it contains: in English, feet are named for the combination of accented and unaccented syllables; in other languages such as Latin and Greek, the duration of the syllable (long or short) is measured.

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Foreshadowing

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Foreshadowing is a literary device in which an author suggests certain plot developments that will come later in the story.

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Fourteener

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A Fourteener, in poetry, is a line consisting of 14 syllables, usually having 7 iambic feet, often used in 16th century English verse. Sometimes it also used to mean a poem of 14 lines,a Quatorzain or the better known sonnet forms.

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Frame story

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A frame story (also frame tale, frame narrative, etc.) employs a narrative technique whereby an introductory main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage for a fictive narrative or organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story. The frame story leads readers from the first story into the smaller one within it.

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Free verse

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Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.
Some poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, must still display some elements of form. Most free verse, for example, self-evidently continues to observe a convention of the poetic line in some sense, at least in written representations, thus retaining a potential degree of linkage, however nebulous, with more traditional forms. Donald Hall goes as far as to say that "the form of free verse is as binding and as liberating as the form of a rondeau."[1] and T. S. Eliot wrote, "No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job."

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Freytag's analysis

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According to Freytag, a drama is divided into five parts, or acts,[5] which some refer to as a dramatic arc: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement.
Although Freytag's analysis of dramatic structure is based on five-act plays, it can be applied (sometimes in a modified manner) to short stories and novels as well. Nonetheless the pyramid is not always easy to use, especially in modern plays such as Alfred Uhry's "Driving Miss Daisy", which is actually divided into 25 scenes without concrete acts.

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Fugitives (poets)

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The Fugitives were a group of poets and literary scholars who came together at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, around 1920. They published a small literary magazine called The Fugitive from 1922-1925 which showcased their works. Although its published life was brief, The Fugitive is considered to be one of the most influential publications in the history of American letters. The Fugitives made Vanderbilt a fountainhead of the New Criticism, the dominant mode of textual analysis in English during the first half of the twentieth century.
The group was also remarkable for the number of its members whose works would claim a permanent place in the literary canon. Many were also influential teachers of literature. Among the most notable Fugitives were John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Merrill Moore, Donald Davidson, William Ridley Wills, and Robert Penn Warren.[1] In "The Briar Patch", Robert Penn Warren provided a look at the life of an exploited black in urban America. Less closely associated were the critic Cleanth Brooks and the poet Laura Riding.

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Southern Agrarians

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The Southern Agrarians (also known as the Twelve Southerners, the Vanderbilt Agrarians, the Nashville Agrarians, the Tennessee Agrarians, or the Fugitive Agrarians) were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a collection of essays published in 1930 entitled I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (ISBN 080713208X).
The Southern Agrarians formed an important branch of American populism. They contributed to the revival of Southern literature in the 1920s and 1930s now known as the Southern Renaissance. Most met each other as faculty and students at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Fustian

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Fustian (also called bombast) is a term for a variety of heavy woven, mostly cotton fabrics, chiefly prepared for menswear. It is also used to refer to pompous, inflated or pretentious writing or speech, from at least the time of Shakespeare. This literary use is because the cloth type was often used as padding, hence, the purposeless words are 'bombast'.

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Futurism

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Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It was largely an Italian phenomenon, though there were parallel movements in Russia, England and elsewhere. The Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture and even gastronomy.

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Gallows humor

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Gallows humor is a type of humor that arises from stressful, traumatic, or life-threatening situations; often in circumstances such that death is perceived as impending and unavoidable. It is similar to black comedy but differs in that it is made by the person affected.

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Gamebook

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A gamebook (also sometimes referred to as choose your own adventure books or CYOA books, not to be confused with the series by that title) is a work of fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices that affect the course of the narrative, which branches down various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages.[1][2] The genre was mainly popular during the 1980s.

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Literary genre

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A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even (as in the case of fiction) length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young-adult, or children's. They also must not be confused with format, such as graphic novel or picture book. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, often with subgroups.
The most general genres in literature are (in loose chronological order) epic, tragedy,[1] comedy, novel, short story, and creative nonfiction.[citation needed] They can all be in the genres prose or poetry, which shows best how loosely genres are defined. Additionally, a genre such as satire, allegory or pastoral might appear in any of the above, not only as a sub-genre (see below), but as a mixture of genres. Finally, they are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. The concept of "genre" has been criticized by Jacques Derrida.

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Georgian Poetry

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Georgian Poetry was the title of a series of anthologies showcasing the work of a school of English poetry that established itself during the early years of the reign of King George V of the United Kingdom.

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Georgics

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The Georgics is a poem in four books, likely published in 29 BC.[1] It is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. It is a poem that draws on many prior sources and influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present. Scholars have often been at odds over how to read the work as a whole, and puzzled over such phrases as labor omnia vincit / improbus (1.145-146), which is not simply the platitude, "work conquers all," but "shameful work conquers all." As its name suggests (Georgica, from the Greek word georgein, 'to farm') the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a work characterized by tensions in both theme and purpose.

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Cantar de gesta

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A cantar de gesta is the Spanish equivalent of the Old French medieval chanson de geste or "songs of heroic deeds".

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Gloss

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A gloss (from Latin: glossa, from Greek: γλῶσσα glóssa "tongue") is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different.

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Gnomic poetry

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Gnomic poetry consists of sententious maxims put into verse to aid the memory. They were known by the Greeks as gnomes, from the Greek word for "an opinion".
A gnome was defined by the Elizabethan critic Henry Peacham (1576?-1643?) as
"a saying pertaining to the manners and common practices of men, which declareth, with an apt brevity, what in this our life ought to be done, or not done".

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Golden line

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The golden line is a type of Latin dactylic hexameter frequently mentioned in Latin classrooms in English speaking countries and in contemporary scholarship written in English.

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Goliard

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The Goliards were a group of clergy who wrote bibulous, satirical Latin poetry in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were mainly clerical students at the universities of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England who protested the growing contradictions within the Church, such as the failure of the Crusades and financial abuses, expressing themselves through song, poetry and performance.

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Gonzo journalism

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Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written subjectively, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. The word Gonzo was first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style. The term has since been applied to other subjective artistic endeavors.
Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered. It disregards the 'polished' edited product favored by newspaper media and strives for a more gritty approach. Use of quotations, sarcasm, humor, exaggeration, and profanity is common.

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Gothic fiction

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Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.

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Grand Guignol

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Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (French pronunciation: [ɡʁɑ̃ ɡiɲɔl]: "The Theater of the Big Puppet") — known as the Grand Guignol — was in the Pigalle area of Paris (at 20 bis, rue Chaptal). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962 it specialized in naturalistic horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (for instance Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Webster's The White Devil) to today's splatter films.

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Graveyard poets

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The "Graveyard Poets" were a number of pre-Romantic English poets of the 18th century characterised by their gloomy meditations on mortality, 'skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms'[1] in the context of the graveyard. To this was added, by later practitioners, a feeling for the 'sublime' and uncanny, and an interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry. They are often reckoned as precursors of the Gothic genre.

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Theatre of ancient Greece

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The theatre of ancient Greece, or ancient Greek drama, is a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political and military power during this period, was its centre, where it was institutionalized as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honored the god Dionysus. Tragedy (late 6th century BC), comedy (486 BC), and the satyr play were the three dramatic genres to emerge there. Athens exported the festival to its numerous colonies and allies in order to promote a common cultural identity. Western theatre originated in Athens and its drama has had a significant and sustained impact on Western culture as a whole.

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Grub Street

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Until the early 19th century, Grub Street was a street close to London's impoverished Moorfields district that ran from Fore Street east of St Giles-without-Cripplegate north to Chiswell Street. Famous for its concentration of impoverished 'hack writers', aspiring poets, and low-end publishers and booksellers, Grub Street existed on the margins of London's journalistic and literary scene. It was pierced along its length with narrow entrances to alleys and courts, many of which retained the names of early signboards. Its bohemian society was set amidst the impoverished neighbourhood's low-rent flophouses, brothels, and coffeehouses.

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Haikai

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Haikai (Japanese 俳諧 comic, unorthodox) from a specific perspective, is short for haikai no renga. It was a popular style of Japanese linked verse originating in the sixteenth century. As opposed to the aristocratic renga, haikai was known as the "low style" linked verse intended for the commoner, the traveler, and those who lived a more frugal lifestyle.[1] It embodies an essence of inspiration received through physical senses; linked poetry that values the genuineness of expression of feelings according to the nature of the mind. This poetic form allowed one to express oneself without regard to traditional poetic conventions of diction which regulated the "serious" poetry of earlier periods. It required genuineness in perception, sincerity, and objectivity. A modern-day equivalent, similar to haikai, is renku (haikai no renga).[2] Like renku, haikai was usually written by two or more participants in a communal setting; it was an art form that could not be pursued in the absence of a social context.[3] Two of the most important features in haikai were linking and shifting with a focus on moving forward. The concept of moving forward is stanza by stanza, concentrating on human experience: landscapes, animals, plant life and other subject matter.

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Renku

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Renku (連句 "linked verses"?), the Japanese form of popular collaborative linked verse poetry formerly known as haikai no renga (俳諧の連歌)[1], is an offshoot of the older Japanese poetic tradition of ushin renga, or orthodox collaborative linked verse. At renga gatherings participating poets would take turns providing alternating verses of 17 syllables and 14 syllables. Initially haikai no renga distinguished itself through vulgarity and coarseness of wit, before growing into a legitimate artistic tradition, and eventually giving birth to the haiku form of Japanese poetry.