Literary Terms Final

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What is Art?

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A human agent's exercise of will over the things of nature in which skill or technique combine with the creative imagination in the production of aesthetic artifacts.

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A work of dramatic literature designed for performance in a theatre.

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Play

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An author of plays.

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Playwright

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Major division in the action of a play; often signaled by the dropping of the curtain.

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Act

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Division within an act, usually indicated by change of setting or entrance of new character.

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Scene

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A speech in a play in which a character alone on stage speaks their thoughts out loud.

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Soliloquy

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Words spoken by a character with other characters on the stage, but directed to the audience.

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Aside

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Play intended to be read.

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Closet Drama

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Dramatize stories from the Bible.

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Mystery Play

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Based on the lives of saints.

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Miracle Play

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Allegorical stories in which virtues and vices are personified to teach humanity how to attain salvation...

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Morality Play

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Confronts a social issue

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Problem Play

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A literary work, esp. a play, that recounts the downfall of an individual.

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Tragedy

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It can be anything from an actual character flaw, to a character's miscalculation or mistake.

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Hamartia

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Excessive ambition, arrogance, and/or great pride.

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Hubris

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A reversal in the action. It can be as simple as a loss of fortune, or as complex as the gradual rise and fall of a character.

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Peripeteia

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A recognition or discovery, esp. in tragedy.

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Anagnorisis

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A purging. Where tragedy arouses fear and pity, and then purges us of them.

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Catharsis

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A work intended to interest, involve, and amuse the reader or audience, in which no terrible disaster occurs and that ends happily for the main characters.

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Comedy

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Refers to verbal wit, such as puns

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High Comedy

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generally associated with physical action and is less intellectual

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Low Comedy

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involves a love affair that meets with various obstacles but overcomes them to end in a blissful union

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Romantic Comedy

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A story; a sequence of events, actual or fictional, in prose or verse. Purpose is to entertain and instruct.

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Narrative

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One who tells a narrative

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Narrator

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An account of actions in a time sequence.

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Story

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A fictional narrative in prose, rarely longer than 30 pages.

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Short Story

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Long narrative prose fiction

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Novel

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Mid-size narrative prose fiction

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Novella

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Narrative writing drawn from the imagination of the author

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Fiction

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Four key elements of fiction

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setting, plot, characterization, theme

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difference between plot and story

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a plot is the author's particular arrangement of the episodes of a narrative, while a story is the episodes in their chronological order

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a person in a literary work

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Character

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central character in a literary work

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Protagonist

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character or force that opposes the protagonist

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Antagonist

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A protagonist who we are unsympathetic with because he or she is dishonorable, graceless, etc.

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Anti-Hero

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the introductory material that creates the tone (setting, introduces chars, background)

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Exposition

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Something in the narrative that begins to introduce the conflict and sets the rising action in motion

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Inciting Action or Exciting Force

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The sequence of complication and conflict that leads to the crisis of a narrative

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Rising Action

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An entanglement in a narrative that leads to a conflict

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Complication

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A struggle between a character and some obstacle

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Conflict

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high point in a conflict

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Crisis

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that point at which the situation of the protagonist is certain either to improve or worsen (no going back now)

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Turning Point

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the sequence of actions leading to the resolution of the story

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Falling Action

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the culmination of a conflict

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Climax

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the unwinding of the conflict at the end of the narrative

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Resolution or Denouement

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scene that breaks from the narrative in order to inform the audience about events that took place before the opening scene of a work

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Flashback

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beginning a story in the middle of the action

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in media res

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the process an author uses to create and develop a character in a literary work

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Characterization

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character is one dimensional and can usually be identified through one/two character traits

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Flat Character

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character that does not change

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Static Character

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character is multi-dimensional

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Round Character

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character changes over the course of the work

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Dynamic Character

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grounds or reasons for a character's actions

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Motivation

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A characters actions to be believable must be two things

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plausible and consistent

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A character whose behavior and values contrast with those of another character

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Foil

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time, place, and social environment of a story. the background against which the action of a narrative takes place

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Setting

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the perspective from which a story is told

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Point of View

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A third person narrator who knows the thoughts of all the characters

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Omniscient Narrator

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Two types of Omniscient Narrator

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editorial and neutral

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A third-person narrator who has limited access to the thoughts of the characters in the work. Generally only inside one mind.

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Limited Omniscient Narrator

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the reader can accept without question the statements of fact and judgements made by the narrator

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Reliable Narrator

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narrator's statements are subject to doubt

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Unreliable Narrator

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the presentation of a character's flow of thought

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Stream of Consciousness

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a work in which concrete elements in a narrative stand for abstract principles, usually in an unambiguous one-to-one relationship

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Allegory

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an element in a narrative that stands for or suggests something else

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Symbolism

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a figure of speech in which one refers indirectly to a historical or literary figure, event, or object

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Allusion

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the expression of an idea in language that offers more than one meaning and leaves uncertainty as to the intended significance of the statement

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Ambiguity

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what the literary work is about; the underlying idea of the work; the central meaning or dominant idea in a literary work

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Theme

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relatively short poem, strongly marked by imagination, melody, and emotion

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Lyric Poem

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a nondramatic poem that tells a story, such as epic poems and ballads

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Narrative Poem

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2 types of Narrative Poem

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Epic and Ballad

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a poem employing dramatic form or some element of dramatic technique, including dialogue, etc

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Dramatic Poem

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the persona created by the autor who speaks the poem

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Speaking Voice

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a poem spoken entirely by one character but addressed to one or more other characters whose presence is strongly felt

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Dramatic Monologue

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the choice of vocabulary and sentence structure

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Diction

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the pervading attitude as perceived by the reader

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Tone

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Denotative v. Connotative

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Denotative is the dictionary meaning while Connotative is the meaning we associate with the word

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whatever in the poem appeals to our senses

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Imagery

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two items from different classes are explicitly compared by a connective word

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Simile

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a direct comparison that doesn't use a connective word

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Metaphor

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in which a word or phrase stands not for itself but for something closely related

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Metonymy

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in which the whole stands for a part or a part stands for the whole

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Synecdoche

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attributing human characteristics to animals, abstractions, or inanimate objects

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Personification

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an address to an absent or inanimate figure as though it could listen

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Apostrophe

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exaggeration or overstatement

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Hyperbole

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an apparently self-contradictory statement

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Paradox

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two contradictory words are used together

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Oxymoron

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symbol that crosses cultural boundaries

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Natural Symbol

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A symbol that a group of people agree to allow to stand for something else

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Conventional Symbol

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symbol aquires its symbolic meaning from the context in which it appears

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Literary or Contextual Symbol

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a form of irony in which what is stated is to some degree negated by what is suggested

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Verbal Irony

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a contrast between what the audience knows and what the character knows

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Dramatic Irony

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there is a difference between what actually happens and what was expected

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Irony of Situation

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when a writer used god, destiny, or fate to dash the hopes and expectations of a character or of humankind in general

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Cosmic Irony

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Six Basic Metrical Feet

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Iambic
Trochaic
Anapestic
Dactylic
Spondaic
Pyrrhic

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two lines that rhyme, usually with the same meter, not separated by a space

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Couplet

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couplets of rhymed iambic pentameter

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Heroic Couplet

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a lyric poem that sets forth a poet's meditations upon death

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Elegy

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a lyric poem that exalts someone or something

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Ode

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a 14 line poem with a regular rhyme scheme

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Sonnet

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Sonnet (octave and sestet - abbaabba cdecde or cdcdcd)

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Petrarchan Sonnet

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Sonnet (abab cdcd efef gg)

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Shakespearean

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lines of poetry freed from any regular meter, form and/or rhyme scheme

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Free Verse

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a pattern of stressed sounds in poetry

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Meter

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the study of the principles of verse structure, including meter, rhyme, and other sound effects, and stanzaic patterns

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Prosody

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tells you the meter

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Scansion

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a slight pause within a line

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Caesura

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concludes with a distinct syntactical pause

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End-stopped Line

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running-on of a line of poetry

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Enjambment

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Repetition of the identical or similar stressed sounds

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Rhyme

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differing consonant sounds are followed by identical stressed vowel sounds

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Perfect or Exact Rhyme

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only the final consonant sounds of the words are identical

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Half-Rhyme

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the repetition of initial sounds or of consonants

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Alliteration

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the repetition of identical vowel sounds preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds

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Assonance

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the repetition of identical consonant sounds and differing vowel sounds in words of proximity

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Consonance

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words that imitate sounds

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Onomatopeia