English Literary Terms

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an extended metaphor; a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning

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Allegory

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the repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words.
[ex. dime a dozen, bigger and better]

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Alliteration

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a brief reference to a person, event, place, (real or fictitious), a work of art, famous historical or literary figure or event; may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion

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Allusion

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comparison of two pairs which have the same relationship

Ex. 1) shoe is to foot as tire is to wheel
Ex. 2) followers are to a leader as planets are to a sun

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Analogy

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Opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction.

Ex. 1) Brutus: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Ex. 2) The vases of the classical period are but the reflection of classical beauty; the vases of the archaic period are beauty itself." Sir John Beazley

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Antithesis

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When an absent person, an abstract concept, or an important object is directly addressed.

Ex. 1) "With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbest the skies. Busy old fool, unruly sun."
Ex. 2) "Oh, Death, be not proud."

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Apostrophe

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A characterizing word or phrase accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a person or thing. A disparaging or abusive word or phrase. The part of a taxonomic name identifying a subordinate unit within a genus. An epithet is a word that shows the object clearer.

Ex. 1) In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, as Jane first meets Mr. Brocklehurst, she refers to him as the "stony stranger."
In the same novel is a reference to Mr. Rochester by Mrs. Fairfax, as she says, "Old Mr. Rochester . . ." [Joel Carlson, '99]”
Ex. 2) The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea." (James Joyce, Ulysses)

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Epithet

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The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant: the expression so substituted.

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Euphemism

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Extravagant exaggeration.

Ex. 1) “Andrew Marvell employed hyperbole throughout To His Coy Mistress:
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest …”

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Hyperbole

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the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning

Ex. 1) The following examples of irony come from Eudora Welty’s book “The Ponder Heart.” The character Edna Earle shows verbal irony when she says, “My Uncle Daniel’s just like your uncle, if you’ve got one-only he has one weakness. He loves society and gets carried away.” This is ironic because throughout the rest of the story, Edna continues to explain the many weaknesses her Uncle Daniel has.
Ex. 2) The next example is of dramatic irony. Edna says, “The sight of a stranger was always meat and drink to him. The stranger don’t have to open his mouth. Uncle Daniel is ready to do all the talking.” When she said this, Edna was complaining of her uncle being too talkative and not letting others speak. This is ironic because she is really the one doing all of the talking.

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Irony

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a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance

Ex. 1) An example of a metaphor comes from William Shakespeare’s play Richard III. It says, “Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York.”
Ex. 2) From “The Lonely Hunter” by William Sharp, it reads, “My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.”

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Metaphor

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a figure of speech that consists of the use of the name of one object or concept for that of another to which it is related

Ex. 1) An example of metonymy from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “The Great Gatsby”, is, “Her voice is full of money.”
Ex. 2) Another example of metonymy is from Robert Frost’s poem Out, Out. It says, “As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling.”

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Metonymy

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a figure of speech in which a part stands for a whole, a whole stands for a part, an individual stands for a class, a class stands for an individual, or a material stands for a thing.

Ex. 1) T.S. Eliot— “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws, Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
Ex. 2) Shakespeare—Macbeth
“Take thy face hence.”

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Synecdoche

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Onomatopoeia is the use of a word that denotes a sound suggested by the phonetic quality of the word, or thing that produces such a sound.

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Onomatopoeia

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literary figures of speech usually composed of a pair of neighboring contradictory words.

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Oxymoron

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a structural arrangement within sentences, paragraphs, or entire essays through which two or more separate elements are similarly phrased and developed.

Ex. 1) William Shakespeare—Hamlet
“…with his statues, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines…” (Pg. 1158)
Ex. 2) Harper Lee—To Kill a Mockingbird
“The tire bumped on gravel, skeetered across the road, crashed into a barrier and popped me like a cork onto pavement.” (Pg. 37)

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Parallelism

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a statement that seems to be contradictory but that actually presents a truth

Ex. 1) George Orwell--- 1984
"War is peace."
"Freedom is slavery."
"Ignorance is strength."

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Paradox

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A form of metaphor in which animals, ideas, things, etc., are represented as having human qualities

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Personification

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the usually humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound

Ex. 1) “A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.” (soles – souls; said by a cobbler) –Julius Caesar, Shakespeare

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Pun

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a question posed for rhetorical effect rather than to receive an answer

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Rhetorical Question

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a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual

Ex. 1) “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” –Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Ex. 2) “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” –Hamlet, Shakespeare

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Sarcasm

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A common figure of speech that explicitly compares two things usually considered different. They are introduced with like or as.

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Simile

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Something that represents or suggests something else. Symbols often take the form of words, visual images, or gestures that are used to convey ideas and beliefs.

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Symbol

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a figure of speech in which a speaker, rather than making a certain claim, denies its opposite. can be used to weaken a statement. Conversely, litotes can be used as a form of understatement, strengthening or emphasizing a statement.

Ex.1) “Performances like that from the All Blacks are not uncommon.” “Not uncommon” implies the opposite – “common”.
Ex. 2) “Not bad looking” instead of “beautiful”.

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Understatement/Litote

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repeated vowel sounds that make a rhythm pattern in a line of poetry
"He hadn't fought at all./ He hung a grunting weight” – “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop
“And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side” – “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe

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Assonance

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a combination of jarring, inharmonious sounds (also referred to as “cacophony”)
“Their clenched teeth still clench’d, and all their limbs / Locked up like veins of metal, clamped and screwed” – from work by John Keats
“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;” – “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll

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Dissonance

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A rhyme made on a single stressed syllable

examples:
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went
~John donne “lecture upon the shadows”

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Masculine Rhyme

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A rhyme in which the final syllable is unstressed
Examples:
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion
~Shakespeare’s “sonnet 20”

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Feminine Rhyme

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Often used in traditional English ballads, a ballad stanza is a quatrain consisting of “ABCB” rhyme scheme and alternating iambic tetrameters and trimeters from line to line.
Examples:
The night was dark no father was there
The child was wet with dew.
The mire was deep, and the child did weep
And away the vapour flew.
(William Blake, "The Little Boy Lost")

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Ballad Stanza

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a verse form usually made up of three seven, eight, or ten-line stanzas followed by a four line “envoy”or refrain, all with a consistent meter and a specific rhyme scheme. All four stanzas have identical final refrain lines. The rhyme scheme is usually 'ababbcbC ababbcbC ababbcbC bcbC', where the capital 'C' is a refrain

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Ballad

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Admired for its flexibility and its graceful, dignified tone, a blank verse is any verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

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Blank Verse

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Couplets are any two lines in a piece of literary work that functions as a unit, whether they comprise a single stanza or make up part of a larger stanza. Often times couplets have an (aa) rhyming scheme.

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Couplets

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a poem whose stanzas always contain four lines. It is the most common stanza form in European poetry. The rhyming patterns are aabb, abab, abba, abcb.

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Quatrain

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the line or lines that are repeated in verse. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the villanelle, the virelay, and the sestina

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Refrain

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a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterned rhyme scheme. There are two forms: the Italian (or Petrarchan) Sonnet and the English (or Shakespearean) Sonnet. The rhyme scheme for each differs with the Petrarch Sonnet following the pattern a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, and c-d-e-c-d-e or c-d-c-c-d-c and the Shakespearean following the pattern a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

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Sonnet

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A poem consisting typically of five tercets (3 lines) and a quatrain(4 lines) in which the first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and together as the last two lines of the quatrain.

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Villanelle

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a pause or break in a line of poetry not necessary indicated by punctuation and usually occurring in the middle of the line
“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan” – “An Essay on Man” by Alexander Pope

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Caesura

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A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line.

Example 1:
The holy time is quiet as a Nun / Breathless with adoration; the broad sun / Is sinking down in its tranquillity.

- Wordsworth’s ‘It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free’

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Enjambment

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Language which describes something in detail, using words to substitute for and create sensory stimulation, including visual imagery and sound imagery. This also refers to specific and recurring types of images, such as food imagery and nature imagery. Literary imagery must evoke stimulation of one or more of the five senses. There are seven different types of imagery: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, organic and kinesthetic.

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Imagery

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recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent feature in the sequence of speech-sounds of a language

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Meter

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a fictitious narrative or statement: as a: a legendary story of supernatural happenings b: a narration intended to enforce a useful truth; especially: one in which animals speak and act like human beings

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fable

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song or poem greeting the dawn 2 a: a morning love song b: a song or poem of lovers parting at dawn 3: morning music

ex. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear

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Aubade

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account of a person’s life written by that person.

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autobiography

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An account of a person's life written, composed, or produced by another

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biography

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A work that ridicules a topic by treating something exalted as if it were trivial.
examples: Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock.
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Burlesque

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refers to literature or other types of art that are instructional or informative, it also refers to texts that are overburdened with instructive and factual information, sometimes to the detriment of a reader's enjoyment.

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Didactic Mode

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any literary work dealing with the subject-matter common to complaints about love, sustained formal lamentation, or somber meditations.

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Elegy

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a poem that is a long narrative about a serious subject, told in an elevated style of language, focused on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group in which the hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people or nation. Usually, the epic has a vast setting, and covers a wide geographic area, it contains superhuman feats of strength or military prowess, and gods or supernatural beings frequently take part in the action.

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Epic

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It is a short verse or motto appearing at the beginning of a longer poem or the title page of a novel, at the heading of a new section or paragraph of an essay or other literary work to establish mood or raise thematic concerns.

ex. Example: opening epigram to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"
It is a short, humorous poem, often written in couplets, that makes a satiric point.
Example: "A dwarfish whole, / its body brevity, / and wit its soul."

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Epigram

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It is a poem addressed to a patron, friend, or family member, thus a kind of "letter" in verse.

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Epistle

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It is an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view.

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Essay

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A sermon or a short, exhortatory work to be read before a group of listeners in order to instruct them spiritually or morally

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Homily

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a record of current transactions; especially a book of original entry in double-entry bookkeeping; an account of day-to-day events; a record of experiences, ideas, or reflections kept regularly for private use; a record of transactions kept by a deliberative or legislative body; log
or a daily newspaper; a periodical dealing especially with matters of current interest

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Journal

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Writing intended for publication in a newspaper or magazine, or for broadcast on a radio or television program featuring news, sports, entertainment, or other timely material.

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Journalism

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a story purported to be historical in nature, but without substantiation. Legend also refers to anything that inspires a body of stories, or anything of lasting importance or fame. The story is handed down from earlier times, but will continue to evolve with time.

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Legend

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An extended fictional prose narrative that is longer than a short story, but not quite as long as a novel. We might arbitrarily assign an approximate length of 20,000-50,000 words.

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Novella

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any story that attempts to explain how the world was created or why the world is the way that it is. Myths are stories that are passed on from generation to generation and normally involve religion. Most myths were first spread by oral tradition and then were written down in some literary form. Many ancient literary works are, in fact, myths as myths appear in every ancient culture of the planet. For example you can find them in ethnological tales, fairy tales as well as epics. A good example of a myth is The Book of Genesis, which recounts tales of the creation of the universe, the Earth and mankind.

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Myth

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A system of stories about the gods, often explicitly religious in nature, that were once believed to be true by a specific cultural group, but may no longer be believed as literally true by their descendents. Like religions everywhere, mythology often provided etiological and eschatological narratives (see above) to help explain why the world works the way it does, to provide a rationale for customs and observances, to establish set rituals for sacred ceremonies, and to predict what happens to individuals after death. If the protagonist is a normal human rather than a supernatural being, the traditional story is usually called a legend rather than a myth. If the story concerns supernatural beings who are not deities, but rather spirits, ghosts, fairies, and other creatures, it is usually called a folktale or fairy tale rather than a myth (see folklore, below). Samples of myths appear in the writings of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid.

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Mythology

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is a calming song written for young children for the purpose of helping them to fall asleep. The genre of the lullaby usually consists of a trimeter (3 metrical feet) or duple meter (2 syllables to a metrical foot, and one foot to each line). Also included are repletion, plain diction, and calming euphony (words grouped together for a harmonious sound).

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Lullaby

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is a long and usually detailed poem with stanzas of varying line lengths and complex rhyme schemes. An Ode generally is written on a specific and serious subject matter with an element of reverence. It is usually longer than a song or lyric but shorter than an epic. Conventional odes are generally dedicated to a specific subject which helps to classify them, while classical odes are classified by tone in the categories of Pindaric or Horatian. Pindaric odes being heroic and ecstatic and Horatian being cool, detached, and balanced with criticism.

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Ode

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is a story or short narrative which works to symbolically reveal a truth, moral lesson, or religious principle. A parable always teaches through comparison with real/actual occurrences a number of people can relate to. Not all parodies are religiously based works.

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Parable

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it takes a particular literary work, written in a serious manner with characteristic features, and imitates it in order to mock or make fun of those same characteristics through exaggeration. Generally, the focus of a parody is comically inappropriate, such as using very elaborate and formal diction of an epic to describe something insignificant like doing the dishes.

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Parody

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a literary work dealing with the lives of shepherds or rural life in general and typically drawing a contrast between the innocence and serenity of a simple life and the misery and corruption of city, and especially court life; often portrayed in a highly idealized manner

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Pastoral

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a genre that embodies themes of vision, knowledge, love, and wholeness, exploring man’s memory and intuitions of an un-fallen world; includes the themes of poetic intuition, love between man and woman, and love between the soul and God

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Lyric

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a literary genre which refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative current in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance

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Romance

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a comic dramatic piece that uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, extravagant exaggeration, and violent horseplay; also refers to the class or form of drama made up of such compositions; generally regarded as intellectually and aesthetically inferior to comedy in its crude characterizations and implausible plots

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Farce

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human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with intent to bring about improvement. Examples are Saturday Night Live and Austin Powers.

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Satire

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is any event with a sad and unfortunate outcome, but the term also applies specifically in Western culture to a form of drama defined by Aristotle characterized by seriousness and dignity and involving a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune

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Tragedy