Glossary of literary terms

Allegory A form of symbolism in which ideas or abstract qualities are represented as characters in a narrative and dramatic situation, resulting in a moral or philosophic statement.

Alliteration The repetition within a line or phrase of the same initial consonant sound.

Allusion A reference, explicit or indirect, to something outside the work itself. The reference is usually to some famous person, event, or other literary work.

Ambiguity A phrase, statement, or situation that may be understood in two or more ways. As a literary device, it is used to enrich meaning or achieve irony.

Apostrophe A direct address to a person who is absent or to an abstract or inanimate entity.

Archetype Themes, images, and narrative patterns that are universal and thus embody some enduring aspects of man’s experience. Some of these themes are the death and rebirth of the hero, the underground journey, and the search for the father.

Assonance The repetition of vowel sounds in a line, stanza, or sentence.

Catharsis One of the key concepts in The Poetics of Aristotle by which he attempts to account for the fact that representations of suffering and death in drama paradoxically leave the audience feeling relieved rather than depressed. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero arouses in the viewer feelings of “pity and fear,” pity because he is a man of great moral worth and fear because the viewer sees himself in the hero.

Conceit A figure of speech that establishes an elaborate parallel between unlike things.

Conflict The struggle of a protagonist, or main character, with forces that must be subdued. The struggle creates suspense and is usually resolved at the end of the story. The force opposing the main character may be either another person – the antagonist, or society, or natural forces, or an internal conflict within the main character.

Connotation The associative and suggestive meanings of a word in contrast to its literal meaning. Compare Denotation.

Consonance The repetition of the final consonant sounds in stressed syllables.

Denotation The literal, dictionary definition of a word. Compare Connotation.

Denouement The final outcome or unraveling of the main conflict of a story; literally, “untying”.

Didactic A work whose primary and avowed purpose is to teach or to persuade the reader of the truth of some philosophical, religious, or moral statement or doctrine.

Dramatic Distance In fiction, the point of view which enables the reader to know more than the narrator of the story.

Figurative Language A general term covering the many ways in which language is used nonliterally. See Hyperbole, Irony, Metaphor, Metonymy, Paradox, Simile, Symbol, Synecdoche, Understatement.

Hyperbole Exaggeration; overstatement. Compare Understatement.

Imagery Language that embodies an appeal to the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch.

Irony Language in which the intended meaning is different from or opposite to the literal meaning. Verbal irony includes overstatement (hyperbole), understatement, and opposite statement.

Dramatic irony occurs when a reader knows things a character is ignorant of or when the speech and action of a character reveal him to be different from what he believes himself to be.

Lyric Originally, a song accompanied by lyre music. Now, a relatively short poem expressing the thought or feeling of a single speaker.

Metaphor A figurative expression consisting of two elements in which one element is provided with special attributes by being equated with a second unlike element.

Metonymy A figure of speech in which a word stands for a closely related idea. In the expression “the pen is mightier than the sword,” pen and sword are metonymies for written ideas and military force respectively.

Onomatopoeia Language that sounds like what it means. Words like buzz, bark, and hiss are onomatopoetic. Also, sound patterns that reinforce the meaning over one or more lines may be designated onomatopoetic.

Paradox A statement that seems self-contradictory or absurd but is, somehow, valid.

Persona Literally “mask”. The term is used to describe a narrator in fiction or the speaker in a poem. The persona’s views are different from the author’s views.

Personification The attribution of human qualities to nature, animals, or things.

Plot A series of actions in a story or a drama which bear a significant relationship to each other.

Point of View The person or intelligence a writer of fiction creates to tell the story to the reader. The major techniques are:

First person, where the story is told by someone, often, though not necessarily, the principal character, who identifies himself as “I”.

Third person, where the story is told by someone (not identified as “I”) who is not a participant in the action and who refers to the characters by name or as “he”, “she”, and “they”.

Omniscient, a variation on the third person, where the narrator knows everything about the characters and events, can move about in time and place as well as from character to character at will, and can, whenever he wishes, enter the mind of any character.

Central intelligence, another variation on the third person, where narrative elements are limited to what a single character sees, thinks, and hears.

Rhythm The alternation of accented and unaccented syllables in language. A regular pattern of alternation produces meter. Irregular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables produces free verse.

Satire Writing in a comic mode that holds a subject up to scorn and ridicule, often with the purpose of correcting human vice and folly.

Setting The place where the story occurs. Often the setting contributes significantly to the total impact of the story.

Simile A figurative expression in which an elements is provided with special attributes through a comparison with something quite different. The words like or as create the comparison, e.g. “My love is like a red, red rose”, “As virtuous men pass mildly away … so let us melt, and make no noise”.

Stream of The narrative technique of some modern fiction, which attempts to Consciousness reproduce the full and uninterrupted flow of a character’s mental

process, in which ideas, memories, and sense impressions may intermingle without logical transitions. A characteristic of this technique is the abandonment of conventional rules of syntax and punctuation.

Symbol A thing or an action that embodies more than its literal, concrete meaning.

Synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part is used to signify the whole.

Synesthesia In literature, the description of one kind of sensory experience in terms of another. Taste might be described as a color or a song.

Theme The moral proposition that a literary work is designed to advance. The theme of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is to “justify the ways of God to men”. The theme of Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” might be briefly stated: The recognition of complex moral ambiguities is essential to maturity.

Tone The attitude embodied in the language a writer chooses. The tone of a work might be sad, joyful, ironic, solemn, and playful.

Understatement A figure of speech that represents something as less important than it really is. Compare Hyperbole.