ACT: A major division in a play. Often, individual acts are divided into smaller units ("scenes") that all take place in a specific location. Originally, Greek plays were not divided into acts. They took place as a single whole interrupted occasionally by the chorus's singing. In Roman times, a five-act structure first appeared based upon Horace's recommendations. This five-act structure became a convention of drama (and especially tragedy) during the Renaissance. (Shakespeare's plays have natural divisions that can be taken as the breaks between acts as well; later editors inserted clear "act" and "scene" markings in these locations.) From about 1650 CE onward, most plays followed the five-act model. In the 1800s, Ibsen and Chekhov favored a four-act play, and in the 1900s, most playwrights preferred a three-act model, though two-act plays are not uncommon.
ALLEGORY: The word derives from the Greek allegoria ("speaking otherwise"). This narrative acts as an extended metaphor in which persons, abstract ideas, or events represent not only themselves on the literal level, but they also stand for something else on the symbolic level. An allegorical reading usually involves moral or spiritual concepts that may be more significant than the actual, literal events described in a narrative. Typically, an allegory involves the interaction of multiple symbols, which together create a moral, spiritual, or even political meaning. Poems, novels, or plays can all be allegorical, in whole or in part. These allegories can be as short as a single sentence or as long as a ten volume book. The label "allegory" comes from an interaction between symbols that creates a coherent meaning beyond that of the literal level of interpretation.
ALLITERATION: Repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound. For instance, the phrase "buckets of big blue berries" alliterates with the consonant b. Most frequently, the alliteration involves the sounds at the beginning of words in close proximity to each other.
EPIPHANY: Christian thinkers used this term to signify a manifestation of God's presence in the world. It has since become in modern fiction and poetry the standard term for the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or scene. In particular, the epiphany is a revelation of such power and insight that it alters the entire world-view of the thinker who experiences it.
ALLITERATION: Repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound. For instance, the phrase "buckets of big blue berries" alliterates with the consonant b. Most frequently, the alliteration involves the sounds at the beginning of words in close proximity to each other.
ALLUSION: A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification. Allusions can originate in mythology, biblical references, historical events, legends, geography, or earlier literary works. Authors often use allusion to establish a tone, create an implied association, contrast two objects or people, make an unusual juxtaposition of references, or bring the reader into a world of experience outside the limitations of the story itself. Authors assume that the readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning to the new context. For instance, if a teacher were to refer to his class as a horde of Mongols, the students will have no idea if they are being praised or vilified unless they know what the Mongol horde was and what activities it participated in historically. This historical allusion assumes a certain level of education or awareness in the audience, so it should normally be taken as a compliment rather than an insult.
ANAPHORA The intentional repetition of beginning clauses in order to create an artistic effect. For instance, Churchill declared, "We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost shall be." The repetition of "We shall. . ." creates a rhetorical effect of solidarity and determination. It serves to lend weight and emphasis. Anaphora is an example of a rhetorical scheme.
ANECDOTE: A short narrative (story) account of an amusing, unusual, revealing, or interesting event. A good anecdote has a single, definite point, and the setting, dialogue, and characters are usually subordinate to the point of the story. Usually, the anecdote does not exist alone, but it is combined with other material such as expository essays or arguments. Writers may use anecdotes to clarify abstract points, to humanize individuals, or to create a memorable image in the reader's mind.
ANTITHESIS: Using opposite phrases in close conjunction. Examples might be, "I burn and I freeze," or "Her character is white as sunlight, black as midnight." The best antitheses express their contrary ideas in a balanced sentence. It can be a contrast of opposites: "Evil men fear authority; good men cherish it." Alternatively, it can be a contrast of degree: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind." Antithesis is an example of a rhetorical scheme.
APHORISM: A terse statement on a serious subject or principle. Example: "The love of money is the root of all evil."
ASIDE: In drama, a few words or a short passage spoken by one character to the audience while the other actors on stage pretend their characters cannot hear the speaker's words. It is a theatrical convention that the aside is not audible to other characters on stage. The aside is usually indicated by stage direction.
ASSONANCE: Repeating identical or similar vowels in nearby words. Assonance in final vowels of lines can often lead to half-rhyme.Deutsche notes that assonance is a common technique in the poetry of G. M. Hopkins, Dylan Thomas, and more generally in popular ballads; an example appears in the second and fourth lines of this stanza from "Fair Annie":
Bind up, bind up your yellow hair,
And tie it on your neck;
And see you look as maiden-like
As the day that first we met.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY: A non-fictional account of a person's life--usually a celebrity, an important historical figure, or a writer--written by that actual person.
BIOGRAPHY: A non-fictional account of a person's life--usually a celebrity, an important historical figure, or a writer.
CANTO: A sub-division of an epic or narrative poem comparable to a chapter in a novel. Example the divisions in Dante's Divine Comedy.
CATHARSIS: An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work.
FABLE: A fable is also a brief story illustrating a moral. After the 1600s, fables increasingly became common as a form of children's literature. Animals or animated objects as the principal characters. The interaction of these animals or inanimate things reveals general truths about human nature, i.e., a person can learn practical lessons from the fictional antics in a fable. However, the lesson learned is not allegorical. Each animal is not necessarily a symbol for something else.
CHARACTER: Any representation of an individual being presented in a dramatic or narrative work through extended dramatic or verbal representation. The reader can interpret characters as endowed with moral and dispositional qualities expressed in what they say (dialogue) and what they do (action). E. M. Forster describes characters as "flat" (i.e., built around a single idea or quality and unchanging over the course of the narrative) or "round" (complex in temperament and motivation; drawn with subtlety; capable of growth and change during the course of the narrative). The main character of a work of a fiction is typically called the protagonist; the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends (if there is one), is the antagonist.
CLICHÉ: A hackneyed or trite phrase that has become overused. Clichés are considered bad writing and bad literature.
CLIMAX: The moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved. It is also the peak of emotional response from a reader or spectator and usually the turning point in the action. The climax usually follows or overlaps with the crisis of a story, though some critics use the two terms synonymously.
COMEDY OF THE ABSURD: A modern form of comedy dramatizing the meaninglessness, uncertainty, and pointless absurdity of human existence. A famous example is Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
CONNOTATION: The extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary. For instance, the terms civil war, revolution and rebellion have the same denotation; they all refer to an attempt at social or political change. However, civil war carries historical connotations for Americans beyond that of revolution or rebellion. Likewise, revolution is often applied more generally to scientific or theoretical changes, and it does not necessarily connote violence. Rebellion, for many English speakers connotes an improper uprising against a legitimate authority (thus we speak about "rebellious teenagers" rather than "revolutionary teenagers"). In the same way, the words house and home both refer to a domicile, but home connotes certain singular emotional qualities and personal possession in a way that house doesn't. I might own four houses I rent to others, but I might call none of these my home, for example.
DENOTATION: The minimal, strict definition of a word as found in a dictionary, disregarding any historical or emotional connotation.
DENOUEMENT: A French word meaning "unknotting" or "unwinding," denouement refers to the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot. It is the unraveling of the main dramatic complications in a play, novel or other work of literature. In drama the term is usually applied to tragedies or to comedies with catastrophes in their plot. This resolution usually takes place in the final chapter or scene, after the climax is over. Usually the denouement ends as quickly as the writer can arrange it--for it occurs only after all the conflicts have been resolved.
DEUS EX MACHINA: An unrealistic or unexpected intervention to rescue the protagonists or resolve the story's conflict. The term means "The god out of the machine," and it refers to stage machinery. A classical Greek actor, portraying one of the Greek gods in a play, might be lowered out of the sky onto the stage and then use his divine powers to solve all the mortals' problems. The term is a negative one, and it often implies a lack of skill on the part of the writer. In a modern example of deus ex machina, a writer might reach a climactic moment in which a band of pioneers were attacked by bandits. A cavalry brigade's unexpected arrival to drive away the marauding bandits at the conclusion, with no previous hint of the cavalry's existence, would be a deus ex machina conclusion. Such endings mean that heroes are unable to solve their own problems in a pleasing manner, and they must be "rescued" by the writer himself through improbable means. In some genres, the deus ex machina ending is actually a positive and expected trait.
DICTION: The choice of a particular word as opposed to others. A writer could call a rock formation by many words--a stone, a boulder, an outcropping, a pile of rocks, a cairn, a mound, or even an "anomalous geological feature." The analytical reader then faces tough questions. Why that particular choice of words? What is the effect of that diction? The word choice a writer makes determines the reader's reaction to the object of description, and contributes to the author's style and tone. It is also possible to separate diction into high or formal diction, which involves elaborate, technical, or polysyllabic vocabulary and careful attention to the proprieties of grammar, and low or informal diction.
EPIC: An epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry. It is a poem that is (a) a long narrative about a serious subject, (b) told in an elevated style of language, (c) focused on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group (d) in which the hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people or nation. Usually, the epic has (e) a vast setting, and covers a wide geographic area, (f) it contains superhuman feats of strength or military prowess, and gods or supernatural beings frequently take part in the action. The poem begins with (g) the invocation of a muse to inspire the poet and, (h) the narrative starts in medias res (i) The epic contains long catalogs of heroes or important characters, focusing on highborn kings and great warriors rather than peasants and commoners.
EPILOGUE: A conclusion added to a literary work such as a novel, play, or long poem. It is the opposite of a prologue. Often, the epilogue refers to the moral of a fable. Sometimes, it is a speech made by one of the actors at the end of a play asking for the indulgence of the critics and the audience.
EPIPHANY: Christian thinkers used this term to signify a manifestation of God's presence in the world. It has since become in modern fiction and poetry the standard term for the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or scene. In particular, the epiphany is a revelation of such power and insight that it alters the entire world-view of the thinker who experiences it.
EPISTOLARY: Taking the form of a letter, or actually consisting of a letter written to another. For instance, several books in the New Testament written by Saint Paul are epistolary--they were originally letters written to newly founded Christian churches. Sometimes, novelists will write an epistolary novel, in which the story is unveiled as a series of letters between the characters, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
ETHOS: The moral element in dramatic literature that determines a character's action rather than his or her thought of emotion. The emotional appeal.
ETHOS: The moral element in dramatic literature that determines a character's action rather than his or her thought of emotion. The emotional appeal.
EUPHEMISM: Using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt, embarrassing, or painful one. For instance, saying "Grandfather has gone to a better place" is a euphemism for "Grandfather has died." The idea is to put something bad, disturbing, or embarrassing in an inoffensive or neutral light. Frequently, words referring directly to death, unpopular politics, blasphemy, crime, and sexual or excremental activities are replaced by euphemisms.
EXISTENTIALISM: A twentieth-century philosophy arguing that ethical human beings are in a sense cursed with absolute free will in a purposeless universe. Therefore, individuals must fashion their own sense of meaning in life instead of relying thoughtlessly on religious, political, and social conventions. These merely provide a façade of meaning according to existential philosophy. Those who rely on such conventions without thinking through them deny their own ethical responsibilities. The basic principles of existentialism are (1) a concern with man's essential being and nature, (2) an idea that existential "angst" or "anguish" is the common lot of all thinking humans who see the essential meaninglessness of transitory human life, (3) the belief that thought and logic are insufficient to cope with existence, and (4) the conviction that a true sense of morality can only come from honestly facing the dilemma of existential freedom and participating in life actively and positively. The ethical idea is that, if the universe is essentially meaningless, and human existence does not matter in the long run, then the only thing that can provide a moral backdrop is humanity itself, and neglecting to build and encourage such morality is neglecting our duty to ourselves and to each other. The major existential literary figures include Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, and Franz Kafka. While the movement is largely atheistic, a profound branch of Christian existentialism has emerged.
FLASHBACK: A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary (such as saying, "But back when King Arthur had been a child. . . ."). Flashback allows an author to fill in the reader about a place or a character, or it can be used to delay important details until just before a dramatic moment.
FOIL: A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character.
FORESHADOWING: Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative. Foreshadowing often provides hints about what will happen next.
FOURTH WALL: Sometimes referred to as the "third wall," depending upon how a stagebuilder numbers the sides of the stage, the fourth wall is an imaginary wall that separates the events on stage from the audience. The idea is that the stage is constructed with a cutaway view of the house, so that the people sitting on the audience can look through this invisible "fourth wall" and look directly into the events inside. Such stages preclude theater in the round.
FRAME NARRATIVE: The result of inserting one or more small stories within the body of a larger story that encompasses the smaller ones. Often this term is used interchangeably with both the literary technique and the larger story itself that contains the smaller ones.
FRANKENSTEIN MOTIF: A motif in which a created being turns upon its creator in what seems to be an inevitable fashion. The term comes from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a nineteenth-century novel in which Victor Frankenstein stiches together the body parts of condemned criminals and then reanimates the resulting patchwork creature using electricity. The Frankenstein motif warns against hubris in human creators. This admonishment occasionally appears in thoughtful science fiction exploring the ethical responsibility of creating new life, but it even more frequently appears in anti-intellectual diatribes against knowledge "mankind was not meant to know." In the later case, the Frankenstein motif expresses general anxieties about the rapidity of technological change. Examples of the Frankenstein motif appear in H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau, Crichton's
FREUDIAN SLIP: A slip of the tongue in which a person means to say one thing, but accidentally substitutes another word or phrase in a suggestive or revealing manner. A Freudian Slip is, as one wag has put it, "when you say one thing and mean your mother." It is an involuntary word substitution that supposedly reveals something you're repressing, hiding, or simply trying not to talk about. As such, it's a perfect tool for the comedy writer.
GENRE: A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions. The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres and subgenres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc.
HAMARTIA: A term from Greek tragedy that literally means "missing the mark." Originally applied to an archer who misses the target, a hamartia came to signify a tragic flaw, especially a misperception, a lack of some important insight, or some blindness that ironically results from one's own strengths and abilities. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist frequently possesses some sort of hamartia that causes catastrophic results after he fails to recognize some fact or truth that could have saved him if he recognized it earlier. The idea of hamartia is often ironic; it frequently implies the very trait that makes the individual noteworthy is what ultimately causes the protagonist's decline into disaster. For instance, what ennobles Brutus is his unstinting love of the Roman Republic, but this same patriotism causes him to kill his best friend, Julius Caesar. These normally positive traits of self-motivation and patriotism caused the protagonist to "miss the mark" and realize too late the ethical and spiritual consequences of their actions.
PARALLELISM: When the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length. A rhetorical device signaling relationships among the parts of a sentence.
Faulty parallelism: She revels in chocolate, walking under the moonlight, and songs from the 1930s jazz period. Good parallelism: She revels in sweet chocolate eclairs, long moonlit walks, and classic jazz music. More good parallelism: She loves eating chocolate eclairs, taking moonlit walks, and singing classic jazz.
HORROR STORY: A short story, novel, or other work of prose fiction designed to instill in the reader a sense of fear, disgust, or horror. The modern and postmodern horror story, as typified by Stephen King and Anne Rice, grows out of the earlier conventions of gothic literature from the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries.
HUBRIS : It is a negative term implying both arrogant, excessive self-pride or self-confidence, a lack of some important perception or insight due to pride in one's abilities. It is the opposite of the Greek term arete, which implies a humble and constant striving for perfection and self-improvement combined with a realistic awareness that such perfection cannot be reached. As long as an individual strives to do and be the best, that individual has arête. As soon as the individual believes he has actually achieved arête, however, he or she has lost that exalted state and fallen into hubris, unable to recognize personal limitations or the humble need to improve constantly. This leads to overwhelming pride, and this in turn leads to a downfall.
IMAGERY: A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a poem, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. Imagery is not limited to visual imagery; it also includes auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic sensation (movement).
INDUCTION: The logical assumption or process of assuming that what is true for a single specimen or example is also true for other specimens or examples of the same type. For instance, if a geologist found a type of stone called adamantium, and he discovered that it was very hard and durable, he could assume through induction that other stones of adamantium are also very hard and durable. The danger in such an assertion is the risk of hasty generalization. This process is the opposite of deduction. Induction fashions a large, general rule from a specific example. Deduction determines the truth about specific examples using a large general rule.
IRONY: Cicero referred to irony as "saying one thing and meaning another." Irony comes in many forms. Verbal irony (also called sarcasm) is when a speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words ostensibly express. Often this sort of irony is plainly sarcastic in the eyes of the reader, but the characters listening in the story may not realize the speaker's sarcasm as quickly as the readers do. Dramatic irony (the most important type for literature) involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. In that situation, the character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store, or the character anticipates a particular outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way. Probably the most famous example of dramatic irony is the situation facing Oedipus in the play Oedipus Rex. Situational irony is when accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the poetic justice of a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked. However, both the victim and the audience are simultaneously aware of the situation in situational irony--which is not the case in dramatic irony.
LITOTES: An understatement, usually in a negative. Example, "You know, Einstein is not a bad mathematician."
LOGOS: The power of reason or logic.
LOGOS: The power of reason or logic.
MEME: An idea or pattern of thought that "replicates" like a virus by being passed along from one thinker to another. A meme might be a song or advertising jingle that gets stuck in one's head, a particularly amusing joke or entertaining story one feels compelled to pass on, a memorable phrase that gets quoted repeatedly in public speeches or in published books, a political ideology, an invention, a teacher's lesson plan, or even a religious belief.
METAPHOR: A comparison or analogy stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking. When we speak of "the ladder of success," we imply that being successful is much like climbing a ladder to a higher and better position. Another example comes from an old television add from the 1980s urging teenagers not to try drugs. The camera would focus on a close-up of a pair of eggs and a voice would state "This is your brain." In the next sequence, the eggs would be cracked and thrown onto a hot skillet, where the eggs would bubble, burn, and seeth. The voice would state, "This is your brain on drugs." The point of the comparison is fairly clear. Another example is how Martin Luther wrote, "A mighty fortress is our God, / A bulwark never failing." Mighty fortress and bulwark are the two metaphors for God in these lines.
METONYMY: Using a vaguely suggestive, physical object to embody a more general idea. The term metonym also applies to the object itself used to suggest that more general idea. Some examples of metonymy are using the metonym crown in reference to royalty or the entire royal family, or stating "the pen is mightier than the sword" to suggest that the power of education and writing is more potent for changing the world than military force. One of my former students wrote in an argumentative essay, "If we cannot strike offenders in the heart, let us strike them in the wallet," implying by her metonym that if we cannot make criminals regret their actions out of their guilty consciences, we can make them regret their actions through financial punishment. We use metonymy in everyday speech when we refer to the entire movie-making industry as the L. A. suburb "Hollywood" or the advertising industry as the street "Madison Avenue" (and when we refer to businessmen working there as "suits.") Journalists use metonymy to refer to the collective decisions of the United States government as "Washington" or when they use the term "the White House" as a shorthand reference for the executive bureaucracy in American government. When students talk about studying "Shakespeare," they mean metonymically all his collected works of drama and poetry, rather than the historical writer's life alone, and so on.
MLA: The acronym for the Modern Language Association. English students primarily know the MLA as the publisher of the MLA guidelines for research papers, the standard format used in American college English classes.
MONOLOGUE: An interior monologue does not necessarily represent spoken words, but rather the internal or emotional thoughts or feelings of an individual, such as William Faulkner's long interior monologues within The Sound and The Fury. Monologue can also be used to refer to a character speaking aloud to himself, or narrating an account to an audience with no other character on stage.
MOOD: In literature, a feeling, emotional state, especially the predominating atmosphere or tone of a literary work. Most pieces of literature have a prevailing mood, but shifts in this prevailing mood may function as a counterpoint, provide comic relief, or echo the changing events in the plot. The term mood is often used synonymously with atmosphere and ambiance. Students and critics who wish to discuss mood in their essays should be able to point to specific diction, description, setting, and characterization to illustrate what sets the mood.
MOTIF: A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula, which appears frequently in works of literature.
MYTH: A myth is a traditional tale of deep cultural significance to a people in terms of ritual practice, or models of appropriate and inappropriate behavior. The myth often (but not always) deals with gods, supernatural beings, or ancestral heroes. The culture creating or retelling the myth may or may not believe that the myth refers to literal or factual events, but it values the mythic narrative regardless of its historical authenticity for its (conscious or unconscious) insights into the human condition or the model it provides for cultural behavior.
NARRATION, NARRATIVE: Narration is the act of telling a sequence of events, often in chronological order. Alternatively, the term refers to any story, whether in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do. A narrative is likewise the story or account itself. Some narrations are reportorial and historical, such as biographies, autobiographies, news stories, and historical accounts. In narrative fiction common to literature, the narrative is usually creative and imaginative rather than strictly factual, as evidenced in fairy tales, legends, novels, novellas, short stories, and so on. However, the fact that a fictional narrative is an imaginary construct does not necessarily mean it isn't concerned with imparting some sort of truth to the reader, as evidenced in fables, anecdotes, and other sorts of narrative.
NARRATOR: The "voice" that speaks or tells a story. Some stories are written in a first-person point of view, in which the narrator's voice is that of the point-of-view character. For instance, in The Adventures of Huck Finn, the narrator's voice is the voice of the main character, Huck Finn. It is clear that the historical author, Mark Twain, is creating a fictional voice to be the narrator and tell the story--complete with incorrect grammar, colloquialisms, and youthful perspective. In other stories, such as those told in the third-person point of view, scholars use the term narrator to describe the authorial voice set forth, the voice "telling the story to us."
NARRATOR, UNRELIABLE: An unreliable narrator is a storyteller who "misses the point" of the events or things he describes in a story, who plainly misinterprets the motives or actions of characters, or who fails to see the connections between events in the story. The author herself, of course, must plainly understand the connections, because she presents the material to the readers in such a way that readers can see what the narrator overlooks. This device is sometimes used for purposes of irony or humor.
NOVEL: In its broadest sense, a novel is any extended fictional prose narrative focusing on a few primary characters but often involving scores of secondary characters. The fact that it is in prose helps distinguish it from other lengthy works like epics We might arbitrarily set the length at 50,000 words or more as a dividing point with the novella and the short story.
NOVELLA: A short prose tale often characterized by moral teaching or satire. Shorter than a novel and longer than a short story. Our Twisted Hero is an example.
NOVELLA: A short prose tale often characterized by moral teaching or satire. Shorter than a novel and longer than a short story. Our Twisted Hero is an example.
ONOMATOPOEIA: The use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic effect. For instance, buzz, click, rattle, and grunt make sounds akin to the noise they represent. A higher level of onomatopoeia is the use of imitative sounds throughout a sentence to create an auditory effect.
OXYMORON: Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Simple or joking examples include such oxymora as jumbo shrimp, sophisticated rednecks, and military intelligence. The richest literary oxymora seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions.
PARABLE : A story or short narrative designed to reveal allegorically some religious principle, moral lesson, psychological reality, or general truth. Rather than using abstract discussion, a parable always teaches by comparison with real or literal occurrences--especially "homey" everyday occurrences a wide number of people can relate to. Well-known examples of parables include those found in the synoptic Gospels, such as "The Prodigal Son" and "The Good Samaritan."
PARADOX: Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Common paradoxes seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions, such as noting that "without laws, we can have no freedom." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar also makes use of a famous paradox: "Cowards die many times before their deaths"
Faulty parallelism: She revels in chocolate, walking under the moonlight, and songs from the 1930s jazz period. Good parallelism: She revels in sweet chocolate eclairs, long moonlit walks, and classic jazz music. More good parallelism: She loves eating chocolate eclairs, taking moonlit walks, and singing classic jazz.
PARAPHRASE: A brief restatement in one's own words of all or part of a literary or critical work, as opposed to quotation.
PARODY : A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features. The humorist achieves parody by exaggerating certain traits common to the work, much as a caricaturist creates a humorous depiction of a person by magnifying and calling attention to the person's most noticeable features. The term parody is often used synonymously with the more general term spoof, which makes fun of the general traits of a genre rather than one particular work or author.
PARABLE: A story or short narrative designed to reveal allegorically some religious principle, moral lesson, psychological reality, or general truth. Rather than using abstract discussion, a parable always teaches by comparison with real or literal occurrences. Well-known examples of parables include those found in the synoptic Gospels, such as "The Prodigal Son."
PATHOS: In its rhetorical sense, pathos is a writer or speaker's attempt to inspire an emotional reaction in an audience--usually a deep feeling of suffering, but sometimes joy, pride, anger, humor, patriotism, or any of a dozen other emotions. In its critical sense, pathos signifies a scene or passage designed to evoke the feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow in a reader or viewer.
PERSONIFICATION: Abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are given human character, traits, abilities, or reactions. Personification is particularly common in poetry, but it appears in nearly all types of artful writing.
POINT OF VIEW: The way a story gets told and who tells it. It is the method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision, from which the story unfolds. Point of view governs the reader's access to the story. Many narratives appear in the first person (the narrator speaks as "I" and the narrator is a character in the story who may or may not influence events within it). Another common type of narrative is the third-person narrative (the narrator seems to be someone standing outside the story who refers to all the characters by name or as he, she, they, and so on). When the narrator reports speech and action, but never comments on the thoughts of other characters, it is the dramatic third person point of view or objective point of view. The third-person narrator can be omniscient--a narrator who knows everything that needs to be known about the agents and events in the story, and is free to move at will in time and place, and who has privileged access to a character's thoughts, feelings, and motives. The narrator can also be limited--a narrator who is confined to what is experienced, thought, or felt by a single character, or at most a limited number of characters. Finally, there is the unreliable narrator (a narrator who describes events in the story, but seems to make obvious mistakes or misinterpretations that may be apparent to a careful reader). Unreliable narration often serves to characterize the narrator as someone foolish or unobservant.
PUN: A play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning. Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, puns upon Romeo's vile death (vile=vial, the vial of poison Romeo consumed). Shakespeare's poetic speaker also puns upon his first name (Will) and his lover's desire (her will) in his sonnets.
REPARTEE: A rapid fire exchange of witty remarks in which each speaker tries to score against an opponent in a verbal fencing match. Shakespeare uses repartee to depict both serious conflicts and comic clashes.
REPETITION: A rhetorical device used to create unity and emphasis.
RHETORICAL QUESTION: A figure of speech in which a question is posed not to solicit a reply but to emphasize a foregone or clearly implied conclusion.
SARCASM: Another term for verbal irony--the act of ostensibly saying one thing but meaning another.
SATIRE: An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards. Popular cartoons such as The Simpsons and televised comedies like The Daily Show make use of it in modern media.
SCIENCE FICTION : Literature in which speculative technology, time travel, alien races, intelligent robots, gene-engineering, space travel, experimental medicine, psionic abilities, dimensional portals, or altered scientific principles contribute to the plot or background. The basic premise is usually built on a "what if" scenarios --i.e., it explores what might occur if a certain technology or event occurred.
SETTING: The general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which the action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs; the setting of an episode or scene within a work is the particular physical location in which it takes place.
SHORT STORY: "A brief prose tale," as Edgar Allan Poe labeled it. This work of narrative fiction may contain description, dialogue and commentary, but usually plot functions as the engine driving the art.
SIMILE: An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as, in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing. This figure of speech is of great antiquity. It is common in both prose and verse works.
SOLILOQUY: A monologue spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character believes himself to be alone. The technique frequently reveals a character's innermost thoughts, including his feelings, state of mind, motives or intentions. The soliloquy often provides necessary but otherwise inaccessible information to the audience.
STAGE DIRECTION: Sometimes abbreviated "s.d.," the term in drama refers to part of the printed text in a play that is not actually spoken by actors on stage, but which instead indicates actions or activity for the actors to engage in.
STATIC CHARACTER: A static character is a simplified character who does not change or alter his or her personality over the course of a narrative. Such static characters are also called flat characteres if they have little visible personality or if the author provides little characterization for them.
STEREOTYPE: A character who is so ordinary or unoriginal that the character seems like an oversimplified representation of a type, gender, class, religious group, or occupation.
STICHOMYTHY: Dialogue consisting of one-line speeches designed for rapid delivery and snappy exchanges. Usually, the verbal parrying is accompanied by the rhetorical device of antithesis and repetitive patterns. The result is highly effective in creating verbal tension and conflict.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. Often such writing makes no distinction between various levels of reality--such as dreams, memories, imaginative thoughts or real sensory perception.
STYLE: The author's words and the characteristic way that writer uses language to achieve certain effects. An important part of interpreting and understanding fiction is being attentive to the way the author uses words.
SYMBOL: A word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level. Symbolism is the act of using a word, place, character, or object in such a way. For instance, consider the stop sign. It is literally a metal octagon painted red with white streaks. However, everyone on the road will be much safer if we understand that this object also represents the act of coming to a complete stop--an idea hard to encompass brieflywithout some sort of symbolic substitute. An object, a setting, or even a character in literature can represent another, more general idea. Note, however, that symbols function perfectly well in isolation from other symbols as long as the reader already knows their assigned meaning. Allegory, however, does not work that way; allegory requires
symbols working in conjunction with each other. Symbol is to an allegory as a still photo is to a movie.
SYNECDOCHE: A rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part. For instance, a writer might state, "Twenty eyes watched our every move." Rather than implying that twenty disembodied eyes are swiveling to follow him as he walks by, she means that ten people watched the group's every move. When a captain calls out, "All hands on deck," he wants the whole sailors, not just their hands.
SYNAESTHESIA: A rhetorical trope involving shifts in imagery It involves taking one type of sensory input (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) and comingling it with another separate sense in an impossible way. In the resulting figure of speech, we end up talking about how a color sounds, or how a smell looks. When we say a musician hits a "blue note" while playing a sad song, we engage in synaesthesia. When we talk about a certain shade of color as a "cool green," we mix tactile or thermal imagery with visual imagery the same way. When we talk about a "heavy silence," we also use synaesthesia.
SYNTAX: The orderly arrangement of words into sentences to express ideas, i.e., the standard word order and sentence structure of a language, as opposed to diction (the actual choice of words) or content (the meaning of individual words).
THEME: A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work. The theme can take the form of a brief and meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life.
TONE: The means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude or mood. The way an author conveys the attitude about particular characters and subject-matter.
TRAGIC HERO: The main character in a Greek or Roman tragedy. The tragic hero is typically an admirable character who appears as the focus in a tragic play, but one who is undone by a hamartia--a tragic mistake, misconception, or flaw. That hamartia leads to the downfall of the main character (and sometimes all he or she holds dear). In many cases, the tragic flaw results from the character's hubris, but for a tragedy to work, the audience must sympathize for the main character.
WELL-MADE PLAY : A form of French theater developed in the 1800s. The well-made play involves secrets and timely arrivals of surprise characters and sudden twists in plot introduced by external threats. It refers to any overly neat and precisely constructed play, especially one that uses artificial authorial interventions to cause problems for the characters. Well-made plays continued to be popular through the 1950s. Ibsen's A Doll's House exhibits traits of the well-made play.
