Glossary of Literary Terms
A
Aestheticism: A literary and artistic movement of the nineteenth century. Followers of the movement believed that art should not be mixed with social, political, or moral teaching. The statement ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ is a good summary of aestheticism. The movement had its roots in France, but it gained widespread importance in England in the last half of the nineteenth century, where it helped change the Victorian practice of including moral lessons in literature. Edgar Allan Poe is one of the best-known American ‘‘aesthetes.’’
Allegory: A narrative technique in which characters representing things or abstract ideas are used to convey a message or teach a lesson. Allegory is typically used to teach moral, ethical, or religious lessons but is sometimes used for satiric or political purposes. Many fairy tales are allegories.
Allusion: A reference to a familiar literary or historical person or event, used to make an idea more easily understood. Joyce Carol Oates’s story ‘‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’’ exhibits several allusions to popular music.
Analogy: A comparison of two things made to explain something unfamiliar through its similarities to something familiar, or to prove one point based on the acceptance of another. Similes and metaphors are types of analogies.
Antagonist: The major character in a narrative or drama who works against the hero or protagonist. The Misfit in Flannery O’Connor’s story ‘‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’’ serves as the antagonist for the Grandmother.
Anthology: A collection of similar works of literature, art, or music. Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘‘The Eatonville Anthology’’ is a collection of stories that take place in the same town.
Anthropomorphism: The presentation of animals or objects in human shape or with human characteristics. The term is derived from the Greek word for ‘‘human form.’’ The fur necklet in Katherine Mansfield’s story ‘‘Miss Brill’’ has anthropomorphic characteristics.
Anti-hero: A central character in a work of literature who lacks traditional heroic qualities such as courage, physical prowess, and fortitude. Anti-he- roes typically distrust conventional values and are unable to commit themselves to any ideals. They generally feel helpless in a world over which they have no control. Anti-heroes usually accept, and often celebrate, their positions as social outcasts. A well-known anti-hero is Walter Mitty in James Thurber’s story ‘‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.’’
Archetype: The word archetype is commonly used to describe an original pattern or model from which all other things of the same kind are made. Archetypes are the literary images that grow out of the ‘‘collective unconscious,’’ a theory proposed by psychologist Carl Jung. They appear in literature as incidents and plots that repeat basic patterns of life. They may also appear as stereotyped characters. The ‘‘schlemiel’’ of Yiddish literature is an archetype.
Autobiography: A narrative in which an individual tells his or her life story. Examples include Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and Amy Hempel’s story ‘‘In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,’’ which has autobiographical characteristics even though it is a work of fiction.
Avant-garde: A literary term that describes new writing that rejects traditional approaches to literature in favor of innovations in style or content. Twentieth-century examples of the literary avant- garde include the modernists and the minimalists.
B
Belles-lettres: A French term meaning ‘‘fine letters’’ or ‘‘beautiful writing.’’ It is often used as a synonym for literature, typically referring to imaginative and artistic rather than scientific or expository writing. Current usage sometimes restricts the meaning to light or humorous writing and appreciative essays about literature. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland epitomizes the realm of belles-lettres.
Bildungsroman: A German word meaning ‘‘novel of development.’’ The bildungsroman is a study of the maturation of a youthful character, typically brought about through a series of social or sexual encounters that lead to self-awareness. J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, and Doris Lessing’s story ‘‘Through the Tunnel’’ exhibits characteristics of a bildungsroman as well.
Black Aesthetic Movement: A period of artistic and literary development among African Americans in the 1960s and early 1970s. This was the first major African-American artistic movement since the Harlem Renaissance and was closely paralleled by the civil rights and black power movements. The black aesthetic writers attempted to produce works of art that would be meaningful to the black masses. Key figures in black aesthetics included one of its founders, poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones; poet and essayist Haki R. Madhubuti, formerly Don L. Lee; poet and playwright Sonia Sanchez; and dramatist Ed Bullins. Works representative of the Black Aesthetic Move- ment include Amiri Baraka’s play Dutchman, a 1964 Obie award-winner.
Black Humor: Writing that places grotesque elements side by side with humorous ones in an attempt to shock the reader, forcing him or her to laugh at the horrifying reality of a disordered world. ‘‘Lamb to the Slaughter,’’ by Roald Dahl, in which a placid housewife murders her husband and serves the murder weapon to the investigating policemen, is an example of black humor.
C
Catharsis: The release or purging of unwanted emotions—specifically fear and pity—brought about by exposure to art. The term was first used by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics to refer to the desired effect of tragedy on spectators.
Character: Broadly speaking, a person in a literary work. The actions of characters are what constitute the plot of a story, novel, or poem. There are numerous types of characters, ranging from simple, stereotypical figures to intricate, multifaceted ones. ‘‘Characterization’’ is the process by which an author creates vivid, believable characters in a work of art. This may be done in a variety of ways, including (1) direct description of the character by the narrator; (2) the direct presentation of the speech, thoughts, or actions of the character; and (3) the responses of other characters to the character. The term ‘‘character’’ also refers to a form originated by the ancient Greek writer Theophrastus that later became popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is a short essay or sketch of a person who prominently displays a specific attribute or quality, such as miserliness or ambition. ‘‘Miss Brill,’’ a story by Katherine Mansfield, is an example of a character sketch.
Classical: In its strictest definition in literary criticism, classicism refers to works of ancient Greek or Roman literature. The term may also be used to describe a literary work of recognized importance (a ‘‘classic’’) from any time period or literature that exhibits the traits of classicism. Examples of later works and authors now described as classical include French literature of the seventeenth century, Western novels of the nineteenth century, and American fiction of the mid-nineteenth century such as that written by James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain.
Climax: The turning point in a narrative, the mo- ment when the conflict is at its most intense. Typically, the structure of stories, novels, and plays is one of rising action, in which tension builds to the climax, followed by falling action, in which tension lessens as the story moves to its conclusion.
Comedy: One of two major types of drama, the other being tragedy. Its aim is to amuse, and it typically ends happily. Comedy assumes many forms, such as farce and burlesque, and uses a variety of techniques, from parody to satire. In a restricted sense the term comedy refers only to dramatic presentations, but in general usage it is commonly applied to nondramatic works as well.
Comic Relief: The use of humor to lighten the mood of a serious or tragic story, especially in plays. The technique is very common in Elizabethan works, and can be an integral part of the plot or simply a brief event designed to break the tension of the scene.
Conflict: The conflict in a work of fiction is the issue to be resolved in the story. It usually occurs between two characters, the protagonist and the antagonist, or between the protagonist and society or the protagonist and himself or herself. The conflict in Washington Irving’s story ‘‘The Devil and Tom Walker’’ is that the Devil wants Tom Walker’s soul but Tom does not want to go to hell.
Criticism: The systematic study and evaluation of literary works, usually based on a specific method or set of principles. An important part of literary studies since ancient times, the practice of criticism has given rise to numerous theories, methods, and ‘‘schools,’’ sometimes producing conflicting, even contradictory, interpretations of literature in general as well as of individual works. Even such basic issues as what constitutes a poem or a novel have been the subject of much criticism over the centuries. Seminal texts of literary criticism include Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics, Sir Philip Sidney’s The Defence of Poesie, and John Dryden’s Of Dramatic Poesie. Contemporary schools of criticism include deconstruction, feminist, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, new historicist, postcolonialist, and reader-response.
D
Deconstruction: A method of literary criticism characterized by multiple conflicting interpretations of a given work. Deconstructionists consider the impact of the language of a work and suggest that the true meaning of the work is not necessarily the meaning that the author intended.
Deduction: The process of reaching a conclusion through reasoning from general premises to a specific premise. Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes often used deductive reasoning to solve mysteries.
Denotation: The definition of a word, apart from the impressions or feelings it creates in the reader. The word ‘‘apartheid’’ denotes a political and economic policy of segregation by race, but its con- notations—oppression, slavery, inequality—are numerous.
Denouement: A French word meaning ‘‘the unknotting.’’ In literature, it denotes the resolution of conflict in fiction or drama. The denouement follows the climax and provides an outcome to the primary plot situation as well as an explanation of secondary plot complications. A well-known example of denouement is the last scene of the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare, in which couples are married, an evildoer repents, the identities of two disguised characters are revealed, and a ruler is restored to power. Also known as ‘‘falling action.’’
Detective Story: A narrative about the solution of a mystery or the identification of a criminal. The conventions of the detective story include the detective’s scrupulous use of logic in solving the mystery; incompetent or ineffectual police; a suspect who appears guilty at first but is later proved innocent; and the detective’s friend or confidant— often the narrator—whose slowness in interpreting clues emphasizes by contrast the detective’s brilliance. Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’’ is commonly regarded as the earliest example of this type of story. Other practitioners are Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, and Agatha Christie.
Dialogue: Dialogue is conversation between people in a literary work. In its most restricted sense, it refers specifically to the speech of characters in a drama. As a specific literary genre, a ‘‘dialogue’’ is a composition in which characters debate an issue or idea.
Didactic: A term used to describe works of literature that aim to teach a moral, religious, political, or practical lesson. Although didactic elements are often found in artistically pleasing works, the term ‘‘didactic’’ usually refers to literature in which the message is more important than the form. The term may also be used to criticize a work that the critic finds ‘‘overly didactic,’’ that is, heavy-handed in its delivery of a lesson. An example of didactic literature is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
Dramatic Irony: Occurs when the reader of a work of literature knows something that a character in the work itself does not know. The irony is in the contrast between the intended meaning of the statements or actions of a character and the additional information understood by the audience.
Dystopia: An imaginary place in a work of fiction where the characters lead dehumanized, fearful lives. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four, and Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale portray ver- sions of dystopia.
E
Edwardian: Describes cultural conventions identified with the period of the reign of Edward VII of England (1901–1910). Writers of the Edwardian Age typically displayed a strong reaction against the propriety and conservatism of the Victorian Age. Their work often exhibits distrust of authority in religion, politics, and art and expresses strong doubts about the soundness of conventional values. Writers of this era include E. M. Forster, H. G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad.
Empathy: A sense of shared experience, including emotional and physical feelings, with someone or something other than oneself. Empathy is often used to describe the response of a reader to a literary character.
Epilogue: A concluding statement or section of a literary work. In dramas, particularly those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the epilogue is a closing speech, often in verse, delivered by an actor at the end of a play and spoken directly to the audience.
Epiphany: A sudden revelation of truth inspired by a seemingly trivial incident. The term was widely used by James Joyce in his critical writings, and the stories in Joyce’s Dubliners are commonly called ‘‘epiphanies.’’
Epistolary Novel: A novel in the form of letters. The form was particularly popular in the eighteenth century. The form can also be applied to short stories, as in Edwidge Danticat’s ‘‘Children of the Sea.’’
Epithet: A word or phrase, often disparaging or abusive, that expresses a character trait of someone or something. ‘‘The Napoleon of crime’’ is an
epithet applied to Professor Moriarty, arch-rival of Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s series of detective stories.
Existentialism: A predominantly twentieth-century philosophy concerned with the nature and perception of human existence. There are two major strains of existentialist thought: atheistic and Christian. Followers of atheistic existentialism believe that the individual is alone in a godless universe and that the basic human condition is one of suffering and loneliness. Nevertheless, because there are no fixed values, individuals can create their own characters— indeed, they can shape themselves—through the exercise of free will. The atheistic strain culminates in and is popularly associated with the works of Jean-Paul Sartre. The Christian existentialists, on the other hand, believe that only in God may people find freedom from life’s anguish. The two strains hold certain beliefs in common: that existence can- not be fully understood or described through empirical effort; that anguish is a universal element of life; that individuals must bear responsibility for their actions; and that there is no common standard of behavior or perception for religious and ethical matters. Existentialist thought figures prominently in the works of such authors as Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Albert Camus.
Expatriatism: The practice of leaving one’s country to live for an extended period in another country. Literary expatriates include Irish author James Joyce who moved to Italy and France, American writers James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald who lived and wrote in Paris, and Polish novelist Joseph Conrad in England.
Exposition: Writing intended to explain the nature of an idea, thing, or theme. Expository writing is often combined with description, narration, or argument.
Expressionism: An indistinct literary term, originally used to describe an early twentieth-century school of German painting. The term applies to almost any mode of unconventional, highly subjective writing that distorts reality in some way. Advocates of Expressionism include Federico Garcia Lorca, Eugene O’Neill, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce.
F
Fable: A prose or verse narrative intended to con- vey a moral. Animals or inanimate objects with human characteristics often serve as characters in fables. A famous fable is Aesop’s ‘‘The Tortoise and the Hare.’’
Fantasy: A literary form related to mythology and folklore. Fantasy literature is typically set in non- existent realms and features supernatural beings. Notable examples of literature with elements of fantasy are Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story ‘‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’’ and Ursula K. LeGuin’s ‘‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.’’
Farce: A type of comedy characterized by broad humor, outlandish incidents, and often vulgar subject matter. Much of the comedy in film and television could more accurately be described as farce.
Fiction: Any story that is the product of imagination rather than a documentation of fact. Characters and events in such narratives may be based in real life but their ultimate form and configuration is a creation of the author.
Figurative Language: A technique in which an author uses figures of speech such as hyperbole, irony, metaphor, or simile for a particular effect. Figurative language is the opposite of literal language, in which every word is truthful, accurate, and free of exaggeration or embellishment.
Flashback: A device used in literature to present action that occurred before the beginning of the story. Flashbacks are often introduced as the dreams or recollections of one or more characters.
Foil: A character in a work of literature whose physical or psychological qualities contrast strongly with, and therefore highlight, the corresponding qualities of another character. In his Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur Conan Doyle portrayed Dr. Watson as a man of normal habits and intelligence, making him a foil for the eccentric and unusually perceptive Sherlock Holmes.
Folklore: Traditions and myths preserved in a culture or group of people. Typically, these are passed on by word of mouth in various forms—such as legends, songs, and proverbs—or preserved in customs and ceremonies. Washington Irving, in ‘‘The Devil and Tom Walker’’ and many of his other stories, incorporates many elements of the folklore of New England and Germany.
Folktale: A story originating in oral tradition. Folktales fall into a variety of categories, including legends, ghost stories, fairy tales, fables, and anecdotes based on historical figures and events.
Foreshadowing: A device used in literature to create expectation or to set up an explanation of later developments. Edgar Allan Poe uses foreshadowing to create suspense in ‘‘The Fall of the House of Usher’’ when the narrator comments on the crumbling state of disrepair in which he finds the house.
G
Genre: A category of literary work. Genre may refer to both the content of a given work—tragedy, comedy, horror, science fiction—and to its form, such as poetry, novel, or drama.
Gilded Age: A period in American history during the 1870s and after characterized by political corruption and materialism. A number of important novels of social and political criticism were written during this time. Henry James and Kate Chopin are two writers who were prominent during the Gilded Age.
Gothicism: In literature, works characterized by a taste for medieval or morbid characters and situations. A gothic novel prominently features elements of horror, the supernatural, gloom, and violence: clanking chains, terror, ghosts, medieval castles, and unexplained phenomena. The term ‘‘gothic novel’’ is also applied to novels that lack elements of the traditional Gothic setting but that create a similar atmosphere of terror or dread. The term can also be applied to stories, plays, and poems. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Joyce Carol Oates’s Bellefleur are both gothic novels.
Grotesque: In literature, a work that is characterized by exaggeration, deformity, freakishness, and disorder. The grotesque often includes an element of comic absurdity. Examples of the grotesque can be found in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O’Connor, Joseph Heller, and Shirley Jackson.
H
Harlem Renaissance: The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s is generally considered the first significant movement of black writers and artists in the United States. During this period, new and established black writers, many of whom lived in the region of New York City known as Harlem, published more fiction and poetry than ever before, the first influential black literary journals were established, and black authors and artists received their first widespread recognition and serious critical appraisal. Among the major writers associated with this period are Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Hero/Heroine: The principal sympathetic character in a literary work. Heroes and heroines typically exhibit admirable traits: idealism, courage, and integrity, for example. Famous heroes and heroines of literature include Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara, and the anonymous narrator in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Hyperbole: Deliberate exaggeration used to achieve an effect. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth hyperbolizes when she says, ‘‘All the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten this little hand.’’
is stated. The title of Jonathan Swift’s ‘‘A Modest Proposal’’ is ironic because what Swift proposes in this essay is cannibalism—hardly ‘‘modest.’’
J
Jargon: Language that is used or understood only by a select group of people. Jargon may refer to terminology used in a certain profession, such as computer jargon, or it may refer to any nonsensical language that is not understood by most people. Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and James Thurber’s ‘‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’’ both use jargon.
K
Knickerbocker Group: An indistinct group of New York writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. Members of the group were linked only by location and a common theme: New York life. Two famous members of the Knickerbocker Group were Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant. The group’s name derives from Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York.
L
Literal Language: An author uses literal language when he or she writes without exaggerating or embellishing the subject matter and without any tools of figurative language. To say ‘‘He ran very quickly down the street’’ is to use literal language, whereas to say ‘‘He ran like a hare down the street’’ would be using figurative language.
Literature: Literature is broadly defined as any written or spoken material, but the term most often refers to creative works. Literature includes poetry, drama, fiction, and many kinds of nonfiction writ- ing, as well as oral, dramatic, and broadcast compositions not necessarily preserved in a written format, such as films and television programs.
Lost Generation: A term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World War I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war. The term is commonly applied to Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others.
I
Image: A concrete representation of an object or sensory experience. Typically, such a representation helps evoke the feelings associated with the object or experience itself. Images are either ‘‘literal’’ or ‘‘figurative.’’ Literal images are especially concrete and involve little or no extension of the obvious meaning of the words used to express them. Figurative images do not follow the literal meaning of the words exactly. Images in literature are usually visual, but the term ‘‘image’’ can also refer to the representation of any sensory experience.
Imagery: The array of images in a literary work. Also used to convey the author’s overall use of figurative language in a work.
In medias res: A Latin term meaning ‘‘in the middle of things.’’ It refers to the technique of beginning a story at its midpoint and then using various flashback devices to reveal previous action. This technique originated in such epics as Virgil’s Aeneid.
Interior Monologue: A narrative technique in which characters’ thoughts are revealed in a way that appears to be uncontrolled by the author. The interior monologue typically aims to reveal the inner self of a character. It portrays emotional experiences as they occur at both a conscious and unconscious level. One of the best-known interior monologues in English is the Molly Bloom section at the close of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘‘The Jilting of Granny Weatherall’’ is also told in the form of an interior monologue.
Irony: In literary criticism, the effect of language in which the intended meaning is the opposite of what
MN
Magic Realism: A form of literature that incorporates fantasy elements or supernatural occurrences into the narrative and accepts them as truth. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Laura Esquivel are two writers known for their works of magic realism.
Metaphor: A figure of speech that expresses an idea through the image of another object. Metaphors suggest the essence of the first object by identifying it with certain qualities of the second object. An example is ‘‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?/ It is the east, and Juliet is the sun’’ in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Here, Juliet, the first object, is identified with qualities of the second object, the sun.
Minimalism: A literary style characterized by spare, simple prose with few elaborations. In minimalism, the main theme of the work is often never discussed directly. Amy Hempel and Ernest Hemingway are two writers known for their works of minimalism.
Modernism: Modern literary practices. Also, the principles of a literary school that lasted from roughly the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of World War II. Modernism is defined by its rejection of the literary conventions of the nineteenth century and by its opposition to conventional morality, taste, traditions, and economic values. Many writers are associated with the concepts of modernism, including Albert Camus, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neill, and James Joyce.
Monologue: A composition, written or oral, by a single individual. More specifically, a speech given by a single individual in a drama or other public entertainment. It has no set length, although it is usually several or more lines long. ‘‘I Stand Here Ironing’’ by Tillie Olsen is an example of a story written in the form of a monologue.
Mood: The prevailing emotions of a work or of the author in his or her creation of the work. The mood of a work is not always what might be expected based on its subject matter.
Motif: A theme, character type, image, metaphor, or other verbal element that recurs throughout a single work of literature or occurs in a number of different works over a period of time. For example, the color white in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a ‘‘specific’’ motif, while the trials of star-crossed lovers is a ‘‘conventional’’ motif from the literature of all periods.
Narration: The telling of a series of events, real or invented. A narration may be either a simple narrative, in which the events are recounted chronologically, or a narrative with a plot, in which the account is given in a style reflecting the author’s artistic concept of the story. Narration is sometimes used as a synonym for ‘‘storyline.’’
Narrative: A verse or prose accounting of an event or sequence of events, real or invented. The term is also used as an adjective in the sense ‘‘method of narration.’’ For example, in literary criticism, the expression ‘‘narrative technique’’ usually refers to the way the author structures and presents his or her story. Different narrative forms include diaries, travelogues, novels, ballads, epics, short stories, and other fictional forms.
Narrator: The teller of a story. The narrator may be the author or a character in the story through whom the author speaks. Huckleberry Finn is the narra- tor of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckle- berry Finn.
Novella: An Italian term meaning ‘‘story.’’ This term has been especially used to describe fourteenth-century Italian tales, but it also refers to modern short novels. Modern novellas include Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilich, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
O
Oedipus Complex: A son’s romantic obsession with his mother. The phrase is derived from the story of the ancient Theban hero Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and was popularized by Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. Literary occurrences of the Oedipus complex include Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and D. H. Lawrence’s ‘‘The Rocking-Horse Winner.’’
Onomatopoeia: The use of words whose sounds express or suggest their meaning. In its simplest sense, onomatopoeia may be represented by words that mimic the sounds they denote such as ‘‘hiss’’ or ‘‘meow.’’ At a more subtle level, the pattern and rhythm of sounds and rhymes of a line or poem may be onomatopoeic.
Oral Tradition: A process by which songs, ballads, folklore, and other material are transmitted by word of mouth. The tradition of oral transmission pre- dates the written record systems of literate society. Oral transmission preserves material sometimes over generations, although often with variations. Memory plays a large part in the recitation and preservation of orally transmitted material. Native American myths and legends, and African folktales told by plantation slaves are examples of orally transmitted literature.
P
Parable: A story intended to teach a moral lesson or answer an ethical question. Examples of parables are the stories told by Jesus Christ in the New Testament, notably ‘‘The Prodigal Son,’’ but par- ables also are used in Sufism, rabbinic literature, Hasidism, and Zen Buddhism. Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story ‘‘Gimpel the Fool’’ exhibits characteristics of a parable.
Paradox: A statement that appears illogical or contradictory at first, but may actually point to an underlying truth. A literary example of a paradox is George Orwell’s statement ‘‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’’ in Animal Farm.
Parody: In literature, this term refers to an imitation of a serious literary work or the signature style of a particular author in a ridiculous manner. A typical parody adopts the style of the original and applies it to an inappropriate subject for humorous effect. Parody is a form of satire and could be considered the literary equivalent of a caricature or cartoon. Henry Fielding’s Shamela is a parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.
Persona: A Latin term meaning ‘‘mask.’’ Personae are the characters in a fictional work of literature. The persona generally functions as a mask through which the author tells a story in a voice other than his or her own. A persona is usually either a character in a story who acts as a narrator or an ‘‘implied author,’’ a voice created by the author to act as the narrator for himself or herself. The persona in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story ‘‘The Yellow Wallpaper’’ is the unnamed young mother experiencing a mental breakdown.
Personification: A figure of speech that gives human qualities to abstract ideas, animals, and inanimate objects. To say that ‘‘the sun is smiling’’ is to personify the sun.
Plot: The pattern of events in a narrative or drama. In its simplest sense, the plot guides the author in composing the work and helps the reader follow the work. Typically, plots exhibit causality and unity and have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some- times, however, a plot may consist of a series of disconnected events, in which case it is known as an ‘‘episodic plot.’’
Poetic Justice: An outcome in a literary work, not necessarily a poem, in which the good are rewarded and the evil are punished, especially in ways that particularly fit their virtues or crimes. For example, a murderer may himself be murdered, or a thief will find himself penniless.
Poetic License: Distortions of fact and literary convention made by a writer—not always a poet— for the sake of the effect gained. Poetic license is closely related to the concept of ‘‘artistic freedom.’’ An author exercises poetic license by saying that a pile of money ‘‘reaches as high as a mountain’’ when the pile is actually only a foot or two high.
Point of View: The narrative perspective from which a literary work is presented to the reader. There are four traditional points of view. The ‘‘third person omniscient’’ gives the reader a ‘‘godlike’’ perspective, unrestricted by time or place, from which to see actions and look into the minds of characters. This allows the author to comment openly on characters and events in the work. The ‘‘third person’’ point of view presents the events of the story from outside of any single character’s perception, much like the omniscient point of view, but the reader must understand the action as it takes place and without any special insight into characters’ minds or motivations. The ‘‘first person’’ or ‘‘per- sonal’’ point of view relates events as they are perceived by a single character. The main character ‘‘tells’’ the story and may offer opinions about the action and characters which differ from those of the author. Much less common than omniscient, third person, and first person is the ‘‘second person’’ point of view, wherein the author tells the story as if it is happening to the reader. James Thurber em- ploys the omniscient point of view in his short story ‘‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.’’ Ernest Hemingway’s ‘‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’’ is a short story told from the third person point of view. Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn is presented from the first person viewpoint. Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City is an example of a novel which uses the second person point of view.
Pornography: Writing intended to provoke feelings of lust in the reader. Such works are often condemned by critics and teachers, but those which can be shown to have literary value are viewed less harshly. Literary works that have been described as pornographic include D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Post-Aesthetic Movement: An artistic response made by African Americans to the black aesthetic movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. Writers since that time have adopted a somewhat different tone in their work, with less emphasis placed on the disparity between black and white in the United States. In the words of post-aesthetic authors such as Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, and Kristin Hunter, African Americans are portrayed as looking inward for answers to their own questions, rather than always looking to the outside world. Two well- known examples of works produced as part of the post-aesthetic movement are the Pulitzer Prize- winning novels The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Beloved by Toni Morrison.
Postmodernism: Writing from the 1960s forward characterized by experimentation and application of modernist elements, which include existentialism and alienation. Postmodernists have gone a step further in the rejection of tradition begun with the modernists by also rejecting traditional forms, preferring the anti-novel over the novel and the anti- hero over the hero. Postmodern writers include Thomas Pynchon, Margaret Drabble, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Prologue: An introductory section of a literary work. It often contains information establishing the situation of the characters or presents information about the setting, time period, or action. In drama, the prologue is spoken by a chorus or by one of the principal characters.
Prose: A literary medium that attempts to mirror the language of everyday speech. It is distinguished from poetry by its use of unmetered, unrhymed language consisting of logically related sentences. Prose is usually grouped into paragraphs that form a cohesive whole such as an essay or a novel. The term is sometimes used to mean an author’s general writing.
Protagonist: The central character of a story who serves as a focus for its themes and incidents and as the principal rationale for its development. The protagonist is sometimes referred to in discussions of modern literature as the hero or anti-hero. Well- known protagonists are Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
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Realism: A nineteenth-century European literary movement that sought to portray familiar characters, situations, and settings in a realistic manner. This was done primarily by using an objective narrative point of view and through the buildup of accurate detail. The standard for success of any realistic work depends on how faithfully it transfers common experience into fictional forms. The realistic method may be altered or extended, as in stream of consciousness writing, to record highly subjective experience. Contemporary authors who often write in a realistic way include Nadine Gordimer and Grace Paley.
Resolution: The portion of a story following the climax, in which the conflict is resolved. The resolution of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is neatly summed up in the following sentence: ‘‘Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang and every body smiled.’’
Rising Action: The part of a drama where the plot becomes increasingly complicated. Rising action leads up to the climax, or turning point, of a drama. The final ‘‘chase scene’’ of an action film is generally the rising action which culminates in the film’s climax.
Roman a clef: A French phrase meaning ‘‘novel with a key.’’ It refers to a narrative in which real persons are portrayed under fictitious names. Jack Kerouac, for example, portrayed various his friends under fictitious names in the novel On the Road. D. H. Lawrence based ‘‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’’ on a family he knew.
Romanticism: This term has two widely accepted meanings. In historical criticism, it refers to a Euro- pean intellectual and artistic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that sought greater freedom of personal expression than that allowed by the strict rules of literary form and logic of the eighteenth-century neoclassicists. The Roman- tics preferred emotional and imaginative expression to rational analysis. They considered the individual to be at the center of all experience and so placed him or her at the center of their art. The Romantics believed that the creative imagination reveals nobler truths—unique feelings and attitudes—than those that could be discovered by logic or by scientific examination. ‘‘Romanticism’’ is also used as a general term to refer to a type of sensibility found in all periods of literary history and usually considered to be in opposition to the principles of classicism. In this sense, Romanticism signifies any work or philosophy in which the exotic or dreamlike figure strongly, or that is devoted to individualistic expression, self-analysis, or a pursuit of a higher realm of knowledge than can be discovered by human reason. Prominent Romantics include Jean- Jacques Rousseau, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
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Satire: A work that uses ridicule, humor, and wit to criticize and provoke change in human nature and institutions. Voltaire’s novella Candide and Jonathan Swift’s essay ‘‘A Modest Proposal’’ are both satires. Flannery O’Connor’s portrayal of the family in ‘‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’’ is a satire of a modern, Southern, American family.
Science Fiction: A type of narrative based upon real or imagined scientific theories and technology. Science fiction is often peopled with alien creatures and set on other planets or in different dimensions. Popular writers of science fiction are Isaac Asimov, Karel Capek, Ray Bradbury, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
Setting: The time, place, and culture in which the action of a narrative takes place. The elements of setting may include geographic location, characters’s physical and mental environments, prevailing cultural attitudes, or the historical time in which the action takes place.
Short Story: A fictional prose narrative shorter and more focused than a novella. The short story usually deals with a single episode and often a single character. The ‘‘tone,’’ the author’s attitude toward his or her subject and audience, is uniform through- out. The short story frequently also lacks denouement, ending instead at its climax.
Signifying Monkey: A popular trickster figure in black folklore, with hundreds of tales about this character documented since the 19th century. Henry Louis Gates Jr. examines the history of the signify- ing monkey in The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, published in 1988.
Simile: A comparison, usually using ‘‘like’’ or ‘‘as,’’of two essentially dissimilar things, as in ‘‘coffee as cold as ice’’ or ‘‘He sounded like a broken record.’’ The title of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘‘Hills Like White Elephants’’ contains a simile.
Social Realism: The Socialist Realism school of literary theory was proposed by Maxim Gorky and
established as a dogma by the first Soviet Congress of Writers. It demanded adherence to a communist worldview in works of literature. Its doctrines required an objective viewpoint comprehensible to the working classes and themes of social struggle featuring strong proletarian heroes. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories exhibit some characteristics of Socialist Realism.
Stereotype: A stereotype was originally the name for a duplication made during the printing process; this led to its modern definition as a person or thing that is (or is assumed to be) the same as all others of its type. Common stereotypical characters include the absent-minded professor, the nagging wife, the troublemaking teenager, and the kind- hearted grandmother.
Stream of Consciousness: A narrative technique for rendering the inward experience of a character. This technique is designed to give the impression of an ever-changing series of thoughts, emotions, im- ages, and memories in the spontaneous and seemingly illogical order that they occur in life. The textbook example of stream of consciousness is the last section of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Structure: The form taken by a piece of literature. The structure may be made obvious for ease of understanding, as in nonfiction works, or may obscured for artistic purposes, as in some poetry or seemingly ‘‘unstructured’’ prose.
Style: A writer’s distinctive manner of arranging words to suit his or her ideas and purpose in writing. The unique imprint of the author’s personality upon his or her writing, style is the product of an author’s way of arranging ideas and his or her use of diction, different sentence structures, rhythm, figures of speech, rhetorical principles, and other elements of composition.
Suspense: A literary device in which the author maintains the audience’s attention through the buildup of events, the outcome of which will soon be revealed. Suspense in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is sustained throughout by the question of whether or not the Prince will achieve what he has been instructed to do and of what he intends to do.
Symbol: Something that suggests or stands for something else without losing its original identity. In literature, symbols combine their literal meaning with the suggestion of an abstract concept. Literary symbols are of two types: those that carry complex associations of meaning no matter what their con- texts, and those that derive their suggestive meaning from their functions in specific literary works. Examples of symbols are sunshine suggesting happiness, rain suggesting sorrow, and storm clouds suggesting despair.
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Tale: A story told by a narrator with a simple plot and little character development. Tales are usually relatively short and often carry a simple message. Examples of tales can be found in the works of Saki, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, and O. Henry.
Tall Tale: A humorous tale told in a straightforward, credible tone but relating absolutely impossible events or feats of the characters. Such tales were commonly told of frontier adventures during the settlement of the west in the United States. Literary use of tall tales can be found in Washington Irving’s History of New York, Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, and in the German R. F. Raspe’s Baron Munchausen’s Narratives of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia.
Theme: The main point of a work of literature. The term is used interchangeably with thesis. Many works have multiple themes. One of the themes of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘‘Young Goodman Brown’’ is loss of faith.
Tone: The author’s attitude toward his or her audience may be deduced from the tone of the work. A formal tone may create distance or convey polite- ness, while an informal tone may encourage a friendly, intimate, or intrusive feeling in the reader. The author’s attitude toward his or her subject matter may also be deduced from the tone of the words he or she uses in discussing it. The tone of John F. Kennedy’s speech which included the appeal to ‘‘ask not what your country can do for you’’ was intended to instill feelings of camaraderie and national pride in listeners.
Tragedy: A drama in prose or poetry about a noble, courageous hero of excellent character who, be-
cause of some tragic character flaw, brings ruin upon him- or herself. Tragedy treats its subjects in a dignified and serious manner, using poetic language to help evoke pity and fear and bring about catharsis, a purging of these emotions. The tragic form was practiced extensively by the ancient Greeks. The classical form of tragedy was revived in the sixteenth century; it flourished especially on the Elizabethan stage. In modern times, dramatists have attempted to adapt the form to the needs of modern society by drawing their heroes from the ranks of ordinary men and women and defining the nobility of these heroes in terms of spirit rather than exalted social standing. Some contemporary works that are thought of as tragedies include The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.
Tragic Flaw: In a tragedy, the quality within the hero or heroine which leads to his or her downfall. Examples of the tragic flaw include Othello’s jealousy and Hamlet’s indecisiveness, although most great tragedies defy such simple interpretation.
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Utopia: A fictional perfect place, such as ‘‘para- dise’’ or ‘‘heaven.’’ An early literary utopia was described in Plato’s Republic, and in modern literature, Ursula K. Le Guin depicts a utopia in ‘‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.’’
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Victorian: Refers broadly to the reign of Queen Victoria of England (1837–1901) and to anything with qualities typical of that era. For example, the qualities of smug narrow-mindedness, bourgeois materialism, faith in social progress, and priggish morality are often considered Victorian. In literature, the Victorian Period was the great age of the English novel, and the latter part of the era saw the rise of movements such as decadence and symbolism.