Catholics - rooted in Ireland, Catholics were an object of persecution in England from the Reformation through the 19th Century

Anglicans - Official church since the 16th century; it has a creed of 39 articles; the classes are high church, broad church or Latitudinarian, and low church.

Presbyterians - John Calvin in Swiss Geneva; the religion was big in Scotland and gave birth to Quakers, Baptists, etc.

Methodists - John and Charles Wesley; the religion was big in Wales

Hermetic Protestantism - contained a belief in occult powers, magic, and the mystic (William Blake, Yeats, etc.)



Ptolmey was a Roman astronomer in the 2nd century A.D., and for nearly 1500 years his account of the universe was accepted. Earth was the center of the universe, orbited by the sun, stars, and planets. Hell was at the center of the globe, Heaven in the outermost circle, the Empyrean. Howeverm, in 1543 Copernicus showed that earth orbits the sun. Milton more or less uses the ptolemaic cosmos in his work.



It is unlikely that many of these more obscure terms will appear on the literature GRE. However, this list will prove a handy reference for the student of literature, and I have highlighted in blue those terms I believe may appear. (Examples without citations have been invented by the webmaster.)

antanaclasis - repeating a word, but in a different sense: "And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass." (Milton, Paradise Lost)

anadiplosis - beginning a phrase with the ending of a previous phrase: "Forthwith his former state and being forgets, / Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain." (Milton, Paradise Lost)

parison - repeating words in grammatically parallel phrases: "Thou art my father, thou my author, thou..." (Milton, Paradise Lost)

ploce - repeating a word within a line: "The truth I know, know it as I know myself.”

polyptoton - repeating words from the same root: ". . . Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall. . . " (Milton, Paradise Lost)

isocolon - repeating words and sounds in phrases the same length: "Under so many frigid, so many frozen seas…”

anaphora - beginning two or more lines the same way: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

epizeuxis - repeating a word with no words inbetween: "Never, never will I relent."

epanalepsis - beginning and ending a line with the same word: “Cry, and all the world will cry.”

anadiplosis - beginning a phrase with the ending of the prior phrase: “As if truth were fickle / Fickle men prevail.”

antimetabole - repeating a phrase in the opposite order: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Jesus Christ)

epistrophe - repeating the same word or phrase at the end of two or more clauses or lines

anastrophe - turning natural word order around: “To her I gave it.”

litotes – understatement: “Hitler didn’t love the Jewish people.”

oxymoron - two words juxtaposed that are opposite: "kind tyrants"

tautology - saying the same thing again but in different words

apostrophe - speaking to someone or something not present

antonomasia – using a proper name in pace of a general idea: "My lover is Adonis"

zeugma - In zeugma, two parallel clause share the same verb but take a different object, creating a noticeable contrast. Alexander Pope is famous for pairing the serious with the trivial to create a comic effect, as here, in this excerpt from “The Rape of the Lock”: "Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, / Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; / Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,/ Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade / Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball . . . "

ellipsis - obviously leaving out a word

sticomythia - when speakers alternate lines and repeat words or ideas that they pick up from each other:

“I never would have gone had-”
“Had you not wanted to, I’m sure.”
“Sure I wanted to, but that is not –“
“Not why you went? Why then go?”
“Go I must, for I was called.”
“Called on an errand pleasurable to you!”

synesthesia - using one sense to evoke another -- "blind mouths" (Milton)

periphrasis - wordily going around a subject:

malapropism – mistakenly replacing one word with another that sounds similar but means something different. It was named for Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals and used by Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Example:

Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; and as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries. . . and likewise that she might reprehend the true meaning of what she is saying....

paradox -- a seeming contradiction that is really true; For instance, John Donne writes in one of his holy sonnets: "Take me to you, imprison me, for I, / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me."



epic simile-- a long simile beginning with like or as and ending with so or such:

Thus Satan . . . Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or the sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:
Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, often, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays
So stretched out in length the arch-fiend lay
Chained on the burning lake... (Milton, Paradise Lost)

type - a historical figure who in someway prefigures (or is the pattern for) another figure (Melchezideck, Jospeh, and David are all types of Christ)

metaphor - a comparison not using like or as

simile - a comparison using like or as

tenor and vehicle - the two parts of a metaphor; the tenor is the idea being represented by the vehicle, or the image used

synecdoche - using the part for the whole, as in "lend a hand"

metonymy - substituting one term for another with closely associated with it, as in "from the White House" for "from the President"

conceit - a far fetched comparison

metaphysical conceits - these are even more intellectualized and far fetched than regular conceits, as John Donne's compass in "Valediction Forbidding Mourning" or the pulley in Herbert's poem

emblem - a symbol in which the connection between meaning and image is purely arbitrary (dove = peace)

epithet - an adjective or phrase that is used to express the characteristic of a person or thing; as in "Fallen cherub" or "myriads of immortal spirits" (Milton, Paradise Lost)

classical epithet - an epithet referring to classical mythology, such as "Cleaning the Augean Stables"



fable - a tale in which beasts behave like humans; it usually communicates a moral

commedia dell' arte - a series of short scenarios performed by travelling players who used stereotypical costumes and mask.

exemplum - told to illustrate the point of a sermon

baroque - heavily ornamented, with dynamic tension (Michelangelo, Milton)

mannerist - distorted figures (El Greco, Donne)

mock heroic - makes a subject ludicrous by inflating it, as in Dryden's poem "Mac Flecknoe"

tragedy -- a drama with a serious and dignified character in which the protagonist has a tragic flaw

closet drama -- a drama suited primarily for reading rather than for production

masque -- an elaborate form of court entertainment, the masque combined poetic drama, music, song, dance, elaborate costuming, and stage spectacle

afterpiece -- an extra entertainment presented after full-length plays in 18th century England. They were usually short comedy, farce, or pantomime. The purpose was to lighten the solemnity of drama. (Example--Tom Thumb)

parody -- A literary work in which the style of an author (or genre) is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule; it differs from burlesque in its depth and technique. (Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, for example, is a parody of the gothic romance genre.)

farce -- A light dramatic work employing unlikely situations, broad stereotypes, exaggeration, and violence. It is generally considered inferior to comedy because of its crude characterizations and unlikely plots.

satire -- a work ridiculing human vices, folly, abuses, and fialings, sometimes with the intent to bring about improvement

ballad opera -- plays (written in England in reaction to the popularity of Italian operas) that supply new words to old tunes, creating a satirical contrast. The Ballad Opera pokes fun at its characters by using unlikely situations and stereotypes; but it is also a satire, aimed at social reform. In Beggar's Opera, John Gay makes the ruffians of Newgate a type for the kind of men who were running the government. He revealed political, social, and economical ills. The play's moral is that corruption at high levels leads to corruption throughout society.

burlesque -- A comic imitation of a serious literary form, burlesque relies on a sharp contrast between the subject itslef and the way it is treated. In Tom Thumb, we see Fielding mocking heroic drama. The intent of such a play is to make fun of a certain genre or of certain writers. Burlesque is less socially conscious than other comedies, and it is less sophisticated than parody.

sentimental comedy -- These plays, in which the protagonists overcome a series of moral trials, do not so much evoke our emotions as tell us how to feel. The sentimental comedy portrays man as good but capable of being led astray. It shows that people can be reformed by appealing to their best sentiments. These plays contain unbelievably virtuous characters whose problems are too easily resolved. It tends to mix the qualities of tragedy and comedy. Oliver Goldsmith called it "bastard tragedy" and said that if the characters "happen to have faults or foibles, the spectator is taught, not only to pardon, but to applaud them, in consideration of the goodness of their hearts; so that folly, instead of being ridiculed, is commended, and the comedy aims at touching our passions without the power of being truly pathetic." Example: The West Indian

laughing comedy -- A term invented by Oliver Goldsmith to describe comedy aimed at amusing an audience rather than telling it how to feel; it portrays man's follies rather than his trials. Most of all, it is FUNNY. Laughing comedies often include satirical treatments of sentimentalism. Example: She Stoops to Conquer, The Rivals, The School for Scandal.

comedy of manners -- Witty, intelligent form of drama satirizing the manners and fashions of a particular social class; it is concerned with social manners and things morally trivial; plays often have allegorical names. Example: Man of Mode

allegory - a more or less symbolic fictional narrative that conveys a second meaning not explicit in the narrative, where characters and events have a one to one correlation to the thing being allegorized and often bear descriptive names, such as "Christian" or "Faith."

Gothic novel -- originally referred to literature set in medieval times (i.e. the time of the Goths) with castles, knights, etc., but it was broadened to include romantic fiction having an atmosphere of intrigue and horror; it is usually dark, stormy, and full of supernatural events. It often emphasized madness and revenge. Examples include Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

myth -- myths tell the deeds of extraordinary beings while at the same time relating unviersal truths; myth critics usually focus on stages of a hero: miraculous brith, initiation, quest, death, and resurrection.

neoclassicism -- adherence classical virtues like elegance, correctness, simplicity, dignity, restraint, order, and proportion; neoclassicism sometimes modifies a classic in order to comment on modern times.

Augustan - Literature written during the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714)

Elizabethan -- Work written during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603): Sidney, Spenser, Hooker, Marlow, Shakespeare, etc.

Jacobean -- English literature during the reign of James I (1603-25)

Caroline -- English literature written during the reign of Charles I and II (1625-1685)

naturalism - emphasizes the instinctual nature of humans (Zola; "slice of life")

realism - attempts to give the illusion of ordinary life

surrealism - 1924 under Andre Breton - expresses thought uncontrolled by reason and aesthetic and moral concepts

existentialism - Kierkegaard (1813-1855), popularized by Sartre - emphasizes freedom, personality, and the importance of individual "existence;" expresses skepticism toward idealism; maintains that man determines his own destiny by the choices he makes



humors -- The four main fluids present in the human body (according to the theory of physiology during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance).

sanguine: blood is dominant; happy, ruddy

phlegmatic: phlegm is dominate, colorless, lethargic, without energy

choleric: yellow bile is dominate, angry

splenetic: black bile is dominate, melancholic (though sometimes associated with anger)

felix culpa -- the idea that the Fall of man was fortunate because it brought us good (in some views, knowledge; in others, redemption through Christ), so that our end was better than our beginning

narrative method -- telling (usually dominant in a novel)

dramatic method -- showing (usually dominant in a play)

catharsis -- the purging of emotions of "pity and terror" aroused by a tragedy (Aristotle)

manet -- he (she) remains on stage

exeunt -- they all exit

argument -- theme

the unities -- based on Renaissance misconceptions of passages in Aristotle's Poetics, it was said dramas should have unity of action, time, and place; that is, they should take place in one day, in one setting, with one plot

hubris -- excessive pride; arrogance

protagonist -- the leading character in a Greek drama (or other form)

antagonist -- a character who opposes or competes with the protagonist

Freytag pyramid -- a device created by the German writer and critic Gustav Freytag to illustrate the structure of a typical five-act play:

exposition -- introduction, background information

rising action -- the events leading up to the climax

climax - the point of highest dramatic tension or a major turning point in the action; the point of no return

falling action -- action after the climax leading to the denouement

denouement or catastrophe--the final action that completes the unraveling of the plot (catastrophe)

chorus -- a group of actors who, in classical Greek drama, commented on the action of the play using song, dance, and recitation.

frame -- a literary device used to "set-up" a story by providing a reason for telling it; the frame is not essential to the story itself; for example, the storytelling/manuscript frame that opens The Turn of the Screw.

distancing - - using techniques such as mockery, ridicule, direct address of the audience, asides, and so forth in order to distance the audience from the work and remind it that it is reading a novel; this keeps the reader from sympathizing with the characters and allows him to ridicule them

narration -- narration may be limited, and told from the point of view of one character in either third person or in first person; or it may be omniscient, in which the narrator knows everything, and is generally the author or a persona for the author.

point of view -- from whose perspective the story is being told--such as a character within the story or an omniscient narrator--and what their vantage point is (i.e. how well can s/he see, how many years after the fact, where did s/he get his info.)

reliable narrator -- a narrator who can be trusted to be telling the truth about the characters and events, such as Jane in Jane Eyre

unreliable narrator -- a narrator who can not necessarily be trusted to present the story accurately because of certain prejudices, perspectives, or limited information he or she might have; such as Nelly in Wuthering Heights

flat character -- a one-dimensional, stereotypical character

static character -- a character who does not change throughout the novel

round character -- a developed character whose many sides are shown

dynamic character -- a character who grows and changes throughout the novel

foreshadowing -- a hint that prepares readers for what occurs later in the work

in medias res -- "in the middle of things"; how epics begin

catharsis - purging that Aristotle thought the special effect of tragedy

dramatic irony - has one meaning for the character, another for the audience

epigraph - an inscription; an apposite quotation at the beginning of a book

pathos - feeling of sympathy aroused by literature

bathos - when an author striving for elevation fails

sensibility - the thoughts, feelings, and assumptions characteristic of an age

encomium - warm or glorious praise

set speech -- a long speech in which only one person is speaking, as in the devil's speeches in the council in hell in Milton's Paradise Lost.

didactic -- intended to convey moral instruction and / or information

soliloquy -- a monologue (usually a series of reflections), in which the actor directly addresses the audience or speaks thoughts aloud while alone upon the stage (Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech, for example.)

Literary Terms

Diction

An author's choice of words. Since words have specific meanings, and since one's choice of words can affect feelings, a writer's choice of words can have great impact in a literary work. The writer, therefore, must choose his words carefully. Discussing his novel "A Farewell to Arms" during an interview, Ernest Hemingway stated that he had to rewrite the ending thirty-nine times. When asked what the most difficult thing about finishing the novel was, Hemingway answered, "Getting the words right."

Didactic Literature

Literature disigned explicitly to instruct as in these lines from Jacque Prevert's "To Paint the Portrait of a Bird."

Paint first a cage
with an open door
paint then
something pretty
something simple
something handsome
something useful
for the bird

Dramatic Monologue

In literature, the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience. Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" is an example wherein the duke, speaking to a non-responding representative of the family of a prospective new duchess, reveals not only the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but aspects of his own personality as well.

Elegy

A lyric poem lamenting death. These lines from Joachim Du Bellay's "Elegy on His Cat" are an example:
I have not lost my rings, my purse,
My gold, my gems-my loss is worse,
One that the stoutest heart must move.
My pet, my joy, my little love,
My tiny kitten, my Belaud,
I lost, alas, three days ago.


Epic

In literature generally, a major work dealing with an important theme. "Gone with the Wind," a film set in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) and Civil War South, is considered an epic motion picture. In poetry, a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. John Milton's "Paradise Lost" is a book length epic poem consisting of twelve subdivisions called books. Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are epic poems, the former concerning the Greek invasion of Troy; the latter dealing with the Greek victory over the Trojans and the ten-year journey of Odysseus to reach his island home.

pigraph

A brief quotation which appears at the beginning of a literary work. The following is the epigraph from T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Quoted from Dante Allighieri's epic poem "The Inferno," the speaker, Guido di Montefeltrano, believing Dante to be another soul condemned to Hell, replies thus to a question:

If I believed my answer were being given
to someone who could ever return to the world,
this flame (his voice is represented by a moving flame) would shake no more.
But since no one has ever returned
alive from this depth, if what I hear is true,
I will answer you without fear of infamy.

The epigraph here reveals one of the themes of the poem, Prufrocks urgent desire not to be revealed.

Epithet

In literature, a word of phrase preceding or following a name which serves to describe the character. Consider the following from Book 1 of Homer's "The Iliad:"
Zeus-loved Achilles, you bid me explain
The wrath of far-smiting Apollo

Connotation and Denotation

The denotation of a word is its dictionary definition. The word wall, therefore, denotes an upright structure which encloses something or serves as a boundary. The connotation of a word is its emotional content. In this sense, the word wall can also mean an attitude or actions which prevent becoming emotionally close to a person. In Robert Frosts "Mending Wall," two neighbors walk a property line each on his own side of a wall of loose stones. As they walk, they pick up and replace stones that have fallen. Frost thinks it's unnecessary to replace the stones since thay have no cows to damage each other's property. The neighbor only says "Good fences make good neighbors." The wall, in this case, is both a boundary (denotation) and a barrier that prevents Frost and his neighbor from getting to know each other, a force prohibiting involvement (connotation).

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry. Consider the following example from Theodore Roethke's "Night Journey:"

We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.

The repetition of the r sound in rush, rain, and rattles, occurring so close to each other in these two lines, would be considered consonance. Since a poem is generally much shorter than a short story or novel, the poet must be economical in his/her use of words and devices. Nothing can be wasted; nothing in a well-crafted poem is there by accident. Therefore, since devices such as consonance and alliteration, rhyme and meter have been used by the poet for effect, the reader must stop and consider what effect the inclusion of these devices has on the poem.

Couplet

A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. The following by Andrew Marvell is an example of a rhymed couplet:

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.

Dactyl

is a foot in poetic meter. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight. In accentual verse, such as English, it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—the opposite is the anapaest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable).

Denouement

Pronounced Dee-noo-ma, the denouement is that part of a drama which follows the climax and leads to the resolution.

Dialogue

In drama, a conversation between characters. One interesting type of dialogue, stichomythia, occurs when the dialogue takes the form of a verbal duel between characters, as in the following between Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude. (William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" - Act 3, scene 4)

QUEEN: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET: Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN: Come, Come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET: Go, Go, You question with a wicked tongue

Conclusion

Also called the Resolution" the conclusion is the point in a drama to which the entire play has been leading. It is the logical outcome of everything that has come before it. The conclusion stems from the nature of the characters. Therefore, the decision of Dr. Stockmann to remain in the town at the conclusion of "An Enemy of the People" is consistent with his conviction that he is right and has been right all along.

Concrete Poetry

A poem that visually resembles something found in the physical world. A poem about a wormy apple written so that the words form the shape of an apple.

Conflict

In the plot of a drama, conflict occurs when the protagonist is opposed by some person or force in the play. In Henry Ibsen's drama "An Enemy of the People" Dr. Thomas Stockmann's life is complicated by his finding that the public baths, a major source of income for the community, are polluted. In trying to close the baths, the doctor comes into conflict with those who profit from them, significantly, his own brother, the mayor of the town.
Another example occurs in the film "Star Wars." Having learned that Princess Lea is being held prisoner by the evil Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker sets out to rescue her. In doing so, he becomes involved in the conflict between the empire and the rebels which Lea spoke of in her holograph message in the drama's exposition. Since Luke is the protgonist of "Star Wars," the conflict in the drama crystallizes to that between Luke and Darth.

(Continued)

Canto

A subdivision of an epic poem. Each of the three books of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" is divided into cantos. For example, in each of the cantos of "The Inferno," Dante meets the souls of people who were once alive and who have been condemned to punishment for sin.

Carpe Diem

A Latin phrase which translated means "Sieze (Catch) the day," meaning "Make the most of today." The phrase originated as the title of a poem by the RomanHorace (65 B.C.E.-8B.C.E.) and caught on as a theme with such English poets as Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell. Consider these lines from Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time":
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
To-morrow will be dying.

Catastrophe

The scene in a tragedy which includes the death or moral destruction of the protagonist. In the catastrophe at the end of Sophocles' "Oedipus the King," Oedipus, discovering the tragic truth about his origin and his deeds, plucks out his eyes and is condemned to spend the rest of his days a wandering beggar. The catastrophe in Shakespearean tragedy occurs in Act 5 of each drama, and always includes the death of the protagonist. Consider the fates of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello.

Character

A person, or any thing presented as a person, e. g., a spirit, object, animal, or natural force, in a literary work. In a cartoon scene, firemen may be putting out a fire which a coyote has deliberately started, while a hydrant observes the scene fearfully. The firemen, the coyote and the hydrant would all be considered characters in the story. If a billowy figure complete with eyes, nose, and mouth representing the wind thwarts the efforts of the firemen, the wind, too, qualifies as a character. Animals who figure importantly in movies of live drama are considered characters. Mr. Ed, Lassie, and Tarzan's monkey Cheetah are examples.

Characterization

The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character in a literary work: Methods may include (1) by what the character says about himself or herself; (2) by what others reveal about the character; and (3) by the character's own actions.

Classicism

A movement or tendency in art, music, and literature to retain the characteristics found in work originating in classical Greece and Rome. It differs from Romanticism in that while Romanticism dwells on the emotional impact of a work, classicism concerns itself with form and discipline.

Autobiography

The story of a person's life written by himself or herself. William Colin Powell's "My American Journey" is an example. Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, of which "Big Two-Hearted River" is a sample, are considered autobiographical.

Ballad

A story in poetic form, often about tragic love and usually sung. Ballads were passed down from generation to generation by singers. Two old Scottish ballads are "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Bonnie Barbara Allan." Coleridges, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a 19th century English ballad.

Biography

The story of a person's life written by someone other than the subject of the work. Katherine Drinker Bowen's "Yankee from Olympus" which details the life and work of the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is an example. A biographical work is supposed to be rigorously factual. However, since the biographer may by biased for or against the subject of the biography, critics, and sometimes the subject of the biography himself or herself, may come forward to challenge the trustworthiness of the material.

Blank Verse

A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Consider the following from "The Ball Poem" by John Berryman:
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over-there it is in the water!

Cacaphony/Euphony

Cacaphony is an unpleasant combination of sounds. Euphony, the opposite, is a pleasant combination of sounds. These sound effects can be used intentionally to create an effect, or they may appear unintentionally. The cacaphony in Matthew Arnold's lines "And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,/Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honor'd, self-secure,/Didst tread on earth unguess'd at," is probably unintentional.

Aesura

A pause within a line of poetry which may or may not affect the metrical count (see #62. meter). In scansion, a caesura is usually indicated by the following symbol (//). Here's an example by Alexander Pope:
Know then thyself,//presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind//is Man.

Anapest

In a line of poetry, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable forming the pattern for the line or perhaps for the entire poem.

Anecdote

A very short tale told by a character in a literary work. In Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," "The Miller's Tale" and "The Carpenter's Tale" are examples.

Antagonist

A person or force which opposes the protagonist in a literary work. In Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster," Mr. Scratch is Daniel Webster's antagonst at the trial of Jabez Stone. The cold, in Jack London's "To Build a Fire" is the antagonist that defeats the man on the trail.

Aphorism

A brief statement which expresses an observation on life, usually intended as a wise observation. Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac" contains numerous examples, one of which is Drive thy business; let it not drive thee. which means that one should not allow the demands of business to take control of one's moral or worldly commitments.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech wherein the speaker speaks directly to something nonhuman. In these lines from John Donne's poem "The Sun Rising" the poet scolds the sun for interrupting his nighttime activities:

Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Aside

A device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the audience but not by other characters in the play. In William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," the Chamberlain, Polonius, confronts Hamlet. In a dialogue concerning Polonius' daughter, Ophelia, Polonius speaks this aside:

How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter.
Yet he knew me not at first; 'a said I was a fishmonger.
'A is far gone. And truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love,
very near this. I'll speak to him again.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem. Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells" conains numerous examples. Consider these from stanza
2:
Hear the mellow wedding bells-
and
From the molten-golden notes,

The repetition of the short e and long o sounds denotes a heavier, more serious bell than the bell encountered in the first stanza where the assonance included the i sound in examples such as tinkle, sprinkle, and twinkle.

Alliteration

Used for poetic effect, a repitition of the initial sounds of several words in a group. The following line from Robert Frost's poem "Acquainted with the Night provides us with an example of alliteration,": I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet." The repitition of the s sound creates a sense of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the line.

Allusion

A reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work. T. S. Eliot, in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" alludes (refers) to the biblical figure John the Baptist in the line Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, . . . In the New Testament, John the Baptist's head was presented to King Herod on a platter.

Ambiguity

A statement which can contain two or more meanings. For example, when the oracle at Delphi told Croesus that if he waged war on Cyrus he would destroy a great empire, Croesus thought the oracle meant his enemy's empire. In fact, the empire Croesus destroyed by going to war was his own.

Analogue

A comparison between two similar things. In literature, a work which resembles another work either fully or in part. If a work resembles another because it is derived from the other, the original work is called the source, not an analogue of the later work.

Short story

A prose narrative that is brief in nature. The short story also has many of the same characteristics of a novel including characters, setting and plot. However, due to length constraints, these characteristics and devices generally may not be as fully developed or as complex as those developed for a full-length novel. There are many authors well known for the short story including Edgar Allan Poe, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. According to the book Literary Terms by Karl Becksonand Arthur Ganz, “American writers since Poe, who first theorized on the structure and purpose of the short story, have paid considerable attention to the form” (257). The written “protocol” regarding what comprises a short versus a long story is vague. However, a general standard might be that the short story could be read in one sitting. NTC’s Dictionary of Literary Terms quotes Edgar Allan Poe’s description as being ‘a short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal’

Protagonist

A protagonist is considered to be the main character or lead figure in a novel, play, story, or poem. It may also be referred to as the "hero" of a work. Over a period of time the meaning of the term protagonist has changed. The word protagonist originated in ancient Greek drama and referred to the leader of a chorus. Soon the definition was changed to represent the first actor onstage. In some literature today it may be difficult to decide who is playing the role of the protagonist. For instance, in Othello,we could say that Iago is the protagonist because he was at the center of all of the play's controversy. But even if he was a main character, was he the lead character? This ambiguity can lead to multiple interpretations of the same work and different ways of appreciating a single piece of literature.

Personification

A figure of speech where animals, ideas or inorganic objects are given human characteristics. One example of this is James Stephens’s poem "The Wind" in which wind preforms several actions. In the poem Stephens writes, “The wind stood up and gave a shout. He whistled on his two fingers.” Of course the wind did not actually "stand up," but this image of the wind creates a vivid picture of the wind's wild actions. Another example of personification in this poem is “Kicked the withered leaves about….And thumped the branches with his hand.” Here, the wind is kicking leaves about, just like a person would and using hands to thump branches like a person would also. By giving human characteristics to things that do not have them, it makes these objects and their actions easier to visualize for a reader. By giving the wind human characteristics, Stephens makes this poem more interesting and achieves a much more vivid image of the way wind whips around a room. Personification is most often used in poetry, coming to popularity during the 18th century.

Persona

In literature, the persona is the narrator, or the storyteller, of a literary work created by the author. As Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama puts it, the persona is not the author, but the author’s creation--the voice “through which the author speaks.” It could be a character in the work, or a fabricated onlooker, relaying the sequence of events in a narrative. Such an example of persona exists in the poem “Robin Hood and Allin a Dale,” in which an anonymous character, perhaps one of Robin’s “merry men,” recounts the events of the meeting and adventures of Robin Hood and Allin a Dale. After telling of their initial introduction in the forest, the persona continues to elaborate on their quest to recover Allin’s true love from the man she is about to marry. Robin and his entourage succeed and then proceed to marry her and Allin a Dale. The persona’s importance is recognized due to the more genuine manner in which the events of a story are illustrated to the reader—with a sense of knowledge and emotion only one with a firsthand view of the action could depict.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs as in the following lines from Act 2, scene 2 of Shakespeare's "Macbeth." In this scene, Macbeth has murdered King Duncan. Horrified at the blood on his hands, he asks:

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Literally, it does not require an ocean to wash blood from one's hand. Nor can the blood on one's hand turn the green ocean red. The hyperbole works to illustrate the guilt Macbeth feels at the brutal murder of his king and kinsman.

Iamb

A metrical pattern of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.

Imagery

A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. The following example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.

uses images of pain and sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself represents society and the psychology of Prufrock, himself.

Inference

A judgement based on reasoning rather than on direct or explicit statement. A conclusion based on facts or circumstances. For example, advised not to travel alone in temperatures exceeding fifty degrees below zero, the man in Jack London's "To Build a Fire" sets out anyway. One may infer arrogance from such an action.

Irony

Irony takes many forms. In irony of situation, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Macbeth murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will achieve great happiness. Actually, Macbeth never knows another moment of peace, and finally is beheaded for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the mystery is solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as brilliant, while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.