FOR ONE PARAGRAPH DEFINITION

Character:
A person who is responsible for the thoughts and actions within a story, poem, or other literature.
Characters are very important because they are the medium through which the reader interacts
with a piece of literature. Characters are used to form the plot of a story or create a mood by the
attributes that are given to them.
Comedy:
Greek comedy was from the beginning associated with fertility rites and the worship of
Dionysus. According to Aristotles it deals in an amusing way with ordinary characters in rather
everyday situations. Its characters may be drawn from observation and experience, but they are
the result of the generalizing faculty rather than the individualising one. First the characters tend
to be realistic, but in essence become stereotypes or even caricatures.
Conflict:
It involves two opposing forces; these forces may be embodied in two individuals, hero and
villain, in one person and society within one individual, the protagonist when love and duty are
at odds, etc. The events of the conflict form the plot, their decisive moment marks the climax of
the play or story.
Context(ualism):
A jargon term current in the New Criticism (thats a book, btw) which denotes a particular kind
of aesthetic experience of a work of literature. The work is experienced as a self-contained
artefact and possessed of mutually opposing energies of a tension filled object that blocks our
escape from its context and thus from its world.
critical approaches:
Critical approaches revel how or why a particular work is constructed and what its social and
cultural implications are. These approaches are: deconstruction, feminist criticism, the new
criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, reader-response criticism, structuralism, Marxist criticism,
formalist and postcolonial criticism.
Drama:
In general any work meant to be performed on a stage by actors. A more particular meaning is a
serious play; not necessarily tragedy. One of its elements is the presence of an audience. Novel
and poetry make their appeals to solitary readers.
Epic:
An epic is a long narrative poem, on a grand scale, about the deeds of warriors and heroes. It is a
heroic story incorporating myth, legend, folk tale and history. Epics are often of national
significance in the sense that they embody the history and aspirations of a nation in a lofty or
grandiose manner.
Fiction:
A vague and general term for an imaginative work, usually in prose. It does not cover poetry and
drama though both are forms of fiction in that they are moulded and contrived or feigned.
Fiction is now used in general of the novel, the short story, the novella, and related genres.
figurative language:
Language which uses figures of speech; e.g. metaphor, simile, alliteration. Figurative language
must be distinguished from literal language. He hared down the street or He ran like a hare
down the street are figurative. He ran very quickly down the street is literal.

focalization:
the focaliser is the primary consciousness of a story. the events, situations, interpretations of
other characters dialogue, etc. are all filtered through this focalizer. This character holds the
main point of view. The focaliser sometimes changes throughout the narrative, resulting in
multiple focalizers in one story. Thus, the focalizer is not always the narrator or the main
character.
iambic pentameter:
A line of ten iambic feet. Poems in iambic pentameter may not rhyme. Those that are written in
continuous lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter are said to be in blank verse.
literary period:
A time and place characterised by an assemblage or interelated cultural, social, ideological,
technological, historical and other trends in which related groups of authors wrote.
Metaphor:
A figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another. The basic figure of poetry.
A comparison is usually implicit, whereas in simile it is explicit.
Mimesis:
Considered by many as a basic principle in the creation of art as representation of nature.
narrative focus:
The character around whom the story moves we often see only those events which this
character witnesses if we see events which do not involve the narrative focus, we are anxious
about how the events will impact upon this character.
novel:
An extended fictional narrative in prose. Its the least amenable to formal definition. The length
of the novel varies greatly. It used to define a short story, however nowadays its used for a story
of about 60-70 thousand words.
Oeuvre:
A substantial body of work constituting the lifework of a writer, an artist, or a composer. In
french, it means art or artwork.
Pastoral:
A minor but important mode which is concerned with the lives of shepherds. For the most part it
tends to be an idealization of shepherd life, and it creates and image of peaceful and uncorrupt
existence.
Plot:
The play design, scheme, or pattern of events in a story and further the organisation of incident
and character in such a way as to induce curiosity and suspense in the spectator reader.
Poetry:
A comprehensive term which can be taken to cover any kind of metrical composition. The
implications are that poetry is a superior form of creation.
Sonnet:
Except for the curtal sonnet the ordinary sonnet consists of 14 lines, usually in iambic
pentameters with considerable variations in rhyme scheme. The three basic sonnet forms are:
Petrarchan (most common), Spenserian, and Shakespearian. Rhyming schemes!!!
Tragedy:
In the first place it almost certainly denoted a form of ritual sacrifice accompanied by a choral
song in honour of Dionysus. Of this ritual developed Greek dramatic tragedy, a serious play in

which the chief figures by some peculiarity of character pass through a series of misfortunes
leading to the final catastrophe.
GENERAL TERMS
Action: (1) The main story of a play, novel, narrative poem, etc. (2) The main series of events
that together constitute the plot.
Adaptation: the re-casting of a work in one medium to fit another.
alienation effect: Brechts dramatic theory of reminding the audience from time to time that they
are only watching a play; the detachment of the audience and the actors from the play.
Allusion: an implicit reference to e.g. another work of literature or art, to a person or event.
Ambiguity: a term standing for words that might have an alternate meaning.
Analysis: A detailed splitting up and examination of a work of literature.
Anthology: collections, used to be collections of epigrams.
Apocrypha: writings of unknown or uncertain authorship.
Appendix: a body of a separate additional material at the end of a book, magazine, contract, etc.
Archaism: using the older form of a word (usually because of metrics)
Author: a person who composes a book, articles or other written work.
Bibliography: a list of books, essays and monographs of a subject; or a list of the works of a
particular author.
Censorship: the act of editing of banning works of art so that only such forms are available to
the public which fulfil requirements of taste, ideology or political settlement.
close reading: detalied examination of a text to discover its meanings.
comparative analysis: the item-by-item comparison of two or more comparable pieces of
literature.
Copyright: the legal right granted to an author against plagiarising their artwork.
critical edition: includes variant readings and emendations after careful study of manuscript or
printings to determine the original most authoritative form of a text.
edition: the number of prints from one set of type. one edition may have several impressions or
paintings.
juxtaposition: two ideas, characters, actions, etc. in side-by-side arrangement for comparison.
literary translation: a work written in one language translated in another.
literary trend: a genre, theme or topic that is especially popular in an era or literature, e.g.
science fiction, etc.
manuscript: text written by hand.
Motto: a short sentence or phrase adopted as representative of a person or family.
Plagiarism: literary theft.
Reference: an item on which the work is based.
Review: a short notice or critical discussion on paper.
Text: words of a book, book, the main body a book.
textual criticism: a study or scholarship devoted to the study and analysis of texts in order to
determine authorship and the original edition of the work.
variation: the calculated avoidance of uniformity of expressions.
willing suspension of disbelief:temporarily and willingly setting aside our beliefs about reality
in order to enjoy the make-believe of a play, poem, film or story.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
conceit: a figure of speech, usually a simile or metaphor that forms an extremely ingenious or
fanciful parallel between apparently dissimilar or incongruous objects or situations.
metonymy: a figure of speech in which the name of an attribute or a thing is substituted for the
thing itself.
onomatopoeia: the formation and use of words to imitate sounds.
paradox: an apparently self-contradictory statement.
personification: the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.
simile: a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another.
symbol: a figure of speech: something that represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but
is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. In literature it denotes
an object, person, idea, etc., to stand for or suggest something else with which it is associated
either explicitly or in some more subtle way
synaesthesia: a figure of speech: the mixing of different sensations, such as hearing and seeing,
etc.
synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole.
tenor and vehicle: components of the metaphor. (by I.A. Richards) the tenor is the object,
concept, or person meant, and the vehicle is the image which carries the weight of the
comparison.
trope: a word or expression used in a figurative sense; it also means verbal amplification of
liturgical texts in the Middle Ages.
FICTION
autobiography: an account of a persons life by him or herself.
biography: an account of a persons life by someone else.
essay: a short literary composition on a particular theme or topic.
focalizer: the primary consciousness of a story. this character holds the main point of view.
foregrounding: is the practice of making something stand out from the surrounding words or
images. (it could be stylistic, grammatical, etc.)
narrator: one who tells the story, the speaker of the voice of a written work.
point of view: the way the story is presented to the reader which may vary.
prose: the ordinary form of written and spoken language.
short story: prose that is designed to produce a single dominant effect which contains the
elements of drama.
stream of consciousness: a literary term referring to the technique which seeks to depict the
multidious thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind.
sub-plot: subsidiary action in a play or story coinciding with the main action.
sub-text: under or below the text, what is not said or done, but we still know/guess those
things happen.
utopia: the idea of a place where all is well, antiquity in literature.
DRAMA
action: the main story of a play, novel, short story, narrative poem, etc.
catharsis: When the tragedy, having aroused powerful feelings in the spectator there comes a
sense of release from tension, of calm.
dialogue: the speech of characters in a play which discuss a subject at length.
monologue: a single person speaking alone with or without an audience.
Morality Play: an allegory in dramatic form.

Mystery Play: a dramatic genre: the Mystery Plays of the Middle Ages were based on the Bible
and were particularly concerned with the stories of mans creation, fall and redemption.
protagonist: The main character in a drama or other literary work. The leading and principal
figure.
Restoration comedy: The kind of drama between the restoration of monarchy in 1660 chiefly
concerned with presenting a society of elegance and stylishness.
stage directions: notes incorporated in or added to the script of a play to indicate location,
sights, circumstances etc. the scene is set in.
stock character: a recurrent type of character which a writer can transform into an individual.
POETRY
alliteration: a figure of speech in which consonants especially at the beginning of the words or
stressed syllables are repeated.
anapest: a metrical foot comprising of two unstressed syllables and one stressed. (opposite of
dactyl)
assonance: the repetition of similar vowel sounds.
ballad / ballad metre: (ballad: a song that tells a story.) usually a four-line stanza or quatrain
containing alternating four-stress and three-stress lines. abcb, refrain.
blank verse : consists of unrhymed five-stress lines, properly, iambic pentameters.
caesura : A break or pause in a line of poetry dictated usually by the natural system of the
language.
couplet : two successive rhyming lines.
dactyl : a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones.
dramatic monologue : a poem in which there is one imaginary speaker addressing an imaginary
audience.
elegy: in classical literature any poem that was composed in elegiac distiches, since the 16th
century it has come to mean a poem mourning for an individual or a lament for some tragic
event.
Enjambment: running on of the sense beyond the second line of one couplet.
epistle: a poem addressed to a friend or a patron, thus a kind of letter in verse.
epitaph: Inscription on a tomb or grave. e.g. the one with the lacedaemonians (Go tell the Spartans, thou who
passest by, // That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.).

foot: a group of syllables forming a metrical unit, a unit of rhythm.

free verse: it has no regular meter or line length and depends on natural speech rhythms.
heroic couplet: nearly always iambic pentameters rhymed in pairs, one of the most common
English metric forms.
hexameter: a metrical line of six feet.
iamb: a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed and a stressed syllable.
ode : a lyric poem of stanza structure, in formatily in tone and style.
pentameter : a five-foot line and the basic line in many English verse.
Petrarchan sonnet : Italian sonnet, 14 lines divided into octave (rhyming abbaabba) and the
sestet (cdecde).
quatrain : a stanza of four lines, rhymed or unrhymed.
rhyme : echo of sounds that causes aesthetc satisfaction.
rhythm: in a verse or a prose, the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables and the
duration of the syllables. Depends on metrical pattern.
run-on line: a line of a verse which runs into the next line without any grammatical break.
Shakespearean sonnet: 14 lines in iambic pentameters. Three quatrains and a couplet.

soliloquy: a speech often of some length, in which a character alone on a stage expresses his
thoughts and feelings.
Spenserian sonnet: a sonnet with the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd, ee. it has the couplet, too.
spondee: a metrical foot of two stressed or long syllables.
stanza: a group of lines in verse.
stress: an emphasis given to a syllable of speech by making it louder than the rest of the word,
base of stress-based metric system.
stressed syllable: a unit of a metric foot, the one given more emphasis when said.
tercet : a stanza of three lines linked by rhyme.
tetrameter : a line of four metrical feet.
trochee : a metrical foot containing a stressed, followed by an unstressed syllable.
verse paragraph : a group of lines (often in blank verse) which forms a unit.
Analysing literary works :
- writers background
- historical background
- form : metre/prosody, rhyming, stanazic pattern
- imagery, figures of speech
- language/style
- varoius approaches, suchs as structutralist, feminist, Marxist, psychoanalitic, etc.
Metric feet :
/ = stressed
-

anapest : /
trochee: /
dactyl : /
iamb : /
spondee : //

= unstressed