TERMS AND DEVICESAActive voice – The voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is performing the

action or causing the happening denoted by the verb; “The boy threw the ball” uses the active voice. Contrast with passive voice.

Allegory – The word derives from the Greek allegoria ("speaking otherwise"). The term loosely describes any writing in verse or prose that has a double meaning. This narrative acts as an extended metaphor in which persons, abstract ideas, or events represent not only themselves on the literal level, but they also stand for something else on the symbolic level. An allegorical reading usually involves moral or spiritual concepts that may be more significant than the actual, literal events described in a narrative. Typically, an allegory involves the interaction of multiple symbols, which together create a moral, spiritual, or even political meaning. The act of interpreting a story as if each object in it had an allegorical meaning is called allegoresis. Examples of allegories include Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and “The Lady of Shalott”. Fables, parables, exempla, and proverbs are various forms of allegories.

Alliteration – Beginning several words with the same consonant sound. For instance, the phrase "buckets of big blue berries" alliterates with the consonant b. Coleridge describes the sacred river Alph in Kubla Khan as "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion," which alliterates with the consonant m. One of Dryden's couplets in Absalom and Achitophel reads, "In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin, / Before polygamy was made a sin." It alliterates with the letter p.

Allusion – A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification. Allusions can originate in mythology, biblical references, historical events, legends, geography, or earlier literary works. Authors often use allusion to establish a tone, create an implied association, contrast two objects or people, make an unusual juxtaposition of references, or bring the reader into a world of experience outside the limitations of the story itself. In the Elizabethan Thomas Nashe’s “Litany in Time of Plague”, “Brightness falls from the air/Queens have died young and fair/Dust hath closed Helen’s eye”, the unidentified Helen in the last line alludes to Helen of Troy.

Analogy – A relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations, people, or objects, especially when used as a basis for explanation: “Water is to fish as air is to birds.”

Anecdotal evidence – a short narrative account of an amusing, unusual, revealing, or interesting event used as evidence to support a point, perhaps in an argumentative essay. A good anecdote has a single, definite point, and the setting, dialogue, and characters are usually subordinate to the point of the story. Writers may use anecdotes to clarify abstract points, to humanize individuals, or to create a memorable image in the reader's mind. Anecdotes are similar to exempla. If I wished to convince you of the dangers of electronic media, I might relay a short story about a girl who became addicted to drugs and homeless because of people she met over the internet. While the evidence may be intriguing, it is hardly scientific or dependable.

Antagonist – The character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends (if there is one). Anything that creates conflict for a protagonist can be described as antagonistic. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s primary antagonist.

Anti-climax – (also called bathos): a drop, often sudden and unexpected, from a dignified or important idea or situation to one that is trivial or humorous. Also a sudden descent from something sublime to something ridiculous. In fiction and drama, this refers to action that is disappointing in contrast to the previous moment of intense interest. In rhetoric, the effect is frequently intentional and comic. For example: "Osama Bin Laden: Wanted for Crimes of War, Terrorism, Murder, Conspiracy, and Nefarious Parking Practices."

Antithesis – (plural: antitheses): Using opposite phrases in close conjunction. Examples might be, "I burn and I freeze," or "Her character is white as sunlight, black as midnight." The best antitheses express their contrary ideas in a balanced sentence. It can be a contrast of opposites: "Evil men fear authority; good men cherish it." Alternatively, it can be a contrast of degree: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind." Antithesis is a kind of contrary parallelism.

Apostrophe – Not to be confused with the punctuation mark, apostrophe is the act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present: For instance, John Donne commands, "Oh, Death, be not proud." King Lear proclaims, "Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, / More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child / Than the sea-monster." Death, of course, is a phenomenon rather than a proud person, and ingratitude is an abstraction that hardly cares about Lear's opinion, but the act of addressing the abstract has its own rhetorical power. An apostrophe is an example of a rhetorical trope.

Archaic language – A word, expression, spelling, or phrase that is out of date in the common speech of an era, but still deliberately used by a writer, poet, or playwright for artistic purposes. For instance, two archaic words (reproduced here in italics) appear in these lines from Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “’Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’/Eftsoons his hand dropt he.” Until fairly recently, it was still common to find poets using "I ween," "steed," and "gramercy" in their poems, even though they wouldn't use these terms in normal daily speech. Artists might choose an archaism over a more familiar word because it is more suitable for meter, for rhyme, for alliteration, or for its associations with the past. It also might be attractive as a quick way to defamiliarize an everyday phrase or object. Archaisms are more rare in modern and postmodern poetry.

Argumentative essay – an essay with the purpose of convincing the reader of something. It should

attempt to have logical development with supporting points and evidence. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is an example of a satirical argumentative essay.

Aside – In drama, a few words or a short passage spoken by one character to the audience (or another

character on stage) while the other actors on stage pretend their characters cannot hear the speaker's words. It is a theatrical convention that the aside is not audible to other characters on stage. Contrast with soliloquy. The aside is usually indicated by stage directions.

Assonance – Repeating identical or similar vowels sounds (especially in stressed syllabes) in nearby words. Assonance in final vowels of lines can often lead to half-rhyme. An example appears in the second and fourth lines of this stanza from "Fair Annie": “Bind up, bind up your yellow hair,/And tie it on your neck;/And see you look as maiden-like/As the day that first we met.” (qtd in Deutsche 140). If combined with consonance, assonance can create actual full rhyme.

Atmosphere – (Also called mood): The emotional feelings inspired by a work. The term is borrowed from meteorology to describe the dominant mood of a selection as it is created by diction, dialogue, setting, and description. Often the opening scene in a play or novel establishes an atmosphere appropriate to the theme of the entire work. The opening of Shakespeare's Hamlet creates a brooding atmosphere of unease. Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher establishes an atmosphere of gloom and emotional decay. The opening of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 establishes a surreal atmosphere of confusion, and so on. Compare with ambiance.

Audience – The person(s) reading a text, listening to a speaker, or observing a performance.Autobiography – A non-fictional account of a person's life—usually a celebrity, an important

historical figure, or a writer—written by that actual person.B

Ballad – A ballad is a narrative poem consisting of quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimester that is meant to be sung. Common traits of the ballad are that (a) the beginning is often abrupt, (b) the story is told through dialogue and action (c) the language is simple or "folksy," (d) the theme is often tragic, though comic ballads do exist, and (e) the ballad contains a refrain repeated several times. Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” are examples of ballads, though are sometimes referred to as lyrical ballads.

Ballad stanza – Traditionally, the ballad stanza consists of four-lines (a quatrain) containing alternating four-stress and three-stress lines with an ABCB or ABAB rhyme scheme. Works written in ballad measure often include such quatrains. As an example, the opening stanza to "Earl Brand" illustrates the pattern. Note also the bits of Scottish dialect in phrases such as "hae" for have and "awa" for away: “Rise up, rise up, my seven brave sons,/And dress in your armour so bright;/Earl Douglas will hae Lady Margaret awa/Before that it be light.”

Bias – a predisposed temperamental or emotional leaning to one side: When Fox News interviews a Republican candidate, the questions are easy and designed to make the candidate look good. When MSNBC interviews a Democratic candidate, the same scenario unfolds because both news organizations are biased in their respective ways.

Biography – (Greek, bios+graphe "life writing"): A non-fictional account of a person's life—usually a celebrity, an important historical figure, or a writer. If a writer uses his or her own life as the basis of a biography, the work is called an autobiography. Contrast with a memoir.

Blank verse – (also called unrhymed iambic pentameter): Unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even-numbered syllables bearing the accents. Blank verse has been called the most "natural" verse form for dramatic works, since it supposedly is the verse form most close to natural rhythms of English speech, and it has been the primary verse form of English drama and narrative poetry since the mid-sixteenth Century. Such verse is blank in rhyme only; it usually has a definite meter. From Hamlet: “To be, or not to be—that is the question:/Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles”.

CCacophony – (Greek, "bad sound"): The term in poetry refers to the use of words that combine sharp,

harsh, hissing, or unmelodious sounds: “Breakers crashed onto jagged rocks and clawed the sands with brutal strikes, pummeling the beach.” The cacophony produced by city traffic at midday is a perfect real world example. It is the opposite and absence of euphony.

Caricature – ridicule by exaggeration or distortion of a thing or person used especially, though not exclusively, in political attacks. This can take visual, written, or aural forms.

Case study – A process or record of research in which detailed consideration is given to the development of a particular person, group, or situation over a period of time; a particular instance of something used or analyzed in order to illustrate a thesis or principle.

Catastrophe – The outcome of the plot of a tragedy, usually determined by the death of the hero. Shakespeare’s tragedies place the catastrophe in the fifth act (See tragedy). Freytag's pyramid illustrates visually the normal charting of the catastrophe in a plotline.

Cause and effect – A method of paragraph or essay development in which a writer analyzes the reasons for and/or the consequences of an action, event, or decision.

Character – Any representation of an individual being presented in a dramatic or narrative work through extended dramatic or verbal representation. The reader can interpret characters as endowed with moral and dispositional qualities expressed in what they say (dialogue) and what

they do (action). E. M. Forster describes characters as "flat" (i.e., built around a single idea or quality and unchanging over the course of the narrative) or "round" (complex in temperament and motivation; drawn with subtlety; capable of growth and change during the course of the narrative). If a single secondary character aids the protagonist throughout the narrative, that character is the deuteragonist (the hero's "side-kick"). A character of tertiary importance is a tritagonist. These terms originate in classical Greek drama, in which a tenor would be assigned the role of protagonist, a baritone the role of deuteragonist, and a bass would play the tritagonist. Compare flat characters with stock characters. To discuss the character of a character is to discuss the qualities of his or her personality.

Characterization – An author or poet's use of description, dialogue, dialect, and action to create in the reader an emotional or intellectual reaction to a character or to make the character more vivid and realistic. Careful readers note each character's attitude and thoughts, actions and reaction, as well as any language that reveals geographic, social, or cultural background. Characterization can occur objectively, known as showing or indirect presentation (whereby the author allows the readers to judge the character based on what the character says and does), or subjectively, known as telling or direct presentation (whereby the author intervenes authoritatively to describe and evaluate the motivations and dispositions of the character).

Character foil – see Foil, below.Chorus – In ancient Greece, the chorus was originally a group of male singers and dancers (choreuti)

who participated in religious festivals and dramatic performances by singing, commenting on the deeds of the characters and interpreting the significance of the events within the play. This group contrasts with the actors (Greek hypocrites). Shakespeare alters the traditional chorus by replacing the singers with a single figure--often allegorical in nature.

Chronological order – (Greek: "logic of time"): The order in which events happen, especially when

emphasizing a cause-effect relationship in history or in a narrative.Cliché – A hackneyed or trite phrase that has become overused. Clichés are considered bad writing

and bad literature. These can include expressions such as, “a whole new ball-game” and “lock, stock, and barrel”. Cliché rhymes are rhymes that are considered trite or predictable. Cliché rhymes in poetry include love and dove, moon and June, trees and breeze.

Climactic order – In writing, there are patterns of organization as to how a writer will "grab" the reader to lead her to the end of an idea. One type is "climactic order", in which the most important idea is saved for last. The writer starts a segment with the least important set of ideas or facts and continues to the end—the climax.

Climax – (From Greek word for "ladder"): The moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the conflict reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved. It is also the peak of emotional response from a reader or spectator and usually the turning point in the action. The climax usually follows or overlaps with the crisis of a story, though some critics use the two terms synonymously. Contrast with anticlimax, crisis, and denouement.

Colloquialism – A word or phrase used every day in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing: If a student were to write in an essay, “Hamlet thought Ophelia was hot stuff, and she was like, ‘ditto’”, that would be a colloquial-ridden sentence. Compare with cliché, jargon and slang.

Colloquial language – Gee, let’s see…I don’t know, how about: language that is dominated by colloquialisms? Come on! See Of Mice and Men.

Comedy – (from Greek: komos, "songs of merrimakers"): The first comedies were loud and boisterous

drunken affairs, as the word's etymology suggests. Later, in medieval and Renaissance use, the word comedy came to mean any play or narrative poem in which the main characters manage to avert an impending disaster and have a happy ending. The comedy did not necessarily have to be funny, and indeed, many comedies are serious in tone. It is only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that comedy's exclusive connotations of humour arose. See also Low Comedy, High Comedy, Comedy of the Absurd, Comedy of Humours, and Comedy of Manners.

Comic relief – A humorous scene, incident, character, or bit of dialogue occurring after some serious

or tragic moment. Comic relief is deliberately designed to relieve emotional intensity and simultaneously heighten and highlight the gravity or tragedy of the action. Macbeth contains Shakespeare's most famous example of comic relief in the form of a drunken porter.

Compare and contrast – a method of analysis, especially for essays, whereby two distinct texts are

juxtaposed to highlight important similarities and differences between them, which, obviously, presupposes that there are, in fact, multiple important similarities and differences between these two texts on a given topic. Consider the significance of animals in Life of Pi and To Kill a Mockingbird, the Christ archetype in The Outsiders and Lord of the Flies, or father-son relationships (or revenge) in Macbeth and Hamlet.

Comparison – juxtaposing anything with anything to find meaningful similarities: the importance of setting in Sinclair Ross’ stories, Julia in 1984 to Ophelia in Hamlet, the comment on human desire in “A Divine Image” and Macbeth, or the ironic titles of “A Divine Image” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; the possibilities for comparison are practically endless.

Conflict – The opposition between two characters (person vs. person), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on (person vs. environment). Conflict may also be completely internal (person vs. self), such as the protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies (drug addiction, self-destructive behaviour, and so on); William Faulkner famously claimed that the most important literature deals with the subject of "the human heart in conflict with itself." Conflict is the engine that drives a plot.

Connotation – The extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary. For instance, the terms civil war, revolution and rebellion have the same denotation; they all refer to an attempt at social or political change. However, civil war carries historical connotations for Americans beyond that of revolution or rebellion. Likewise, revolution is often applied more generally to scientific or theoretical changes, and it does not necessarily connote violence. Rebellion, for many English speakers connotes an improper uprising against a legitimate authority (thus we speak about "rebellious teenagers" rather than "revolutionary teenagers"). In the same way, the words house and home both refer to a domicile, but home connotes certain singular emotional qualities and personal possession in a way that house doesn't. I might own four houses I rent to others, but I might call none of these my home, for example. Much of poetry involves the poet using connotative diction that suggests meanings beyond "what the words simply say." Contrast with denotation.

Consonance – the repetition of the same consonant sounds in close proximity. The sound may be anywhere within a word—at the beginning, middle, or end. Classic examples include linger, longer, and languor or rider, reader, raider, and ruder. A broader example might include the ‘t’ and ‘s’ sounds in the first stanza of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “Let us go through certain half-deserted streets/The muttering retreats/Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells”. Contrast with assonance.

Contrast – juxtaposing anything with anything to find meaningful differences: the importance of setting in “The Painted Door” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Hamlet to Laertes, the images of courage in To Kill a Mockingbird and Macbeth, or the Victorian presentations of women in “Goblin Market” and “The Lady of Shalott”; the possibilities for contrast are almost as endless as they are for comparison, but it can be slightly more difficult to find meaningful differences between any two things.

Couplet – Two lines—the second line immediately following the first—of the same metrical length that end in a rhyme to form a complete unit. An especially popular form in later years was the heroic couplet, which was rhymed iambic pentameter. In drama, a couplet (or sometimes double couplet) often is used to indicate the end of a scene or highlight an important moment: “For never was a story of more woe/than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” A couplet that occurs after the volta in an English sonnet is called a gemel.

DDenotation – The minimal, strict definition of a word as found in a dictionary, disregarding any

historical or emotional connotation. Consider the denotation of the word ‘red’: the lowest spectrum of light separated by a prism. Contrast that with the connotation of ‘red’: blood (and therefore both life and death), stop, heat, danger, love, lust, etc. Contrast with connotation.

Dénouement – A French word meaning "unknotting" or "unwinding," denouement refers to the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot. It is the unravelling of the main dramatic complications in a play, novel, or other work of literature. In drama, the term is usually applied to tragedies or to comedies with catastrophes in their plot. This resolution usually takes place in the final chapter or scene, after the climax is over. Usually the denouement ends as quickly as the writer can arrange it—for it occurs only after all the conflicts have been resolved.

Descriptive essay – A descriptive essay is characterized by sensory details, which appeal to the physical senses, and details that appeal to a reader’s emotional, physical, or intellectual sensibilities. Determining the purpose, considering the audience, creating a dominant impression, using descriptive language, and organizing the description are the rhetorical choices to be considered when using a description. The focus of a description is the scene. Description uses tools such as figurative language like metaphors and similes to arrive at a dominant impression.

Dialect – The language of a particular district, class, or group of persons. The term dialect encompasses the sounds, spelling, grammar, and diction employed by a specific people as distinguished from other persons either geographically or socially. Dialect is a major technique of characterization that reveals the social or geographic status of a character. For example, Mark Twain uses exaggerated dialect in Huckleberry Finn to differentiate between characters: "We's safe, Huck, we's safe! Jump up and crack yo' heels. Dat's de good ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it."

Dialogue – The lines spoken by a character or characters in a play, essay, story, or novel, especially a conversation between two characters, or a literary work that takes the form of such a discussion (e.g., Plato's Republic). Bad dialogue is pointless. Good dialogue either provides characterization or advances the plot. In plays, dialogue often includes within it hints akin to stage directions. For instance, if one character asks, "Why are you hitting me?" the reader can assume that on stage another character is striking the speaker. Noticing such details is particularly important in classical drama and in Shakespeare's plays since explicit stage directions are often missing.

Diary – An informal record of a person's private life and day-to-day thoughts and concerns. Conventionally, daily entries take epistolary form with the introductory phrase, "Dear Diary." Since the subject-matter is so intimate, the authors of diaries usually do not intend for their

contents to be published—though many famous ones have been published posthumously—including the diary of Sameul Pepys (complete with all his sexual indiscretions) or the diary of Anne Frank. Contrast with memoir and autobiography.

Diction – The choice of a particular word as opposed to others. A writer could call a rock formation by many words—a stone, a boulder, an outcropping, a pile of rocks, a cairn, a mound, or even an "anomalous geological feature." The analytical reader then faces tough questions. Why that particular choice of words? What is the effect of that diction? The word choice a writer makes determines the reader's reaction to the object of description, and contributes to the author's style and tone.

Didactic – Writing that is "preachy" or seeks overtly to convince a reader of a particular point or lesson, meaning “intended to give instruction”. Medieval homilies and Victorian moral essays are often held up as examples of didactic literature, but one might argue that all literature is didactic to one extent or another since the written word frequently implies or suggests an authorial attitude. Sometimes, the lesson is overtly religious, as in the case of sermons or in literature like Milton's Paradise Lost, which seeks to "justify God's ways to men." In a more subtle way, much of Romantic literature hints at a critique of urbanized and mechanized life in 19th-century London.

Dilemma - (Greek: δί-λημμα "double proposition") is a problem offering at least two possibilities, neither of which is practically acceptable. In literature, protagonists of narratives often face at least one dilemma: should Lizzie let her sister die or buy fruit from the goblin men? Should Neo let Morpheus die or sacrifice himself? The resolution of the dilemma is often the crisis moment that leads to the resolution of the entire conflict.

Direct presentation – In direct presentation, a character is described by the author, the narrator or

the other characters. The reader is told that Roderick is nervous; the reader does not need to glean this from his described behaviour.

Dissonance – the absence of consonance and assonance (euphony); the same as cacophony.Drama – A composition in prose or verse presenting, in pantomime and dialogue, a narrative involving

conflict between a character or characters and some external or internal force (see conflict). Playwrights usually design dramas for presentation on a stage in front of an audience. Aristotle called drama "imitated human action." Drama may have originated in religious ceremonies. Thespis of Attica (sixth century BCE) was the first recorded composer of a tragedy. Tragedies in their earliest stage were performed by a single actor who interacted with the chorus. The playwright Aeschylus added a second actor on the stage (deuteragonist) to allow additional conflict and dialogue. Sophocles and Euripides added a third (tritagonist). Medieval drama may have evolved independently from rites commemorating the birth and death of Christ. During the late medieval period and the early Renaissance, drama gradually altered to the form we know today. The mid-sixteenth century in England in particular was one of the greatest periods of world drama. In traditional Greek drama, as defined by Aristotle, a play was to consist of five acts and follow the three dramatic unities. In more recent drama (i.e., during the last two centuries), plays have frequently consisted of three acts, and playwrights have felt more comfortable disregarding the confines of Aristotelian rules involving verisimilitude. See also unities, comedy, tragedy, revenge play, miracle play, morality play, and mystery play. An individual work of drama is called a play.

Dramatic irony – Dramatic irony involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows

something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. In that situation, the character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store, or the character anticipates a particular outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way. Probably the most famous example of dramatic irony is the situation facing Oedipus in the play Oedipus Rex.

Dramatic monologue – A poem in which: 1) a single person who is not meant to represent the poet

utters a speech that makes up the whole of the poem in a specific situation at a critical moment; 2) this person addresses and interacts with one or more other people—but we know of the auditors’ presence, and what they say and do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker; and 3) the main principle controlling the poet’s formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker’s temperament and character. It is similar to the soliloquy in theatre, in that both a dramatic monologue and a soliloquy often involve the revelation of the innermost thoughts and feelings of the speaker. A famous example is Browning's "My Last Duchess". Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” has elements of being a dramatic monologue (especially as it relates to the third feature), and Donne’s “The Flea” has most of the elements of a dramatic monologue, except for the third feature.

Dramatic form – A medium for the expression of dramatic meaning (e.g., improvisation, tableau, role,

Story Theatre, dance drama, Readers Theatre, mask, mime, puppetry, script work, audiovisual); may involve the integration of a variety of media and a combination of the arts.

Dynamic character – one whose personality changes or evolves over the course of a narrative or appears to have the capacity for such change.

EEditorial – A newspaper article written by or on behalf of an editor that gives an opinion on a topical

issue.Elegy – In classical Greco-Roman literature, "elegy" refers to any poem written in elegiac meter

(alternating hexameter and pentameter lines). More broadly, elegy came to mean any poem dealing with the subject-matter common to the early Greco-Roman elegies—complaints about love, sustained formal lamentation, or somber meditations. In Christian elegies, the lyric reversal often moves from despair and grief to joy when the speaker realizes that death or misfortune is but a temporary barrier separating one from the bliss of eternity. In the case of pastoral elegies in the 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s, the speaker often mourns the death of a close friend. Closely related to the pastoral elegy, the dirge or threnody is shorter than the elegy and often represented as a text meant to be sung aloud. The term monody refers to any dirge or elegy presented as the utterance of a single speaker.

Emotional appeal – When a writer appeals to readers' emotions (often through pathos) to excite and

involve them in the argument.Epic – An epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry. It is a poem that is (a) a long

narrative about a serious subject, (b) told in an elevated style of language, (c) focused on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group (d) in which the hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people or nation. Usually, the epic has (e) a vast setting, and covers a wide geographic area, (f) it contains superhuman feats of strength or military prowess, and gods or supernatural beings frequently

take part in the action. The poem begins with (g) the invocation of a muse to inspire the poet and, (h) the narrative starts in medias res. (i) The epic contains long catalogs of heroes or important characters, focusing on highborn kings and great warriors rather than peasants and commoners. Often, epics retain elements of oral-formulaic transmission, such as staggered intervals in which the poet summarizes earlier events, standardized epithets and phrases originally used by singers to fill out dactylic hexameters during extemporaneous performance, and so on. The term epic applies most accurately to classical Greek texts like the Iliad and the Odyssey. However, some critics have applied the term more loosely. The Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf has also been called an epic of Anglo-Saxon culture, Milton's Paradise Lost has been seen as an epic of Christian culture, and Shakespeare's various History Plays have been collectively called an epic of Renaissance Britain. Other examples include Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered and the anonymous Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest example known. Contrast with mock epic. See epic simile.

Epilogue – A conclusion added to a literary work such as a novel, play, or long poem. It is the opposite

of a prologue. Often, the epilogue refers to the moral of a fable. Sometimes, it is a speech made by one of the actors at the end of a play asking for the indulgence of the critics and the audience. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream contains one of the most famous epilogues. Contrast with prologue.

Epiphany – Christian thinkers used this term to signify a manifestation of God's presence in the world.

It has since become in modern fiction and poetry the standard term for the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or scene. In particular, the epiphany is an understanding of such power and insight that it alters the entire world-view of the thinker who experiences it (in this sense, it is similar to what a scientist might call a "paradigm shift").

Epigram – a statement, whether in verse or prose, which is short, focused, and witty. It can be on any

subject, but it is often satiric. Consider the following: “A word is dead/when it is said/some say./I say/it just begins to live/that day”(Emily Dickinson), “Patriotism is the virtue of the viscous”(Oscar Wilde), and “Swans sing before they die—‘twere no bad thing/should certain people die before they sing!”(Samuel Taylor Coleridge).

Epigraph* - a short verse or motto appearing at the beginning of a longer poem or the title page of a novel, at the heading of a new section or paragraph of an essay or other literary work to establish mood or raise thematic concerns. The opening epigraph to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is one such example.

Epitaph – an epitaph refers literally to an inscription carved on a gravestone, aka, cenotaph. In a more

general sense, an epitaph is the final statement spoken by a character before his death. In many of Shakespeare's plays, it is common for the last words a character speaks to come true, especially if he utters a curse. Shakespeare's own epitaph in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon is rather famous: GOOD FREND FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE BLESTE BE Y MAN Y SPARES THES STONES AND CVRST BE HE Y MOVES MY BONES." Other famous epitaphs include John Keats' grave inscription: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

Euphemism – Using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt, embarrassing, or painful one. For instance, saying "Grandfather has gone to a better place" is a euphemism for "Grandfather has died." The idea is to put something bad, disturbing, or embarrassing in an inoffensive or neutral

light. Frequently, words referring directly to death, unpopular politics, blasphemy, crime, and sexual or excremental activities are replaced by euphemisms.

Euphony - (from Greek "good sound"): Attempting to group words together harmoniously, so that the

consonants permit an easy and pleasing flow of sound when spoken, as opposed to cacophony, when the poet intentionally mixes jarring or harsh sounds together in groups that make the phrasing either difficult to speak aloud or grating to the ear. It is the use of assonance, consonance, and/or alliteration. Here is an example of euphony from John Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes (1820): “And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;/Manna and dates, in argosy transferred/From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one/From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon.”

Expert testimony – This is a strategy often used in argumentative or persuasive essays. Expert testimony can incorporate such things as an authority in a field (such as a scientist), reliable statistics, or laws. If the writer does not possess the expertise in a given field, he or she can still present a convincing argument through the selective citation of expert testimony.

Exposition – The use of authorial discussion to explain or summarize background material rather than

revealing this information through gradual narrative detail. Often, this technique is considered un-artful, especially when creative writers contrast showing (revelation through details) and telling (exposition). Many dramas begin with necessary exposition, so the audience has all the important details but without the author having to dramatize at length things that could be more easily relayed (consider Horatio’s monologue in I.i. on the events that occurred before Hamlet begins).

Expository essay – It is explanatory writing. Most essays require some element of exposition, and such strategies as cause and effect, compare and contrast, definition, and logic - just to name a few - all contribute in the necessary explaining of something.

Extended metaphor – more properly known as ‘conceit’, it is establishing a striking parallel, usually

ingeniously elaborate, between two very dissimilar things or situations. In effect then, it is just a metaphor—but more complex and lengthy (sometimes running the length of an entire poem). Consider Donne’s “The Flea” and some of the passages in Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.

External conflict – A struggle between a character and some other force, such as the environment (or

specific elements within it) or another character or group of people. All conflicts are either external or internal.

FFable – Also called an apologue, a fable is a brief story illustrating human tendencies—usually through

animal characters, called a beast fable. Unlike the parables, fables often include talking animals or animated objects as the principal characters. The interaction of these animals or objects reveals general truths about human nature; i.e., a person can learn practical lessons from the fictional antics in a fable. However, unlike a parable, the lesson learned is not necessarily allegorical. Each animal is not necessarily a symbol for something else. Instead, the reader learns the lesson as an exemplum—an example of what one should or should not do. The sixth century (BCE) Greek writer Aesop is most credited as an author of fables. After the 1600s, fables increasingly became common as a form of children's literature. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is one of the 20th century’s most famous fables. See also allegory and parable.

Falling action – A plot term, the falling action, which follows the crisis, shows a reversal of fortune for

the protagonist. In a tragedy, this reversal leads to disaster; in a comedy, it leads to a happy ending.

Fantasy – Any literature that is removed from reality—especially poems, books, or short narratives set

in nonexistent worlds, such as an elvish kingdom, on the moon, in Pellucidar (the hollow center of the earth), or in alternative versions of the historical world—such as a version of London where vampires or sorcerers have seized control of parliament. The characters are often something other than humans, or human characters may interact with nonhuman characters such as trolls, dragons, munchkins, kelpies, etc. Examples include J. R. R. Tolkien's synthetic histories in The Silmarilion, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, or any vampire novel.

Farce – (from Latin Farsus, "stuffed"): A farce is a form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter through highly exaggerated caricatures of people in improbable or silly situations. Traits of farce include (1) physical bustle such as slapstick, (2) sexual misunderstandings and mix-ups, and (3) broad verbal humour such as puns. Many literary critics (especially in the Victorian period) have tended to view farce as inferior to "high comedy" that involves brilliant dialogue. Many of Shakespeare's early works, such as The Taming of the Shrew, are considered farces. Anything by Monty Python is farcical. Contrast with comedy of manners.

Figurative language – A deviation from what speakers of a language understand as the ordinary or

standard use of words in order to achieve some special meaning or effect. Perhaps the two most common figurative devices are the simile—a comparison between two distinctly different things using "like" or "as" ("My love's like a red, red rose")—and the metaphor—a figure of speech in which two unlike objects are implicitly compared without the use of "like" or "as." These are both examples of tropes. Any figure of speech that results in a change of meaning is called a trope. Any figure of speech that creates its effect in patterns of words or letters in a sentence, rather than twisting the meaning of words, is called a scheme. Perhaps the most common scheme is parallelism.

First person point of view – The narrator of the story speaks as “I”, and is to a lesser or greater degree a participant in the story. The matter of the narrative is limited to what the first-person narrator knows, experiences, infers, or can find out by talking to other characters. There are first-person narrators who are only accidental witnesses or observers (Marlowe in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), minor or peripheral participants (the un-named friend of Roderick in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”), or, in fact, the central protagonist (Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird). Some first-person novels have multiple people taking turns relating portions of the events, especially in epistolary novels.

Flashback – A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events—usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary (such as saying, "But back when King Arthur had been a child. . ."). Flashback allows an author to fill in the reader about a place or a character, or it can be used to delay important details until just before a dramatic moment.

Flat character – A flat character is built around a single idea or quality and is presented without much

individualizing detail, and therefore can be fairly adequately described in a single phrase or sentence. The drunken Porter in Macbeth and a number of peripheral characters in novels

(Zeebo, Tom Robinson, and Mr. Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird, for example) are examples of flat characters.

Foil – A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. Usually the foil will be a character with some similarities to the protagonist, but whose differences emphasize a significant flaw or virtue in the protagonist. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Laertes the unthinking man of action is a foil to the intelligent but reluctant Hamlet. In Macbeth, the holy King Edward in England is a foil to the unholy King Macbeth of Scotland, and Banquo and Macduff also serve to highlight negative characteristics in Macbeth through their similarities and significant differences. In Pride and Prejudice, the judgemental Elizabeth has her gentle and sweet-natured sister Jane as her foil.

Foreshadowing – Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative. Foreshadowing often provides hints about what will happen next. For instance, a movie director might show a clip in which two parents discuss their son's leukemia. The camera briefly changes shots to do an extended close-up of a dying plant in the garden outside, or one of the parents might mention that another relative died on the same date. The perceptive audience sees the dying plant, or hears the reference to the date of death, and realizes this detail foreshadows the child's death later in the movie. Often this foreshadowing takes the form of a noteworthy coincidence or appears in a verbal echo of dialogue. Other examples of foreshadowing include the conversation and action of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth, or the various prophecies that Oedipus hears during Oedipus Rex.

Form – The organizational mode of a particular genre or literary type (like “the short story form” or “the novel form”). In most poems (like sonnets), the form consists of a set number of lines, a set rhyme scheme, and a set meter for each line. In the free verse or open-form poetry common to the modernist and postmodernist movements, the rigid constraints of form are often discarded in order to achieve a variety of effects. More specifically, we may also speak of “the verse form” or “the stanza form” in poetry.

Formal essay – Also called an article, this short prose composition undertakes to discuss a matter, express a point of view, or persuade a general audience to accept a thesis on any subject. It is relatively impersonal, as the author writes as someone who is highly knowledgeable and expounds the subject in an orderly way. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” has most of the characteristics of a formal essay.

Formal language – The application of a language that follows the grammatical, orthographic, and syntactical rules of that language. Though much of our communication is not formal, it is vitally important that the rules of formal language are understood; an understanding of formal language allows one to maximize the effect of the language (even if one chooses to “break” the rules) both when transmitting and receiving. “I am going to get a soda-pop,” would be a formal way of informally expressing, “Ima get some pop.”

Free verse – Sometimes referred to as “open form” verse or by the French term, vers libre, the rhythmic pattern of free verse is not organized into a regular metrical form. Most free verse also has irregular line lengths, and either lacks rhyme or else uses it only sporadically. Simply put, the lines have neither a set rhyme scheme nor metrical pattern. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a famous example of a free verse poem that still has rhyme (but without structure) and rhythm (but without a metrical pattern). Contrast with blank verse and rhymed verse.

GGenre – A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions. The

three broadest categories of genre include lyric (uttered entirely in the first person), epic or narrative (where a first person narrator lets the characters speak for themselves), and drama (in

which the characters do all the talking). These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres and subgenres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include novels, short stories, essays, biographies, murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, comedies, tragedies, etc. Northrop Frye has proposed an archetypal theory in which the four major genres, comedy, romance, tragedy, and satire, correlate to the four seasons.

Graphic text – Words formatted as graphic files retaining the designers` original typeface, type size, type style colour and background choices. Graphic text always appears the same, regardless of the type of hardware or software used to display it. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience are graphic text, though the graphic component is often disregarded. In a small way, Wyndham Lewis’ “Bless the Hairdresser” has elements of graphic text.

HHero – Classically: a mythological or legendary man often of divine descent endowed with great

strength or ability, usually becoming an illustrious warrior (Heracles, Achilles). Dramatically: the principal male character in a literary or dramatic work (Hamlet, Neo). However, hero no longer need designate only a male character. Though the word ‘heroine’ is still permissible to describe the above characteristics in a female character, ‘hero’ may also be used (Katniss, Hedda Gabler). The character should be generally good, unless he or she is more specifically a tragic hero (Macbeth) or a Byronic hero (Milton’s Lucifer/Satan) or any of the other ‘hero’ sub-sets.

Historical reference – A reference—either directly or indirectly—to some specific detail or event from a specific time in the past. To allude in a poem to the invention of the printing press or the height of the Mayan empire would be to make historical references. However, a historical reference can also be a text (usually written or graphically illustrated—until more recently, that is) that captures the zeitgeist of a particular time past, or perhaps just offers a window (however small) into life in previous generations. Many texts accomplish this: Pride and Prejudice, The Odyssey, Twelfth Night, “The Lamp at Noon”, The Prestige—almost anything set in the past that deals with the concerns or cultural quiddities of that past.

Hyperbole – The figure of speech, or trope, of bold overstatement, or the extravagant exaggeration of

fact or of possibility. It may be used for serious or ironic or comic effect. "His thundering shout could split rocks." Or, "Yo' mama's so fat. . . ."

IIambic pentameter – Iambic describes any meter that is like an iamb: a lightly stressed syllable

followed by a heavily stressed syllable (‘unfair’, for example, is usually stressed as un-FAIR—iambic—instead of UN-fair—trochaic). The pentameter indicates that each line of the poetry will have five (penta) meters (in this case, an iamb). The result is a ten-syllable line made of five iambs. Shakespeare’s plays are written mostly in iambic pentameter as are sonnets. Example: "The cúrfew tólls the knéll of párting dáy." (Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.")

Idiom – In its loosest sense, the word idiom is often used as a synonym for dialect or idiolect. In its more scholarly and narrow sense, an idiom or idiomatic expression refers to a construction or expression in one language that cannot be matched or directly translated word-for-word in another language. For instance, the English expression, "She has a bee in her bonnet," meaning "she is obsessed," cannot be literally translated into another language word for word. It's a non-literal idiomatic expression, akin to "She is green with envy."

Image – A picture formed in the reader’s mind by the words in the literature. A poem can be an image

comprised from a multiplicity of images. Consider the image Poe creates with the first sentence to one of his most enduring tales: “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”

Imagery – A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a poem, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. Imagery is not limited to visual imagery; it also includes auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic sensation (movement).

Indeterminate ending – An ending to a story that is incomplete in some significant way. Some major

story question has been unresolved, or a new question of importance has been posed as a way to end the story. In George Bowering’s “A Short Story”, does Donna shoot herself or not? All we know is that she picks up the shotgun, fires the remaining barrel, and throws it over the hill. We were not told she was aiming at anything, and her thoughts preceding this moment suggested she may have been considering suicide. But could she throw the shotgun over a hill after shooting herself? The ending is so indeterminate, you could argue either interpretation.

Indirect presentation - In indirect presentation, a character's traits are revealed by action and speech. When the author describes Jane as rubbing her eyes frequently, the reader can infer that Jane is tired without being told as much.

Informal essay – Also called a familiar or personal essay, this short prose composition undertakes to

discuss a matter, express a point of view, persuade a general audience to accept a thesis on any subject, or simply entertain. The author assumes a tone of intimacy with her audience, tends to deal with everyday things rather than with public affairs or specialized topics, and writes in a relaxed, self-revelatory, and sometimes whimsical fashion. A child’s account of the difficulties of learning to tie shoe-laces would probably meet this criteria.

Informal language – The application of a language that does not follow the grammatical, orthographic, and syntactical rules of that language. Much of our communication is informal, which is generally unproblematic. Without an understanding of the rules of a language, however, we would not know which rules could be broken without impeding the meaning of a communication. Almost all communication via electronic media is grossly informal. “tx 4 lols” is about as informally as one can express, “Thanks for the laughs.” Obviously, the more informal a language becomes, the more misunderstandings occur.

Interior monologue – A type of stream of consciousness in which the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single individual in the same order these thoughts occur inside that character's head. The author does not attempt to provide (or provides minimally) any commentary, description, or guiding discussion to help the reader untangle the complex web of thoughts, nor does the writer clean up the vague surge of thoughts into grammatically correct sentences or a logical order. Indeed, it is as if the authorial voice ceases to exist, and the reader directly "overhears" the thought pouring forth randomly from a character's mind. M. H. Abrams notes that an example of an interior monologue can be found in the "Lestrygonian" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses. Here, Leopold Bloom wanders past a candy shop in Dublin, and his thoughts wander back and forth: “Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugar-sticky girl shoveling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school great. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge

and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white.”

Internal conflict – See Conflict above (person vs. self) and contrast with External Conflict.Internal rhyme – A poetic device in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the

end of the same metrical line. Internal rhyme appears in the first and third lines in this excerpt from Shelley's "The Cloud": “I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,/And out of the caverns of rain,/Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,/ I arise and unbuild it again.” In this excerpt, the word laugh is an internal rhyme with cenotaph, and the word womb is an internal rhyme with tomb. Other examples include the Mother Goose rhyme, "Mary, Mary, quite contrary," or Coleridge's Ancient Mariner ("We were the first that ever burst / Into that silent sea").

Irony – Cicero referred to irony as "saying one thing and meaning another", which is a decent definition of one kind of verbal irony. Irony comes in many forms. Verbal irony (which includes, but is not limited to, sarcasm) is a trope in which a speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words ostensibly express. Often this sort of irony is plainly sarcastic in the eyes of the reader, but the characters listening in the story may not realize the speaker's sarcasm as quickly as the readers do. Dramatic irony (the most important type for literature) involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. In that situation, the character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store, or the character anticipates a particular outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way. Probably the most famous example of dramatic irony is the situation facing Oedipus in the play Oedipus Rex. Situational irony is a trope in which accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the poetic justice of a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked. However, both the victim and the audience are simultaneously aware of the situation in situational irony. Probably the most famous example of situational irony is Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, in which Swift "recommends" that English landlords take up the habit of eating Irish babies as a food staple.

JJargon – Potentially confusing words and phrases used in an occupation, trade, or field of study. We

might speak of medical jargon, sports jargon, pedagogic jargon, police jargon, or military jargon, for instance. “Hey, Sarg! Tex went AWOL after cleaning the mess and head in one afternoon!” There are at least three words of military jargon in this passage, although many of them have become familiar to much of the public through military films.

Juxtaposition – The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development. Consider how Eliot contrasts the grandeur of existential issues with the mundane realities of his speaker’s life by juxtaposing them to heighten the ironic effect in the following passage from “The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “Time for you and time for me,/And time yet for a hundred indecisions,/And for a hundred visions and revisions,/Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

LLegend – A story that is part of a culture of related stories from an ancient civilization in which the

protagonist is a human being rather than a supernatural being. Legends often serve to explain certain cultural practices or values or to honor heroes. The legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table is perhaps the most famous “English” legend.

Limited omniscient point of view – This describes a story in which a narrator tells the story in the

third person, but stays inside the confines of what is perceived, thought, remembered and felt by a single character (or at most very few characters) within the story. Henry James, who refined this narrative mode, described such a selected character as his “focus”, or “mirror”, or “center of consciousness”. In a number of James’ later works all the events and actions are represented as they unfold before, and filter to the reader through, the particular perceptions, awareness, and responses of only one character. Consider the purpose of Ralph in Lord of the Flies or Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.

Literal language – Language used to create a standard meaning. This is the opposite of figurative language. “The door of the house is open” is a literal sentence, whereas “the house’s mouth gaped wide” is a figurative sentence.

Lyric – (from Greek lyra "song"): The lyric form is as old as Egypt (surviving examples date back to 2600 BCE), and examples exist in early Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and other sources. If literature from every culture through the ages were lumped into a single stack, it is likely that the largest number of writings would be these short verse poems. There are three general meanings for lyric: (1) A short poem (usually no more than 50-60 lines, and often only a dozen lines long) written in a repeating stanzaic form, often designed to be set to music. Unlike a ballad, the lyric usually does not have a plot (i.e., it might not tell a complete story), but it rather expresses the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts of a single poetic speaker (not necessarily the poet) in an intensely personal, emotional, or subjective manner. Often, there is no chronology of events in the lyrics, but rather objects, situations, or the subject is written about in a "lyric moment." Sometimes, the reader can infer an implicit narrative element in lyrics, but it is rare for the lyric to proceed in the straightforward, chronological "telling" common in fictional prose. For instance, in William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper," the reader can guess from the speaker's words that the speaker has come unexpectedly upon a girl reaping and singing in the Scottish Highlands, and that he stops, listens, and thinks awhile before continuing on his way. However, this chain of events is not explicitly a center of plot or extended conflict between protagonist and antagonist. Instead it triggers a moment of contemplation and appreciation. Thus it is not a plot in the normal sense of the word. (2) Any poem having the form and musical quality of a song. (3) As an adjective, lyric can also be applied to any prose or verse characterized by direct, spontaneous outpouring of intense feeling. Often, the lyric is subdivided into various genres, including the aubade, the dramatic monologue, the elegy, the epithalamion, the hymn, the ode, and the sonnet.

MMelodrama – A dramatic form characterized by excessive sentiment, exaggerated emotion,

sensational and thrilling action, and an artificially happy ending. Melodramas originally referred to romantic plays featuring music (melos is Greek for “song”), singing, and dancing, but by the eighteenth century they connoted simplified and coincidental plots, bathos, and happy endings. These melodramatic traits are present in Gothic novels, western stories, popular films, and television crime shows, to name but a few more recent examples.

Metaphor – A comparison or analogy stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking. When we speak of "the ladder of success," we imply that being successful is much like climbing a ladder to a higher and better position. Another example comes from an old television add from the 1980s urging teenagers not to try drugs. The camera would focus on a close-up of a pair of eggs and a voice would state "This is your brain." In the next sequence, the eggs would be cracked and thrown onto a hot skillet, where the eggs would

bubble, burn, and seeth. The voice would state, "This is your brain on drugs." The point of the comparison is fairly clear. Another example is how Martin Luther wrote, "A mighty fortress is our God, / A bulwark never failing" (Mighty fortress and bulwark are the two metaphors for God in these lines). A metaphor is an example of a rhetorical trope, and such metaphors have a long history of critical discussion. Aristotle, for instance, claimed "the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances" (qtd in Deutsche 84). Often, a metaphor suggests something symbolic in its imagery. For instance, Wordsworth uses a metaphor when he states of England, "she is a fen of stagnant waters," which implies something about the state of political affairs in England as well as the island's biomes. Sometimes, the metaphor can be emotionally powerful, such as John Donne's use of metaphor in "Twickenham Garden," where he writes, "And take my tears, which are love's wine" (line 20). If we break down a metaphorical statement into its component parts, the real-world subject (first item) in a metaphoric statement is known as the tenor. The second item (often an imaginary one or at least not present in a literal sense) to which the tenor refers is called the vehicle. For example, consider the metaphorical statement, "Susan is a viper in her cruel treacheries." Here, Susan is the tenor in the metaphor, and viper is the vehicle in the same metaphor. The tenor, Susan, is literally present or literally exists. The vehicle, the hypothetical or imagined viper, is not necessarily physically present. An unusual metaphor that requires some explanation on the writer's part is often called a metaphysical conceit. If the metaphorical connection is merely implied rather than directly stated, such as talking about "the ladder of success," the term is a subdued metaphor. The combination of two different metaphors into a single, awkward image is called a "mixed metaphor" or abusio. See also tenor, vehicle, subdued metaphor, and telescoped metaphor. Contrast with simile.

Metre – Metre is the recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent feature in the sequence of speech-sounds of a language. In all sustained spoken English we sense a rhythm; that is, a recognizable though varying pattern in the beat of the stresses, or accents (the more forcefully uttered, hence louder syllables), in the stream of speech-sounds. In metre, this rhythm is structured into a recurrence of regular—that is, approximately equivalent—units of stress pattern. Compositions written in metre are also known as verse. The metre is determined by the pattern of stronger and weaker stresses on the syllables composing the words in the verse-line; the stronger is called the “stressed” syllable and all the weaker ones the “unstressed” syllables. A foot is the combination of a strong stress and the associated weak stresses which make up the recurrent metric unit of a line. The four standard feet distinguished in Eng”lish are i) iambic—unstressed syllable followed by stressed syllable, ii) anapestic—two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable, iii) trochaic—unstressed syllable followed by stressed syllable (or its variant, catalectic—where the last syllable of the line is stressed), and iv) dactylic—one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. A metric line is named according to the number of feet composing it (monometer—one foot; dimetre—two feet; trimetre—three feet; tetrameter—four feet; pentameter—five feet; hexameter—six feet; heptameter—seven feet; octametre—eight feet). To describe the metre of a line we name (a) the predominant foot and (b) the number of feet it contains. To scan a passage of verse is to go through it line by line, analyzing the component feet, and also indicating where any major pauses in the phrasing fall within a line. If I scan the first few lines of Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”, “That is no country for old men. The young/ In one another’s arms, birds in the trees/ —Those dying generations—at their song,/ The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,/ Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long/ Whatever is begotten, born, and dies”(1-6), I can see that the metre is iambic pentameter, often considered the most eloquent and sophisticated of metres.

Monologue – A lengthy speech by a single person, used chiefly—though not exclusively—to describe such speech in plays. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Malcolm’s closing remarks in Macbeth, and any character’s lengthy speech in a novel all constitute as monologues.

Mood – (from Anglo-Saxon, mod "heart" or "spirit"): In literature, a feeling, emotional state, or disposition of mind—especially the predominating atmosphere or tone of a literary work. Most pieces of literature have a prevailing mood, but shifts in this prevailing mood may function as a counterpoint, provide comic relief, or echo the changing events in the plot. Students and critics who wish to discuss mood in their essays should be able to point to specific diction, description, setting, and characterization to illustrate what sets the mood. A synonym for Atmosphere and Ambiance.

Mystery – A genre of fiction dealing with determining the solution to a confusing crime. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Mystery of Marie Roget”, and “The Purloined Letter” are some of the first to define this genre. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series follows in this tradition. However, mystery need not imply a detective story. Some stories, like Poe’s “The Black Cat”, leave the detective work purely to the reader and so end as mysteriously as they began. A Mystery Play is a late medieval dramatic genre written in verse form based on stories from The Bible.

Myth – One story in a mythology—a system of stories of ancient origin which were once believed to be

true by a particular cultural group (like Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, Hindu, or First Nations), and which served to explain (through the actions of gods and other supernatural beings) why the world is the way it is (myths about the sun) and why things happen as they do (myths about the creation of humans), to provide a rationale for social customs and observances, and to establish the sanctions for the rules by which people conduct their lives. Most myths are related to social rituals—set forms and procedures in sacred ceremonies. Consider the myths of Heracles, Horus, Thor, Manu, or Raven. Contrast with Legend and Folktale.

NNarrative – A story told in prose or verse involving events, characters, and what the characters say and

do. Some prose forms (like novels and short stories) and verse forms (like epics and romances and others) are told by a narrator (see below); but in drama, the narrative is not told. It evolves by means of direct presentation on stage of the actions and speeches of the characters. Obviously, dramas (and films) are still narratives.

Narration – Narration is the act of telling a sequence of events, often in chronological order. Alternatively, the term refers to any story, whether in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do. Some narrations are reportorial and historical, such as biographies, autobiographies, news stories, and historical accounts. To sum, a narrator narrates a narrative, which is narration.

Narrator – The speaker (in any literary form) who relays the narrative. Sometimes the narrator is a character in the story (as in “The Fall of the House of Usher”), and sometimes the narrator is just a voice that seems to have no personality (as in “Goblin Market”). Sometimes, even, the narrator is somewhere between these two extremes (as in A Christmas Carol).

OObjective (language tone etc.) – Objective language refrains from using connotative words as

much as possible to create as objective a tone as possible. An objective tone is one that does not seem to favour any firm position on an issue or take sides with any particular group. The goal of objectivity is truth. “The government has increased taxes on businesses, which may

make it more difficult for some businesses to operate” is a more objective statement than “The government is strangling businesses with higher taxes.” In the latter, the word “strangling” connotes a murderous behaviour, thus inferring that the government’s actions are evil. Such word-play is hardly objective. In literature, an objective work is one in which the author presents the invented situation or the fictional characters and their thoughts, feelings, and actions and undertakes to remain detached and noncommittal. In an objective work, the speaker is obviously an invented character, such as in Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Contrast with Subjective below.

Objective point of view – (Also known as unobtrusive or impersonal) This describes a story in which

a narrator tells the story in the third person, but limits the narration to descriptions and reports of the action in dramatic scenes without introducing personal comments or judgments. More radical instances of the objective narrator, who gives up even the privilege of access to inner feelings and motives, are to be found in a number of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. This point of view can also be described as though the reader were watching video and audio footage of the events. There are no thoughts expressed in the head.

Octave – An eight-line stanza or verse of poetry. The first part of an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet is an octave rhyming abbaabba.

Ode – A long lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure. Odes typically praise and glorify someone or something. Consider Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”.

Omniscient point of view – This describes a story in which a narrator tells the story in the third person and knows everything that needs to be known about the agents, actions, and events, and has privileged access to the characters’ thoughts, feelings, and motives; also, the narrator is free to move at will in time and place, to shift from character to character, and to report (or conceal) their speech, doings, and states of consciousness. Within this mode, the intrusive narrator is one who not only reports, but also comments on and evaluates the actions and motives of the characters, and sometimes expresses personal views about human life in general. Most works are written according to the convention that the omniscient narrator’s reports and judgments are to be taken authoritatively by the reader, and so serve to establish what counts as true facts and values within the fictional world. This is the fashion in which many of the greatest novelists have written, including Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.

Onomatopoeia – Sometimes called echoism, this designates a word or combination of words whose

sound seems to resemble closely the sound denoted, such as “hiss”, “buzz”, “rattle”, “bang”. The sounds of these words are similar to the sounds they describe.

Oxymoron – This is a kind of paradox where two terms that in ordinary usage are contraries are conjoined. Ex. “O Death in life”, “pleasing pains”, “I burn and freeze”, “loving hate”.

PParadox – A statement or idea which seems on its surface to be logically contradictory or absurd, yet

turns out to be interpretable in a way that makes good sense. Consider the last four words of John Donne’s sonnet “Death, Be Not Proud”: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally/ And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”

Parallelism – The similarity of word order and structure. For instance, "King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise, and equitable." The previous sentence has parallel structure in use of adjectives. However, the following sentence does not use parallelism: "King Alfred tried to make

clear laws that had precision and were equitable." Parallelism: "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." Shakespeare used this device to good effect in Richard II when King Richard laments his unfortunate position:“I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,/ My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,/ My gay apparel for an almsman's gown,/ My figured goblets for a dish of wood” (3.3.170-73).

Parody – A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular work, or the distinctive style of a particular author or person, or the typical stylistic and other features of a serious genre, and deflates or lowers the importance of the original by applying the imitation to a lowly or comically inappropriate subject. Similar to the more general term “spoof”. Consider the Scary Movie franchise a modern example.

Passive voice - The voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the source) of the action denoted by the verb; "The ball was thrown by the boy” uses the passive voice; "The ball was thrown” is an abbreviated passive. Passive voice should generally be avoided, as it is often considered weak writing. Contrast with Active Voice above.

Pastoral – (from the Latin pastor, meaning “shepherd”) A deliberately conventional poem expressing an urban poet’s nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds and other rural folk in an idealized natural setting. Consider Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”.

Pathos – In Greek, it meant the passions, or suffering, or deep feeling generally, as opposed to ethos. In a more modern sense, pathos describes a scene or passage that is designed to evoke the feelings of tenderness, pity, or sympathetic sorrow from the audience. Consider the Cratchit’s Christmas of the future after Tiny Tim’s death in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.

Personal essay – See Informal Essay above.Personification – (also called prosopopeia) An inanimate object or an abstract concept is spoken of as

though it were endowed with life or with human attributes or feelings (compare to pathetic fallacy). In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, when Adam bit into the fatal apple, “Sky lowered, and muttering thunder, some sad drops/ Wept at completing of the mortal sin.” Notice how the sky and rain are personified. Consider also William Blake’s odes to the seasons (“To Summer” etc).

Persuasive essay – Either a formal or informal essay (see above) with the intent to convince the reader of some position. One might compose a persuasive essay on why Monster is the best energy drink, or why Monster energy drinks are terrible for one’s health. One might try to persuade the reader that “Ode on Solitude” is more persuasive than “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. There is no end to persuasive topics.

Persuasive technique – Persuasive techniques are the strategies authors use to make their writing

more convincing. They do this by getting the reader’s attention, emphasizing points, and polishing their writing. Some techniques are using analogies, overstatements, understatements, repetition, rhetorical questions, emotional appeals, rational appeals, authoritative appeals, sentence variety, and referencing cause and effect.

Plot – The events and actions displayed and ordered in a literary work towards achieving a particular artistic and emotional effect. At its most basic, a plot involves a character or group of characters whose lives become complicated in some way early in the story by a catalyst or inciting incident. This complication than builds over a series of incidents, or scenes, in what is generally termed the rising action. The complication reaches a critical point eventually, wherein the central character, or protagonist, makes a choice at what is termed the crisis that leads to the most intense moment in the story—the climax—though this may not be that intense, depending on

the story. The climax and crisis somehow resolve the complication, or conflict, shortly thereafter during the falling action or denouement. The character’s life then returns to some relatively less complicated form in the conclusion or resolution of the story. Together, these components comprise the most simplified construction of plot.

Point of view – Point of view signifies the way a story gets told. The two most common ways to tell a

story are through first-person narration and third-person narration. In first-person narratives, the narrator speaks as “I”, and is to a greater or lesser degree a participant in the story (consider The Catcher in the Rye or most of Poe’s stories). In the third-person point of view, the narrator is someone outside the story who refers to all the characters in the story by name, or as “he”, “she”, “they” (consider Jane Austen’s novels). See First Person Point of View above and Third Person Point of View below.

Pro and con argument – Any argument that looks at both points in favour of a certain decision or

position and points opposed to a certain decision or position. Out of a close examination of both sides of the argument, a final decision or position is usually made. One might weigh the pros and cons of marrying a certain person, such as in the following example. Pros: she’s beautiful, wealthy, and she likes reading (so do I). Cons: she smokes (and I hate that), she doesn’t like doing things out-doors (and I do), and we always argue. Decision: I will not marry her.

Prologue – (1) In original Greek tragedy, the prologue was either the action or a set of introductory speeches before the first entry (parados) of the chorus. Here, a single actor's monologue or a dialogue between two actors would establish the play's background events. (2) In later literature, a prologue is a section of any introductory material before the first chapter or the main material of a prose work, or any such material before the first stanza of a poetic work.

Propaganda – (Latin, "things that must be sent forth"): The term is today used to refer to information, rumours, ideas, and artwork spread deliberately to help or harm another specific group, movement, belief, institution, or government. The term's connotations are mostly negative. When literature or journalism is propaganda and when it is not is hotly debated. For instance, the Roman Emperor Augustus commissioned Virgil to write The Aeneid for specific goals. He wanted Virgil to glorify Rome's greatness, instil public pride in Rome's past, and cultivate traditional Roman virtues such as loyalty to the family, the Empire, and the gods. Is this propaganda? Or patriotism? Is there a difference with respect to media and literature? Propagandist literature is a type of didactic literature which aims to alter the reader’s attitude towards a pressing social, political, or religious issue at the time at which the work is written. Consider George Orwell’s novels Animal Farm and 1984 or even Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Protagonist – The main character in a work, on whom the author focuses most of the narrative attention, with the main problem in the story.

Proverb – A short, pithy statement of widely accepted truth about everyday life. Many proverbs are allegorical in that the explicit statement is meant to have, by analogy or by extended reference, a general application: “a stitch in time saves nine” or “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

Purpose – The intention or aim behind any particular expression (visual, verbal, literary, aural). One might discuss the purpose of a poem, story, film, play, sculpture, painting, song, or essay. In doing so, one discusses the reason this text (form of expression) is expressed in the manner that it is.

Pun – (also called paranomasia): A play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning. For example, in Matthew 16:18, Christ puns in Koine Greek: "Thou art Peter [Petros] and upon this rock [petra] I will build my church." Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, puns upon Romeo's vile death (vile=vial, the vial of poison Romeo consumed). Shakespeare's poetic speaker also puns upon his first name (Will) and his lover's desire (her will) in the sonnets, and John Donne puns upon his last name in "Hymn to God the Father." Originally, puns were a common literary trope in serious literature, but after the eighteenth century, puns have been primarily considered a low form of humour. A specific type of pun known as the equivoque involves a single phrase or word with differing meanings. For instance, one epitaph for a bank teller reads "He checked his cash, cashed in his checks, / And left his window. / Who's next?"

QQuatrain – A four-line stanza, the most common in English versification and employed with various

metres and rhyme schemes. Emily Dickinson is one of the most subtle, varied, and persistent of all users of the quatrain.

Question and answer – A method of presentation whereby a series of questions are posed (usually

one at a time) by the author or an interviewer and then answered by the author or by the subject of the interview. This can be a very direct method of presenting information.

RRefrain – A line, or part of a line, or a group of lines, which is repeated in the course of a poem,

sometimes with slight changes, and usually at the end of each stanza. The refrain occurs in many ballads, and is a frequent element in Elizabethan songs. A refrain may consist only of a single words—“Nevermore” as in Poe’s “The Raven” (1845)—or of an entire stanza. If the stanza-refrain occurs in a song, as a section to be sung by all the auditors, it is called a chorus. In Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”, every stanza ends with the same refrain.

Repetition – The purposeful use of the same line, or part of a line, or group of lines, or single word, multiple times in a text with the intention of creating an effect thereby. Repetition can be as organized as a refrain (see above) or as simple a reusing the word ‘gold’ in a number of lines through-out a poem, as in Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”. Repetition is often used to emphasize an important image or idea.

Research – Studious inquiry or examination especially through investigation or experimentation aimed at the collecting of information about a particular subject. Research requires one review numerous and varied sources of information on a subject with the intention of distilling the key elements from all sources into one cohesive conclusion.

Resolution – See Dénouement above.Rhetorical question – A sentence in the grammatical form of a question which is not asked in order

to request information or to invite a reply, but to achieve a greater expressive force than a direct assertion. In everyday discourse, for example, if we utter the rhetorical question “Isn’t it a shame?” it functions as a forceful alternative to the assertion “It’s a shame.”

Rhyme – Standard rhyme consists of the repetition, in the rhyming words, of the last stressed vowel and of all the speech sounds following that vowel (ex. late and fate; hollow and follow).

Rhyme scheme – The pattern generated by the use of end rhymes (rhymes at the end of a line of verse) to which the whole of the poem typically adheres. Rhyme schemes are noted through the use of letters of the alphabet (starting with ‘A’), with each letter indicating end words that share the same rhyme. Note the following example from Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”:

“On either side the river lie ALong fields of barley and of rye, AThat clothe the wold and meet the sky; AAnd thro' the field the road runs by ATo many-tower'd Camelot; BAnd up and down the people go, CGazing where the lilies blow CRound an island there below, CThe island of Shalott.” B

We can expect the eighteen remaining stanzas to all follow this scheme of AAAABCCCB—though the second stanza’s first line need not rhyme with the first stanza’s first line, and so on—but the poet may deem it fit to alter the scheme at some point for some significant reason.

Rhythm – A recognizable—though varying—pattern in the beat of the stresses or accents (the more forcefully uttered, hence louder syllables), in the stream of speech-sounds. Through the use of font size, I can indicate the rhythm in the following line by associating a larger font with a more

forcefully stressed syllable: “How are you, today?” Rising action – According to Freytag’s Pyramid for plot, the rising action (called the complication by

Aristotle) is the course of events between the inciting incident (the beginning of the main character’s difficulties in this story) and the crisis moment that causes the climax (the moment of greatest tension and suspense). The rising action is usually a series of added complications inter-mixed with moments of reduced complication.

Round character – A character that is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity; such a character is as difficult to describe with any adequacy as a person in real life, and like real persons, is capable of surprising us. Not all stories have round characters, but most longer stories require at least one central round character—especially novels. Consider Hamlet or Jay Gatsby.

SSarcasm – The crude and taunting use of irony that clothes dispraise for someone or something in the

words of praise. The sarcasm should be obvious through the speaker’s exaggerated or non-existent, and therefore disingenuous, tone: “Oh, you’re God’s great gift to women, you are!”

Satire – The art of diminishing or degrading a subject by making it (or a person) ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation. It differs from a parody in that parody evokes laughter mainly as an end in itself, while satire derides; that is, it uses laughter as a weapon to say something the speaker deems worthy. It is an attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humour, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards. Satire became an especially popular technique used during the Enlightenment, in which it was believed that an artist could correct folly by using art as a mirror to reflect society. When people viewed the satire and saw their faults magnified in a distorted reflection, they could see how ridiculous their behaviour was and then correct that tendency in themselves. The tradition of satire continues today. Popular cartoons such as The Simpsons and South Park and televised comedies like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report make use of it in modern media. Classic examples include Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and “A Modest Proposal”.

Sestet – A six-line stanza.Setting – The general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which the action of a fictional

or dramatic work occurs; the setting of an episode or scene within a work is the particular physical location in which it takes place. The overall setting of Macbeth, for example, is medieval Scotland, and the setting for the particular scene in which Macbeth comes upon the witches is a blasted heath.

Simile – A comparison between two distinctly different things which is explicitly indicated by the word

“like” or “as”. A simple example is Robert Burns’ “O my love’s like a red, red rose.” Here is another example, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: “And ice, mast-high, came floating by,/ as green as emerald.”

Slang – Informal diction, or the use of vocabulary considered inconsistent with the preferred formal wording common among the educated or elite in a culture. For instance, formal wording might require a message such as this one: "Greetings. How are my people doing?" The slang version might be as follows: "Yo. Whassup with my peeps?"

Soliloquy – This is the act of talking to oneself, whether silently or aloud. In drama, ot denotes the convention by which a character, alone on the stage, utters his or her thoughts aloud as a monologue. The technique frequently reveals a character's innermost thoughts, including his feelings, state of mind, motives or intentions. The soliloquy often provides necessary but otherwise inaccessible information to the audience. The dramatic convention is that whatever a character says in a soliloquy to the audience must be true, or at least true in the eyes of the character speaking (i.e., the character may tell lies to mislead other characters in the play, but whatever he states in a soliloquy is a true reflection of what the speaker believes or feels). The soliloquy was rare in Classical drama, but Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights used it extensively, especially for their villains. Well-known examples include speeches by the title characters of Macbeth, Richard III, and Hamlet and also Iago in Othello. (Contrast with an aside.) Unlike the aside, a soliloquy is not usually indicated by specific stage directions.

Sonnet – A lyric poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a single, complete idea or thought with a reversal, twist, or change of direction in the concluding lines. There are three common forms: (1)The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet has an eight line stanza (called an octave) followed by a six line stanza (called a sestet). The octave has two quatrains rhyming abba, abba, the first of which presents the theme, the second further develops it. In the sestet, the first three lines reflect on or exemplify the theme, while the last three bring the poem to a unified end. The sestet may be arranged cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce. (2) The English or Shakespearean sonnet uses three quatrains; each rhymed differently, with a final, independently rhymed couplet that makes an effective, unifying climax to the whole. Its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Typically, the final two lines follow a "turn" or a "volta," (sometimes spelled volte, like volte-face) because they reverse, undercut, or turn from the original line of thought to take the idea in a new direction. (3) The Miltonic sonnet is similar to the Petrarchan sonnet, but it does not divide its thought between the octave and the sestet--the sense or line of thinking runs straight from the eighth to ninth line. Also, Milton expands the sonnet's repertoire to deal not only with love as the earlier sonnets did, but also to include politics, religion, and personal matters.

Speaker – The narrative or elegiac voice in a poem (such as a sonnet, ode, or lyric) that speaks of his or her situation or feelings. It is a convention in poetry that the speaker is not the same individual as the historical author of the poem. For instance, consider the poet Lord Byron's mock epic Don Juan. Lord Byron wrote the poem as a young man in his late twenties. However, the speaker of the poem depicts himself as being an elderly man looking back cynically on the days of youth. Clearly, the "voice" talking and narrating the story is not identical with the author.

In the same way, the speaker of the poem "My Last Duchess" characterizes himself through his words as a Renaissance nobleman in Italy who is cold-blooded—quite capable of murdering a wife who displeases him—but the author of the poem was actually Robert Browning, a mild-mannered English poet writing in the early nineteenth-century. Many students (and literary critics) attempt to decipher clues about the author's own attitudes, beliefs, feelings, or biographical details through the words in a poem. However, such an activity must always be done with caution. Shakespeare may write a sonnet in which the poetic speaker pours out his passion for a woman with bad breath and wiry black hair (Sonnet 130), but it does not necessarily mean that Shakespeare himself was attracted to halitosis, or that his wife had black hair, or that he had a fling with such a woman.

Stanza – (Italian for “stopping place”) A group of the verse-lines in a poem, often set off by a space in the printed text. A stanza in poetry is comparable to a paragraph in prose.

Stream of consciousness – The name applied to a mode of narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator’s intervention, the full spectrum and continuous flow of a character’s mental process, in which the sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random associations. The interior monologue is a type of stream-of-consciousness narrative. Here is a stream-of-conscious interior monologue from James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), in which Leopold Bloom saunters through Dublin, observing and musing: “Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugar-sticky girl shoveling scoopfuls of creams for a Christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white.”

Statistical evidence – Accumulated numbers from a sample group of variable size that relate to some specific issue which are used to support a position or argument put forth by a group or person. For example, one might reference the fact that 80% of Canadian marriages end in divorce today (statistic), whereas only 40% ended in divorce fifty years ago (statistic), as statistical evidence that people are more selfish today than in the past. However, one must very carefully examine statistical evidence for misapplication. Could there be any other reason that more marriages end in divorce today than in the past?

Static character – A static character is a simplified character who does not change or alter his or her

personality in any significant way over the course of a narrative. If a character dies, this does not constitute a change in character—only a change in vital signs. In Finding Nemo, Crush is a static character, as his personality does not change in the film. This is in contrast to Marlin, a dynamic character.

Stereotype – A character who is so ordinary or unoriginal that the character seems like an oversimplified representation of a type, gender, class, religious group, or occupation. A cliché or stock character (see below).

Stock / stereotyped character – A character type that appears repeatedly in a particular literary

genre, one which has certain conventional attributes or attitudes. Stock characters in medieval romances include the damsel in distress, the contemptuous dwarf, the chivalrous, handsome young knight, the wild man of the woods, and the senex amans (the ugly old man married to a younger girl). In modern detective fiction, the prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold, the hard-drinking P.I., and the corrupt police-officer are stereotypical stock characters. Stock characters in western films might include the noble sheriff, the whorehouse madam, the town drunkard, etc.

Style – An author’s style is how he or she says whatever it is he or she says. Style can be discussed in

terms of rhetoric (situation and purpose), diction (word choice), syntax (sentence structure), and use of figurative language. For example, the rhetoric of Sinclair Ross’ “One’s a Heifer” may not differ greatly from Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”, but the diction, syntax, and density of figurative language do. Thus, I might say that Poe and Ross’ styles are quite different. I may also speak of an author’s style being grand, mediocre, or plain. An author’s style, though common perhaps to a number of her or his works (like Emily Dickinson or Ray Bradbury) might vary from text to text (like Poe, to a certain degree, or William Blake).

Stylistic technique – Any element of composition that an author employs to create a certain effect or

style. If Poe chooses to write his story with complex, elaborately-worded sentences with passages in French or Latin and a first-person narrator who mourns his dead and once beautiful lover while alluding subtly to The Bible (although the entire story is an allegory for some mental struggle), one might describe any of the above choices as being a stylistic technique that he is using. Each one may or may not create a different effect. Anything an author writes may be a part of her style and therefore termed a stylistic technique.

Subjective (language tone etc.) – Subjective language uses highly connotative words to infer a

meaning or association between two separate ideas, persons, or objects. It creates a subjective tone which suggests the speaker or writer is not impartial in a given scenario and, in fact, supports one position or side over another. Subjectivity has been known to ignore or distort the truth in favour of presenting a certain position more positively or negatively. Contrast with Objective.

Surprise ending – A conclusion to a story that is unexpected because it either subverts the audience’s expectations for the genre or concludes in a way that seems in contrast to the story (or a specific character’s behaviour) hitherto. If the virginal heroine in the horror film is murdered at the end but her jerk boyfriend survives, this may come as a surprise to many viewers who have certain expectations of the horror genre based on previous films they have seen. Perhaps the most famous surprise ending in recent cinematic history can be found in The Sixth Sense, which not only surprises the audience, but also causes them to reevaluate their entire interpretation of the film. Such a surprise ending may be termed a paradigm shift, an O. Henry ending, or, more colloquially, a twist.

Suspense – The lack of certainty on the part of a concerned reader about what is going to happen, especially to characters with whom the reader has established a bond of sympathy. If what in fact happens violates any expectations we have formed, this constitutes surprise. Will Frodo become corrupted by the ring, or will he be able to safely destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom? The uncertainty creates suspense.

Symbol – In the broadest sense a symbol is anything which signifies something; in this sense, all words

are symbols. In discussing literature, however, the term is applied only to objects or images which represent concepts or ideas. Some symbols are conventional or public: thus “the Cross”, “the Red, White, and Blue”, and “the Good Shepherd” are terms that refer to symbolic objects of which the further significance is determinate within a particular culture. A peacock (an image) can symbolize pride (concept); a rising sun (image): birth (concept); a rose (object): love (concept).

Symbolism – A coherent system composed of a number of symbolic elements; frequent use of words,

places, characters, or objects that mean something beyond what they are on a literal level. Often the symbol may be ambiguous in meaning. When multiple objects or characters each seem to have a restricted symbolic meaning, what often results is an allegory. Contrast with allegory, leit-motif and motif.

TTheme – A general concept, idea, belief, or doctrine—either implicit or asserted—which an

imaginative work is designed to incorporate and make persuasive to the reader. At the most basic, a theme is an intent or message in a text. John Milton states as the explicit theme (intent) of Paradise Lost to “assert Eternal Providence,/ and justify the ways of God to men”. Some critics have claimed that all non-trivial works of literature, including lyric poems, involve an implicit theme which is embodied and dramatized in the evolving meanings and imagery. One might claim that the theme (message) of The Ring is rejecting those who are different can spark revenge.

Thesis – Almost interchangeable with theme, a thesis is an argument, either overt or implicit, that a writer develops and supports. It is usually used to describe the intent of non-fiction, such as essays, articles, or speeches; whereas theme is typically applied to fiction.

Thesis statement – The explicitly stated thesis of a work. The sentence (if there is one) in a work that clearly explains the intention of the work. Usually, a thesis statement can be found in an introductory paragraph of a modern academic essay. See the example from Paradise Lost under ‘theme’.

Third person point of view – In a narrative with the third-person point of view, the narrator is someone outside the story who refers to all the characters in the story by name, or as “he”, “she”, “they”. Thus Jane Austen’s Emma begins: “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” There are three forms of the third-person narrative: omniscient, limited omniscient, and objective.

Tone – The tone is the literary speaker’s attitude towards his or her listener and/or his or her attitude towards the subject of the literature. It is the means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude or mood. By looking carefully at the choices an author makes (in characters, incidents, setting; in the work's stylistic choices and diction, etc.), careful readers often can isolate the tone of a work and sometimes infer from it the underlying attitudes that control and color the story or poem as a whole. The tone might be formal or informal, playful, ironic, optimistic, pessimistic, or sensual. To illustrate the difference, two different novelists might write stories about capitalism. Author #1 creates a tale in which an impoverished but hard-working young lad pulls himself out of the slums when he applies himself to his education, and he becomes a wealthy, contented middle-class citizen who leaves his past behind him, never looking back at that awful human cesspool from which he rose. Author #2 creates a tale in which a dirty street-rat skulks his way out of the slums by abandoning his family and going off to college, and he greedily hoards his money in a gated community and ignores the suffering of his former "equals," whom he leaves behind in his selfish desire to get ahead. Note that both author #1 and author #2 basically present the same plotline. While the first author's writing creates a tale of optimism and hope, the second author shapes the same tale into a story of bitterness and cynicism. The difference is in their respective tones--the way they convey their attitudes about particular characters and subject-matter.

Tragedy – A serious play or story in which the chief character, by some flaw in his (or her) personality,

passes through a series of misfortunes leading to a final, devastating catastrophe. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragedy. He writes in his Poetics (c. 350 BCE): "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; . . . through pity [eleos] and fear [phobos] effecting the proper purgation [catharsis] of these emotions" (Book 6.2). Traditionally, a tragedy is divided, usually implicitly, into five acts. The first act introduces the characters in a state of happiness, or at the height of their power, influence, or fame. The second act typically introduces a problem or dilemma, which reaches a point of crisis in the third act, but which can still be successfully averted. In the fourth act, the main characters fail to avert or avoid the impending crisis or catastrophe, and this disaster occurs. The fifth act traditionally reveals the grim consequences of that failure.

UUnderstatement – The opposite of hyperbole, the Greek term is meiosis (“lessening”). It means to

deliberately represent something as very much less in magnitude or importance than it really is, or is ordinarily considered to be. The effect is usually ironic—savagely ironic in Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub, “Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse,” and comically ironic in Mark Twain’s comment that “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” A special form of understatement is litotes (Greek for “plain” or “simple”), the assertion of an affirmative by negating its contrary: “He’s not the brightest man in the world” meaning “he’s stupid.”

VVoice – This term points to the fact that readers are aware of a presence beyond the fictitious voices

that speak in a work, and a persona behind all the dramatic personae, and behind even the first-person narrator. We have the sense of a pervasive authorial presence, a determinate intelligence and moral sensibility, who has invented, ordered, and rendered all these literary characters and materials in just this way. Some authors’ voices may present themselves especially in certain texts, while others—like Edgar Allan Poe, for example—have such a definite voice that it dominates all of their writing.

WWit – A form of comic expression in a brilliant and paradoxical style. Wit used to be synonymous with

intelligence (as we can see in the term half-wit), but by the seventeenth century came to be perceived more closely with Alexander Pope’s definition of “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.” It is a kind of verbal expression which is brief, deft, and intentionally contrived to produce a shock of comic surprise; its typical form is that of the epigram. The surprise is usually the result of a connection or distinction between words or concepts which frustrates the listener’s expectation, only to satisfy it in an unexpected way. Philip Guedalla wittily said: “History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.” Thus the trite comment about history turns out to be unexpectedly appropriate, with an unlooked-for turn of meaning, to the writers of history as well. Once Mae West remarked that “too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”

Ambience 11Ambiguity 11Anachronism 11Antihero 11Antipathy 12Aphorism 12Archetype 11

Avant-garde 12Bildungsroman 11Caesura 10Catharsis 11Chiasmus 12Close Reading 10Crisis 10Comedy of Manners 10Conceit 11Deus ex machina 12Dirge 11Dramatis Personae 10Dystopia 12Epistolary 11Epithet 12Existential 11Explication 10Folktale 10Foot (in metre) 10Freytag’s Pyramid 10Great Chain of Being 11Homonym 10Hubris 11In media res 11Intertextuality 12Kenning 11Lampoon 10Malapropism 10Metafiction 12Metonymy 10Mise en scene 12Mock Epic 12Motif 10Novella 10Pathetic Fallacy 11Picaresque narrative 12Rhetoric 10Synecdoche 10Synesthesia 12Syntax 10Trope 10Utopia 10Verisimilitude 11