Neshaminy High School

Allegory:  a universal symbol or personified abstraction. Example: Death portrayed as a cloaked "grim reaper" with scythe and hourglass, or Justice depicted as a blindfolded figure with a sword and balances. Also a literary work or genre (e.g., John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress) that makes widespread use of such devices.

Alliteration: the repetition of similar initial sounds, usually consonants, in a group of words. “Maggie and Millie, and Molly and May / Went down to the beach to play one day” e e cummings.

Allusion:  an indirect or oblique reference within a text to another text or work. Hence a subtle artistic quotation or homage. For example, the opening sentence of Cat's Cradle--"Call me Jonah"--alludes to both an Old Testament prophet and the opening line of Melville's Moby Dick.

Ambiguity: something uncertain as to interpretation 

Anachronism: something that shows up in the wrong place or the wrong time.  Example, the clock that strikes in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar—there were no clocks in that day.

Analogy: a comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them 

Analysis: a method in which a work or idea is separated into its parts, and those parts given rigorous and detailed scrutiny 

Anaphora: a device or repetition in which a word or words are repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences 

Anecdote: a very short story used to illustrate a point.  Example, George Washington and the cherry tree, opening scenes of Seinfeld where Jerry does his stand-up routines usually contain anecdote. 

Antagonist: a person or force opposing the protagonist in a drama or narrative 

Antihero:  a protagonist who does not embody or exhibit the qualities of the traditional hero. An antihero may even be downright dishonest and petty.  Examples, Sawyer from Lost, Willy Loman form Death of a Salesman, Alex from A Clockwork Orange.

Antithesis: a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness.  “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. 

Aphorism: a terse, pointed statement expressing some wise or clever observation about life.  “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” Shakespeare.

Apologia: a defense or justification for some doctrine, piece of writing, cause, or action; also apology 

Apostrophe: a figure of speech in which an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something inanimate or nonhuman is addressed directly.  “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!” Childe Harold by Lord Byron. 

 Apocalyptic literature:  writings that aim to reveal the future history of the world and the ultimate destiny of the earth and its inhabitants. Examples: the prophetic books of the Old Testament; Revelations. From the sermons of Puritan ministers to the latest popular work of science fiction, American literature has always had a pronounced apocalyptic tendency.

Argumentation: the process of convincing a reader by proving either the truth or the falsity of an idea or proposition; also, the thesis or proposition itself 

Assonance: the repetition of similar vowel sounds within a line or succeeding lines of verse. Example: the short i and e sounds in Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra: "then is it sin/ To rush into the secret house of death/ Ere death dare come to us?"

Assumption: the act of supposing, or taking for granted that a thing is true 

Atrocity Text (Genocide Lit):  Texts which recount the story of a survivor of genocide.  Most contain very similar motifs such as survivor's guilt and hunger, symbolic use of color, psychological breakdown of the narrator, and questionable narrators.  Examples: Primo Levi’s Survival at Auschwitz, Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father, Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate, Rezak Hukanovic’s Tenth Circle of Hell.

Audience: the intended listener or listeners 

Autobiography: an author's own life history or memoir. Example: The Education of Henry Adams. Thoreau's Walden is also an example of autobiography, and Whitman's Leaves of Grass, though it is not specifically an autobiography, contains numerous autobiographical elements.

Blank Verse:  a verse form consisting of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's plays are largely in blank verse.

Black humor:  comedy mingled with horror or a sense of the macabre; extremely bitter, morbid, or shocking humor. Examples (increasingly common in post-WWII film and literature) include Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle  and the films Pulp Fiction and Misery.

Catalogue: a traditional epic device consisting of a long rhetorical list or inventory. Homer's catalogue of ships in the Iliad is probably the most famous example, though almost any poem by Whitman will supply a prize specimen or two.

Characterization: the means by which a writer reveals a character’s personality

Chiasmus: a reversal in the order off words so that the second half of a statement balances the first half in inverted word order.  “Fair is foul and foul is fair” Macbeth.

Christ Figure: a character who sacrifices himself or herself for the betterment of the characters in the story.  Examples:  R.P. Mc Murphy (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Hamlet, Frodo Baggins and Gandolf (Lord of the Rings)

Circumlocution: a roundabout or evasive speech or writing, in which many words are used but a few would have served 

Classicism: art, literature, and music reflecting the principles of ancient Greece and Rome: tradition, reason, clarity, order, and balance 

Cliché: a phrase or situation overused within society 

Climax: the decisive point in a narrative or drama; the pint of greatest intensity or interest at which plot question is answered or resolved 

Colloquialism: folksy speech, slang words or phrases usually used in informal conversation

Comedy:  film or dramatic work depicting the uphill struggle and eventual success of a sympathetic hero or heroine; usually about ordinary people in difficult but non-life-threatening predicaments. Examples: Shakespeare, As You Like It; Shaw, Pygmalion.  Conflict: struggle or problem in a story causing tension 

Connotation: implicit meaning, going beyond dictionary definition 

Consonance--repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in a line or succeeding lines of verse. Example: the r and s repetitions in Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream: "Or, if there were a sympathy in choice/ War, death, or sickness did lay seige to it . . ."

Contrast: a rhetorical device by which one element (idea or object) is thrown into opposition to another for the sake of emphasis or clarity 

Drama: a literary work designed for presentation by actors on a stage. Examples: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice; Miller, Death of a Salesman.

Dramatic Romance:  play which adapts the themes, characters, and conventions of narrative romance for the stage. Example: Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Denotation: plain dictionary definition 

Denouement (pronounced day-new-mahn): loose ends tied up in a story after the climax, closure, and conclusion 

Dialect: the language of a particular district, class or group of persons; the sounds, grammar, and diction employed by people distinguished from others. 

Dialectics: formal debates usually over the nature of truth. 

Dichotomy: split or break between two opposing things. 

Diction: the style of speaking or writing as reflected in the choice and use of words. 

Didactic: having to do with the transmission of information; education. 

Dogmatic: rigid in beliefs and principles. 

Elegy: a mournful, melancholy poem, especially a funeral song or lament for the dead, sometimes contains general reflections on death, often with a rural or pastoral setting.  Examples, “This Dust Was Once a Man” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” by Walt Whitman

Epic: a long narrative poem usually about gods, heroes, and legendary events; celebrates the history, culture, and character of a people. Examples: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Milton's Paradise Lost, Beowulf, Gilgamesh.  Epics are divided into two categories-- Primary Epic (author is known) and   Secondary Epic (unknown author)

Epigram: witty aphorism.

Epitaph: any brief inscription in prose or verse on a tombstone; a short formal poem of commemoration often a credo written by the person who wishes it to be on his tombstone. 

Epithet: a short, descriptive name or phrase that may insult someone’s character, characteristics 

Essay: literally a "trial," "test run," or "experiment" (from the French essayer, "to attempt"); hence a relatively short, informal piece of non-fiction prose that treats a topic of general interest in a seemingly casual, impressionistic, and lively way. Montaigne was the great originator of the form; Emerson was its most influential 19th-century American practitioner.

Euphemism: the use of an indirect, mild or vague word or expression for one thought to be coarse, offensive, or blunt. 

Evocative (evocation): a calling forth of memories and sensations; the suggestion or production through artistry and imagination of a sense of reality. 

Exposition: beginning of a story that sets forth facts, ideas, and/or characters, in a detailed explanation. 

Expressionism: movement in art, literature, and music consisting of unrealistic representation of an inner idea or feeling(s).

Fable: a short, simple story, usually with animals as characters, designed to teach a moral truth. 

Fallacy: from Latin word “to deceive”, a false or misleading notion, belief, or argument; any kind of erroneous reasoning that makes arguments unsound. 

Falling Action: part of the narrative or drama after the climax. 

Fantasy Fiction:  modern adventure novels or tales that adapt many of the conventions and devices of medieval romance (e.g., imaginary worlds, creatures, heroes). Though often considered a sub-category of science fiction, fantasy literature usually doesn't involve the concern with modern science and technology that distinguishes true SF. Example: Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.

Farce: comedy that makes extensive use of improbable plot complications, zany characters, and slapstick humor. Examples: films by the Marx brothers and the Three Stooges; George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's You Can't Take It with You.

Figurative Language: apt and imaginative language characterized by figures of speech (such as metaphor and simile).  This is language that cannot be taken literally

Flashback: a narrative device that flashes back to prior events. 

Foil: a person or thing that, by contrast, makes another seem better or more prominent.  Example: the more we learn about Fortinbras and Laertes the more we understand about Hamlet failure.

Folk Tale: story passed on by word of mouth. 

Foreshadowing:  in fiction and drama, a device to prepare the reader for the outcome of the action; “planning” to make the outcome convincing, though not to give it away.

Form:  metaphorically, the "container" or "mold" of a work of art, as opposed to its material or contents; hence any of the structural patterns or organizing principles that underlie and shape a work. Forms can be traditional and very rigid and specific--e.g., the sonnet in poetry, the sonata in classical music--or vague and flexible, as in most modern works.

Free Verse: verse without conventional metrical pattern, with irregular pattern or no rhyme. 

Genre:  a collective grouping or general category of literary works; a large class or group that consists of individual works of literature that share common attributes (e.g., similar themes, characters, plots, or styles). Examples: drama, epic, lyric poem, novel, etc.

Gothic Tale: a style in literature characterized by gloomy settings, violent or grotesque action, and a mood of decay, degeneration, and decadence. 

Hyperbole: an exaggerated statement often used as a figure of speech or to prove a point. “I am so hungry I could eat a horse.”

Iambic Pentameter:  popular English verse form consisting of five metrical feet--with each foot consisting of an iamb (i.e., an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: daDUM). Rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets (a form associated with Chaucer and Pope). Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse (a form associated with Shakespeare and Milton).

Imagery:  a word or phrase in a literary text that appeals directly to the reader's taste, touch, hearing, sight, or smell. An image is thus any vivid or picturesque phrase that evokes a particular sensation in the reader's mind. Example: Whitman's "vapor-pennants" and evocations of "golden brass" and "silvery steel" in "To a Locomotive in Winter"; Bryant's  "lone lakes" and "autumn blaze" in "To an American Painter. . . ."Implication: a meaning or understanding that is to be arrived at by the reader but that is not fully and explicitly stated by the author. 

Incongruity: the deliberate joining of opposites or of elements that are not appropriate to each other. 

Inference: a judgment or conclusion based on evidence presented; the forming of an opinion which possesses some degree of probability according to facts already available. 

Irony:  originally a deceptive form of understatement (from the Greek eiron, a stock comic character who typically equivocated, misled his listeners, or concealed complex meanings behind seemingly simple words); hence an attribute of statements in which the meaning is different--or more complicated--than it seems. A subtle form of sarcasm, verbal irony is a rhetorical device in which the speaker either severely understates his point or means the opposite of what he says (as when a guest politely describes a host's unimpressive wine as "nicely chilled" or a conspicuously dull person is described as "not a likely Mensa candidate." Dramatic irony arises in situations where two or more individuals have different levels of understanding or different points of view. More specifically, it occurs when the audience or certain characters in a play know something that another character does not--as when Oedipus, ignorant that he himself is the person he seeks, vows to track down Laius's killer.

Interior Monologue: a form of writing which represents the inner thoughts of a character; the recording of the internal, emotional experience(s) of an individual; generally the reader is given the impression of overhearing the interior monologue.

Inversion: words out of order for emphasis. 

Juxtaposition: the intentional placement of a word, phrase, sentences of paragraph to contrast with another nearby. 

Lyric: a short, highly formal, song-like poem, usually passionate and confessional, often about love; a song expressing a private mood or an intense personal feeling. The sonnet and the ode are two specific types of lyric.

Magical Realism:  a genre developed in Latin America which juxtaposes the everyday with the marvelous or magical.  Example, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Melodrama:  a film or literary work marked by "good guys" vs. "bad guys," unexpected plot twists, surprise endings, action and suspense. Examples: Most horror movies and detective thrillers.

Metaphor: an analogy that compare two different  things imaginatively. Extended Metaphor:  a metaphor that is extended or developed as far as the writer wants to take it. Controlling Metaphor: a metaphor that runs throughout the piece of work. Mixed Metaphor: a metaphor that ineffectively blends two or more analogies. 

Meter:  the expected pattern or theoretical number and distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse of a given type. For example, in iambic pentameter the prescribed pattern is da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM--five iambs.(See Rhythm.)

Metonymy:  literally “name changing” a device of figurative language in which the name of an attribute or associated thing is substituted for the usual name of a thing.

Mock epic:  a long narrative poem that lightly parodies or mimics the conventions of classical epic. Whitman's elaborate "invocation" of a muse in "Song of the Exposition" is a mock-epic device.

Mode of Discourse:  argument (persuasion), narration, description, and exposition. 

Modernism:  European and American literary and artistic movement that arose and flourished during the first half of the twentieth century. Modernism can be understood as in large part an avant-garde reaction to mass culture and to middle-class Victorian values and tastes. Its techniques and aesthetic principles are illustrated in the works of Picasso, Stravinsky, Klee, Proust, Joyce, Eliot, Faulkner, and others.

Monologue:  an extended speech by a character in a play, short story, novel, or narrative poem.

Mood:  the predominating atmosphere evoked by a literary piece.

Motif:  a recurring feature (name, image, or phrase) in a piece of literature. 

Myth:  a story, often about immortals, and sometimes connected with religious rituals, that attempts to give meaning to the mysteries of the world.

Narrative:  a story or description of events. 

Narrator:  one who narrates, or tells, a story. 

Neo-Classicism:  eighteenth-century literary and artistic movement dedicated to the recovery and imitation of classical (i.e., Greek and Roman) styles and models. Neo-classical architectural principles are evident in most of the federal government buildings in Washington, D.C. Joel Barlow's Columbiad (1807--a fulsome poetical extravagance widely admired in its time but seldom read or even mentioned today) is an example of neo-classical epic.

Novel:  a long fictional narrative in  prose, usually about the experiences of a central character. Examples, Dickens's David Copperfield, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

Novella: short story; short prose narrative, often satirical. Examples, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Chopin’s The Awakening.

Ode:  a classical lyric form, typically of medium length with complex stanzas and ornate prosodic effects. Ancient odes were usually written to commemorate ceremonial occasions such as anniversaries or funerals. The Romantic poets wrote odes in celebration of art, nature, or exalted states of mind.

Omniscient Point of View:  knowing all things, usually the third person. 

Onomatopoeia: literally "name poetry"; in verse, the use of words (e.g., clank, buzz, hiss, etc.) that imitate natural sounds. Example, Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew: "Have I not in a pitched battle heard/ Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang?"

Pacing:  rate of movement; tempo.  Pacing should be appropriate for the subject.

Parable:  a story designed to convey some religious principle, moral lesson, or general truth.  Kafka’s “Before the Law,” Parable of the Bible: The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son, The Rich Man and Lazarus

Paradox:  a statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really containing a possible truth; an opinion contrary to generally accepted ideas.  “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” Bob Dylan

Parallelism: the principle in sentence structure that states elements of equal function should have equal form. 

Parody:  a literary or artistic work that mimics in an absurd of ridiculous way the conventions and style of another work. Also known as travesty, lampoon, or burlesque. Twain's Connecticut Yankee is in part a parody of Mallory's Morte d'Arthur. Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle parodies everything from calypso lyrics and commercial advertising to detective fiction and Moby Dick.

Pastoralism:  a cultural outlook that values (or at least sympathizes with) the disciplines and routines of rural living over those of urban life. In pastoral literature the author typically adopts the perspective of a country dweller in order to expose the numerous shams, absurdities, and nuisances of life in the city or the court. Examples of traditional pastoral include Virgil's Eclogues and Spenser's The Shepherde's Calendar. Pastoral elements can also be found in Walden and "Leaves of Grass."

Pathos:  the ability in literature to call forth feelings of pity, compassion, and/or sadness. 

Personification: a figure of speech attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract ideas. 

Plot: in narrative or dramatic works the sequence of events or episodes that link up to provide a sense of unified action

Poignant:  eliciting sorrow or sentiment.

Point of View: the attitude unifying any oral or written argumentation; in description, the physical point from which the observer views what he is describing. 

Postmodernism: catch-phrase or jargon term used extensively in film and literary studies to identify certain trends in contemporary media and fiction. Post-modernist works tend to be highly self-referential and are typically saturated with irony and allusion. Such works also tend to subvert traditional models of unity and coherence and instead try to capture the sense of discontinuity and apparent chaos characteristic of the electronic age. Post-modernism is typically associated with writers like William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, and John Barth, with film-makers like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino, and with so-called deconstructionist forms of criticism.

Prosody--the technical analysis of all the sound elements (e.g., rhythm, alliteration, rhyme) in poetry or speech.

Prose:  the ordinary form of spoken and written language; language that does not have a regular rhyme pattern. 

Protagonist: the central character in a work of fiction; opposes antagonist.

Pun:  play on words; the humorous use of a word emphasizing different meanings or applications. 

Purpose: the intended result wished by an author. 

Realism:  writing about the ordinary aspects of life in a straightforward manner to reflect life as it actually is. Example, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.

Refrain:  a phrase or verse recurring at intervals in a poem or song; chorus. 

Requiem:  any chant, dirge, hymn, or musical service for the dead. 

Resolution: point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out; denouement. 

Rhetoric: use of language, both written and verbal in order to persuade. 

Rhetorical Question: question suggesting its own answer or not requiring an answer; used in argument or persuasion.

Rhyme:  the use of the same or similar sounds either internally or at the ends of lines in order to produce an audible echo effect; when this effect is regularly repeated over the course of a poem or stanza and obeys a precise and predictable formal pattern, it is called a rhyme scheme. To avoid rhyming notes that are too blatant or insistent, modern poets sometimes use near rhyme (e.g., bald, cold; brim, stream), which produces a subtler musical effect.

Rhythm--in prosody, the actual number and distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse of a given type when it is naturally spoken. (As opposed to the ideal or theoretical number and distribution as specified by the metrical form.) (See Meter.)

Rising Action: plot build-up, caused by conflict and complications, advancement towards climax. 

Romance--a literary genre typically involving fantastic or perilous adventures. Medieval verse romances were usually about knights and ladies, sorcerers and dragons, daring deeds, and secret love. Example: the tales of King Arthur and his knights.

Romanticism:  an intellectual and artistic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Originating in Europe, where it was associated with Rousseau, Wordsworth, Goethe, and other artists and philosophers, the influence of Romanticism eventually spread to America, where it found adherents in figures like Bryant, Emerson, and Thoreau. Valuing imagination over intellect, passion over reason, and artistic self-expression over reverence for tradition, the Romantics reacted to what they viewed as the excessive rationalism and classicism of the European Enlightenment. Examples, Edgar Allan Poe stories, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Satire:  a genre or mode that exposes and ridicules human vice and folly. Its characters are usually braggarts, bullies, shady tricksters, and scalawags--often detestable and seldom commendable or sympathetic. Examples: Swift's Gulliver's Travels; Orwell's Animal Farm.

Scansion: the analysis of poetic verse in terms of meter. 

Science Fiction--prose fiction usually set in the future or in some remote region of the universe; often adapts the characters of conventions of ancient myth or medieval romance to the modern age of science and technology. Example: Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath the Sea; H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.

Setting: the time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur. 

Simile:  a figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific word of comparison. 

Soliloquy: an extended speech, usually in a drama, delivered by a character alone on stage.  “To Be or Not To Be” or “O What a Rogue and Peasant Slave Am I” from Hamlet

Sonnet:  a lyric form consisting of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter and exhibiting a regular rhyme scheme. Example: Bryant's "Sonnet--To an American Painter Departing for Europe."  Two major sonnet divisions are the English or Shakespearean Sonnet and the Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet.

Spiritual: a folk song, usually on a religious theme. 

Speaker: a narrator, the one speaking in the text. 

Stereotype: cliché; a simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story. 

Stream of Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images, as the character experiences them.  Example, the final chapter of Ulysses by James Joyce

Structure: the planned framework of a literary selection; its apparent organization. 

Style:  the manner of putting thoughts into words; a characteristic way of writing or speaking. 

Synecdoche:  a part of something is used to represent the whole or, occasionally, the whole is used to represent the part.

Symbolism:  the systematic use of recurrent symbols or images in a work to create an added level of meaning. Example: most of the characters and incidents in Melville's Moby Dick can be interpreted symbolically. Similarly, the raft, the river, the towns, and "the territory" combine to provide a pattern of symbolic meaning in Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

Theme:  a controlling idea or a subject for philosophical reflection in a literary work. Themes can be mythical and archetypal (e.g., the fall of man, symbolic death and rebirth, a quest for knowledge) or moral and psychological (passion vs. reason, the futility of anger, the vanity of selfishness, the need for love, etc.). Thus the same themes can be found in works by different authors in different eras in a variety of genres and styles.

Tragedy:  drama or film portraying the doomed struggle and eventual downfall of an admirable but flawed hero. Usually about powerful leaders or extraordinary individuals torn between opposing goals or difficult choices. Examples: Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Shakespeare, King Lear.

Tragicomedy:  drama or film in which the serious actions, harsh truths, and threatening situations of tragedy are combined with the lighter tone and generally happy conclusions of comedy. Example: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure; M. Nichols, Carnal Knowledge.

Utopian Literature:  prose fiction which aims at a richly detailed and generally realistic depiction of an ideal society or alternative world. Strictly speaking, utopian literature depicts attractive alternatives; whereas Dystopian Literature presents nightmarish or hellish visions of the future. Examples: Huxley, Brave New World; Orwell, 1984

Victorian Literature:  Victorian novels tend to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck win out in the end; virtue would be rewarded and wrongdoers are suitably punished. They tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart. While this formula was the basis for much of earlier Victorian fiction, the situation became more complex as the century progressed.  Examples:  Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.