A Selective List of Useful Literary Terms for Studying
Prose Narratives
Note: The following definitions have been culled from Kip Wheeler’s extensive online dictionary of Literary Terms at <http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms.html>
ACTION: A real or fictional
event or series of such events comprising the subject of a novel, story,
narrative poem, or a play, especially in the sense of what the characters do in
such a narrative. Action, along with dialogue
and the characters' thoughts, form the skeleton of a narrative's plot.
AESTHETIC DISTANCE: An
effect of tone, diction, and presentation in poetry creating a sense of an
experience removed from irrelevant or accidental events. This sense of
intentional focus seems intentionally organized or framed by events in the poem
so that it can be more fully understood by quiet contemplation. Typically, the
reader is less emotionally involved or impassioned--reacting to the material in
a calmer manner.
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.
If
we wish to be more exact, an allegory is an act of interpretation, a way of
understanding, rather than a genre
in and of itself. Poems, novels, or plays can all be allegorical, in whole or
in part. These allegories can be as short as a single sentence or as long as a
ten volume book. The label "allegory" comes from an interaction
between symbols that creates a coherent meaning beyond that of the literal
level of interpretation. Probably the most famous allegory in English
literature is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), in which the hero
named Christian flees the City of
The
following illustrative passage comes from J. A. Cuddon's
Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd edition (Penguin
Books, 1991). I have Americanized the British spelling and punctuation:
To distinguish more clearly we can take the old Arab fable of
the frog and the scorpion, who met one day on the bank of the River Nile, which
they both wanted to cross. The frog offered to ferry the scorpion over on his
back provided the scorpion promised not to sting him. The scorpion agreed so
long as the frog would promise not to drown him. The mutual promises exchanged,
they crossed the river. On the far bank the scorpion stung the frog mortally.
"Why did you do that?" croaked the frog, as it lay
dying.
"Why?" replied the scorpion, "We're both Arabs,
aren't we?"
If we substitute for a frog a "Mr. Goodwill" or a
"Mr. Prudence," and for the scorpion "Mr. Treachery" or
"Mr. Two-Face," and make the river any river and substitute for
"We're both Arabs . . ."
"We're both men . . ." we turn the fable [which illustrates human
tendencies by using animals as illustrative examples] into an allegory [a
narrative in which each character and action has symbolic meaning]. On the
other hand, if we turn the frog into a father and the scorpion into a son
(boatman and passenger) and we have the son say "We're both sons of God,
aren't we?", then we have a parable (if a rather cynical one) about the
wickedness of human nature and the sin of parricide. (22)
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. Authors assume
that the readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning
to the new context. For instance, if a teacher were to refer to his class as a
horde of Mongols, the students will have no idea if they are being praised or
vilified unless they know what the Mongol horde was and what activities it
participated in historically. This historical allusion assumes a certain level
of education or awareness in the audience, so it should normally be taken as a
compliment rather than an insult or an attempt at obscurity.
ALTER EGO: A literary
character or narrator who is a thinly disguised representation of the author,
poet, or playwright creating a work. Some scholars suggest that J. Alfred Prufrock is an alter ego for T. S. Eliot in "The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," or that
the wizard Prospero giving up his magic in The Tempest is an alter ego
of Shakespeare saying farewell to the magic of the stage. Contrast with persona.
AMBIGUITY: In common conversation, ambiguity is a negative term
applied to a vague or equivocal expression when precision would be more useful.
Sometimes, however, intentional ambiguity in literature can be a powerful
device, leaving something undetermined in order to open up multiple possible
meanings. When we refer to literary ambiguity, we refer to any wording, action,
or symbol that can be read in divergent ways. As William Empson
put it, ambiguity is "any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room
for alternative reactions to the same piece of language" (qtd. in Deutsch 11).
ANACHRONISM: Placing an event, person, item, or
verbal expression in the wrong historical period. In Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar, Shakespeare writes the following lines:
Brutus: Peace!
Count the clock.
Cassius: The clock has stricken three (Act II, scene i,
lines 193-94).
Of course, there
were no household clocks during Roman times, no more than there were Blu-Ray disk players! The reference is an anachronism,
either accidental or intentional. Elizabethan theater
often intentionally used anachronism in its costuming, a tradition that
survives today when Shakespeare's plays are performed in biker garb or in
Victorian frippery. Indeed, from surviving illustrations, the acting companies
in Elizabethan England appeared to deliberately create anachronisms in their
costumes. Some actors would dress in current Elizabethan garb, others in garb
that was a few decades out of date, and others wore pseudo-historical costumes
from past-centuries--all within a single scene or play.
ANAGNORISIS:
(Greek for "recognition"): A term used by Aristotle in the Poetics
to describe the moment of tragic recognition in which the protagonist realizes
some important fact or insight, especially a truth about himself, human nature,
or his situation. Aristotle argues that the ideal moment for anagnorisis in a tragedy is the moment of peripeteia, the reversal of fortune. Critics often
claim that the moment of tragic recognition is found within a single line of
text, in which the tragic hero admits to his lack of insight or asserts the new
truth he recognizes. This passage is often called the "line of tragic
recognition."
ANTICLIMAX (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: "Usama Bin Laden: Wanted for Crimes of War, Terrorism,
Murder, Conspiracy, and Nefarious Parking Practices."
ANTIHERO: A protagonist
who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a traditional hero. While the
traditional hero may be dashing, strong, brave, resourceful, or handsome, the
antihero may be incompetent, unlucky, clumsy, dumb, ugly, or clownish. Examples
here might include the senile protagonist of Cervantes' Don Quixote or
the girlish knight Sir Thopas from Chaucer's
"Sir Thopas." In the case of the Byronic
and Miltonic antihero, the antihero is a romanticized but wicked character
who defies authority, and becomes paradoxically ennobled by his peculiar
rejection of virtue. In this sense,
ARCHETYPE: An original model or pattern from which other later
copies are made, especially a character, an action, or situation that seems to
represent common patterns of human life. Often, archetypes include a symbol, a
theme, a setting, or a character that some critics think have a common meaning
in an entire culture, or even the entire human race. These images have
particular emotional resonance and power. Archetypes recur in different times
and places in myth, literature, folklore, fairy tales, dreams, artwork, and
religious rituals. Using the comparative anthropological work of Sir James
Frazer's The Golden Bough, the psychologist Carl Jung theorized that
the archetype originates in the collective
unconscious of mankind, i.e., the shared experiences of a race or
culture, such as birth, death, love, family life, and struggles to survive and
grow up. These would be expressed in the subconscious of an individual who
would recreate them in myths, dreams, and literature. Examples of archetypes
found cross-culturally include the following:
(1) Recurring
symbolic situations (such as the orphaned prince or the lost
chieftain's son raised ignorant of his heritage until he is rediscovered by his
parents, or the damsel in distress rescued from a hideous monster by a handsome
young man who later marries the girl. Also, the long journey, the difficult
quest or search, the catalog of difficult tasks, the
pursuit of revenge, the descent
into the underworld, redemptive rituals, fertility rites, the
great flood, the End of the World),
(2) Recurring
themes (such as the Faustian
bargain; pride preceding a fall; the inevitable nature of death,
fate, or punishment; blindness; madness; taboos such as forbidden love,
patricide, or incest),
(3) Recurring
characters (such as witches or ugly crones who cannibalize
children, lame blacksmiths of preternatural skill, womanizing Don Juans, the hunted man, the femme fatale, the snob,
the social climber, the wise old man as mentor or teacher, star-crossed lovers;
the caring mother-figure, the helpless little old lady, the stern
father-figure, the guilt-ridden figure searching for redemption, the braggart,
the young star-crossed lovers, the bully, the villain in black, the oracle or
prophet, the mad scientist, the underdog who emerges victorious, the mourning
widow or women in lamentation),
(4) Symbolic
colors (green as a symbol for life, vegetation, or summer; blue as
a symbol for water or tranquility; white or black as a symbol of purity; or red
as a symbol of blood, fire, or passion) and so on.
(5) Recurring
images (such as blood, water, pregnancy, ashes, cleanness,
dirtiness, caverns, phallic
symbols, yonic symbols, the ruined tower, the rose or
lotus, the lion, the snake, the eagle, the hanged man, the dying god that rises
again, the feast or banquet, the fall from a great height).
The
study of these archetypes in literature is known as archetypal
criticism or mythic criticism. Archetypes are
also called universal symbols. Contrast with private
symbol.
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
AUDIENCE: The person(s)
reading a text, listening to a speaker, or observing a performance.
AUTHORIAL
VOICE: The voices or speakers used by
authors when they seemingly speak for themselves in a book. (In poetry, this
might be called a poetic
speaker). The use of this term makes it clear in critical discussion
that the narration or presentation of a story is not necessarily to be
identified with the biographical and historical author. Instead, the authorial
voice may be another fiction created by the author. It is often considered poor
form for a modern literary critic to equate the authorial voice with the
historical author, but this practice was common in the nineteenth century.
However, twentieth-century critics have pointed out that often a writer will
assume a false persona of attitudes or beliefs when she writes, or that
the authorial voice will speak of so-called biographical details that cannot
possibly be equated with the author herself. In the early twentieth-century,
New Critics also pointed out that linking the authorial voice with the
biographical author often unfairly limited the possible interpretations of a
poem or narrative. Finally, many writers have enjoyed writing in the first
person and creating unreliable narrators--speakers who tell the story
but who obviously miss the significance of the tale they tell, or who fail to
connect important events together when the reader does. Because of these
reasons, it is often considered naive to assume that the authorial voice is a
"real" representation of the historical author.
Famous
instances in which the authorial voice diverges radically from the biographical
author include the authorial voice in the mock-epic Don Juan (here, the
authorial voice appears as a crusty, jaded, older man commenting on the sordid
passions of youth, while the author Lord Byron was himself a young man) and the
authorial narrator of Cervante's Don Quixote
(who attests that the main character Don Quixote is quite mad, and despises his
lunacy even while "accidentally" unveiling the hero's idealism as a
critique of the modern world's fixation with factual reality).
Examples
of unreliable narrators include the narrator of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
(the speaker, a pilgrim named Geoffrey, appears to be a dumbed-down
caricature of the author Geoffrey Chaucer, but one who has little skill at
poetry and often appears to express admiration for character-traits that the
larger rhetoric of the poem clearly condemns). In a more modern example, the
mentally disabled character in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (who is
completely unable to interpret the events taking place around him) serves as an
unreliable narrator, as does Tom Hanks' character in the film Forest Gump.
See also poetic
speaker.
BIOGRAPHICAL
FALLACY: The error of believing,
as George Kane phrases it in Chaucer studies, that "speculative
lives" of narrators and characters "have some historical
necessity" (17), i.e., characters and events in the author's historical
life must have inspired, influenced, or been the source for any fictional
events or characters in the work, or that the narrative speaker in a literary
work must be synonymous with the author or poet's own voice and viewpoints. It
was very common in nineteenth-century scholarship, for instance, to assume that
Shakespeare's political or religious beliefs manifest in Prospero's words or
Hamlet's soliloquies. The truth is often more complex; several of Shakespeare's
characters in different plays express diametrically opposed viewpoints from
each other, so which ones (if any) can we safely declare represent the
playwright's personal perspectives? Even in cases where the narrator speaks in
the first person, or when a character in a poem has the exact same name as the
author, it proves impossible to prove that voice is identical with the author's
personal beliefs. For example, the voice of "Geoffrey" in The
Canterbury Tales appears to be ignorant of details that the historical
author Geoffrey Chaucer knew intimately, so his fictional character cannot be
equated safely with the historical author Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote the work.
Likewise, the voice speaking in the poem, "Daddy," by Sylvia Plath,
refers to multiple suicide attempts and a father's early death, and these two
details lure readers into equating that voice with the suicide attempts and
abusive father in the poet Sylvia Plath's own life--even though the age of the
father's death and the number of suicide attempts do not match Plath's age when
she attempted suicide or her total number of suicide attempts. Trying to make a direct connection here results in the biographical
fallacy.
BYRONIC HERO: An antihero
who is a romanticized but wicked character. Conventionally, the figure is a
young and attractive male with a bad reputation. He defies authority and
conventional morality, and becomes paradoxically ennobled by his peculiar
rejection of virtue. In this sense, Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost may
be considered sympathetically as an antihero, as are many of Lord Byron's
protagonists (hence the name). From American pop culture, the icon of James
Dean in Rebel Without a Cause is a good
example. Other literary examples are Heathcliffe in
CANON
(from Grk kanon, meaning "reed" or "measuring
rod"): Canon has three general meanings. (1) An approved
or traditional collection of works. Originally, the term "canon"
applied to the list of books to be included as authentic biblical doctrine in
the Hebrew and Christian Bible, as opposed to apocryphal works
(works of dubious, mysterious or uncertain origin). Click here for more information. (2)
Today, literature students typically use the word canon to refer to
those works in anthologies that have come to be considered standard or
traditionally included in the classroom and published textbooks. In this sense,
"the canon" denotes the entire body of literature traditionally
thought to be suitable for admiration and study. (3) In
addition, the word canon refers to the writings of an author that
generally are accepted as genuine, such as the "Chaucer canon" or the
"Shakespeare canon." Chaucer's canon includes The Canterbury Tales,
for instance, but it does not include the apocryphal work, "The Plowman's Tale," which has been mistakenly attributed
to him in the past. Likewise, the Shakespearean canon has only two apocryphal
plays (Pericles and the Two Noble Kinsmen) that have gained
wide acceptance as authentic Shakespearean works beyond the thirty-six plays
contained in the First Folio. NB: Do not confuse the spelling of cannon
(the big gun) with canon (the official collection of literary works).
The
issue of canonical literature is a thorny one. Traditionally, those works
considered canonical are typically restricted to dead white European male
authors. Many modern critics and teachers argue that women, minorities, and
non-Western writers are left out of the literary canon unfairly. Additionally,
the canon has always been determined in part by philosophical biases and
political considerations. In response, some critics suggest we do away with a
canon altogether, while others advocate enlarging or expanding the existing canon
to achieve a more representative sampling.
CATASTROPHE:
The "turning downward" of the plot in a classical tragedy. By
tradition, the catastrophe occurs in the fourth act of the play after the
climax. (See tragedy.)
Freytag's pyramid
illustrates visually the normal charting of the catastrophe in a plotline.
CATHARSIS: An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or
spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to
Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic
artistic work. 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).
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). The main character of a work of
a fiction is typically called the protagonist;
the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends (if there is
one), is the antagonist.
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.
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.
CHRONOLOGY
(Greek: "logic of time"): The order in which events happen,
especially when emphasizing a cause-effect relationship in history or in a
narrative.
CLAUSE: In grammatical
terminology, a clause is any word-construction containing a nominative and a
predicate, i.e., a subject "doing" a verb. The term clause
contrasts with the term phrase. A phrase might contain nouns as
appositives or objects, and it might contain verb-like words in the form of
participles or gerunds, but it crucially lacks a subject "doing" a
verb. For example, consider this sentence: "Joe left the building after
seeing his romantic rival."
Clause: Joe left the building
Phrase: after seeing his romantic rival
If
the clause could stand by itself as a complete sentence, it is known as an independent
clause. If the clause cannot stand by itself as a complete sentence
(typically because it begins with a subordinating conjunction), it is said to
be a dependent clause.
CLIFFHANGER:
A melodramatic narrative (especially in films, magazines, or serially published
novels) in which each section "ends" at a suspenseful or dramatic
moment, ensuring that the audience will watch the next film or read the next installment to find out what happens. The term comes from
the common 1930's film-endings in which the main characters are literally left
hanging on the edge of a cliff until the story resumes. The term cliffhanger has more loosely been applied to any situation,
event, or contest in which the outcome remains uncertain until the last moment
possible.
CLIMAX, LITERARY (From Greek word for
"ladder"): The moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative
poem at which the crisis 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.
CLOSE
CLOSURE
(Latin clausura, "a closing"):
Closure has two common meanings. First, it means a sense of completion or
finality at the conclusion of play or narrative work--especially a feeling in
the audience that all the problems have been resolved satisfactorily.
Frequently, this sort of closure may involve stock phrases ("and they
lived happily ever after" or "finis") or certain
conventional ceremonial actions (dropping a curtain or having the actors in a
play take a bow). The narrative may reveal the solution of the primary
problem(s) driving the plot, the death of a major character (especially the
antagonist, the protagonist's romantic interest or even the protagonist
herself), or careful denouement. An example of extended denouement
as closure occurs in George Eliot's Middlemarch, in which the author
carefully explains what happened in later years to each character in the novel.
Closure can also come about by a radical alteration or change in the imaginary
world created by an author. For instance, in J. R. R. Tolkien's The
Lord of the Rings, much of the closure to the saga comes from the departure
of the elves and wizards, who sail across the sea, leaving the world of human
men and women forever, an act which apparently causes magic to fade.
Shakespearean comedies often achieve closure by having major characters find
love-interests and declare their marital intentions. Other more experimental
forms of literature and poetry may achieve closure by "circular
structure," in which the poem or story ends by coming back to the
narrative's original starting spot, or by returning a similar situation to what
was found at the beginning of the tale. See discussion under denouement.
Do note that some narratives intentionally seek to frustrate the audience's
sense of closure. Examples of literature that reject conventions of closure
include cliffhanger serials (see above), which reject
normal closure in an attempt to gain returning audiences. Many postmodern
narratives influenced by existential philosophy, on the other hand, reject
closure as too "simplistic" and "artificial" in comparison
with the complexities of human living.
Secondly,
some critics use the term "closure" as a derogatory term to imply the
reduction of a work's meanings to a single and complete sense that excludes the
claims of other interpretations. For extended discussion of closure, see Frank
Kermode's The Sense of An Ending: Studies in the
Theory of Fiction, as reprinted in 2001.
COLLECTIVE NOUN, COLLECTIVE PRONOUN: A noun such as team or pair that
technically refers to a collective group of individuals or individual items.
What makes them tricky in grammar? They can be singular or plural (e.g., one
team, two teams, or one pair, two pairs.) Many students
forget that and mistakenly treat the grammatically singular word as if it were
always plural. Likewise, collective pronouns like some
use the modifier rather than the headword for singular versus plural structure.
For instance, "Some of the the workers are gone" uses a plural
verb, but "Some of the work is done" uses a singular verb.
COLLOQUIALISM: A word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed
speech, but rarely found in formal writing.
COLONIALISM: The term refers
broadly and generally to the habit of powerful civilizations to
"colonize" less powerful ones. On the obvious level, this process can
take the form of a literal geographic occupation, outright enslavement, religious conversion at gun-point, or forced assimilation of
native peoples. On a more subtle level, this process can take the form of bureucratic policy that incidentally or indirectly leads to
the extinction of a minority's language or culture, economic exploitation of
cheap labor, and globalistic
erasure of cultural differences. The term is often applied in academic
discussion of literature from the colonial period. We can see the concerns of
colonialism and imperial ambition in the works of George Orwell's
"Shooting an Elephant," in Rudyard Kipling's fictional tales about
COMEDY (from Greek: komos,
"songs of merrimakers"): In the original
meaning of the word, comedy referred to a genre
of drama during the Dionysia festivals of ancient
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 seriousness or tragedy of the action. Macbeth contains
Shakespeare's most famous example of comic relief in the form of a drunken
porter.
CONFLICT: The opposition between two characters (such as a
protagonist and an antagonist), 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. Conflict may also be completely internal, such as the
protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies (drug addiction,
self-destructive behavior, 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. Examples of narratives driven mainly by conflicts between the
protagonist and nature include Jack London's "To Build a Fire" (in
which the Californian struggles to save himself from freezing to death in
Alaska) and Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" (in which shipwrecked men
in a lifeboat struggle to stay alive and get to shore). Examples of narratives
driven by conflicts between a protagonist and an antagonist include Mallory's Le
Morte D'arthur, in
which King Arthur faces off against his evil son Mordred,
each representing civilization and barbarism respectively. Examples of
narratives driven by internal struggles include Daniel Scott Keyes'
"Flowers for Algernon," in which the hero struggles with the loss of
his own intelligence to congenital mental retardation, and Edgar Allan Poe's
"The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the protagonist ends up struggling
with his own guilt after committing a murder. In complex works of literature,
multiple conflicts may occur at once. For instance, in Shakespeare's Othello,
one level of conflict is the unseen struggle between Othello and the
machinations of Iago, who seeks to destroy him.
Another level of conflict is Othello's struggle with his own jealous
insecurities and his suspicions that Desdemona is cheating on him.
CONVENTION: A common feature that has become traditional or
expected within a specific genre
(category) of literature or film. In Harlequin romances, it is conventional to
focus on a male and female character who struggle through misunderstandings and
difficulties until they fall in love. In western films of the early
twentieth-century, for instance, it has been conventional for protagonists to
wear white hats and antagonists to wear black hats. The wandering knight-errant who travels from place to place, seeking
adventure while suffering from the effects of hunger and the elements, is a
convention in medieval romances. It is a convention for an English sonnet
to have fourteen lines with a specific rhyme scheme, abab, cdcd, efef, gg, and so on. The use of a chorus
and the unities
are dramatic conventions of Greek tragedy, while, the aside,
and the soliloquy
are conventions in Elizabethan tragedy. Conventions are often referred to as
poetic, literary, or dramatic, depending upon whether the convention appears in
a poem, short story or novel, or a play.
EPISODIC:
Occurring in a long string of short, individual scenes, stories, or sections,
rather than focusing on the sustained development of a single plot. These
episodes may be unrelated to each other directly, or they may be loosely
connected together in terms of overall events. Picaresque
narratives, medieval
romances, and collections like 1001 Arabian Nights are
often said to be episodic.
EPISTOLARY: Taking the
form of a letter, or actually consisting of a letter written to another. For
instance, several books in the New Testament written by
EUCATASTROPHE (Grk. eu+catastrophe,
"happy or fortunate ending"): As Christopher Garbowski
describes in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia,
Tolkien coined this term in his Andrew Lang Lecture entitled "On
Fairy-stories." It applies to a final resolution in fantasy literature
that evokes a sense of beauty, hope, and wonder in readers. Tolkien uses it as
an antonym for the catastrophe
that traditionally ends a tragedy.
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 unartful, especially
when creative writers contrast showing (revelation through details)
and telling (exposition). For example, a writer might use exposition
by writing, "Susan was
angry when she left the house and climbed into her car outside." That sentence is telling the reader
about Susan, i.e., using exposition. In contrast, the writer might change this
to the following version. "Red-faced with nostrils flaring, Susan slammed the door and
stomped over to her car outside."
Now, the writer is showing Susan's anger, rather than using exposition
to tell the audience she's angry.
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.
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.
FRAME
NARRATIVE: The result of inserting
one or more small stories within the body of a larger story that encompasses
the smaller ones. Often this term is used interchangeably with both the
literary technique and the larger story itself that contains the smaller ones,
which are called pericopes, "framed narratives" or
"embedded narratives." The most famous example is Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales, in which the overarching frame narrative is the story of a band of
pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in
FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE:
A style of third-person narration that mingles within it traits from
first-person narration, often shifting pronouns, adverbs, tense, and
grammatical mode. The term comes from the French "style indirect libre," and Flaubert's use of this technique in
French literature strongly influenced English-speaking authors like James
Joyce. M. H. Abrams provides a hypothetical example for illustrative purposes
in A Glossary of Literary Terms:
Thus, a direct, "He thought, 'I will see her home now, and
may then stop at my mother's," might shift, in an indirect representation,
to: "He would see her home then, and might afterward stop at his
mother's" (Abrams 169).
Though
most scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature emphasize
Flaubert's contribution, the technique does predate him. Chaucer himself uses
it in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, where the narrator
Geoffrey describes the Monk's attitude to monastic rules [I (A) 183-88], and
moves from direct quotation of dialogue into a paraphrased list of the Monk's
main arguments presented as if the narrator were the one speaking.
IDEAL READER: The imaginary audience who
would, ideally, understand every phrase, word, and allusion in a literary work,
and who would completely understand the literary experience an author presents,
and then responds emotionally as the writer wished.
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." In the same way, the Spanish phrase,
"Me gustan los arboles,"
is usually translated as, "I like the trees," but if we were to pull
the phrase apart and read it word for word, it would make no sense in
analytical English (i.e., "To me pleases the trees").
IMPLIED AUDIENCE: The "you" a writer or poet refers to or implies
when creating a dramatic
monologue. This
implied audience might be (but is not necessarily) the reader of the poem, or
it might be the vague outline or suggestion of an extra character who is not described or detailed explicitly in the text
itself. Instead, the reader gradually learns who the speaker addresses by
garnering clues from the words of the speaker. For instance, Browning's "Porphyria's
Lover" and Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" raise some intriguing
questions. To whom are these speakers confessing their murders? Likewise, Browning's "My Last Duchess" contains an implied
audience who appears to be a messenger or diplomat sent to make marriage
arrangements between the poem's speaker and some unknown young girl. From
context, the speaker is taking this messenger on a tour of his castle and
showing off portraits and paintings. Likewise, in T. S. Eliot's "The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the
speaker begins by saying, "Let us go then, you and I . . ." The
"you" might be the actual reader of the poem, or it might be an
implied audience (some unknown dinner companion) accompanying Prufrock, or it might be that the implied audience is the
speaker himself; i.e., Prufrock is talking to
himself, trying to build up his courage to make a declaration of love. Contrast
with audience
and ideal
reader. This term is often used interchangeably with internal
audience.
IN
MEDIAS RES (Latin: "In the
middle[s] of things"): The classical tradition of opening an epic
not in the chronological point at which the sequence of events would start, but
rather at the midway point of the story. Later on in the narrative, the hero
will recount verbally to others what events took place earlier. Usually in
medias res is a technique used to heighten dramatic tension or to create a
sense of mystery. This term is the opposite of the
phrase ab ovo, when a story
begins in the beginning and then proceeds in a strictly chronological manner
without using the characters' dialogue, flashbacks, or memories. (Contrast with
flashback,
in which the past events are experienced as a memory, and anastrophe,
in which the entire story is cut into chronological pieces and experienced in a
seemingly random or inverted pattern.)
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.
INTERNAL AUDIENCE: An imaginary listener(s) or audience to whom a character speaks in a
poem or story. For example, the duke speaking in Browning's
"My Last Duchess" appears to be addressing the reader as if the
reader were an individual walking with him through his estate admiring a piece
of art. There are suggestions that this listener, whom the duke addresses,
might be an ambassador or diplomat sent to arrange a marriage between the
widower duke and a young girl of noble birth. This term is often used
interchangeably with implied
audience.
IRONY:
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.
See also antithesis,
bathos,
foil, mirror
passage, and mirror
scene.
LEIT-MOTIF (also spelled leitmotiv): From the German
term for "lead motif," a leit-motif
originally was coined by Hans von Wolzuegen to
designate a musical theme associated with a particular object, character, or
emotion. For instance, the ominous music in Jaws plays whenever the
shark is approaching. That particular score is the leit-motif
for the shark. Other examples are found in musical compositions such as
"Peter and the Wolf" and many Wagnerian operas. In literature,
critics have adapted the term leit-motif
to refer to an object, animal, phrase, or other thing loosely associated with a
character, a setting, or event. For instance, the color green is a leit-motif associated with Sir Bercilak in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, thus
the appearance of the Green Chapel and a green girdle should cause the reader
to recall and connect these places and items with the Green Knight. In
Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, the moon is a leit-motif
associated with the fairy court, and it appears again in the stage scenery and
stage discussion of Bottom's play about Pyramis and Thisbe. The leit-motif
is not necessarily a symbol (though it can be). Rather, it is a recurring
device loosely linked with a character, setting, or event. It gives the
audience a "heads-up" by calling attention to itself and suggesting
that its appearance is somehow connected with its appearance in other parts of
the narrative. Contrast with theme
and motif,
below.
MELODRAMA: 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, 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.
METAFICTION: Fiction in which the subject of the story is
the act or art of storytelling of itself, especially when such material breaks
up the illusion of "reality" in a work. An example is John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, in which
the author interrupts his own narative to insert
himself as a character in the work. Claiming not to like the ending to the
tale, the author sets his watch back ten minutes, and the storyline backs up
ten minutes so an alternative ending can unfold. The act reminds us that the
passionate love affair we are so involved in as
readers is a fictional creation of an author at that point when we are most
likely to have forgotten that artificiality because of our involvement. Other
examples include Chaucer's narrator in the Canterbury Tales, in which
the pilgrim tells the reader to "turn the leaf [page] and choose another
tale" if the audience doesn't like naughty stories like the Miller's tale.
This command breaks the illusion that Geoffrey is a real person on pilgrimage,
calling attention to the fictional qualities of The Canterbury Tales
as a physical artifact--a book held in the readers'
hands. Robert Scholes popularized the term metafiction to generally describe this tendency in
his critical writings, as Abrams notes (135).
MOTIF: A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of
incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula, which appears frequently in
works of literature. For instance, the "loathly
lady" who turns out to be a beautiful princess is a common
motif in folklore, and the man fatally bewitched by a fairy lady is a common
folkloric motif appearing in Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci." In medieval Latin
lyrics, the "Ubi sunt?"
[where are . . .?] motif
is common, in which a speaker mourns the lost past by repeatedly asking, what
happened to the good-old days? ("Where are the snows of yesteryear?"
asks Francois Villon.) The motif of the "beheading
game" is common in Celtic myth, and so on. Frequently,
critics use the word motif interchangeably with theme
and leit-motif. See also folkloric
motif.
NARRATION, NARRATIVE:
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. A narrative
is likewise the story or account itself. Some narrations are reportorial and
historical, such as biographies, autobiographies, news stories, and historical
accounts. In narrative fiction common to literature, the narrative is usually
creative and imaginative rather than strictly factual, as evidenced in fairy
tales, legends, novels, novelettes, short stories, and so on. However, the fact
that a fictional narrative is an imaginary construct does not necessarily mean
it isn't concerned with imparting some sort of truth to the reader, as
evidenced in exempla,
fables,
anecdotes,
and other sorts of narrative. The narrative can begin ab ovo
(from the start and work its way to the conclusion), or it can begin in
medias res (in the middle of the action, then recount earlier
events by the character's dialogue, memories, or flashbacks). See exemplum
and fable.
NARRATOR: The "voice" that speaks or tells a story.
Some stories are written in a first-person point of view, in which the
narrator's voice is that of the point-of-view character. For instance, in The
Adventures of Huck Finn, the narrator's voice is the voice of the main
character, Huck Finn. It is clear that the historical author, Mark Twain, is
creating a fictional voice to be the narrator and tell the story--complete with
incorrect grammar, colloquialisms, and youthful perspective. In other stories,
such as those told in the third-person point of view, scholars use the term narrator
to describe the authorial voice set forth, the voice "telling the story to
us." For instance, Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist presents a
narrative in which the storyteller stands outside the action described. He is
not a character who interacts with other characters in terms of plot. However,
this fictionalized storyteller occasionally intrudes upon the story to offer
commentary to the reader, make suggestions, or render a judgment about what
takes place in the tale. It is tempting to equate the words and sentiments of
such a narrator with the opinions of the historical author himself. However, it
is often more useful to separate this authorial voice from the voice of the historical
author. For further discussion, see authorial
voice, unreliable
narrator, and point
of view.
NARRATOR,
UNRELIABLE: An unreliable narrator is
a storyteller who "misses the point" of the events or things he
describes in a story, who plainly misinterprets the motives or actions of
characters, or who fails to see the connections between events in the story.
The author herself, of course, must plainly understand the connections, because
she presents the material to the readers in such a way that readers can see
what the narrator overlooks. This device is sometimes used for purposes of
irony or humor. See discussion under authorial
voice.
ORGANIC UNITY:
An idea common to Romantic poetry and influential up through the time of the
New Critics in the twentieth century, the theory of organic unity suggests all
elements of a good literary work are interdependent upon each other to create
an emotional or intellectual whole. If any one part of the art is
removed--whether it is a character, an action, a speech, a description, or
authorial observation--the entire work diminishes in potency as a result. The
idea also suggests that the growth or development of a piece of good
literature--from its beginning to its end--occurs naturally according to an
understandable sequence. That sequence may be chronological, logical, or
otherwise step-by-step in some productive manner.
PARAPHRASE: A brief restatement in one's own words of all or part of a
literary or critical work, as opposed to quotation, in which one reproduces all
or part of a literary or critical work word-for-word, exactly.
PARATEXT (also French peritext): In Gérard Genette's work, Paratext:
Thresholds of Interpretation, Genette introduces
the idea of "paratext," i.e., anything
external to the text itself that influences the way we read a text. These
"paratexts" can be almost infinite in
number, but they might include a list of other works the author has published on
the front cover of a book, the gender of the author as indicated by his or her
name, reviews written about the book, and editorial commentary about the work.
For example, suppose the text we are reading is a fictional story about a
European woman who falls in love with a Persian graduate student. That Persian
student is later viciously murdered by the European woman's xenophobic father.
If we see the author's name is "Susan Jones" we might interpret the
text differently than if we saw the author's name was "Achmed
bin Jaffah," for instance. If the same author
wrote a number of murder mysteries, we might be especially prone to read this
new text as influenced by that early genre work, or even expect the current
text to be (rightly or wrongly) yet another murder mystery. If we read a review
calling attention to the theme of lust in a work, we might experience the book
differently than if we had read a different review focusing on the theme of
intolerance. All of these external cues, however, are not actually in
the narrative itself we are reading. Thus, they are paratextual.
A New Critic from the 1930s would probably argue that all paratexts
are irrelevant to determining the meaning of literary art, and the paratextual should be ignored accordingly. Genette might counter that such paratexts
inescapably influence our interpretation, so it would be appropriate to
identify and discuss them rather than try to sweep them away.
PARODY (Greek: "beside, subsidiary, or mock
song"): A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features
of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features. The
humorist achieves parody by exaggerating certain traits common to the work,
much as a caricaturist creates a humorous depiction of a person by magnifying
and calling attention to the person's most noticeable features. The term parody
is often used synonymously with the more general term spoof,
which makes fun of the general traits of a genre
rather than one particular work or author. Often the subject-matter of a parody
is comically inappropriate, such as using the elaborate, formal diction of an
epic to describe something trivial like washing socks or cleaning a dusty
attic.
Aristotle
attributes the first Greek parody to Hegemon of
Thasos in The Poetics, though other writings credit the playwright Hipponax with the first creation of theatrical parody.
Aristophanes makes use of parody in The Frogs (in which he mocks the
style of Euripides and Aeschylus). Plato also caricatures the style of various
writers in the Symposium. In the Middle Ages,
the first well-known English parody is Chaucer's "Sir Thopas,"
and Chaucer is himself the basis of parodies written by Alexander Pope and W.
W. Skeat. Cervantes creates a parody of medieval romance in Don Quixote.
Rabelais creates parodies of similar material in Gargantua
and Pantagruel. Erasmus parodies
medieval scholastic writings in Moriae
Encomium. In Shamela (1741), Henry
Fielding makes a parody of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela by turning
the virtuous serving girl into a spirited and sexually ambitious character who
merely uses coyness and false chasteness as a tool for snagging a husband. In Joseph
Andews (1742), Henry Fielding again parodies
Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, this time by replacing
PERIPETEIA
(Also spelled peripetea, Greek for
"sudden change"): The sudden reversal of fortune in a story, play, or
any narrative in which there is an observable change in direction. In tragedy,
this is often a change from stability and happiness toward the destruction or
downfall of the protagonist.
PERSONA (Plural, personae or personas; Latin,"mask"): An external representation of
oneself which might or might not accurately reflect one's inner self, or an
external representation of oneself that might be largely accurate, but involves
exaggerating certain characteristics and minimizing others. One of the most
famous personae is that of the speaker in Jonathan Swift's "A
Modest Proposal." Here, the Irish author Swift, outraged over
POINT OF VIEW:
The way a story gets told and who tells it. It is the method of narration that
determines the position, or angle of vision, from which the story unfolds.
Point of view governs the reader's access to the story. Many narratives appear
in the first person (the narrator speaks as "I" and the narrator
is a character in the story who may or may not influence events within it).
Another common type of narrative is the third-person narrative (the
narrator seems to be someone standing outside the story who
refers to all the characters by name or as he, she, they,
and so on). When the narrator reports speech and action, but never comments on
the thoughts of other characters, it is the dramatic third person point of
view or objective point of view. The third-person narrator can
be omniscient--a narrator who knows everything that needs to be known
about the agents and events in the story, and is free to move at will in time
and place, and who has privileged access to a character's thoughts, feelings,
and motives. The narrator can also be limited--a narrator who is
confined to what is experienced, thought, or felt by a single character, or at
most a limited number of characters. Finally, there is the unreliable
narrator (a narrator who describes events in the story, but seems to make
obvious mistakes or misinterpretations that may be apparent to a careful
reader). Unreliable narration often serves to characterize the narrator as
someone foolish or unobservant. See also authorial
voice.
REALISM: An
elastic and ambiguous term with two meanings. (1) First, it refers generally to
any artistic or literary portrayal of life in a faithful, accurate manner,
unclouded by false ideals, literary conventions, or misplaced aesthetic glorification
and beautification of the world. It is a theory or tendency in writing to
depict events in human life in a matter-of-fact, straightforward manner. It is
an attempt to reflect life "as it actually is"--a concept in some
ways similar to what the Greeks would call mimesis.
Typically, "realism" involves careful description of everyday life,
"warts and all," often the lives of middle and lower class characters
in the case of socialist realism. In general, realism seeks to avoid
supernatural, transcendental, or surreal events. It tends to focus as much on
the everyday, the mundane, and the normal as events that are extraordinary,
exceptional, or extreme. As J. A. Cuddon
notes, realism "more crudely [. . .] suggests jackets off,
sleeves rolled up, 'no nonsense'" attitudes toward literary art (773).
(2)
Secondly and more specifically, realism refers to a literary movement in
Note
that the earlier literary movement known as naturalism
is often used as a precursor and antonym for realism, even
though both literary movements share many similarities. It is sometimes
difficult to distinguish between naturalism and realism. Some writers are classified
as part of both movements. Personally, I distinguish between them by noting how
naturalism goes out of its way to obsessively and grimly point out the
limitations of human potential. Realism shares this concern, but seems less
obsessed with this point. My distinction, however, is one not generally
accepted by literary critics. Often, writers like Thomas Hardy are said to be
both naturalistic and realistic, for instance.
Examining
the wide variety of writers called "realists" at one time or another shows
how flexible the term is. These writers include such diverse artists as Mark
Twain, Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Tolstoy, Gogol, Gorki,
William Howells, William Burroughs, Thomas Hardy, and Norman Mailer. Dramatists
normally considered realists include Henrik Ibsen,
George Bernard Shaw, and Strindberg.
RHETORIC: The art of persuasive argument through writing or
speech--the art of eloquence and charismatic language.
ROUND
CHARACTER: A round
character is depicted with such psychological depth and detail that he
or she seems like a "real" person. The round character contrasts with
the flat
character, a character who serves a specific or minor literary function
in a text, and who may be a stock
character or simplified stereotype. If the round character changes or
evolves over the course of a narrative or appears to have the capacity for such
change, the character is also dynamic.
Typically, a short story has one round character and several flat ones.
However, in longer novels and plays, there may be many round characters. The
terms flat and round were first coined by the novelist E. M.
Forster in his study, Aspects of the Novel.
SATIRE: An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice
in the form of scathing humor, 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 behavior was and then correct that tendency in themselves.
The tradition of satire continues today. Popular cartoons such as The
Simpsons and televised comedies like The Daily Show make use of
it in modern media. Conventionally, formal satire involves a
direct, first-person-address, either to the audience or to a listener mentioned
within the work. An example of formal satire is Alexander Pope's Moral
Essays. Indirect satire conventionally employs the form
of a fictional narrative--such as Byron's Don Juan or Swift's Gulliver's
Travels. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and similar tools are almost
always used in satire. Horatian
satire tends to focus lightly on laughter and ridicule, but it
maintains a playful tone. Generally, the tone is sympathetic and good humored, somewhat tolerant of imperfection and folly even
while expressing amusement at it. The name comes from the Roman poet Horace (65
BCE-8 CE), who preferred to ridicule human folly in general rather than condemn
specific persons. In contrast, Juvenalian
satire also uses withering invective, insults, and a slashing attack.
The name comes from the Roman poet Juvenal (60-140 CE), who frequently employed
the device, but the label is applied to British writers such as Swift and Pope
as well.
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. For
example, the general setting of Joyce's "The Dead," is a quay named
Usher's Island, west of central
SPEECH ACT THEORY: An idea set forth by J. L. Austin's How
to Do Things with Words, which argues that language is often a mode of
action rather than a means of communication or conveying information.
Language-use that conveys information is called constative,
and constative sentences by their very nature are
either true or false in the sense that they are accurate or inaccurate.
Language-use that serves as a mode of action is called performative.
Performative language causes something to happen
merely by making assertion. Examples include the "I do" statement in
a wedding ceremony. Here, the act of making the assertion is the same as the
action itself. Other examples include the following ones:
In these
examples above, the act of making the assertion is the same as performing
the act. Thus, these are examples of performative
language.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Writing in which a character's perceptions,
thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without
regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. Often such writing makes no distinction between
various levels of reality--such as dreams, memories, imaginative thoughts or
real sensory perception. William James coined the phrase "stream of consciousness"
in his Principles of Psychology (1890). The technique has been used by
several authors and poets: Katherine Anne Porter, Dorothy Richardson, James
Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner.
Some critics treat the interior
monologue as a subset
of the more general category, stream of consciousness. Although interior
monologues by earlier writers share some similarities with stream of
consciousness, the first clear appearance is in Edouard
Dujardin's Les lauriers sont coupés (The
Laurels Have Been Cut, 1888). Perhaps the most famous example is the stream
of consciousness section in James Joyce's Ulysses, which climaxes in a
forty-odd page interior monologue of Molly Bloom, an extended passage with only
one punctuation mark. Cf. interior
monologue.
SUBPLOT: A minor or subordinate secondary plot, often
involving a deuteragonist's struggles, which takes place
simultaneously with a larger plot, usually involving the protagonist.
The subplot often echoes or comments upon the direct plot either directly or
obliquely. Sometimes two opening subplots merge into a single storyline later
in a play or narrative.
SYNTAX (from
Greek syntaxis): As David Smith puts it,
"the orderly arrangement of words into sentences to express ideas,"
i.e., the standard word order and sentence structure of a language, as opposed to
diction
(the actual choice of words) or content (the meaning of
individual words). Standard English syntax prefers a Subject-Verb-Object pattern, but poets may tweak syntax to achieve
rhetorical or poetic effects. Intentionally disrupting word order for a poetic
effect is called anastrophe.
Syntax is often distinguished from morphology and grammar. Note that syntax is
what allows us to produce sequential grammatical units such as phrases,
clauses, and sentences. See also analytic
language and synthetic
language.
TEXT: In literary
criticism, formalist critics use the term text to refer to a single
work of literary art (such as a specific poem, essay, short
story). In formalist thinking, this text is an autonomous verbal object--i.e.,
it is self-enclosed and self-creating, and thus the critic need not necessarily
explicate it using the biography of the author, or the historical background of
its time-period, or other "extra-textual" details.
THEME: A central idea or statement that unifies and
controls an entire literary work. The theme can take the form of a brief and
meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life; it may be a single idea
such as "progress" (in many Victorian works), "order and
duty" (in many early Roman works), "seize-the-day" (in many late
Roman works), or "jealousy" (in Shakespeare's Othello). The
theme may also be a more complicated doctrine, such as
Note: The following definitions have been culled from Kip Wheeler’s extensive online dictionary of Literary Terms at <http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms.html>