Glossary of Literary Terms
Glossary of Literary Terms
Glossary of Literary Terms
When writing a literary analysis or a poetic explication, the student’s job is to ask how the writer says what
he or she is saying and why. Examining the how and why is analysis and the process involves reading
closely to see which ‘tools’ the writer has purposely employed to develop a specific effect or meaning.
Allegory – A narrative in which the characters, actions, and sometimes the setting, symbolically represent
an idea, moral, or political or religious principles.
Examples: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Christ’s parables of the prodigal son, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Aesop’s beast
fables or Orwell’s Animal Farm, the X-Men comics (an allegory for the Civil Rights Movement)
Alliteration – Repetition of the same consonant sounds in two or more words (usually at the beginning of
the words, but sometimes on the stressed syllables)
Uses: adds music to a line, makes a phrase memorable or distinctive, or reflects the content of the verse (cf.
onomatopoeia).
Example: "Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, / He bravely breach'd his boiling bloody breast."
(Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V.i.146-147)
Allusion – A direct or indirect reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature.
Allusions imply reading and cultural experiences shared by the writer and the reader, functioning as a kind
of shorthand whereby the recalling of something outside the text supplies an emotional or intellectual
context. Use the verb form, allude.
Example: At the outset of his “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. says, “Five score years ago,” an allusion
to Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” which begins “Four score and seven years ago.” King alludes to Lincoln in order to
draw a parallel between the historic moment of emancipation and his own time during the Civil Rights Movement.
Antithesis – a balanced statement; a figure of speech in which words and phrases with opposite meanings
are balanced against each other.
Example: “To err is human, to forgive, divine” (Pope, “An Essay On Criticism”).
Example: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” (Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities,)
Apostrophe – to turn away from the general audience of a work to address a specific group, person, or
thing (see Personification), including those that are absent, dead, or imaginary. Often, the address is
preceded by O or Oh.
Example: “For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel / Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III.ii.180-181) Here, the speaker, Antony, is addressing a crowd, but briefly addresses the
gods mid-speech in an apostrophe.
Assonance – The repetition of vowel sounds in stressed syllables (see also Alliteration). Assonance differs
from rhyme in that rhyme is a similarity of vowel and consonant: "lake" and "fake" demonstrate rhyme,
"lake" and "fate” demonstrate assonance.
Caesura – A pause occurring in a line of poetry, either due to sense or to natural speech rhythm. A caesura
is usually accompanied by some form of punctuation. It is conventional to notate a caesura with the “double
pipe” sign: ||
Example: “How do I love thee? || Let me count the ways” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How Do I Love Thee?,” Sonnet
43)
Chiasmus - An inversion of the second of two parallel phrases (e.g. do not live to eat but eat to live). It is
named after the Greek letter chi (x), indicating a crisscross arrangement of terms. (e.g. we drive on the
parkway and park on the driveway).
Cliché – An expression that has lost its freshness or appeal due to overuse.
Examples: the writing is on the wall, as easy as pie, what goes around comes around, or turn over a new leaf
Climax – moment of greatest intensity or emotional tension as a narrative’s conflict is reached, usually
marks a turning point in the plot.
Example: In Star Wars: A New Hope, the climax is when Luke Skywalker, harnessing the Force with help from his
deceased mentor, is able to fly up to and shoot the exact point that destroys the Death Star, just as it is about to destroy
the rebel base.
Literary example?
Conceit – a figure of speech (such as an analogy, metaphor, hyperbole, or oxymoron) which sets up an
unusual, exaggerated, or elaborate parallel between two different things (for example, comparing one’s
beloved to a ship or planet. The comparison may be brief or may extend throughout an entire poem.
Example: In “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” John Donne includes an extended metaphor comparing the souls of
himself and his lover to a drafting compass: “If they be two, they are two so / As stiff twin compasses are two;” The
poem continues to build on this image until its conclusion.
Conflict – The struggle or tension within the plot between opposing forces.
Diction – A writer’s specific choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language, which
combine to create meaning. Discussions about diction consider why the writer uses this word rather than
any other word that might have the same literal meaning.
Drama – A literary genre usually in the form of a story or play that focuses on and resolves some universal
problem or situation.
Echo - the repetition of key words, sounds, syllables, lines or ideas for effect.
End-stop – a natural pause indicated by punctuation such as a period or comma at the end of a line.
Enjambment– when a sentence ‘steps over’ a line break into the next line without pause.
Epic – A long narrative poem about the deeds of a hero, often set in a past that is depicted as greater than
the present.
Epigram – Originally a brief poem, usually solemn, but now usually refers to a short poem with a cutting
remark at the end.
Figurative Language also called Figures of Speech – describe something as one thing when it is another;
it is the opposite of literal language.
Example: Shakespeare’s phrase “My love is a fever” (Sonnet 147) is figurative because love is not a high body
temperature. The phrase, rather, might describe the speaker’s emotion in an alternative way to express the degree of
feeling or the idea of being stricken with a condition.
Figurative language can be found in: allegory, apostrophe, conceit, hyperbole, irony, litotes, metonymy (and
synecdoche), oxymoron, paradox, personification, simile, and symbolism.
Foot – the basic unit of rhythm in poetry consisting of a group of two or three syllables. For example, a line
of poetry ten syllables long written in iambs (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) would
be iambic pentameter. Note that variation is important in poetry; therefore, the prevailing foot may be
spotted with different feet. A line of iambic poetry may begin with a trochee.
Iamb: U /
Trochee: / U
Anapest: U U /
Dactyl: / U U
Spondee: / /
Pyrrhic: U U
Free Verse – flowing lines, usually unrhymed, that vary in length and with no fixed meter.
Hyperbole – Exaggeration or overstatement used to emphasize a point rather than to be taken literally.
For example, consider this image of the flowers in William Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils:
Irony – a contrast between the intent and the literal meaning of words or action. Irony is not an unfortunate
coincidence; rather, it is a planned and purposeful tool used to emphasize an idea.
Dramatic irony shows how a character’s intentions have the opposite effect from what is desired.
o Example: in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Macbeth kills Duncan because he thinks it will lead to his happiness,
but in fact he loses everything that does make him happy.
Verbal irony says “what a beautiful day outside” when it is actually pouring.
Litotes – (pronounced lie-toe-teez) a type of understatement which uses a double negative as a form of
understatement.
Melodrama – A drama (play) which sets clearly “good guys” against obviously “bad guys” in scenes of
sensational action and suspense, but ends happily.
Metaphor – A figure of speech that draws implicit comparison between two unlike things, that is, without
using a word such as “like” or “as.”
Meter – the sound a poem makes based on regular or irregular patterns of syllables and stresses in each
line. Meter is measured in ‘feet’ per line of a poem, and the lines are measured as ‘versification.’ Figuring
out a poem’s meter can be a bit tricky, but usually a pattern emerges after you ‘scan’ a few lines and mark
the stressed and unstressed syllables and add up the ‘feet,’ or stresses. These patterns (or ‘scansion’) are
assigned names such as “iambic pentameter,” which means each lines has five ‘iambs’ (one unstressed +
one stressed syllable) for a total of ten beats per line. Certain forms of poetry prescribe a certain meter.
Sonnets, for example, are usually iambic pentameter. It’s helpful to scan a poem for meter for a few reasons.
For one, meter can help you figure out the form of a poem, which can give you clues about the writer and
his or her historical, social or cultural context; this can help you ask questions about the conventions and
expectations of the poem. Additionally, meter can help you figure out the overall ‘sound’ of the poem and
consider the pacing---how fast or how slow it moves and why. Further, meter might complement imagery.
For example, long deep-breathing lines followed by shorter lines might mimic waves crashing on a beach
and then receding.
Metonymy – a figure of speech in which a phrase or word is substituted for one which is closely related
to it.
Example: “The White House made an announcement today.” ‘The White House’ is used when what is literally meant is
the president and/or his cabinet members and staff, etc.
If someone says they are reading Dickens, they mean they are reading something written by the author.
Onomatopoeia – The use of words or passages that imitate sounds. Words like moo, sizzle, and zoom are
examples, but poets often use the rhythm of the lines and sound effects like alliteration and assonance to
achieve sound effects, as well.
Example: in Seamus Heaney’s poem “Mid-term Break,” the sound of the second line recalls the sound of bells clanging:
“I sat all morning in the college sick bay/ Counting bells knelling classes to a close.”
Oxymoron – A figure of speech, usually consisting of two words, which combines two contradictory terms
in a surprising and descriptive way.
Paradox – A statement that seems to be self-contradictory or even absurd, but is used to demonstrate a
truth.
Alexander Pope uses paradox when he suggests, in “An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” that a literary critic could “damn with
faint praise.”
“Cowards die many times before their deaths” Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II.ii.32
Personification – Figurative language in which inanimate objects or abstract concepts are given human
qualities.
Realism – representation of objects, actions, or social conditions as they really are. There is usually an
emphasis on the everyday, familiar, and an avoidance of idealization.
Repetition – using syllables, words, phrases, lines, or stanzas more than once. Repetition is often used to
unify both poetry and prose, and often serves to structure a literary work.
Sarcasm – An unsophisticated or heavy-handed form of verbal irony (see “irony” for further clarification).
Satire – A type of literary work which uses irony, sarcasm, wit, and ridicule to expose and criticize the
follies and vices of a person, custom, or institution. Famous examples in English literature include Jonathan
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Modern examples on television include The
Colbert Report and South Park, and in print and online is the satirical publication The Onion.
Simile – A figure of speech that draws an explicit comparison between two unlike things by using like, as,
than, or seems.
Example: “my love is like a red, red rose,” (Robert Burns “Red, Red Rose”)
Stanza – a unit of structure in a poem, consisting of a group of lines separated by blank space. Stanzas may
be thought of as the paragraphs of a poem.
Symbol/Symbolism – something that represents or stands for something else; in literature, a concrete image
can express an emotion or abstract idea because of symbolism.
Examples: a bulldog can symbolize tenacity, a dove can represent peace, and scales can stand for justice.
In Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the beating heart that the narrator hears may symbolize his conscience, his increasing
madness, or a countdown to death.
Synecdoche (pronounced ‘sin-eck-doe-key’) refers to a figure of speech in which a part represents the
whole or the whole represents a part.
Theme – The central meaning or dominant idea of a work. A theme provides a unifying point around
which plot, characters, setting, point of view, symbols and other elements are developed.
Tone – the attitude in which an author expresses his idea. Tone or mood is inferred by elements of the
author’s style. Just as a tone of voice in a conversation can convey an attitude, a tone in a written work can
indicate a mood like seriousness, happiness, anger, nostalgia, etc. Note that the tone doesn’t always coincide
with its content; a poem about death may have a silly or ironic tone, and a poem about a paper cut may have
a serious tone.
Versification - Generally, the structural form of a verse, as revealed by scansion. Identification of verse
structure includes the name of the metrical type and the name designating number of feet:
• Monometer: 1 foot
• Dimeter: 2 feet
• Trimeter: 3 feet
• Tetrameter: 4 feet
• Pentameter: 5 feet
• Hexameter: 6 feet
• Heptameter: 7 feet
• Octameter: 8 feet
• Nonameter: 9 feet
Consult http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display_rpo/poetterm.cfm for any terms not found in this guide.
BCCC Tutoring Center 7/2015