Literature & Composition by Jago, Shea, Scanlon, Aufses

Literature & Composition by Jago, Shea, Scanlon, Aufses is the Literature & Composition: Reading - Writing - Thinking textbook authored by Carol Jago, Santa Monica High School, California, Renée H. Shea, Bowie State University, Maryland, Lawrence Scanlon, Brewster High School, New York, and Robin Dissin Aufses, Lycée Français de New York, and published by Bedford/St. Martin's, Boston, MA in 2011.

• Abstract. An abstract term is a general term, referring to a broad concept, as opposed to a term that refers to a specific, particular thing (e.g., personhood as opposed to Seamus Heaney); opposite of concrete. Example.

  Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. -- John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

• Act. The major subunit into which the action of a play is divided. The number of acts in a play typically ranges between one and five, and are usually further divided into scenes.
• Allegory. A literary work that portrays abstract ideas concretely. Characters in an allegory are frequently personifications of abstract ideas and are given names that refer to these ideas.
• Alliteration. The repetition of the same initial consonant sounds in a sequence of words or syllables. Example.

  Methinks 'tis pretty sport to hear a child,
  Rocking a word in mouth yet undefiled;
  The tender racquet rudely plays the sound
  Which, weakly bandied, cannot back rebound. -- Thomas Bastard, "De Puero Balbutiente"

• Allusion. A reference to another work of literature, or to art, history, or current events. Example. In "Sound and Sense", Alexander Pope alludes to characters from classical Greek literature:

  When Ajax strives, some rock's vast weight to throw
  The line too labors, and the words move slow;
  Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
  Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

• Analogy. In literature, a comparison between two things that helps explain or illustrate one or both of them. Example.

  There is Mr. Marblehall's ancestral home. It's not so wonderfully large — it has only four columns — but you always look toward it, the way you always glance into tunnels and see nothing. -- Eudora Welty, "Old Mr. Marblehall"

• Anapest. See meter.
• Anaphora. Repetition of an initial word or words to add emphasis. Example.

  Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
  Whose flocks supply him with attire;
  Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
  In winter, fire. -- Alexander Pope, "The Quiet Life."

• Annotation. The act of noting observations directly on a text, especially anything striking or confusing, in order to record ideas and impressions for later analysis.
• Antagonist. Character in a story or play who opposes the protagonist; while not necessarily an enemy, the antagonist creates or intensifies a conflict for the protagonist. An evil antagonist is a villain. Example. In William Shakespeare's Hamlet (p. 720), Claudius is the antagonist.
• Apostrophe. A direct address to an abstraction (such as Time), a thing (the Wind), an animal, or an imaginary or absent person. Example.

  Leave me, O Love which reachest but to dust;
  And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things. -- Sir Philip Sidney, "Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust."

• Archaic language. Words that were once common but that are no longer used. Examples.

  Horatio: What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
  Together with that fair and warlike form
  In which the majesty of buried Denmark
  Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak! -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

• Ars poetica. Literally, "the art of poetry"; a form of poetry written about poetry.
• Assonance. The repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words. Example.

  That church so lone, the log-built one,
  That echoed to many a parting groan
  And natural prayer
  Of dying foemen mingled there. -- Herman Melville, "Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862)."

• Atmosphere. The feeling created for the reader by a work of literature. Atmosphere can be generated by many things, but especially style, tone, and setting. Synonymous with mood.
• Ballad. First taking shape in the later Middle Ages, the ballad was a sung poem that recounted a dramatic story. Ballads were passed down orally from generation to generation. Arising in the Romantic period, the literary ballad — a poem intentionally imitative of the ballad's style and structure — attempted to capture the sentiments of the common people in the same way the traditional ballad had. See also stanza.
• Beat movement. A movement of American writers in the 1950s who saw American society as oppressively conformist. These writers rejected mainstream values, seeking ways to escape through drugs, various forms of spirituality, and sexual experimentation. The writers of the Beat generation, among them Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, celebrated freedom of expression and held generally antiestablishment views about politics. Their writing, likewise, rejected conventional norms of structure and diction, and their books prompted several notorious obscenity trials, which helped reshape censorship laws in the United States.
• Bildungsroman. A novel that explores the maturation of the protagonist, with the narrative usually moving the main character from childhood into adulthood. Also called a coming-of-age story.
• Blank verse. Unrhymed iambic pentameter, blank verse is the most commonly used verse form in English because it is the verse form that comes closest to natural patterns of speaking in English. See also iambic pentameter. Example.

  This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
  To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
  Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
  This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
  A rugged people, and through soft degrees
  Subdue them to the useful and the good.
  Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
  Of common duties, decent not to fail
  In offices of tenderness, and pay
  Meet adoration to my household gods,
  When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. --Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses,"

• Cadence. Quality of spoken text formed from combining the text's rhythm with the rise and fall in the inflection of the speaker's voice. Example. In Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach", the poet creates a cadence that imitates a changing wave pattern by using caesura (with commas):

  Listen! you hear the grating roar
  Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
  At their return, up the high strand,
  Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
  With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
  The eternal note of sadness in.

• Caesura. A pause within a line of poetry, sometimes punctuated, sometimes not, often mirroring natural speech. Example.

  O could I lose all father now! for why
  Will man lament the state he should envy. -- Ben Jonson, "On My First Son."

• Caricature. A character with features or traits that are exaggerated so that the character seems ridiculous. The term is usually applied to graphic depictions but can also be applied to written depictions. Example. The characters in David Zane Mairowitz and Robert Crumb's Kafka (p. 981) are caricatures.
• Carpe diem. A widespread literary theme meaning "seize the day" in Latin and found especially in lyric poetry, carpe diem encourages readers to enjoy the present and make the most of their short lives.
• Catharsis. Refers to the emotional release felt by the audience at the end of a tragic drama. The term comes from Aristotle's Poetics, in which he explains this frequently felt relief in terms of a purification of the emotions caused by watching the tragic events. (Catharsis means "purgation" or "purification" in Greek.)
• Character. A person depicted in a narrative. While this term generally refers to human beings, it can also include animals or inanimate objects that are given human characteristics. Several more specific terms are used to refer to types of characters frequently employed by authors:
• Flat character. A character embodying only one or two traits and who lacks character development; for this reason, a flat character is also called a static character.Often such characters exist only to provide background or adequate motivation for a protagonist's actions. Example. In Gish Jen's "Who's Irish?", the narrator's son-in-law is described only as being lazy and depressed; his role in the story is to step into a stereotypical, stock role, providing the narrator with fuel for her prejudice.
• Round character. A character exhibiting a range of emotions and who evolves over the course of the story. Example. In Shakespeare's Hamlet (p. 720), Hamlet is a round character who experiences complex emotional development throughout the play.
• Secondary character. A supporting character; while not as prominent or central as a main character, he or she is still important to the events of a story or play. Example. In Sophocles' Antigone, Haemon is a secondary character.
• Stock character. A type of flat character based on a stereotype; one who falls into an immediately recognizable category or type — such as the absentminded professor or the town drunk — and thus resists unique characterization. Stock characters can be artfully used for humor or satire. Example. In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", June Star and John Wesley are portrayed as stock characters — spoiled, bratty children.
• Characterization. The method by which the author builds, or reveals, a character; it can be direct or indirect. Indirect characterization means that an author shows rather than tells us what a character is like through what the character says, does, or thinks, or what others say about the character. Direct characterization occurs when a narrator tells the reader who a character is by describing the background, motivation, temperament, or appearance of a character. Example.
  • Direct characterization: "Fenstad's Mother" by Charles Baxter:

    Fenstad's mother was a lifelong social progressive who was amused by her son's churchgoing, and, wine or no wine, she could guess where he had been. She had spent her life in the company of rebels and deviationists, and she recognized all their styles.

  • Indirect characterization: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen,

    Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, declined being introduced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in walking about the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party. His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again.

  • Chorus. In drama, especially classical Greek drama, the chorus refers to a group of participants in a play who deliver commentary on the play's action. The role of the chorus is no longer a regular feature of modern drama, although it has been employed in a few prominent works, such as T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. See also drama.
  • Climax. The point in a story when the conflict reaches its highest intensity. Example. In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" (p. 1226), the climax occurs when Mama (the narrator) makes the forceful decision to take the family quilts from her daughter Dee (who intends to hang them as artwork, a symbol of her heritage) and return them to her daughter Maggie (who would use them for their intended purpose — as quilts).
  • Colloquial language/colloquialism. An expression or language construction appropriate only for casual, informal speaking or writing. Example.

    "I toldja shut up, Ellie," Arnold Friend said, "you're deaf, get a hearing aid, right? Fix yourself up. This little girl's no trouble and's gonna be nice to me, so Ellie keep to yourself, this ain't your date right? Don't hem in on me, don't hog, don't crush, don't bird dog, don't trail me," he said in a rapid, meaningless voice, as if he were running through all the expressions he'd learned but was no longer sure which of them was in style, then rushing on to new ones, making them up with his eyes closed. -- Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

  • Colonialism. The occupation of one country by another. In the early 1800s, European countries controlled 35 percent of the world, but by 1914, that number had risen to nearly 85 percent and included parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The legacy of colonialism has extended beyond the political independence that many countries gained in the 1960s and 1970s.
  • Comedy. Usually used to refer to a dramatic work that, in contrast to tragedy, has a light, amusing plot, features a happy ending, centers around ordinary people, and is written and performed in the vernacular.
  • Comedy of manners. A satiric dramatic form that lampoons social conventions. Example. Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners.
  • Coming-of-age story. See bildungsroman.
  • Complex sentence. See sentence.
  • Compound sentence. See sentence.
  • Compound-complex sentence. See sentence.
  • Concrete. A concrete term is one that refers to a specific, particular thing, as opposed to a term that refers to a broad concept (e.g., Seamus Heaney as opposed to personhood); opposite of abstract. Example.

    Krebs went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas. There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity brothers, all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar. He enlisted in the Marines in 1917 and did not return to the United States until the second division returned from the Rhine in the summer of 1919. -- Ernest Hemingway, "Soldier's Home."

  • Conflict. The tension, opposition, or struggle that drives a plot. External conflict is the opposition or tension between two characters or forces. Internal conflict occurs within a character. Conflict usually arises between the protagonist and the antagonist in a story. Example. In Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener", the story's external conflict is between Bartleby, who won't leave his office after being fired, and the narrator, who is trying to remove him.
  • Connotation. Meanings or associations readers have with a word or item beyond its dictionary definition, or denotation. Connotations may reveal another layer of meaning of a piece, affect the tone, or suggest symbolic resonance. Example. In the following lines from Ben Jonson's "On My First Son", the word lament — as opposed to synonyms such as cry or feel bad about — has formal and religious connotations:

    Will man lament the state he should envy,
    To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
    And, if no other misery, yet age!

  • Consonance. An instance in which identical final consonant sounds in nearby words follow different vowel sounds. See also rhyme. Example.

    Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
    How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
    Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
    And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. -- Wilfred Owen, "Arms and the Boy."

  • Couplet. See stanza.
  • Cumulative sentence. See sentence.
  • Dactyl. See meter.
  • Denotation. The literal definition of a word, often referred to as the "dictionary definition."
  • Denouement. Pronounced day-noo-moh, this literally means "untying the knot"; in this phase of a story's plot, the conflict has been resolved and balance is restored to the world of the story. Example. In Fences (p. 195) by August Wilson, the conflicts of the play are resolved with the death of Troy in Act II, scene iv. The scene that follows (Act II, scene v) is the play's denouement.
  • Dialect. Dialogue or narration written to simulate regional or cultural speech patterns. Example.

    Troy: . . . Man ain't had two dimes to rub together. He walking around with his shoes all run over bumming money for cigarettes. -- August Wilson, Fences

  • Dialogue. The written depiction of conversation between characters. Example.

    "Who is this?" I demanded, thinking: heavy breather, prank caller.
    "Who d'you think?" Sourdi was crying, a tiny crimped sound that barely crept out of the receiver. Then her voice steadied with anger and grew familiar. "Is Ma there?"
    "What's the matter? What happened?"
    "Just let me speak to Ma, O.K.?" There was a pause, as Sourdi blew her nose. "Tell her it's important."-- May-lee Chai, "Saving Sourdi."

  • Diction. A writer's choice of words. In addition to choosing words with precise denotations and connotations, an author must choose whether to use words that are abstract or concrete, formal or informal, or literal or figurative. See colloquial language.
  • Direct characterization. See characterization.
  • Dramatic irony. See irony, dramatic.
  • Dramatic monologue. A type of poem in which the speaker, who is clearly distinct from the poet, addresses an audience that is present in the poem.
  • Ekphrastic poetry. A form of poetry that comments on a work of art in another genre, such as a painting or a piece of music.
  • Elegy. A contemplative poem, on death and mortality, often written for someone who has died.
  • End rhyme. See rhyme.
  • End-stopped line. An end-stopped line of poetry concludes with punctuation that marks a pause. The line is completely meaningful in itself, unlike run-on lines, which require the reader to move to the next line to grasp the poet's complete thought. See also enjambment. Example.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand. -- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming."

  • English sonnet. See sonnet.
  • Enjambment. A poetic technique in which one line ends without a pause and must continue on to the next line to complete its meaning; also referred to as a "run-on line." Example.

    Once more the storm is howling, and hid
    Under this cradle-hood and coverlids
    My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
    But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
    Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
    Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed. -- William Butler Yeats, "A Prayer for My Daughter."

  • Epigram. A short, witty statement designed to surprise an audience or a reader. Example.

    "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." -- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

  • Epigraph. A quotation preceding a work of literature that helps set the text's mood or suggests its themes. Example.

    "The dragon is by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon." — St. Cyril of Jerusalem -- Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."

  • Epiphany. A character's transformative moment of realization. James Joyce, often credited with coining this as a literary term, defined it as the "sudden revelation of the whatness of a thing," the moment in which "the soul of the commonest object . . . seems to us radiant . . . a sudden spiritual manifestation [either] in the vulgarity of speech or of a gesture or in a memorable phrase of the mind itself." Example.

    I put in windows with arches. I drew flying buttresses. I hung great doors. I couldn't stop. . . . So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now. Then he said, "I think that's it. I think you got it," he said. "Take a look. What do you think?"
    But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do.
    "Well?" he said. "Are you looking?"
    My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything.
    "It's really something," I said. -- Raymond Carver, "Cathedral."

  • Eulogy. A poem, speech, or other work written in great praise of something or someone, usually a person no longer living. Example. William Wordsworth's "London, 1802" is a eulogy to the poet John Milton.
  • Exposition. In a literary work, contextual and background information told to readers (rather than shown through action) about the characters, plot, setting, and situation. Example. In Antigone, Sophocles uses the opening dialogue and initial speeches of the chorus and sentry to provide background on the play's events and characters.
  • Extended metaphor. See metaphor, extended.
  • Eye rhyme. See rhyme.
  • Falling action. In a plot diagram, this is the result (or fallout) of the climax or turning point. In this phase, the conflict is being resolved. See also plot.
  • Farce. A dramatic form marked by wholly absurd situations, slapstick, raucous wordplay, and sometimes innuendo.
  • Feminist literature. Literary works that explore (either overtly or implicitly) women's identity and role in society. Feminist criticism reexamines literary works and the role of women in literature.
  • Figurative language. Language that uses figures of speech; nonliteral language usually evoking strong images. Sometimes referred to as metaphorical language, most of its forms explain, clarify, or enhance an idea by comparing it to something else; the comparison can be explicit (simile) or implied (metaphor). Other forms of figurative language include personification, paradox, overstatement (hyperbole), understatement, and irony. Example.

    There is a knocker shaped like a gasping fish on the door. . . . There's many a big, deathly looking tapestry, wrinkling and thin, many a sofa shaped like an S. Brocades as tall as wicked queens in Italian tales stand gathered before the windows. Everything is draped and hooded and shaded, of course, unaffectionate but close. -- Eudora Welty, "Old Mr. Marblehall."

  • First-person narrator. See narrator.
  • Flashback. A scene in a narrative that is set in an earlier time than the main action. Example. See the first two paragraphs of "Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros, p. 623.
  • Foil. A contrasting character who allows the protagonist to stand out more distinctly. Example. In Shakesepeare's Hamlet (p. 720), Laertes — who leaps at vengeance rather than deeply contemplates it — is the perfect foil for Hamlet.
  • Foot. See meter.
  • Foreshadowing. A plot device in which future events are hinted at.
  • Form. Refers to the defining structural characteristics of a work, especially a poem (i.e., meter and rhyme scheme). Often poets work within set forms, such as the sonnet or sestina, which require adherence to fixed conventions.
  • Formal diction. See diction.
  • Free verse. A form of poetry that does not have a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme. Example.

    And would it have been worth it, after all,
    Would it have been worth while,
    After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
    After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor
    And this, and so much more? —
    It is impossible to say just what I mean! -- T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

  • Genre. This term can refer broadly to the general category that a literary work falls into (drama or poetry, fiction or nonfiction) or more specifically to a certain subset of literary works grouped together on the basis of similar characteristics (science fiction, local color, western). Example. Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (p. 1211) is a piece of fiction that is also classified as Southern gothic.
  • Harlem Renaissance. A movement in the 1920s and 1930s marked by a great flowering of black arts and culture centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.
  • Hook. An opening to a piece of writing designed to catch the audience's attention. Example. See the first paragraph of "The End of White America?" by Hua Hsu, p. 7.
  • Hubris. An excessive level of pride that leads to the protagonist's downfall. See also tragedy. Example. See Creon's actions in Antigone by Sophocles, p. 1327.
  • Hyperbole. Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or ironic effect; an overstatement to make a point. Example.

    You know how children with cameras learn to work the exposed moments that define the family cluster. They break every trust, spy out the undefended space, catching Mom coming out of the bathroom in her cumbrous robe and turbaned towel, looking bloodless and plucked. It is not a joke. They will shoot you sitting on the pot if they can manage a suitable vantage. -- Don DeLillo, "Videotape."

  • Iamb. See meter.
  • Iambic pentameter. An iamb, the most common metrical foot in English poetry, is made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Iambic pentameter, then, is a rhythmic meter containing five iambs. Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse. See also meter; blank verse. Example.

    The cur | few tolls | the knell | of part | ing day,
    The low | ing herd | wind slow | ly o'er | the lea,
    The plow | man home | ward plods | his wea | ry way,
    And leaves | the world | to dark | ness and | to me -- Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

  • Iconography. The images or symbols used by an artist or present in a work of art.
  • Imagery. A description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds. The verbal expression of a sensory experience: visual (sight), auditory (sound), olfactory (scent), gustatory (taste), tactile (touch), or kinesthetic (movement/tension). Imagery may use literal or figurative language. Example.

    Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. -- Willa Cather, My Antonia

  • Imperative sentence. See sentence.
  • Impressionism. A movement of French painters that reached its apex in the 1870s and 1880s. The impressionists attempted to capture the subjective experience of seeing things rather than create accurate reproductions. Key representatives include Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas. The impressionists' attempts to capture subjective experience in art was very influential on symbolist poets and writers of stream-of-consciousness prose, such as James Joyce (p. 77) and Virginia Woolf (p. 77–78).
  • In medias res. Latin for "in the middle of things," a technique in which a narrative begins in the middle of the action.
  • Indirect characterization. See characterization.
  • Informal diction. See diction.
  • Internal rhyme. See rhyme.
  • Interrupted sentence. See sentence.
  • Inversion. Also called an inverted sentence, it is created by alteration of the standard English word order of a subject (S) being followed by a verb (V) and its object (O) in a declarative sentence. Often used to call attention to something, perhaps to emphasize a point or an idea by placing it in the initial position, or to slow the pace by choosing an unusual order. Example.

    So: looks he had, his own trade he had, there would have been a good wife in time. -- Salman Rushdie, "The Free Radio."

  • Irony, dramatic. Tension created by the contrast between what a character says or thinks and what the audience or readers know to be true; as a result of this technique, some words and actions in a story or play take on a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters. Example. Once readers learn of Mr. Kapasi's hope for a relationship with Mrs. Das, in Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" (p. 434), his actions take on a different meaning for the readers than for her.
  • Irony, situational. A pointed discrepancy between what seems fitting or expected in a story and what actually happens. Example. T. C. Boyle's story "Admiral" is ripe with situational irony. While pet-sitting for Admiral II, a cloned dog, Nisha falls for an anti-cloning activist. Also, Nisha's instructions from the cloned dog's owners are to, in essence, bring their original pet back to life by treating this dog exactly as she did the original, who was struck by a car; to do so she must let Admiral II indulge his love of playing in traffic, which could lead him, ironically, to share Admiral I's fate.
  • Irony, verbal. A figure of speech that occurs when a speaker or character says one thing but means something else, or when what is said is the opposite of what is expected, creating a noticeable incongruity. Sarcasm involves verbal irony used derisively. Example.

    Jack (pulling off his gloves): When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
    Algernon: And who are the people you amuse?
    Jack (airily): Oh, neighbors, neighbors.
    Algernon: Got nice neighbors in your part of Shropshire?
    Jack: Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them.
    Algernon: How immensely you must amuse them! -- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

  • Italian sonnet. See sonnet.
  • Juxtaposition. Placing two things side by side for the sake of comparison or contrast. Authors sometimes use incongruous juxtapositions to produce verbal irony. Example.

    Hamlet: To be, or not to be: that is the question:
    Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
    The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
    Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
    And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

  • Kafkaesque. Having the nightmarish, uncanny characteristics of Kafka's stories.
  • Limited omniscient point of view. See point of view.
  • Literary elements. The components that together create a literary work. This term encompasses elements of style, such as imagery, syntax, figurative language, and tone; as well as storytelling elements, such as plot, character, setting, and point of view.
  • Lyric. A short poem expressing the personal feelings of a first-person speaker. The term comes from the Greek word lyre, and the form is descended from poems intended to be sung with a lyre.
  • Masque. Now extremely rare, this genre of lush spectacle, song, dance, masks, and elaborate staging was popular among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British nobles, who also made up its amateur and occasionally royal cast. Example. Ben Jonson wrote many masques for the court of King James I and Queen Anne.
  • Metaphor. A figure of speech that compares or equates two things without using like or as. For comparisons made using like or as, see simile. Example.

    For this, for everything we are out of tune;-- William Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much With Us."

  • Metaphor, extended. A metaphor that continues over several lines or throughout an entire literary work. Example. In "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop, the metaphor of losing as an art to be practiced and perfected is repeated and developed throughout.
  • Metaphysical conceit. A literary device that sets up a striking analogy between two entities that would not usually invite comparison, often drawing connections between the physical and the spiritual. This literally device is famously used by metaphysical poets, including John Donne and George Herbert.
  • Meter. The formal, regular organization of stressed and unstressed syllables, measured in feet. A foot is distinguished by the number of syllables it contains and how stress is placed on the syllables — stressed (´) or unstressed (˘). There are five typical feet in English verse: iamb (˘ ´), trochee (´ ˘), anapest (˘ ˘ ´), dactyl (´ ˘ ˘), and spondee (´ ´). Some meters dictate the number of feet per line, the most common being tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter, having four, five, and six feet, respectively. See iambic pentameter.
  • Metonymy. A figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is related to it. Compare to synecdoche; see also metaphor. Example. In this excerpt from "London, 1802" by William Wordsworth, an altar is used to represent religion, a sword to represent the military, and a pen to represent the arts:

    England hath need of thee: she is a fen
    Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen.

  • Minimalism. A style in prose or verse that emphasizes economy of words and unadorned sentences.
  • Modernism. In literature, Modernism refers to a movement of writers who reached their apex between the 1920s and 1930s and expressed views of disillusionment with contemporary Western civilization, especially in the wake of World War I's mindless slaughter. Rejecting the conventions of the Victorian era, these writers experimented with form and took insights from recent writings by Freud and Jung about the unconscious. They viewed art as restorative and frequently ordered their writing around symbols and allusions. Representative modernist writers include T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.
  • Monologue. In a play, a speech given by one person. See also soliloquy. Example. Troy delivers a monologue in Act I, scene iv, of Fences.
  • Mood. Synonymous with atmosphere, mood is the feeling created for the reader by a work of literature. Many things can generate mood — especially style, tone, and setting.
  • Motif. A recurring pattern of images, words, or symbols that reveals a theme in a work of literature. Example. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the repeated use of words such as play, act, see, assume, show, reveal, appear, form, and shape, as well as the inclusion of a play within the play, become a motif, which helps to reveal one of the play's central themes: the contrast between appearance and reality.
  • Naive narrator. See narrator.
  • Narrative. A story. Narratives may be written either in prose or in verse, as in narrative poetry. Example. "The Battle of Blenheim" by Robert Southey is a narrative poem.
  • Narrative frame. Also known as a frame story, a narrative frame is a plot device in which the author places the main narrative of his or her work within another narrative — the narrative frame. This exterior narrative usually serves to explain the main narrative in some way.
  • Narrator. The character, or persona, that the author uses to tell a narrative, or story. Narrators may tell stories from several different points of view, including first person, second person (very rare), and third person. See point of view. Example. In Daisy Miller by Henry James, the narrator is a third-person limited omniscient voice, who usually sticks closely to Winterbourne's thoughts and experiences:

    After this Daisy was never at home, and Winterbourne ceased to meet her at the houses of their common acquaintance, because, as he perceived, these shrewd people had quite made up their minds that she was going too far. They ceased to invite her, and they intimated that they desired to express to observant Europeans the great truth that, though Miss Daisy Miller was a young American lady, her behaviour was not representative — was regarded by her compatriots as abnormal. Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned towards her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all.

    More specific terms are used to discuss the role a narrator plays in interpreting the events in a narrative:
    • Objective narrator. A narrator who recounts only what characters say and do, offering no insight into their thinking or analysis of events. All interpretation is left to the reader. Example. In her short story "The Lottery", author Shirley Jackson uses the perspective of the objective narrator effectively to stand back and suspend judgment on an incident that turns ugly and violent.
    • Unreliable narrator. A narrator who is biased and doesn't give a full or accurate picture of events in a narrative. Narrators may be unreliable because of youth, inexperience, madness, intentional or unintentional bias, or even a lack of morals. Authors often use this technique to distinguish the character's point of view from their own. Sometimes an author will use an unreliable narrator to make an ironic point. Example. As Salman Rushdie's "The Free Radio" progresses, readers realize that the narrator is unreliable in his account (and perception) of the rickshaw boy's fate.
  • Near rhyme. See rhyme.
  • Non sequitur. In literature, a reply or remark that does not have any relevance to what occasioned or preceded it; in rhetoric, a conclusion that does not logically follow from the premises. Example.

    Hamlet: I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I known a hawk from a handsaw.-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

  • Novella. A short novel, from the Italian word meaning "story."
  • Objective narrator. See narrator.
  • Objective point of view. See point of view.
  • Octet. See stanza.
  • Ode. A form of poetry used to meditate on or address a single object or condition. It originally followed strict rules of rhythm, meter, and rhyme, which by the Romantic period had become more flexible.
  • Omniscient narrator. See narrator.
  • Omniscient point of view. See point of view.
  • Onomatopoeia. Use of words that refer to sound and whose pronunciations mimic those sounds. Example.

    Women draped in black huddled and chattered in their harems; yak-yak-yak.-- Muriel Spark, "The First Year of My Life."

  • Overstatement. See hyperbole.
  • Oxymoron. A paradox made up of two seemingly contradictory words. Example.

    Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. -- William Butler Yeats, "A Prayer for My Daughter."

  • Parable. A tale told explicitly to illustrate a moral lesson or conclusion. Parables can take the form of drama, poetry, or fiction.
  • Paradox. A statement that seems contradictory but actually is not. Example.

    For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
    As what he loves may never like too much. -- Ben Jonson, "On My First Son."

  • Parallel structure. Also known as parallelism, this term refers to the repeated use of similar grammatical structures for the purpose of emphasis. Compare with anaphora, a type of parallel structure concerned only with the repetitions of an initial word or words. Example.

    He would dispose of his good luck pebble. Swallow it, maybe, or use Lee Strunk's slingshot, or just drop it along the trail. On the march he would impose strict field discipline. He would be careful to send out flank security, to prevent straggling or bunching up, to keep his troops moving at the proper pace and at the proper interval. He would insist on clean weapons. He would confiscate the remainder of Lavender's dope. Later in the day, perhaps, he would call the men together and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it. He would look them in the eyes, keeping his chin level, and he would issue the new SOPs in a calm, impersonal tone of voice, an officer's voice, leaving no room for argument or discussion. -- Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried."

  • Parody. A comic or satiric imitation of a particular literary work or style. Parodies can run the gamut from lighthearted imitations intended merely to play with something well known, to exaggerations intended to criticize by making a work or literary style look ridiculous.
  • Passive voice. A sentence employs passive voice when the subject doesn't act but is acted on. Example.

    Midway down they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with raspberry or orange jelly or with blancmange and jam. -- James Joyce, "The Dead."

  • Pastoral. Literature that employs a romanticized description of leisurely farm or rural life.
  • Periodic sentence. See sentence.
  • Persona. A voice and viewpoint that an author adopts in order to deliver a story or poem. See narrator.
  • Personification. A figure of speech in which an animal or an inanimate object is imbued with human qualities. Example.

    And this same flower that smiles today,
    Tomorrow will be dying. -- Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."

  • Petrarchan sonnet. See sonnet.
  • Plot. The arrangement of events in a narrative. Almost always, a conflict is central to a plot, and traditionally a plot develops in accordance with the following model: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement. There can be more than one sequence of events in a work, although typically there is one major sequence along with other minor sequences. These minor sequences are called subplots.
  • Point of view. The perspective from which a work is told. The most common narrative vantage points are:
  • First person. Told by a narrator who is a character in the story and who refers to him- or herself as "I." First-person narrators are sometimes unreliable narrators.
  • Second person. Though rare, some stories are told using second-person pronouns (you). This casts the reader as a character in the story.
  • Third-person limited omniscient. Told by a narrator who relates the action using third-person pronouns (he, she, it). This narrator is usually privy to the thoughts and actions of only one character.
  • Third-person omniscient. Told by a narrator using third-person pronouns. This narrator is privy to the thoughts and actions of all of the characters in the story. Examples:
    • First person: "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen,

      I nursed her. They feel that's important nowadays. I nursed all the children, but with her, with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, I did like the books then said. Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed.

    • Second person: "Videotape" by Don DeLillo,

      You don't usually call your wife over to the TV set. She has her programs, you have yours. But there's a certain urgency here. You want her to see how it looks. The tape has been running forever and now the thing is finally going to happen and you want her to be here when he's shot.

    • Third-person limited omniscient: "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri,

      He began to check his reflection in the rearview mirror as he drove, feeling grateful that he had chosen the gray suit that morning and not the brown one, which tended to sag a little in the knees. From time to time he glanced through the mirror at Mrs. Das.

    • Third-person omniscient: "The Lady with the Little Dog" by Anton Chekhov,

      She looked at him with fear, with entreaty, with love, looked at him intently, the better to keep his features in her memory. "I've been suffering so!" she went on, not listening to him. "I think only of you all the time, I've lived by my thoughts of you. And I've tried to forget, to forget, but why, why did you come?" Further up, on the landing, two high-school boys were smoking and looking down, but Gurov did not care; he drew Anna Sergeevna to him and began kissing her face, her cheeks, her hands.

      See narrator.
  • Postmodernism. In literature, Postmodernism refers to a loose grouping of writers in the post–World War II era who carry on the agenda of Modernism, inasmuch as they reject traditional literary conventions, embrace experimentation, and see contemporary life as bleak and fragmented. Rather than attempt to instill order through some literary device — as T. S. Eliot did with his use of allusions and myth, or William Butler Yeats with his symbolic system — postmodern writers tend to eschew attempts to treat art as a corrective to modern malaises, and their writing celebrates or plays with the fragmentation of life instead of seeking to fix it. In addition, postmodern writers attack the distinction between "high" and "low" art maintained by modernists, and their writing engages with popular art forms like cartoons and television. Representative postmodern writers include Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and Kurt Vonnegut.
  • Propaganda. Work that aims to influence an audience about a debatable position or affiliation, not through rational or supported appeals but through one or more of the following: emotional manipulation, the selective use (and omission) of facts, spin, or any number of fallacious techniques. The word has mostly negative connotations.
  • Prose poem. A blending of prose and poetry, usually resembling prose in its use of sentences without line breaks, and poetry in its use of quintessentially poetic devices such as figurative language. A prose poem makes traditional genre distinctions problematic. See also form.
  • Protagonist. The main character in a work; often a hero or heroine, but not always. Example. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the protagonist is Marlow, who is also the novella's narrator.
  • Pun. A play on words that derives its humor from the replacement of one word with another that has a similar pronunciation or spelling but a different meaning. A pun can also derive humor from the use of a single word that has more than one meaning. Example. The title of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a pun on the name of the play's protagonist, Ernest.
  • Quatrain. See stanza.
  • Realism. Describing a literary technique, the goal of which is to render work that feels true, immediate, natural, and realistic. Example. Realism characterizes Hemingway's technique in "Soldier's Home".
  • Refrain. A line, lines, or a stanza in a poem that repeat(s) at intervals. Example.

    "'twas a famous victory"

    This refrain appears, slightly modified each time, in Robert Southey's "The Battle of Blenheim".
  • Resolution. The working out of a plot's conflicts, following the climax. See also plot.
  • Reversal. When, in a narrative, the protagonist's fortunes take an unforeseen turn. Example. In Antigone, Creon's reversal of fortune begins when his son, Haemon, commits suicide upon hearing of Antigone's death. See also plot.
  • Rhetorical question. A question asked for stylistic effect and emphasis to make a point rather than to solicit an answer. Example.

    Men of England, wherefore plough
    For the lords who lay ye low? -- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Song: To the Men of England,"

  • Rhyme. The repetition of the same (or similar) vowel or consonant sounds or constructions. A rhyme at the end of two or more lines of poetry is called an end rhyme. A rhyme that occurs within a line is called an internal rhyme. A rhyme that pairs sounds that are similar but not exactly the same is called a near rhyme or a slant rhyme. A rhyme that only works because the words look the same is called an eye rhyme or a sight rhyme. Rhyme often follows a pattern, called a rhyme scheme. Examples:
    • End rhyme:

      England hath need of thee: she is a fen
      Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, -- William Wordsworth, "London, 1802"

    • Internal rhyme:

      A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings. -- D. H. Lawrence, "Piano."

    • Near rhyme or slant rhyme:

      The alphabet is searched for letters soft,
      To try a word before it can be wrought. -- Thomas Bastard, "De Puero Balbutiente."

    • Eye rhyme:

      "Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
      How many may you be?"
      "How many? Seven in all," she said,
      And wondering looked at me. -- William Wordsworth, "We Are Seven."

  • Rhythm. The general pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. See also meter. Example.

    Whose herds | with milk, | whose fields | with bread,
    Whose flocks | supply | him with | attire;
    Whose trees | in sum | mer yield | him shade,
    In win | ter, fire. -- Alexander Pope, "The Quiet Life."

  • Rising action. The events, marked by increasing tension and conflict, that build up to a story's climax. Example. In "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, the rising action centers around the growing conflict between Dee's new culture and values and those of her family. This conflict increases as the disagreement about who should have the quilts intensifies, ultimately leading to the climax of the story.
  • Romanticism. In literature, a late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century movement that emphasized beauty for beauty's sake, the natural world, emotion, imagination, the value of a nation's past and its folklore, and the heroic roles of the individual and the artist. Some prominent Romantic poets in this book include Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats.
  • Round character. See character.
  • Run-on line. See enjambment.
  • Sarcasm. See irony, verbal.
  • Satire. A literary work that uses irony to critique society or an individual.
  • Scene. A subdivision of an act in a play. Scenes usually break up the action into logical chunks. Many contemporary plays, however, contain only sequences of scenes, without an overarching act structure. See also act.
  • Secondary character. See character.
  • Sentence. Specific types of sentences discussed in this book:
    • complex sentence. A sentence containing an independent clause and one or more subordinate clauses (beginning with words such as after, before, although, because, until, when, while, and if ). Example.

      In the castle, after they had landed, the subjective element decidedly prevailed. -- Henry James, Daisy Miller

    • compound sentence. Two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, or so) or a semicolon. Example.

      His voice seemed about to crack, and the grandmother's head cleared for a moment. -- Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."

    • compound-complex sentence. A combination of a compound sentence and a complex sentence; it is often fairly long. Example.

      They flattered him with dreams because they knew they could take money away from him at cards and he would buy them drink while they did it, though he was no richer than they. -- Salman Rushdie, "The Free Radio."

    • cumulative sentence. A sentence in which an independent clause is followed by details, qualifications, or modifications in subordinate clauses or phrases. Example.

      Connie liked the way he was dressed, which was the way all of them dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed into black, scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his waist in and showed how lean he was, and a white pull-over shirt that was a little soiled and showed the hard small muscles of his arms and shoulders. -- Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

    • imperative sentence. A sentence that issues a command. The subject of an imperative sentence is often implied rather than explicit. Example.

      Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. -- Binyavanga Wainaina, "How to Write about Africa."

    • interrupted sentence. A sentence of any pattern modified by interruptions that add descriptive details, state conditions, suggest uncertainty, voice possible alternative views, or present qualifications. Example.

      At the risk of exciting a somewhat derisive smile on the reader's part, I may affirm that with regard to the women who had hitherto interested him, it very often seemed to Winterbourne among the possibilities that, given certain contingencies, he should be afraid — literally afraid — of these ladies; he had a pleasant sense that he should never be afraid of Daisy Miller. -- Henry James, Daisy Miller

    • periodic sentence. A sentence that begins with details, qualifications, or modifications, building toward the main clause. Example.

      As the day was splendid, however, and the concourse of vehicles, walkers, and loungers numerous, the young American found their progress much delayed. -- Henry James, Daisy Miller

    • simple sentence. A sentence composed of one main clause without any subordinate clauses. Example.

      Winterbourne was much amused. -- Henry James, "Daisy Miller"

  • Sestet. See stanza.
  • Setting. Where and when a story takes place. Example.

    It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spire and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps — an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell in the battle of Jefferson. -- William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily."

  • setting, social. The manners, mores, customs, rituals, and codes of conduct in a work; an author may suggest approval or disapproval of any of these through a description of place.
  • Shakespearean sonnet. See sonnet.
  • Sight rhyme. See rhyme.
  • Simile. A figure of speech used to explain or clarify an idea by comparing it explicitly to something else, using the words like, as, or as though to do so. Example.

    Martha was a poet, with the poet's sensibilities, and her feet would be brown and bare, the toenails unpainted, the eyes chilly and somber like the ocean in March, and though it was painful, he wondered who had been with her that afternoon. -- Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried."

  • Simple sentence. See sentence.
  • Slang. See colloquial language / colloquialism.
  • Slant rhyme. See rhyme.
  • Soliloquy. In a play, a monologue in which a character, alone on the stage, reveals his or her thoughts or emotions. Example. See Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" speech in Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
  • Sonnet. A poetic form composed of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter that adheres to a particular rhyme scheme. The two most common types are:
  • Petrarchan sonnet. Also known as the Italian sonnet, its fourteen lines are divided into an octave and a sestet. The octave rhymes abba, abba; the sestet that follows can have a variety of different rhyme schemes: cdcdcd, cdecde, cddcdd.
  • Shakespearean sonnet. Also known as the English sonnet, its fourteen lines are composed of three quatrains and a couplet, and its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg.
  • Sound. The musical quality of poetry, as created through techniques such as rhyme, enjambment, caesura, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and cadence.
  • Speaker. This term is most frequently used in the context of drama and poetry. In drama, the speaker is the character who is currently delivering lines. In poetry, the speaker is the person who is expressing a point of view in the poem, either the author or a persona created by the author. See also narrator; persona; point of view. Example. In Ben Jonson's "On My First Son", the speaker is a father, presumably Jonson, addressing his dead son.

    Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
    My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy:
    Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
    Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

  • Spondee. See meter.
  • Sprung rhythm. A meter developed out of Gerard Manley Hopkins's attempt to mirror natural speech patterns in his poetry. In sprung rhythm, the number of stressed syllables in each line is the same, while the number of unstressed syllables can vary. This means that the types of feet employed in each line can vary.
  • Stage directions. Any notes in the script of a play written by the author that set guidelines for the performance, explaining, for example, what the setting should look like, how actors should move and deliver certain lines, and so on. They are generally set in italics.
  • Stanza. Lines in a poem that the poet has chosen to group together, usually separated from other lines by a space. Stanzas within a poem usually have repetitive forms, often sharing rhyme schemes or rhythmic structures. A number of frequently used stanza types have specific names:
  • Couplet. A two-line, rhyming stanza. Example.

    And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she, belied with false compare. -- William Shakespeare, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."

  • Tercet. A three-line stanza.
  • Quatrain. A four-line stanza. Example.

    Think me not unkind and rude
    That I walk alone in grove and glen;
    I go to the god of the wood
    To fetch his word to men. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Apology."

  • Sestet. A six-line stanza. Example.

    It was a summer evening,
    Old Kaspar's work was done;
    And he before his cottage door
    Was sitting in the sun,
    And by him sported on the green
    His little grandchild Wilhelmine. -- Robert Southey, "The Battle of Blenheim."

  • Octet. An eight-line stanza. Example.

    I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
    And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower
    And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
    In the elms above the flooded stream;
    Imagining in excited reverie
    That the future years had come,
    Dancing to a frenzied drum,
    Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. -- William Butler Yeats, "A Prayer for My Daughter."

  • Stream of consciousness. A technique in which prose follows the logic and flow of a character's (or multiple characters') thought processes — associations, tangents, seemingly strange transitions — rather than a more ordered narrative.
  • Structure. The organization of a work.
  • Style. The way a literary work is written. Style is produced by an author's choices in diction, syntax, imagery, figurative language, and other literary elements.
  • Suspense. A literary device that uses tension to make the plot more exciting; the effect created by artful delays and selective dissemination of information. Example. An excellent example of suspense in fiction is Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?".
  • Symbol. A setting, object, or event in a story that carries more than literal meaning and therefore represents something significant to understanding the meaning of a work of literature. Example.

    And for the first time, or so it seemed, I noticed the piece on the right-hand side. It was called "Perfectly Contented." I tried to play this one as well. It had a lighter melody but with the same flowing rhythm and turned out to be quite easy. "Pleading Child" was shorter but slower; "Perfectly Contented" was longer but faster. And after I had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song. -- Amy Tan, "Two Kinds."

  • Synecdoche. A figure of speech in which part of something is used to represent the whole. Compare to metonymy. Example.

    They were called legs or grunts. -- Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried."

  • Syntax. The arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences in a prose passage. This includes word order (subject-verb-object, for instance, or an inverted structure); the length and structure of sentences (simple, compound, or complex), phrases, and clauses; the chronology of passages; the preference of various parts of speech over others; the use of connectors between and within sentences; and more. Example.

    Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him?¹ That is the way my Maggie walks.² She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.³-- Alice Walker, "Everyday Use."

    Notes:
    1. (¹) complex sentence; also a question
    2. (²) OSV structure, a simple declarative sentence
    3. (³) complex sentence; repetition of three parallel modifying phrases creates rhythm and emphasis.
  • Syntax, poetic. Similar to syntax in prose, poetic syntax also includes the arrangement of words into lines — where they break or do not break, the use of enjambment or caesura, and line length/patterns. Example.

    For this,-
    for everything, we are out of tune; (caesura)
    It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be (caesura)
    A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; (enjambment) -- William Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much with Us."

  • Tercet. See stanza.
  • Theatrical property. Known more commonly as a prop, this is a term for any object used onstage by an actor in a play. Example. During Hamlet's soliloquy in act V, scene I, of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the actor makes use of Yorick's skull as a prop.
  • Theme. Underlying issues or ideas of a work.
  • Thesis statement. The chief claim that a writer makes in any argumentative piece of writing, usually stated in one sentence.
  • Tone. A speaker's attitude as exposed through stylistic choices. (Tone is often confused with another element of style, mood, which describes the feeling created by the work.) Along with mood, tone provides the emotional coloring of a work and is created by some combination of the other elements of style. Example.

    In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, nine hundred million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular. -- Binyavanga Wainaina, "How to Write about Africa,"

  • Tragedy. A serious dramatic work in which the protagonist experiences a series of unfortunate reversals due to some character trait, referred to as a tragic flaw. The most common tragic flaw is hubris, Greek for pride. Modern tragedies tend to depart from some of the genre's classical conventions, portraying average rather than noble characters and attributing the protagonist's downfall to something other than a flaw in character — for example, social circumstances. Example. Antigone by Sophocles.
  • Tragic flaw. See tragedy.
  • Tragic hero. A character who possesses a flaw or commits an error in judgment that leads to his or her downfall and a reversal of fortune. Example. Hamlet in William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
  • Transcendental Movement. A reaction against both rationalism and empiricism in philosophy, as well as austere Calvinist doctrines about human nature, transcendentalism emphasized knowledge via mystical insight, the divine spark in each human being, and the immanence of God in nature. Beginning in Europe and drawing inspiration from European thinkers, among them Immanuel Kant and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the transcendental movement flourished in the nineteenth-century United States, where it was linked with Christian Unitarianism. Key thinkers include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
  • Trochee. See meter.
  • Understatement. The presentation or framing of something as less important, urgent, awful, good, powerful, and so on, than it actually is, often for satiric or comical effect; the opposite of hyperbole, it is often used along with this technique, and for similar effect. Example.

    The grave's a fine and private place,
    But none, I think, do there embrace. -- Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress."

  • Unreliable narrator. See narrator.
  • Verbal irony. See irony, verbal.
  • Verse. A broad term, verse refers to a piece of writing that is metered and rhythmic. (Free verse is an exception to this, being a piece of writing grouped with verse rather than prose, even though it lacks a meter.) The term verse can also be used to refer to poetry in general. See also meter; rhyme; rhythm.
  • Vignette. A short narrative scene or description, often one in a series. If a story or novel is composed of a series of vignettes, it often relies on a thematic, rather than a plot-driven, structure. Example. "If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?" by Geeta Kothari is composed of numerous vignettes.
  • Villanelle. A form of poetry in which five tercets (rhyme scheme aba) are followed by a quatrain (rhyme scheme abaa). At the end of tercets two and four, the first line of tercet one is repeated. At the end of tercets three and five, the last line of tercet one is repeated. These two repeated lines, called refrain lines, are again repeated to conclude the quatrain. Much of the power of this form lies in its repeated lines and their subtly shifting sense or meaning over the course of the poem.
  • Wordplay. Techniques by which writers manipulate language for effect; examples include puns (the deliberate misuse of words that sound alike) or double entendres (expressions with two meanings). Example.

    Lady Bracknell: Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.
    Algernon: I'm feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.
    Lady Bracknell: That's not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.
    Algernon [to Gwendolen]: Dear me, you are smart!
    Gwendolen: I am always smart! Aren't I, Mr. Worthing?
    Jack: You are quite perfect, Miss Fairfax.
    Gwendolen: Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions. -- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

  • Zeugma. Pronounced zoyg-muh, a technique in which one verb is used with multiple (and often incongruous) objects, so that the definition of the verb is changed, complicated, or made both literal and figurative. Example.

    They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself — Vietnam, the place, the soil — a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. -- Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried."