| A | B |
|---|
| Absurdist fiction | a novel or play that presents humanity's plight as meaningless and without purpose |
| Allegory | a fictional narrative that contains a second, symbolic meaning in addition to its overt story |
| Ballad | a songlike poem that ells a story and often has a refrain, or repeated line or lines |
| Comic novel | a feature of British and American literature that seeks to amuse the reader with larger-than-life characters and outlandish events |
| Dysopia | a narrative that depicts an anti-utopia, a world where ordinary people live regimented lives at the whim of a totalitarian government |
| Epic | a long narrative poetic work in a formal or elevated style that features a heroic lead character who often must understake a journey or a great trial to overcome a powerful foe |
| Essay | a prose work written in the first-person expressing strong opinions about some topic or life experience |
| Epistolary novel | written in the form of letters, diaries, and journal entries |
| Fable | a tale taht provides a moral lesson and features animals with human characteristics |
| Fairy Tale | a story that features fantasy characters from folklore and usually ends happily |
| Fantasy | a genre that blends historical material with invented elements such as wizards with magical powers and mythical creatures |
| Farce | a comic play that employs stock situations and characters and exaggerated emotions |
| Legend | a traditional story that has become part of the collective experience of a nation, ethnic group, or culture |
| Lyric Poem | a brief work in verse that addresses the reader directly and expresses the poet's feelings and perceptions |
| Myth | an ancient story that presents the exploits of gods or heroes to explain some aspect of life or nature |
| Novel | a long work of prose fiction that is often realistic and tends to address the concerns of the society in which it is produced |
| Parody | a work written in imitation of an author's style or of a genre in order to make fun of it and mock its conventions |
| Poem | a literary work that is generally written in rhythmic lines of various lengths that may be divided into groups called stanzas |
| Haiku | a Japanese poetic form consisting of three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables |
| Limerick | a comic five-line poem (rhyme scheme AABBA) that seems to have originated in England in the early 1700s |
| Ode | a meditative poem written in praise of someone or about a serious subject |
| Pastoral | a poem that depics rural life or the life of shepherds in an idealized form, often for urban audiences |
| Sonnet | a 14 line poetic form that originated in Italy and later became popular in Shakespeare's England. Contained 2 quatrains (four-line stanzas rhymed ABBA) and six lines variously rhymed in pairs |
| Trioet | an 8 line poetic form based on French models. Its first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are its second and final lines |
| Villanelle | an intricate French poetic form with 19 lines divided into five 3-line stanzas (called tercets) and one final quatrain |
| Satire | a work that ridicules the follies and vices of individuals and society, often through comic exaggerations |
| Science fiction | depicts scientific and technological breakthroughs and their effects on future society |
| Short story | a brief work of prose fictino that often concentrates on a single incident and one or two main characters |
| Utopian novel | depicts its author's ideas about what a perfectly ordered society would be like |
| Alliteration | the repeating of initial consonant sounds in a sentence, paragraph, or line of poetry |
| Allusion | a reference to some famous person, place, event, artwork, or other literary work |
| Anachronism | a detail of a literary work that is not appropriate for its time setting |
| Analogy | emphasizes the way two apparently unlike things are actually similar |
| Surplice | a loose white garment worn in church |
| Antithesis | a figure of speech that balances an idea with a contrasting one or its opposite |
| Assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds in a sentence or line of poetry |
| Character | a person or humanlike animal in a story, poem, or play |
| Climax | the point of greatest dramatic tension |
| Connotation | the use of precise words to give a positive or negative slant to a statement or passage |
| Denotation | the literal meaning of a word, as found in a dictionary |
| Diction | the choice of words and style of language used |
| Dramatic monologue | a poetic form generally written in blank verse that presents the thoughts and emotions of a character in a particular situation |
| Euphemism | a inoffensive phrase used to replace a more direct or unpleasant expression |
| Flashback | a description or episode in a literary work that iterrupts the main story to recount something that happened in the past |
| Figure of speech | the use of words aside from the literal meaning, often used for an artistic or emotionally heightened effect |
| Foreshadowing | when an author provides clues to what will happen later in a narrative |
| Heroic couplets | form of English poetry with pairs of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter (five stresses to a line) |
| Hyperbole | an absurdly exaggerated statement |
| Imagery | the use of descriptive language to enlist the senses in evoking a scene, situation, or state of mind |
| Irony | a sudden discordance between the expected meaning of words or actions and what they actually mean |
| Verbal irony | saying one thing and meaning something else |
| Situational irony | situation is in reality much different that the character thinks |
| Dramatic irony | when the audience is aware of something that the characters do not know |
| Malapropism | a word misteaken for another word with a similar sound |
| Metaphor | a figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared without the use of the words like or as |
| Meter | a way of measuring the rhythm in a formal verse |
| Iambic | - / |
| Trochaic | / - |
| Anapestic | - - / |
| Dactylic | / - - |
| Metonomy | a figure of speech in which a word is substituted for antoher word which it is somehow linked or closely associated |
| Onomatopoeia | using words that imitate sounds |
| Oxymoron | a phrase made up of words that seem contradictory when placed together but actually express a special meaning |
| Paradox | a statement whose two parts seem contradictory, yet upon future study convey a deeper truth |
| Personification | a figure of speech in which human characteristics are given to something nonhuman |
| Point of view | how a literary work is narrated |
| First person point of view | when the main character tells the story in his or her own words |
| Second person point of view | when the author uses pronouns such as "you" to describe the main character |
| Third person point of view | when a person outside the story is the narrator |
| Omniscient point of view | the narrator has knowledge of everything in the story |
| Plot | the sequence of events in a narrative and has five main sections (intro/exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution) |
| Intro/exposition | characters and settings are introduced |
| Rising action | the main problem or conflict arises |
| Climax | a dramatic turn of events creates great tension |
| Falling action | the climax leads to an unwinding of the problem or conflict |
| Resolution | the problem or conflict is worked out in the end |
| Rhyme | the matching of end sounds in lines of verse |
| Rhythm | the arrangement of beats or stresses in verse or prose |
| Setting | the time and place in which a narrative unfolds |
| Simile | the comparison of two unlike things using the words like or as |
| Symbol | an animal, object, place, action, or event that an author uses to represent a larger meaning |
| Synechdoche | a figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole |
| Theme | central idea about life or the human condition that it represents |
| Tone | the manner in which a writer approaches his or her material and is expressed in style and pervading atmosphere |
| Drama | the performance of a narrative by actors onstage before an audience |
| Tragedy | a drama in which a protagonist who is heroic or well respected brings about his or her own downfall through a fatal character flaw |
| Comedy | a play written to be amusing, and often features exaggerated characters and funny situations |
| Dramatic monologue | a poetic form in which a character speaks in his or her own voice with an implied listener at hand |
| Soliloquy | a dramatic speech in which a character talks to him/herself, allowing the audience to overhear and judge the character's state of mind |
| Structuralist Criticism | theory that certain underlying patterns and symmetries are common to the literatures of almost all societies and cultures |
| Formalist Criticism | this approach is concerned purely with how a text's literary elements contribute to a coherent whole |
| New Criticism | a critical movement akin to formalism that focused mainly on lyric poems and examined them as verbal objects without reference to the author's biography or outside influences |
| Historical criticism | focus on a work's context in history and how its allusions, style, and point of view fit the conventions of its period |
| New Historicism | aims simultaneously to understand a text through its historical context and influences as well as to interpret cultural and intellectual history through the study of relevant literary and sub-literary texts |
| Biographical criticism (traditional criticism) | this approach focuses on how details of the writer's life and the period he lived in are reflected in the work and explain how it was produced |
| Postcolonial criticism | examine literary works as examples of western colonialism and imperialism and try to show how these works helped further ideas of racial and cultural inequality |
| Psychoanalytic criticism | combs the language and plots of literary works for examples of Freudian concepts such as repressed consciousness, the struggles of the superego, the Oedipus complex, etc. |
| Reader-Response criticism | focus on the reader's role in responding to, and, in effect, "creating" a piece of literature |
| Marxist criticism | views literature through a political lens, as in how a work depicts or glosses over the exploitation of workers by wealthy or powerful interests |
| Feminist criticism | emphasizes the role of women in literature, either as authors and poets or as characters in a narrative |
| Philosophical criticism | look at the ethical or religious questions raised by a work of literature, and seek to bring out the author's own ideas about what is ethic and how life should be lived |
