Important Literary Terms

Glossary of Important Literary Terms

by Santosh Kumar Biswa, Bhutan

 

S/N	Term	Meaning
1	Dead Metaphor	It is one which, like “the log of a table” or “the heart of the matter,” has so common a usage that we have ceased to be aware of the discrepancy between the vehicle and the tenor. Vehicle – metaphoric word itself Tenor – subject to which the metaphoric word is applied
2	A B C Poem	A poem that has five lines that creates a mood, picture, or feeling. Lines 1 through 4 are made up of words, phrases or clauses while the first word of each line is in alphabetical order. Line 5 is one sentence long and begins with any letter.
3	Acronym	A word formed from the initial letter of other words.
4	Acrostic poem	Most commonly a poem in which the initial letter of each line makes a word/words when read downwards. Poetry that certain letters, usually the first in each line form a word or message when read in a sequence.
5	Acrostic	A poem in which letters in successive lines make a word or pattern or verse in which certain letters such as the first in each line form a word or message. A true acrostic, like the ‘Argument’ at the beginning of JONSON’S VOLLPONE, forms the word from the first letter of each line.
6	Allegory	A poem in which the meaning and message is presented symbolically. It is the representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form and can often be an extended metaphor for a specific historical or political event.
7	Alliteration	The repetition of a sound in two or more words. In its commonest forms, initial consonants are repeated. The repetition of initial consonant sounds.
8	Allusion	A reference, sometimes indirect, to a person, place, theory etc. which the reader is assumed to have some knowledge of (passing reference or indirect mention).
9	Analogy	The comparison of two things by explaining one to show how it is similar to the other.
10	Anaphora	The repetition of the first word or words in successive sentences or clauses.
11	Anecdote	A short story used to illustrate a point, often used by writers as a way of introducing their topic.
12	Annotation	Explain, comment, give extra information, evaluation, analysis etc. to write notes upon something. A comment or instruction (usually added) or the act of adding notes.
13	Anthology	A collection of poems or passages, often with a useful theme.
14	Anti-climax/ bathos	A rhetorical; awakening word or phases in descending order according to their rhetorical intensity often used for attaining comic effect; the weak ending of a dramatic effect.; a situation beginning seriously but ending lightly. Or a change from a serious subject to a disappointing one.
15	Antithesis	A stylistic device based on opposition terms, statements, motifs, or themes.
16	Apostrophe	A direct statement made to a person or thing; rhetorical figure; addressing personified things, absent person, or thing, or gods; invocation; poetic fallacy.
17	Assonance	A repetition of similar vowel sounds, generally close to each other, to achieve a particular kind of word music. The repetition of vowel sounds. E.g. My words like silent raindrops fell.
18	Audience	The readership whom the writer is addressing, the people who are being targeted by the article.
19	Ballad	A poem or song narrating a popular story. There are three kinds of ballads: folk, broadside and literary.
20	Bio Poem	A poem written about one self's life, personality traits, and ambitions.
21	Blank verse	Unrhymed verse. It is normally a line of 10 syllables. It’s second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth syllables are accentuated (iambic pentameter). Poem made of one or two sentences broken into the lines of a verse that enable the writer to evoke a strong image that is often unobtrusive.
22	Burlesque	A comic form which is ridiculously exaggerated. Its style is dignified but the matter is nonsensical. Sometimes the subject is dignified but the style is nonsensical. Poetry that treats a serious subject as humour
23	Cacophony	The sound in the poem that is mixed with discordant or harsh sounds
24	Caesura	The pausing or stopping within a line of poetry caused by needed punctuation.
25	Connotation	The set of associations implied by a word in addition to its literal meaning.
26	Consonance	The repetition of consonant sounds in a short sequence of words.
27	Canzone Poem	Medieval Italian lyric style poetry with five or six stanzas and a shorter ending stanza.
28	Carpe Diem	Latin expression that means 'seize the day.' Carpe diem poems have a theme of living for today.
29	Catachresis	Word distorted to twist the meaning. E.g. Nothing ventured, nothing sprained (gained).
30	Chiasmus	Form of contrast deliberately built.
31	Cinquain	Theme poem following syllabic line that counts: 2, 4,6,8,2. Poetry with five lines. Line 1 has one word (the title). Line 2 has two words that describe the title. Line 3 has three words that tell the action. Line 4 has four words that express the feeling, and line 5 has one word which recalls the title.
32	Classicism	Poetry which holds the principles and ideals of beauty that is characteristic of Greek and Roman art, architecture, and literature.
33	Cliché	A stereotyped expression which is overused. E.g. "the dawn of a new era". An overused word or phrase. E.g.: I'm so hungry I could eat a horse
34	Climax	The highest point of development or intensity of a situation in a poem, story or play.
35	Collage poem	Any poem that is created by bringing together sentences or phrases from different sources.
36	Coin an expression	To invent a new word or phrase to suit the context.
37	Colloquialism	Word or phrase chiefly found in everyday speech, as opposed to writing. The use of colloquialism is one of the hallmarks of an informal style of writing.
38	Communion	State of sharing or exchanging the same thoughts of feeling.
39	Conceits	A clever or fanciful expression in writing or speech that involves comparison in writing or speech that involves a comparison between two things.
40	Concrete poetry	Poetry which depends for effect upon the way it is laid out on the page.
41	Connotation	The various secondary meanings and overtones of a word: what associations it carries
42	Consonance	The repetition of the same consonant in words close to each other. The repetition of end consonant (every letter that is not a vowel) sounds.
43	Couplet	Prosody of two successive lines of verse, usually rhyming and of the same length. It has stanzas made up of two lines which rhyme with each other.
44	Dactyls	An element of metre in poetry. In quantitative verse, a long syllable followed by two short syllables.
45	Denotation	The literal dictionary meaning(s) of a word as distinct from an associated idea or connotation.
46	Descriptive poem	A poem that make the readers see and feel the action described in it. It has short verse with rhyme.
47	Dirge	A solemn and mournful short poem sung at funerals, monody; requiem; elegy.
48	Disillusioned	Destroy the pleasant but mistaken beliefs or ideals.
49	Dissociation of sensibility	Term used to describe a disjunction of thought and feeling.
50	Doggerel	Rough, heavy- footed and jerky versification
51	Dramatic monologue	A poem or piece of writing, containing elements of drama such as tension and character: revelation, which is spoken to a listener. The speaker addresses a specific topic while the listener unwittingly reveals details about him/herself.
52	Eclogue	A short pastoral poem (play, picture).
53	Elegy	Sorrowful song or poem with lament especially for the dead. A poem about the death of an individual.
54	Emotive Language	Language deliberately designed to arouse the emotions (often to be found in tabloid newspapers).
55	Emphatic Words	Words being used for the purpose of emphasis: E.g. even; so; too; indeed; only; most; all (as in "all too clear")
56	End Rhyme	A rhyme in the final syllable(s) of a verse.
57	End-stopped	A feature in poetry where the syntactic unit (phrase, clause, or sentence) corresponds in length to the line.
58	Enjambment	The breaking of a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause, or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses. Its opposite is end-stopping, where each linguistic unit corresponds with a single line.
59	Epic	A long poem narrating the descriptive adventures of a heroic figure that tells the story.
60	Epigram	A verse with an irregular metre pattern which is very short, ironic and witty, usually written as a brief couplet or quatrain.
61	Epitaph	Verses written about someone with important qualities who has died.
62	Epithalamion	A song or a poem written in honour of the bride and groom to celebrate their wedding.
63	Ethereal	Light, airy, delicate, esp., in appearance; heavenly
64	Euphemism	A deliberate softening of a harsh truth or an inoffensive or indirect expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive or too harsh
65	Extended Metaphor	A metaphor which is drawn out beyond the usual word or phrase to extend throughout a stanza or an entire poem, usually by using multiple comparisons between the unlike objects or ideas
66	Fable	A short moral story (often with animal characters). It is  sometimes about mythical or supernatural beings or events.
67	Figurative  Language	Language using figures of speech which cannot be taken literally.
68	Figure of Speech	It is the devices used by the poet to create special effects by giving an additional sense to words to make readers look at what the poet says in an appealing manner.
69	Foot	A unit of rhythm or metre; the division in verse of a group of syllables, one of which is long or accented.
70	Found poem	A poem which has not been deliberately composed but discovered by chance, in some other context.
71	Free verse	Verse that does not use traditional metrical or rhyming schemes. It does not essentially follow any structure or style. There is no fixed metre and no structure regarding rhyme and lines in each stanza.  Poetry written in either rhyme or unrhymed lines that has no set fixed metrical pattern.
72	Ghazal	A short lyrical Urdu poem between 5 and 15 couplets long.
73	Haiku	A Japanese verse form consisting of 17 syllables in 3 lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively. It does not use rhyme.
74	Half rhyme	Rhyme approximately. E.g. heat-wet-sleet.
75	Heroic couplet	Lines in iambic pentameter which are rhymed in pairs.
76	Homonym	Two words which are pronounced or spelled the same way but have different meanings
77	Horace Ode	Short lyric poem written in two or four-line stanzas, each with the same metrical pattern. It deals with friendship or love.
78	Hymn	A song of praise (to God or to a saint or to a nation)
70	Hyperbole (Overstatement)	Exaggeration for rhetorical reasons; amplification; exaggeration to create an effect with humour. It is not a statement to be taken literally.
80	Iambs	A metrical unit with unstressed-stressed syllables
81	Idealism	Forming or pursuing ideals; representation of things in ideal form; philosophy in which objects are held to be dependent on the mind.
82	Idiom	An expression whose meaning cannot be inferred from the literal meanings of the words that make it up.
83	Imagery	The ability to form mental images of things or events. It is a word-picture with repeated use of words of comparison (the image grows magnified).
84	Iambic Pentameter	This is a very complicated style of writing poetry that was often used by classical poets. It uses syllable stresses to create musical sounds. There is one short sounding syllable followed by one long sounding syllable at the end of each of the five stanzas in a row.
85	Idyll Poem	A short poem descriptive of rural or pastoral life that either depicts a peaceful, idealized country scene or about heroes of a bygone age.
86	Internal Rhyme	It is also called middle rhyme; a rhyme occurring within a line.
87	Irony	Where actual meaning is opposite to what is said; witty language used to convey insults or scorn.
88	Imagism	20th century movement which made the image the central focus of the poem. It uses common speech in free verse with clear concrete imagery.
89	Innuendo	An indirect (and usually malicious) implication or subtle reference, especially. one made indicating criticism or disapproval; insinuation.
90	Intrigue	Make and carry out secret plans or plots to do something bad, arouse somebody’s interest or curiosity.
91	Jargon	The special vocabulary or characteristic idioms in language used by a particular group of people.
92	Kinetic poetry	Poetry which depends visually on the movement created by the layout of words on the page.
93	Lat Poem	A long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels.
94	Limerick	A very popular form of humorous and nonsense poetry of five lines having the same  metrical structure  with rhyme and  seven to ten syllables each. It often uses the rhyming scheme AA BB A in which the third and the fourth lines are shorter than the rest.
95	List Poem	A poem of any length, rhymed or unrhymed, that is made up of a list of items or events.
96	Litotes	A deliberate understatement for rhetorical effect often designed to create a comic or sarcastic effect.
97	Lyric	A short poem of songlike quality expressing individual emotions of the poet/ individual.
98	Masque (mask)	A mature dramatic entertainment comprising songs, music, dance, elaborate costumes and scenic splendour. Plot and characters are very significant.
99	Metaphor	A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity.
100	Metaphysics	The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence, truth and knowledge.
101	Metaphysical poet	Any of the poets in 17th century England who inclined to the personal and intellectual complexity and concentration in poetry.
102	Metonymy	The use of a characteristic as a substitute for the object described and vice versa or the technique of substituting the name of an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself.
103	Metre	The organization of poetry into regular or recurrent patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables that measure the rhythmic quantity in poetry. The unit of metre is foot.
104	Metrical Romance	A poem of romance in metre.
105	Mock epic	Burlesque of epic poetry by treating on insignificant subject in a grand manner.
106	Montage	The act of placing two different objects together to create a further meaning.
107	Myth	Story about gods, goddesses or heroic individuals
108	Narrative Poem	A poem that tells a story or narrates a series of events.
109	Octave	An eight-line stanza; the first eight lines of a patriarchal sonnet.
110	Ode	A reflective or lyric poem that praises a person, object or incident. It has complex stanza forms with exalted style and tone that comprise of two or more lines repeated as a unit.
111	Onomatopoeia	The creation of words which imitate the actual sound of things that suggest their meaning.  It is also called sound words.
112	Oxymoron	Conjoining contradictory terms or incongruous images; a pithy paradox, often involving only two words making sense despite an apparent self-contradiction; incongruity; paradox. Or it is the technical term for a paradox which is expressed in two contradictory words.
113	Palindrome	A word or phrase that reads the same backward as forward
114	Persona	The speaker or voice of a literary work that is doing the talking by using “I”.
115	Pun (quibble  )	A humorous play on words, usually for humour, deliberately playing on two possible meanings of one word to create a comic effect.
116	Pantheism	Belief that God is everything and that everything is God.
117	Paradox	A statement that contradicts itself which is nevertheless somehow true.
118	Parody	A composition that imitates or misrepresents somebody's style, usually in a humorous way; a humorous imitation of a literary work or style.
119	Pastoral	A lengthy lyric poem which describes rural life as a peaceful and ideal way of life. It has an elevated style and formal stanza structure.
120	Pathos	A style of writing that has the power to evoke feelings which stimulate pity, tenderness, and sorrow in the readers/viewers.
121	Personification	The presentation of an object or idea as a person with human qualities or feelings (a figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstract ideas are endowed with qualities of living beings).
122	Petra Chan  Poem	A 14-line sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abbaabba followed by a sestet of cddcee or cdecde.
123	Pictogram	The representation of an object or idea as a small drawing or diagram.
124	Pindaric ode	An ode form used by Pindar, a Greek professional lyrist of the 5th century B.C.; has triple groups of triple units. It is a ceremonious poem consisting of two or more lines repeated as a unit followed by an antistrophe with the same metrical pattern and concluding with a summary line (an epode) in a different meter.
125	Platonic Love	Type of love that is free from physical desire.
126	Pleonasm	Meaningless repetition of redundant words or using more words than necessary.
127	Poet Laureate	Poet appointed to write poems for state occasions.
128	Poetic Diction	Words chosen for their poetic quality. It is the manner in which something is expressed in words by the poet.
129	Poetic Drama	A play in which poetry outweighs drama. The dialogues are written in verse, usually blank verse.
130	Poetic Justice	An ideal situation in which good is rewarded and evil is punished.
131	Poetic Licence	Freedom to change normal rules of language when writing verse by reversing word order and changing its meaning.
132	Point of View	The author's point-of-view concentrates on the vantage point of the speaker, or "teller", of the story or poem. 1st person: the speaker is a character in the story or poem and tells it from his/her perspective (uses "I") 2nd person limited: the speaker is not part of the story, but tells about the other characters with limited information about what one character sees and feels. 3rd person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to "know" and describe what all characters are thinking.
133	Prose Poem	A form of writing which is written as prose but resembles poetry.
134	Psalm	Sacred song or hymn in the bible which is usually used to praise God or a deity.
135	Quatrain	Kind of poem that has four lines in a stanza, of which the second and fourth lines rhyme with each other and have a similar syllable structure.
136	Refrain	A phase or verse which recurs at intervals, especially at the end of each stanza of a poem or a song. A metrical or rhythmical unit that consists of a few words, a line, or a group of lines which are repeated regularly within a poem, esp. at the end of the stanza.
137	Repetition	The repeating of words, phrases, lines, or stanzas.
138	Requiem	A song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person or a chant embodying a prayer for the repose of the dead.
139	Rhetoric	Study of the technique and rules for using language effectively with precise, logical and beautiful words.
140	Rhetorical Question	This is a literary device used to indicate a question to which no answer is expected: the answer is implied in the question.
141	Rhyme	Rhyme is identifying of a sound between words or the endings of the words especially in verse in its accented vowel and succeeding sound with a specified word.
142	Rhyme Pattern	The way the rhymes occur in a poem.
143	Rhyme Royal	A type of poetry consisting of stanzas having seven lines in iambic pentameter.
144	Rhyme Scheme	The sequence in which the rhyme occurs. The first end sound is represented described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines as the letter "a", the second as "b", etc.
145	Strophe	One section of a lyric poem or choral ode in classical Greek drama in which two or more lines are repeated as a unit.
146	Rhythm	The arrangement of spoken words alternating stressed and unstressed elements; the regular or progressive pattern of recurrent accents in the flow of a poem; the rise and fall of stresses on words in the metrical feet.
147	Romanticism	A movement in literature and art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that celebrated nature rather than civilization
148	Rondeau (Rondeaux)	A French verse form of 10 or 13 lines running on two rhymes with the opening phrase repeated twice as the refrain of the second and third stanzas.
149	Satire	It is the witty language used in a poem or story used to convey insults or scorn which lashes vice or folly with ridicule. It uses irony and sarcasm.
150	Sestina	A highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line closing stanza followed by a tercet or envoy, for a total of thirty-nine lines . The end words of the first stanza are repeated in varied order as end words in the other stanzas and also recur in the envoy.
151	Shape Poem	A poem written in the shape of an object as per the subject discussed.
152	Simile	The direct comparison of one thing with another or a comparison between two unlike things, generally connected with ‘as’ or ‘like’.
153	Slant Rhyme	Sometimes known as half or off rhyme, a rhyme in which the sounds are similar, but not exact often using consonance or assonance.
154	Soliloquy	A dramatic speech intended by a character in a play to give the illusion of unspoken reflections to oneself where no one else is present. It conveys the innermost thoughts of a character.
155	Sonnet	A verse form consisting of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme, with five-foot iambics rhyming (pentameter).
156	Stanza	A grouping of two or more lines of a poem in terms of length, metrical form, or rhyme scheme.
157	Stress	Emphasis on a syllable or word in pronouncing or in accordance with a metrical pattern.
158	Surrealism	A 20th century movement of artists and writers (developing out of Dadaism) who used fantastic images and incongruous juxtapositions in order to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams, in a dreamlike and absurd manner.  It attempts to convey the working of the subconscious mind. In literature, it results in jumble of words without logical or rational sequence.
159	Syllabic Verse	Verse which is organized according to the number of syllables in each line.
160	Syllable	A unit of spoken language larger than a phoneme.
161	Symbol	An arbitrary sign (written or printed) that has acquired a conventional significance where the object represents not itself but other objects or qualities like courage, innocence.
162	Symbolism	The use of symbol to represent ideas especially in art or literature; poetry full of religious symbolism.
163	Synecdoche	A rhetorical figure:  naming a part of an object instead of naming the whole object or a figure of speech which substitutes a more inclusive term for a less inclusive one or vice versa. Thus a newly arrived person becomes a “new face “.
164	Tanka	A form of Japanese poetry; the 1st and 3rd lines have five syllables and the 2nd, 4th, and 5th have seven syllables. It is a 31-syllable poem in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables.
165	Tautology	It is the repetition of the same idea in different expressions to produce a dramatic effect.
166	Tenor	Subject to which the metaphoric word is applied.
167	Tercet	A stanza having three lines in rhyme.
168	Terza Rima	A series of three-line stanzas interlocked by rhyme arranged in three-line tercets, as; aba bcb cdc ded….
169	Tone	The attitude suggested by the voice of the poem with emotional feelings of the passage, the unspoken voice of the writer or a pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal languages.
170	Transferred Epithet	A rhetorical figure where normal syntactical structure of a sentence is changed and some terms are transferred from their logical place: inversion: anastrophe.
171	Trochee	A metrical foot with a long or accented syllable followed by a short or unaccented syllable.
172	Vehicle	A medium for the expression or achievement of something, which is metaphoric word itself.
173	Verse	A line of metrical text of poetry.
174	Villanelle	A poem of 19 lines divided into three-line stanza and a concluding stanza of four lines. It uses only two rhymes and the first line is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanza and the last-but-one line of the poem.
175	Visual Poetry	Poetry which depends for its effect largely upon the layout of the words on the page.
176	Wit	A brief and well-phrased expression whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter or give one a shock of amused surprise, calculated to stick in the mind.