Literary Terms
The following literary terms are featured in English 9 and coorespond to the literature therein.
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allegory an extended metaphor in which persons, objects, and actions have meanings that lie outside the story
EXAMPLE: In Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown," the character of Faith
also represents the idea of faith).
EXAMPLE: In Orwell's Animal Farm, Manor Farm also represents Russia and Napoleon, Stalin.
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ambiguity uncertainty as regards interpretation; having more than one possible meaning at once; unclarity. When used with skill ambiguity can add suspense and interest as well as meaning to a story.
EXAMPLE Nathaniel Hawthorne uses ambiguity in his short story Young Goodman Brown
when he does not explain why the purpose of the title character's journey, and
whether the journey took place or what merely Brown's dream.
EXAMPLE Ambrose Bierce often uses ambiguity to hold the reader's interest such as
in "One Kind of Officer" the reader is given several ideas as to what Lt. Price
and Capt. Ransom are shouting at each other during the battle. The reader
is never told what they were saying, but the content of their conversation is
implied by the final scene when Lt. Price says it was to him to "not know anything."
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blank verse poetry that consists of unrhymed lines with a specific beat,. Often blank verse is written in iambic pentameter, iambic meaning two syllables with the first unstressed and the second stressed and pentameter meaning five repetitions of these two-syllable units. Note the difference from free verse.
EXAMPLE William Shakespeare's plays are composed mostly in blank verse.
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characterization means by which a writer reveals a character's personality, generally through the following methods: direct statements about the character, physical descriptions, actions, thoughts and remarks, and other character's reactions to or remarks about the character
EXAMPLE Willa Cather implies many character traits by how her characters in O Pioneers!
talk and dress.
EXAMPLE George Orwell's matches attitudes people have about particular animals to enhance
his characterizations in Animal Farm, such selecting a workhorse named Boxer
be an exemplary worker.
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conceit a complex and strikingly unusual comparison of two seemingly unalike subjects
EXAMPLE: in "Huswifery" Edward Taylor compares a person --himself-- to a spinning wheel.
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epic a long narrative poem, written in a formal style, about a hero, who represents a people
EXAMPLE: In Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish, which is written
as a long poem about the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, the title character
represents Puritan ideals.
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diction a writer's choice of words. An important aspect of style and voice, diction must be appropriate to the subject, audience, occasion, and literary form.
EXAMPLE In Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" he uses formal diction that fits
the solemn occasion of a nation at a time of war honoring its dead
and fighting for the mission of self-preservation.
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extended metaphor: comparison of many parts working together to form one larger comparison
EXAMPLE: in "On Her Children" Anne Bradstreet uses bird imagery
to form an extended metaphor describing her family).
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fable a brief tale, in which the characters are most frequently animals, told to point a moral
EXAMPLE: Orwell's novel Animal Farm resembles a fable despite the facts that it
is longer than most fables and it does not have an explicit moral
stated at the end; it has animals as the main characters and has a
clear point.
You might notice on the title page, Orwell calls Animal Farm "a fairy
story," by which he means to suggest in a humorous way, his book
is just a fable, what Britons call a "fairy story" and thus lightly disguising
his novel's political significance.
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Faust story a story of a person selling his or her soul to the devil. (This refers to a famous story about a medieval magician named Faust. Later the story was popularized in the play "Doctor Faustus" by the English playwright Christopher Marlowe and by the play "Faust" by the German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Both plays depict the Dr. Faust selling his soul to the devil Mephistopheles in exchange for magic powers and wealth.)
EXAMPLE: Washington Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker"
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folktale a story of unknown authorship preserved and passed down through generations by oral tradition, marked by unlikely events, stock characters, and supernatural elements and teaches a lesson or expresses a general truth
EXAMPLE: Washington Irving's story "The Devil and Tom Walker" is based on folktales
from Germany) and is now considered an American folktale
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free verse verse that has irregular meter and rime; however, it does not necessarily lack rhythm.
Note the difference from blank verse.
EXAMPLE: Walt Whitman uses free verse in most of his poems and thus recreates
the rising and falling cadences of natural speech, with lengths of lines
being varied according to intended emphasis.
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gothic horror a genre, or type, of story that is marked by magic, mystery, and chivalry and set in medieval times, and includes fearful, barbaric events.
EXAMPLE: Popular examples are Frankenstein and Dracula. Note that gothic horror is
different from today's typical horror film that usually concentrate more on gore
and violence than on intrigue and pschological terror. A good example of a modern
gothic horror film is Silence of the Lambs.
For a literary example, consider Shirley Jackson's "The Lotttery."
Although, like Silence of the Lambs it does not take place in medieval
times, it does include elements of mystery, chivalry, and barbaric ritual and
transfers these to a modern setting.
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historical fiction fiction whose setting is in some time other than that in which it is written, especially when the period setting of importance to the work and attention to historical details is made.
EXAMPLE: Paulsen's Soldier's Heart uses many genuine facts about the Civil War and
real-life soldier Charles Goddard to develop the story, which is imagined. That is,
specific details of events, dialogues, and characters' thoughts, feelings, and actions
are created by the author.
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imagery the use of language to evoke a picture or visual (image) or a concrete sensation of a person, thing, place, or experience. Most images appeal to the sense of sight; however, they also sometimes appeal to sound, taste, touch, smell or movement as well.
EXAMPLE: Jonathan Edwards uses strong imagery of floods, tempests, fires, and spiders
to frighten people of Hell in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
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parallelism stating subjects of equal importance in equal grammatical structures. Parallelism can occur at the word level, phrase, clause, sentence, or paragraph level.
EXAMPLE: Jefferson uses parallelism throughout the Declaration of Independence
to add clarity and strength to his arguments: "life, liberty, and
pursuit...." are all nouns.
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realism a kind of writing where the authors try to present a "slice of life" usually of ordinary people as they confront hardships. A kind of Realism is called Naturalism and this is when authors present hardships that are beyond the characters' control such as heredity, environment, or chance).
EXAMPLE Stephen Crane wrote stories about people dealing with the hardships of war.
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satire a type of work that has a disapproving attitude and uses humor and wit to point to flaws in humanity in the hope of improving it
EXAMPLE Animal Farm shows flaws that occur in so-called socialist governments.
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