Glossary of literary terms
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The following is a list of literary terms; that is, those words used in discussion, classification, criticism, and analysis of literature.
Contents |
A
- Abecedarius
- Academic drama
- Acatalectic
- Accent
- Accentual verse
- Acrostic
- Anachronism
- Analects
- Analogy
- Anapest
- Anaphora
- Anastrophe
- Anecdote
- Angry Young Men
- Annal
- Annotation
- Antagonist
- Antepenult
- Anthology
- Anticlimax
- Anti-hero
- Anti-masque
- Anti-romance
- Antinovel
- Antistrophe
- Antithesis
- Antonym
- Aphorism
- Apocope
- Apocrypha
- Apollonian and Dionysian
- Apologue
- Apology
- Apothegm
- Aposiopesis
- Apostrophe
- Apron stage
- Arcadia
- Archaism
- Archetype
- Aristeia
- Argument
- Arsis
- Art for art's sake
- Asemic
- Aside
- Assonance
- Atmosphere
- Attitude
- Aube
- Aubade
- Audience
- Autobiography
- Autotelic
- Avant-garde
B
- Ballad
- Ballade
- Ballad stanza
- Bard
- Baroque
- Bathos
- Beast epic
- Beast poetry
- Beat Generation
- Beginning rhyme
- Belles-lettres
- Bestiary
- Beta reader
- Bibliography
- Bildungsroman
- Biography
- Black humor
- Blank verse
- Bloomsbury Group
- Body
- Bombast
- Boulevard drama
- Bourgeosis drama
- Bouts-rimés
- Bowdlerize
- Breviloquence
- Broadside
- Burlesque
- Burletta
- Burns stanza
- Buskin
- Byronic hero
C
- Caca
- Cadence
- Caesura
- Calligram
- Canon
- canso
- Canticum
- Canto
- Canzone
- Capa y espada
- Captivity narrative
- Caricature
- Carmen figuratum
- Carpe diem
- Catachresis
- Catalectic
- Catalexis
- Catastrophe
- Catharsis
- Caudate sonnet
- Cavalier drama
- Cavalier poetry
- Celtic Renaissance
- Celtic Twilight
- Cesura
- Chain of Being
- Chain verse
- Chanson de geste
- Chansonnier
- Chant royal
- Chantey
- Chanty
- Chapbook
- Character
- Characterization
- Charactonym
- Chaucerian stanza
- Chiasmus
- Chivalric romance
- Choriamb
- Choriambus
- Chorus
- Chronicle
- Chronical play
- Cinquain
- Classicism
- Classification (literature)
- Classification of rhymes (Peter Dale)
- Clerihew
- Cliché
- Climax
- Cloak-and-sword play
- Closed heroic couplet
- Closet drama
- Comédie larmoyante
- Comedy
- Comedy of errors
- Comedy of humors
- Comedy of intrigue
- Comedy of manners
- Comedic relief
- Commedia dell'arte
- Comic relief
- Common measure
- Commonplace book
- Common rhyme
- Comoedia erudate
- Comparative linguistics
- Compensation
- Complaint
- Conceit
- Concordance
- Concrete universal
- Confessional literature
- Confidant/confidante
- Conflict
- Connotation
- Consistency
- Consonance
- Contradiction
- Contrast
- Convention
- Copyright
- Counterplot
- Coup de théâtre
- Couplet
- Courtesy book
- Courtly love
- Cowleyan ode
- Cradle books
- Craft cycle
- Crisis
- Criticism
- Cross acrostic
- Crown of sonnets
- Curtain raiser
- Curtal sonnet
D
- Dactyl
- Dada
- Dale's classification of rhymes
- Dandyism
- Débat
- Decadence
- Decasyllabic verse
- Decorum
- Denotation
- Denouement
- Description
- Descriptive lingustics
- Detective story
- Deus ex machina
- Deuteragonist
- Dialect
- Dialogue
- Dibrach
- Diction
- Didactic
- Digest
- Digression
- Dime novel
- Diameter
- Dipody
- Dirge
- Dissociation of sensibility
- Dissonance
- Distich
- Distributed Stress
- Dithyramb
- Diverbium
- Divine afflatus
- Doggerel
- Dolce stil nuove
- Domestic tragedy
- Donnée
- Doppelgänger
- Double
- Double rhyme
- Drama
- Drama of sensibility
- Dramatic character
- Dramatic irony
- Dramatic lyric
- Dramatic monologue
- Dramatic proverb
- Dramatis personae
- Dramatugy
- Dream allegory
- Dream vision
- Droll
- Dumb show
- Duodecimo
- Duologue
- Duple meter/duple rhythm
- Dystopia
E
- Echo verse
- Eclogue
- Edition
- Elegiac couplet
- Elegiac meter
- Elegy
- Elision
- Emblem
- Emblem book
- Emendation
- Emotive language
- Encomiastic verse
- End rhyme
- End-stopped line
- English sonnet
- Enjambment
- Entr'acte
- Envoy/envoi
- Èpater le bourgeois
- Epic poetry
- Epic simile
- Epic Theater
- Epigram
- Epigraph
- Epilogue
- Epiphany
- Episode
- Epistle
- Epistolary novel
- Epistrophe
- Epitaph
- Epithalamion
- Epithet
- Epizeuxis
- Epode
- Eponymous author
- Equivalence
- Erziehungsroman
- Essay
- Ethos
- Eulogy
- Euphony
- Euphuism
- Evidence
- Exegesis
- Exemplum
- Existentialism
- Exordium
- Experimental novel
- Explication de texte
- Exposition
- Expressionism
- Extended metaphor
- Extension
- Extrametrical verse
- Extravaganza
- Eye rhyme
F
- Fable
- Fabliau
- Falling action
- Falling rhythm
- Fancy and imagination
- Fantasy
- Farce
- Feeling
- Feminine ending
- Feminine rhyme
- Fiction
- Figurative language
- Figure of speech
- Fin de siècle
- Flashback
- Flat character
- Fleshly school
- Foil
- Folio
- Folk drama
- Folklore
- Folk tale
- Foot
- Foreshadowing
- Form
- Four levels of meaning
- Four meanings of a poem
- Fourteener
- Frame story
- Free verse
- French forms
- Freytag's pyramid
- Fugitives and Agrarians
- Fustian
- Futurism
G
- Gallows humor
- Gamebooks
- Gathering
- Genetic fallacy
- Genius and talent
- Genre
- Georgian poetry
- Georgic
- Gesta
- Gloss
- Gnomic verse
- Golden line
- Goliardic verse
- Gongorism
- Gonzo journalism
- Gothic novel
- Grand Guignol
- Graveyard poetry
- Graveyard school
- Greek tragedy
- Grub Street
- Grundyism
- Guignol
H
- Hagiography
- Hagiology
- Haiku
- Half rhyme
- Hamartia
- Handwaving
- Headless line
- Head rhyme
- Hebraism-Hellenism
- "The Hedgehog and the Fox"
- Hemistich
- Hendecasyllable
- Hendecasyllabic verse
- Heptameter
- Heptastrich
- Heresy of Paraphrase
- Hero
- Heroic couplets
- Heroic drama
- Heroic quatrain
- Heroic stanza
- Hexameter
- Hexastich
- Hiatus
- High comedy
- Higher criticism
- Historical linguistics
- Historical novel
- Historic present
- History play
- Hokku see Haiku
- Holograph
- Homeric epithet
- Homeric simile
- Homily
- Horatian ode
- Horatian satire
- Hornbook
- Hovering accent
- Hubris
- Hudibrastic verse
- Humor
- Humours
- Hybris
- Hymn
- Hymnal stanza
- Hyperbole
- Hypercatalectic
- Hypermetrical
- Hypocorism
- Hysteron-proteron
I
- Iambic pentameter
- Ideology
- Idiom
- Imagery
- Imagism
- Impressionism
- Inference
- In medias res
- Internal rhyme
- Interpretation
- Intertextuality
- Irony
J
K
L
- Lai
- Lake Poets
- Lament
- Lampoon
- L'art pour l'art
- Laureate
- Lay
- Leaf
- Legend
- Legitimate theater
- Leonine rhyme
- Letters
- Level stress (even accent)
- Libretto
- Light ending
- Light poetry
- Light rhyme
- Light stress
- Light verse
- Limerick
- Linguistics
- Linked rhyme
- Link sonnet
- Literary ballad
- Literary criticism
- Literary epic
- Literary realism
- Literary theory
- Literature
- Litotes
- Litterateur
- Liturgical drama
- Living newspaper
- Local color
- Logaoedic
- Logical fallacy
- Logical stress
- Logos
- Long measure
- Loose sentence
- Lost Generation
- Low comedy
- Lyric
M
- Macaronic verse
- Madrigal
- Magical realism
- Malapropism
- Märchen
- Marginalia
- Marinism
- Marivauge
- Marxist literary criticism
- Masculine ending
- Masculine rhyme
- Masked comedy
- Masque
- Maxim
- Meaning
- Medieval drama
- Meiosis
- Melic poetry
- Melodrama
- Memoir
- Menippean satire
- Mesostich
- Metaphor
- Metaphysical conceit
- Metaphysical poetry
- Meter
- Metonymy
- Metre
- Metrical accent
- Metrical foot
- Middle Comedy
- Miles gloriosus
- Miltonic sonnet
- Mime
- Mimesis
- Minnesinger
- Minstrel
- Miracle play
- Miscellanies
- Mise en scène
- Mixed metaphor
- Mock epic
- Mock heroic
- Mode
- Modernism
- Monodrama
- Monody
- Monograph
- Monologue
- Monometer
- Monopody
- Monostich
- Monograph
- Mood
- Mora
- Moral
- Morality play
- Motif
- Motivation
- Movement
- Mummery
- Muses
- Musical comedy
- Mystery play
- Mythology
N
- Narrative point of view
- Narrator
- Naturalism
- Non-fiction
- Non-fiction novel
- Novel
- Novelette
- Novella
- Novelle
O
- Objective correlative
- Objective criticism
- Obligatory scene
- Octameter
- Octave
- Ode
- Oedipus complex
- Onomatopoeia
- Open couplet
- Oxymoron
P
- Palinode
- Pantoum
- Pantun
- Parable
- Paraclausithyron
- Paradelle
- Paradox
- Pararhyme
- Partimen
- Pastourelle
- Pathetic fallacy
- Pathya Vat
- Parallelism
- Parody
- Pastoral
- Pathos
- Pentameter
- Periodic sentence
- Peripetia
- perspective
- Persona
- Personification
- Pièce bien faite
- Picaresque novel
- Platonic
- Plot
- Poem
- Poem and song
- Poetic diction
- Poetic transrealism
- Poetry
- Point of view
- Polysyndeton
- Post-colonialism
- Postmodernism
- Pound's Ideogrammic Method
- Prologue
- Prose
- Prosimetrum
- Prosody
- Protagonist
- Proverb
- Pruning poem
- Psychoanalytic literary criticism
- Psychoanalytic theory
- Pun
- Purple patch
- Pyrrhic
Q
R
- Reader-response criticism
- Realism
- Refrain
- Repetition
- Resolution
- Rhetoric
- Rhyme
- Rhythm
- Roman a clef
- Romance novel
- Romanticism
- Russian formalism
S
- Satire
- Scanning
- Scansion
- Scene a faire
- Sea shanty
- Semiotics
- Semiotic literary criticism
- Setting
- Shanty
- Sestet
- Shakespearean sonnet
- Simile
- Sobriquet
- Soliloquy
- Sonnet
- Speaker
- Sprung rhythm
- Stanza
- Static character
- Stereotype
- Stream of consciousness
- Structuralism
- Subplot
- Syllogism
- Symbol
- Synecdoche
- Synaesthesia
- Syntax
T
- Tableau
- Tail rhyme
- Tagelied
- Tale
- Tall Tale
- Telestich
- Tanka
- Tenor
- Tension
- Tercet
- Terza rima
- Tetrameter
- Tetrastich
- Textual criticism
- Texture
- Theater of Cruelty
- Theater of the Absurd
- Theme
- Thesis
- Thesis play
- Threnody
- Tirade
- Tone
- Tract
- Tractarian Movement
- Tragedy
- Tragedy of blood
- Tragic flaw
- Tragic Hero
- Tragic irony
- Tragicomedy
- Tranche de vie
- Transcendentalism
- Transferred epithet
- Transition
- Translation
- Travesty
- Triad
- Tribe of Ben
- Tribrach
- Trimeter
- Triolet
- Triple rhyme
- Triple meter
- Triple rhythm
- Triplet
- Tristich
- Tritagonist
- Trivium
- Trobar clus
- Trochee
- Trope (literature)
- Troubadour
- Trouvère
- Truncated line
- Tumbling verse
- Type character
U
- Ubi sunt
- Underground culture
- Underground press
- Understatement
- Unities
- Unity
- Universality
- University Wits
- Unobtainium
- Utopia
- Utopian and dystopian fiction
- Unreliable narrator
V
- Variable syllable
- Variorum
- Varronian satire (Menippean satire)
- Vates
- Vaudeville
- Vehicle
- Verbal irony
- Verisimilitude
- Verism
- Vers de société
- Verse
- Verse paragraph
- Vers libre
- Verso
- Victorianism
- Viewpoint
- Vignette
- Villain
- Villanelle
- Virelay
- Virgule
- Voice (of the writer)
- Voice (in phonetics)
- Volta
- Vorticism
- Vulgate
W
- Wardour Street English
- Weak ending
- Weak foot
- Well-made play
- Wellerism
- Western fiction
- Wimmering
- Wit
- Word accent
- Wrenched accent
- Watermark
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