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Know your bathos from your pathos, and your avant garde from your angry young men with our glossary of literary terms.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A
Abstract language
About ideas, not things and specific subjects. 'An artist is a creature driven by demons,' Faulkner.
Absurd
Centring around the idea that we are isolated individuals living a meaningless existence.
Aestheticism
Art for art's sake, rather than for any exterior motive, such as utilitarianism.
Agitprop
Politically left-wing work.
Allegory
A work that has a literal meaning and a subtext that is symbolic, used particularly as a way of commenting about political or moral ideas or people.
Allusion
Reference to something else, such as another work of literature.
Anabasis
Building to the action's climax.
Anagnoris
When a character recognises the truth.
Analepsis
Flashback.
Analogues
With a parellel in another literature, language or culture.
Anaphora
Repeating words in one clause following another for effect, eg 'The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'
Androcentric
Man-focused.
Angry Young Men
Writers and artists, such as John Osborne, Kinglsey Amis and Alan Sillitoe whose often bitter, fierce and humourous work lashed out against the hypocrisy of middle class-dominated Britain in the 1950s, where working class people were still efffectively barred from any influence.
Antagonist
The protaganist's or hero's principal enemy.
Anthropomorphism
Giving human-like thinking and talking abilities to non-humans.
Anti-novel
Defying traditional novel conventions, seen in the work of Sterne, Joyce, Woolf, among others.
Apocryphal
Work with unknown background.
Aporia
The part of a work where contradictory meanings make meaning unclear, and the work deconstructs. This is central to deconstruction theory.
Avant garde
Ahead of its time, experimental, shocking, from French meaning 'advance guard'.
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B
Baroque
Elaborate and ornate in style.
Bathos
Going beyond pathos so that the result is ludicrous.
Beat movement
American anti-establishment writers of the 1950s, such as Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg, influenced by Zen Buddhism and jazz.
Black comedy
Making the horrific amusing, such as Joseph Heller's Catch 22 story of a person trying to avoid dangerous military service.
Burlesque
Using a manner which jars with the matter in a work to satirise a subject or literature. It can come in a variety of styles – parody, mock epic, travesty.
Bildungsroman
Novel that deals with a person's early life.
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C
Canon of literature
The essential list of authors in a particular culture, such as English, that critics, teachers and scholars recognise as major and whose works have been deemed classics. The term stems from the Greek word 'kanon' – measuring rod – and it was applied to the books that religious leaders deemed to be genuine in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
Celtic Revival
Irish literature's very productive period from the late 19th century to the 1939 death of William Butler Yeats. Also called Irish Literary Renaissance.
Chronicle
Account of events over a long period, the ancestor of histories, but a chronicle does not distinguish between fact and fiction in the form of legend and myth. It will, therefore, not be reliable as an account of what actually happened, but rather as an indication of the concerns of the people of a particular time and place. The 9th century Anglo-Saxon Chronicles are a good example.
Cliché
An expression that has been overused but is employed to make a point, eg 'lock, stock and barrel'.
Comedy of manners
Humourously depicting the behaviour of a particular type of person, such as the middle class, suburbanite.
Concrete language
About things and specific subjects, not ideas. 'Kent sir – everyone knows Kent – apples, cherries, hops, and women.' Dickens.
Crisis
A key moment that may lead towards and follow the climax.
Cultural materialism
Emphasising the importance of the time and place of the writing and reading of a work.
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D
Decadence
Opposed to nature and norms of sexual behaviour and morality, for example Oscar Wilde.
Deconstruction
The same text may be interpreted in a huge number of ways dependent on how specific readers and writers interpret language. There can never be any fixed meaning. It is an idea central to post-structuralism.
Deus ex machina
'God from the machine,' in Latin. Greek playwrights would end tricky drama plots lowering a god on to the stage to resolve any dilemmas and loose ends. Now the term refers to a literary device introducing an unlikely or unexpected event or discovery to bring a story to a satisfactory close. Dickens' writing that Oliver Twist discovers his inheritance, for example.
Doggerel
Jerky light verse, badly constructed.
Dénouement
Unravelling of a plot.
Dream vision
Where a character falls asleep and dreams that he or she is being taken through a landscape. Examples include Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.
Dystopia
Dysfunctional world.
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E
Empathy
Beyond sympathetic identification with a character.
Encomium
Praise.
Enlightenment
From the mid 17th century to the late 18th century in western Europe, when reason, clear thinking and writing was emphasised. It was thought that reason would solve all problems and the period is also referred to as the Age of Reason.
Epiphany
Sudden revelation or understanding.
Epistolary novel
A story told through protagonist's diary or letters, for example Richardson's Pamela.
Existentialism
Philosophy holding that we live in a meaningless dangerous universe where each individual must be responsible for her or his existence.
Expressionism
Rejection of realism in favour of the representation of the inner mind.
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F
Feminist criticism
Aims to balance out the perceived male dominated society and literature. Post-structuralism is a basic tenet because it holds that the use of inherited language reinforces male dominance. See Woolf's A Room of One's Own.
Foregrounding
Language drawing attention to itself.
Foreshadowing
Preparing for later events.
Formalism
Focuses on the technical devices and formal patterns of literature as opposed to its subject or social concerns.
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G
Genre
The type of category approriate for a work, for example science fiction.
Gothic
Particularly popular from the mid 18th century to the early 19th century, it focuses on the mysterious, supernatural and passionate, frequently in a medieval scene. See the Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe.
Great chain of being
The idea that remained popular until the Renaissance – that there is a hierarchical chain from God at the top, down to Earth's lowest form of life at the bottom.
Grotesque
Including features that are macabre, fantastic, exaggerated, pornographic or unpleasant. See Dickens.
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H
Hermeneutics
Interpretation of texts.
Heroic
Emphasising love and valour.
Historical novel
Using historical events as the basis for fiction.
Hubris
Failing after adopting an arrogant presumption or pride.
Humanism
Emphasising human dignity and achievements in this world rather than inherent immorality and the afterlife of the spirit.
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I
In media res
Starting in the middle of the plot and returning to the earlier parts.
Intentional fallacy
According to the New Critics the mistaken idea that a writer's intentions are important. Their view is that only an objective reading of the text is relevant.
Interior monologue
Random process of thought in literature created with the intention of exactly matching the way it occurs in a person's head.
Intertexuality
Relating various texts to each other to illuminate further.
Irony
Language that tends to contradict the meaning; ill-timed arrival of a desired event; when the reader is aware of something that is hidden to a character.
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J
Jacobean
English literature during James I reign from 1603 to 1625.
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K
Kafkaesque
After the Czech author Franz Kafka, meaning nightmarish.
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L
Lampoon
Satirical, caricature of a subject.
Leitmotif
A recurring image or pattern of words.
Longeur
Boring writing passage.
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M
Magical realism
Realism combined with the fantastic, see Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie.
Marxist criticism
After Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels' (1820-1895), approach that holds that literature must be looked at in the context it was produced, particularly the economic and political context.
Melodrama
Works with two-dimensional characters and sentimental, sensational action.
Metafiction/metanovel
Novels about novel-writing where the writer emphasises the fact that he or she is creating a fiction with the reader. See Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
Modernist
European and American arts movement lasting from the 19th century through to the 20th century, probably reaching its height in the 1920s. It broke with previous conventions, experimented and used various styles, including avant garde and existentialism. See Woolf's Jacob's Room.
Motif
Recurring element, such as an emotion.
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N
Narrator/narrative voice
The person telling the story. This takes a number of guises, including the first and third person.
Naturalism
Expounding philosophical ideas using settings and characters that are realistic. See Hardy.
Nemesis
A tragic hero or heroine's punishment.
Neo-classicism
Literature between the mid 17th century and late 18th century, such as Fielding.
New Critics
Argued that only an objective reading of the text is relevant and the writer's intentions and context are irrelevant.
Noble savage
The idea that the modern world has corrupted man who in primeval times used to be more honourable.
Novel
Any continuous prose between 60,000 to 200,000 words that is longer than a novella or short story and usually tells a story employing plot and character.
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O
Organic form
Where the writer's subject and theme gives rise naturally to the form.
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P
Paradox
Self-contradictory.
Parody
Imitating a writing style or subject for amusement. See Fielding's Shamela.
Pathetic fallacy
Giving nature human qualities, such as by saying that a storm is nature's retribution on man for human destruction of the environment.
Pathos
A characteristic in literature that causes the reader to feel pity or grief, such as in Hardy's Jude the Obscure.
Phallocentric
Supporting the idea of male-dominated society.
Picaresque
Relating to a rogues adventures, rather than an organised plot. See Fielding's Tom Jones.
Plot
The deliberate scheming of events and their causes and effects by a writer.
Pluralism
That one text may be read in different ways by different people.
Post-colonial
Relating to literature from the former colonies.
Postmodernism
Anti-conventional in the way of modernism, but echoing the all-encompassing doubts of the post-war post-Holocaust period, such as relating to nuclear or environmental disasters.
Post-structuralism
Following from structuralism, but holding that everything an author writes can only be understood in the context of his or her social, historical, political culture.
Pre-Raphaelite
England's literature in the mid 19th century.
Protagonist
A story's main character.
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R
Realism
Insight into psychology, factual accuracy and or dealing with proletariat struggles.
Renaissance
The European flourishing of arts, sciences and culture after the Middle Ages that is generally thought to have spread from Italy over a 200-year period from the 14th century.
Roman a clef
Real people are disguised as fictional characters in a novel.
Romanticism
Period of literature in Europe from the late 18th century to the mid 19th century emphasising emotions and imagination rather than the rationalism that had gone before.
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S
Saga
Long and often relating to the lives of a particular family or dynasty.
Satire
Mocking humour aimed at making a moral point.
Science fiction
Based on some imaginary technology or scientific happening.
Sensibility
Ability to react with sympathy or empathy to an artistic creation. The period from the mid to the late 18th century is sometimes referred to as the Age of Sensibility.
Sentimental novel
Making great play of sensibilities.
Sentimentality
Over-the-top sensibility, treacle-coated.
Stream of consciousness
An attempt to recreate in words a person's free, natural thought processes. See Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Joyce's Ulysses.
Structuralism
Approach that holds that all text must be considered as part of a system of language because it comprises codes, conventions and signs. Originating in the 1960s this approach has been superseded by post-structuralism.
Surrealism
Aiming to show the processes of the unconscious mind by going beyond the real.
Symobolism
The use of literary symbols to portray ideas and plot.
Sympathy
A certain amount of identification with a character, but still remain detached from it, less involved than with empathy.
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T
Theme
Key notion.
Tragedy
The downfall of a character as a result of fate or as a result of a fatal character flaw.
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U
Underground
Alternative or anti-establishment literature.
Utilitarianism
Theory that the value of things and ideas is determined by them being useful to as many people as possible.
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V
Vignette
Description of something to conjure up a small picture of it.
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W
War literature
Usually referring to literature coming out of the First World War.
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Z
Zeitgeist
Attitude of the times.
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