Glossary of Literary Terms

Alliteration – the repetition of initial consonant sounds. Although alliteration sometimes appears in prose, it is mainly a poetic device. Like other forms of sound repetition, allite­ration pleases the ear and emphasizes the words in which it occurs.

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind. (W. Wordsworth)

Allusion – a reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work which a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.

I saw her turn pink, perfect statue that she was – a miracle that I share with Руgmalion only. (O. Henry)

Antithesis – the stylistic figure of contrast, a compositional device in text arrangement based on the opposition of meaning.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… (Ch. Dickens)

Antonomasia – the use of a proper name in place of common noun or vice versa to emphasize some feature or quality.

He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. (C. Doyle)

Assonance – the repetition of similar vowels, usually in stressed syllables.

Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aiden,

I shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore? (E. Poe)

Atmosphere – the prevailing mood or feeling of a literary work. Atmosphere is often developed, at least in part, through descriptions of setting. Such descriptions help to create an emotional climate for the work, which establishes the reader's expectations and attitudes.

Blank verse – verse that does not rhyme; and particularly, verse with five-beat or -stress lines, rather than four beats.

Character – a person or an animal, a thing, or a nature force presented as a person – appearing in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem.

Climax – a decisive moment that is of maximum intensity or is a major turning point in a plot.

Complication – a series of difficulties forming the central action in a narrative.

Conceptual metaphor – understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another, e.g. love is madness, love is magic, argument is war.

Connotation – a part of meaning of a linguistic unit, expressing its stylistic value.

Context – the parts of a piece of writing, speech, etc., that precede and follow a word or passage and contribute to its full meaning; the conditions and circumstances that are relevant to an event, fact, etc.

Contextual meaning – a meaning imposed by and depending on the context.

Convergence – a combination or accumulation of various stylistic devices and expressive means in one place to support an important idea and ensure the delivery of the message.

Decoding – the interpretation of messages (spoken, written, visual) by the receiver or addressee which have been formed or encoded as text by the transmitter or addresser according to a set of rules or code (e.g. language).

Denouement – the “resolution” of the plot of a play or novel.

Exposition – the part of a writing that provides the background information needed to understand the characters and the action.

Emotive meaning – the connotation of a word or expression which affects the emotions of the reader or listener.

Encoding – a term in semiotics from communication theory to refer to the process whereby an addresser or transmitter converts a message into a text by means of a set of rules or code, to be received or decoded by an addressee.

Epithet – a descriptive name or phrase used to characterize someone or something.

You’re a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature. (Ch. Dickens)

Expressive means – phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in language for the purpose of logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance.

Figurative language – language that is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense; it embraces all kinds of devices or features which are semantically or grammatically marked or unusual in some way, notably all the rhetorical figures of speech.

Figurative meaning – a type of extension of meaning for a word resulting in polysemy or multiple meaning by metaphoric transfer of senses.

Free verse – poetry that does not have a fixed rhythm or rhyme scheme.

Genre – the set or cluster of structural and stylistic properties that have come to be associated with them; it is a class of discourse with the same primary social function and communicative goals and intended audience.

Gradation – an arrangement of sentences or their parts which makes a gradual increase in significance, importance, emotive tension in the utterance.

Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die. (Ch. Dickens)

Image – a mental representation or picture; idea produced by the imagination.

Imagery – words or phrases that create pictures, or images, in the reader’s mind; ideas presented in a poetical form; figurative descriptions and figures of speech collectively.

Individual style – the set of features peculiar to, or characteristic of an author, a system of individual stylistic features

Inversion – the displacement of the predicate or secondary members of the sentence, and their shift into the front, opening position in the sentence.

Came frightful days of snow and rain. (J. London)

Irony – the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning; a statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.

Apart from splits based on politics, racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds and specific personality differences, we’re just one cohesive team. (D. Uhnak)

Key term – a word in a text significant for the theme.

Literal meaning – meaning of a word (opposed to figurative or metaphorical) used with its basic conceptual meaning.

Loan word (borrowing) – an integrated word from a foreign language, orthography adapted for the receiving language, e.g. carte blanche (from French).

Metaphor – transference of names based on the associated likeness between two objects, on the similarity of one feature common to two different entities, on possessing one common characteristic.

His voice was a dagger of corroded brass. (S. Lewis)

Meaning – representation of a concept; takes one of the properties, by which a concept is characterized and makes it represent the concept as a whole.

Message – a piece of information encoded by a speaker/writer as addresser into a linguistic form or code and transmitted via the medium of speech or writing along a channel to an addressee who decodes it.

Metonymy – transference of names based on contiguity (nearness), on actually existing relations between the objects, denoted by the words, on common grounds of existence in reality but different semantically.

He made his way through the perfume and conversation. (I. Shaw)

Motif – a recurring feature (such as a name, an image, or a phrase) in a work of literature; a motif generally contributes in some way to the theme of a short story, novel, poem, or play.

Narration – one of the major forms of discourse, the kind of writing or speaking that tells a story (a narrative); it may take the form of prose or poetry.

Parallelism – identical or similar syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession, often backed up by repetition of words and conjunctions and prepositions.

From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure – a ghostly couple. (V. Woolf)

Periphrasis – renaming of an object by a phrase that emphasizes some particular feature of the object, e.g. a gentleman of the long robe (a lawyer), the fair sex (women), my better half (my wife).

Personification – figure of speech in which an animal, an object, a natural force, or an idea is given personality, or described as if it were human.

Notre Dame squats in the dusk. (E. Hemingway)

Plot – the sequence of events or actions in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem.

Polysyndeton – repeated use of conjunctions to strengthen the idea of equal logical/emotive importance of connected sentences.

The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. (Ch. Dickens)

Repetition – the repeating of a word in order to emphasize.

Anaphora (a…, a…, a…) – the beginning of two or more sentences (clauses) is repeated.

I might as well face facts: good-bye, Susan, good-bye a big car, good-bye a big house, good-bye power, good-bye the silly handsome dreams. (J. Braine)

Epiphora (…a, …a, …a) – the end of successive sentences (clauses) is repeated.

I wake up and I’m alone and I walk round Warley and I’m alone; and I talk with people and I’m alone and I look at his face when I’m home and it’s dead. (J. Braine)

Framing (a… a) – the beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end, thus forming the “frame” for the non-repeated part of the sentence (utterance).

Obviously – this is a streptococcal infection. Obviously. (W. Deeping)

Anadiplosis (…a, a…) – the end of one clause (sentence) is repeated in the beginning of the following one.

Now he understood. He understood many things. (P. Abrahams)

Chain repetition (…a, a… b, b…) – several successive repetitions.

A smile would come into Mr. Pickwick's face: a smile extended into a laugh: the laugh into a roar, and the roar became general. (Ch. Dickens)

Successive repetition (…a, a, a…) – a string of closely following each other reiterated units.

Of her father’s being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure. (Ch. Dickens)

Synonymic repetition – the repetition of the same idea by using synonymous words and phrases which by adding a slightly different nuance of meaning intensifies the impact of the utterance.

The poetry of earth is never dead … // The poetry of earth is ceasing never... (J. Keats).

Rhetorical question – peculiar interrogative construction which semantically remains a statement.

Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? (G. Byron)

Rhyme – the repetition of sounds in two or more words or phrases that appear close to each other in a poem.

The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armor against fate;

Death lays his icy hand on kings. (J. Shirley)

Rhythm – the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables into a pattern. Rhythm is most apparent in poetry, though it is part of all good writing.

Semantic field – a group of words united by sense connections that are determined by like features in the words’ lexical meaning.

Setting – the time and place in which the events in a short story, novel, play, and narrative poem occur.

Simile – imaginative comparison made between two dissimilar things through the use of a specific word of comparison, such as like, as, than, or resembles.

He stood immovable like a rock in a torrent. (J. Reed)

Stylistic device (figure of speech) – a word or an expression that is not meant to be interpreted in a literal sense.

Suspense – the quality of a short story, novel, drama, or narrative poem that makes the reader or audience uncertain or tense about the outcome of events.

Symbol – any object, person, place, or action that has a meaning in itself and that also stands for something larger than itself, such as a quality, an attitude, a belief, or a value.

Theme – a subject of discourse, discussion, or composition; a unifying or dominant idea, motif.

Tone – a general quality, effect or atmosphere.

T rope – a figure of speech based on some kind of transfer of denomination.