5 Glossary of Literary Terms
Adage A traditional or proverbial saying.
Allegory A story in which the characters and events extend beyond the confines of their story to represent an object lesson to readers.
Alliteration The repetition of a consonant sound – “storm strewn sea.”
Anapaest The anapaestic meter consists of a series of two unstressed sounds followed by a single stressed sound – “The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold” (Lord Byron).
Antagonist Character whose dramatic role is to oppose the protagonist (q.v.).
Archetype Also known as universal symbol, an archetype may be a character (the intrepid hero, damsel in distress, party animal), a theme (the triumph of good over evil), a symbol, or even a setting. Many literary critics are of the opinion that archetypes, which have a common and recurring representation in a particular human culture or entire human race, shape the structure and function of a literary work.
Archetypal plot A sequence of events forming a type of story that has recurred throughout the history of a civilization, and with which most people are familiar; for example, a battle between good and evil.
Assonance The repetition of vowel sounds, as in “rapid rattle” (Wilfred Owen).
Aural Describes how a poem appeals to our sense of sound, hearing.
Ballad A narrative poem, usually written in quatrains with abcb rhyme scheme (q.v.).
Blank verse Unrhymed iambic pentameter (q.v.) poetry.
Blocking agents In drama, characters who try to prevent other characters from achieving their goals.
Catharsis The purging of audience emotion in tragedy, the release of emotion, and final feeling of relief.
Comedy Form of drama characterized by some sense of optimism, fellowship, love, and good humour.
Conceit A metaphor that is unusually ingenious or elaborate. Common feature in work of metaphysical poets, such as John Donne.
Contextual symbol A symbol that has a non-literal meaning only within the context of the work of art in which it is found.
Dactyl The dactylic meter is the opposite of the anaepestic. It consists of a series of single hard-stressed sounds followed by two soft-stressed sounds – “Just for a handful of silver he left us” (Robert Browning).
Deconstruction An interpretive movement in literary theory that reached its apex in the 1970s. Deconstruction rejects absolute interpretations, stressing ambiguities and contradictions in literature. Deconstruction grew out of the linguistic principles of De Saussure who noted that many Indo-European languages create meaning by binary opposites. Verbal oppositions such as good/evil, light/dark, male/female, rise/fall, up/down, and high/low show a human tendency common transculturally to create vocabulary as pairs of opposites, with one of the two words arbitrarily given positive connotations and the other word arbitrarily given negative connotations.
Dramatic monologue A poem which is “dramatic” because it is a speech presented to an audience (usually of only one person) and a “mo