ACT: A major division in a play. Often, individual acts are divided into smaller units ("scenes") that all take place in a specific location. In Roman times, a five-act structure first appeared based upon Horace's recommendations.
Allegory. The word derives from the Greek allegoria ("speaking otherwise"). A figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary, symbolic or metaphorical meaning. In The Faerie Queene, for example, Red Cross Knight is a heroic knight in the literal narrative, but also a figure representing Everyman in the Christian journey.
alliteration-repetition of initial or medial consonant sounds in two or more adjacent words-e.g., "It is lawful to picket premises for the purpose of peaceful persuasion."
ALLUSION: A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification. Allusions can originate in mythology, biblical references, historical events, or legends. Authors often use allusion to establish a tone, create an implied association, contrast two objects or people, make an unusual juxtaposition of references, or bring the reader into a world of experience outside the limitations of the story itself. Authors assume that the readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning to the new context. For instance, if a teacher were to refer to his class as a horde of Mongols, the students will have no idea if they are being praised or vilified unless they know what the Mongol horde was and what activities it participated in historically. This historical allusion assumes a certain level of education or awareness in the audience, so it should normally be taken as a compliment rather than an insult or an attempt at obscurity.
AMBIGUITY: In common conversation, ambiguity is a negative term applied to a vague or equivocal expression when precision would be more useful. Sometimes, however, intentional ambiguity in literature can be a powerful device, leaving something undetermined in order to open up multiple possible meanings. When we refer to literary ambiguity, we refer to any wording, action, or symbol that can be read in divergent ways.
ANACHRONISM: Placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Shakespeare writes the following lines:
Brutus: Peace! Count the clock.
Cassius: The clock has stricken three (Act II, scene i, lines 193-94).
anadiplosis-repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause-e.g., "Labor and care are rewarded with success, success produces confidence, confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which diligence had raised."
anaphora-repetition of the same word or groups of words at the beginning of successive clauses-e.g., "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills."
ANECDOTE: A short narrative account of an amusing, unusual, revealing, or interesting event. A good anecdote has a single, definite point, and the setting, dialogue, and characters are usually subordinate to the point of the story. Usually, the anecdote does not exist alone, but it is combined with other material such as expository essays or arguments. Writers may use anecdotes to clarify abstract points, to humanize individuals, or to create a memorable image in the reader's mind. Anecdotes are similar to exemplum.
ANTICLIMAX. A drop, often sudden and unexpected, from a dignified or important idea or situation to one that is trivial or humorous. Also a sudden descent from something sublime to something ridiculous. In fiction and drama, this refers to action that is disappointing in contrast to the previous moment of intense interest. In rhetoric, the effect is frequently intentional and comic. For example: "Osama Bin Laden: Wanted for Crimes of War, Terrorism, Murder, Conspiracy, and Nefarious Parking Practices."
ANTIHERO: A protagonist who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a traditional hero. While the traditional hero may be dashing, strong, brave, resourceful, or handsome, the antihero may be incompetent, unlucky, clumsy, dumb, or clownish. In the case of the Byronic and Miltonic antihero, the antihero is a romanticized but wicked character who defies authority, and becomes paradoxically ennobled by his peculiar rejection of virtue. In this sense, Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost is presented in a sympathetic manner as an antihero.
antithesis-the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel form-e.g., "Many
things difficult to design prove easy to perform."
APOSTROPHE: Not to be confused with the punctuation mark, apostrophe is the act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present: For instance, John Donne commands, "Oh, Death, be not proud." King Lear proclaims, "Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, / More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child / Than the sea-monster." Death, of course, is a phenomenon rather than a proud person, and ingratitude is an abstraction that hardly cares about Lear's opinion, but the act of addressing the abstract has its own rhetorical power. An apostrophe is a rhetorical trope.
Apologue. A moral fable, usually featuring personified animals or inanimate objects which act like people to allow the author to comment on the human condition. Often, the apologue highlights the irrationality of mankind. The beast fable, and the fables of Aesop are examples.
apposition-placing side by side two coordinate elements, the second of which serves as an explanation or modification of the first-e.g., "John Smith, president of the Sons of the Bolsheviks, could not be reached by telephone."
ARCHAISM: A word, expression, spelling, or phrase that is out of date in the common speech of an era, but still deliberately used by a writer, poet, or playwright for artistic purposes. For instance, two archaic words (reproduced here in italics) appear in these lines from Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
Note that for Shakespeare in the sixteenth century, the use of thy and thine is not archaic, but for John Updike in the twentieth century, the use of thy and thine is definitely archaic.
ARCHETYPE: An original model or pattern from which other later copies are made, especially a character, an action, or situation that seems to represent common patterns of human life generally. Often, archetypes include a symbol, a theme, a setting, or a character that some critics think have a common meaning in an entire culture, or even the entire human race. Examples of archetypes found cross-culturally include recurring symbolic situations (such as the lost prince or chieftain raised ignorant of his heritage until he is rediscovered by his parents, or the damsel in distress rescued from a hideous monster by a handsome young man who later marries the girl), recurring characters (witches as ugly crones that cannibalize children, lame blacksmiths of preternatural skill), symbolic colors (green as a symbol for life or summer, blue as a symbol for water, or red as a symbol of blood, fire, or passion) and so on.
ASIDE: In drama, a few words or a short passage spoken by one character to the audience while the other actors on stage pretend their characters cannot hear the speaker's words.It is a theatrical convention that the aside is not audible to other characters on stage.
assonance-repetition of similar vowel sounds, preceded and followed by different consonants, in stressed syllables of adjacent words-e.g., "a blind, despised, and dying king."
asyndeton-deliberate omission of conjunctions between related clauses-e.g., "I came, I saw, I conquered."
ATMOSPHERE (also called mood): the emotional feelings inspired by a work. The term is borrowed from meteorology to describe the dominant mood of a selection as it is created by diction, dialogue, setting, and description. Often the opening scene in a play or novel establishes an atmosphere appropriate to the theme of the entire work. The opening of Shakespeare's Hamlet creates a brooding atmosphere of unease. Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher establishes an atmosphere of gloom and emotional decay. The opening of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 establishes a surreal atmosphere of confusion, and so on.
BALLAD: In common parlance, song hits, folk music, and folktales or any song that tells a story are loosely called ballads. In more exact literary terminology, a ballad is a narrative poem consisting of quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter. Common traits of the ballad are that (a) the beginning is often abrupt, (b) the story is told through dialogue and action (c) the language is simple or "folksy," (d) the theme is often tragic--though comic ballads do exist, and (e) the ballad contains a refrain repeated several times. One of the most important anthologies of ballads is F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Famous medieval and Renaissance examples include "Chevy Chase," "The Elfin Knights," "Lord Randal," and "The Demon Lover." A number of Robin Hood ballads also exist. More recent ballads from the 18th century and the Scottish borderlands include "Sir Patrick Spens," "Tam Lin," and "Thomas the Rhymer."
BALLAD MEASURE: Traditionally, ballad measure consists of a four-line stanza or a quatrain containing alternating four-stress and three-stress lines with an ABCB or ABAB rhyme scheme. Works written in ballad measure often include such quatrains. As an example, the opening stanza to "Earl Brand" illustrates the pattern. Note also the bits of Scottish dialect in phrases such as "hae" for have and "awa" for away.
Rise up, rise up, my seven brave sons,
And dress in your armour so bright;
Earl Douglas will hae Lady Margaret awa
Before that it be light.
BARD (Welsh Bardd, Irish Bard): (1) An ancient Celtic poet, singer and harpist who recited heroic poems by memory. These bards were the oral historians, political critics, eulogizers, and entertainers of their ancient societies. They were responsible for celebrating national events such as heroic actions and victories. (2) The word in modern usage has become a synonym for any poet. Shakespeare in particular is often referred to as "the Bard" or "the Bard of Avon" in spite of the fact he wrote in the Renaissance, long after the heyday of Celtic bards.
BEAST FABLE: A short, simple narrative with speaking animals as characters designed to teach a moral or social truth. Examples include the fables of Aesop and Marie de France, Kipling's Jungle Books and Just So Stories, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Richard Adams' Watership Down, and Chaucer's "Nun's Priest's Tale."
BLANK VERSE (also called unrhymed iambic pentameter): Unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even-numbered syllables bearing the accents. Blank verse has been called the most "natural" verse form for dramatic works, since it supposedly is the verse form most close to natural rhythms of English speech, and it has been the primary verse form of English drama and narrative poetry since the mid-sixteenth Century. Such verse is blank in rhyme only; it usually has a definite meter. (Variations in this meter may appear occasionally.) The Earl of Surrey first used the term "blank verse" in his 1540 translation of The Aeneid of Virgil. As an example, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus' speech to Hippolyta appears in blank verse:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name. (5.1.12-17)
Burlesque. A work designed to ridicule a style, literary form, or subject matter either by treating the exalted in a trivial way or by discussing the trivial in exalted terms (that is, with mock dignity). Burlesque concentrates on derisive imitation, usually in exaggerated terms. Literary genres (like the tragic drama) can be burlesqued, as can styles of sculpture, philosophical movements, schools of art, and so forth.
CACOPHONY: From the Greek meaning "bad sound," the term in poetry refers to the use of words that combine sharp, harsh, hissing, or unmelodious sounds. It is the opposite of euphony.
CADENCE: The melodic pattern just before the end of a sentence or phrase--for instance an interrogation or an exhortation. More generally, the natural rhythm of language depending on the position of stressed and unstressed syllables. Cadence is a major component of individual writers' styles. A cadence group is a coherent group of words spoken as a single rhythmical unit, such as a prepositional phrase, "of parting day" or a noun phrase, "our inalienable rights."
Caesura. A pause, metrical or rhetorical, occurring somewhere in a line of poetry. The pause may or may not be typographically indicated.
CANTO: A sub-division of an epic or narrative poem comparable to a chapter in a novel. Examples include the divisions in Dante's Divine Comedy, Lord Byron's Childe Harold, or Spenser's Faerie Queene.
CARPE DIEM: Literally, the phrase is Latin for "seize the day," from carpere (to pluck, harvest, or grab) and the accusative form of die (day). The term refers to a common moral or theme in classical literature that the reader should make the most out of life and should enjoy it before it ends. Poetry or literature that illustrates this moral is often called poetry or literature of the "carpe diem" tradition. Examples include Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," and Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."
CATASTROPHE: The "turning downward" of the plot in a classical tragedy. By tradition, the catastrophe occurs in the fourth act of the play after the climax.
CATHARSIS: An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work. He writes in his Poetics (c. 350 BCE): "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; . . . through pity [eleos] and fear [phobos] effecting the proper purgation [catharsis] of these emotions" (Book 6.2).
CHARACTER: Any representation of an individual being presented in a dramatic or narrative work through extended verbal representation. The reader can interpret characters as endowed with moral and dispositional qualities expressed in what they say (dialogue) and what they do (action). E. M. Forster describes characters as "flat" (i.e., built around a single idea or quality and unchanging over the course of the narrative) or "round" (complex in temperament and motivation; drawn with subtlety; capable of growth and change during the course of the narrative). The main character of a work of a fiction is typically called the protagonist; the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends (if there is one), is the antagonist.
climax-repetition of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of increasing importance-e.g., "Let a man acknowledge obligations to his family, his country, and his God.
Conceit. An elaborate, usually intellectually ingenious poetic comparison or image, such as an analogy or metaphor in which, say a beloved is compared to a ship, planet, etc. The comparison may be brief or extended. See John Donne's "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," for example: "Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, / The Intelligence that moves, devotion is."
consonance-words at the ends of verses in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables agree but the words that precede them differ; sometimes called "half-rhyme"-e.g.,
A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun.
Or nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon
End-stopped. A line that has a natural pause at the end (period, comma, etc.). For example, these lines are end stopped:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Coral is far more red than her lips red. -Shakespeare
Epic. An extended narrative poem recounting actions, travels, adventures, and heroic episodes and written in a high style (with ennobled diction, for example). It may be written in hexameter verse, especially dactylic hexameter, and it may have twelve books or twenty four books. Characteristics of the classical epic include these:
" The main character or protagonist is heroically larger than life, often the source and subject of legend or a national hero
" The deeds of the hero are presented without favoritism, revealing his failings as well as his virtues
" The action, often in battle, reveals the more-than-human strength of the heroes as they engage in acts of heroism and courage
" The setting covers several nations, the whole world, or even the universe
" The episodes, even though they may be fictional, provide an explanation for some of the circumstances or events in the history of a nation or people
" The gods and lesser divinities play an active role in the outcome of actions
" All of the various adventures form an organic whole, where each event relates in some way to the central theme
Examples:
" Homer, Iliad
" Homer, Odyssey
" Virgil, Aeneid
" Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered
" Milton, Paradise Lost
Euphemism. The substitution of a mild or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one, as in the use of "pass away" instead of "die." The basic psychology of euphemistic language is the desire to put something bad or embarrassing in a positive (or at least neutral light).
Fantasy. Any work that is disengaged from reality. Often such works are set in nonexistent worlds, such as under the earth, in a fairyland, on the moon, etc. The characters are often something other than human or include nonhuman characters. Example: J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.
Flashback. A device that allows the writer to present events that happened before the time of the current narration or the current events in the fiction. Flashback techniques include memories, dreams, stories of the past told by characters, or even authorial sovereignty. (That is, the author might simply say, "But back in Tom's youth. . . .")
Foot. The basic unit of meter consisting of a group of two or three syllables. Scanning or scansion is the process of determining the prevailing foot in a line of poetry, of determining the types and sequence of different feet.
Types of feet: U (unstressed); / (stressed syllable)
Iamb: U /
Trochee: / U
Anapest: U U /
Dactyl: / U U
Spondee: / /
Pyrrhic: U U
Gothic. A work in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown terror pervades the action. The setting is often a dark, mysterious castle, where ghosts and sinister humans roam menacingly. Horace Walpole invented the genre with his Castle of Otranto. Gothic elements include these:
" Ancient prophecy, especially mysterious, obscure, or hard to understand.
" Mystery and suspense
" High emotion, sentimentalism, but also pronounced anger, surprise, and especially terror
" Supernatural events (e.g. a giant, a sighing portrait, ghosts or their apparent presence, a skeleton)
" Omens, portents, dream visions
" Fainting, frightened, screaming women
" Women threatened by powerful, impetuous male
" Setting in a castle, especially with secret passages
" The metonymy of gloom and horror (wind, rain, doors grating on rusty hinges, howls in the distance, distant sighs, footsteps approaching, lights in abandoned rooms, gusts of wind blowing out lights or blowing suddenly, characters trapped in rooms or imprisoned)
" The vocabulary of the gothic (use of words indicating fear, mystery, etc.: apparition, devil, ghost, haunted, terror, fright)
Examples:
" Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
" William Beckford, Vathek
" Anne Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
" Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
" Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
Heroic Couplet. Two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter. Most of Alexander Pope's verse is written in heroic couplets. In fact, it is the most favored verse form of the eighteenth century. Example:
u / u / u / u / u /
'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
u / u / u / u / u /
Appear in writing or in judging ill. . . .
--Alexander Pope
[Note in the second line that "or" should be a stressed syllable if the meter were perfectly iambic. Iambic= a two syllable foot of one unstressed and one stressed syllable, as in the word "begin." Pentameter= five feet. Thus, iambic pentameter has ten syllables, five feet of two syllable iambs.]
Humanism. The new emphasis in the Renaissance on human culture, education and reason, sparked by a revival of interest in classical Greek and Roman literature, culture, and language. Human nature and the dignity of man were exalted and emphasis was placed on the present life as a worthy event in itself (as opposed to the medieval emphasis on the present life merely as preparation for a future life).
Invective. Speech or writing that abuses, denounces, or attacks. It can be directed against a person, cause, idea, or system. It employs a heavy use of negative emotive language. Example:
" I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. --Swift
Lampoon. A crude, coarse, often bitter satire ridiculing the personal appearance or character of a person.
Meter. The rhythmic pattern produced when words are arranged so that their stressed and unstressed syllables fall into a more or less regular sequence, resulting in repeated patterns of accent (called feet).
Mock-Heroic Epic. Treating a frivolous or minor subject seriously, especially by using the machinery and devices of the epic (invocations, descriptions of armor, battles, extended similes, etc.). The opposite of travesty. Examples:
" Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
" Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock
Novella. A prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. There is no standard definition of length, but since rules of thumb are sometimes handy, we might say that the short story ends at about 20,000 words, while the novel begins at about 50,000. Thus, the novella is a fictional work of about 20,000 to 50,000 words. Examples:
" Henry James, Daisy Miller
" Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
" Henry James, Turn of the Screw
" Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
parenthesis-insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactic flow of the sentence-e.g., "He tried-who could do more?-to restrain the fury of the mob."
parallelism-similarity of structure in a pair of related words, phrases, or clauses-e.g.,
"An ideal orator strives to teach, to please, and to move."
Parody. A satiric imitation of a work or of an author with the idea of ridiculing the author, his ideas, or work. The parodist exploits the peculiarities of an author's expression--his propensity to use too many parentheses, certain favorite words, or whatever. The parody may also be focused on, say, an improbable plot with too many convenient events. Fielding's Shamela is, in large part, a parody of Richardson's Pamela.
Persona. The person created by the author to tell a story. Whether the story is told by an omniscient narrator or by a character in it, the actual author of the work often distances himself from what is said or told by adopting a persona--a personality different from his real one. Thus, the attitudes, beliefs, and degree of understanding expressed by the narrator may not be the same as those of the actual author. Some authors, for example, use narrators who are not very bright in order to create irony.
Picaresque novel. An episodic, often autobiographical novel about a rogue or picaro (a person of low social status) wandering around and living off his wits. The wandering hero provides the author with the opportunity to connect widely different pieces of plot, since the hero can wander into any situation. Picaresque novels tend to be satiric and filled with petty detail. Examples:
" Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
" Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
" Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild
polysyndeton-repetition of conjunctions in close succession-e.g., "We have ships and men and money and stores."
Pseudonym. A "false name" or alias used by a writer desiring not to use his or her real name. Sometimes called a nom de plume or "pen name," pseudonyms have been popular for several reasons.
First, political realities might make it dangerous for the real author to admit to a work. Beatings, imprisonment, and even execution are not unheard of for authors of unpopular works.
Second, an author might have a certain type of work associated with a certain name, so that different names are used for different kinds of work. One pen name might be used for westerns, while another name would be used for science fiction.
Lastly, an author might choose a literary name that sounds more impressive or that will garner more respect than the author's real name. Examples:
" Samuel Clemens used the name Mark Twain
" Mary Ann Evans used the name George Eliot
" Jonathan Swift used the name Lemuel Gulliver (once)
Rhyme. The similarity between syllable sounds at the end of two or more lines. Some kinds of rhyme include:
" Couplet: a pair of lines rhyming consecutively.
" Eye rhyme: words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough, though, hiccough. Or: love, move, prove. Or: daughter, laughter.)
" Feminine rhyme: two syllable rhyme consisting of stressed syllable followed by unstressed.
" Masculine rhyme: similarity between terminally stressed syllables.
Romance. An extended fictional prose narrative about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people. Knights on a quest for a magic sword and aided by characters like fairies and trolls would be examples of things found in romance fiction. Examples:
" Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
" Sir Philip Sidney, The Arcadia
In popular use, the modern romance novel is a formulaic love story (boy meets girl, obstacles interfere, they overcome obstacles, they live happily ever after). Computer software is available for constructing these stock plots and providing stereotyped characters. Consequently, the books usually lack literary merit. Examples:
" Harlequin Romance series
Sarcasm. A form of sneering criticism in which disapproval is often expressed as ironic praise. (Oddly enough, sarcastic remarks are often used between friends, perhaps as a somewhat perverse demonstration of the strength of the bond--only a good friend could say this without hurting the other's feelings, or at least without excessively damaging the relationship, since feelings are often hurt in spite of a close relationship. If you drop your lunch tray and a stranger says, "Well, that was really intelligent," that's sarcasm. If your girlfriend or boyfriend says it, that's love--I think.)
Satire. A literary mode based on criticism of people and society through ridicule. The satirist aims to reduce the practices attacked by laughing scornfully at them--and being witty enough to allow the reader to laugh, also. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present. The satirist may insert serious statements of value or desired behavior, but most often he relies on an implicit moral code, understood by his audience and paid lip service by them. The satirist's goal is to point out the hypocrisy of his target in the hope that either the target or the audience will return to a real following of the code. Thus, satire is inescapably moral even when no explicit values are promoted in the work, for the satirist works within the framework of a widely spread value system. Many of the techniques of satire are devices of comparison, to show the similarity or contrast between two things. A list of incongruous items, an oxymoron, metaphors, and so forth are examples. See "The Purpose and Method of Satire" for more information.
Setting. The total environment for the action of a fictional work. Setting includes time period (such as the 1890's), the place (such as downtown Warsaw), the historical milieu (such as during the Crimean War), as well as the social, political, and perhaps even spiritual realities. The setting is usually established primarily through description, though narration is used also.
Sonnet. A fourteen line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme. The two main types of sonnet are the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean. The Petrarchan Sonnet is divided into two main sections, the octave (first eight lines) and the sestet (last six lines). The octave presents a problem or situation which is then resolved or commented on in the sestet. The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-B-A A-B-B-A C-D-E C-D-E, though there is flexibility in the sestet, such as C-D-C D-C-D.
Shakespearean Sonnet. (perfected though not invented by Shakespeare), contains three quatrains and a couplet, with more rhymes (because of the greater difficulty finding rhymes in English). The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-G. In Shakespeare, the couplet often undercuts the thought created in the rest of the poem.
Style. The manner of expression of a particular writer, produced by choice of words, grammatical structures, use of literary devices, and all the possible parts of language use. Some general styles might include scientific, ornate, plain, emotive. Most writers have their own particular styles.
Subplot. A subordinate or minor collection of events in a novel or drama. Most subplots have some connection with the main plot, acting as foils to, commentary on, complications of, or support to the theme of, the main plot. Sometimes two opening subplots merge into a main plot.
Symbol. Something that on the surface is its literal self but which also has another meaning or even several meanings. For example, a sword may be a sword and also symbolize justice. A symbol may be said to embody an idea. There are two general types of symbols: universal symbols that embody universally recognizable meanings wherever used, such as light to symbolize knowledge, a skull to symbolize death, etc., and constructed symbols that are given symbolic meaning by the way an author uses them in a literary work, as the white whale becomes a symbol of evil in Moby Dick.
Tone. The writer's attitude toward his readers and his subject; his mood or moral view. A writer can be formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or pessimistic. While both Swift and Pope are satirizing much the same subjects, there is a profound difference in their tone.
Utopian novel. A novel that presents an ideal society where the problems of poverty, greed, crime, and so forth have been eliminated. Examples:
" Thomas More, Utopia
" Samuel Butler, Erewhon
" Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
Verisimilitude. How fully the characters and actions in a work of fiction conform to our sense of reality. To say that a work has a high degree of verisimilitude means that the work is very realistic and believable--it is "true to life.".
zeugma-one part of the sentence governs something quite separate (yoking unlike things)-e.g., Inebriated mom at Las Vegas wedding tells husband: "I gotta get the kids. I gotta pick up the sitter. I gotta get to the midnight show." He responds: "What you gotta get is sober."