Literary terms and their meanings. Literary terms, such as, allegory, alliteration, consonance, conceit, tragicomedy, tragedy, comedy, etc all are explained.

1. Glossary of Literary Terms.
 Allegory: An allegory is a story with two levels of meaning. First, there's the surface of the story.
(The characters and the plot) And it has the symbolic level, or the deeper meaning that all the equipment on
the surface represents. The symbolic meaning of an allegory can be political or religious, historical or
philosophical. Allegories are kind of like massive metaphors, but they usually come in narrative form—that
is, they're told through stories. Examples: John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Edmund Spenser's The
Faerie Queene is an allegory that takes poetic form.
 Alliteration: Alliteration is a term used to describe the repetition of initial consonant sounds. More simply
put, alliteration is what happens when words that begin with the same consonant (the letters that aren't
vowels) are mixed together to great effect. As in, "Carol constantly craves cornflakes." You’ll find
alliteration in many a tongue twister, but it's also just about everywhere in literature, too. For example:
Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Ligeia".
 Assonance: Assonance is a kind of internal rhyme that makes use of repeated vowel sounds. The vowel
sounds are woven together to create a sound effect`t. It's a trick of the trade that poets use to create and
enhance meaning. For example: The Rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains.
 Consonance: Consonance is a kind of alliteration. It happens when consonant sounds are repeated. The
consonants stay the same, but the vowels can change. Stella levels the laughter with an alarming leer.
The L sounds is causing consonance.
 Ballad: A ballad is a song it is also an ancient form of storytelling. In the old days, common people didn't
get their stories from books—they were sung as musical poems. Because they are meant to convey
information, ballads usually have a simple rhythm and a consistent rhyme scheme. They often tell the story
of everyday heroes, and some poets, like Bob Dylan, continue to set them to music. Many ballads are
written in a ballad meter, which consists of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. This
meter is a classic, an old stand-by, and many of poems, ballads, hymns, and other songs were written in it—
example: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" or John Keats' "La Belle Dame
Sans Merci".
 Blank Verse: Blank verse is one of the most common forms of English poetry. The term refers to verse that
has no rhyme scheme, but does have a regular meter — iambic pentameter. This verse was common
in Renaissance dramas by folks like Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. But it's also used all over
poetry, most famously in Milton's Paradise Lost. Traditionally, blank verse is used when the writer writes
on serious subjects. Another example: Shakespeare's play - The Tempest.
 Conflict: In any novel or a play the conflict is what drives the plot and fuels the action. How do authors
build conflict in literature? Conflict can occur between two characters, as a struggle between protagonist and
antagonist. Or a character can be in conflict with an external force like nature or society in
general. Macbeth, for example, seems to be struggling against time. In Mark Twain's Adventures of

2. Huckleberry Finn, Huck bumps up against the rules and order of the antebellum South. Conflict can be
internal, as well. Lots of novels are interested in their protagonist's inner struggles. Needless to say, a novel
or play can have many different kinds of conflict boosting the plot.
 Chorus: In the ancient Greek theater, the chorus was a group of people. They sang, danced, and made
comments about the action on stage. They also gave the key information about stuff happening off stage —
like battles and sea voyages. The traditional Greek chorus is not often seen in modern theater, the term can
sometimes be used to refer to a character that gives the audience key information or offers commentary.
 Comedy: Comedy a genre that deals in humor and entertainment. Comedies traditionally end in marriage
(Happy ending), which is what makes a comedy different from tragedies. Shakespeare's A Midsummer
Night's Dream is an example of a romantic comedy.
 Conceit: A conceit is a kind of metaphor that compares two very unlike things in a surprising and clever
way. Often, conceits are extended metaphors that dominate an entire passage or poem. Metaphysical
poet John Donne was known for his conceits. His 1635 poem "The Flea" he uses a little bug to talk about
wanting to get his lady’s love.
 Couplet: A style of poetry defined as a complete thought written in two lines with rhyming ends. The most
popular of the couplets is the heroic couplet. The heroic couplet consists of two rhyming lines of iambic
pentameter usually having a pause in the middle of each line. One of William Shakespeare’s trademarks was
to end a sonnet with a couplet, as in the poem “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long as lives this, and this gives life to thee.
 Drama: In literature, drama refers to a literary work written for performance by an actor or actors. Drama
typically consists of dialogues broken up into acts and scenes. There are lots of dramatic subgenres, such as
comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy. Drama started way back in the classical period and has flourished in
various historical periods, including the Renaissance, the 18th century and Enlightenment, and
the modern theater of the 20th century. For example: Oedipus Rex by Sophocles.
 Elegy: A type of literature defined as a song or poem, written in melancholic couplets, that expresses
sorrow or lamentation, usually for one who has died. This type of work stemmed out of a Greek work
known as a "elegus," a song of mourning or lamentation that is accompanied by the flute. Beginning in the
16th century, elegies took the form we know today. Milton's "Lycidas," is an example of a pastoral elegy.
 Epic: Epic is a kind of narrative poem that dates back to ancient Greece and the classical period. Homer
used the epic to tell stories about larger-than-life heroes and their triumphs on and off the battlefield. Epics
usually involve supernatural or mythic elements like gods. They are written in an elevated style and use lots
of long similes, called heroic similes. Homer wrote two main epics: the Iliad and the Odyssey. After
him, Virgil wrote the Aeneid. Later epics include Milton's Paradise Lost.
 Flat Character: E.M. Forster coined the term of Flat character to refer to characters who are one-
dimensional, who lack emotional depth, and who don't change much over the course of the story, but they
help move the plot along and provide comic relief.

3.  Heroic Couplet: Heroic couplets are rhyming pair of verse in iambic pentameter. They're called heroic
because in the old days of English poetry they were used to talk about the trials and adventures of heroes.
Heroic couplets ruled the poetry for a long time, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, when Alexander
Pope ruled the neoclassical world with works like "Sound and Sense," which just so happens to be written in
heroic couplets.
 Iambic Pentameter: It is the most useful technical term in poetry. An iamb is a metrical foot that consists
of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, penta means five and meter refers to a regular rhythmic
pattern in poetry. Iambic pentameter is a kind of rhythmic pattern that consists of five iambs per line.
Many poets used this rhythmic pattern. Poets mixed it up with metrical variations like extra syllables or out-
of-order stresses. Iambic pentameter has some majorly early roots, dating back to Latin verse and Old
French, but Chaucer is considered the pioneer of the verse in English and used it for his famous Canterbury
Tales. Example: The first line of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: If music be the food of love, play on.
 Imagery: Imagery is the key to literature—especially poetry. If you're reading a description that engages
any one of your five senses, you're reading imagery. Imagery means to use figurative language to represent
objects, actions and ideas in such a way that it appeals to our physical senses. Usually it is thought that
imagery makes use of particular words that create visual representation of ideas in our minds. The word
imagery is associated with mental pictures. However, this idea is but partially correct. Imagery, to be
realistic, turns out to be more complex than just a picture.
 Irony: A literary term referring to how a person, situation, statement, or circumstance is not as it would
actually seem. Many times it is the exact opposite of what it appears to be. There are many types of irony,
the three most common being verbal irony, dramatic irony, and cosmic irony. Verbal irony occurs when
either the speaker means something totally different than what he is saying or the audience realizes, because
of their knowledge of the particular situation to which the speaker is referring, that the opposite of what a
character is saying is true. Dramatic irony occurs when facts are not known to the characters in a work of
literature but are known by the audience. Cosmic irony suggests that some unknown force brings about dire
and dreadful events. Irony spices up a literary work by adding unexpected twists and allowing the reader to
become more involved with the characters and plot.
 Metaphor: A type of figurative language in which a statement is made that says that one thing is something
else but, literally, it is not. In connecting one object, event, or place, to another, a metaphor can uncover new
and interesting qualities of the original thing that we may not normally notice or even consider important.
Metaphoric language is used in order to realize a new and different meaning. As an effect, a metaphor
functions primarily to increase stylistic colorfulness and variety. Metaphor is a great contributor to poetry
when the reader understands a likeness between two essentially different things. A metaphor may be found
in a simple comparison or largely as the image of an entire poem. For Example: Love is a battlefield.
 Novel: A novel is a long piece of fiction with a narrative structure. It is, first and foremost, a story, with lots
of characters and a plot. Some say it was derived from continental works like Cervantes' Don Quixote.
Others argue the novel was descended from the genre of romance, those old tales of knights and damsels in
distress. The novel really came into its own during the 18th century when early novelists like Daniel
Defoe and Eliza Haywood started writing. Since those days, it has become the most dominant form in all of
literature.

4.  Parody: A parody is a text that imitates another work or genre for the sake of a good, hearty laugh. Parodies
are not meant to incite some major social change, and they're not even meant to knock the original work
down a mark. For example: Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which is a parody of a biography.
 Pun: A pun is a play on words. The sound or spelling of the words might be similar, sure, but the meanings
are very different. For example: Every calendar's days are numbered.
 Rhyme: A rhyme is just a repetition of sounds that sound the same.
Types of rhyme:
 Internal rhyme occurs within a line of poetry.
 End rhyme occurs only at the ends of lines.
 Perfect rhyme rhymes perfectly, as in cat and hat.
 Slant rhyme consists of rhymes that are close. Think dear and door or soul and all. It is also known
as half rhyme, imperfect rhyme, or weak rhyme.
 Eye rhymes look alike, but don't sound alike, like tough and bough or mint and pint.
 Romance: As a genre, romance originated in medieval France. Romance is all about courtly love and
chivalry. It's all about honor, duty, and damsels in distress. And indeed the genre of romance is ripe for
parodying. Cervantes's Don Quixote makes fun of the heroism of knights. Romance reached its peak during
the Medieval age, the romance genre influenced other later genres, like Gothic and Victorian literature. In
Renaissance period, people started writing plays called romances that were tragicomedies with some
specific elements: long journeys, happy endings, elements of magic, adventure, and an emphasis on time
and the life cycle. The Tempest, Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale are all examples of
Shakespearean romance. These romances aren't supposed to be realistic—they're more like fairy tales where
people find redemption in symbolic situations.
 Romantic Comedy: A comedy focusing on love, marriage, courtship and humor can be called a literary
romantic comedy. A good example is Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
 Round Character: Novelist E.M. Forster coined this phrase to describe characters which are unlike a flat
character. A round character is written so that we probably have some understanding of that character's
thoughts, feelings, and motivations, and they may also change over the course of the story. Most
protagonists are round.
 Satire: Satire is a genre that sets out to improve bad behavior through sarcasm and irony. A satirist
humorously depicts a current state of affairs, and hopes that by doing so, he might improve it. It's all about
making fun of vices, foolishness, and shortcomings, so that the subject can improve. Satire can be found in
novels, plays, short stories, etc. In English literature, satire experienced a bit of a revival during the 18th
century, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift poked fun of society for all kinds of weaknesses. One of the
most famous satires of all time is Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal

5.  Simile: A simile is a figure of speech that makes use of the adverbs "like" or "as" to make a comparison or
analogy. In that sense, it's a very specific kind of metaphor. Greek poet Homer used them in his writing and
William Shakespeare is probably Homer's successor to the simile throne.
 Soliloquy: A soliloquy is the most important monologue given by a character in a play which is alone on
the stage. Example: Hamlet's "To Be or Not To Be" speech. Because they're alone when they deliver these
speeches, a character might reveal some very key thoughts, feelings, and opinions to us audience members
during a soliloquy.
 Sonnet: It’s one of the most common poetic forms. Sonnets traditionally have:
 Fourteen lines
 A rhyme scheme
 Iambic pentameter
 A turn, or volta, somewhere around line 8 or 9, where the poem takes a new direction or changes its
argument in some way.
Aside from these requirements, there are a lot of different ways a sonnet can be written . Poets can change the rhyme
scheme and the meter, and write about whatever they want to. Most sonnets fall into one of three categories:
 Petrarchan: These sonnets are divided into two sections—an octave, with eight lines, followed by a
sestet, with six lines The rhyme scheme for the octave is usually ABBAABBA, while the rhyme scheme
for the sestet was a little more fast and loose, Sometimes with CDECDE or CDCDCD, etc. In a
Petrarchan sonnet, the volta comes at line nine, at the beginning of the sestet. Typically, the octave
would present some sort of an argument that the sestet would solve, or describe some sort of state of
affairs that the sestet would then comment on.
 Shakespearean: Usually, Shakespeare and his successors arranged their sonnet into three quatrains,
followed by a final couplet. The volta would come around the beginning of the third quatrain, which is
just where it would be if it were a Petrarchan sonnet, too. Rhyme wise, Shakespeare shook it up a bit
compared to his Petrarchan predecessors. Typically a Shakespearean sonnet goes like this: ABAB
CDCD EFEF GG.
 Spenserian. Like the Shakespearean sonnet, these usually have three quatrains, followed by a final
couplet. Unlike the Petrarchan sonnet, there's not necessarily any volta. Spenserian sonnets are unique
for using an interlocking rhyme scheme: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. Though they date to the way back
days of the 13th century, sonnets are still around today. Now they are all in to free verse, the metrical
requirements, rhyme schemes, and stanza structures have fallen by the wayside somewhat in favor of a
looser adherence to the form. Now in some there’s no iambic pentameter, they are with extra lines and
with no volta.
 Stream Of Consciousness: In literature, the term refers to a style of narration in which a character's
thoughts are thrown at us, one after the other, as if we were thinking those thoughts right along with them.
Pioneered by Modernist writers like Virginia Woolf, this narration gives the illusion that we're aware of a
character's unedited, uncensored, and sometimes more than a little nonsensical thoughts. The idea here is to
represent as accurately as possible human consciousness.
 Tragicomedy: Tragicomedy is a mixed genre that blends tragic and comic conventions. We see it most
in drama, but it is used up in novels, too. The tragicomedy tradition has its roots in the Classical period,
but it really took flight in the Renaissance. Shakespeare wrote tragicomedies. Later in the 17th and 18th

6. centuries, tragicomedies referred to plays with high tragic plots about noble characters coupled with low
comic plots involving marriage. The genre isn't hugely popular today, though there are some tragicomedies
written in the 20th century.
 Tragedy: According to Aristotle's classic Poetics, tragedy is a genre that depicts a noble character who falls
from grace. The genre is meant to create the emotions of pity and fear in its audience, hence purging those
emotions in an act of catharsis. Usually, that fall from grace is brought about by some sort of tragic flaw,
(hamartia) on the part of the hero, like ambition, greed, or pride. But it can also just come from bad
circumstances, unfortunate coincidences, and rotten luck. This genre started in Greek drama.