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The definitions given below are not meant to be exhaustive. Indeed, whole books have been written to explain some of these terms, such as archetype , hero, realism, and symbolism. These notes are meant to provide basic definitions of frequently used literary terms; I hope these definitions will establish common ground for book discussions. Most of the examples given are works reviewed on this Web site. 

"In literature, an extended metaphor in which characters, objects, incidents, and descriptions carry one or more sets of fully developed meanings in addition to the apparent and literal ones. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress , for example, is apparently about a man named Christian who leaves his home and journeys to the Heavenly City. However, it is clear that Christian stands for any Christian man and that the incidents of his journey represent the temptations and trials that beset any Christian man throughout his life on earth" (Source : Benet's, 26).

“A species of fiction – also called allohistory – in which much depends on some major reversal of known geography or history” ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 15).

Examples: novels in which Germany won World War II.

See protagonist .

anticlimax

"An arrangement of details such that the lesser appears at the point where something greater is expected" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 246). The term may also refer to a resolution that does not deserve all the build-up it has received.

Also see: climax .

antihero

"A protagonist who lacks traditional heroic virtues and noble qualities and is sometimes inept, cowardly, stupid, or dishonest, yet sensitive" (Source : Benet's, 40).

"A protagonist of a modern play or novel who has the converse of most of the traditional attributes of the hero. This hero is graceless, inept, sometimes stupid, sometimes dishonest" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 30).

Example: Parker in the novels by Richard Stark .

Also see: hero , protagonist .
 

"Generally, a prototype or original pattern or a paradigm or abstract idea of a class of things that represents the typical and essential elements shared by all varieties of that class. In literature, myth, folklore, and religion, the term can be applied to images, themes, symbols, ideas, characters, and situations that appeal to our unconscious racial memory. T.S. Eliot explains this memory as civilized man's 'pre-logical mentality'…Archetypes can be primitive and universal and consist of general themes like birth, death, coming of age, love, guilt, redemption, conflict between free will and destiny, rivalry between members of the family, fertility rites; of characters like the hero rebel, the wanderer, the devil, the buffoon; and of creatures like the lion, serpent, or eagle" (Source : Benet's, 46).

"A figure of speech which descends from the sublime to the ridiculous in an attempt to create a grandiose or pathetic effect. The term describes an unintentional anticlimax" (Source : Benet's, 83).

“A type of novel, common in German literature, which treats the personal development of a single individual, usually in youth” (Source : Benet’s, 109).

"A substantial aspect of …much modern fiction. The term describes sardonically humorous effects derived from mordant wit and morbid or grotesque situations that deal with anxiety, suffering, or death" (Source : Benet's, 112).

Example: The Ax by Donald E. Westlake.

A narrative structure that sandwiches a large central section (which usually makes up the bulk of the work) between two smaller sections that introduce and conclude the work. The two smaller sections thus stand on both sides of the main narrative, like a set of bookends propping up a row of books on a shelf. Authors may choose this type of structure for two reasons:

1. to provide another perspective on the action. The narrator of the two bookend sections is often different from the narrator of the main section. This technique therefore offers another person’s perception of the events and their significance, or another character’s comments about the main narrator. Sometimes the narrator of the bookend sections offers information that the main narrator does not or could not know but that the reader needs to understand the full significance of the story.
2. to indicate the passage of time. Many authors use this narrative structure to present a main narrative that occurred in the past; the bookend sections then provide a current comment on the main story, for example a person describing a diary written by an ancestor found in an old trunk.

Sometimes the bookend structure serves both of these purposes. For example, an adult may provide a current commentary on a main narrative written from his point of view as a child.

Examples: The Unburied by Charles Palliser, A Place of Execution by Val McDermid, Strange Fits of Passion by Anita Shreve, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

"The subgenre in which the narrative interest is centered on a person or a group of people attempting to steal something, break in somewhere, or otherwise interfere with a seemingly impregnable stronghold has become known as a caper. There are comic capers and serious capers. Donald E. Westlake writes the former under his own name in his novels about John Dortmunder; he writes the latter as Richard Stark in Parker novels" (Source : DeAndrea, 401).

See characterization .

"The creation of imaginary persons so that they seem lifelike.

"There are three fundamental methods of characterization : (1) the explicit presentation by the author of the character through direct exposition, either in an introductory block or more often piecemeal throughout the work, illustrated by action; (2) the presentation of the character in action, with little or no explicit comment by the author, in the expectation that the reader can deduce the attributes of the actor from the actions; and (3) the representation from within a character, without comment by the author, of the impact of actions and emotions on the character's inner self.

"Regardless of the method by which a character is presented, the author may concentrate on a dominant trait to the exclusion of other aspects of personality, or the author may attempt to present a fully rounded creation. If the presentation of a single dominant trait is carried to an extreme, not a believable character but a caricature will result…On the other hand, the author may present so convincing a congeries of personality traits that a complex rather than a simple character emerges; such a character is three-dimensional or, in E.M. Forster's term, 'round'…

"Furthermore, a character may be either static or dynamic. A static character is one who changes little if at all. Things happen to such a character without things happening within …A dynamic character, on the other hand, is one who is modified by actions and experiences, and one objective of the work in which the character appears is to reveal the consequences of these actions" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 89).

"A rhetorical term for a rising order of importance in the ideas expressed…In large compositions—the essay, the short story, the drama, or the novel—the climax is the point of highest interest, whereat the reader makes the greatest emotional response. In dramatic structure climax designates the turning point in the action, the crisis at which the rising action reverses and becomes the falling action" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 99).

Also see: anticlimax .

"A principle demanding that the parts of any composition be so arranged that the meaning of the whole may be immediately clear and intelligible. Words, phrases, clauses within the sentence; and sentences, paragraphs, and chapters in larger pieces of writing are the units that, by their progressive and logical arrangement, make for coherence or, contrariwise, by illogical arrangement, result in incoherence. Literature has no need, however, of unilateral coherence in all its particulars. Occasional incoherence—or even unsuitable coherence—may perfectly register uncertainty, anxiety, terror, confusion, illness, or other common states" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 102).

"The struggle that grows out of the interplay of two opposing forces. Conflict provides interest, suspense, and tension. At least one of the opposing forces is customarily a person. This person, usually the protagonist, may be involved in conflicts of four different kinds: (1) a struggle against nature…(2) a struggle against another person, usually the antagonist…(3) a struggle against society…or (4) a struggle for mastery by two elements within the person…Seldom do we find a simple, single conflict, but rather a complex one partaking of two or even all of the preceding elements… Conflict implies not only the struggle of a protagonist against someone or something, but also the existence of some motivation for the conflict or some goal to be achieved thereby. Conflict is the raw material out of which plot is constructed" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 115-116).

Also see: plot .

This type of mystery characteristically involves a group of people brought together, usually in a large house, for a specific purpose. When one member of the group turns up dead, all the others immediately are suspects and become suspicious of each other. The detective, frequently an amateur sleuth, deduces the murderer's identity through shrewd observation of the participants. The story often ends with all participants gathered in the drawing room; the sleuth examines in turn each one's motives for the murder, saving the guilty party for last.

In a cozy, the unpleasant business of the murder usually occurs "off stage." Someone discovers a corpse, but readers are spared the details of how the killing and death occur.

"This term describes the underlying attitude behind a certain type of mystery story. Although it is frequently treated as the opposite of hard-boiled, that impression is inaccurate. The proper antonym of cozy is noir . A cozy supposes a benign universe: These murders we have before us are unsettling, but once we figure out who the killer is, we can get back to living our decent and pleasant lives" (Source : DeAndrea, 401).

"Literally, 'unknotting.' The final unraveling of a plot; the solution of a mystery; an explanation or outcome. Dénouement implies an ingenious untying of the knot of an intrigue, involving not only a satisfactory outcome of the main situation but an explanation of all the secrets and misunderstandings connected with the plot complication" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 146).

"…the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, named for the inventor of the detective story, are given by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) to honor outstanding achievements in mystery writing" ( Source : DeAndrea, 395).

“A novel told as a series of letters written by one or more of the characters. [. . .] One of the earliest types of the novel, it offered readers an immediate entry into the world of the characters through the inherently social medium of correspondence. [. . .] Contemporary use is rare, perhaps related to the waning of letter-writing as a social phenomenon” (Source : NYPL, 642).

Examples: Alice’s Tulips by Sandra Dallas is an example of a traditional epistolary novel, in which all the letters are written by the same person. Fan Mail by Ronald Munson illustrates a contemporary twist on the genre by employing several forms of written communication: memos, faxes, telephone messages, e-mail, reports, newspaper clippings.

"A 20th-century movement in philosophy…All existentialists are concerned with ontology, the study of being. The point of departure is human consciousness and mental processes. In contrast to most previous philosophical systems, which maintain that an a priori essence precedes or transcends the individual existence of people or of objects, the existentialists conclude that existence precedes essence. The significance of this for human beings is that the concept that one has an essential self is shown to be an illusion. A man's self is nothing except what he has become; at any given moment, it is the sum of the life he has shaped until then. The 'nothing' he begins with is thus the source of man's freedom, for at each moment it is man's will that can choose how to act or not to act. However, each such decision affects the future doubly: a man is or should be responsible for the consequences of his actions; and each action necessarily excludes the other potential actions for that moment, and their consequences, and thus at least partially limits the potentialities for future actions.

"By what standards, then, should a person make decisions? The mind cannot discern any meaning for this existence in the universe; when a person abandons his illusions, he finds himself horrified by the absurdity of the human condition…a person must create a human morality in the absence of any known predetermined absolute values" ( Source : Benet's, 334-335).

"…the introductory material that creates the tone, gives the setting, introduces the characters, and supplies other facts necessary to understanding" a work of literature ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 204).

"A device by which a work presents material that occurred prior to the opening scene of the work. Various methods may be used, among them recollections of characters, narration by the characters, dream sequences, and reveries" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 215).

“The presentation of material in a work in such a way that later events are prepared for. [. . .] the purpose of foreshadowing is to prepare the reader or viewer for action to come” (Source: Harmon & Holmon, 219).

-G-

genre

“Used to designate the types or categories into which literary works are grouped according to form, technique, or, sometimes, subject matter. The French term means “kind,” “genus,” or “type.” The traditional genres include tragedy, comedy, epic, lyric, and pastoral. Today a division of literature into genres would also include novel, short story, essay, television play, and motion picture scenario. [. . .] Critics today frequently regard genre distinctions as useful descriptive devices but rather arbitrary ones. Genre boundaries have been much subject to flux and blur in recent times, and it is almost the rule that a successful work will combine genres in some original way” (Source: Harmon & Holmon, 231).

The related term genre fiction refers to several types of popular fiction such as thrillers, westerns, mysteries, romance novels, and science fiction. Each type has its own set of standard characteristics that most novels of the type exhibit. Genre fiction is often used pejoratively to mean something like “mere genre fiction,” which refers to a formulaic novel that rigidly follows the conventions of its type and exhibits little creativity.

gothic
alternate terms: gothic novel, gothic narrative

A type of fiction that arose in the 18th century. “It was characterized by horror, violence, supernatural effects, and medieval elements, usually set against a background of gothic architecture, especially a gloomy and isolated castle” ( Source : Benet’s, 417). In addition to the gloomy, isolated castle, other common gothic trappings include insanity (often in the form of a mad relative kept locked in a room in the castle), ghosts and spirits, and dramatic thunder-and-lightning storms.

See also: Southern gothic

Examples: Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier epitomizes the gothic novel. Other works by duMaurier, including Jamaica Inn, also include gothic elements.

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-H-

This prize is awarded annually by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers for the best work, either fiction or nonfiction, of literary excellence in crime writing.

"A type of 20th-century American crime story, which combined the style of realism with a subject of increasing interest: urban crime. Hard-boiled fiction gained a reputation for laconic, witty, and sometimes realistically crude dialogue; the graphic and objective depiction of violence; and the introduction of seedy, corrupt, and sordid settings" (Source : Benet's, 446).

Example: The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley.

"The central character (masculine or feminine) in a work. The character who is the focus of interest" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 246).

A hero traditionally has positive qualities such as high ethical standards, commitment to duty, perseverance, and courage. An antihero possesses negative qualities such as cowardice and dishonesty. Protagonist is a neutral term denoting simply the main character of a work.

"In rhetoric, a deliberate dissembling for effect or to intensify meaning. In the most general sense, two categories of irony can be identified: verbal irony, in which it is plain that the speaker means the opposite of what he says, and circumstantial, or situational, irony, in which there is a discrepancy between what might reasonably be expected and what actually occurs—between the appearance of a situation and its reality. One of the most common forms of verbal irony is the use of praise when a slur is intended…Tragic irony results from a perception of the intensity of human striving and the indifference of the universe…In dramatic irony, a speaker may utter words that have a hidden meaning intelligible to the audience but of which he himself is unaware…" ( Source : Benet's, 510).

"A worldwide twentieth-century tendency in the graphic and literary arts, especially painting and prose fiction. The frame or surface of the work may be conventionally realistic, but contrasting elements—such as the supernatural, myth, dream, fantasy—invade the realism and change the whole basis of the art" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 304).

A term introduced by the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, who "saw in magic realism the capacity to enrich our idea of what is 'real' by incorporating all dimensions of the imagination, particularly as expressed in magic, myth, and religion" ( Source : Benet's, 635).

Example: Snow in August by Pete Hamill.

"A work, usually a play, based on a romantic plot and developed sensationally, with little regard for motivation and with an excessive appeal to the emotions of the audience. The object is to keep the audience thrilled by the arousal anyhow of strong feelings of pity, horror, or joy. Poetic justice is superficially secured, the characters (either very good or very bad) being rewarded or punished according to their deeds. Though typically a melodrama has a happy ending, tragedies that use much of the same technique are sometimes referred to as melodramatic" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 312).

"In literature, recurrent images, words, objects, phrases, or actions that tend to unify the work are called motives" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 330).

"…its purpose is to recount events…There are two forms: simple narrative , which recites events chronologically, as in a newspaper account; and narrative with plot, which is less often chronological and more often arranged according to a principle determined by the nature of the plot and the type of story intended" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 336).

Also see: plot .

See narration .

"Anyone who recounts a narrative. In fiction the term is used for the ostensible author or teller of a story. In fiction presented in the first person, the 'I' who tells the story is the narrator; the narrator may be in any of various relations to the events described, ranging from being their center (the protagonist) through various degrees of importance (minor characters) to being merely a witness. In fiction told from an omniscient point of view, the author acts self-consciously as narrator, recounting the story and freely commenting on it. A narrator is always present, at least by implication, in any work, even a story in which a self-effacing author relates events with apparent objectivity. A narrator may be reliable or unreliable. If the narrator is reliable, the reader accepts without serious question the statements of fact and judgment. If the narrator is unreliable, the reader questions or seeks to qualify the statements of fact and judgment" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 337).

Also see: point of view .

“A movement in 20th-century American literary criticism […]. The New Critics were united in their emphasis on dealing with the text directly; they insisted that a work of art be considered as an autonomous whole, without regard to biographical, cultural, or social speculations” (Source : Benet's, 726).

New Criticism arose from the writings of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Chief among the New Critics were John Crowe Ransom, whose 1941 book The New Criticism gave the movement its name; Allen Tate, R.P. Blackmur; Cleanth Brooks; Robert Penn Warren; Kenneth Burke; and Yvor Winter.

noir

"The term was coined by postwar French film critics as film noir (black film) to describe the sort of movie characterized by dark photography and a despairing, doom-laden sense of life. Scholars of the mystery story found it convenient to use the term for work that shared the same attitude…Typical themes in noir work include obsessive love (or hate, or both), amnesia, illness, betrayal, and man-as-the-plaything of fate" ( Source : DeAndrea, 403).

A novel dominated by social customs, manners, conventions, and habits of a definite social class. In the true novel of manners the mores of a specific group, described in detail and with great accuracy, become powerful controls over characters. The novel of manners is often, although by no means always, satiric” (Source: Harmon & Holmon, 354).

Examples: the novels of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton

"In literature, a comic or satirical imitation of a piece of writing, exaggerating its style and content, and playing especially on any weakness in structure or meaning of the original" (Source : Benet's, 778).

“. . . the tendency to credit nature with human emotions. In a larger sense the pathetic fallacy is  any false emotionalism resulting in a too impassioned description of nature. It is the carrying over to inanimate objects of the moods and passions of a human being” (Source : Harmon & Holman, 379).

"The quality in art or literature that evokes sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow in the viewer or reader" (Source : Benet's, 783).

"…in common usage it describes an acquiescent or relatively helpless suffering or the sorrow occasioned by unmerited grief, as opposed to the stoic grandeur and awful justice of the tragic hero" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 380).

"The minimal definition of plot is 'pattern.' Only slightly less simple is 'pattern of events.' Plot is an intellectual formulation about the relations among the incidents and is, therefore, a guiding principle for the author and an ordering control for the reader.

"Because the plot consists of characters performing actions in incidents that comprise a 'single, whole, and complete' action, this relation involves conflict between opposing forces…Without conflict, plot hardly exists…These forces may be physical (or external), or they may be spiritual (or internal); but they must in any case afford an opposition. The struggle between the forces, moreover, comes to a head in one incident—the crisis—that forms the turning point and usually marks the moment of greatest suspense" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 394).

Also see: conflict .

"The vantage point from which an author presents a story. If the author serves as a seemingly all-knowing maker, the point of view is called omniscient. At the other extreme, a character in the story—major, minor, or marginal—may tell the story as he or she experienced it. Such a character is usually called a first-person narrator; if the character does not comprehend the implications of what is told, the character is called a naïve narrator. The author may tell the story in the third person and yet present it as it is seen and understood by a single character, restricting information to what that character sees, hears, feels, and thinks; such a point of view is said to be limited…If the author never speaks in his or her own person and does not obviously intrude, the author is said to be self-effacing. In extended works, authors frequently employ several methods" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 400).

Also see: narrator .

Postmodernism

“Despite persistent disagreement regarding its definition, the term ‘postmodernism’ was accepted by the mid-1970s as a comprehensive sociocultural paradigm…Reacting against the traditional master narratives that projected an orderly and coherent universe, the postmodern writers have chosen narrative openness over closure, fiction over truth, and fragmentation over unity and coherence” (Source: Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, ed. George Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and Phillip Leiningter [NY: HarperCollins, 1991], 874).

The following information is from Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology, ed. Paula Geyh, Fred G. Leebron, Andrew Levy (NY: Norton, 1998):

Cultural and literary postmodernism, which began in the 1960s, is “a tentative grouping of ideas, stylistic traits, and thematic preoccupations that set the last four decades apart from earlier eras” (x). “In postmodern fiction, World War II, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and the atom bomb appear often as metaphors for …[a] failure of reason, as historical markers to explore how we manage to live with… absolute contradiction, or simply as spectral presences that remind us that nuclear arsenals still exist, and that our lives remain charged and threatened by visions of apocalypse” (xi).

Characteristics of postmodern fiction:

• “an assault upon traditional definitions of narrative…particularly those that created coherence or closure” (xii)
• the theme of the suburbanization of America, the decline of the city, and apocalyptic visions of the devastated city (xiv)
• “fascination about how the public life of the nation intersects with the private lives of its citizens” (xviii)
• “questioning of any belief system that claims universality or transcendence” (xx)
• the rise of the nonfiction novel, which “extends the experiments of the New Journalism and further undermines the distinctions between journalism and literature, fact and fiction” (xxv)
• the creation of “ruptures, gaps, and ironies that continually remind the reader that an author is present” (1); this characteristic is particularly evident in the postmodern tendency to blend memoir and fiction to show “how individuals use fictional constructions to make order of real-life events” (126)

James Wood, writing about modern British literature in The Oxford Guide to Contemporary Writing (John Sturrock, ed.; Oxford UP, 1996), describes America as “the locus of Post-Modernity and its discontents—vulgar films, trashed cities, the congestions of cliché and other degradations of language, the clotting of the soul with cultural debris, the submersion of the individual” (137).

About.com’s contemporary literature guide Amy Strong has this to say about reading postmodern literature: “reading postmodern fiction can be an exhilarating and, at times, utterly baffling experience. Postmodern texts consciously disorient the reader, shaking off the soft blanket of chronological, straightforward storytelling in favor of a harsher, more forbidding narrative style. The reader is led through multiple shifts in consciousness, chronology, and geography, often without a chapter break [. . .].”
(From “ Analyzing Postmodern Texts ,” http://contemporarylit.about.com/library/weekly/aa031201a.htm )

Example: L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy.

"A sequel that is set at an earlier time than the work it follows" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 407).

Examples: Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry is a prequel to Lonesome Dove; Justice by Larry Watson is the prequel to Montana 1948 .

"A novel dealing with a special social, political, economic, or moral issue or problem and possibly advocating a doctrinaire solution. If the propagandistic purpose dominates the work so as to dwarf or eclipse all other elements, such as plot and character, then the novel belongs to the realm of the didactic and probably cannot be understood or appreciated for its own sake as a work of art. It may be good propaganda and bad literature at the same time" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 412).

Examples: The Chamber and The Street Lawyer by John Grisham.

"Originating in early Greek drama, the term was applied to the first actor and leader of the chorus. The antagonist was the second most important character and the other contender in the agon, the dispute or debate that formed part of a Greek tragedy. Protagonist is now used generally to denote the main character of a play or story and is sometimes used interchangeably with hero" ( Source : Benet's, 834).

See also: antihero , hero .

"A piece of notably fine writing. Now and then authors in a strongly emotional passage will give free play to most of the stylistic tricks in their bag. They will write prose intensely colorful and more than usually rhythmic. When there is an unusual piling up of these devices in such a way as to suggest a self-conscious literary effort, the section is spoken of as a purple patch—a colorful passage standing out from the writing around it…Although sometimes used in a nonevaluative, descriptive sense, the term is more often employed derogatorily" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 421).

“This kind of criticism suggests that a piece of writing scarcely exists except as a text designed to be read; indeed, scarcely exists until somebody reads it. The reader-response approach does not so much analyze a reader’s responding apparatus as scrutinize those features of the text that shape and guide a reader’s reading.” This form of criticism postulates the “concept of a hypothetical reader different from any real reader—a hypothetical construct of norms and expectations that can be derived or projected or extrapolated from the work and that may even be said to inhere in the work. This hypothetical reader becomes, in effect, a part of the fiction itself.” ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 427).

See Notes on The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work by Louise M. Rosenblatt .

"…literature that attempts to depict life in an entirely objective manner. In English, realism may be said to have…become a definite literary trend in the 19th century. In America, realism became an important movement in the 1880s…" (Source : Benet's, 858).

“An action, theme, or piece of information meant to lead a character or the reader astray. Mysteries often employ red herrings to complicate the plot and draw the reader’s attention away from the real solution, thus prolonging the pleasure of reading. The term derives from hunters’ use of the smoked fish to distract their dogs” (Source : NYPL, 671).

“Literally, a novel with a key, or secret meaning. Such a work of fiction contains one or more characters and situations based upon actual persons and their lives” (Source : Benet’s, 882).

“The term romance has had special meanings as a kind of fiction since the early years of the novel … In common usage, it refers to works with extravagant characters, remote and exotic places, highly exciting and heroic events, passionate love, or mysterious or supernatural experiences. In another and more sophisticated sense, romance refers to works relatively free of the more restrictive aspects of realistic verisimilitude … In America particularly, the romance has proved to be a serious, flexible, and successful medium for the exploration of philosophical ideas and attitudes, ranging through such differeing works as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Melville’s Moby-Dick , Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! , and Warren’s World Enough and Time ” ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 450).

A work of literature that aims to "expose human or institutional vices and in which a corrective is either implied or directly proposed" ( Source : Benet's, 914).

"A work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity. Satirists attempt through laughter not so much to tear down as to inspire a remodeling" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 461).

Example: Moo by Jane Smiley is a satire on academic life.

"The effort to induce an emotional response disproportionate to the situation, and thus to substitute heightened and generally unthinking feeling for normal ethical and intellectual judgment" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 475).

"The background against which action takes place. The elements making up a setting are: (1) the geographical location, its topography, scenery, and such physical arrangements as the location of the windows and doors in a room; (2) the occupations and daily manner of living of the characters; (3) the time or period in which the action takes place, for example, epoch in history or season of the year; (4) the general environment of the characters, for example, religious, mental, moral, social, and emotional conditions" ( Source :Harmon & Holman, 477).

“A lurid or macabre writing style native to the American South. Since the middle of the 20th century, Southern writers have interpreted and illuminated the history and culture of the region through the conventions of the Gothic narrative (or Gothic novel), which at its best provides insight into the horrors institutionalized in societies and social conventions. Foremost among these authors are William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams, and Carson McCullers” (Source : NYPL, 678).

See also: gothic

Examples: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice.

A general term for types of fiction that deal with alternate realities (for example, science fiction, fantasy, and occult or horror fiction).

"A narrative technique developed toward the end of the 19th century, employed to evoke the psychic life of a character and depict subjective as well as objective reality…As a literary term, "stream of consciousness" generally refers to the presentation of a character's thoughts, feelings, reactions, etc., on an approximated preverbal level and with little or no direct comment or explanation by the author…In general, the term "stream of consciousness" is used as the description of mental life at the borderline of conscious thought and is characterized by the devices of association, reiteration of word- or symbol-motifs, apparent incoherence, and the reduction or elimination of normal syntax and punctuation to simulate the free flow of the character's mental processes…aspects of stream-of-consciousness techniques are evident in the work of most of the important writers to appear since the 1930s" ( Source : Benet's, 988-989).

Example: The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe.

"A symbol is something that is itself and also stands for something else…In a literary sense a symbol combines a literal and sensuous quality with an abstract or suggestive aspect…Literary symbols are of two broad types: One includes those embodying universal suggestions of meaning, as flowing water suggests time and eternity, a voyage suggests life. Such symbols are used widely (and sometimes unconsciously) in literature. The other type of symbol acquires its suggestiveness not from qualities inherent in itself but from the way in which it is used in a given work. Thus, in Moby-Dick the voyage, the land the ocean are objects pregnant with meanings that seem almost independent of Melville's use of them in his story; on the other hand, the white whale is invested with meaning—and differing meanings for different crew members—through the handling of materials in the novel" (Source : Harmon & Holman, 507).

"…the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, sombre, playful, serious, ironic, condescending, or many another possible attitude" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 520).

"The concept that a work shall have in it some organizing principle to which all its parts are related so that the work is an organic whole. A work with unity is cohesive in its parts, complete, self-contained, and integrated…A work may…be unified by form, intent, theme, symbolism—in fact, by any means that can so integrate and organize its elements that they have a necessary relation to one another and an essential relation to the whole of which they are parts" ( Source : Harmon & Holman, 533-534).

DeAndrea, William L. Encyclopedia Mysteriosa: A Comprehensive Guide to the Art of Detection in Print, Film, Radio, and Television (NY: Prentice Hall, 1994).

Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall., 1996). 

The New York Public Library Literature Companion [abbreviated NYPL], ed. Anne Skillion (N.Y.: Free Press, 2001). 
 

 

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