ESSENTIAL LITERARY TERMS With Exercises SHARON HAMILTON ESSSon- Your partner in student success- W • W • NORTON & COMPANY New York • London I = Copyright © 2007 by Peoples Education and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. To the Reader copyright © 2007 by Peoples Education Simultaneously published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Composition by Matrix Publishing Services Book design by Anna Palchik Production manager: Diane O’Connor, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Jason Grasso, Peoples Education Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hamilton, Sharon, 1943- Essential literary terms : a brief Norton guide with exercises / Sharon Hamilton, p. cm. Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4138-1726-3 ISBN-10: 1-4138-1726-2 1. Literature—Terminology. 2. Criticism—Terminology. I. Title. PN44.5.H28 2006 803—dc22 2005058540 Copyright © 2007 Peoples Education, Inc. 299 Market Street Saddle Brook, New Jersey 07663 www.PeoplesEducation.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be kept in an information storage or retrieval system, transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the Publisher. Printed in the United States of America. 10 M 7 .-.r Contents TO THE READER XI APPLICATIONS OF ESSENTIAL LITERARY TERMS FOR THE AP* ENGLISH LITERATURE EXAM XIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XVIH Literary Forms 1 DRAMA 1 Comedy 3 High and low comedy 3 Farce 3 Romantic comedy 4 Comedy of manners 4 Stock characters 4 Tragedy 4 Classical tragedy 4 Senecan tragedy 4 Revenge tragedy 4 Domestic tragedy 5 Tragicomedy 5 Theater of the Absurd 6 Periods of Drama 7 Ancient Greek 7 Roman 7 English medieval 7 Morality plays 7 Mystery plays 7 Elizabethan and Jacobean 7 Restoration and Eighteenth Century 7 Modem 7 FICTION • Novel 8 Novel of incident 9 Novel of character 9 Realistic novel 9 Romance 9 Bildungsroman 10 Historical novel 10 Epistolary novel 10 Antinovel 10 Metafiction 10 iii I 1 . 1 rv Contents j Short Story 1I Novella 12 POETRY 13 Verse 13 ■ i Epic Poetry 13 { Dramatic Poetry 14 Lyric Poetry 14 SPECIALIZED FORMS 15 ! Dramatic Monologue 15 exercise: dramatic monologue 16 - Epigram 19 Aphorism 20 ! exercise: epigram 20 Satire 21 Direct (formal) satire 21 Indirect satire 22 Horatian satire 22 Juvenalian satire 22 exercise: satire 24 Figurative Language 32 FIGURES OF THOUGHT fTROPES) 32 Simile 32 I J Metaphor 33 Tenor 33 Vehicle 33 Mixed metaphor 34 Extended metaphor 35 Subtext 36 exercises: similes and metaphors 36 ! Personification 39 Allegory 39 : Pathetic fallacy 40 f Synecdoche 41 Metonymy 41 ' exercise: personification, pathetic fallacy, synecdoche, AND METONYMY 42 I Contents v ▼ Irony 44 Verbal irony 44 Sarcasm 44 Structural irony 45 Unreliable narrator 45 Dramatic irony 46 Tragic irony 46 Cosmic irony 46 exercises: irony 47 TROPES DEPENDENT ON CONTRASTING LEVELS OF MEANING 54 Hyperbole 54 Understatement 55 Paradox 56 Oxymoron 57 Litotes 57 Periphrasis 58 Pun 59 Equivoque 60 exercise: tropes dependent on contrasting levels of meaning 60 FIGURES OF SPEECH (SCHEMES) (2 Apostrophe 62 Invocation 63 Rhetorical Question 63 Anaphora 64 Antithesis 64 Chiasmus 65 exercise: figures of speech (schemes) 66 Rhetorical Strategies 68 Diction 68 Formal vs. colloquial language 68 Abstract vs. concrete language 70 Poetic diction 72 Allusion 74 Analogy 76 exercises: allusion, analogy, and diction 78 Imagery 83 Symbolism 86 ! I vi Contents | ' i Atmosphere 89 1 exercises: imagery, symbolism, and atmosphere 92 ; Repetition 98 Selection and Order of Details 99 Epiphany 102 exercises: repetition, selection and order of details, AND EPIPHANY 104 1 i Narration 112 : VOICE 112 : Narrator 112 ! POINT OF VIEW 113 l First-Person 113 Third-Person 114 Third-person omniscient 114 Intrusive narrator 115 Objective narrator 116 Narrator in drama 117 Third-person limited 118 Stream of consciousness 118 Second-person 120 : exercise: point of view 122 I 1 CHARACTERIZATION 125 i Flat Characters vs. Round Characters 126 Showing vs. Telling 127 exercises: characterization 127 ROLES IN THE PLOT 129 Protagonist 129 Hero, heroine 129 i • Antagonist 130 t Villain 130 Foil 131 i i exercises: roles 132 I DIALOGUE 132 Verisimilitude 137 I Speech headings 137 l Stage directions 137 V- | Contents vii ▼ Direct and indirect discourse 139 Repartee 140 Soliloquy 141 Aside 143 exercise: dialogue 144 SETTING 150 exercises: setting 152 THEME 154 TONE 156 Pathos 161 exercises: theme and tone 162 Structure 167 In Medias Res 167 Exposition 168 Flashback 168 Narrative Pace 170 Parenthetical Observation 172 Subplot 174 Shift in Style 176 exercises: structure 178 Syntax 184 Independent clause 184 Dependent clause 184 Subject 184 Simple subject 184 Complete subject 184 Predicate 184 Simple predicate 184 Complete predicate 184 Direct object 184 Indirect object 185 Appositive 185 Sentence Fragments 185 Kinds of Sentences 186 Simple sentence 186 I i viii Contents 1 ▼ : i J Compound sentence 186 Coordinating conjunction 186 Complex sentence 186 Subordinate clause 186 Means of Linkage 186 i '• r Coordination 186 if Subordination 187 •: Parallelism 188 i! Syntactical Order 189 Loose sentence (cumulative sentence) 189 Periodic sentence 190 Inversion 190 . Sentence Variety 191 ill EXERCISES: SYNTAX 194 II I! Prosody 198 METER 198 ■ Quantitative meter 198 ! Syllabic meter 198 Stress 198 Accentual meter 198 Accentual-syllabic meter 198 Foot 199 f Metrical Feet 199 I Iamb 199 Anapest 200 ! Trochee 200 j Dactyl 200 Number of Feet in a Line 200 i Manometer 200 S Dimeter 200 i Trimeter 201 i Tetrameter 201 Pentameter 201 Hexameter 201 Heptameter 201 Naming the Meter 201 Iambic pentameter 201 Trochaic trimeter 202 Dactylic tetrameter 202 I Contents ix Common Substitutions 202 Spondee 202 Calalexis 203 Masculine and feminine endings 203 Pauses within and between Lines of Verse 204 End-stopped lines 204 Enjambed lines 204 Caesura 205 Scansion 205 exercises: meter 207 RHYME 210 End Rhyme 211 Double rhyme 211 Triple rhyme 211 Masculine rhyme 211 Feminine rhyme 211 Internal Rhyme 211 Rhyme Scheme 2J2 Perfect and Imperfect Rhyme 213 Eye rhyme 213 Half-rhyme (off-rhyme, slant rhyme, imperfect rhyme) 213 exercise: rhyme 215 SOUNDANDSOUNDPATTERNS 217 Alliteration 217 Internal alliteration 218 Consonance 219 Assonance 220 Onomatopoeia 221 exercises: sound and sound patterns 223 Poetic Forms 226 STANZAS 226 Couplet 226 Heroic couplet 226 Closed couplet 226 Open couplet 227 Tercet (Triplet) 228 Terza rima 228 M x Contents j ▼ ; f ii« Quatrain 229 ii ■ ! i'; In Memoriam stanza 229 Ballad meter (common meter) 229 Refrain 230 Sonnet 231 hi Italian (Petrarchan) 231 li English (Shakespearean) 231 I Volta (turn) 231 hi Sonnet sequence 233 i i Curtal sonnet 234 i;i Blank Verse 234 !il!■l In poetry 234 In drama 236 i!i ! Free Verse (Open Form Verse) 239 ! 1 exercises: poetic forms 242 U 1 \ ■i Appendix: MLA Style 247 MLA ln-Text Documentation 249 i Notes 254 MLA List of Works Cited 254 Sample Research Paper, MLA Style 268 1| l ( ! PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 275 J INDEX Of TERMS 277 i m 1 !