Literary Terms Flashcards
Literary concepts likely to appear on GRE Subject Eng LIt
Alexandrine
A line of iambic hexameter. The final life of a Spenserian stanza is an alexandrine.
Ex) “A needless alexandrine ends the song / that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.” (Alexander Pope, “Essay on Criticism”) second line is an alexandrine.
Iambic
A metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
Ex) defeat.
Hexameter
A metrical line of six feet. Southey, Kingsley, Coleridge, Longfellow, Clough, Tennyson, Swinburne experimented with it.
Spenserian Sonnet
Developed and named after Edmund Spenser. The link sonnet. Has the binding couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet at the end.
Rhyme scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee. Two couplets in the body (bb, cc) and one at the end.
Ex) Edmund Spenser “One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand”
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
Vain man (said she), that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalise;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quod I); let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, when as death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
Spenserian Stanza
Form invented by Edmund Spenser. Nine iambic lines, eight are pentameters and last is a hexameter (alexandrine). Rhyme scheme ababbcbcc.
Ex) Edmund Spenser created this stanza for [The Faerie Queene].
Pentameter
Five foot metrical line. Basic line in much English verse, especially blank verse and heroic couplet. Established by Chaucer, Ezra Pound loosened the hold.
Blank Verse
Most widely used of English verse forms, favored by dramatists. John Milton “Paradise Lost”. (Dryden and Pope preferred heroic couplet) Introduced by Earl of Surrey (16th cen.) in his translation of the Aeneid. Unrhymed five-stress lines (iambic pentameters).
Heroic Couplet
Rhymed decasyllables, nearly always in pairs of iambic pentameters. Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Hall, Drayton, Fletcher, Beaumont, Donne, Waller, Denham, Oldham, Dryden, Pope.
Alliteration
Repeated consonant or sound, usually at beginning of series of words.
Allusion
A reference to someone or something, usually literary.
Ex) Herman Melville, Moby Dick. “Call me Ishmael.” (biblical Ishmael)
Ex) William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury. (Shakespeare, Macbeth. “… it is a tale / told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / signifying nothing.”)
Anthropomorphism
The assigning of human attributes (emotions, physical characteristics, etc) to nonhumans (plants, animals). Differs from personification in that it is an intrinsic premise and an ongoing pattern applied to a nonhuman character throughout a literary work.
Ex) Aslan from C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia is a Lion, but addressed and behaves as if is human.
Ex) All the characters from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Ex) Greek god Zeus is supposed to be superhuman but often has human emotions and behaviors.
Apostrophe
A speech addressed to someone not present, or to an abstraction.
Ex) “History! You will remember me…” - Innate grandiosity lends itself to parody.
Ex) John Donne in “The Sun Rising”: “Busy old fool, unruly sun, / Why dost thou thus, / Through windows, and through curtains call on us?”
Bildungsroman
German term “novel of education.” Typically follows a young person over a period of years, from naivete&inexperience through struggles with harsher realities&hypocrisies of the adult world.
Ex) James Joyce [A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man] and J. D. Salinger [A Catcher in the Rye], coming-of-age novels.
Caesura
The pause that breaks a line of Old English verse. Also any particularly deep pause in a line of verse.
Ex) “Hwaet! we Gar-Dena | | on geardagum…” (“Lo! we Spear-Danes, in days of yore…”) - Beowulf
Ex) “Arma virumque cano, | | Troiae qui primus ab oris…” (“I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy…”) - Aeneid
Decorum
A neoclassical principle of drama. Relation of style to content in the speech of dramatic characters. For example, a character’s speech should be appropriate to his or her social station.
Ex) In Oscar Wilde’s [The Importance of Being Earnest]
Doggerel
Derogatory, poorly written poetry of little or no literary value.
Ex) Shakespeare purposely employed doggerel in dialogue between Dromio twins (The Comedy of Errors) for comedic effect.
Ottava Rima
Eight-line Iambic stanza, rhyming abababcc. Introduced to English verse in early 16th cen. by Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Used by Lord Byron in [Beppo (1818)], [The Vision of Judgement (1822)], [Don Juan (1819-24)].
W. B. Yeats “Sailing to Byzantium”. Last stanza in “Among School Children”.
Epithalamium
A work, especially a poem, written to celebrate a wedding.
Ex) Edmund Spenser, “Epithalamium”.
Song! made in lieu of many ornaments,
With which my love should duly have been dect,
Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
Ye would not stay your dew time to expect,
But promist both to recompens;
Be unto her a goodly ornament,
And for short time an endlesse moniment.
Euphuism
Derived from Lyly’s [Euphues (1580)] to characterize writing that is self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech. Popular and influential mode of speech and writing in late 16th cen.
Ex) Polonius in Shakespeare’s [Hamlet]. “To thine own self be true.” “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Feminine Rhyme
Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. To properly be a feminine rhyme (and not just a “double rhyme”) the penultimate syllables are stressed while final syllables are unstressed.
Ex) A pair of lines ending by “running” and “gunning”.
Ex) Shakespeare “Sonnet 20 - A woman’s face with nature’s own hand”
A Woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion…
Flat Characters&Round Characters
Coined by E. M. Forster. Flat Characters are built around a single dominant trait, Round Characters are shaded and developed with greater psychological complexity.
Ex) Mrs. Micawber in Charles Dickens [David Copperfield] is flat, Anna Karenina in Leo Tolstoy’s [Anna Karenina] is round.
Georgic
Not to be confused with pastoral poetry which idealizes life in the countryside. Georgic poems deal with people laboring in the countryside, pushing plows, raising crops, etc.
Ex) Derived from Virgil’s [Georgics], about the virtues of the farming life.
Pastoral
Is of great antiquity, interpenetrates many classical and modern European literature. Idealization of shepherds’ life, features shepherds holding piping contests and writing poems. Later influenced by Christian love.
Ex) Phillip Sydney, [Arcadia]. Christopher Marlowe “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”
Hamartia
Aristotle’s term for “the tragic flaw”. Tragic flaw implies an inherent psychological flaw in the tragic character, Hamartia implies fate.
Ex) Oedipus, in his hasty temper. Macbeth, in his lust for power.
Homeric Epithet
Repeated descriptive phrase as found in Homer’s epics.
Ex) “Rosy-fingered dawn” “the wine-dark sea” “the ever-resourceful Odysseus”
Hudibrastic
Derived from Samuel Butler’s [Hudribras]. Couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (eight syllables long at any rate), deliberate, humorous, ill-rhythmed, ill-rhymed couplets.
Ex) We grant, although he had much wit He was very shy of using it As being loathe to wear it out And therefore bore it not about, Unless on holidays, or so As men their best apparel do. Beside, 'tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak.
Tetrameter
Line of four metrical feet, usually iambic or trochaic. Used extensively by many, including Milton, Byron, Scott.
Ex) John Milton [L' Allegro] Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and Cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles
Trochaic
Having your metrical foot start by a stressed syllable, followed by an unstressed syllable.
Ex) John Milton [L' Allegro] Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and Cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles
Hyperbole
A deliberate exaggeration.
Ex) Ralph Waldo Emerson “The Concord Hymn”: “Here once embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.”
Litotes
An understatement created through a double negative / negating the negative.
Ex) Bible, Book of Acts: “Paul answered, ‘I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.’” (Acts 21:39)
Masculine Rhyme
Fhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (regular rhyme).
Ex) Robert Frost "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening": Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Metonymy
Phrase that refers to a person or object by their single important feature. Differs from Synecdoche in that it is meant to represent something related to that as opposed to the whole.
Ex) Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play [Richelieu] “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Neoclassical Unities
Principles of dramatic structure derived from Aristotle’s [Poetics]. Popular in the neoclassical movement of the 17th and 18th centuries.
To observe unity of time, a work should take place within the span of one day.
To observe unity of place, a work should take place within the confines of a single locale.
To observe unity of action, a work should contain a single dramatic plot, with no subplots.
Pastoral Elegy
A poem that takes the form of an elegy (lament for the dead) sung by a shepherd. Shepherd is a stand-in for the author, elegy is for another poet.
Ex) John Milton’s “Lycidas” (dedicated to Edward King). Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais” (dedicated to John Keats)
Pathetic Fallacy
Coined by John Ruskin. Refers to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects.
Ex) John Ruskin “The cruel crawling foam”
Personification
Giving an inanimate object human qualities or form.
Ex) Emily Dickinson "The Train": I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step . . .
Picaresque
A novel typically constructed along an incident-to-incident basis, follows the adventures of a scurrilous rogue whose primary concerns are filling their belly and staying out of jail.
Ex) Mark Twain [Huckleberr Finn]. Daniel Defoe [Moll Flanders].
Antagonist
The main character opposing the protagonist, usually the villain.
Ex) Iago from Shakespeare, [Othello]
