Literary Terms

Literary Terms of Poetry

Genre
Epic( )
A long narrative poem about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from
which it originated.

Ballad( )
Ballads are anonymous narrative poems designed for singing or oral recitation and usually composed in
4-line stanzas, the first and third lines having four feet each, the second and fourth lines having three
feet each and rhymes falling on the second and fourth lines.
Ballad stanza
A ballad stanza has 4 lines: the 1st and 3rd lines have 4 stressed words or syllables; the 2nd and
4th lines have 3 stresses and rhyme.

Sonnet( )
A sonnet is a lyrics of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme.

Petrarchan sonnet
Also called Italian sonnet, this sonnet form originated in Italy in the 13th century and was
consummated by Francesco Petrarch.
T his form contains an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba and a sestet of various rhyme
patterns such as cdecde or cdcdcd.
Shakespeare sonnet
Also called Elizabethan Sonnet or English Sonnet, this sonnet form is perfected by Shakespeare.
It is structured of 3 quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme
pattern abab cdcd efef gg.
Spenserian sonnet
A sonnet form composed of three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter with rhyme
scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee.

Elegy
elegiac stanza
a stanza with four lines in iambic pentameter and an abab rhyme scheme.

Spenserian stanza
Each sranza has 9 lines. Each of the first 8 lines is in iambic pentameter form and the 9th line ub iambic
hexameter(6 feet) (Alexandrine ). T he rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc.

Heroic stanza
Blank verse
rhymeless iambic pentameter
unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter

Couplet
a rhymed pair of lines, which are usually of the same length and o en express a complete and self-
contained thought.

Heroic couplet( )
two lines of rhyming iambic pentameters( ).

Terza rima

Allegory
A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral
qualities.An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning, and a symbolic meaning.

Ode

Romance

Pastoral( )
 It deals with the simple and unspoiled life of the shepherds or countryside.

Poetic Devices
Imagery/Image
Words and phrases or any expressions that creat pictures in the reader's mind are images.

Conceit
A conceit is a metaphor or simile that is made elaborate, o en extravagant. It also means any fanciful
poetic image.

Alliteration
Repetition of a Consonant Sound

Enjambment
A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next.

enjambment lines
end-stopped lines
Apostrophe
a figure of speech in which a poem seems to speak to something that cannot respond

Anastrophe
reversal of the normal word order

Anaphora
Repitition of a word, phrase, or a clause at the beginning of word groups occuring one a er the other.

Polysyndeton
Elision
Aphesis( )
Syncope( )
Apocope( )

Literary Terms of Prose

Soliloquy( )
Romance
Romance is a literary form means a long conposition in verse or prose form dealing with the life and
adventures of a noble hero, generally a knight.

Allegory( )
A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities.
An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning, and a symbolic meaning.

Picaresque novel( )
It is an early type of novel. It describes the adventures of a lively and resourceful hero on the journey.
It is told in a serious of episodes rather than in one all-unifying plot, and is noted for its loose, flexible and
open-ended structure.

Epistolary novel( )
It consists of the letters the characters write to each other.

Gothic novel
T he Gothic novels were mostly stories of mystery and horror which take place in some haunted or
delapidated middle age castles and we're rating profusely by both male and female writers.
It emphasizes the grotesque, mysterious and desolate.
T he typical Gothic novel has a medieval setting, plot of revenge and terrifying scenes and ending.

Psychological novel
Novels that on a complex psychological development and present much of the narration through the inner
workings of the character's mind.

Bildungsroman( )

Stream of Consciousness
 Literary Movements and Trends

Renaissance
time span
15 17

definition

artistic features
A thirsting curiosity for the classical literature
The keen interest in the activities of humanity

Representative writers and works

Edmund Spenser
The Shepherd's Calendar
The Faerie Queene( )
Thomas More( • )
Utopia
John Lyly
Eupheus
Francis Bacon
Of Studies
Christopher Marlowe( )
He first made blank verse the principle instrument of English drama.

Tamburiane( )
The Jew of the Malta( )
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus( )
William Shakespeare
 4 Great Tragedies
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear
Macbeth
4 Great Comedies
ATAT

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Merchant of Venice
As You Like It
The Twel h Night
Ben Johnson
Everyman in His Humour

Puritan Literature
time span
definition
Puritanism was the religious doctrine of the revolutionary bourgeoisie during the English
Revolution. It preached thri ,sobriety, hard work and unceasing labor, but with no
extravagant enjoyment of the fruits of labor.
The wealthy were to accumulate capital, the poor to labor at their task, as a "divine duty".
Wordly pleasures were condemned as harmful.

Artistic features
The literature was very much concerned with the tremendous social upheavals of the time.

Representative writers and works

John Milton
Paradise Lost
Paradise Regained
Samson Agonistes
John Bunyan
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Donne
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning( )
 Go and Catch a Falling Star

Neo-classicism
time span
1660 18

definition

Artistic features
an interest in fixed rules
an emphasis on reason
an aim to instruct
an interest in urbanity
a revolt against subjectivity

Representative writers and works

Richard Steele
The Tatler
The Spectator
Joseph Addison
The Spectator
Alexander Pope
Essay on Criticism
Jonathan Swi
Gulliver's Travels
A Modest proposal
Daniel Defoe
 Robinson Crusoe
Henry Fielding
Tom Jones
Lawrence Sterne
Tristram Shandy( )
A Sentimental Journey( )
Samuel Richardson
Pamela
the first psycho-analytical novel and epistolary novel

Oliver Goldsmith
The Vicar of Wakefield( )
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
18

School of Scandal

Sentimentalism
definition

Artistic features
Representative writers and works
Oliver Goldsmith
Lawrence Sterne
Thomas Gray
William Brake
Songs of Innocence
Songs of Experience
The Tiger
Robert Burns
 A Red, Red Rose
Auld Lang Syne

Romanticism

Representative writers and works

William Wordsworth
I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Ancient Mariner
George Gordon Byron
Don Juan
Percy B. Shelley
Ode to the West Wind
John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale
Jean Austen
Pride and Prejudice
Watler Scott
Rob Roy
Critical Realism
definition

artistic features
Representative writers and works
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist
David Copperfield
Great Expectations
A Tale of Two Cities
William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair
George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss

Adam Bede

Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights
Alfred Tennyson
•

In Memoriam

Robert Browning
The Ring and the Book
Elizabeth Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese