Explained clearly with concise examples and cross-references. A plain-English guide to the words readers, students, teachers, editors, and writers use to describe literature.
A plain-English guide spanning classical rhetoric, poetic craft, narrative technique, genre, critical theory, and book culture.
Knowing the right term sharpens interpretation, improves analysis, and equips you to talk about how texts achieve their effects.
Each term includes a concise definition and, where helpful, a quick illustrative example in parentheses for immediate understanding.
Browse A–Z, scan by domain, read actively comparing related terms, and remember that definitions favor clarity over strict nuance.
Explore literary terms organized by their primary domains.
Point of view, structure, plot devices, characterization, and storytelling techniques.
Sound patterns, meter, stanzas, fixed forms, and musical elements.
Schemes and tropes from classical rhetoric that add power and beauty.
Periods, styles, national traditions, and literary movements.
Interpretive frameworks, schools of thought, and analytical approaches.
Forms, publication terms, textual studies, and material aspects.
Comprehensive definitions of literary terms from allegory to zeugma.
A story in which characters and events consistently symbolize deeper moral or political meanings (e.g., a farm standing for a revolution).
Repetition of initial consonant sounds (wild and whirling words).
A brief, indirect reference to a person, place, text, or event (a "He met his Waterloo" moment).
Intentional or meaningful openness to multiple interpretations (an ending that suggests two fates).
Something placed outside its historical time (a wristwatch in ancient Rome).
Repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses (I came, I saw, I conquered).
The character or force opposing the protagonist (the regime that the hero resists).
Giving human traits to nonhuman entities in a literal way (a talking tree with feelings).
A central figure lacking conventional heroic virtues (a selfish, flawed protagonist).
A concise statement of general truth (Actions speak louder than words).
A recurring symbol, character type, or pattern across texts and cultures (the mentor, the journey).
Repetition of vowel sounds (the mellow wedding bells).
Omission of conjunctions for speed or emphasis (I came, I saw, I conquered).
A narrative poem, often musical, with repetition and simple language (folk storytelling in verse).
A poet, traditionally one who recites epic or heroic verse (the national bard).
Unintended or comic descent from the sublime to the trivial (from tragedy to trinkets).
Mid-20th-century American movement favoring spontaneity, jazz rhythms, and counterculture themes.
A coming-of-age novel tracing psychological and moral growth (youth to adulthood).
Unrhymed iambic pentameter; the staple of much English dramatic and narrative poetry.
Comic imitation that exaggerates style or subject for ridicule (serious topic treated absurdly).
A brooding, rebellious, charismatic antihero marked by isolation and remorse.
A pause within a poetic line (To err is human // to forgive, divine).
Works widely accepted as exemplary or foundational in a culture or period.
A major division in a long poem (epic chapters).
Emotional release or purification experienced through art (pity and fear in tragedy).
A crisscross inversion of syntax or ideas (Ask not what your country can do for you…).
The peak of tension or turning point in a narrative.
Poetry that follows fixed patterns of meter and rhyme (sonnet, villanelle).
An extended, striking metaphor linking disparate things (love compared to a compass).
The struggle driving a narrative (character vs. character, self, society, nature, fate).
The emotional or cultural association of a word beyond its dictionary meaning.
Repetition of consonant sounds within or at the end of words (blank and think).
Two successive lines of poetry that rhyme and form a unit.
Factual writing that uses literary techniques (memoir, literary journalism).
A metrical foot: stressed syllable followed by two unstressed (MERR-i-ly).
The dictionary definition of a word.
The resolution or untying of complications after a narrative climax.
An improbable, external solution to a plot problem (a sudden inheritance).
Spoken interaction between characters; reveals voice, conflict, and subtext.
Word choice; indicates tone, register, and style.
Intended to teach, often with an explicit moral or lesson.
Harsh, discordant sounds or ideas for effect.
A double or mirror-self that reflects or haunts a character.
Audience knows more than characters, producing tension or humor.
A poem of mourning or meditation on loss (often lamenting a person or era).
The continuation of a sentence beyond a line break without a pause.
A long narrative poem of heroic deeds and national significance.
A brief quotation placed at a book's or chapter's beginning to suggest themes.
A sudden insight or illuminating realization.
A work composed of letters, diary entries, or emails.
A descriptive tag attached to a name (swift-footed Achilles).
A name that gives rise to a word (From Machiavelli → Machiavellian).
A mild expression for something harsh (passed away for died).
Pleasantly harmonious sounds.
Background information that establishes context, stakes, and setting.
Story (chronological events) vs. plot (the order and manner of presentation).
A scene set in an earlier time than the main narrative.
A character who highlights another's traits by contrast.
Hints that signal future events (ominous weather before disaster).
A story that encloses another story (a tale within a tale).
Third-person narration that blends with a character's inner voice.
Poetry without fixed meter or rhyme, guided by natural rhythms.
Dramatic structure: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, dénouement.
A category defined by style, form, or subject (tragedy, romance, sci-fi).
A poem about rural labor and agriculture (didactic pastoral).
Literature of mystery, terror, and the supernatural in brooding settings.
A long-form narrative in comics medium.
The strange or distorted that provokes both empathy and revulsion.
A tragic flaw or error leading to a hero's downfall.
Archetypal pattern of departure, initiation, return (the monomyth).
Overweening pride that invites downfall.
Unusual word order for emphasis or effect.
Deliberate exaggeration (I've told you a million times).
Subordination that shows logical relationships (because, although, when).
Multiple social voices and registers coexisting within a text.
Respectful imitation or tribute to an earlier work.
A metrical foot: unstressed followed by stressed (to DAY).
A person's unique language use (distinctive vocabulary and rhythms).
Language that evokes sensory experience (the tang of salt air).
Early 20th-century poetry emphasizing clarity, precision, and economy.
Beginning a narrative in the middle of the action.
The shaping of a text's meaning by other texts (allusion, parody, echo).
Direct presentation of a character's thoughts.
A contrast between expectation and reality (verbal, situational, dramatic).
A poet's address to a muse or guiding spirit.
A long, mournful lament or denunciation, often warning of moral decline.
Specialized vocabulary of a trade or group; can exclude or clarify.
Bitter, scathing satire that condemns corruption or vice.
A compact metaphorical compound (whale-road for sea).
A novel about an artist's development.
The seasonal word anchoring a haiku in time.
The "cutting word" in haiku that creates a pause or turn.
A sharp, often public satire of a person or institution.
A recurring element associated with a theme or character (a signature image).
A threshold state of transition, ambiguity, or in-betweenness.
Affirmation by negation of the opposite (not bad for good).
Vivid regional detail in setting, dialect, and customs.
Short, musical poetry expressing personal feeling or thought.
Humorous misuse of words that sound similar (a nice derangement of epitaphs).
Fiction that draws attention to its own fictionality (a narrator who knows you're reading).
An implicit comparison that asserts identity (time is a thief).
The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse.
Substitution by something closely associated (the crown for monarchy).
Representation or imitation of reality in art.
Spare style emphasizing surface detail and implication.
A work within a work reflecting on its own structure.
The atmosphere or emotional coloring of a text.
A recurring element that supports themes (repeated images of flight).
The voice that tells the story (first person, third person, omniscient, etc.).
Extreme realism emphasizing determinism by environment, heredity, and chance.
A statement that does not logically follow; can be comic or disorienting.
Prose based on facts (history, essay, biography).
A work focused on social codes and class behavior.
A prose narrative longer than a short story, shorter than a novel.
Concrete set of objects/situations that evoke an emotion.
A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem addressing a person or idea.
A narrator who knows and can reveal all characters' thoughts.
A word that imitates a sound (buzz, hiss).
Literature preserved and transmitted by speech and memory.
A group exploring literature under formal constraints (lipograms, palindromes).
Juxtaposed opposites that reveal paradox (deafening silence).
A manuscript written over earlier text; metaphor for layered history.
A brief story illustrating a moral or spiritual lesson.
An apparent contradiction that reveals a deeper truth (less is more).
Calling attention to something by pretending to pass over it.
Repetition of syntactic structure for rhythm and emphasis.
Clauses placed side by side without explicit connection (I came. I saw. I left.)
Humorous imitation that critiques style, subject, or form.
Idealized representation of rural life and nature.
Attributing human feelings to nature (angry skies).
The mask or voice adopted by a writer; distinct from the author.
Episodic tale of a roguish hero surviving by wit.
The causal sequence and structuring of events.
Intentional deviation from rules for effect.
Excessive use of conjunctions for weight and rhythm (and this and that).
A flashforward; anticipating a later event.
A block of prose that employs poetic language and effects.
The central character whose desires drive the story.
A stanza of four lines, often with a rhyme scheme.
Idealistic to a fault; impractical pursuit of chivalric or impossible goals.
Reuse of another's exact words; in literature, can be epigraphic, intertextual, or dialogic.
Faithful representation of everyday life without idealization.
A misleading clue that distracts from the truth.
A repeated line or group of lines in a poem or song.
Echo of sounds, especially at line ends (exact, slant, internal).
The pattern of beats and pauses; the musicality of language.
A novel with real people thinly disguised as fictional characters.
A movement valuing emotion, imagination, and nature over rationalism.
Complex, developed character capable of surprise.
See enjambment; a line that flows past its end without pause.
Literature that ridicules folly or vice to provoke reform or reflection.
Marking a poem's meter and stresses to analyze its rhythm.
Scene dramatizes moment-to-moment action; summary condenses time.
Capacity for refined feeling; an 18th-century ideal of sympathy and taste.
Concrete description appealing to sight, sound, smell, taste, touch.
Time, place, and social environment of a narrative.
A brief, focused work of prose fiction.
A comparison using like or as (like a bridge over trouble).
Imperfect rhyme with similar but not identical sounds.
A character speaking thoughts aloud, typically alone on stage.
A 14-line poem in a set meter and rhyme (Petrarchan, Shakespearean, etc.).
A metrical foot of two stressed syllables (HEARTBREAK).
Narrative that attempts to mimic thought's flow.
A theory that analyzes cultural phenomena via underlying systems and relations.
Tension about what will happen next.
A concrete object or element that stands for an abstract idea.
A part stands for the whole or vice versa (hands for workers).
The arrangement of words into phrases and sentences.
Needless repetition of meaning (free gift).
The central, recurring idea or insight a work explores.
A claim or argument a text advances or a critic defends.
A genre built on high stakes, tension, and pace.
The writer's attitude toward subject or audience (wry, earnest, sardonic).
A traditional motif or common rhetorical place (carpe diem).
A serious drama of human suffering leading to catharsis.
19th-century American movement stressing intuition and nature.
A metrical foot: stressed followed by unstressed (GAR-den).
A figure of speech; more broadly, a recurring narrative device.
Reversal of fortune or decisive shift in action (peripeteia).
Insertion of a word into another (abso-bloody-lutely).
Lament for vanished times or people (Where are they now?).
Deliberate downplaying for irony or restraint (It's a bit chilly in a blizzard).
A narrator whose account is biased, limited, or deceptive.
Imagined ideal society vs. its nightmare counterpart.
Alternate history that explores what-if timelines.
Fine parchment used in manuscripts; by extension, luxury book materiality.
The appearance of truth or plausibility in a narrative world.
The craft and analysis of verse: meter, rhyme, stanza.
Literature of the British Victorian era; often social realism and moral debate.
A 19-line fixed form with refrains and strict rhyme.
A brief, evocative scene emphasizing mood over plot.
The distinct textual presence: authorial, narrative, or character.
A worldview shaping a text's assumptions and values.
Reader's provisional acceptance of the implausible for sake of story.
Quick verbal ingenuity; can be biting or playful.
Puns, double meanings, and playful manipulation of language.
A collaborative setting for drafting, critique, and revision.
A story told from a nonhuman or alien perspective.
The classical motif of hospitality and its rituals.
A long, rambling, entertaining tale.
A cheap 19th-century popular novel, often sensational.
Fiction aimed at teen readers, often exploring identity and agency.
Symbolic of feminine generative power (contrast: phallic).
The spirit or defining mood of a historical period.
Narration with no single character's limited perspective (akin to omniscience).
One word governs multiple parts of a sentence, often wittily (she broke his car and his heart).
A Japanese "following the brush" essay form of associative reflections.
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Metaphor asserts identity; simile signals likeness with like/as.
Metonymy substitutes by association; synecdoche uses part/whole.
Mood is the reader's felt atmosphere; tone is the author's attitude.
Events in time (Fabula) vs. their artful arrangement (Sjuzhet).
Verbal: says opposite. Situational: outcome vs. expectation. Dramatic: audience knows more.
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