Glossary of Literary Terms
A
Acotación Stage
Note on the play where the author instructs on everything related to the scenario, action, or movement of the characters. It ranges from the simple indication of entrances and exits of the characters in classical theater to the detailed description of the characters in the realist.
B
Balada / Oda
The ballad is a fixed form of the court’s final song of the European Middle Ages. It is unique in repeating the same verse, chorus, at the end of three stanzas. It consists of eight syllables and rhymes are cruzadas. The lyrical ode is the composition in verse, of medium length and noble and lofty theme. It expresses the admiration excited by something or someone, may be sacred, heroic, philosophical, amatory.
C
Caligrama
Term taken from the work of the French poet Apollinaire, Calligrames. This is the poem where the arrangement of the lines suggests a graphical form. It is a kind of poetry to look and see and to read (visual poetry). In concrete poetry, the poet draws an object related to the main theme of the poem, though, sometimes there are visual poems written in the form of drawing, but no item of the work.
Cancionero
European medieval love poems. Usually formed chapbooks or poems copied from other songbooks clean, printed books or manuscripts, etc. Some of these collections came to be disseminated through the press, but others have been preserved in manuscript copies. The oldest known in Spain is the Cancionero de Baena (1445).
Carpe Diem
It is a literary topic, recurrent in literature, exhorting them not to pass the time we have been given, or, to enjoy the pleasures of life apart from the future that is uncertain. Is particularly important in the Renaissance, and Baroque and Romanticism.
Catarsis
It is the liberating effect exerted by the tragedy in the audience. According to Aristotle, tragedy must produce in the audience feelings of pity and terror, to purify them of these emotions, so they leave the theater feeling clean and high, with a high understanding of the ways of men and gods.
Arthurian Cycle
From the twelfth century, Arthur was the central character of the cycle of legends known as the Matter of Britain, appearing in many French romances. Chretien de Troyes added another legend to its essential elements, including the figure of Lanzarote and the relationship with the Holy Grail.
Clímax / Anticlimax
Climax is the point at which the plot of a literary work is at its highest tension. The climax is often placed on the outcome of the work. Anticlimax is a time of growing tension that resolves without causing a final increase of tension which would have led to the narrative climax, this happens, for example, when a violent conflict on stage soon resolved peacefully.
Contrapunto
Explicit contrast of characters, ideas, times, places, or situations in a literary work. Presented concur different planes at once (on one page the characters go from present to past and back to the future, etc.).
D
Decadentismo
The current decline is an artistic, philosophical and, especially, literary, which originated in France in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and developed by almost all European and American countries. Called decadent literary writers all those linked to the spiritual heritage or formal Baudelaire.
Diégesis
It is the point of view from which the narrator stands to narrate the past, present, or future on the grounds of a work. Whether the narrator is involved in the narrative as a character in it, or if it remains out of the argument, the narrator is always a character intradiegetic. When there is no narrator, plays, but there is no mimesis diegesis of the characters.
Dramática
Literary genre that represents some event or conflict in the lives of human beings through dialogue of the characters. Corresponds to the generic name of any literary creation in which an artist named playwright conceives and develops an event within a given space and time. The facts relate to people or characters that represent specific and direct as a human conflict.
E
Égloga / Idyll
The eclogue is a subgenre of lyric poetry theme of love in which one or more development will shepherds in a rural environment where nature is paradise and has a high profile music. Their romance is a literary sub-genre of Greek lyric poetry of Greece, the theme of love, dialogue between pastors and developed into a nice nature or paradise, which the creator identifies with the landscape of Arcadia. Its counterpart in Latin literature or Roman back is the eclogue.
Enciclopedismo
The encyclopedic is the philosophical and educational movement expressed through the Encyclopedia published in France in the eighteenth century by Diderot and d’Alembert. Through this movement sought to develop a monumental work, which will summarize the enlightened thought of the time, that is, all knowledge of his time, and was called Encyclopedia.
Épica
The epic poetry is a literary genre in which the author presents an objective legendary or fictional facts developed in a certain space and time. The author uses as a form of expression common narrative, although there may be also the description and dialogue.
Epístola
An epistle is a writing directed or sent to a person or a group of people who usually takes the form of a letter, after the Renaissance became an essay text almost dignified by a demanding and formal style, often provided with intent didactic or moral, but sometimes merely a function dedicated to distracting.
Erasmismo
Movement emerged from the ideas of Erasmus of Rotterdam. He criticizes the corruption of the clergy, superstition and external aspects of the Catholic religion because it prefers an inward and spiritual religion, founded. On the other hand, is against the wars, especially those of religion.
F
Escritura Automáticamente
It is the process or outcome of writing is not of the writer’s conscious thoughts. It is a way to draw out the subconscious. Writing is to start letting the thoughts flow as they arise, without any coercion, moral, social or of any kind. It was defended as a method of literary creation by André Breton and the Surrealists in the first half of the twentieth century.
Existencialismo
Although there is no clear and unanimous theoretical definition, the shared conception points to a philosophical movement whose central tenet is that human beings are, individually, those who create meaning and essence of their lives. Existentialism philosophical questions tend to peer into the depths of the human condition.
Fábula / Apologue
The tales are short literary compositions in which the characters almost always animals or objects that have human characteristics such as speech, movement, etc. These stories conclude with a moral teaching or instructional in nature, usually placed at the end of the text. A fable is a narrative whose purpose is instruction on some principle or moral or ethical behavior, usually at the bottom or top of it and called moral. Unlike the fable, which shares a similar end, no animal stars, but by people.
H
Flash-back or Retrospect
The flashback or retrospect is a technique used both in film and literature that alters the timing of the story, connecting at different times and moving the action to the past.
Héroe
A hero or heroine is an eminent figure who embodies the quintessence of the key traits valued in their culture of origin. Usually the hero has superhuman abilities or personality traits that allow idealized perform extraordinary feats and beneficial (“heroic acts”) for which it is famous. However, in literature and especially in the tragedies, the hero may also have serious flaws which lead to perdition.
I
Intertextualidad
Intertextuality means the set of relationships that bring a particular text to other texts from various sources: the same author or more commonly from others, from the same period or earlier periods.
L
Lírica
The lyric or lyric poetry is a literary genre in which the author expresses his moods, his feelings or reactions to the outside world. It is therefore extremely subjective.
Literatura del Absurdo
The absurdity is a literary technique involving the introduction of zero elements in a logical framework consistent predictable, but incompatible with the new item. It is a recurrent feature in the mood. In contemporary literature highlights the value existentialist who claimed the so-called “Theatre of the Absurd.”