Literary Terms and Concepts: Definitions and Examples

Posted on Jan 2, 2025 in Language

Metalinguistic Function

It is the function oriented towards the code. It consists in the use of the code (language) to discuss or describe itself. It is the function typically fulfilled by grammars or works of linguistics.

Stanza

Example: “The Canonization” by John Donne.

Microstyle

Includes similes, parallelisms, anaphoric references, ellipsis, rhymed verse with end-stopped and run-on lines, etc.

Suspension of Disbelief

Poetry, drama, and novels create worlds of fiction in which readers accept what is called the “suspension of disbelief”; i.e., they accept to take for real the imaginary worlds proposed by the literary text. This is not exclusive to literature.

System

It forms part of other superior systems in which it is embedded.
It is the core that regulates the system.
The system includes other elements which lie in peripheral or liminal areas of the system and which are the areas of intersection with other systems.
Systems are not static, but change over time by the interplay between central and peripheral elements or/and by the contact with other systems.

Complete

In its very first stages, the process of reading involves what is apparently a very objective activity, as its goal is to find out what the words in the text mean. But no single word has one and only one meaning. The reader will have to choose what they mean in the text and will have to decide how they contribute to the general message.

Competence

Literary competence is our knowledge about and our ability to interact with literary texts. The term literary encyclopedia can be defined as the part of our literary knowledge resulting from the double-sided activity of compiling, organizing, and classifying the information extracted from literary and non-literary texts in the course of our contacts with them. Both activities are closely interrelated and are very hard to separate.

Psychoanalytic Criticism

Freudian criticism (c. 1900–present)
Jungian criticism (1920s–present)
Lacanian criticism (c. 1977–present)

Verse

Could be defined as a mode of segmental formalization of language, by which utterances are delivered or encapsulated in stretches of a variable length (lines) such as can be perceived by the human mind as constituting a moment or a quantum of reality. The underlying principle of verse composing is human perception.

Poetry

The core of poetry is lyric. Lyric does not tell a story, but shows a situation or enacts an emotion, and in showing any of them makes us feel.

Lines

Monometer (line consisting of one foot, i.e. two syllables in disyllabic feet, of rare occurrence)
Dimeter (two feet, i.e., four syllables in disyllabic feet, also rare)
Trimeter (three feet or six syllables)
Tetrameter (four feet)
Pentameter (five feet)
Hexameter, also called alexandrine (six feet)
Heptameter (seven feet, also rare)
Octameter (eight feet, i.e, sixteen syllables, even rarer).

Simile, Metaphor, Conceit

Simile: A comparison of two things through the use of “like” or “as”.
Metaphor: The substitution of a word for a word whose meaning is close to the original word [external relation].
Conceit: An extended metaphor or simile that extends itself over the whole poem or a large part of the poem.

David Copperfield

Addresser1(Dickens)->Message->Addressee1+[Addresser2(ImpliedAuthor)]->Message->[Addressee2(ImpliedReader)]+Addresser3(David)->Message->[Addressee3(Interlocutor)].

David Copperfield is narrated by an I-narrator, David, apparently to an interlocutor; but because there is no direct evidence of someone listening to David, we tend to assume that he is talking directly to us. As there is also no obvious reason to distinguish between author and implied author, and reader and implied reader in this novel, there is little need to distinguish between the first-person character (David as a child and young man), the narrator (David as an adult), the implied author (‘Dickens’), and the real author (Dickens).

Sense

Direct statement and attribution are other clues. Of paramount importance in this picture are the inferences which we draw from characters’ words and behavior.

Omniscient Narrator

Third omniscient person: The author describes all that the characters see, hear, and feel, as well as events in which none of the characters takes part. It is well understood that the author has absolute knowledge of everything: characters’ feelings, emotions, thoughts, and events.
Third limited person: The author (as any observer) refers to all the persons in the third person, but he only relates what can be seen, heard, or thought by only one character. He does not have omniscient knowledge but limited. E.g. Robert Jordan in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Third observer/objective person: The author narrates as if he were a witness, as if he witnessed the events, but limiting himself to what he can know. He cannot get access to the inner self of the character. E.g.: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Roland Barthes

Functions can be defined as any segment of the story which can be seen as the term of a correlation of the action in that story.

Indices, however, are units referring not to complementary items but to a more or less diffuse concept which is nevertheless necessary to the meaning of the story: psychological indices concerning the characters, data regarding their identity, notations of ‘atmosphere’, and so on.

Communicative System in Drama

Double communicative system: Characters-character. Play-audience. Dramatic irony is the presence of the audience. Characters say or do something that has meaning that the audience recognizes but the characters do not.

Playwright

Through the characters’ words (and sometimes names), dress, and behavior. Through the sets produced by the set designer. Through the knowledge the audience brings to the performance, our cultural or encyclopedic knowledge.

Mask Wearing

The audience may be fully aware of the mask the characters wear and thus of the disparity between appearance and reality. Hamlet, mask of madness; Oedipus, unaware of his mask.
Or they may at first be as unaware of the mask as are the other characters in the play.
Sometimes mask wearers are themselves unaware or partially unaware of their masks, as in the case of Oedipus.
Moment of revelation: unmasking = climax of the plot. Iago in Othello

Breaking Conversational Maxims

Maxims of quality: A speaker will not say what he believes to be false or lack adequate evidence to assure.
Maxim of quantity: The contribution of the speaker must be neither more nor less informative than is required.
Maxim of relation or relevance: The speaker will be relevant, he will focus on the point he wishes to make and that the hearer expects.
Maxim of manner: The speaker will make his message clear and will therefore avoid obscurity or ambiguity.

Practice

“Epitaph on Elizabeth” by Ben Jonson

Written as an epigram in rhythm couplet elegy. Poem written about the death of a woman named Elizabeth, who remains unknown.

“The Trees” by Philip Larkin

The themes are the effects of time and the transience of youth. Also the continuous rebirth and the natural cycle used to compare the life-cycle of a tree to the life-cycle of a human. Immortality and life and death. Young vs. Old. Written in iambic tetrameter.

“Ulysses” by James Joyce

Chapter 4. Calypso. Technique: stream of consciousness, attempts to describe the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind.

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” by Tom Stoppard

Does not have a narrator. It’s a tragicomedy with a self-conscious and humorous tone, whose writing style is minimalistic.