Literary Terms and Movements Glossary
Dimensions
Annotations, enclosed in parentheses, serve as stage guides, highlighting key elements and their purpose.
Ballad
A ballad consists of poetic stanzas of equal length, wistfully recounting past events, often legendary, romantic, or traditional.
Ode
A lyrical composition expressing admiration for someone or something.
Calligram
A calligram is a text, usually poetic, where the arrangement of words creates a visual representation of the poem’s content.
Song
A collection of songs and poems, often by multiple authors, compiled during the Middle Ages, typically focusing on a specific genre, author, or theme.
Carpe Diem
A motif originating with Horace (65-8 BC), advising enjoyment of the present due to life’s brevity and the certainty of death. This theme, prominent in Baroque and Romanticism, encourages seizing the moment and enjoying life’s pleasures despite an uncertain future.
Catharsis
A term used by Aristotle in Poetics to describe the effect of tragedy on the audience. Tragedy evokes pity and terror, purifying these emotions, leaving the audience with a heightened understanding of human and divine nature.
Arthurian Cycle
King Arthur, a prominent figure in European literature, embodies the ideal monarch. Central to the Arthurian cycle of legends, his existence is debated. Early texts depict him as a military commander rather than a king.
Climax/Anticlimax
Climax (gradatio) arranges words or phrases in increasing order of importance. Anticlimax (degradatio) presents a series of ideas that abruptly diminish in importance, often for satirical effect.
Counterpoint
A literary device presenting simultaneous and contrasting times, locations, and characters, commonly used in interior monologues.
Decadence
A late 19th-century literary and artistic movement originating in France. Inspired by post-Romantic poetry, Decadent authors, influenced by Baudelaire, criticized bourgeois morality, sought escape from everyday life, and explored individual heroism, sensitivity, and the unconscious.
Diegesis
The fictional world where narrated events occur. The narrator recounts the story, introducing the audience to actions and thoughts. Its three axes are space, time, and characters.
Drama
A literary genre representing events or conflicts through character dialogue, intended for public performance.
Eclogue/Romance
An eclogue, a subgenre of lyric poetry, often resembles a one-act play. Pastors discuss love within a rural paradise, emphasizing nature and music. Originating in 4th-century BC Hellenism, its themes are rural and bucolic. The romance, a Hellenistic Greek subgenre created by Theocritus, shares similar themes of love, pastoral dialogue, and idealized nature, often associated with Arcadia. The Latin or Roman equivalent is the eclogue.
Encyclopedias/Enlightenment
An 18th-century philosophical and cultural movement centered around Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia. It championed scientific knowledge and reason against tradition, religious intolerance, and superstition.
Epic
A genre of verse poetry recounting extraordinary and heroic deeds of mythical, historical, legendary, or fictional characters.
Epistle
A writing, often in letter form, addressed to a person or group. During the Renaissance, the epistle evolved into a formal essay, often with moral or didactic intent.
Erasmus
A Renaissance humanist movement based on Erasmus’s ideas. It criticized clerical corruption, superstitious piety, and external aspects of Catholicism, advocating for inner spirituality. It supported two forms of power: temporal/political (ruler) and spiritual (Pope).
Automatic Writing
Writing produced without conscious thought, allowing the subconscious to surface. Used by Surrealists like André Breton, it aimed to liberate creative power from repressive influences.
Existentialism
A mid-20th-century European philosophical movement exploring human existence, freedom, loneliness, death, doubt, anxiety, and social/religious faith.
Fable
Short literary compositions featuring animals or objects with human characteristics, conveying a moral lesson.
Flashback
A narrative technique altering the timeline by shifting the action to the past.
Hero
A figure embodying key cultural values, often with superhuman abilities, performing extraordinary feats.
Intertextuality
The relationships between a text and other texts from various sources.
Lyric
A genre expressing the author’s feelings and emotions, traditionally sung and accompanied by a lyre.
Literature of the Absurd
A post-World War II literary movement, primarily in drama, expressing the absurdity of human existence in an unpredictable world and the impossibility of true communication.
Victorian Literature
Literature produced in England during the second half of the 19th century, reacting against Romanticism, emphasizing realism, progress, didacticism, morality, adventure, and a blend of scientific and religious thought.
Eastern Literature
Encompasses ancient Chinese, Persian, Indian, Egyptian, and Hebrew literature, characterized by orality, symbolism, fantasy, and a strong moral and spiritual sense.
Locus Amoenus
A literary theme describing an idyllic, idealized natural setting where a beautiful action unfolds.
Metaphor/Allegory
A metaphor identifies two terms with resemblance. An allegory is a continuous series of metaphors.
Metatextuality
The critical relationship between a text and another, such as a critique or censorship.
Italian Renaissance Metric
Characterized by the use of pentameter verse and consonant rhyme, employed in sonnets, triplets, liras, ottava rima, and Petrarchan songs.
Mimesis
The imitation of nature in classical art, considered its essential purpose.
Myth
A traditional story of miraculous events involving supernatural beings.
Interior Monologue
A narrative technique revealing a character’s thoughts, conscious and unconscious, without authorial intervention.
Novel of Manners
A 19th-century novel analyzing human behavior and character types within their historical and social context.
Psychological Novel
A novel focusing on internal conflicts and psychological traits, often using monologues, diaries, or letters.
Sentimental Novel
A type of romance novel exalting nature, love, passion, and melancholy.
Novel-River (Roman-Fleuve)
A series of novels following a central character or community over time, each volume forming a complete novel but contributing to a larger narrative.
Parable
A symbolic story conveying a moral lesson through analogy or resemblance.
Petrarchism
A Renaissance aesthetic imitating Petrarch’s style, themes, and imagery, particularly in love sonnets.
Prolepsis
A narrative technique anticipating future events.
Realism
A 19th-century literary movement depicting society and environment realistically.
Romanticism
A late 18th and early 19th-century movement prioritizing feelings and rejecting Enlightenment rationalism and Classicism.
Symbolism
A late 19th-century movement originating in France, emphasizing the use of symbols and musicality in poetry.
Symbol
A literary device representing an abstract concept with a concrete object.
Tempus Fugit
The theme of life’s transience, often treated from a moral or vitalistic perspective.
Topos (Topic)
A recurring theme or pattern in literature.
Tragedy/Comedy
Tragedy depicts protagonists facing unavoidable fate, often with a fatal outcome. Comedy uses humor to ridicule customs and problems, typically with a happy ending.
Dramatic Unities
The classical rules of time, place, and action in drama.
Avant-Garde
Early 20th-century art movements emphasizing innovation and challenging traditional aesthetics.