Literary Terms and Techniques

Senior PhaseEnglish:

N5 & Higher

Literary Terms and Techniques

Name ______

Teacher ______

Tutor Group ______

N5/Higher Literary Terms and Techniques

The terms and techniques within this glossary are not arranged strictly according to the units of work you shall cover during any N5/Higher English course, as many of them are not restricted to one particular type of text but can be used when discussing prose, poetry, media or drama.

Over the course of the year, you shall be expected to learn the definitions of the terms and techniques given for each week, before being tested on them by your class teacher. This will help you become more familiar with the terminology you will be required to use in critical essay writing, textual analysis, close reading and various other elements within N5/Higher English. It will also help increase your general vocabulary.

This booklet should, therefore, be used for reference whenever necessary while studying a particular text or preparing for unit assessments and examinations. This is why the terms and techniques contained in the glossary are in alphabetical order; that you might locate what you are looking for more easily. Become accustomed to searching the glossary for relevant information; do not just leave it up to your class teacher to tell you to.

Every lesson, bar two, has twelve terms/techniques that your class teacher will read out the definitions for (in a different order than which they appear) at some point each week. You must, therefore, not only learn the definitions but also the spelling of the terms/techniques themselves. Words that appear in bold are those also referenced elsewhere within the glossary.

Although the glossary is extensive it is not exhaustive. There are still many terms and techniques of use when discussing poetry, prose, media and drama that it does not contain. However, it does hold most of the more common.

Week 1

1. Absurd, the – a term often applied to the modern sense of human purposelessness in a universe without meaning or value. Many 20th-century writers of prose fiction stressed the absurd nature of human existence: see the novels and stories of Franz Kafka.

1. Accent – the emphasis placed upon a syllable in pronunciation.

1. Accentual verse – verse in which the meter is based on counting only the number of stressed syllables in a line, and in which the number of unstressed syllables may vary.

1. Acrostic – a poem in which the initial letters of each line can be read down the page to spell an alphabet, a name, or some concealed message.

1. Act – a major division in the action of a play, comprising one or more scenes. A break between acts often coincides with a point at which the plot jumps ahead in time.

1. Advertising - the activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media, or the business of designing and writing advertisements.

1. Allegory – a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. The principal technique of allegory is personification, whereby abstract qualities are given human shape – as in the public statues of Liberty or Justice.

1. Alliteration – the repetition of the initial consonant sound in a series of words: ‘Landscape-lover, lord of language’ (Tennyson).

1. Alliterative metre – a long line divided by a caesura into two balanced half-lines, each with a given number of stressed syllables (usually two) and a variable number of unstressed syllables. These half lines are linked by alliteration between both (sometimes one) of the stressed syllables in the first half and the first (sometimes second) stressed syllable in the second half.

Al for love and oure Lord livede wel straite,

In hope for to have hevene-rich blisse.

(lines from the 14th century poem Piers Plowman)

1. Allusion – a reference to another event, place, person or piece of literature.

1. Ambiguity – words or phrases in which the meaning is unclear or which has more than one possible interpretation, e.g. Boy Driving His Father to Confession.

1. Amphibrach – a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable between two unstressed syllables, as in the word ‘confession’.

Week 2

1. Anachronism – the misplacing of any person, thing, custom or event outside its proper historical time. Performance of Shakespeare’s plays in modern dress use deliberate anachronism.

1. Anagnorisis – ‘recognition’ or ‘discovery’, used to denote the turning point in drama at which a character (usually the protagonist) recognises the true state of affairs, having previously been in error or ignorance. The classic instance is Oedipus’ recognition, in Oedipus the King, that he himself has killed his own father, married his mother and brought the plague upon Thebes.

1. Analogy – illustration of an idea by means of a more familiar idea that is similar to it in some significant features, e.g. ‘As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.’ (William Blake)

1. Anapaest – a metrical foot made up of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, as in the word ‘interrupt’.

1. Anaphora – a figure of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses or sentences.

1. Antagonist – the most prominent of the characters who oppose the protagonist or hero(ine) in a dramatic or narrative work.

1. Anthem – a term most often used to describe a song in which the words affirm a collective identity, usually expressing attachment to some nation, institution or cause.

1. Anticlimax – an abrupt lapse from growing intensity to triviality in any passage of dramatic, narrative, or descriptive writing.

1. Anti-hero/heroine – a central character in a dramatic or narrative work who lacks the qualities of nobility expected of traditional heroes and heroines in romance and epics, e.g. Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605) and Joyce’s Leopold Bloom (Ulysses, 1922). The anti-hero is also an important figure in modern drama, e.g. Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

1. Antithesis – balancing opposites together with a sentence to create a contrast, e.g.

‘Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love.’ (W.B. Yeats)

1. Apocalyptic – revealing the secrets of the future through prophecy; or having the character of an apocalypse or world consuming holocaust. Apocalyptic writing is usually concerned with the coming end of the world, as in Yeat’s poem ‘The Second Coming’.

1. Apostrophe – a figure of speech in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person, or inanimate object.

Week 3

1. Aerial shot - a shot from a crane, plane, or helicopter.

1. Arbitrary – lacking any natural basis or substantial justification.

1. Archaic - old fashioned, used to describe words which are seldom used anymore, e.g. “Thou’ or “Thee”.

1. Archetype – a symbol, theme, setting, or character-type that recurs in different times and places in myth, literature, folklore, dreams and rituals so frequently or prominently as to suggest that it embodies some essential element of ‘universal’ human experience.

1. Aside – a short speech or remark spoken by a character in a drama, directed either to the audience or to another character, which by convention is supposed to be inaudible to the other characters on stage.

1. Assonance – the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables (and sometimes in the unstressed syllables) of neighbouring words: ‘bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell’ (Heaney).

1. Auteur - the idea that the director of a film is the sole creative force behind it, whose personal themes and worldview are imprinted onto the film.

1. Automatic writing – a method of composition that tries to dispense with conscious control, transcribing immediately the promptings of the unconscious mind.

1. Ballad - A folk song or orally transmitted poem telling in a direct and dramatic manner some popular story usually derived from a tragic incident in local history or legend – The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

1. Bard – a poet who was awarded privileged status in ancient Celtic cultures, and who was charged with the duty of celebrating the laws and heroic achievements of his people.

1. Baroque – eccentric or lavishly ornate in style.

1. Bathos – a lapse into the ridiculous by a poet aiming at elevated expression. Whereas anticlimax can be a deliberate poetic effect, bathos is an unintended failure.

Week 4

1. Black comedy – a kind of drama in which disturbing or sinister subjects like death, disease, or warfare, are treated with bitter amusement, usually in a manner calculated to offend and shock.

1. Blank verse – unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, as in the lines of Tennyson’s Ulysses:

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

1. Broken Rhyme – the splitting of a word (not in fact the rhyme) at the end of a verse line, to allow a rhyme on a syllable other than the final one, which is transferred to the following line. The first line of Hopkins’ The Windhover ends with the first syllable of ‘King/dom’ to rhyme with ‘wing’ in line four.

1. Burlesque – a kind of parody that ridicules some serious literary work either by treating its solemn subject in an undignified style, or by applying its elevated style to a trivial subject.

1. Cacophony – the harshness or discordancy of sound. Usually the result of awkward alliteration as in tongue twisters.

1. Caesura – a pause in a line of verse.

1. Cadence – the rising and falling rhythm of speech, especially noticeable in free verse or in prose.

1. Camera angle - the position of the camera relative to the horizontal plane of the subject. In a high-angle shot, the camera is above the subject; in an eye-level or flat shot, the camera is on the same plane as the subject; in a low-angle shot, the camera is below the subject. Camera angles should make sense within the context of the shot.

1. Camera distance - the apparent distance of the camera from the subject (extreme close (XCU), close-up (CU), medium shot (MS), long shot (LS)).

1. Camera movement - an actual or simulated movement relative to the subject:

• pan - slow, steady movement across a scene from a fixed point
• follow - like the pan, but the camera is directed at an individual or object as it moves through a scene
• tilt - a vertical pan or follow
• zoom in and zoom out - use of the zoom lens to approach or back away from the subject
• dolly or track - use of a wheeled vehicle to move the camera alongside, toward, or away from the action.

Week 5

1. Canto – a subdivision of an epic or other narrative poem, equivalent to a chapter in a prose work.

1. Casting - the selection of individuals who will appear in a film or program.

1. Characterization – the representation of persons in narrative and dramatic works.

1. Chorus – a group of singers distinct from the principal performers in dramatic or musical performance; also the song or refrain that they sing.

1. Chronicle – a written record of events presented in order of time, and updated regularly over a prolonged period.

1. Cinematographer - the person responsible for photographing the film.

1. Circumlocution – the roundabout manner of referring to something at length rather than naming it briefly and directly.

1. Coinage – a newly invented word or expression.

1. Classic American Editing - a uniquely Hollywood style of editing designed to be as unobtrusive as possible in the viewer’s experience of watching the film. The opposite of montage.

1. Cliché – A phrase, idea or image that has been used so much that it has lost its original meaning and significance, e.g. “at the end of the day.”

1. Climax – The high point or most important moment.

1. Close up (CU) - shot in which an important detail, object, or facial expression fills the screen.

Week 6

1. Colloquial – ordinary, everyday speech.

1. Composition (visual media) - the placement and use of all the various elements in the frame of a movie, television show, or photograph in order to achieve maximum impact.

1. Connotation – the implication or suggestion attached to a word or phrase.

1. Content – the term commonly used to refer to what is said in a literary work, as opposed to how it is said.

1. Context – those parts of a text preceding and following any particular passage, giving it a meaning fuller or more identifiable than if it were read in isolation.

1. Continuity - the scripted part of a documentary program, which introduces the topic, connects the various components (usually recorded interviews), and concludes the program; provides coherence to the disparate components of these programs.

1. Coup de theatre – a sudden, surprising turn of events that gives a new twist to the plot of a play.

1. Couplet – a pair of rhyming verse lines, usually of the same length.

1. Crisis – a decisive point in the plot of a play or story, upon which the outcome of the remaining action depends.

1. Criticism – the reasoned discussion of literary works.

1. Crosscutting - intermingling shots of different events, used to suggest parallels or to create suspense.

1. Crossed Rhyme – the rhyming of one word in the middle of a long verse line with a word in a similar position in the next line.

Week 7

1. Cut - the immediate change from one shot to the next.

1. Dactyl – a metrical unit (foot) of verse, having one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in the word carefully.

1. Deconstruct - to take apart, analyze, or break down a media text into its component parts in order to understand how it is created.

1. Dialect – A way of speaking in a certain area of the country.

1. Dialogue – spoken exchanges between or among characters in a dramatic or narrative work; or a literary form in prose or verse based on a debate or discussion, usually between two speakers.

1. Diction – the choice of words used in a literary work.

1. Digression – a temporary departure from one subject to another more or less distantly related topic before the discussion of the first subject is resumed.

1. Director - the person responsible for the creative interpretation of the script, story, or issue and the supervision of its filming and editing.

1. Dirge – a song or poem of lamentation in mourning for someone’s death.

1. Discourse – any extended use of speech or writing.

1. Dissolve - the superimposition of one shot, which is fading out, on the next shot, which is fading in.

1. Dissonance – harshness of sound and/or rhythm.

Week 8

1. Documentary - a factual film about a particular subject or a radio program that treats an event or issue in depth.

1. Double entendre – a French phrase for ‘double meaning’, adopted in English to refer to a pun in which a word or phrase has a second, usually sexual, meaning.

1. Double Rhyme – a rhyme on two syllables, the first stressed and the second unstressed e.g. tarry/marry, adore us/chorus.

1. Dramatic Monologue - a kind of poem in which a single fictional or historical character other than the poet speaks to a silent audience of one or more persons. Such a poem reveals not the poet’s thoughts but the mind of the impersonated character – Tennyson’s Ulysses.

1. Duple metre – a term covering poetic metres based upon a foot of two syllables.

1. Dutch Tilt - a shot where the camera is canted off the horizontal line. Used to suggest mental/physical disorientation.

1. Dystopia – a modern term invented as the opposite of utopia, and applied to an alarmingly unpleasant imaginary world, usually of the projected future.

1. Editing (print media) - a process of selecting and arranging items and of revising writing in newspapers, magazines, and other print media.

1. Editing (sound) - a process of arranging and bringing together all the individual soundtracks (e.g., dialogue, sound effects, music) and combining them onto one master track.

1. Editing (visual) - a process of selecting, arranging, and combining shots.

1. Elegy – an elaborately formal lyric poem lamenting the death of a friend or public figure, or reflecting seriously on a solemn subject – Milton’s Lycidas.

1. Ellipsis – the omission from a sentence of a word or words that would be required for complete clarity. The sequence of three dots (…) employed to indicate the omission of something in a text is also known as an ellipsis.

Week 9

1. Emblem – a picture with a symbolic meaning.

1. End-rhyme – rhyme occurring at the ends of verse lines.

1. Enjambment – when lines of poetry run on from one another without a full stop. This can give a sense of urgency.

1. Epic – a long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary hero, in a grand ceremonious style.

1. Epigram – A short poem with a witty turn of thought.

1. Epigraph – a quotation or motto placed at the beginning of a book, chapter, or poem as an indication of its theme.

1. Epilogue – a concluding section of any written work.

1. Epistle – a letter.

1. Epitaph – a form of words in prose or verse suitable for inscription on a tomb.

1. Epithet – an adjective used to define a characteristic quality or attribute of some person or thing, e.g. “the wine-dark sea” and “the rosy-fingered dawn”.

1. Eponymous – name-giving; a term applied to a real or fictitious person after whom a place, thing, institution, meal, or book is named.

1. Euphemism – A softer, less harsh way of expressing something unpleasant, e.g. “passing away” instead of “death”.

Week 10

1. Establishing shot (ES) - generally a long shot or extreme long shot used to show the setting.

1. Euphony – a pleasing smoothness of sound, perceived by the ease with which the words can be spoken in combination.

1. Extended Image – A comparison that is repeated in more than one place in a poem or is continued throughout the writing; see Shakespeare’s sonnets.

1. Extreme close up (ECU) - a close up in which a small detail fills the entire screen.

1. Extreme long shot (ELS) - a very wide shot, often a panoramic view.

1. Eye rhyme – a kind of rhyme in which the spellings of paired words appear to match but without true correspondence in pronunciation, e.g. dive/give, said/maid.

1. Fable – a brief tale in verse or prose that conveys a moral lesson, usually by giving human speech and manners to animals and inanimate things.

1. Fade-in - a shot that begins totally over or under exposed (white or black) and gradually becomes properly exposed.

1. Fade-out - a shot that ends by changing from the proper exposure to an extreme under or over exposure.

1. Falling rhyme – a rhythmical effect often found in metrical verse in which the unstressed syllables are perceived as being attached to the preceding stressed syllables rather than those following.

1. Fast motion - the opposite of slow motion (i.e., filmed at fewer than 24 frames per second).

1. Feminine Rhyme – rhyme of more than one syllable, e.g. “constitution” and “destitution “; “master” and “disaster” in the poem One Art by Elizabeth Bishop.

Week 11