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List of literary terms
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| Literature | 
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 Major forms 
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 Novel · Poem · Drama  | 
| Genres | 
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 Epic · Lyric · Drama  | 
| Media | 
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 Performance (play) · Book  | 
| Techniques | 
| History and lists | 
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 Basic topics · Literary terms  | 
| Discussion | 
The following is a list of literary terms; that is, those words used in discussion, classification, criticism, and analysis of poetry, novels and picture books.
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[edit] A
- Abecedarius
 - Academic drama
 - Acatalectic
 - Accent
 - Accentual verse
 - Acrostic
 - Allegory
 - Alliteration
 - Allusion
 - Anachronism
 - Anacrusis
 - Analects
 - Analogue
 - Analogy
 - Anapest
 - Anaphora
 - Anastrophe
 - Anecdote
 - Angry Young Men
 - Annal
 - Annotation
 - Antagonist
 - Antepenult
 - Anthology
 - Anticlimax
 - Anti-hero
 - Anti-masque
 - Anti-romance
 - Antinovel
 - Antistrophe
 - Antithesis
 - Antonym
 - Aphorism
 - Apocope
 - Apocrypha
 - Apollonian and Dionysian
 - Apologue
 - Apology
 - Apothegm
 - Aposiopesis
 - Apostrophe
 - Apron stage
 - Arcadia
 - Archaism
 - Archetype
 - Aristeia
 - Argument
 - Arsis
 - Art for art's sake
 - Asemic writing
 - Aside
 - Assonance
 - Atmosphere
 - Attitude
 - Aube
 - Aubade
 - Audience
 - Autobiography
 - Autotelic
 - Avant-garde
 
[edit] B
"The Leopard" from the 13th-century bestiary "Rochester Bestiary."
- Ballad
 - Ballade
 - Ballad stanza
 - Bard
 - Baroque
 - Bathos
 - Beast epic
 - Beast poetry
 - Beat Generation
 - Beginning rhyme
 - Belles-lettres
 - Bestiary
 - Beta reader
 - Bibliography
 - Bildungsroman
 - Biography
 - Black humor
 - Blank verse
 - Bloomsbury Group
 - Body
 - Bombast
 - Boulevard drama
 - Bourgeosis drama
 - Bouts-rimés
 - Bowdlerize
 - Breviloquence
 - Broadside
 - Burlesque
 - Burletta
 - Burns stanza
 - Buskin
 - Byronic hero
 
[edit] C
- Caca
 - Cadence
 - Caesura
 - Calligram
 - Canon
 - canso
 - Canticum
 - Canto
 - Canzone
 - Capa y espada
 - Captivity narrative
 - Caricature
 - Carmen figuratum
 - Carpe diem
 - Catachresis
 - Catalectic
 - Catalexis
 - Catastrophe
 - Catharsis
 - Caudate sonnet
 - Cavalier drama
 - Cavalier poetry
 - Celtic Renaissance
 - Celtic Twilight
 - Cesura
 - Chain of Being
 - Chain verse
 - Chanson de geste
 - Chansonnier
 - Chant royal
 - Chantey
 - Chanty
 - Chapbook
 - Character
 - Characterization
 - Charactonym
 - Chaucerian stanza
 - Chiasmus
 - Chivalric romance
 - Choriamb
 - Choriambus
 - Chorus
 - Chronicle
 - Chronical play
 - Cinquain
 - Classicism
 - Classification (literature)
 - Classification of rhymes (Peter Dale)
 - Clerihew
 - Cliché
 - Climax
 - Cloak-and-sword play
 - Closed heroic couplet
 - Closet drama
 - Comédie larmoyante
 - Comedy
 - Comedy of errors
 - Comedy of humors
 - Comedy of intrigue
 - Comedy of manners
 - Comedic relief
 - Commedia dell'arte
 - Comic relief
 - Common measure
 - Commonplace book
 - Common rhyme
 - Comoedia erudate
 - Comparative linguistics
 - Compensation
 - Complaint
 - Conceit
 - Concordance
 - Concrete universal
 - Confessional literature
 - Confidant/confidante
 - Conflict
 - Connotation
 - Consistency
 - Consonance
 - Contradiction
 - Contrast
 - Convention
 - Copyright
 - Counterplot
 - Coup de théâtre
 - Couplet
 - Courtesy book
 - Courtly love
 - Cowleyan ode
 - Cradle books
 - Craft cycle
 - Crisis
 - Criticism
 - Cross acrostic
 - Crown of sonnets
 - Curtain raiser
 - Curtal sonnet
 
[edit] D
- Dactyl
 - Dada
 - Dale's classification of rhymes
 - Dandyism
 - Débat
 - Decadence
 - Decasyllabic verse
 - Decorum
 - Denotation
 - Dénouement
 - Description
 - Descriptive lingustics
 - Detective story
 - Deus ex machina
 - Deuteragonist
 - Dialect
 - Dialogue
 - Dibrach
 - Diction
 - Didactic
 - Digest
 - Digression
 - Dime novel
 - Diameter
 - Dipody
 - Dirge
 - Dissociation of sensibility
 - Dissonance
 - Distich
 - Distributed Stress
 - Dithyramb
 - Diverbium
 - Divine afflatus
 - Doggerel
 - Dolce stil nuove
 - Domestic tragedy
 - Donnée
 - Doppelgänger
 - Double
 - Double rhyme
 - Drama
 - Drama of sensibility
 - Dramatic character
 - Dramatic irony
 - Dramatic lyric
 - Dramatic monologue
 - Dramatic proverb
 - Dramatis personae
 - Dramaturgy
 - Dream allegory
 - Dream vision
 - Droll
 - Dumb show
 - Duodecimo
 - Duologue
 - Duple meter/duple rhythm
 - Dystopia
 
[edit] E
- Echo verse
 - Eclogue
 - Edition
 - Ekphrasis
 - Elegiac couplet
 - Elegiac meter
 - Elegy
 - Elision
 - Emblem
 - Emblem book
 - Emendation
 - Emotive language
 - Encomiastic verse
 - End rhyme
 - End-stopped line
 - English sonnet
 - Enjambment
 - Entr'acte
 - Envoy/envoi
 - Èpater le bourgeois
 - Epic poetry
 - Epic simile
 - Epic Theater
 - Epigraph
 - Epilogue
 - Epiphany
 - Episode
 - Epistle
 - Epistolary novel
 - Epistrophe
 - Epitaph
 - Epithalamion
 - Epithet
 - Epizeuxis
 - Epode
 - Eponymous author
 - Equivalence
 - Erziehungsroman
 - Essay
 - Ethos
 - Eulogy
 - Euphony
 - Euphuism
 - Evidence
 - Exegesis
 - Exemplum
 - Existentialism
 - Exordium
 - Experimental novel
 - Explication de texte
 - Exposition
 - Expressionism
 - Extended metaphor
 - Extension
 - Extrametrical verse
 - Extravaganza
 - Eye rhyme
 
[edit] F
- Fable
 - Fabliau
 - Falling action
 - Falling rhythm
 - Fancy and imagination
 - Fantasy
 - Farce
 - Feeling
 - Feminine ending
 - Feminine rhyme
 - Fiction
 - Figurative language
 - Figure of speech
 - Fin de siècle
 - Flashback
 - Flat character
 - Fleshly school
 - Foil
 - Folio
 - Folk drama
 - Folklore
 - Folk tale
 - Foot
 - Foreshadowing
 - Form
 - Four levels of meaning
 - Four meanings of a poem
 - Fourteener
 - Frame story
 - Free verse
 - French forms
 - Freytag's pyramid
 - Fugitives and Agrarians
 - Fustian
 - Futurism
 
[edit] G
From the 13th-century Carmina Burana, a collection of love and vagabond songs in Goliardic verse from Benediktbeurn Monastery.
- Gallows humor
 - Gamebooks
 - Gathering
 - Genetic fallacy
 - Genius and talent
 - Genre
 - Georgian poetry
 - Georgic
 - Gesta
 - Gloss
 - Gnomic verse
 - Golden line
 - Goliardic verse
 - Gongorism
 - Gonzo journalism
 - Gothic novel
 - Grand Guignol
 - Graveyard poetry
 - Graveyard school
 - Greek tragedy
 - Grub Street
 - Grundyism
 - Guignol
 
[edit] H
- Hagiography
 - Hagiology
 - Haikai
 - Haikai no renga
 - Haiku
 - Half rhyme
 - Hamartia
 - Handwaving
 - Headless line
 - Head rhyme
 - Hebraism-Hellenism
 - "The Hedgehog and the Fox"
 - Hemistich
 - Hendecasyllable
 - Hendecasyllabic verse
 - Heptameter
 - Heptastrich
 - Heresy of paraphrase
 - Hero
 - Heroic couplets
 - Heroic drama
 - Heroic quatrain
 - Heroic stanza
 - Hexameter
 - Hexastich
 - Hiatus
 - High comedy
 - Higher criticism
 - Historical linguistics
 - Historical novel
 - Historic present
 - History play
 - Hokku
 - Holograph
 - Homeric epithet
 - Homeric simile
 - Homily
 - Horatian ode
 - Horatian satire
 - Hornbook
 - Hovering accent
 - Hubris
 - Hudibrastic verse
 - Humor
 - Humours
 - Hybris
 - Hymn
 - Hymnal stanza
 - Hyperbole
 - Hypercatalectic
 - Hypermetrical
 - Hypocorism
 - Hysteron-proteron
 
[edit] I
- Iambic pentameter
 - Ideology
 - Idiom
 - Imagery
 - Imagism
 - Impressionism
 - Indeterminacy
 - Inference
 - In medias res
 - Internal rhyme
 - Interpretation
 - Intertextuality
 - Irony
 
[edit] J
- Jacobean era
 - Jeremiad
 - Journal
 - Judicial criticism
 - Juncture
 - Juggernaut
 - Juvenalian satire
 - Juxtaposition
 
[edit] K
[edit] L
- Lai
 - Lake Poets
 - Lament
 - Lampoon
 - L'art pour l'art
 - Laureate
 - Lay
 - Leaf
 - Legend
 - Legitimate theater
 - Leonine rhyme
 - Letters
 - Level stress (even accent)
 - Libretto
 - Light ending
 - Light poetry
 - Light rhyme
 - Light stress
 - Light verse
 - Limerick (poetry)
 - Linguistics
 - Linked rhyme
 - Link sonnet
 - Literary ballad
 - Literary criticism
 - Literary epic
 - Literary realism
 - Literary theory
 - Literature
 - Litotes
 - Litterateur
 - Liturgical drama
 - Living newspaper
 - Local color
 - Logaoedic
 - Logical fallacy
 - Logical stress
 - Logos
 - Long measure
 - Loose sentence
 - Lost Generation
 - Low comedy
 - Lyric
 
[edit] M
- Macaronic verse
 - Madrigal
 - Magical realism
 - Malapropism
 - Märchen
 - Marginalia
 - Marinism
 - Marivauge
 - Marxist literary criticism
 - Masculine ending
 - Masculine rhyme
 - Masked comedy
 - Masque
 - Maxim
 - Meaning
 - Medieval drama
 - Meiosis
 - Melic poetry
 - Melodrama
 - Memoir
 - Menippean satire
 - Mesostich
 - Metaphor
 - Metaphysical conceit
 - Metaphysical poetry
 - Meter
 - Metonymy
 - Metre
 - Metrical accent
 - Metrical foot
 - Metrical structure
 - Middle Comedy
 - Miles gloriosus
 - Miltonic sonnet
 - Mime
 - Mimesis
 - Minnesinger
 - Minstrel
 - Miracle play
 - Miscellanies
 - Mise en scène
 - Mixed metaphor
 - Mock epic
 - Mock heroic
 - Mode
 - Modernism
 - Monodrama
 - Monody
 - Monograph
 - Monologue
 - Monometer
 - Monopody
 - Monostich
 - Monograph
 - Mood
 - Mora
 - Moral
 - Morality play
 - Motif
 - Motivation
 - Movement
 - Mummery
 - Muses
 - Musical comedy
 - Mystery play
 - Mythology
 
[edit] N
- Narrative point of view
 - Narrator
 - Naturalism
 - Neologism
 - Non-fiction
 - Non-fiction novel
 - Novel
 - Novelette
 - Novella
 - Novelle
 - narrative poem
 
[edit] O
- Objective correlative
 - Objective criticism
 - Obligatory scene
 - Octameter
 - Octave
 - Ode
 - Oedipus complex
 - Onomatopoeia
 - Open couplet
 - Oulipo
 - Orchestra_(literary term)
 - Oxymoron
 
[edit] P
- Palinode
 - Pantoum
 - Pantun
 - Parable
 - Paraclausithyron
 - Paradelle
 - Paradox
 - Pararhyme
 - Partimen
 - Pastourelle
 - Pathetic fallacy
 - Pathya Vat
 - Parallelism
 - Parody
 - Pastoral
 - Pathos
 - Pentameter
 - Periodic sentence
 - Peripetia
 - perspective
 - Persona
 - Personification
 - Pièce bien faite
 - Picaresque novel
 - Plain Style
 - Platonic
 - Plot
 - Poem
 - Poem and song
 - Poetic diction
 - Poetic transrealism
 - Poetry
 - Point of view
 - Polysyndeton
 - Post-colonialism
 - Postmodernism
 - Pound's Ideogrammic Method
 - Prologue
 - Progymnasmata
 - Prose
 - Prosimetrum
 - Prosody
 - Protagonist
 - Proverb
 - Pruning poem
 - Psychoanalytic literary criticism
 - Psychoanalytic theory
 - Pun
 - Purple patch
 - Pyrrhic
 
[edit] Q
[edit] R
- Reader-response criticism
 - Realism
 - Refrain
 - Renga
 - Renku
 - Repetition
 - Resolution
 - Rhapsodes
 - Rhetoric
 - Rhyme
 - Rhythm
 - Roman a clef
 - Romance novel
 - Romanticism
 - Russian formalism
 
[edit] S
- Satire
 - Scanning
 - Scansion
 - Scene a faire
 - Sea shanty
 - Semiotics
 - Semiotic literary criticism
 - Setting
 - Shanty
 - Sestet
 - Shakespearean sonnet
 - Simile
 - Slice of life
 - Sobriquet
 - Soliloquy
 - Sonnet
 - Sonneteer
 - Speaker
 - Sprung rhythm
 - Stanza
 - Static character
 - Stereotype
 - Stream of consciousness
 - Structuralism
 - Subplot
 - Syllogism
 - Symbol
 - Synecdoche
 - Synaesthesia
 - Syntax
 
[edit] T
- Tableau
 - Tail rhyme
 - Tagelied
 - Tale
 - Tall Tale
 - Telestich
 - Tanka
 - Tenor
 - Tension
 - Tercet
 - Terza rima
 - Tetrameter
 - Tetrastich
 - Textual criticism
 - Texture
 - Theater of Cruelty
 - Theatre of the Absurd
 - Theme
 - Thesis
 - Thesis play
 - Threnody
 - Tirade
 - Tone
 - Tract
 - Tractarian Movement
 - Tragedy
 - Tragedy of blood
 - Tragic flaw
 - Tragic Hero
 - Tragic irony
 - Tragicomedy
 - Tranche de vie
 - Transcendentalism
 - Transferred epithet
 - Transition
 - Translation
 - Travesty
 - Triad
 - Tribe of Ben
 - Tribrach
 - Trimeter
 - Triolet
 - Triple rhyme
 - Triple meter
 - Triple rhythm
 - Triplet
 - Tristich
 - Tritagonist
 - Trivium
 - Trobar clus
 - Trochee
 - Trope (literature)
 - Troubadour
 - Trouvère
 - Truncated line
 - Tumbling verse
 - Type character
 
[edit] U
- Ubi sunt
 - Underground culture
 - Underground press
 - Understatement
 - Unities
 - Unity
 - Universality (disambiguation)
 - University Wits
 - Unobtainium
 - Utopia
 - Utopian and dystopian fiction
 - Unreliable narrator
 
[edit] V
- Variable syllable
 - Variorum
 - Varronian satire (Menippean satire)
 - Vates
 - Vaudeville
 - Vehicle
 - Verbal irony
 - Verisimilitude
 - Verism
 - Vers de société
 - Verse
 - Verse paragraph
 - Vers libre
 - Verso
 - Victorianism
 - Viewpoint
 - Vignette
 - Villain
 - Villanelle
 - Virelay
 - Virgule
 - Voice (of the writer)
 - Voice (in phonetics)
 - Volta
 - Vorticism
 - Vulgate
 
[edit] W
- Wardour Street English
 - Weak ending
 - Weak foot
 - Well-made play
 - Wellerism
 - Western fiction
 - Wimmering
 - Wit
 - Word accent
 - Wrenched accent
 - Watermark
 
[edit] References and further reading
- M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005. ISBN 1413004563.
 - Chris Baldick. The Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford Univ. Press, 2004. ISBN 0198608837.
 - Chris Baldick. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001. ISBN 019280118X.
 - Edwin Barton & G. A. Hudson. Contemporary Guide To Literary Terms. Houghton-Mifflin, 2003. ISBN 0618341625.
 - Mark Bauerlein. Literary Criticism: An Autopsy. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. ISBN 0812216253.
 - Karl Beckson & Arthur Ganz. Literary Terms: A Dictionary. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989. ISBN 0374521778.
 - Peter Childs. The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0415340179.
 - J. A. Cuddon. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin Books, 2000. ISBN 0140513639 .
 - Dana Gioia. The Longman Dictionary of Literary Terms: Vocabulary for the Informed Reader. Longman, 2005. ISBN 032133194X.
 - Sharon Hamilton. Essential Literary Terms: A Brief Norton Guide with Exercises. W. W. Norton, 2006. ISBN 0393928373.
 - William Harmon. A Handbok to Literature. Prentice Hall, 2005. ISBN 0131344420.
 - X. J. Kennedy, et al. Handbook of Literary Terms: Literature, Language, Theory. Longman, 2004. ISBN 0321202074.
 - V. B. Leitch. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W. W. Norton, 2001. ISBN 0393974294.
 - Frank Lentricchia & Thomas McLaughlin. Critical Terms for Literary Study. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0226472035.
 - David Mikics. A New Handbook of Literary Terms. Yale Univ. Press, 2007. ISBN 030010636X.
 - Ross Murfin & S. M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006. ISBN 0312259107.
 - John Peck & Martin Coyle. Literary Terms and Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. ISBN 0333962583.
 - Edward Quinn. A Dictionary of Literary And Thematic Terms. Checkmark Books, 2006. ISBN 0816062447.
 - Lewis Turco. The Book of Literary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, and Scholarship. Univ. Press of New England, 1999. ISBN 0874519551.
 

