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Historical fiction

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A type of fiction in which the narrative is set in another time or place. In historical fiction, the author usually attempts to recreate a faithful picture of daily life during the period. Historical fiction sometimes introduces well-known figure from the past. More often it places imaginary characters in a carefully reconstructed version of a particular historical era.

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Impartial omniscience

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Refers to an omniscient narrator who, although he or she presents the thoughts and actions of the characters, does not judge them or comment on them.

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Impressionism

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In fiction, a style of writing that emphasizes external events less than the impression those events make on the narrator or protagonist. Impressionist short stories usually center the narrative on the chief characters' mental lives rather than the reality around them.

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Initiation story

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Also called coming-of-age story. A narrative in which the main character, usually a child or adolescent, undergoes an important experience or rite of passage--often a difficult or disillusioning one--that prepares him or her for adulthood.

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In medias res

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A Latin phase meaning "in the midst of things" that refers to a narrative device of beginning a story midway in the events it depicts (usually at an exciting or significant moment) before explaining the context or preceding actions.

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Innocent narrator

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Also called naive narrator. A character who fails to understand all the implications of the story he or she tells. Of course, virtually any narrator has some degree of innocence or naiveté, but the innocent narrator--often a child or childlike adult--is used by an author trying to generate irony, sympathy, or pity by creating a gap between what the narrator knows and what the reader knows.

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Interior monologue

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An extended presentation of a character's thoughts in a narrative. Usually written in the present tense and printed without quotation marks, an interior monologue reads as if the character were speaking aloud to himself or herself, for the reader to overhear.

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Ironic point of view

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The perspective of a character or narrator whose voice or position is rich in ironic contradictions.

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Irony

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A literary device in which a discrepancy of meaning is masked beneath the surface of the language. Irony is present when a writer says one thing but means something quite the opposite. There are many kinds of irony, but the two major varieties are verbal irony (in which discrepancy is contained in words) and situational irony (in which the discrepancy exists when something is about to happen to a character or characters who expect the opposite outcome).

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Irony of fate

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A type of situational irony that can be used for either tragic or comic purposes. Irony of fate is the discrepancy between actions and their results, between what characters deserve and what they get, between appearance and reality.

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Legend

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A traditional narrative handed down through popular oral tradition to illustrate and celebrate a remarkable character, an important event, or to explain the unexplainable. Legends, unlike other folktales, claim to be true and usually take place in real locations, often with genuine historical figures.

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Levels of diction

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In English, there are conventionally four basic levels of formality in word choice, or four levels of diction. From the least formal to the most elevated they are vulgate, colloquial English, general English, and formal English.

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Limited omniscience

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Also called third-person limited point of view. A type of point of view in which the narrator sees into the minds of some but not all of the characters. Most typically, limited omniscience sees through the eyes of one major or minor character. In limited omniscience, the author can comprise between the immediacy of first-person narration and the mobility of third person.

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Literary genre

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A conventional combination of literary form and subject matter, usually aimed at creating certain effects. A genre implies a preexisting understanding between the artist and the reader about the purpose and rules of the work.

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Literary theory

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Literary criticism that tries to formulate general principles rather than discuss specific texts. Theory operates at a high level of abstraction and often focuses on understanding basic issues of language, communication, art, interpretation, culture, and ideological content.

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Local color

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The use of specific regional material--unique customs, dress, habits, and speech patterns of ordinary people--to create atmosphere or realism in a literary work.

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Locale

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The location where a story takes place.

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Magic realism

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Also called magical realism. A type of contemporary narrative in which the magical and the mundane are mixed in an overall context of realistic storytelling.

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Metafiction

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Fiction that consciously explores its own nature as a literary creation. The Greek word "meta" means "upon"; metafiction consequently is a mode of narrative that does not try to create the illusion of verisimilitude but delights in its own fictional nature, often by speculating on the story it is telling.

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Microcosm

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The small world as created by a poem, play, or story that reflects the tensions of the larger world beyond. In some sense, most successful literary works offer a microcosm that illuminates the greater world around it.

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Minimalist fiction

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Contemporary fiction written in a deliberately flat, unemotional tone and an appropriately unadorned style. Minimalist fiction often relies more on dramatic action, scene, and dialogue than complex narration or authorial summary.

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Monologue

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An extended speech by a single character. The term originated in drama, where it describes a solo speech that has listeners (as opposed to a soliloquy, where the character speaks only to himself or herself). A short story or even a novel can be written in monologue form if it is an unbroken speech by one character to another silent character or characters.

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Moral

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A paraphrasable message or lesson implied or directly stated in a literary work. Commonly, a moral is stated at the end of a fable.

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Motif

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An element that recurs significantly throughout a narrative. A motif can be an image, idea, theme, situation, or action (and was first commonly used as a musical term for a recurring melody or melodic fragment). A motif can also refer to an element that recurs across many literary works like a beautiful lady in medieval romances who turns out to be an evil fairy or three questions that are asked a protagonist to test his or her wisdom.

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Motivation

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What a character in a story or drama wants. The reasons an author provides for a character's actions. Motivation can be either explicit (in which reasons are specifically stated in a story) or implicit (in which the reasons are only hinted at or partially revealed).

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Myth

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A traditional narrative of anonymous authorship that arises out of a culture's oral tradition. The characters in traditional myths are usually gods or heroic figures. Myths characteristically explain the origins of things--gods, people, places, plants, animals, and natural events--usually from a cosmic view. A culture's values and belief systems are traditionally passed from generation to generation in myth. In literature, myth may also refer to boldly imagined narratives that embody primal truths about life. Myth is usually differentiated from legend, which has a specific historical base.

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Mythological criticism

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The practice of analyzing a literary work by looking for recurrent universal patterns. Mythological criticism explores the artist's common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols that are shared by different cultures and epochs.

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Naive narrator

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A character who fails to understand all the implications of the story he or she tells. Of course, virtually any narrator has some degree of innocence or naiveté, but the innocent narrator--often a child or childlike adult--is used by an author trying to generate irony, sympathy, or pity by creating a gap between what the narrator knows and what the reader knows.

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Narrator

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A voice or character that provides the reader with information and insight about the characters and incidents in a narrative. A narrator's perspective and personality can greatly affect how a story is told.

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Naturalism

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A type of fiction or drama in which the characters are presented as products or victims of environment and heredity. Naturalism, considered an extreme form of realism, customarily depicts the social, physiological, and economic milieu of the primary characters.

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Nonfiction novel

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A genre in which actual events are presented as a novel-length story, using the techniques of fiction (flashback, interior monologues, etc.).

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Nonparticipant narrator

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A narrator who does not appear in the story as a character but is capable of revealing the thoughts and motives of one or more characters. A nonparticipating narrator is also capable of moving from place to place in order to describe action and report dialogue.

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Nouvelle

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The French term for the short prose tale (called novella) by Italian Renaissance writers that usually depicted in relatively realistic terms illicit love, ingenious trickery, and sensational adventure, often with an underlying moral.

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Novel

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An extended work of fictional prose narrative. The term novel usually implies a book-length narrative (as compared to more compact forms of prose fiction such as the short story). Because of its extended length, a novel usually has more characters, more varied scenes, and a broader coverage of time than a short story.

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Novella

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In modern terms, a prose narrative longer than a short story but shorter than a novel (approximately 30,000 to 50,000 words). Unlike a short story, a novella is long enough to be published independently as a brief book.

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Objective point of view

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A point of view in which the narrator merely reports dialogue and action with minimal interpretation or access to the character's minds.

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Observer

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A type of first-person narrator who is relatively detached from or plays only a minor role in the events described.

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O. Henry ending

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A surprising climax that depends on a quick reversal of the situation from an unexpected source. The success of a trick ending is relative to the degree in which the reader is surprised but not left incredulous when it occurs. The American writer O. Henry popularized this type of ending.

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Omniscient narrator

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Also called all-knowing narrator. A narrator who has the ability to move freely through the consciousness of any character. The omniscient narrator also has complete knowledge of all of the external events in a story.

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Open dénouement

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One of the conventional types of dénouement or resolution. In open dénouement, the author ends a narrative with few loose ends, or unresolved matters, on which the reader is left to speculate.

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Oral tradition

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The tradition within a culture that transmits narratives by word of mouth from one generation to another. Fables, folktales, ballads, and songs are examples of some types of narratives found originally in an oral tradition.

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Parable

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A brief, usually allegorical narrative that teaches a moral. In parables, unlike fables (where the moral is explicitly stated within the narrative), the moral themes are implicit and can often be interpreted in several ways.

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Paradox

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A statement that at first strikes one as self-contradictory, but that on reflection reveals some deeper sense. Paradox is often achieved by a play on words.

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Parallelism

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An arrangement of words, phrases, clauses, or sentences side-by-side in a similar grammatical or structural way. Parallelism organizes ideas in a way that demonstrates their coordination to the reader.

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Paraphrase

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The restatement in one's own words of what we understand a literary work to say. A paraphrase is similar to a summary, although not as brief or simple.

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Parody

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A mocking imitation of a literary work or individual author's style usually for comic effect. A parody typically exaggerates distinctive features of the original for humorous purposes.

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Participant narrator

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A narrator participates as a character within a story.

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Persona

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Latin for "mask." A fictitious character created by an author to be the speaker of a poem, story, or novel. A persona is always the narrator of the work and not merely a character in it.

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Picaresque

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A type of narrative, usually a novel, that presents the life of a likable scoundrel who is at odds with respectable society. The narrator of a picaresque was originally picaro (Spanish for "rascal" or "rogue") who recounts his adventures tricking the rich and gullible. This type of narrative rarely has a tight plot, and the episodes or adventures follow in a loose chronological order.

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Plot

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The particular arrangement of actions, events, and situations that unfold in a narrative. A plot is not merely the general story of a narrative but the author's artistic pattern made from the parts of the narrative, including the exposition, complication, climax, and dénouement. How an author chooses to construct the plot determines the way the reader experiences the story. Manipulating a plot, therefore, can be the author's most important expressive device when writing a story. More than just a story made up of episodes or a bare synopsis of the temporal order of events, the plotting is the particular embodiment of an action that allows the audience to see the casual relationship between the parts of the action.

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Point of view

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The perspective from which a story is told. There are many types of point of view, including the first-person narrator (a story in which the narrator is a participant in the action) and third-person narrator (a type of narration in which the narrator is a nonparticipant).

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Print culture

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A culture that depends primarily on the printed word--in books, magazines, and newspapers--to distribute and preserve information. In recent decades the electronic media have taken over much of this role from print.

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Protagonist

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The central character in a literary work. The protagonist usually initiates the main action of the story, often in conflict with the antagonist.

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Psychological criticism

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The practice of analyzing a literary work through investigating three major areas: the nature of literature genius, the psychological study of a particular artist, and the analysis of a fictional characters. This methodology uses the analytical tools of psychology and psychoanalysis to understand the underlying motivations and meaning of a literary work.

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Pulp fiction

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A type of formulaic and quickly written fiction originally produced for cheap mass circulation magazines. The term pulp refers to the inexpensive wood-pulp paper developed in the mid-nineteenth century on which these magazines were printed. Most pulp fiction journals printed only melodramatic genre work--westerns, science fiction, romance, horror, adventure tales, or crime stories.

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Reader-response criticism

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The practice of analyzing a literary work by describing what happens in the reader's mind while interpreting the text. Reader-response critics believe that no literary texts exists independently of readers' interpretations and that there is no single fixed interpretation of any literary work.

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Realism

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An attempt to reproduce faithfully the surface appearance of life, especially that of an ordinary people in everyday situations. As a literary term, realism has two meanings--one general, the other historical. In a general sense, realism refers to the representation of characters, events, and settings in ways that the spectator will consider plausible, based on consistency and likeness to type. This sort of realism does not necessarily depend on elaborate factual description or documentation but more on the author's ability to draft plots and characters within a conventional framework of social, economic, and psychological reality. In a historical sense, Realism (usually capitalized) refers to a movement in the nineteenth-century European literature and theater that rejected the idealism, elitism, and romanticism of earlier verse dramas and prose fiction in an attempt to represent life truthfully. Realist literature customarily focused on the middle class (and occasionally the working class) rather than aristocracy, and it used social and economic detail to create an accurate account of human behavior.

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Regionalism

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The literary representation of a specific locale that consciously uses the particulars of geography, custom, history, folklore, or speech. In regional narratives, the locale plays a crucial role in the presentation and progression of a story that could not be moved to another setting without artistic loss. Usually, regional narratives take place at some distance from the literary capital off a culture, often in small towns or rural areas.

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Resolution

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The final part of a narrative, the concluding action or actions that follow the climax.

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Retrospect

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A scene relived in a character's memory.

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Rising action

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The part of the play or narrative, including the exposition, in which events start moving toward a climax. In the rising action the protagonist usually faces the complications of the plot to reach his or her goal.

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Romance

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In general terms, romance is a narrative mode that employs exotic adventure and idealized emotion rather than realistic depiction of character and action. In the romantic mode--out of which most popular genre fictions devlop--people, actions, and events are depicted more as we wish them to be (heroes are very brave, villains are very brave) rather than the complex ways they usually are.

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Round character

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A term coined by English novelist E. M. Foster to describe a complex character who is presented in depth and detail in a narrative. Round characters are those who change significantly during the course of a narrative. Most often, round characters are the central characters in a narrative.

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Sarcasm

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A conspicuously bitter form of irony in which the ironic statement is designed to hurt or mock its target.

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Satiric comedy

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A genre using derisive humor to ridicule human weakness and folly or attack political injustices and incompetence. Satiric comedy often focuses on ridiculing characters or killjoys, who resist the festive mood of comedy. Such characters, called humors, are often characterized by one dominant personality trait or ruling obsession.

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Scene

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In drama, the scene is a division of the action in an act of the play. There is no universal convention as to what constitutes a scene, and the practice differs by playwright and period. Usually, a scene represents a single dramatic action that builds to a climax (often ending in the entrance or exit of a major character). In this last sense of a vivid and unified action, the term can be applied to fiction.

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Selective omniscience

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The point of view that sees the events of a narrative through the eyes of a single character. The selectively omniscient narrator is usually a non-participant narrator.

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Sentimentality

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A usually pejorative description of the quality of a literary work that tries to convey great emotion but fails to give the reader sufficient grounds for sharing it.

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Setting

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The time and place of a literary work. The setting may also include the climate and even the social, psychological, or spiritual state of the participants.

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Short Story

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A prose narrative too brief to be published in a separate volume--as novellas and novels frequently are. The short story is usually a focused narrative that presents one or two main characters involved in a single compelling action.

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Situational irony

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A literary device in which a discrepancy of meaning is masked beneath the surface of the language. Irony is present when a writer says one thing but means something quite the opposite. There are many kinds of irony, but the two major varieties are verbal irony (in which discrepancy is contained in words) and situational irony (in which the discrepancy exists when something is about to happen to a character or characters who expect the opposite outcome).

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Sketch

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A short, static, descriptive composition. Literary sketches can be either fiction or nonfiction. A sketch usually focuses on describing a person or place without providing a narrative.

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Sociological criticism

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The practice of analyzing a literary work by examining the cultural, economic, and political context in which it was written or received. Sociological criticism primarily explores the relationship between the artist and society.

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Static character

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A character with only one outstanding trait. Static characters are rarely the central characters in a narrative and remain same throughout a story.

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Stock character

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A common or stereotypical character that occurs frequently in literature. Examples of stock characters are the mad scientist, the battle-scarred veteran, or the strong-but-silent cowboy.

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Stream of consciousness

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Not a specific technique, but a type of modern narration that uses various literary devices, especially interior monologue, in an attempt to duplicate the subjective and associative nature of human consciousness. Stream of consciousness often focuses on imagistic perception in order to capture the preverbal level of consciousness.

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Style

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All the distinctive ways in which an author, genre, movement, or historical period uses language to create a literary work. An author's style depends on his or her characteristic use of diction, imagery, tone, syntax, and figurative language. Even sentence structure and punctuation can play a role in an author's style.

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Subject

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The main topic of a poem, story, or play.

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Summary

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A brief condensation of the main idea or story of a literary work. A summary is similar to a paraphrase, but less detailed.

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Suspense

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Enjoyable anxiety created in the reader by the author's handling of plot. Wen the outcome of events is unclear, the author's suspension of resolution intensifies the reader's interest--particularly if the plot involves characters to whom the reader or audience is sympathetic. Suspense is also created when the fate of a character is clear to the audience, but not to the character. The suspense results from the audience's anticipation of how and when the character will meet his or her inevitable fate.

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Symbol

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A person, place, or thing in a narrative that suggests meanings beyond its literal sense. Symbol is related to allegory, but it works more complexly. In an allegory an object has a single additional significance. By contrast, a symbol usually contains multiple meanings and associations.

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Symbolic act

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An action whose significance goes well beyond its literal meaning. In literature, symbolic acts usually involve some conscious or unconscious ritual element like rebirth, purification, forgiveness, vengeance, or initiation.

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Synopsis

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A brief summary or outline of a story or dramatic work.

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Tale

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A short narrative without a complex plot, the word originating from the Old English talu, or "speech." Tales are an ancient form of narrative found in folklore, and traditional tales often contain supernatural elements. A tale differs from a short story by its tendency towards less developed characters and linear plotting. The ambition of a tale is usually similar to that of yarn: revelation of the marvelous rather than illumination of the everyday world.

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Tall tale

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A humorous short narrative that provides a wildly exaggerated version of events. Originally an oral form, the tall tale assumes that its audience knows the narrator is distorting the events.

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Theme

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A generally recurring subject or idea conspicuously evident in a literary work. A short didactic work like a fable may have a single obvious theme, but longer works can contain multiple themes. Not all subjects in a work can be considered themes, only the central subjects or subjects.

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Thesis sentence

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A summing-up of the one main idea or argument that an essay or critical paper will embody.

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Third-person narrator

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A type of narration in which the narrator is a nonparticipant. In a third-person narrative the characters are referred to as "he," "she," or "they." Third-person narrators are most commonly omniscient, but the level of their knowledge may vary from total omniscience (the narrator knows everything about the characters and their lives) to limited omniscience (the narrator is limited to the perceptions of a single character).

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Tone

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The attitude toward a subject conveyed in a literary work. No single stylistic device creates one; it is the net result of the various elements an author brings to creating the work's feeling and manner. Tone may be playful, sarcastic, ironic, sad, solemn, or any other possible attitude. A writer's tone plays an important role in establishing the reader's relationship to the characters or ideas presented in a literary work.

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Total omniscience

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A type of point of view in which the narrator knows everything about all of the characters and events in a story. A narrator with total omniscience can also move freely from one character to another. Generally, a totally omniscient narrative is written in the third person.

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Trick ending

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A surprising climax that depends on a quick reversal of the situation from an unexpected source. The success of a trick ending is relative to the degree in which the reader is surprised but not left incredulous when it occurs. The American writer O. Henry popularized this type of ending.

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Understandment

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An ironic figure of speech that deliberately describes something in a way that is less than the true case.

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Unreliable narrator

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A narrator who--intentionally or unintentionally--relates events in a subjective or distorted manner. The author usually provides some indication early on in such stories that the narrator is not to be completely trusted.

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Verbal irony

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A statement in which the speaker or writer says the opposite of what is really meant.

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Verisimilitude

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The quality in a literary work of appearing true to life. In fiction, verisimilitude is usually achieved by careful use of realistic detail in description, characterization, and dialogue.

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Vulgate

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From the Latin word vulgus, "mob" or "common people." The lowest level of formality in language, vulgate is the diction of the common people with no pretensions at refinement or elevation. The vulgate is not necessarily vulgar in these sense of containing foul or inappropriate language; it refers simply to unschooled, everyday language.

Literary Terms

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