Adventure
novel. A
novel where exciting events are more important than character development and
sometimes theme. Examples:
- H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines
- Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel
- Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers
- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Allegory. A figurative work in which
a surface narrative carries a secondary, symbolic or metaphorical meaning. In The
Faerie Queene, for example, Red Cross Knight is a heroic knight in the
literal narrative, but also a figure representing Everyman in the Christian
journey. Many works contain allegories or are allegorical in part, but
not many are entirely allegorical. Some examples of allegorical works include
- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
- John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress
- Dante, The Divine Comedy
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies
(allegorical novel)
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick (allegorical
novel)
- George Orwell, Animal Farm (allegorical
novel)
Apologue. A moral fable, usually
featuring personified animals or inanimate objects which act like people to
allow the author to comment on the human condition. Often, the apologue
highlights the irrationality of mankind. The beast fable, and the fables of
Aesop are examples. Some critics have called Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
an apologue rather than a novel because it is more concerned with moral
philosophy than with character or plot. Examples:
- George Orwell, Animal Farm
- Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
Autobiographical
novel. A
novel based on the author's life experience. More common that a thoroughly
autobiographical novel is the incluision of autobiographical elements among
other elements. Many novelists include in their books people and events from
their own lives, often slightly or even dramatically altered. Nothing beats
writing from experience, because remembrance is easier than creation from
scratch and all the details fit together. Examples of autobiographical novels
are:
- James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man
- Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
Blank
Verse.
Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's plays are largely blank verse, as are
other Renaissance plays. Blank verse was the most popular in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in England.
Here are some examples you likely won't see elsewhere:
At last,
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields,
And softly shaking on the dimpled pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow
In large effusion o'er the freshened world.
--James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring, 172-176
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generouis purpose in the glowing breast.
--James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring, 1152-1156
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man!
How passing wonder He, who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes?
. . . . . . . .
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
--Edward Young, Night Thoughts, Night the First,
67-70, 73-74
- John Milton, Paradise
Lost (1667)
- John Dryden, All for Love
- James Thompson, The Seasons
Burlesque. A work designed to
ridicule a style, literary form, or subject matter either by treating the
exalted in a trivial way or by discussing the trivial in exalted terms (that
is, with mock dignity). Burlesque concentrates on derisive imitation, usually
in exaggerated terms. Literary genres (like the tragic drama) can be
burlesqued, as can styles of sculpture, philosophical movements, schools of
art, and so forth. See Parody, Travesty.
- John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728),
burlesques Italian opera by trivializing it
- Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb the Great (1730),
burlesques heroic drama by trivializing it
- Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
(1711-14), burlesques the eighteenth century upper crust social mores by
treating them with the machinery of epic poetry
Caesura. A pause, metrical or
rhetorical, occurring somewhere in a line of poetry. The pause may or may not
be typographically indicated (usually with a comma). An example from George
Herbert's "Redemption":
At
length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.
Canon. In relation to literature,
this term is half-seriously applied to those works generally accepted as the
great ones. A battle is now being fought to change or throw out the canon for
three reasons. First, the list of great books is thoroughly dominated by DWEM's
(dead, white, European males), and the accusation is that women and minorities
and non-Western cultural writers have been ignored. Second, there is pressure
in the literary community to throw out all standards as the nihilism of the
late 20th and early 21st century makes itself felt in the literature
departments of the universities. Scholars and professors want to choose the
books they like or which reflect their own ideas, without worrying about
canonicity. Third, the canon has always been determined at least in part by
political considerations and personal philosophical biases. Books are much more
likely to be called "great" if they reflect the philosophical ideas
of the critic.
On the other hand, a great case can be made for reading through the traditional
canon because over many years (hundreds or thousands in some cases) some works
have emerged as the best--reaching the deep truths of human nature or
discussing the greatest of ideas (who we are, why we live, what our purpose
here is, why we go wrong) in the most intelligent, fruitful, and thoughtful
ways. The canon works raise the most interesting questions, sometimes offer
answers, and often present both Q and A in a beautiful way. You could do worse
than read Aristotle, or Samuel Johnson, or Charles Dickens, or Epictetus, or
George Herbert.
Children's
novel. A
novel written for children and discerned by one or more of these: (1) a child
character or a character a child can identify with, (2) a theme or themes
(often didactic) aimed at children, (3) vocabulary and sentence structure
available to a young reader. Many "adult" novels, such as Gulliver's
Travels, are read by children. The test is that the book be interesting to
and--at some level--accessible by children. Examples:
- Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer
- L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
- Booth Tarkington, Penrod and Sam
Christian
novel. A
novel either explicitly or implicitly informed by Christian faith and often
containing a plot revolving around the Christian life, evangelism, or conversion
stories. Sometimes the plots are directly religious, and sometimes they are
allegorical or symbolic. Traditionally, most Christian novels have been viewed
as having less literary quality than the "great" novels of Western
literature. Examples:
- Charles Sheldon, In His Steps
- Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe
- Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis
- Par Lagerkvist, Barabbas
- Catherine Marshall, Christy
- C. S. Lewis, Perelandra
- G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who was Thursday
- Bodie Thoene, In My Father's House
Coming-of-age
story. A
type of novel where the protagonist is initiated into adulthood through
knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment.
Understanding comes after the dropping of preconceptions, a destruction of a
false sense of security, or in some way the loss of innocence. Some of the
shifts that take place are these:
- ignorance to knowledge
- innocence to experience
- false view of world to correct view
- idealism to realism
- immature responses to mature responses
Examples:
- Jane Austen Northanger Abbey
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Conceit. An elaborate, usually
intellectually ingenious poetic comparison or image, such as an analogy or
metaphor in which, say a beloved is compared to a ship, planet, etc. The
comparison may be brief or extended. See Petrarchan Conceit. (Conceit
is an old word for concept.) See John Donne's "Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning," for example, lines 21-32, where he compares his and
his love's souls first to gold (which can be hammered to such a thinness that a
small lump can cover the dome of a building) and then to a drawing compass
whose foot in the center allows the other to draw a perfect circle. Romantic,
isn't it:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat,
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Detective
novel. A
novel focusing on the solving of a crime, often by a brilliant detective, and
usually employing the elements of mystery and suspense. Examples:
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of
the Baskervilles
- Agatha Christie, Murder on the
Orient Express
- Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison
Dystopian
novel. An
anti-utopian novel where, instead of a paradise, everything has gone wrong in
the attempt to create a perfect society. See utopian novel. Examples:
- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
End-stopped.
A line
that has a natural pause at the end (period, comma, etc.). For example, these
lines are end stopped:
My
mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Coral is far more red than her lips red. --Shakespeare
Enjambed. The running over of a
sentence or thought into the next couplet or line without a pause at the end of
the line; a run-on line. For example, all the lines here are enjambed:
Let
me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove. . . . --Shakespeare
A hint to those who read poetry aloud: Don't pause a long time at the end of a
line with no punctuation. Pause for a comma, pause longer for a semicolon,
longer still for a period, but at the end of an enjambed line, if you pause at
all, only the hemidemisemiquaver of a pause. On the other hand, don't go out of
your way to join the lines together by a forceful lack of spacing.
Epic. An extended narrative poem
recounting actions, travels, adventures, and heroic episodes and written in a
high style (with ennobled diction, for example). It may be written in hexameter
verse, especially dactylic hexameter, and it may have twelve books or twenty
four books. Characteristics of the classical epic include these:
- The main character or protagonist is
heroically larger than life, often the source and subject of legend or a
national hero
- The deeds of the hero are presented
without favoritism, revealing his failings as well as his virtues
- The action, often in battle, reveals
the more-than-human strength of the heroes as they engage in acts of
heroism and courage
- The setting covers several nations, the
whole world, or even the universe
- The episodes, even though they may be
fictional, provide an explanation for some of the circumstances or events
in the history of a nation or people
- The gods and lesser divinities play an
active role in the outcome of actions
- All of the various adventures form an
organic whole, where each event relates in some way to the central theme
Typical
in epics is a set of conventions (or epic machinery). Among them are these:
- Poem begins with a statement of the
theme ("Arms and the man I sing")
- Invocation to the muse or other deity
("Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles")
- Story begins in medias res (in
the middle of things)
- Catalogs (of participants on each side,
ships, sacrifices)
- Histories and descriptions of
significant items (who made a sword or shield, how it was decorated, who
owned it from generation to generation)
- Epic simile (a long simile where the
image becomes an object of art in its own right as well as serving to
clarify the subject).
- Frequent use of epithets ("Aeneas
the true"; "rosy-fingered Dawn"; "tall-masted
ship")
- Use of patronymics (calling son by
father's name): "Anchises' son"
- Long, formal speeches by important
characters
- Journey to the underworld
- Use of the number three (attempts are
made three times, etc.)
- Previous episodes in the story are
later recounted
Examples:
- Homer, Iliad
- Homer, Odyssey
- Virgil, Aeneid
- Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered
- Milton, Paradise
Lost
Epistolary
novel. A
novel consisting of letters written by a character or several characters. The
form allows for the use of multiple points of view toward the story and the
ability to dispense with an omniscient narrator. Examples:
- Samuel Richardson, Pamela
- Samuel Richardson, Clarissa
- Fanny Burney, Evelina
- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
- Hannah W. Foster, The Coquette
Euphemism. The substitution of a mild
or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one, as in the use of
"pass away" instead of "die." The basic psychology of
euphemistic language is the desire to put something bad or embarrassing in a
positive (or at least neutral light). Thus many terms referring to death, sex,
crime, and excremental functions are euphemisms. Since the euphemism is often
chosen to disguise something horrifying, it can be exploited by the satirist
through the use of irony and exaggeration.
- "The war situation has developed
not necessarily to Japan's
advantage." --Emperor Hirohito, upon surrendering after the dropping
of the atom bombs on Japan.
Euphuism. A highly ornate style of
writing popularized by John Lyly's Euphues, characterized by balanced
sentence construction, rhetorical tropes, and multiplied similes and allusions.
Existentialist
novel. A
novel written from an existentialist viewpoint, often pointing out the
absurdity and meaninglessness of existence. Example:
- Albert Camus, The Stranger
Fantasy
novel. Any
novel that is disengaged from reality. Often such novels are set in nonexistent
worlds, such as under the earth, in a fairyland, on the moon, etc. The
characters are often something other than human or include nonhuman characters.
Example:
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Flashback. A device that allows the
writer to present events that happened before the time of the current narration
or the current events in the fiction. Flashback techniques include memories,
dreams, stories of the past told by characters, or even authorial sovereignty.
(That is, the author might simply say, "But back in Tom's youth. . .
.") Flashback is useful for exposition, to fill in the reader about a
character or place, or about the background to a conflict.
Foot. The basic unit of meter
consisting of a group of two or three syllables. Scanning or scansion is the process
of determining the prevailing foot in a line of poetry, of determining the
types and sequence of different feet.
Types of feet: U
(unstressed); / (stressed syllable)
Iamb: U /
Trochee: / U
Anapest: U U /
Dactyl: / U U
Spondee: / /
Pyrrhic: U U
Iambic words:
about, event, infuse, persuade
Trochaic words: woman, daisy, golden, patchwork
Anapestic words: underneath, introduce
Dactyllic words: fantasy, alchemy, penetrate
Note that poetic
feet are composed of words fitted together to form the meter. That is,
anapestic hexameter is not composed of lines of six anapestic words each, but
lines of six anapestic feet, made up of various words. Here is an off-the-cuff
anapestic hexameter couplet:
On the wall, under
light, stood a man in a coat, with a dog by his side.
Looking up, looking down, our eyes met with a frown--and a smile from the dog.
See also versification,
below.
Frame. A narrative structure that
provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative in a novel. Often, a
narrator will describe where he found the manuscript of the novel or where he
heard someone tell the story he is about to relate. The frame helps control the
reader's perception of the work, and has been used in the past to help give
credibility to the main section of the novel, through the implication or claim
that the novel represents a true account of events, written by someone other
than the author. In the 16th through the 18th centuries, frames were sometimes
used to help protect the author and publisher from persecution for the ideas
presented. Examples of novels with frames:
- Mary Shelley Frankenstein
- Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet
Letter
Free
verse.
Verse that has neither regular rhyme nor regular meter. Free verse often uses
cadences rather than uniform metrical feet.
I
cannot strive to drink
dry the ocean's fill
since you replenish my gulps
with your tears
Gothic
novel. A
novel in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown terror
pervades the action. The setting is often a dark, mysterious castle, where
ghosts and sinister humans roam menacingly. Horace Walpole invented the genre
with his Castle
of Otranto. Gothic
elements include these:
- Ancient prophecy, especially
mysterious, obscure, or hard to understand.
- Mystery and suspense
- High emotion, sentimentalism, but also
pronounced anger, surprise, and especially terror
- Supernatural events (e.g. a giant, a
sighing portrait, ghosts or their apparent presence, a skeleton)
- Omens, portents, dream visions
- Fainting, frightened, screaming women
- Women threatened by powerful, impetuous
male
- Setting in a castle, especially with
secret passages
- The metonymy of gloom and horror (wind,
rain, doors grating on rusty hinges, howls in the distance, distant sighs,
footsteps approaching, lights in abandoned rooms, gusts of wind blowing
out lights or blowing suddenly, characters trapped in rooms or imprisoned)
- The vocabulary of the gothic (use of
words indicating fear, mystery, etc.: apparition, devil, ghost, haunted,
terror, fright)
Examples:
- Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
- William Beckford, Vathek
- Anne Radcliffe, The Mysteries of
Udolpho
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
Graphic Novel. A novel illustrated panel
by panel, either in color or black and white. Graphic novels are sometimes
referred to as extended comics, because the presentation format (panel by panel
illustration, mostly dialog with usually little exposition) suggests a comic.
So too does the emphasis on action in many graphic novels. Characters who are
not human, talking monsters, and imaginary beings sometimes populate graphic
novels, bringing them closer to science fiction or fantasy than realism.
- Jeff Smith, Bone
- Matt Wagner, Mage: The Hero
Discovered
Heroic
Couplet.
Two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter. Most of Alexander Pope's verse is
written in heroic couplets. In fact, it is the most favored verse form of the
eighteenth century. Example:
u / u / u / u / u /
'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
u / u / u / u / u /
Appear in writing or in judging ill. . . .
--Alexander Pope
[Note
in the second line that "or" should be a stressed syllable if the
meter were perfectly iambic. Iambic= a two syllable foot of one unstressed and
one stressed syllable, as in the word "begin." Pentameter= five feet.
Thus, iambic pentameter has ten syllables, five feet of two syllable iambs.]
Historical
novel. A
novel where fictional characters take part in actual historical events and
interact with real people from the past. Examples:
- Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
- Sir Walter Scott, Waverly
- James Fenimore Cooper, Last of the Mohicans
- Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe
Horatian
Satire. In
general, a gentler, more good humored and sympathetic kind of satire, somewhat
tolerant of human folly even while laughing at it. Named after the poet Horace,
whose satire epitomized it. Horatian satire tends to ridicule human folly in
general or by type rather than attack specific persons. Compare Juvenalian
satire.
Humanism. The new emphasis in the
Renaissance on human culture, education and reason, sparked by a revival of
interest in classical Greek and Roman literature, culture, and language. Human
nature and the dignity of man were exalted and emphasis was placed on the
present life as a worthy event in itself (as opposed to the medieval emphasis
on the present life merely as preparation for a future life).
Humours. In medieval physiology,
four liquids in the human body affecting behavior. Each humour was associated
with one of the four elements of nature. In a balanced personality, no humour
predominated. When a humour did predominate, it caused a particular
personality. Here is a chart of the humours, the corresponding elements and
personality characteristics:
- blood...air...hot and moist: sanguine, kind,
happy, romantic
- phlegm...water...cold and
moist: phlegmatic, sedentary, sickly, fearful
- yellow bile...fire...hot and dry:
choleric, ill-tempered, impatient, stubborn
- black bile...earth...cold and
dry: melancholy, gluttonous, lazy, contemplative
The
Renaissance took the doctrine of humours quite seriously--it was their model of
psychology--so knowing that can help us understand the characters in the
literature. Falstaff, for example, has a dominance of blood, while Hamlet seems
to have an excess of black bile.
Hypertext
novel. A
novel that can be read in a nonsequential way. That is, whereas most novels
flow from beginning to end in a continuous, linear fashion, a hypertext novel
can branch--the reader can move from one place in the text to another
nonsequential place whenever he wishes to trace an idea or follow a character.
Also called hyperfiction. Most are published on CD-ROM. See also interactive
novel. Examples:
- Michael Joyce, Afternoon
- Stuart Moulthrop, Victory Garden
Interactive
novel. A
novel with more than one possible series of events or outcomes. The reader is
given the opportunity at various places to choose what will happen next. It is
therefore possible for several readers to experience different novels by
reading the same book or for one reader to experience different novels by
reading the same one twice and making different choices.
Invective. Speech or writing that
abuses, denounces, or attacks. It can be directed against a person, cause,
idea, or system. It employs a heavy use of negative emotive language. Example:
- I cannot but conclude the bulk of your
natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature
ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. --Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's
Travels
Irony. A mode of expression,
through words (verbal irony) or events (irony of situation), conveying a
reality different from and usually opposite to appearance or expectation. A
writer may say the opposite of what he means, create a reversal between
expectation and its fulfillment, or give the audience knowledge that a
character lacks, making the character's words have meaning to the audience not
perceived by the character. In verbal irony, the writer's meaning or even his
attitude may be different from what he says: "Why, no one would dare argue
that there could be anything more important in choosing a college than its
proximity to the beach." An example of situational irony would occur if a
professional pickpocket had his own pocket picked just as he was in the act of
picking someone else's pocket. The irony is generated by the surprise
recognition by the audience of a reality in contrast with expectation or appearance,
while another audience, victim, or character puts confidence in the appearance
as reality (in this case, the pickpocket doesn't expect his own pocket to be
picked). The surprise recognition by the audience often produces a comic
effect, making irony often funny.
An example of
dramatic irony (where the audience has knowledge that gives additional meaning
to a character's words) would be when King Oedipus, who has unknowingly killed
his father, says that he will banish his father's killer when he finds him.
Irony is the most
common and most efficient technique of the satirist, because it is an
instrument of truth, provides wit and humor, and is usually at least obliquely
critical, in that it deflates, scorns, or attacks.
The ability to
detect irony is sometimes heralded as a test of intelligence and
sophistication. When a text intended to be ironic is not seen as such, the
effect can be disastrous. Some students have taken Swift's "Modest
Proposal" literally. And Defoe's contemporaries took his "Shortest Way with
the Dissenters" literally and jailed him for it. To be an effective piece
of sustained irony, there must be some sort of audience tip-off, through style,
tone, use of clear exaggeration, or other device.
Juvenalian
Satire.
Harsher, more pointed, perhaps intolerant satire typified by the writings of
Juvenal. Juvenalian satire often attacks particular people, sometimes thinly
disguised as fictional characters. While laughter and ridicule are still
weapons as with Horatian satire, the Juvenalian satirist also uses withering
invective and a slashing attack. Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope are
Juvenalian satirists.
Lampoon. A crude, coarse, often
bitter satire ridiculing the personal appearance or character of a person.
Literary
quality. A
judgment about the value of a novel as literature. At the heart of this issue
is the question of what distinguishes a great or important novel from one that
is less important. Certainly the feature is not that of interest or excitement,
for pulp novels can be even more exciting and interesting than
"great" novels. Usually, books that make us think--that offer insight
into the human condition--are the ones we rank more highly than books that
simply titillate us. In non-literary fiction, plot is emphasized. If the value
of the novel lies in how clever the plot twists are or how thrilling the story
is, then it is more likely to be classified as fiction than literature. If you
don't ever want to read the book again because now you know how it comes out,
you have just read fiction, not literature. If you want to read the book again
even though you know the plot and the ending, you might just be reading
literature. If the book causes you to think, maybe even grow wiser, you are
very likely reading literature. Yeah, I know how Hamlet comes out--spoiler
alert--pretty much everybody of importance is dead at the end, but I still want
to read it or watch it again.
Metaphysical
Poetry.
The term metaphysical was applied to a style of 17th Century poetry
first by John Dryden and later by Dr. Samuel Johnson because of the highly
intellectual and often abstruse imagery involved.
Chief among the
metaphysical poets are John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew
Marvell, and Henry Vaughan. While their poetry is widely varied (the
metaphysicals are not a thematic or even a structural school), there are some
common characteristics:
- 1. Argumentative structure. The
poem often engages in a debate or persuasive presentation; the poem is an
intellectual exercise as well as or instead of an emotional effusion.
- 2. Dramatic and colloquial mode of
utterance. The poem often describes a dramatic event rather than being
a reverie, a thought, or contemplation. Diction is simple and usually
direct; inversion is limited. The verse is occasionally rough, like
speech, rather than written in perfect meter, resulting in a dominance of
thought over form.
- 3. Acute realism. The poem often
reveals a psychological analysis; images advance the argument rather than
being ornamental. There is a learned style of thinking and writing; the
poetry is often highly intellectual.
- 4. Metaphysical wit. The poem
contains unexpected, even striking or shocking analogies, offering
elaborate parallels between apparently dissimilar things. The analogies
are drawn from widely varied fields of knowledge, not limited to
traditional sources in nature or art. Analogies from science, mechanics,
housekeeping, business, philosophy, astronomy, etc. are common. These
"conceits" reveal a play of intellect, often resulting in puns,
paradoxes, and humorous comparisons. Unlike other poetry where the
metaphors usually remain in the background, here the metaphors sometimes
take over the poem and control it.
Metaphysical
poetry represents a revolt against the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry
and especially the typical Petrarchan conceits (like rosy cheeks, eyes like
stars, etc.).
Meter. The rhythmic pattern
produced when words are arranged so that their stressed and unstressed
syllables fall into a more or less regular sequence, resulting in repeated
patterns of accent (called feet). See feet and versification.
Mock Epic. Treating a frivolous or
minor subject seriously, especially by using the machinery and devices of the epic
(invocations, descriptions of armor, battles, extended similes, etc.). The
opposite of travesty. Examples:
- Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
- Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock
Multicultural
novel. A
novel written by a member of or about a cultural minority group, giving insight
into non-Western or non-dominant cultural experiences and values, either in the
United States or abroad. Examples:
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
- Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife
- Forrest Carter, The Education of
Little Tree
- Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl
Call My Name
- James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the
Mountain
- Chaim Potok, The Chosen
- Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Penitent
- Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Mystery
novel. A
novel whose driving characteristic is the element of suspense or mystery.
Strange, unexplained events, vague threats or terrors, unknown forces or
antagonists, all may appear in a mystery novel. Gothic novels and detective
novels are often also mystery novels.
Novel. Dare we touch this one
with a ten foot pole? Of course we dare, provided that you accept the caveat
that novels are so varied that any definition is likely to be inadequate to
cover all of them. So here is a place to start: a novel is an extended prose
fiction narrative of 50,000 words or more, broadly realistic--concerning the
everyday events of ordinary people--and concerned with character. "People
in significant action" is one way of describing it.
Another definition
might be "an extended, fictional prose narrative about realistic
characters and events." It is a representation of life, experience, and
learning. Action, discovery, and description are important elements, but the
most important tends to be one or more characters--how they grow, learn,
find--or don't grow, learn, or find.
Compare the
definition of a romance, below, and you will see why this definition
seems somewhat restrictive.
Novella. A prose fiction longer
than a short story but shorter than a novel. There is no standard definition of
length, but since rules of thumb are sometimes handy, we might say that the
short story ends at about 20,000 words, while the novel begins at about 50,000.
Thus, the novella is a fictional work of about 20,000 to 50,000 words.
Examples:
- Henry James, Daisy Miller
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde
- Henry James, Turn of the Screw
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Novel
of manners.
A novel focusing on and describing in detail the social customs and habits of a
particular social group. Usually these conventions function as shaping or even
stifling controls over the behavior of the characters. Examples:
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity
Fair
Parody. A satiric imitation of a
work or of an author with the idea of ridiculing the author, his ideas, or
work. The parodist exploits the peculiarities of an author's expression--his
propensity to use too many parentheses, certain favorite words, or whatever.
The parody may also be focused on, say, an improbable plot with too many
convenient events. Fielding's Shamela is, in large part, a parody of Richardson's Pamela.
Persona. The person created by the
author to tell a story. Whether the story is told by an omniscient narrator or
by a character in it, the actual author of the work often distances himself
from what is said or told by adopting a persona--a personality different from
his real one. Thus, the attitudes, beliefs, and degree of understanding
expressed by the narrator may not be the same as those of the actual author.
Some authors, for example, use narrators who are not very bright in order to
create irony.
Petrarchan
Conceit.
The kind of conceit (see above) used by Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch and
popular in Renaissance English sonnets. Eyes like stars or the sun, hair like
golden wires, lips like cherries, etc. are common examples. Oxymorons are also
common, such as freezing fire, burning ice, etc. If you wonder where
Shakespeare got the images he criticizes in Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes
are nothing like the sun), take a look at Petrarch's Sonnet 69, which includes
the following lines (these translated by Charles Tomlinson in 1874): "Her
golden hair was streaming in the wind," "Her walk was not the step of
mortal thing, / But of angelic form," "her accents clear had in their
music more than human sound."
Picaresque
novel. An
episodic, often autobiographical novel about a rogue or picaro (a person of low
social status) wandering around and living off his wits. The wandering hero
provides the author with the opportunity to connect widely different pieces of
plot, since the hero can wander into any situation. Picaresque novels tend to
be satiric and filled with petty detail. Examples:
- Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
- Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild
Pseudonym. A "false name"
or alias used by a writer desiring not to use his or her real name. Sometimes
called a nom de plume or "pen name," pseudonyms have been
popular for several reasons.
First, political
realities might make it dangerous for the real author to admit to a work.
Beatings, imprisonment, and even execution are not unheard of for authors of
unpopular works.
Second, an author
might have a certain type of work associated with a certain name, so that
different names are used for different kinds of work. One pen name might be
used for westerns, while another name would be used for science fiction.
Lastly, an author
might choose a literary name that sounds more impressive or that will garner
more respect than the author's real name. Examples:
- Samuel Clemens used the name Mark Twain
- Mary Ann Evans used the name George
Eliot
- Jonathan Swift used the name Lemuel
Gulliver (once)
Pulp
fiction.
Novels written for the mass market, intended to be "a good
read,"--often exciting, titillating, thrilling. Historically they have
been very popular but critically sneered at as being of sub-literary quality.
The earliest ones were the dime novels of the nineteenth century, printed on
newsprint (hence "pulp" fiction) and sold for ten cents. Westerns,
stories of adventure, even the Horatio Alger novels, all were forms of pulp
fiction.
Regional novel. A novel faithful to a
particular geographic region and its people, including behavior, customs,
speech, and history. Examples:
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- Thomas Hardy, Return of the Native
Rhyme. The similarity between
syllable sounds at the end of two or more lines. Some kinds of rhyme (also
spelled rime) include:
- Couplet: a pair of lines
rhyming consecutively: "These lines make up a couplet with a rhyme. /
Just don't expect the lines to be sublime."
- Eye rhyme: words whose spellings
would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough,
though, hiccough. Or: love, move, prove. Or: daughter, laughter.)
- Feminine rhyme: two syllable rhyme
consisting of stressed syllable followed by unstressed.
- Masculine rhyme: similarity between
terminally stressed syllables.
Ridicule. Words intended to belittle
a person or idea and arouse contemptuous laughter. The goal is to condemn or
criticize by making the thing, idea, or person seem laughable and ridiculous.
It is one of the most powerful methods of criticism, partly because it cannot
be satisfactorily answered ("Who can refute a sneer?") and partly
because many people who fear nothing else--not the law, not society, not even
God--fear being laughed at. (The fear of being laughed at is one of the most
inhibiting forces in western civilization. It provides much of the power behind
the adolescent flock urge and accounts for many of the barriers to change and
adventure in the adult world.) Ridicule is, not surprisingly, a common weapon
of the satirist.
Roman a clef. [French for "novel
with a key," pronounced roh MAHN ah CLAY] A novel in which historical
events and actual people are written about under the pretense of being fiction.
Examples:
- Aphra Behn, Love Letters Between a
Nobleman and His Sister
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Romance. An extended fictional
prose narrative about improbable events involving characters that are quite
different from ordinary people. Knights on a quest for a magic sword and aided
by characters like fairies and trolls would be examples of things found in
romance fiction. Examples:
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
- Sir Philip Sidney, The Arcadia
In
popular use, the modern romance novel is a formulaic love story (boy meets
girl, obstacles interfere, they overcome obstacles, they live happily ever
after). Computer software is available for constructing these stock plots and
providing stereotyped characters. Consequently, the books usually lack literary
merit. Examples:
Sarcasm. A form of sneering
criticism in which disapproval is often expressed as ironic praise. (Oddly
enough, sarcastic remarks are often used between friends, perhaps as a somewhat
perverse demonstration of the strength of the bond--only a good friend could
say this without hurting the other's feelings, or at least without excessively
damaging the relationship, since feelings are often hurt in spite of a close
relationship. If you drop your lunch tray and a stranger says, "Well, that
was really intelligent," that's sarcasm. If your girlfriend or boyfriend
says it, that's love--I think.)
Satire. A literary mode based on
criticism of people and society through ridicule. The satirist aims to reduce
the practices attacked by laughing scornfully at them--and being witty enough
to allow the reader to laugh, also. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and
several other techniques are almost always present. The satirist may insert
serious statements of value or desired behavior, but most often he relies on an
implicit moral code, understood by his audience and paid lip service by them.
The satirist's goal is to point out the hypocrisy of his target in the hope
that either the target or the audience will return to a real following of the
code. Thus, satire is inescapably moral even when no explicit values are
promoted in the work, for the satirist works within the framework of a widely
spread value system. Many of the techniques of satire are devices of
comparison, to show the similarity or contrast between two things. A list of
incongruous items, an oxymoron, metaphors, and so forth are examples.
Science fiction
novel. A
novel in which futuristic technology or otherwise altered scientific principles
contribute in a significant way to the adventures. Often the novel assumes a
set of rules or principles or facts and then traces their logical consequences
in some form. For example, given that a man discovers how to make himself
invisible, what might happen? Examples:
- H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
- Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space
Odyssey
- Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Sentimental
novel. A
type of novel, popular in the eighteenth century, that overemphasizes emotion
and seeks to create emotional responses in the reader. The type also usually
features an overly optimistic view of the goodness of human nature. Examples:
- Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield
- Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling
- Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental
Journey
- Thomas Day, The History of Sandford
and Merton
Sequel. A novel incorporating the
same characters and often the same setting as a previous novel. Sometimes the
events and situations involve a continuation of the previous novel and
sometimes only the characters are the same and the events are entirely
unrelated to the previous novel. When sequels result from the popularity of an
original, they are often hastily written and not of the same quality as the
original. Occasionally a sequel is written by an author different from that of
the original novel. See series. Examples:
- Mark Twain, Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad
- Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Detective
- Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
- Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett
Series. Several novels related to
each other, by plot, setting, character, or all three. Book marketers like to
refer to multi-volume novels as sagas. Examples:
- Anthony Trollope, Barsetshire novels
- C. S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia novels
- L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
novels
- James Fenimore Cooper, The
Leatherstocking Tales
Setting.The total environment for
the action of a fictional work. Setting includes time period (such as the
1890's), the place (such as downtown Warsaw),
the historical milieu (such as during the Crimean War), as well as the social,
political, and perhaps even spiritual realities. The setting is usually
established primarily through description, though narration is used also. Some
novels include frames that supply an extended description of the setting (where
a character is looking back to an earlier era, an "editor" is
describing the characters or the context of the tale).
Sonnet. A fourteen line poem,
usually in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme. (See Foot and Versification
for explanations of iambic pentameter.) The two main types of sonnet are the
Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean. The Petrarchan Sonnet is
divided into two main sections, the octave (first eight lines) and the sestet
(last six lines). The octave presents a problem or situation which is then
resolved or commented on in the sestet. The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-B-A
A-B-B-A C-D-E C-D-E, though there is flexibility in the sestet, such as C-D-C
D-C-D.
The Shakespearean
Sonnet, (perfected though not invented by Shakespeare), contains three
quatrains and a couplet, with more rhymes (because of the greater difficulty
finding rhymes in English). The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B C-D-C-D
E-F-E-F G-G. In Shakespeare, the couplet often undercuts the thought created in
the rest of the poem.
Spenserian
Stanza. A
nine-line stanza, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last
line in iambic hexameter (called an Alexandrine). The rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B
B-C-B-C C. Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene is written in Spenserian
stanzas.
Style. The manner of expression
of a particular writer, produced by choice of words, grammatical structures,
use of literary devices, and all the possible parts of language use. Some
general styles might include scientific, ornate, plain, emotive. Most writers
have their own particular styles.
Subplot. A subordinate or minor
collection of events in a novel or drama. Most subplots have some connection
with the main plot, acting as foils to, commentary on, complications of, or
support to the theme of, the main plot. Sometimes two opening subplots merge
into a main plot.
Symbol. Something that on the
surface is its literal self but which also has another meaning or even several
meanings. For example, a sword may be a sword and also symbolize justice. A
symbol may be said to embody an idea. There are two general types of symbols:
universal symbols that embody universally recognizable meanings wherever used,
such as light to symbolize knowledge, a skull to symbolize death, etc., and
constructed symbols that are given symbolic meaning by the way an author uses
them in a literary work, as the white whale becomes a symbol of evil in Moby
Dick.
Tone. The writer's attitude
toward his readers and his subject; his mood or moral view. A writer can be
formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or pessimistic.
While both Swift and Pope are satirizing much the same subjects, there is a
profound difference in their tone.
Travesty. A work that treats a
serious subject frivolously-- ridiculing the dignified. Often the tone is mock
serious and heavy handed.
Utopian novel. A novel that presents an
ideal society where the problems of poverty, greed, crime, and so forth have
been eliminated. Examples:
- Thomas More, Utopia
- Samuel Butler, Erewhon
- Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
Verisimilitude. How fully the characters
and actions in a work of fiction conform to our sense of reality. To say that a
work has a high degree of verisimilitude means that the work is very realistic
and believable--it is "true to life."
Versification. Generally, the structural
form of a verse, as revealed by scansion. Identification of verse structure
includes the name of the metrical type and the name designating number of feet:
- Monometer: 1 foot
- Dimeter: 2 feet
- Trimeter: 3 feet
- Tetrameter: 4 feet
- Pentameter: 5 feet
- Hexameter: 6 feet
- Heptameter: 7 feet
- Octameter: 8 feet
- Nonameter: 9 feet
The
most common verse in English poetry is iambic pentameter. See foot for
more information.
Western. A novel set in the western
United States
featuring the experiences of cowboys and frontiersmen. Many are little more
than adventure novels or even pulp fiction, but some have literary value.
Examples:
- Walter Van Tilburg
Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident
- Owen Wister, The Virginian
