Denouement - A French word meaning "unknotting" or "unwinding," denouement refers to the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot. It is the unraveling of the main dramatic complications in a play, novel or other work of literature.
Description - In descriptive writing, the author does not tell the reader what was seen, felt, tasted, smelled, or heard. Rather, he describes something that he experienced and, through his choice of words, makes it seem real. In other words, descriptive writing is vivid, colorful, and detailed. Example: The sunset filled the entire sky with the deep color of rubies, setting the clouds ablaze.
Dialogue - The lines spoken by a character or characters in a play, essay, story, or novel, especially a conversation between two characters, or a literary work that takes the form of such a discussion (e.g., Plato's Republic). Bad dialogue is pointless. Good dialogue either providescharacterization or advances the plot. In plays, dialogue often includes within it hints akin to stage directions. For instance, if one character asks, "Why are you hitting me?" the reader can assume that on stage another character is striking the speaker. Noticing such details is particularly important in classical drama and in Shakespeare's plays since explicit stage directions are often missing.
Diction - An author's choice of words. Since words have specific meanings, and since one's choice of words can affect feelings, a writer's choice of words can have great impact in a literary work. The writer, therefore, must choose his words carefully. Discussing his novel "A Farewell to Arms" during an interview, Ernest Hemingway stated that he had to rewrite the ending thirty-nine times. When asked what the most difficult thing about finishing the novel was, Hemingway answered, "Getting the words right."
Drama - When you use the word drama to describe your day-to-day life, you're probably not referring to dialogue and actors on a stage. More than likely, you're talking about some crazy stuff going down. Though drama has taken on a new meaning these days, it has a very specific definition in literature.In literature, drama refers to a literary work written for performance by an actor or actors. Drama typically consists of dialogue broken up into acts and scenes. There are lots of dramatic subgenres, such as comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy. A closet drama is drama that's not meant to be performed—only read. We also sometimes also use the word drama to refer to serious, rather than comic, work.
What's the difference between drama and theater? Drama refers to the play's text itself while theater emphasizes the performance of the script. That is, theater is all about the stage, whereas drama typically refers to words on the page.
Dynamic character - A literary or dramatic character who undergoes an important inner change, as a change in personality or attitude: Ebeneezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is a classic example. When we first meet him, he is mean, bitter, and avaricious. Through his experiences with the three ghosts, he becomes generous, kind, and beloved.
Exposition - Exposition is when an author just straight up tells us a bunch of background information instead of revealing the goods through narrative nuggets. This is when we're told information, not shown it. Sometimes, authors let one of their characters act as the exposition guru to help them get all their juicy information across.
External conflict - Any fan of reality television knows all about conflict. Whether in a novel, a play or the latest episode of Survivor, conflict is what drives the plot and fuels the action.How do authors build conflict in literature? Well, in lots of different ways. Conflict can occur between two characters, like the struggle between Victor Frankenstein and the Monster in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Often these scenarios will play out as a struggle between protagonist and antagonist.
Or, a character can be in conflict with an external force like nature or society in general. Macbeth, for example, seems to be struggling against time. J.D.Salinger's oh-so-alienated protagonist Holden Caulfield is in conflict with society in The Catcher in the Rye. In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck bumps up against the rules and order of the antebellum South.
Falling action - The falling action is the series of events which take place after the climax. In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," Cinna, the poet, is mistaken for Cinna, the conspirator, and killed; Antony and Octavius argue, Brutus and Cassius argue, the battle at Philippi is agreed upon, and the ghost of Caesar appears to Brutus. The falling action of a drama leads to the conclusion.
Flashback - A reference to an event which took place prior to the beginning of a story or play. In Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilamanjaro," the protagonist, Harry Street, has been injured on a hunt in Africa. Dying, his mind becomes preoccupied with incidents in his past. In a flashback Street remembers one of his wartime comrades dying painfully on barbed wire on a battlefield in Spain.
Flat character - Also called a static character, a flat character is a simplified character who does not change or alter his or her personality over
the course of a narrative, or one without extensive personality and characterization. The term is used in contrast with a round character.
Foreshadowing - a method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come. In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," Romeo's expression of fear in Act 1, scene 4 foreshadows the catastrophe to come:
I fear too early; for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.
Free verse - Unrhymed poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us with many examples. Consider the following lines from "Song of Myself."
I celebrate myself and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Genre - A type or category of literature marked by certain shared features or conventions. The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres and subgenres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc.
Hyperbole - A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs as in the following lines from Act 2, scene 2 of Shakespeare's "Macbeth." In this scene, Macbeth has murdered King Duncan. Horrified at the blood on his hands, he asks:
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Literally, it does not require an ocean to wash blood from one's hand. Nor can the blood on one's hand turn the green ocean red. The hyperbole works to illustrate the guilt Macbeth feels at the brutal murder of his king and kinsman.
Imagery - A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. The following example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
uses images of pain and sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself represents society and the psychology of Prufrock, himself.
Internal conflict - A psychological struggle within the mind of a literary or dramatic character, the resolution of which creates the plot's suspense. Hamlet's inaction is caused by internal conflict; he struggles over whether to trust information provided by his father's ghost, who asks Hamlet to avenge his death by killing the king.
Irony - Cicero referred to irony as "saying one thing and meaning another." Irony comes in many forms. In situational irony, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Macbeth murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will achieve great happiness. Actually, Macbeth never knows another moment of peace and finally is beheaded for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the mystery is solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as brilliant, while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.
Jargon - Potentially confusing words and phrases used in an occupation, trade, or field of study. For instance, we might speak of medical jargon, sports
jargon, pedagogic jargon, police jargon, or military jargon.
Lyric - A short poem in which the poet expresses an emotion or illuminates some life principle. Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died" is a lyric poem wherein the speaker, on a deathbed expecting death to appear in all its grandeur, encounters a common housefly instead.
Description - In descriptive writing, the author does not tell the reader what was seen, felt, tasted, smelled, or heard. Rather, he describes something that he experienced and, through his choice of words, makes it seem real. In other words, descriptive writing is vivid, colorful, and detailed. Example: The sunset filled the entire sky with the deep color of rubies, setting the clouds ablaze.
Dialogue - The lines spoken by a character or characters in a play, essay, story, or novel, especially a conversation between two characters, or a literary work that takes the form of such a discussion (e.g., Plato's Republic). Bad dialogue is pointless. Good dialogue either providescharacterization or advances the plot. In plays, dialogue often includes within it hints akin to stage directions. For instance, if one character asks, "Why are you hitting me?" the reader can assume that on stage another character is striking the speaker. Noticing such details is particularly important in classical drama and in Shakespeare's plays since explicit stage directions are often missing.
Diction - An author's choice of words. Since words have specific meanings, and since one's choice of words can affect feelings, a writer's choice of words can have great impact in a literary work. The writer, therefore, must choose his words carefully. Discussing his novel "A Farewell to Arms" during an interview, Ernest Hemingway stated that he had to rewrite the ending thirty-nine times. When asked what the most difficult thing about finishing the novel was, Hemingway answered, "Getting the words right."
Drama - When you use the word drama to describe your day-to-day life, you're probably not referring to dialogue and actors on a stage. More than likely, you're talking about some crazy stuff going down. Though drama has taken on a new meaning these days, it has a very specific definition in literature.In literature, drama refers to a literary work written for performance by an actor or actors. Drama typically consists of dialogue broken up into acts and scenes. There are lots of dramatic subgenres, such as comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy. A closet drama is drama that's not meant to be performed—only read. We also sometimes also use the word drama to refer to serious, rather than comic, work.
What's the difference between drama and theater? Drama refers to the play's text itself while theater emphasizes the performance of the script. That is, theater is all about the stage, whereas drama typically refers to words on the page.
Dynamic character - A literary or dramatic character who undergoes an important inner change, as a change in personality or attitude: Ebeneezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is a classic example. When we first meet him, he is mean, bitter, and avaricious. Through his experiences with the three ghosts, he becomes generous, kind, and beloved.
Exposition - Exposition is when an author just straight up tells us a bunch of background information instead of revealing the goods through narrative nuggets. This is when we're told information, not shown it. Sometimes, authors let one of their characters act as the exposition guru to help them get all their juicy information across.
External conflict - Any fan of reality television knows all about conflict. Whether in a novel, a play or the latest episode of Survivor, conflict is what drives the plot and fuels the action.How do authors build conflict in literature? Well, in lots of different ways. Conflict can occur between two characters, like the struggle between Victor Frankenstein and the Monster in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Often these scenarios will play out as a struggle between protagonist and antagonist.
Or, a character can be in conflict with an external force like nature or society in general. Macbeth, for example, seems to be struggling against time. J.D.Salinger's oh-so-alienated protagonist Holden Caulfield is in conflict with society in The Catcher in the Rye. In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck bumps up against the rules and order of the antebellum South.
Falling action - The falling action is the series of events which take place after the climax. In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," Cinna, the poet, is mistaken for Cinna, the conspirator, and killed; Antony and Octavius argue, Brutus and Cassius argue, the battle at Philippi is agreed upon, and the ghost of Caesar appears to Brutus. The falling action of a drama leads to the conclusion.
Flashback - A reference to an event which took place prior to the beginning of a story or play. In Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilamanjaro," the protagonist, Harry Street, has been injured on a hunt in Africa. Dying, his mind becomes preoccupied with incidents in his past. In a flashback Street remembers one of his wartime comrades dying painfully on barbed wire on a battlefield in Spain.
Flat character - Also called a static character, a flat character is a simplified character who does not change or alter his or her personality over
the course of a narrative, or one without extensive personality and characterization. The term is used in contrast with a round character.
Foreshadowing - a method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come. In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," Romeo's expression of fear in Act 1, scene 4 foreshadows the catastrophe to come:
I fear too early; for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.
Free verse - Unrhymed poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us with many examples. Consider the following lines from "Song of Myself."
I celebrate myself and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Genre - A type or category of literature marked by certain shared features or conventions. The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres and subgenres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc.
Hyperbole - A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs as in the following lines from Act 2, scene 2 of Shakespeare's "Macbeth." In this scene, Macbeth has murdered King Duncan. Horrified at the blood on his hands, he asks:
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Literally, it does not require an ocean to wash blood from one's hand. Nor can the blood on one's hand turn the green ocean red. The hyperbole works to illustrate the guilt Macbeth feels at the brutal murder of his king and kinsman.
Imagery - A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. The following example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
uses images of pain and sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself represents society and the psychology of Prufrock, himself.
Internal conflict - A psychological struggle within the mind of a literary or dramatic character, the resolution of which creates the plot's suspense. Hamlet's inaction is caused by internal conflict; he struggles over whether to trust information provided by his father's ghost, who asks Hamlet to avenge his death by killing the king.
Irony - Cicero referred to irony as "saying one thing and meaning another." Irony comes in many forms. In situational irony, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Macbeth murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will achieve great happiness. Actually, Macbeth never knows another moment of peace and finally is beheaded for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the mystery is solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as brilliant, while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.
Jargon - Potentially confusing words and phrases used in an occupation, trade, or field of study. For instance, we might speak of medical jargon, sports
jargon, pedagogic jargon, police jargon, or military jargon.
Lyric - A short poem in which the poet expresses an emotion or illuminates some life principle. Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died" is a lyric poem wherein the speaker, on a deathbed expecting death to appear in all its grandeur, encounters a common housefly instead.