All the literary terms and devices professors will expect you to know.

1. College Bound English: Literary Terms and Devices Selected from A Handbook to Literature, 8 th Edition by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman

3. 1. acronym

5. 2. act (as in drama) Mel Gibson as Hamlet Kenneth Branagh Derek Jacobi

7. 3. adaptation

9. 4. aesthetics (this is a painting by Chuck Close, entitled “Self-Portrait”)

10. 4. aesthetics Picasso’s “House-garden”

12. 5. agrarian … American writers who published in Nashville, Tennessee, between 1922 and 1925 The Fugitive , a LITTLE MAGAZINE of poetry and some criticism championing agrarian REGIONALISM but attacking “the old high-castle Brahmins of the Old South.”

13. 5. agrarian Hamlin Garland

14. “ Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.” -Bernard Berenson

17. 6. allegory Wizard of Oz George Orwell 1984 Animal Farm William Golding Lord of the Flies Lord of the Flies

19. 7. alliteration

22. 8. allusion Babe the Blue Ox

24. 9. anachronism Back to the Future

27. 10. analogy 3. find is to kind as feign is to: pane pretend line mean 4. pane is to pain as weigh is to: scale pounds weight way 5. bring is to brought as sing is to: sang melody song record

28. 10. analogy 6. dime is to tenth as quarter is to: twenty-five fourth home coin 7. plates is to dishes as arms is to: Legs hands farms weapons rhlschool.com

29. “ Contemporary literature. Easier to shock than to convince.” -Albert Camus

31. 11. anapest William Wordsworth

34. 12. anecdote John Falstaff

37. 13. annotation Northrop Frye

39. 14. antagonist Nurse Ratched

41. 15. anthology

42. “ Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism, what will be grasped at once.” -Cyril Connolly

44. 16. aside (as in drama) Roderigo and Iago

46. 17. assonance (as in poetry) John Donne

48. 18. autobiography Maya Angelou

49. 18. autobiography Charles Bukowski

51. 19. avant-garde Frank O’Hara John Ashbery

53. 20. bard Shakespeare

54. “ Our literature is substitute for religion, and so is our religion.” -T.S. Eliot

56. 21. Bildungsroman Pip Great Expectations

59. 22. biography Paul Burrell Princess Diana

61. 23. black humor Kurt Vonnegut

63. 24. canon Harold Bloom

66. 25. catharsis Irene Jacob in Othello

67. “ To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.” -Ernst Fischer

69. 26. character Lennie Small Don Quixote

71. 27. clich é Jerry Seinfeld George W. Bush

73. 28. climax H.G. Wells

75. 29. collage Edgar Allan Poe

79. 30. conflict William Faulkner

80. “ In an incarcerate society, free literature can exist only as denunciation and hope.” -Eduardo Galeano

82. 31. consonance John Milton T.S. Eliot

84. 32. couplet T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound

86. 33. denouement Scooby-Doo Stories

89. 34. dialogue Ernest Hemingway James Thurber

91. 35. diction Shirley Jackson

92. “ Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.” -Goethe

94. 36. didactic novel The Jungle Upton Sinclair

96. 37. dime novel Malaeska

99. 38. discourse Sandra Looney Augustana John Dudley USD

101. 39. dynamic character Sandra Cisneros Don Quixote

103. 40. dystopia George Orwell’s 1984

104. “ It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.” -Henry James

106. 41. elegy Oleg Liubkivsky The Elegy of Far Autumn, 1992

110. 43. epic Odysseus Trojan Horse

113. 45. euphemism husky big-boned hefty portly plump fluffy

114. “ National literature begins with fables and ends with novels.” -Joseph Joubert

116. 46. exposition (as in a story’s plot) Harry Potter

120. 47. Expressionism “ Lady and Her Cat” Millie Shapiro “ The Muse” Jeff Buckley

122. 48. falling action

126. 49. foot (as in poetry) William Blake

129. 50. foreshadowing Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Maya Angelou’s Caged Bird Sings

130. 50. foreshadowing

131. “ Literature is a form of permanent insurrection. Its mission is to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep men in a constant state of dissatisfaction with themselves.” -Mario Vargas Llosa

133. 51. history play (as in Shakespeare) King John

135. 52. hubris Poseidon

137. 53. hyperbole Kurt Vonnegut

139. 54. iamb (as in poetry) Shakespeare

141. 55. idiom James Thurber

142. “ Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around.” -David Lodge

144. 56. imagery Ernest Hemingway F. Scott Fitzgerald

147. 57. Imagism (cont.) William Carlos Williams Selected Poetry Jack Kerouac On the Road

149. 58. Impressionism “ Ninfee Bianche” Claude Monet 1899

151. 59. in medias res

153. 60. internal rhyme (as in poetry) Li-Young Lee

154. “ A great literature is …chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immoveable certainties of the nation.” -H.L. Mencken

156. 61. irony

158. 62. K ü nstlerroman Chaim Potok

160. 63. limerick There once was a man from Nantucket, Who kept all of his cash in a bucket, But his daughter, named Nan, Ran away with a man, And as for the bucket, Nantucket. But he followed the pair to Pawtucket, The man and the girl with the bucket; And he said to the man, He was welcome to Nan, But as for the bucket, Pawtucket .

162. 64. masque Romeo and Juliet Edgar Allan Poe

164. 65. maxim “ Ask not what your country can do for you— …ask what you can do for your country.” John F. Kennedy

165. “ Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes.” -George Orwell

168. 66. memoir James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

171. 67. metaphysical John Donne

174. 68. meter (as in poetry)

177. 69. motif Cervantes Don Quixote

179. 70. mood

180. “ Literature is both my joy and my comfort: it can add to every happiness and there is no sorrow it cannot console.” -Pliny the Younger

183. 71. Muses http://shekinah.elysiumgates.com/muse/muses.jpg

187. 72. Naturalism Stephen Crane

190. 73. Nobel prize William Golding 1983 T.S. Eliot 1948 Ernest Hemingway 1954

192. 74. noir http://www.slushpile.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/irish%20noir.jpg

195. 75. novel (and nonfiction novel) J.D. Salinger Charlotte Perkins Gilman

196. “ Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.” -Ezra Pound

198. 76. novella

200. 77. ode John Keats

202. 78. Oedipus Complex (cont.) Oedipus & the Sphinx

205. 79. omniscient point of view Joseph Stalin George Orwell’s 1984

206. 79. omniscient point of view

207. 79. omniscient point of view

208. 79. omniscient point of view

209. “ To my mind that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity.” -Mark Twain

211. 80. onomatopoeia

213. 81. oxymoron

215. 82. palindrome

216. 82. palindrome Racecar I did roll--or did I? Hannah Poop

218. 83. parallelism

221. 84. paraphrase

223. 85. parody

224. “ Ernest: What is the difference between literature and journalism? Gilbert: Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.” -Oscar Wilde

227. 86. persona John Berryman

229. 87. personification

231. 88. Petrarchan Sonnet Petrarch

234. 89. plot

236. 90. pragmatism

237. “ Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but molds it to its purpose.” -Oscar Wilde

239. 91. prelude

241. 92. prologue

243. 93. Prose poem

246. 94. protagonist (cont.) Batman/Spiderman Pip from Great Expectations

248. 95. proverb

249. “ One may recollect generally that certain thoughts or facts are to be found in a certain book; but without a good index such a recollection may hardly be more available than that of the cabin boy,who knew where the ship’s tea kettle was because he saw it fall overboard.” -Horace Binney

251. 96. Pulitzer Prize John Steinbeck 1940 Grapes of Wrath Margaret Mitchell 1937 Gone with the Wind

253. 97. quatrain

255. 98. Realism

257. 99. refrain

260. 100. Renaissance

261. “ The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.” -Samuel Butler

263. 101. requiem

265. 107. resolution (as in plot)

267. 102. rhyme scheme

269. 103. rhythm (as in poetry)

271. 104. rising action (cont.)

273. 105. romance

274. “ What one knows best is…what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.” -Chamfort

277. 106. Romanticism—William Worsdworth

279. round character—Chief Bromden

282. 108. satire

284. 109. scansion

286. 110. schema (cont.) Laurence Fishburne from Othello

287. “ The easiest books are generally the best, for whatever author is obscure and difficult in his own language certainly does not think clearly.” -Lord Chesterfield

289. 111. science fiction Alien vs. Predator

290. 111. science fiction Ray Bradbury

292. 112. semantics Michel Foucault

295. 113. semiotics Jacques Derrida

297. 114. Sentimentalism

299. 115. Shakespearean Sonnet

300. “ Let us answer a book of ink with a book of flesh and blood.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

302. 116. short story

304. 117. sonnet Petrarch

306. 118. stage directions

308. 119. static character Henry Higgins

310. 120. stanza

311. “ I don’t like to read books; they muss up my mind.” -Henry Ford

314. 121. stock character Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird

316. 122. Stream of Consciousness James Joyce

318. 123. Surrealism William Burroughs

320. 124. symbolism

322. 125. symposium

323. “ One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.” -E.M. Forster

325. 126. synopsis

327. 127. syntax

329. 128. tall tale Pecos Bill and Slue-Foot Sue

330. 128. tall tale John Henry

333. 129. Theatre of the Absurd Samuel Beckett

335. 130. theme

336. “ All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.” -Ernest Hemingway

338. 131. thesis

340. 132. tone

342. 133. tour de force

344. 134. tragedy

346. 135. tragic flaw

347. “ I do not read a book: I hold a conversation with the author.” -Elbert Hubbard

350. 136. Transcendentalism Thomas Cole The Voyage of Life: Youth 1842

351. 136. Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau

353. 137. trope Example of irony

354. 137. trope Example of irony

356. 138. utopia Charlotte Perkins Gilman

358. 139. verse (as in poetry) Robert Lowell Sylvia Plath

360. 140. vignette Sandra Cisneros

361. “ Books are a narcotic.” -Franz Kafka