French 380 Literary Terms

Dr. Joanne Schmidt

Action what happens in a story or play; plot.
Alexandrine a line of 12 syllables, usually used in French poetry.
Allegory a story with more than one meaning where an abstraction is personified.
Example: the Marianne, a statue, represents French republicanism.
Alliteration the use of two or more words beginning with the same sound.
Allusion a reference in a story, poem, or play to a generally well-known person,
place, event, or situation outside the literary work.
Antagonist the character in opposition to the protagonist.
Anticlimax an event following the climax which is usually less important than the
climax.
Antihero a protagonist who lacks heroic qualities such as strength or courage.
Archetype a basic model or prototype representing essential characteristics.
Aside words spoken by an actor intended to be heard by the spectators in the
audience and not by the other characters in the play.
Assonance a repetition of vowel sounds with different consonant sounds.
(fame, same)
Atmosphere the mood of a story or the general feeling created by all the details of
the plot, character, setting, and diction. Also, the background of a
piece of fiction which the readers imagination feels rather than sees.
Background physical background in fiction.
Ballad a story written in poetic verse and usually set to music. Popular during
the Middle Ages.

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Black comedy a comedy filled with cynicism and despair using sarcasm.
Caesura a pause in a line of poetry usually indicated by a punctuation mark.
Character a person in a story. Character also denotes the beliefs, habits of
mind, moral choices, and motivation that distinguish one fictional
person from another.
Climax highest point of the action in a story.
Closet drama (or armchair theatre) a play in verse form which is meant to be read
and not performed.
Comedy a story with an amusing plot that ends happily, usually with a marriage.
Comedy of manners a comedy that ridicules the social customs and morays of a
period.
Connotation the cluster of meanings implied or suggested by a word, as
distinguished from its literal or denotative meaning. Connotations of a
word often carry powerful emotional charges. Imaginative literature
depends on much of its emotional and aesthetic effectiveness on the
connotative meaning of words.
Decor setting or background.
Denotation the literal, dictionary meaning of a word.
Denouement a French word denoting an untying; the conclusion to a story; the
part of the plot in which conflicts are finally resolved.
Diction the words used by an author, his/her vocabulary in a particular story. For
example, Gustave Flaubert, the author of MADAME BOVARY, used
medical and technical vocabulary in his novel.
Didactic a literary work designed to teach or instruct the reader. Parables, fables,
and allegories are didactic; their moral themes determine the
characters and the plots. Propaganda is a kind of didactic work which
seeks to convince the reader to take action; often, propaganda may
oversimplify characters and events in order to make its message clear.
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Drama a dialogue between two or more people or characters presented by actors

on the stage.
Dramatic monologue a monologue in which only one character speaks.
Elegy a poem that is gravely meditative on a subject such as death, love, or
suffering.
Ellipsis omission of part of a sentence, for example, ellipsis of a verb.
English or Shakespearean sonnet a fourteen line poem with a rhyme scheme of
ababcdcd efef gg.
Epic usually a long narrative poem in which the actions of a hero are described.
Episode one incident in a longer story containing several incidents.
Exposition the information about characters and events necessary for the reader, or
spectator, to understand the developing action of a story, novel, poem,
or play. In a play, the exposition should occur during the first scenes of
the first act of the play.
Fable a simple story or tale to illustrate some maxim about human nature, often by
having animals talk or act like human beings.
Farce a very low comedy, generally based on trick or joke; likely to be realistic.
Figurative language language which uses figures of speech to create special effects
and to extend its meanings beyond its mere denotation.
Flashback a passage in a story which breaks the chronological sequence by
presenting an event or episode that happened earlier.
Folktale a story handed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next.
Form the organization of the elements of a piece of literature. Internal form is
conceived as consisting of an arrangement of images, figures, sounds,
feelings, etc. Form as opposed to content.

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Foreshadowing clues or hints in the text or story that prepare the reader or
spectator for some future event or action.
Formal essay a non-fiction article which presents information in an impersonal
way. Montaignes ESSAYS are much more based in the personal,
which was his intention.
Free verse poetry without meter or rhyme.
Genre a French word used to refer to a literary form or type such as tragedy,
comedy, epic, lyric, novel, or short story.
High comedy a comedy which is more formal in its language with a clever and
amusing dialogue.
Hyperbole an exaggeration in language made to produce a certain effect; figure of
speech containing an exaggeration.
Image an aspect of diction whereby words and phrases suggest concrete, physical,
or descriptive details such as sounds, odors, colors, and tactile
sensations. Language evoking an opening of the senses.
Imagery figurative language that evokes pictures or feelings in the mind of the
reader.
Irony a term referring to the disparity between what is said and what is meant,
between expectations and outcomes.
Italian sonnet a fourteen line poem divided into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet
(six lines).
Local color a descriptive technique in literary works, particularly in the novel,
which attempts to recreate the setting of the story by including long
descriptions of streets, towns, villages, cities, etc.
Low comedy a comedy that can be slapstick containing loud and often boisterous
actions and absurd situations.

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Lyric poetry short verse, considered song-like, which reveals the inner thoughts
and feelings of the speaker. A singing quality or intensity of feeling in a
poem.
Melodrama a play or story that portrays a moral conflict.
Metaphor a comparison in language that compares two unlike things to suggest a
likeness between the two. A metaphor is non-explicit in nature. Like or
as are not used.
Metonymy a use of language in which one conveys the meaning of one word by
the use of another. The process generally takes the form of substituting
the container for the contents, the abstract for the concrete, etc.
Meter a patterned arrangement of syllables in poetic verse.
Motivation the reasons behind a characters actions.
Myth an archetypal story devised to explain some natural phenomenon or to
provide people with a legend of its origins. Typically its characters are
much larger than life size.
Narration or narrative technique the act of presenting or telling the story. It may be
presented in the third person, first person, or even in the second person,
which is the case of the New Novel written in France after 1950. In
fiction, it is where the author is actually telling the story as opposed to
describing or commenting.
Onomatopoeia a formation of words in imitation of natural sounds.
Oxymoron a figure of speech containing contradictory meanings and words, (a
gentle severity).
Paradox a statement in language that says two opposite things.
Persona the character or voice assumed by the writer of the story for the telling of
that story.
Parody the ideas of another writer are imitated through word and style to make
them seem ridiculous.
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Personification the implication of human qualities attributed to a thing or animal.

Plot the sequence of events in a story artfully arranged so that the author may
attain the desired aesthetic or artistic effect.
Poetic justice good is rewarded, evil is punished.
Point of view the aspect or perspective from which any storyteller sees what he or
she is relating. Point of view includes narrative technique. Is the story
told in third person, first person, or by an omniscient narrator? In third
person narration the teller is distant from the action, whereas in first
person narration he or she is part of the action. The omniscient narrator
knows everything, including what the characters think, thus, events are
described from the point of view of several characters.
Protagonist the main character in a drama, story or novel around whom the action
is centered.
Psychology in the traditional sense as knowledge of the human heart. Also, the
study of motive and motivation in the characters.
Rhyme and rhyme scheme the sounds in poetic verse that are repeated within or at
the ends of lines. Rhyme scheme refers to the analysis of the sounds
repeated at the end of each line of poetry.
Romance a long, narrative describing an adventure story about chivalric heroes.
Romantic comedy a story or play about love that leads to a happy ending.
Satire the use of irony, ridicule, or sarcasm to expose and attack human vices.
Setting where the story takes place.
Simile a comparison in language between two unlike things usually introduced by
like or as, (cheeks like roses).
Stanza a unit within a poem formed by a group or series of lines of poetry.

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Stream of consciousness an attempt in the language of a literary work to render the

thoughts of a character as they occur in his or her mind, with all the
strange jumps and lapses that characterize actual thinking processes.
Style the effect attained by an author through the purposeful or planned selection
of words and sentence structure. In other words, the manner in which
an author uses words to create literary works.
Symbol a word or phrase or image that stands for a larger idea.
Synecdoche a figure of speech in which the part stands for the whole. For
example, Iseut the Fair saw the sail approaching.
Theme the main idea of a literary work, which develops from the interaction of
plot and character.
Tone a term referring to an authors attitude toward his or her subject or audience.
The tone helps to define the attitude toward his or her subject.
Topos a commonplace or one of the eternally viable subjects treated in literature.
Tragedy a story of a character or characters who face misfortune and which ends in
disaster.
Tragi-comedy a serious story or situation that ends happily.
Verse a line of poem.
Verisimilitude a term which, when used in a literary context, means trueness to
life.
Voice a tone maintained by the narrator of a story and recognized by the reader as
the narrators.

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