List of Literary Terms (Junior Cert English): Revision Notes
List of Literary Terms
Understanding literary terms is essential for analysing and appreciating literature. These tools help writers create meaning, emotion, and artistic effects in their work. This comprehensive guide covers the most important literary devices you'll encounter in your studies.
Sound and rhythm devices
Sound devices are fundamental tools that writers use to create rhythm and musicality in their work. These techniques work by manipulating the sounds of language itself, creating effects that go beyond mere meaning to engage the reader's auditory imagination.
Alliteration
This technique involves repeating the same initial consonant sound in words that appear close together. Writers use this device to create rhythm and make their writing more memorable.
Literary Example: Emily Dickinson's Alliteration
Emily Dickinson demonstrates this beautifully in "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" where she writes: "He likes a Boggy Acre - / A Floor too cool for Corn - / But when a Boy and Barefoot / I more than once at Noon."
The repeated 'B' sounds create a musical quality that enhances the poem's flow.
Assonance
Writers repeat similar vowel sounds within words and phrases to create lyrical effects in poetry and prose. This technique adds musicality without the obvious repetition of rhyme.
Assonance is particularly effective in creating mood and atmosphere. The repeated vowel sounds can create feelings of harmony, discord, or emotional resonance depending on which sounds are chosen.
Emily Dickinson frequently employed this device in her poetry. In "Because I could not stop for Death," she writes: "Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –" The repetition of the long 'o' sound in "could not stop" creates a haunting, elongated effect that mirrors the poem's contemplative tone.
Consonance
This involves repeating consonant sounds within words that are positioned close together. Unlike alliteration, these repeated sounds can appear anywhere in the words, not just at the beginning.
Demonstration: Consonance in Action
The famous tongue-twister demonstrates this technique effectively: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers." The 'p' sound appears throughout the phrase, creating both initial consonant repetition and internal consonant echoes.
Rhyme
Writers create rhyme when sounds repeat in the final syllables of words. This can occur at line endings or within lines themselves, and it helps establish rhythm and musical quality in poetry.
Shakespeare's Macbeth features both internal and end rhyme patterns. The witches' spell includes: "Double, double toil and trouble, / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble," where the end rhymes create an incantatory effect.
Poetic forms and structure
Poetic forms provide structural frameworks that poets use to create specific artistic effects. These established patterns have been refined over centuries and continue to challenge and inspire writers today.
Terza rima
This poetic form arranges multiple tercets in a specific rhyme scheme, usually following an aba bcb cdc pattern. The second line of each tercet rhymes with the first and third lines of the next, creating an interlocking chain effect.
Worked Example: Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind"
Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" exemplifies this form perfectly. Each section consists of four stanzas written in terza rima followed by a final stanza that contains a rhyming couplet.
Sonnet
This formal poem contains fourteen lines and follows a standard rhyme scheme. Petrarchan sonnets consist of an eight-line stanza followed by a six-line stanza, while Shakespearean sonnets comprise three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet.
The sonnet's strict structure forces poets to express complex ideas within tight constraints, often leading to powerful and concentrated expressions of emotion or thought.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" follows the Petrarchan structure, with a rhyme scheme of abba abba cdcdcd, demonstrating how the form can support deep emotional expression.
Haiku
This poetic form consists of three lines that follow a syllable pattern of 5-7-5 and usually focuses on natural imagery. Although the form originated in Japan, poets write haikus in many different languages, including English.
Traditional Haiku Structure
A traditional haiku translated from Japanese demonstrates the form's essence:
"An old silent pond... / A frog jumps into the pond, / splash! Silence again."
This captures a single moment in nature with vivid simplicity.
Villanelle
This formal poem consists of nineteen lines arranged into five tercets followed by a concluding quatrain that ends with a rhyming couplet. The form also features a complex rhyme and repetition scheme, where the entire first and third lines of the first tercet appear alternately as the third lines of each subsequent tercet.
The villanelle is one of the most challenging poetic forms due to its intricate repetition requirements. Only two rhyme sounds are used throughout the entire poem, and two refrains are woven throughout the structure.
Dylan Thomas's famous villanelle "Do not go gentle into that good night" demonstrates how this demanding form can create powerful emotional impact through its intricate repetition patterns.
Narrative elements
Narrative elements are the building blocks of storytelling that work together to create compelling and meaningful stories. Understanding these elements helps readers analyse how authors construct their narratives.
Protagonist
The main character in a narrative serves as the central focus of the story. The plot typically revolves around this character's journey, challenges, and development.
Sometimes a work's title reveals the protagonist's identity, as in The Odyssey (Odysseus), The Aeneid (Aeneas), Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre), and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter). However, this naming convention doesn't always apply.
Antagonist
This character or force opposes or works against the goals of the protagonist. The antagonist creates conflict and obstacles that the main character must overcome.
Character Analysis: Iago as Antagonist
In Shakespeare's Othello, the villainous Iago serves as the antagonist, manipulating Othello's trust to sabotage his happy marriage and ultimately destroy his life.
Conflict
The central struggle drives the plot of a story forwards. Literary scholars often classify conflicts as either internal, where a character struggles with some internal dilemma, or external, where a character struggles against outside forces like nature, other characters, or supernatural forces.
Conflict Analysis: Lord of the Flies
In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the main conflict pits the protagonist, Ralph, against the antagonist, Jack. Throughout the story, the two boys compete to become the dominant leader of the boys stranded on the island, with Ralph embodying the rules and order of civilisation and Jack representing the opposing tendency towards terror and violence.
Plot
The sequence of major events in a narrative or dramatic work usually consists of five basic elements: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
This five-part structure, often called Freytag's Pyramid, provides a framework for understanding how tension builds and resolves in most narratives.
The plot of most romantic comedies can be described as: two people meet, they fall in love, they experience some challenge and break up, they cross paths again, they resolve their problem and reunite.
Figurative language
Figurative language allows writers to create meaning beyond literal text, adding depth, emotion, and artistic beauty to their work. These devices help readers experience literature on multiple levels of understanding.
Metaphor
This figure of speech features a comparison between two different things that are not literally the same. Unlike similes, metaphors do not use the words "like" or "as" in their comparisons.
Shakespeare's Famous Metaphor
Shakespeare's plays make frequent use of metaphors, many of which have become famous. The lines below use a metaphor to compare the world to a theatre where people are the actors:
"All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players. / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts..."
Simile
This figure of speech directly compares two objects, usually including either "like" or "as" in the comparison.
The Romantic poets were especially fond of similes, as in the title of William Wordsworth's poem, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," which compares the speaker to a cloud drifting through the sky.
Imagery
Descriptive or figurative language attempts to evoke mental images by appealing to the reader's senses of sight, sound, smell, texture, or taste.
Imagery in Robert Frost's Poetry
In these lines from Robert Frost's poem "Birches," the speaker uses vivid imagery to help the reader imagine the sights, sounds, and feelings they might experience while surveying frozen birch trees after an ice storm:
"Often you must have seen them / Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning / After a rain. They click upon themselves / As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored / As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel."
Personification
This type of metaphor assigns human attributes to inanimate objects or abstract ideas.
Personification in Hurston's Writing
Zora Neale Hurston uses personification throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God to powerful effect, such as here, near the end of the novel, once Janie is home again and after Pheoby has left her:
"The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the courthouse came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room, out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing."
Types of irony
Irony is a sophisticated literary device that creates layers of meaning by establishing contrasts between appearance and reality, expectation and outcome, or literal and intended meaning.
Verbal irony
The use of a statement to express an idea other than (or opposite to) the literal meaning of the statement.
Verbal Irony in Pride and Prejudice
In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the novel's genteel characters often employ verbal irony with a politeness that borders on passive aggression. When Mary Bennet attempts to entertain a dinner party by singing, her father intercedes on behalf of the other guests, who can scarcely endure her painfully bad performance:
"...when Mary had finished her second song, he said aloud, 'That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.'"
Situational irony
The humourous or surprising effect of a situation where the outcomes diverge widely from expectations.
Master of Situational Irony: O. Henry
O. Henry was the master of situational irony, expertly captured in his short story "The Gift of the Magi." A husband and wife each secretly sell their most prized possession to buy each other gifts that complement the very possessions they've sold.
Dramatic irony
This literary device occurs when one or more characters remain unaware of plot developments that have already been revealed to the audience, giving rise to humour, suspense, or double meanings.
Dramatic irony is particularly powerful because it makes readers active participants in the story, creating tension as they watch characters make decisions based on incomplete information.
Shakespeare uses dramatic irony to create tension and humour throughout Othello. Iago, the play's villain, frequently reveals his diabolical schemes to the audience in monologues and asides, while remaining outside the hearing of Othello and his other unwitting victims, who for some reason seem to trust him absolutely.
Character types
Understanding different character types helps readers recognise the roles and functions that various characters serve within literary works.
Hero/Heroine
The main character of a literary work, especially one who exhibits admirable traits such as courage and righteousness. In mythology, heroes and heroines also typically possess supernatural powers or other special qualities.
Elizabeth Bennet is the heroine of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. Harry is the hero of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.
Antihero/Antiheroine
This protagonist lacks heroic qualities such as integrity, courage, and morality.
Antiheroes have become increasingly popular in modern literature and media, as they often reflect the moral complexity of real life more accurately than traditional heroes.
In J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, protagonist Holden Caulfield serves as an antihero, narrating his misguided and unsuccessful attempts to make meaningful personal connections in a society he largely despises.
Foil
This character's traits contrast with those of the protagonist or another main character, thereby highlighting some aspect of that character.
In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the noble, loyal Banquo acts as a foil to Macbeth, the treacherous, treasonous protagonist.
Advanced techniques
These sophisticated literary techniques require deeper analysis and understanding to fully appreciate their effects on meaning and reader experience.
Allegory
A literary work in which nearly all of the characters, events, settings, and other literal elements of the story have a second, symbolic meaning. In most cases, allegories advance a very clear moral lesson.
Classic Allegory: Animal Farm
George Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegory in which the barnyard animals who overthrow the farmer and take over the farm represent the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.
Symbol
Anything that is meant to represent or evoke something else, especially a concrete object meant to represent an intangible idea.
Throughout the Bible, the dove is a symbol for the Holy Spirit. In pop culture, the dove often symbolises peace.
Theme
An underlying or emerging abstract idea or concept explored in a literary work. One work may explore multiple themes.
Themes are different from topics or subjects. While a topic might be "war," a theme would be "the futility of war" or "war's impact on human relationships."
The dystopian novels 1984, Brave New World, and The Handmaid's Tale all explore the theme of subjugation of the individual for the benefit of society.
Mood
The emotional atmosphere of a work of literature, as evoked by setting, imagery, word choice, style, and tone. The mood may expand, deepen, or shift over the course of a work.
Setting Mood: Dickens' Opening
The opening sentence of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities perfectly sets the mood for the complex story he is about to tell, eliciting confusion and mixed feelings:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity..."
Tone
In literature, the attitude of a writer, narrator, or speaker towards the subject matter, as expressed by style, word choice, or demeanour.
Tone Analysis: Catch-22
Joseph Heller's Catch-22 tells the story of a U.S. Air Force squadron forced to fly dangerous bombing missions during World War II. Despite the serious subject matter, the narrator's humourous, ironic tone reveals Heller's disdain for the absurdity of war.
Key Points to Remember:
- Sound devices like alliteration, assonance, and consonance create rhythm and musicality in writing
- Poetic forms such as sonnets, haikus, and villanelles have specific structural requirements that poets use to create artistic effects
- Narrative elements including protagonist, antagonist, and conflict work together to drive story development
- Figurative language techniques like metaphor, simile, and imagery help writers create meaning beyond literal text
- Understanding literary terms enhances your ability to analyse and appreciate the craft behind great writing