Questions tagged [terminology]

Questions pertaining to terms used in the study of literature, including the names of the genres, tropes, terms used for analysis, and so forth.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
12 votes
3 answers
7k views

Is there a name for the literary device in the expression "Thanks, I hate it."?

"Thanks, I hate it!" is an expression one could use to passive-aggressively indicate a strong dislike for something. What kind of literary device is used in this saying? Can this be ...
user19705's user avatar
  • 139
1 vote
1 answer
147 views

Can plot development analysis (climax, denouement, etc.) apply to smaller segments throughout a work?

I am in a class where we are being taught to analyze the smaller consecutive units of text which make up chapters in the overall work (which is of a biographical-historical narrative genre), where we ...
SeligkeitIstInGott's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
599 views

What is an inciting incident?

I've been struggling to find a clear definition of what exactly an inciting incident is. According to Masterclass, an inciting incident is: The inciting incident of a story is the event that sets the ...
Jude Zambarakji's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
115 views

Is there a term for the short summary at the beginning of a chapter in a novel (or in the table of contents), sometimes facetious? [duplicate]

I understand it was a popular practice in the 16th to 18th century in European fiction, and still appears even today. Example: "Chapter II: Of Mr. Joseph Andrews his Birth, Parentage, Education, ...
Herr Rau's user avatar
  • 113
3 votes
1 answer
142 views

Technical term for "internal inconsistency"

I'm trying to remember a technical term that I encountered in literature class. It's a word probably of Greek origin, but possibly Latin. It describes an error that an author has committed in the ...
Clara Diaz Sanchez's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
172 views

Vergil or Virgil?

My understanding is that the author of the Aeneid can safely be referred to as either "Vergil" or "Virgil." So this question is not about "how should one refer to him." ...
Quuxplusone's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
68 views

Can Tolkien's work be considered as pre-raphaelic art? [closed]

A fellow friend of mine is really interested in Preraphaelites. Is the classification only subject to historic line-up?
glyph42's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
56 views

Term to describe a type of story where symbolism is necessary to understand it

I'll get straight to the point - I'm trying to find if there is a word to describe a property I've noticed. Take a standard narrative - although an understanding of symbolism / metaphor in this ...
Andura's user avatar
  • 21
6 votes
3 answers
1k views

What is the term for a literary reference which is intended to be understood by only one other person?

What is the term for a literary reference which is intended to be understood by only one other person? I came across this term some years ago but did not record it - wrongly assuming I could easily ...
Patrick FitzGerald's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
92 views

Is there a term for the final step an author takes when they "prove" a theme by assigning a reward or tragedy on a character?

For example, in the tale of the tortoise and the hare the tortoise's victory and the social acceptance it wins would be the step that proves to the reader that committing to being “slow and steady” is ...
iceninja21's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
109 views

Making trivial things big, and big things trivial

In Sherriff’s play Journey’s End, Sherriff makes a recurring point of soldiers ‘coping’ with the war by making trivial things big and big things small, so much so that deviation from this theme leads ...
Vivaan Daga's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
134 views

What is the term for the last word of each line in rhyme/poem? The word that is actually the rhyming one

If we take this ABAB stanza, for example: The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day. It's very easy to spot the words that ...
Sarke's user avatar
  • 133
2 votes
3 answers
128 views

Is there a subgenre or style where a work is made of parts that can be considered works themselves?

Typically, a long text is structured into parts, like chapters or sections. These parts have no sense, or a different sense, when they are read apart, independently of the main work. But a writer ...
nightcod3r's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
118 views

Is there a term for contextual "padding" around a character's words?

Is there a technical term for the parts displayed in italics here? He closed his eyes again, "XXXXXXX", he mumbled. The XXXXX was YYYYYY, she noticed exasperated. They don't really ...
Bartholomaios's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
174 views

What's the term for multiple levels of reality in a fictional work?

An increasing number of books nowadays have different levels of reality, as it were, with characters on one level being creations of characters on another. Good examples of this are Sofies verden and ...
Hamas are war criminals's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
149 views

Is there a word for the device where an adjective or descriptive verb is applied to a nearby word rather than the word it actually describes?

Eg. "the green and climbing eyesight of a cat" ("Sir, Say No More"); "[the quarry] whose trail soon vanished in the antlered wood" ("Arrowhead Hunting"). The ...
eclarette's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
123 views

Is there a term for an item in a period piece that is used as a stand in for a more modern equivalent?

The most obvious example I could think of, was the Flintstone's "car". Obviously cars didn't exist at the time. (Neither did most of the things in the Flintstone's lives - which I think is ...
Brandon Bratcher's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
164 views

Has the puzzle genre in literary fiction been given a formal name?

I'm not talking about maximalist novels, or experimental literature or metaphysical literature. I'm talking about books where the author is not interested in making it easy for the reader to figure ...
bobsmith76's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
142 views

How do you classify a writer as a ??th century writer?

Is there a common method to adscribe a writer/painter/person as belonging to a certain century? As in "Herman Melville was a 19th century writer who...". Is it only used in such clear cases ...
user2513484's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
270 views

What is the difference between romanticism and existentialism?

It seems existentialism and romanticism are both literary movements which (1) see a man as irrational, and (2) search for meaning in an individual's life. Can we say that these movements are ...
Marina's user avatar
  • 165
2 votes
1 answer
114 views

Expression used when a subplot is the genuine plot

I'm looking for the literary expression that is used when the themes and plot of a subplot are the real plot of a narrative, which is counterpoised to another, more accessible story plot that is only ...
RoDaSm's user avatar
  • 129
5 votes
1 answer
163 views

Term for a story that is a perfect loop

Is there a noun for or an adjective that describes stories that can be read from beginning-to-end repeatedly? That is, the beginning of the story is a seamless continuation from its ending. You could ...
theonlygusti's user avatar
5 votes
5 answers
325 views

What exactly makes Lord of the Rings "not a trilogy"?

Yes, I know that Tolkien, the author, originally intended to release it as one single book. But for practical/various reasons, it was instead split up into three ones (confusingly consisting of two &...
S. Ginoza's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
685 views

Is Anna Karenina a modernist novel?

Almost all of Anna Karenina (1878) had a classical flavour to me. For most of the novel, the thought processes of the characters, as described by the omniscient narrator, are very linear, ordered, ...
Qwertuy's user avatar
  • 163
2 votes
1 answer
67 views

What is the word for the kind of story where the protagonist/s become corrupted by the end of the story?

There is a certain story arc that is not uncommon in many stories and real-life events, where the protagonist or essentially a group of people set out with what seems to be a just and noble cause. ...
Attitude12136's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
353 views

What does it mean when the chorus speaks "severally" in "Aias"?

I am reading James Scully's translation of Aias (also known as Ajax), in The Complete Plays of Sophocles, translated by Robert Bagg & James Scully. Eleven different times, per the search function ...
bobble's user avatar
  • 9,554
0 votes
1 answer
101 views

What is it called when the true villain of the story is revealed later on?

In Star Wars, the audience is meant to believe Darth Vader is the villain of the story, but later on it becomes apparent that the Emperor is the true villain of the saga. What is this called? I really ...
Jake Jackson's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
36 views

Terminology for the category including all of dialogues, monologues, asides and soliloquies

As far as I can understand, a play's script might come not only in a conventional dialogue but also in monologues, asides and soliloquies along with stage directions. I'm unable to find a single term ...
Iris's user avatar
  • 1
3 votes
1 answer
260 views

Is this free indirect speech in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"?

Does Rowling use the technique of free indirect speech in this piece of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in particular in the bold part? Harry was silent. Judging by the fact that Draco ...
Aegon91's user avatar
  • 31
4 votes
0 answers
117 views

Name for a fictional or mythological character who doesn't suffer personally, but whose family and friends all do?

I feel like this must be a character archetype or mythological figure, but can't find any references to it. In my mind, it's something like Cassandra knowing the future but not being believed; this ...
Kyle Bahr's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
136 views

When did the terms "Mester de Clerecía" and "Mester de Juglaría" start to be used?

Mester de Juglaría was a genre of Spanish literature from the 12th-13th centuries, which was transmitted orally by travelling entertainers (juglares). It was later surpassed by the Mester de Clerecía, ...
Rand al'Thor's user avatar
  • 71.1k
8 votes
1 answer
1k views

Is there an equivalent to Orientalism in Eastern scholarship of the West?

Orientalism (1978) is a book by Edward Said that established the concept of "orientalism", which refers to the Western depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. Is there an equivalent to ...
sba222's user avatar
  • 183
1 vote
1 answer
53 views

What is the role of the author in an itihasa?

A number of important Hindu texts, including the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, are referred to as itihasa. According to the Wikipedia article about this collection of texts, A story is considered to ...
Tsundoku's user avatar
  • 44k
5 votes
2 answers
1k views

Who coined the term "omniscient narrator"?

In narrative theory, A third person omniscient narrator conveys information from multiple characters, places, and events of the story, including any given characters' thoughts, and a third person ...
Tsundoku's user avatar
  • 44k
1 vote
0 answers
51 views

Literary term for the stagehands on "The Masked Singer"

On the American television singing contest "The Masked Singer", there is a cast of stagehands who play an essential role. They are silent, anonymous, and wear identical dark suits and ...
SlowMagic's user avatar
  • 413
1 vote
2 answers
155 views

One generic word for novels, short stories, poetry etc. as well as non-fictional books

I'm looking for a word that can cover both fictional and non-fictional books as well as short stories, poetry etc. I'm aware of "texts" which normally can cover all written media. "...
Sam's user avatar
  • 11
2 votes
2 answers
212 views

Can all forms of drama be categorised under the four types 'tragedy', 'comedy', 'tragicomedy' and 'melodrama'?

What are the different forms of drama? On searching for the same query on the internet, I found multiple articles that called Comedy, Tragedy, Tragicomedy and Melodrama as the major forms but, there ...
Aaryan Kakkar's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
251 views

Is there a name for the narrative technique of starting at the end and then going back to the beginning? (As in Lord Jim)

I've been reading Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, which is rife with what I would call non-standard narrative structures. There are obvious narrative peculiarities in the book that have been discussed at ...
Slider345's user avatar
  • 113
28 votes
4 answers
8k views

What is the opposite of deus ex machina?

Deus ex machina is a plot device in which a seemingly unsolvable problem is resolved by a sudden and unexpected external event. For example: "The villain has our hero backed in a corner with no ...
SlowMagic's user avatar
  • 413
2 votes
0 answers
62 views

Name for prosodic pattern in which the last line in a verse is much shorter than all the rest

I noticed this pattern in Auden's poetry where the last line in a verse will be much shorter than preceding lines. Here is one of the earliest examples, taken from Paid on Both Sides: Here a scrum ...
pseudosudo's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
161 views

What is a term for an (occasionally lengthy) passage set between chapters?

In The Forgetting*, there are passages from books (mostly the main character's diaries) set between the chapters. They generally serve to provide exposition about the world or backstory for the main ...
bobble's user avatar
  • 9,554
4 votes
1 answer
127 views

What is trauma literature?

I recently stumbled upon the term "trauma literature". However, I am having a hard time figuring out what it actually refers to. There is almost no piece of literature that does not contain ...
JavaApprentice's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
352 views

Why are some metaphors not similes?

This Master Class website says that A simile is a type of metaphor. All similes are metaphors, but not all metaphors are similes. Is this true? Can anyone cite an official textbook? Please explain ...
user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
117 views

Term for intentionally impressing different meanings on different audiences

Is there a term for when an author intentionally generates two completely different responses from two distinct parts of their audience or readership? An example I found could be in The Picture of ...
stevec's user avatar
  • 181
3 votes
1 answer
161 views

Categories of narrative focus

I recall that a few years back a friend was explaining how novels can fall into various categories depending on what the focus of the story is. For example, one category he mentioned was where the ...
Daniel Walker's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
112 views

Can Byronic heroes be funny?

I'm learning about the different hero archetypes. As far as I know, Byronic heroes are charismatic, passionate, and flawed, among others. But can they be humorous? I can't think of any examples off of ...
lit30's user avatar
  • 111
3 votes
3 answers
265 views

What do you call the "message" written before a poem?

From Re Judicial by Baticuling (Jesús Balmori) in El libro de mis vidas manileñas (1928) Before the first stanza, the author begins with a little message: "Antonio Manipula, juez ... y ...
janreggie's user avatar
  • 133
2 votes
1 answer
569 views

What does it mean for literature to be “reflective”?

The book-review and -recommendation site The Storygraph allows users to categorise books in various ways such as adventurous, funny, inspiring, and reflective. Some (fiction) books I know have been ...
Wrzlprmft's user avatar
  • 608
11 votes
2 answers
859 views

Is there a term for epic poetry’s detailed, successive introductions of multiple characters?

I’ve noticed a topos in a few epic poems I’ve read where a long list of characters is given, each receiving practically a paragraph of description. In The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, Jason’s ...
IglooMaster's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
3k views

In musical theatre, what does "book by" mean?

In musical theatre, what does "book by" mean? For example, the Bonnie and Clyde 2012 musical has a book by Ivan Menchell. Bonnie & Clyde is a musical with music by Frank Wildhorn, ...
QMan2488's user avatar
  • 203