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Literary Terms
A Glossary of Literary Terms - 7th ed.
M. H. Abrams
Harcourt Brace College Publishers
1999 Fort Worth
ABRAMS: GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS (HARCOURT) REQ
ISBN: 0-15-505452-X New Price: $42.95 Used
Price: $32.20
This list is meant as an easy reference guide
for student in ENGL 270. The definitions are only a small portion
of what is written in the Glossary.
We strongly suggest that all English students at Hope purchase and use
their own copies of the Glossary,
because
it contains pages of useful information applicable to this and
other English classes. However, these short excerpts can help
students review for exams or access the heart of the definitions
quickly while writing papers.
8/30
Oral Formulaic Poetry
p. 200
"Poetry that is composed and transmitted by singers or reciters.
Its origins are prehistoric... Oral poetry includes both narrative
forms...and lyric forms... There is no fixed version of
an oral composition...each performer tends to render it differently..."
9/4
Elegy
p. 72
"...used...to refer to the subject matter of change and loss
frequently expressed in the elegiac verse form, especially in complaints
about love."
9/6
Courtly Love
p. 48
"A doctrine of love, together with an elaborate code governing
the relations between aristocratic lovers, which was widely
represented in the lyric poems and chivalric romances of western
Europe during the Middle Ages. ... The courtly lover idealizes
and idolizes his beloved, and subjects himself to her every whim.
... The lover suffers agonies of the body and spirit as he is put
to
the test by his imperious sweetheart, but remains devoted to
her, manifesting his honor by his unswerving fidelity and his adherence
to a rigorous code of behavior, both in knightly battles and
in the complex ceremonies of courtly speech and conduct."
Lai
p. 139
"...originally applied to a variety of poems by medieval French
writers in the latter twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some lais
were
lyric, but most of them were short narratives written in octosyllabic
couplets."
9/9
Chivalric Romance
p. 34
"is a type of narrative...[that] displaced the earlier epic and
heroic forms. ... Romances were at first written in verse,
but later in
prose as well. The romance is distinguished from the epic
in that it does not represent a heroic age of tribal wars, but a courtly
and
chivalric age... It's standard plot is that of a quest
undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a lady's favor...it stresses
the
chivalric ideals of courage, loyalty, honor, mercifulness to
an opponent, and elaborate manners..."
9/13
Dream Vision
p. 71
"is a mode of narrative widely employed by medieval poets: the
narrator falls asleep, usually in a spring landscape...often he is led
by a guide...and the events which he dreams are at least in part
an allegory."
9/30
Humanism
p.116
"In the sixteenth century the word humanist was coined to signify
one who taught to worked in the...humanities... In the nineteenth
century a new word, humanism, came to be applied to the view
of human nature, the general values, and the educational ideas
common to many Renaissance humanists...Renaissance humanism assumed
the dignity and central position of human beings in the
universe; emphasized the importance in education of studying
classical imaginative and philosophical literature...
Renaissance
p. 264
"('rebirth') is the name commonly applied to the period of European
history following the Middle Ages..begun...in the late
fourteenth century and to have continued..through the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. In this period the European arts of painting,
sculpture, architecture, and literature reach an eminence not
exceeded in any age."
Utopias and Dystopias
p. 327
"The term utopia designates the class of fictional writings that
represent an ideal but nonexistent political and social way of life.
...[from] the Greek words 'eutopia' (good place) and 'outopia'
(no place). ... The term dystopia has recently come to be applied
to works of fiction...that represent a very unpleasant imaginary
world in which ominous tendencies of our present social, political,
and technological order are projected into a disastrous future
culmination."
10/2
Conceit
p. 42
"...the term for figures of speech which establish a striking
parallel, usually ingeniously elaborate, between two very dissimilar things
or situations. ... Two types of conceit are often
distinguished by specific names: ...Petrachan conceit...metaphysical conceit..."
Platonic Love
p. 223
"...the theory that genuine beauty of the body is only the outer
manifestation of a moral and spiritual beauty of the soul... The
Platonic lover is irresistibly attracted to the bodily beauty
of a beloved person, but reveres it as sign of the spiritual beauty that
it
shares with all other beautiful bodies..."
Sonnet
p. 290
"A lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic
pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. There are two
major patterns of rhyme in sonnets written in the English language:
The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet...the English sonnet or else the
Shakespearean sonnet..."
10/9
Genres
p. 108
"A term...that denotes types of classes of literature.
The genres into which literary works have been grouped at different times
are
very numerous, and the criteria...highly variable. ...there
has been an enduring division of the overall literary domain into three
large
classes...poetry, prose fiction, and drama."
10/11
Epithalamion
p. 81
"…a poem written to celebrate a marriage. …verses were originally written to be sung outside the bedroom of a newly married couple."
10/14
Comedy
p. 38
"…a fictional work in which the materials are selected and managed primarily in order to interest and amuse us: the characters and their discomfitures engage our pleasurable attention rather than our profound concern, we are made to feel confident that no great disaster will occur, and usually the action turns out happily for the chief characters."
10/25
Metaphysical Poets
p. 158
"…Donne employs the terminology and abstruse arguments of the medieval Scholastic philosophers. …a group of seventeenth-century poets who, whether or not directly influenced by Donne, employ similar poetic procedures and imagry, both in secular poetry…and in religious poetry…"
11/4
Pastoral
p. 202
"…a deliberately conventional poem expressing an urban poet’s nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds and other rural folk in an idealized natural setting."
11/6
Epic
p. 76
"…a work that meets at least the following criteria: it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or…the human race."
Epic Similies
p. 79
"are formal, sustained similies in which the secondary subject, or vehicle, is elaborated far beyond its specific points of close parallel to the primary subject, or tenor, to which it is compared…"
11/15
Enlightenment
p. 75
"...an intellectual movement and cultural ambiance which developed in western Europe during the 17th century and reached its height in the eighteenth. The common element was a trust in human reason as adequate to solve the crucial problems and to establish the essential norms in life..."
11/18
Essay
p. 82
"Any short composition in prose that undertakes to discuss a matter, express a point of view, persuade us to accept a thesis on any subject, or simply entertain."
Style
p. 303
"...how speakers or writers say whatever it is they say.
11/22
Irony (structural)
p. 135
...the author...introduces a structural feature that serves to sustain a duplex meaning and evaluation throughout the work. One common literary device of this sort is the invention of a naive hero..."
11/22
Persona
p. 217
"...the first-person speaker who tells the story in a narrative poem or novel, or whose voice we hear in a lyric poem. ...we need...to make distinctions between...entirely fictional characters very different from their authors...and the speakers in the autobiographical passages...where we are invited to attribute the voice we hear, and the sentiments it utters, to the poet in his own person."
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