English Lexicon allegory A story or narrative, often told at some length, which has a deeper meaning below the surface. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan is a well-known allegory. A more modern example is George Orwell's Animal Farm, which on a surface level is about a group of animals who take over their farm but on a deeper level is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and the shortcomings of Communism. alliteration The repetition of the same consonant sound, especially at the beginning of words. For example, "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion" (Kubla Khan by S.T. Coleridge). allusion A reference to another event, person, place, or work of literature, such as “A Daniel come to judgment,” a Biblical allusion in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The allusion is usually implied rather than explicit and often provides another layer of meaning to what is being said. ambiguity Use of language where the meaning is unclear or has two or more possible interpretations or meanings. It could be created through a weakness in the way the writer has expressed himself or herself, but often it is used by writers quite deliberately to create layers of meaning in the mind of the reader. anachronism Something that is historically inaccurate, for example the reference to a clock chiming in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. anadiplosis A kind of REPETITION in which the last word or phrase of one sentence or line is repeated at the beginning of the next, as in these lines from Bartholomew Griffin’s Fidessa: For I have loved long, I crave reward Reward me not unkindly: think of kindness, Kindness becommeth those of high regard Regard with clemency a poor man’s blindness. analogy A comparison of two things, alike in certain aspects; particularly a method used in exposition and description by which something unfamiliar is explained or described by comparing it to something more familiar. In argumentation and logic, analogy is frequently used to justify contentions. Analogy is widely used in poetry but also in other forms of writing; a SIMILE is an expressed analogy, a METAPHOR an implied one. analysis A method by which a thing is separated into parts, and those parts are given rigorous, logical, detailed scrutiny, resulting in a consistent and relatively complete account of the elements of the thing and the principles of their organization. anaphora One of the devices of REPETITION, in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences. It is one of the most obvious of the devices used in the poetry of Walt Whitman, as the opening lines from one of his poems show: As I ebb’d with the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok. anecdote A short NARRATIVE detailing particulars of an interesting EPISODE or event. The term most frequently refers to an incident in the life of an important person and should lay claim to an element of truth. Though anecdotes are often used as the basis for short stories, an anecdote lacks complicatedPLOT and relates a single EPISODE. antagonist The character directly opposed to the protagonist. antithesis Contrasting ideas or words that are balanced against each other, as in “Man proposes, God disposes.” Antithesis is the balancing of one term against another. The second line of the following couplet by Pope is an example: “The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, / And wretches hang that jury-men may dine.” Often characterized by similar grammatical structure. apostrophe An interruption in a poem or narrative so that the speaker or writer can address a dead or absent person or particular audience directly. aside A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on stage. assonance The repetition of similar vowel sounds. For example: "There must be Gods thrown down and trumpets blown" (Hyperion by John Keats). This shows the paired assonance of "must", "trum", "thrown", "blown". Assonance differs from RHYME in that RHYME is a similarity of vowel and consonant. asyndeton A condensed form of expression in which elements customarily joined by conjunctions are presented in a series without conjunctions. The most famous example is probably Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered). atmosphere The prevailing MOOD created by a piece of writing, particularly – but not exclusively – when that mood is established in part by SETTING or landscape. It is, however, not simply setting but rather an emotional aura that helps establish the reader’s expectations and attitudes. Examples are the comber mood established the description of the prison door in the opening chapter of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the brooding sense of fatality engendered by the description of Egdon Heath at the beginning of Hardy’s The Return of the Native, the sense of “something rotten in the state of Denmark” established by the scene on the battlements at the opening of Hamlet, or the opening stanza of Poe’s “The Raven.” autobiography The story of a person’s life as written by that person. Although a common loose use of the term includes memoirs, diaries, journals and letters, distinctions among these forms need to be made. Diaries, journals, and letters are not extended, organized narratives prepared for the public eye; autobiographies and memoirs are. But, whereas memoirs deal at least in part with public events and noted personages other than the author, an autobiography is a connected narrative of the author’s life, with some stress on introspection. ballad A narrative poem that tells a story (traditional ballads were songs) usually in a straightforward way. The theme is often tragic or contains a whimsical, supernatural, or fantastical element. bildungsroman A novel that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical. Dickens’ Great Expectations is a standard example. blank verse Unrhymed poetry that adheres to a strict pattern in that each line is an iambic pentameter (a tensyllable line with five stresses). It is close to the natural rhythm of English speech or prose, and is used a great deal by many writers including Shakespeare and Milton. The freedom through the lack of RHYME is offset by the demands for variety, which may be obtained by the skillful poet through a number of means: the shifting of the CAESURA, or pause, from place to place within the line; the shifting of the STRESS among syllables; the use of the RUN-ON LINE, which permits thoughtgrouping in large or small blocks; the variation in tonal qualities by changing the level of DICTION from passage to passage; and finally, the adaptation of the form to reflect differences in the speech of characters and in emotion. caesura A conscious break in a line of poetry (“I never had noticed it until / Twas gone, - the narrow copse,” from Edward Thomas). It is also employed without dashes, as in “To err is human, to forgive, divine” with the caesura falling between human and to. catharsis A purging of the emotions which takes place at the end of a tragedy. character A complicated term that includes the idea of the moral constitution of the human personality (Aristotle's sense of ethos), the presence of moral uprightness, and the simpler notion of the presence of creatures in art that seem to be human beings of one sort or another; character is also a term applied to a literary form that flourished in England and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is a brief descriptive SKETCH of a personage who typifies some definite quality. The person is described not as an individualized personality but as an example of some vice or virtue or type, such as a busybody, a glutton, a fop, a bumpkin, a garrulous old man, or a happy milkmaid. Similar treatments of institutions and inanimate things, such as "the character of a coffee house," also employed the term, and late in the seventeenth century, by a natural extension of the tradition. characterization The creation of imaginary persons so that they seem lifelike. chiasmus A pattern in which the second part is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed, as in Coleridge’s line, “Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike,” or Pope’s “Works without show, and without pomp presides.” In general, any elements subject to arrangement can take on this chiastic or mirror-image design (X-shaped, like the Greek letter chi). cliché A phrase, idea, or image that has been used so much that it has lost much of its original meaning, impact, and freshness: “just the tip of the iceberg” climax A rhetorical term for a rising order of importance in the ideas expressed. Such an arrangement is called climactic, and the item of the climax. Not to be confused with plot: climax. colloquial Ordinary, everyday speech and language, including the use of slang, contractions, and lively conversational rhythms. comedy Originally simply a play or other work which ended happily. Now we use this term to describe something that is funny and which makes us laugh. In literature the comedy is not a necessarily a lightweight form. A play like Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, for example, is, for the most part a serious and dark play but as it ends happily, it is often described as a comedy. conceit An elaborate, extended, and sometimes surprising comparison between things that, at first sight, do not have much in common. More common in poetry. conflict The struggle that grows out of the interplay of two opposing forces; provides interest, suspense, and tension. connotation An implication or association attached to a word or phrase. A connotation is suggested or felt rather than being explicit. Connotations may be (1) private and personal, the result of individual experience, (2) group (national, linguistic, racial), or (3) general or universal, held by all or most people. consonance The repetition of the same consonant sounds in two or more words in which the vowel sounds are different. For example: "And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, / By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell" (Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen). Where consonance replaces the rhyme, as here, it is called half-rhyme. culture In a state of nature, humankind survives by directly struggling with the environment; in time, the elements of that struggle – practices, habits, customs, beliefs, traditions – become institutions, the body of which is known as culture. Because culture changes from place to place and from time to time, we speak variously of English culture, Elizabethan culture, Victorian culture, working-class culture, and so forth. For literary purposes, we may speak of a work as both a creature and a creator of culture; we may study Elizabethan culture through Shakespeare’s plays, and vice versa. Drama and fiction tend to be popular accounts of cultural and social problems in the first place, so they are the most interesting subjects for cultural analysis; and certain sorts of work – such as those explicitly designed to praise or blame in an overtly social context – yield the best results to such analysis. A cultural approach to literature assumes beforehand that a work exists most interestingly as part of a social context. denotation The basic meaning of a word, independent of its emotional coloration or associations. denouement The ending of a play, novel, or drama where "all is revealed" and the plot is unraveled. dialect When the speech of two groups or of two persons representing two groups both speaking the same “language” exhibits very marked differences, the groups or persons are said to speak different dialects. dialogue Conversation between two or more people. Dialogue, sometimes used in general expository and philosophical writing, embodies certain values: 1. It advances the action and is not mere ornamentation. 2. It is consistent with the character of the speakers. 3. It gives the impression of naturalness without being a verbatim record of what may have been said, because fiction is concerned with the “semblance of reality,” not with reality itself. 4. It presents the interplay of ideas and personalities among the people conversing; it sets forth a conversational give and take – not simply a series of remarks of alternating speakers. 5. It varies according to the various speakers participating. 6. It serves to give relief from passages essentially descriptive or expository. diction The choice of words that a writer makes. Certain sorts of diction can become an author’s typical habit and distinctive stylistic signature, as in the combination of question and elliptical absolute found in many of W.B. Yeats’s most celebrated passages (such as “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last…” and “What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap…”). didactic A work that is intended to preach or teach, often containing a particular moral or political point. double entendre A statement that is deliberately ambiguous, one of whose possible meanings is risqué or suggestive of some impropriety. NOT a PUN. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio executes a notable double entendre when he tells the Nurse (who has asked about the time of day), “Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.” The entendre here is double because a dial does have a “hand” and the circumference is marked with “pricks”; by adding “bawdy” to this statement, Mercutio explicitly doubles the meanings of “hand” and “prick” and brings out the still-current vulgar sense of the latter. dramatic monologue A poem or prose piece in which a character addresses an audience. Often the monologue is complete in itself, as in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. dystopia Literally “bad place.” The term is applied to accounts of imaginary worlds, usually in the future, in which present tendencies are carried out to their intensely unpleasant culminations. empathy A feeling on the part of the reader of sharing the particular experience being described by the character or writer. end stopped lines A verse line with a pause or a stop at the end of it. The absence of enjambment (or run-on lines). As in Pope’s All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. enjambment (run-on line) A line of verse that flows on into the next line without a pause. The first and second lines from Milton given below, carried over to the second and third, illustrate: Or if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook, that flow’d Fast by the oracle of God… epanalepsis The repetition at the end of a clause of a word or phrase that occurred at its beginning, as in Shakespeare’s lines from King John (2.1): “Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer’d blows: / Strength match’d with strengthm and power confronted power.” epiphany Literally a manifestation or showing-forth; an event in which the essential nature of something – a person, a situation, an object – was suddenly perceived. episodic structure A term applied to writing containing a series of incidents or episodes that are loosely connected by a larger subject matter or thematic structure but that could stand on their own. A work that has a sustained story line or that would not be a complete work without one of its parts does not exhibit episodic structure. epistrophe A rhetorical term applied to the REPETITION of the closing word or phrase at the end of several clauses, as in Sidney’s “And all the night he did nothing by weep Philoclea, sigh Philoclea, and cry out Philoclea.” (The New Arcadia) eponymous hero euphemism The person after whom a literary work, film, etc., is named Expressing an unpleasant or unsavory idea in a less blunt and more pleasant way. To say “at liberty” instead of “out of work,” “senior citizens” instead of “old people,” “in the family way” instead of “pregnant.” farce A play that aims to entertain the audience through absurd and ridiculous characters and action. figurative language Language that is symbolic or metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally. Embodies one or more FIGURES OF SPEECH. figures of speech The various uses of language that depart from customary construction, order, or significance. Figures of speech are of two major kinds: rhetorical figures, which are departures from customary usage to achieve special effects without a change in the radical meaning of the words; and tropes, which involve basic changes in the meaning of words. flashback A device by which a work presents material that occurred prior to the opening scene of the work. foil Applied to any person who through contrasts underscores the distinctive characteristics of another. (Literally, a ‘leaf” of bright metal placed under a jewel to increase its brilliance) foreshadowing The presentation of material in a work in such a way that later events are prepared for. Foreshadowing can result from the establishment of a mood or atmosphere, as in the opening of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or the first act of Hamlet. It can result from an event that adumbrates the later action, as does the scene with the witches at the beginning of Macbeth. It can result from the appearance of physical objects or facts, as the clues do in a detective story, or from the revelation of a fundamental and decisive character trait, as in the opening chapter of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. In all cases, the purpose of foreshadowing is to prepare the reader or view for action to come. form A term designating the organization of the elementary parts of a work of art in relation to its total effect; distinguished from content. free verse Verse written without any fixed structure (either in meter or rhyme). Very little of published verse is truly “free” in every respect: poets may give up rhyme and meter, but replace it with parallelism and anaphora (as in Whitman). Freytag’s pyramid A diagram of the structure of a five-act tragedy (inciting moment, rising action, climax or crisis, falling action, moment of last suspense). This pyramid has been widely accepted as a heuristic means of getting at the structure of many kinds of fiction in addition to drama. genre A particular type of writing, e.g. prose, poetry, drama. Genre classification implies that there are groups of formal or technical characteristics among works of the same generic kind regardless of time or place of composition, author, or subject matter. hyperbole Deliberate and extravagant exaggeration. The figure may be bused to heighten effect, or it may be used for humor. Macbeth is using hyperbole here: “No; this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.” image A distinctive element of the language of art by which experience in its richness and complexity is communicated, as opposed to the simplifying and conceptualizing processes of science and philosophy. The image is, therefore, a portion of the essence of the meaning of the literary work, not just decoration. Images may be either literal or figurative, a literal image being one that involves no necessary change or extension in the obvious meaning of the words, one in which the words call up a sensory representation of the literal object or sensation; and a figurative image being one that involves a “turn” on the literal meaning of the words. imagery The use of words to create a picture or "image" in the mind of the reader. Images can relate to any of the senses, not just sight, but also hearing, taste, touch, and smell. "Imagery" is often used to refer to the use of descriptive language, particularly to the use of metaphors and similes. Patterns of imagery, often without the conscious knowledge of author or reader, are sometimes taken to be keys to a deeper meaning of a work. Such patterning is important in fiction, as well contrasting images of light and dark being among the most conspicuous. irony At its simplest level, irony means saying one thing while meaning another. It occurs where a word or phrase has one surface meaning but another contradictory, possibly opposite meaning is implied. Irony is frequently confused with sarcasm. Sarcasm is spoken, often relying on tone of voice, and is much more blunt than irony. The effectiveness of irony is the impression it gives of restraint. The ironist writes with tongue in cheek; for this reason irony is more easily detected in speech than in writing, because the voice can, through its intonation, easily warn the listener of a double significance. loose sentence A sentence grammatically complete before the end; the opposite of PERIODIC SENTENCE. A complex loose sentence consists of an independent clause followed by a dependent clause. Most of the complex sentences we use are loose (the term implies no fault in structure), the PERIODIC SENTENCE being usually reserved for emphasis, drama, and variety. Loose sentences with too many dependent clauses become limp. “Although I just ate, I’m still hungry” is periodic; “I’m still hungry, although I just ate” is loose. lyric Originally a song performed to the accompaniment of a lyre (an early harp-like instrument) but now it can mean a song-like poem or a short poem expressing personal feeling metaphor A comparison of one thing to another in order to make description more vivid. The metaphor actually states that one thing is the other. For example, a simile would be: "The huge knight stood like an impregnable tower in the ranks of the enemy", whereas the corresponding metaphor would be: "The huge knight was an impregnable tower in the ranks of the enemy". (See SIMILE and PERSONIFICATION.) meter The regular use of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry; the recurrence in poetry of a rhythmic pattern, or the rhythm established by the regular occurrence of similar units of sound. metonymy The substitution of the name of an object closely associated with a word for the word itself. We commonly speak of the monarch as “the crown,” an object closely associated with royalty thus being made to stand for it. motif A dominant theme, subject or idea which runs through a piece of literature. Often a "motif" can assume a symbolic importance narrative A piece of writing that tells a story narrator Anyone who recounts a narrative. See also POINT-OF-VIEW. onomatopoeia The use of words whose sound copies the sound of the thing or process that they describe. On a simple level, words like "bang", "hiss", and "splash" are onomatopoeic, but it also has more subtle uses oxymoron A figure of speech which joins together words of opposite meanings, e.g. "the living dead", "bitter sweet", etc. paradox A statement that appears contradictory, but when considered more closely is seen to contain a good deal of truth. Richard Bentley’s statement that there are “none so credulous as infidels” is an illustration, as is “less is more” in Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto.” parallelism Such an arrangement that one element of equal importance with another is similarly developed and phrased. The principle of parallelism dictates that coordinate ideas should have coordinate presentation. Within a sentence, for instance, where several elements of equal importance are to be expressed, if one element is cast in a relative clause the others should be expressed in relative clauses. Conversely, of course, the principle of parallelism demands that unequal elements should not be expressed in similar constructions. Practiced writers are not likely to attempt, for example, the comparison of positive and negative statements, of inverted and uninverted constructions, of dependent and independent clauses. And, for an example of simple parallelism, the sentence immediately preceding may serve. pastiche A French word for a parody or literary imitation. Perhaps for humorous or satirical purposes, perhaps as a mere literary exercise, perhaps in all seriousness, a writer imitates the style or technique of some recognized writer or work. In art a picture is called a pastiche when it manages to catch something of a master’s peculiar style. In music pastiche is applied to a medley or assembly of various pieces into a single work. periodic sentence A sentence not grammatically complete before its end; the opposite of a LOOSE SENTENCE. The periodic sentence is effective when it is designed to arouse interest and curiosity, to hold an idea in suspense before its final revelation. persona Literally a mask. The term is widely used to refer to a “second self” created by an author and through whom the narrative is told. The persona may be a narrator; it can also be not a character but an “implied author.” personification The attribution of human feelings, emotions, or sensations to an inanimate object. Personification is a kind of metaphor where human qualities are given to things or abstract ideas, and they are described as if they were a person perspective Different from the literary usage of point-of-view in that a story can technically be told in the same point-of-view but told from a different perspective. plot The sequence of events in a poem, play, novel, or short story that make up the main storyline point of view The vantage point from which an author tells a story. A narrative is typically told from first person (“I”) or third person (“he”); second person (“you”) is rare. polysyndeton The use of more conjunctions than is normal. Milton’s Satan for example “pursues his way, / And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.” prose Any kind of writing which is not verse - usually divided into fiction and non-fiction protagonist The main character or speaker in a poem, monologue, play, or story pun A play on words that have similar sounds but quite different meanings. An example is Thomas Hood’s: “They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell.” repetition Reiteration of a word, sound, phrase, or idea. One of the most notable examples is Poe’s “The Bells” where repetition is present in rhyme, in meter, and in stanza forms. rhetoric Originally, the art of speaking and writing in such a way as to persuade an audience to a particular point of view. Now this term is often used to imply grand words that have no substance to them. There are a variety of rhetorical devices, such as the rhetorical question - a question which does not require an answer as the answer is either obvious or implied in the question itself. (See APOSTROPHE, EXEMPLUM.) rhyme Corresponding sounds in words, usually at the end of each line but not always. The correspondence of sound is based on the vowels and succeeding consonants of the accented syllables, which must be preceded by different consonant sounds. The types of rhyme are classified according to two schemes: (1) the position of the rhymes in the line, and (2) the number of syllables involved. rhyme scheme The pattern of the rhymes in a poem. For the purpose of analysis, rhyme schemes are usually presented by the assignment of the same letter of the alphabet to each similar sound in a stanza. rhythm The "movement" of the poem as created through the meter and the way that language is stressed within the poem. In both prose and poetry the presence of rhythmic patterns lend both pleasure and heightened emotional response, for it establishes a pattern of expectations and it rewards the listener or reader with the pleasure of a series of fulfillments of expectation. In poetry three different elements may function in a pattern of regular occurrence: quantity, accent, and number of syllables. In prose, despite the absence of the formal regularity of pattern here described for verse, cadence is usually present. satire The highlighting or exposing of human failings or foolishness within a society through ridiculing them. Satire can range from being gentle and light to being extremely biting and bitter in tone, e.g. Swift's Gulliver's Travels or A Modest Proposal, and George Orwell's Animal Farm setting The background against which action takes place. The elements making up a setting are: 1. The geographical location, its topography, scenery, and such physical arrangements as the location of the windows and doors in a room 2. The occupations and daily manner of living of the characters 3. The time or period in which the action takes place, for example, epoch in history or season of the year 4. The general environment of the characters, for example, religious, mental, moral, social, and emotional conditions. When setting dominates, or when a work is written largely to present the manners and customs of a locality, the result is local color writing or regionalism. simile A comparison of one thing to another in order to make description more vivid. Similes use the words "like" or "as" in this comparison. A simile is generally the comparison of two things essentially unlike, on the basis of resemblance in one aspect. It is not a simile to say, “My house is like your house” even though a comparison does exist. soliloquy A speech in which a character, alone on stage, expresses his or her thoughts and feelings aloud for the benefit of the audience, often in a revealing way sonnet A fourteen-line poem, usually with ten syllables in each line. There are several ways in which the lines can be organized, but often they consist of an octave and a sestet stanza The blocks of lines into which a poem is divided. (Sometimes these are, less precisely, referred to as verses, which can lead to confusion as poetry is sometimes called "verse".) stream of consciousness A technique in which the writer records thoughts and emotions in a "stream" as they come to mind, without giving order or structure structure The way that a poem or play or other piece of writing has been put together. This can include the meter pattern, stanza arrangement, and the way the ideas are developed, etc.Often authors advertise their structure as a means of securing clarity (as in some college textbooks), whereas at other times their artistic purpose leads them to conceal the structure (as in narratives) or subordinate it altogether (as in some INFORMAL ESSAYS). In fiction, the structure is generally regarded today as the most reliable as well as the most revealing key to the meaning of the work. In the contemporary criticism of poetry, too, structure is used to define not only verse form and formal arrangement but also the sequences of images and ideas that convey meaning. style The individual way in which a writer has used language to express his or her ideas.Style combines two elements: the idea to be expressed and the individuality of the author. From the point of view of style it is impossible to change the diction to say exactly the same thing; for what the reader receives from a statement is not only what is said, but also certain CONNOTATIONS that affect the consciousness. Just as no two personalities are alike, no two styles are exactly alike. It has been observed that even infants have individual styles. Even in so limited a medium as Morse code, each sender has a style, called a “fist.” A mere recital of some categories may suggest the infinite range of manners the word style covers: we speak, for instance, of journalistic, scientific, or literary styles; we call the manners of other writers abstract or concrete, rhythmic or pedestrian, sincere or artificial, dignified or comic, original or imitative, dull or vivid, low or plain or high. But if we are actually to estimate a style, we need more delicate tests than these; we need terms so scrupulous in their sensitiveness as to distinguish the work of each writer from that of all other writers, because, as has been said, no two styles are exactly comparable. A study of styles for the purpose of analysis will include, in addition to the infinity of personal detail suggested above, such general qualities as: DICTION, sentence structure and variety, IMAGERY, RHYTHM, REPETITION, COHERENCE, emphasis, and arrangement of ideas. There is a growing interest in the study of style and language in fiction. subplot A subordinate or minor story in a piece of fiction. This secondary plot interest, if skillfully handled, has a direct relation to the main plot. suspense Anticipation as to the outcome of events, particularly as they affect a character for whom one has sympathy. Suspense a major device for securing and maintaining interest. It may be either of two major types: in one, the outcome is uncertain and the suspense resides in the question of who or what or how; in the other, the outcome is inevitable from foregoing events and the suspense resides in the audience’s anxious or frightened anticipation, in the question of when. symbol Like images, symbols represent something else. In very simple terms a red rose is often used to symbolize love; distant thunder is often symbolic of approaching trouble. Symbols can be very subtle and multi-layered in their significance synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to stand for the whole thing or the whole signifies the part. To be clear, a good synecdoche ought to be based on an important part of the whole, and usually, the part standing for the whole ought to be directly associated with the subject at hand. Thus, under the first restriction we say “threads” for “clothes” and “wheels” for “car,” and under the scone we speak of infantry on the march as “foot” rather than as “hands” just as we use “hands” rather than “foot” for people who work at manual labor. syntax The way in which sentences are structured. Sentences can be structured in different ways to achieve different effects. technique The sum of working methods or special skills. Technique may be applied very broadly, as when one says, “The symbolic journey is a major technique in Joyce’s Ulysses,” or very narrowly to refer to the minutiae of method, or in an intermediate sense, as in STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. In all cases, however, technique refers to how something is done rather than to what is done. Technique, FORM, STYLE, and “manner” overlap somewhat, with technique connoting the literal, mechanical, or procedural parts of execution. theme A central idea. In nonfiction prose it may be thought of as the general topic of discussion, the subject of the discourse, the THESIS. In poetry, fiction, and drama it is the abstract concept that is made concrete through representation in person, action, and image. No proper theme is simply a subject or an activity. Both theme and thesis imply a subject and a predicate of some kind – not just vice in general, say, but some such proposition as “Vice seems more interesting than virtue but turns out to be destructive.” “Human wishes” is a topic or subject; the “vanity of human wishes” is a theme. tone The tone of a text is created through the combined effects of a number of features, such as diction, syntax, rhythm, etc. The tone is a major factor in establishing the overall impression of the piece of writing understatement Saying less than is actually meant, generally in an ironic way. When someone says “pretty fair” but means “splendid,” that is an understatement. verisimilitude The term indicates the degree to which a work creates the appearance of truth. zeugma A device that joins together two apparently incongruous things by applying a verb or adjective to both which only really applies to one of them, e.g. "Kill the boys and the luggage" (Shakespeare's Henry V).