Critical Concepts

This page is under construction and will remain so indefinitely. Suggestions for additions and modifications are welcome.   Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu  .

There are many excellent handbooks that cover literary critical terminology, together (often) with a good deal of useful literary history.  And there are a number of on-line guides and glossaries devoted to reading and writing about literature. 

The articles below tend to be moderately long, because they undertake to clear up certain confusions my experience tells me students can often benefit from clearing up.  However, there are occasions on which such detail is beside the point, and a much briefer entry would be more helpful.  Anthologies designed for classroom use often have this kind of apparatus, usually tucked away as an appendix.  Be sure to look in the back of the one you are using.  Meanwhile, here is a useful short glossary online

Glossary of Literary Terms at Research Links to accompany Michael Meyer's The Bedford Introduction to Literature

In the present project (designed for undergraduate courses I teach at Kansas State University) discussions are available for the highlighted terms in the list that follows.  Non-highlighted terms will be addressed shortly, since they are referenced in the articles on the terms already discussed.  Important terms not so far listed will be included in due time.

• Ability (important distinctions among various current senses of the term)
• Abstract (and Concrete)
• Allegory, symbol, and proportional analogy
• Allusion
• Analogy, allegory, parable
  • One of Freud's analogies for explaining his concept of "repression"
  • Freud's parable of the horse of Schilda
  • Symbol and allegory in Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil"
• Analysis (vs. explication)
• Category errors (see also "category violation," below)
  • Some examples of category error concerning the psychological concept of "repression"
• Category violation
• Character and characterization
  • Assessing an agent's responsibility for actions & their consequences
    • See also the entry on self-deception in The Sceptic's Dictionary.
  • Flat vs. Round Characterization
  • Static vs. Dynamic Characterization
  • Characterization:  types of, as a basis for classifying plots
• Concrete (and Abstract)
• Conflict
• Contrast
• Dramatic question
• Dramatic situation
• Dramatic irony
• Dramatic monologue
• Epiphany
• Explication (vs. analysis)
• Exposition (two senses)
• First person narration / narrator
• Foil
• Initiation story
• Interior monologue
• Irony
  • Dramatic irony
  • Situational irony
  • Verbal irony
• Motif
• Unreliable narrator:  see first-person narrator
• Objectivity (in interpretation)
• Overstatement:  see verbal irony.
• Parable
  • See "analogy"
• Persona
  • See dramatic monologue
  • See first-person narrator
• Plot:  
  • Action / Story / Plot [under construction]
  • Dramatic question and suspense
  • Dramatic situation
• Exposition and precipitating incident
• Rising Action
  • Dramatic situation
  • Conflict (see Dramatic Situation, above)
  • Crisis | Turning Point
  • Climax
  • Epiphany
• Falling Action | Resolution | Dénouement
• Plots classified in terms of characterization
• Point of view:
  • Foil and Point of View
  • First-Person Narration/Narrator
  • PoV of a story vs. PoV of a person or of a fictional character
  • "Objective Narration" | "Omniscient Narration" | "Reliable Narration"
  • See also:  Dramatic Monologue

• Reason (and objectivity in interpretation)
• Repression (psychological)
  • One of Freud's analogies for explaining his concept of "repression":  the rowdy in the lecture hall
  • Freud's parabolization of the horse of Schilda
  • Some examples of category error concerning the psychological concept of "repression"
  • See also the entry on self-deception in The Sceptic's Dictionary.
• Research paper
• Responsibility:  assessing an agent's responsibility for actions & their consequences
• Revision, "microscopic"
• Sarcasm:  see verbal irony.
• Self-deception (entry from The Sceptic's Dictionary).
• Soliloquy.  Compare and contrast dramatic monologue.
• Suspense:  see dramatic question.
• Symbol, allegory, and proportional analogy.
• Understatement:    see verbal irony.
• Verbal irony.

On-line guides

Several publishers of introductory literature texts have constructed web sites supporting their texts with additional material on authors covered and on critical concepts.  These are definitely worth a look.

• Research Links is maintained by Bedford/St. Martin's, the publisher of Michael Meyer's The Bedford Introduction to Literature.  Bedford/St. Martin's also publishes the useful books by Murfin and Ray and by Richter, cited in the next section in this page.
• Literature Online is Addison-Wesley-Longman's companion for the 8th Edition of X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia's Literature:  An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
• The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction Online is a similar resource for Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn's The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction.
• Norton Topics Online offers companions to the famous Norton Anthology of English Literature and Norton Anthology of American Literature.  Both are organized chronologically, and provide a wealth of relevant historical and cultural information. 
• Literature Online (LION) is a vast compilation of texts and commentary, available to students and faculty at KSU through the Hale Library Interface.  It requires logging on with your K-State eID.  (People elsewhere may be able to get access to this through their university or local library, depending on whether the library in question has entered into the requisite agreement with the proprietor, ProQuest Information and Learning Company.  Check with a librarian at your library.)
• Extremely rich is the Voice of the Shuttle, a comprehensive index to resources on the Web having to do with the Humanities.  See for example its pages on Literature - in English and Literature (Other Than English).

Writing centers at a couple of universities also offer some helpful brief guides to reading literature and writing about literary works.:

• "Some Basic Guidelines for Reading Literature" is a handout published by the Undergraduate Writing Center at U Texas - Austin, which has things to say about writing about works of literature as well as reading them.
• "Writing about Fiction" -- a handout from the Purdue University On-line Writing Lab -- is actually about more than writing on fiction.  It offers hints for reading more productively, and gives short definitions of some basic literary critical terms (characterization, conflict, dialogue, imagery, point of view, symbol, tone).

In addition, there are some fairly sophisticated glossaries of literary critical and rhetorical terms that can be consulted on the web.  The definitions given are succinct, and therefore (with few exceptions) do not touch on some of the complexities worth thinking about, but they extend to many more terms than will be covered on this site.  Here are some:

• "A Handbook of Terms for Discussing Poetry" has been put together by Harry Rusche and the students of English 205, "Introduction to Poetry," at Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia).  Among the topics covered (on linked pages) are:  figurative language, language and meaning, poetic kinds and genres, rhythm and meters, stanzas and verse forms.
• Both "A Glossary of Literary Terms" and "A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices" has been put compiled by Robert Harris, Professor of English at Southern California College in Costa Mesa, California.
• A "Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples" has been composed by Ross Scaife of the Classics Department at the University of Kentucky.  It concludes with a list of links to other sites with material of possible interest to its users.
• "A Brief List of Some Key Terms in Literature" has been compiled by Dr. Ismail Talib of the National University of Singapore.  Brief definitions are supplemented with links to more detailed discussion of some topics.
• "Rhetoric Resources at Georgia Tech" takes you to discussions of key terms in the study of rhetoric (and to treatments of some of the historically famous thinkers about rhetoric, as well as important themes relating to rhetoric).

 Return to List of Critical Terms.

Books

By far the most extensive and informative discussions of literary critical terminology is to be found in books, not on the Web. Here is a list of a few items well worth seeking out.  Serious readers of literature will want to own at least one.  Later editions than the ones I have listed may be available.  (Conversely, you may be able to run across older editions - still highly useful! ­ to be had at very little expense.  You can shop for these on the web at several sites offering new or used books.)  I have listed the following in approximate order of complexity and thoroughness.

• Barnet, Sylvan, Morton Berman, and William Burto.  A Dictionary of Literary, Dramatic, and Cinematical Terms.  2^nd Ed.  Boston: Little, Brown and Company.  1971.

• Abrams, M.H.  A Glossary of Literary Terms.  4^th Ed.  New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston.  1981.

• Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray.  The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms.  Boston:  Bedford Books.  1997.

• Cuddon, J.A.  The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory.  3^rd Ed.  New York:  Penguin Books USA.  1991.

• Lentricchia, Frank, and Thomas McLaughlin, eds.  Critical Terms for Literary Study.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.  1990.

• Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth, eds.  The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism.  Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press.  1994.

For a more thorough bibliography of such works, see "Some Dictionaries of Literary Theory and Related Areas," compiled by Lowell Edmunds of the Classics Department at Rutgers University.

An excellent introduction to contemporary debates in "literary theory" is David H. Richter, ed., Falling into Theory:  Conflicting Views on Reading Literature, 2nd Edition.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin's.  2000. 

This contains a number of clearly written, passionately committed, conflicting answers to three questions that serious readers (not confined to people majoring in literature, but certainly including them!) will sooner or later want to develop their own answers to:  (1) Why should we read?  (More specifically:  why read literature in analytical way (instead of "just enjoying it" in an immediate way, without "thinking about it")?  (2) What should we read?  (That is, how might we decide what works are worth spending our time on)?  (3) How should we read? (Or:  since there are so many different approaches and points of view that we might adopt, which should we pick, and why?)  There is a website designed to supplement this text, but of course can't be (and isn't intended to be) a substitute for dipping into the text itself.

An illuminating discussion of the ethical issues raised by various positions within contemporary literary theory is Wayne C. Booth's The Company We Keep:  An Ethics of Fiction.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1990.

There is a useful annotation on Booth's book at the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database at New York University

 Return to List of Critical Terms.

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

     Contents copyright © 2000 by Lyman A. Baker. 

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

     This document last revised 26 August, 2004 .