Glossary of Literary Terms
1. Acotación Stage
A note in a play where the author instructs on everything related to the scenario, action, or movement of the characters. It ranges from the simple indication of entrances and exits of the characters in classical theater to the detailed description of the characters in realist theater.
2. Ballad / Ode
A ballad is a fixed form of courtly song from the European Middle Ages. It is unique in repeating the same verse, or chorus, at the end of three stanzas. It consists of eight syllables and the rhymes are cruzadas.
A lyrical ode is a composition in verse, of medium length and noble and lofty theme. It expresses the admiration excited by something or someone, and may be sacred, heroic, philosophical, or amatory.
3. Caligrama
A term taken from the work of the French poet Apollinaire, Calligrames. This is a poem where the arrangement of the lines suggests a graphical form. It is a kind of poetry to look at and see as well as to read (visual poetry). In concrete poetry, the poet draws an object related to the main theme of the poem, though, sometimes there are visual poems written in the form of a drawing, but with no item from the work.
4. Cancionero
European medieval love poems. Usually formed chapbooks or poems copied from other songbooks, clean, printed books or manuscripts, etc. Some of these collections came to be disseminated through the press, but others have been preserved in manuscript copies. The oldest known in Spain is the Cancionero de Baena (1445).
5. Carpe Diem
This is a literary topic, recurrent in literature, exhorting people to not let the time we have been given pass by, or, to enjoy the pleasures of life apart from the future that is uncertain. It is particularly important in the Renaissance, Baroque, and Romanticism.
6. Catharsis
This is the liberating effect exerted by tragedy on the audience. According to Aristotle, tragedy must produce in the audience feelings of pity and terror, to purify them of these emotions, so they leave the theater feeling clean and high, with a high understanding of the ways of men and gods.
7. Arthurian Cycle
From the twelfth century, Arthur was the central character of the cycle of legends known as the Matter of Britain, appearing in many French romances. Chretien de Troyes added other legends to its essential elements, including the figure of Lancelot and the relationship with the Holy Grail.
8. Climax / Anticlimax
Climax is the point at which the plot of a literary work is at its highest tension. The climax is often placed at the outcome of the work. Anticlimax is a time of growing tension that resolves without causing a final increase of tension which would have led to the narrative climax; this happens, for example, when a violent conflict on stage is soon resolved peacefully.
9. Contrapunto
The explicit contrast of characters, ideas, times, places, or situations in a literary work. It presents concurrent different planes at once (on one page the characters go from present to past and back to the future, etc.).
10. Decadentismo
The Decadent movement is an artistic, philosophical and, especially, literary one, which originated in France in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and developed in almost all European and American countries. Decadent literary writers are all those linked to the spiritual or formal heritage of Baudelaire.
11. Diegesis
This is the point of view from which the narrator stands to narrate the past, present, or future on the grounds of a work. Whether the narrator is involved in the narrative as a character in it, or if it remains out of the argument, the narrator is always an intradiegetic character. When there is no narrator, as in plays, there is mimesis but no diegesis of the characters.
12. Dramática
A literary genre that represents some event or conflict in the lives of human beings through dialogue of the characters. It corresponds to the generic name of any literary creation in which an artist named playwright conceives and develops an event within a given space and time. The facts relate to people or characters that represent a specific and direct human conflict.
13. Eclogue / Idyll
The eclogue is a subgenre of lyric poetry with a theme of love in which one or more shepherds converse in a rural environment where nature is paradise and has a high musical profile.
The idyll is a literary sub-genre of Greek lyric poetry of Greece, with the theme of love, and dialogue between pastors, developed into a nice nature or paradise, which the creator identifies with the landscape of Arcadia. Its counterpart in Latin literature or Roman literature is the eclogue.
14. Enciclopedismo
The encyclopedic movement is the philosophical and educational movement expressed through the Encyclopedia published in France in the eighteenth century by Diderot and d’Alembert. Through this movement they sought to develop a monumental work, which would summarize the enlightened thought of the time, that is, all the knowledge of their time, and was called Encyclopedia.
15. Épica
The epic poem is a literary genre in which the author presents objective legendary or fictional facts developed in a certain space and time. The author uses as a form of expression common narrative, although there may be also description and dialogue.
16. Epistle
An epistle is a writing directed or sent to a person or a group of people that usually takes the form of a letter; after the Renaissance it became an almost dignified essay text by a demanding and formal style, often provided with didactic or moral intent, but sometimes merely a function dedicated to distraction.
17. Erasmismo
A movement that emerged from the ideas of Erasmus of Rotterdam. He criticizes the corruption of the clergy, superstition, and external aspects of the Catholic religion because it prefers an inward and spiritual religion. On the other hand, he is against wars, especially those of religion.
18. Automatic Writing
This is the process or outcome of writing that is not of the writer’s conscious thoughts. It is a way to draw out the subconscious. Writing is to start letting the thoughts flow as they arise, without any coercion, moral, social, or of any kind. It was defended as a method of literary creation by André Breton and the Surrealists in the first half of the twentieth century.
19. Existentialism
Although there is no clear and unanimous theoretical definition, the shared conception points to a philosophical movement whose central tenet is that human beings are, individually, those who create meaning and essence of their lives. Existentialist philosophical questions tend to peer into the depths of the human condition.
20. Fable / Apologue
Fables are short literary compositions in which the characters are almost always animals or objects that have human characteristics such as speech, movement, etc. These stories conclude with a moral teaching or instructional message, usually placed at the end of the text.
An apologue is a narrative whose purpose is instruction on some principle or moral or ethical behavior, usually at the bottom or top of it and called moral. Unlike the fable, which shares a similar end, it does not star animals, but people.
21. Flashback or Retrospect
The flashback is a technique used both in film and literature that alters the timing of the story, connecting at different times and moving the action to the past.
22. Hero
A hero or heroine is an eminent figure who embodies the quintessence of the key traits valued in their culture of origin. Usually the hero has superhuman abilities or idealized personality traits that allow them to perform extraordinary and beneficial feats (“heroic acts”) for which they are famous. However, in literature and especially in tragedies, the hero may also have serious flaws which lead to perdition.
23. Intertextuality
Intertextuality means the set of relationships that bring a particular text to other texts from various sources: the same author or, more commonly, from others, from the same period or earlier periods.
24. Lírica
The lyric is a literary genre in which the author expresses their moods, feelings, or reactions to the outside world. It is therefore extremely subjective.
25. Literature of the Absurd
The absurd is a literary technique involving the introduction of zero elements in a logical, consistent, predictable framework, but incompatible with the new item. It is a recurrent feature in humor. In contemporary literature it highlights the existentialist value that claimed the so-called “Theatre of the Absurd.”