Understanding Literary Genres and Devices

Fiction and Prose Narratives

Fiction: In literature, a work created from the imagination of the writer.

Novel: A lengthy and complex fictional prose narrative dealing imaginatively with the human condition using a connected series of events and a group of characters in a specific setting.

Short Story: A brief fictional prose narrative usually concerning a single effect portrayed in a single episode or scene and with a limited number of characters focusing on unity of characterization, theme, and effect.

Poetry and Verse Forms

Poetry: A work designed to convey a vivid and imaginative sense experience through the use of condensed language selected for its sound and suggestive power and meaning, and employing specific technical devices, such as meter, rhyme, and metaphor.

Narrative Verse: A poem that tells a story.

Epic: A long narrative poem in elevated style celebrating heroic achievement.

Ballad: A sung or recited narrative.

Dramatic Poetry: A verse composition portraying life or character or telling a story involving conflicts and emotions through action and dialogue.

Lyric Poetry: Originally intended to be sung and accompanied by a lyre.

Types of Sonnets

Sonnet: A fixed verse form.

Shakespearean Sonnet (English): A poem of fourteen lines grouped into three quatrains and a couplet with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.

Petrarchan Sonnet (Italian): A poem of fourteen lines divided into an octave rhyming abbaabba and a sestet with a variable rhyme scheme; it can be cdecde, cdcdcd, cdecde, or some other variation that never ends in a final couplet.

Nonfiction and Literary Elements

Nonfiction: Works based on fact rather than imagination, although nonfiction can contain some fictional elements.

Point of View: The perspective from which a story is related to the reader.

Plot: The structure of the work comprising crisis, climax, exposition, complication, and dénouement, foreshadowing, discovery, and reversals.

Theme: The dominant idea of a work of literature.

Imagery: A verbal representation of objects, feelings, or ideas; can be literal or figurative.

Metaphor: A figure of speech that substitutes one word or phrase for another, suggesting a likeness between them.

Allegory: A symbolic representation. The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form; a fictional narrative that conveys a secondary meaning or meanings not explicitly set forth in the literal narrative.

Rhyme: An echoing by two or more words with similar-sounding final syllables.

Meter: A systematically arranged and measured rhythm in verse. A fixed pattern or verse form.