Academic year: 2019/2020 (Semester II)

Level: 1st year master/literature

Module: Translation of literary and historical texts

Glossory of Literary Terms

-Essay: short piece of writing on a single subject.

-Fiction: stories from a writer’s imagination.

-Folklore: stories (folk tales), customs and beliefs of a racial or national group.

-Free Verse: poetry in a form that doesn’t follow any regular pattern.

-Genre: particular kind of writing.

-Gothic novel: eighteenth-century story of mystery and horror set in lonely places.

-Idealism: living life according to one’s ideals: what one considers perfect; adj. idealistic.

-Ideology: set of ideas that may point the way for society.

-Image: a picture brought into the mind by words; imagery=the use of such words.

-Impression: effect produced on the mind; impressionistic= trying to give an impression

without describing in detail.

-Inspire: cause a flow of fine feelings or great thoughts.

-Irony: a use of words which are clearly opposite to one’s meaning, often laughingly (as
when one says “what beautiful weather “on a day of very bad weather); adj. Ironic,
ironical.

-Journalism: writing for newspapers.

-Legend: old story passed down (possibly based on actual events).

-Light verse: poetry without (very) serious purposes.

-Lyrical: expressing strong feelings, usually in song-like form; also lyric as adj.

-Manuscript: the author’s original piece of writing (formerly hand-written).

-Melodrama: play which is very exciting but unlike real life.

-Metaphor: a way of expressing one idea by naming an other thing to which it can be
compared (not using “as” or “like”) e.g. the roses in her cheeks.
-Meter: arrangement of words in regular groups of strong and weak beats in poetry.

-Montage: a piece of writing made from separate parts combined together.

-Mood: a state of the feelings.

-Motive: cause (reason, desire etc) of a person’s actions.

-Muckraker: one who collects the shameful facts (muck=dirt) about people.

-Myth: ancient story with magic elements, mythical=of or like myths,

-Mythology=collection of myths.

-Narrator: person who tells (narrates) the story (narrative).

-Naturalism: the idea that art and literature should present the world and people just as
science shows they really are.

-Neoclassical: new (neo) or modern style based on ancient Greek or Roman writing.

-Novel: book-length story, novelist= a writer of novels.

-Obscene: going into usually unacceptable details about sex.etc.

-Optimistic: believing that good will win in the end.

-Pamphlet: short book of a few pages.

-Personality: character.

-Pessimism: the belief that in this world evil is more powerful than good.

-Phase: stage of development.

-Playwright: writer of plays for the theatre.

-Plot: set of events that make up a story.

-Preface: the writer’s introduction to his or her book.

-Prose: written language which is not poetry.

-Publish: print and sell (books etc.) publisher, publication.

-Quatrain: group of 4 lines of poetry in fixed form.

-Realism: showing things as they really are.

-Review: critical essay on new books etc; to review= to consider or reconsider the value
of.

-Rhythm: expected beat or movement.

-Romanticism: admiring wild (not man-made) beauty and feelings (emotion) not thought.

-Satire: making the reader laugh at the faults in people or ideas.

-Sentimental: expressing (too much of) tender feelings; sentimentalism=too great an

interest in such feelings.

-Sermon: religious address.

-Sonnet: 14 line poem with definite rhyme patterns.

-Stanza: one of the groups of lines that make up a poem.

-Suspense: anxious waiting.

-Symbol: something that represents an idea; adj. Symbolic; symbolism= a use in literature
of symbols to represent real things, feelings etc.

-Target: the thing one aims at (in satire etc.).

-Tension: anxiety in situation or between people.

-Theme: subject (of a piece of writing etc).

-Tragedy: serious play for the theatre, with a sad ending; any very sad event; adj. Tragic.

-Transcendentalist: one who believes that man can find truth through his own feelings.

-Trend: direction of development.

-Trilogy: a group of 3 books related in subjects but each complete in itself.

-Trochaic: using trochee, feet of two sounds, stressed, followed by unstressed.

-Utopia: perfect country (as described in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, 1516) utopian.

Mr. LACHOURI