GLOSSARY
often contains elements of anxiety,
loneliness, and paranoia in characters’
reactions to a meaningless universe.fable A simple story with a moral
message, often featuring animal
characters and mythical elements.fairy tale A short tale featuring
folkloric fantasy characters and
wonderful events, and set in a magical,
timeless, and usually rural world.fiction A work that is entirely invented,
consisting of a made-up narrative and
imaginary characters. A work of fiction
may be wholly fantastical or embedded
in the real world. In a wider sense,
fiction is the genre consisting of
novels and stories.folklore The traditional beliefs,
legends, and customs of a culture,
passed down by oral tradition for many
hundreds (or even thousands) of years.folktale A popular or traditional tale
handed down from generation to
generation by oral transmission;
another name for a fairy tale.frame narrative An outer narrative
that introduces a story (or stories)
contained within it—generally via a
character who narrates the main, inner
story. The frame provides context and
structure, and sometimes incorporates
many different stories, as in Giovanni
Boccaccio’s The Decameron and Geoffrey
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.genre A style or category of literature
(or art or music), such as tragedy,
comedy, history, spy fiction, science
fiction, romance, or crime.gothic A genre that explores the
limits of the imagination, originating
in England and Germany in the late
18th and early 19th centuries. Its
features include gloomy, macabre
settings (such as castles, ruins, or
graveyards), supernatural beings
(such as ghosts and vampires), and
an atmosphere of mystery and horror.haiku A Japanese form comprising
a short poem with three lines of five,
seven, and five syllables respectively,
and traditionally dealing with the
natural world. It flourished from the
17th to the 19th centuries and became
popular in Western literature in the
20th century.hard-boiled fiction A type of urban
crime fiction originating with the
American pulp-fiction detective
magazines of the 1920s, often with a
sardonic private investigator as the
protagonist, and featuring gangsters,
prostitutes, guns, sex, and violence, as
well as fast, colloquial dialogue.Harlem Renaissance A flourishing
of black American writing (also art and
music) that came out of the new black
middle class in 1920s’ Harlem, New
York. Lasting from around 1918 to the
early 1930s, it helped establish a black
cultural identity in the US.humanism During the Renaissance,
an intellectual movement springing
from a revived interest in classical
Greek and Roman thought; today, a
largely secular, rationalist system of
thought that emphasizes human rather
than divine agency.legend A traditional story, linked to
historical events, people, or locations,
and operating within the realms of the
possible (as opposed to a myth, which
incorporates supernatural elements),
although the exact dates and details
may have been lost.magic realism A postmodern style
of artistic expression that in literature
takes the form of a traditional realist
narrative into which bizarre or
supernatural elements are introduced,
forcing the reader to reevaluate the
reality of the surrounding fiction.metafiction A type of postmodern
writing that uses techniques to
remind the reader of the artificiality
of a fictional work (for example by
including the author as a character,or by having characters who are
aware that they are in a story), to
draw attention to the relationship
between fiction and real life.metaphor A figure of speech that adds
an extra layer of meaning to an object
by equating it with something else.meter In poetry, the rhythm of a
piece of verse, dictated by the “feet”
(stressed syllables) in a line.Modernism In literature, a movement
that lasted from the late 19th to the
mid-20th century. It broke with
traditional forms and expanded
the limits of poetry and fiction with
experimental methods that sought
a new level of psychological truth,
such as stream of consciousness.motif A theme that returns several
times throughout a work, and which
may reflect on and enhance the other
themes or central message of a work.myth A symbolic account of gods or
superhuman beings existing in a time
apart from ordinary human history,
used to explain the customs, rituals,
and beliefs of a people or culture. Often
mentioned in the same phrase as, but
different from, legend.narrative An account of a series of
connected events, whether fictional
or nonfictional.narrative voice The way in which
a narrative is communicated to the
reader, for example via a first-person
or an omniscient narrator.naturalism A literary movement that
went further than realism in trying to
recreate human behavior in exact and
precise detail. It also tried to show how
people (especially the poor) are formed
by their environments and social
pressures, and it was often criticized
for concentrating on human misery.
It originated in France in the mid-19th
century, and is perhaps best exemplified
by the novels of Émile Zola.341
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