EN 110: Introduction to Literary Studies

Stokes

Critical Terms

NOTE: All terms can be found in The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms.

What is Literature, and What Do We Do With It?

authorial intention
criticism
intentional fallacy
formalism
New Criticism
gaps
implied author
implied reader
irony
metaphor
motif
narrator
point of view
symbol/sign
syntax
tone

Forms I: Poetry and Drama

absurd
allusion
anapest
blank verse
close reading
dactyl
denotation/connotation
diction
free verse
iamb
lyric
metafiction
scansion
sonnet
style
trochee

Context

hegemony
ideology
modernism

Forms II: Narrative

first-person point of view
naive hero
narrator
point of view
third-person point of view
omniscient
unreliable narrator

Theories

cultural criticism
feminist/gender criticism
new historicism
psychoanalytic criticism
queer theory
reception criticism
reader-response criticism

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