Terminology linked to structure and plot

Act and Scene The major structural divisions of a play are called acts, and their sub-divisions scenes. An act or scene changes to indicate either the passage of time, a new action or a change of place. Shakespeare's plays have five acts, whereas most modem plays have two or three.

Blank Verse Poetry that is written in lines of unrhymed iambic pentameters. It is very common in English and can be used for telling a story or thinking about ideas and feel- ings. It is worthwhile noticing how regular and insistent its rhythms are.
Shakespeare uses blank verse in his plays. There is usually no point in drawing attention to this, unless there are very interesting variations in the rhythm of a line. Such variations are usually the expression of deep emotion. For instance, Hamlet's order to his mother, 'Look here upon this picture, and on this', could be scanned in the usual way, but that would not reflect its emotional quality. To do that justice, the line should be scanned:

Loók heŕe upoń thiś pićtuře, anď ŏn thís…

It is also important to notice when Shakespeare uses verse which is not blank verse. For instance, the witches in Macbeth and the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream speak in trochees rather than iambs. Trochees sound different, thus making the witches and fairies seem strange, non-human creatures. (See also Metre.)

Cadence The rise and fall in pitch the voice makes when at the end of a line, a sentence or caesura. The emotional impact of poetry is often created by cadences. There is no technical language to describe their effect, though they are often said to be 'rising', 'falling' or 'steady'. When you write about cadences, you should try to characterise the emotional effect they create. For instance, the close of the passage about skating from Book I of Wordsworth's The Prelude is effective because the steady cadence enacts the peace of untroubled sleep:

   and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

Caesura The break in a line of poetry. The convention for marking a caesura is ||. Caesuras are important because they mark changes in tone, in argument and emotion. They can also produce comic effects, particularly when what follows the caesura is very different from what preceded it. When writing about a caesura, you should never just point to its existence but try to describe the impact that it has. For instance, the caesura in the last line of Yeats's 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death' is effective because there is no break in the previous line (there are very few in the poem) and because it enacts the clear-sighted thoughtfulness of one who has come to a momentous decision:

A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life,  || this death.

Counterpoint    A word borrowed from music to indicate how some syllables in an otherwise regular line produce variations on the set rhythm. You should only use the term if you want to discuss the emotional or intellectual effect of the variation. The opening of Larkin's 'Church Going' is basically iambic until the last three emphatic words of the second line, which have the effect of enclosing the poet in the church, the poet's thoughts in his head, and the reader in the poem:

Onće Í am suŕe thĕre's nóthiňg góiňg oń
Ĭ stép iňsiďe, léttinģ thé doór thúd shuť.
the counterpointing of the rhythm fixes poet and reader in one place and prepares them both for the serious and sensitive meditations that are to come. (See also Metre and Scansion.)

Denouement    A term that may be used of both novels and plays when talking about the way the tangled elements of a plot are untied. Denouements are often linked to discoveries, because it's often in the light of a discovery that a plot can be wound up. Because plots are more important in comic rather than tragic works, their denouements are more complex and, often, more intriguing. The unveiling of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing (a discovery) leads to the hoped for denouement - the publicly declared love of Beatrice and Benedick. (See also Discovery, Resolution and Reversal.)

Discovery     The moment, usually towards the close of a plot, when something is disclosed which alters the situation and allows the plot to be resolved. In Jane Eyre, for instance, her discovery that Rochester's wife is dead enables the plot to end with the marriage that both Jane and the reader desire. In Twelfth Night the discovery that makes possible the winding up of the plot is the public realisation that Sebastian and Viola are twins. (See also Resolution and Reversal.)

Disjunction     The event which by disturbing or rupturing the customary pattern of life initiates the main elements of a plot. The arrival, for instance, of Mr Bingley in the opening chapter of Pride and Prejudice is the disjunction that makes possible the subsequent events of the plot.

End-stopped and Run-on Lines.    An end-stopped line is one in which the grammatical unit, be it clause or sentence, is coterminous with the line. Thus, there is the satisfaction of finding the line and the sense ending together. A run-on line (sometimes called an enjambed line) is where the grammar, and thus the sense, is left unfinished at the end of the line. Run-on lines create pleasurable feelings of expectation, as the reader has to look further for the full sense of what is being said.

Epic Simile    The comparison of one thing in terms of another in which the idea intro- duced to make the comparison (the vehicle) is developed in a lengthy passage to form a vivid picture. Epic similes are effective when there is an appropriateness in the comparison. For instance, in Book I of Milton's Paradise Lost the fallen angels rising from the burning lake of Hell are compared to the plague of locusts brought down upon Egypt by Amram's son - Moses:

   As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son in Egypt's evil day
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of hell ...

The appropriateness is not just a visual one; Milton shows that both the locusts and fallen angels were a plague - the former upon Egypt, the latter upon the whole of mankind.

Epigram    Either a brief, usually witty, statement or a short poem which makes a simple but often dramatic or humorous point. You will probably use the first meaning more than the second. Often it is useful to call a deft line or remark epigrammatic. By that you are saying it is punchy and memorable. T. S. Eliot's 'Whispers of Immortality' has a grimly epigrammatic thrust:

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures underground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Epiphany      James Joyce used this word to indicate those moments of illumination that often come to characters, particularly those in short stories, at the climax of the plot. An epiphany can be something seen or understand or something familiar which, for the first time, is seen for what it is. It's useful when writing about those moments of insight that come to Katherine Mansfield's characters, often at the very end of the story. (See also Discovery).

Expectation    The effect of being led to think that something is going to happen. Short stories, novels and plays all build up expectations in readers and audiences. Expectations are built upon what is known about events and characters, and also on what the characters themselves expect to happen. Whenever you write about expectation, you should stress that it is the author, or playwright, who is responsible for creating it. (See also Surprise and Relief.)

Foreshadowing         A term used when an author gives a hint or clue to events that will happen later in a text. Foreshadowing can take many forms, but includes symbolism, parallel events & characters and intertextual or subtextual references.

Frame       You have to be careful when using this term because in Theatre Studies it has a quite specific meaning, which is concerned with the perspectives an audience is given when viewing a set of events. In English the term is broader and simpler. It is used of any action that provides a context for a subsequent action. Its most popular use is in drama when there is a play within a play, as in the Induction of The Taming of the Shrew; or in novels where one narrative leads to another, as in the incidents at the start of Heart of Darkness which provide the frame for Marlowe's narrative.

Half-rhyme    The effect that is created when the consonants of two words in a rhyming position have the same sounds but the vowels do not. In effect, it is consonance function- ing in the place of rhyme. The effect of half-rhyme (or para-rhyme, as it is sometimes called) is to make the ear expect a rhyme which is denied. The result is that the words often sound strangely out of tune with each other. In Owen's 'Futility' the feeling that death has distorted the natural progress of life is enacted in the half-rhymes. He is speaking of the sun:

Think how it wakes the seeds,
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?

Whenever you write about half-rhyme, you should try to bring out how it leads you to expect a rhyme which you do not get. (See also Consonance and Rhyme.)

Heroic Couplets   These are lines of iambic pentameters that rhyme in pairs. They are assertive and self-affirming and are consequently appropriate for argument. For instance, Pope in An Essay on Criticism neatly conveys the ideal of economy in verse in a heroic couplet which is itself economical:

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

They are, however, also used in narrative poems. Many people do not find them easy to read, because they seem repetitious. They should be read slowly, and it is often interesting to note whether the sentences of the poem are coterminous with the couplets. When they are not, and run-on lines occur, readers usually enjoy the variation. (See also Metre.)

Intrusion     A term usually used when discussing the way in which a narrator enters his or her own narration, usually for the purpose of commenting upon the events. George Eliot frequently does this in her novels. The effect is sometimes called narratorial intrusion.

Inversion     Inversion occurs when an author, usually a poet, changes the 'natural' or I standard' word order. For instance, Milton's line from Paradise Lost - 'Now came still evening on, and twilight grey' - inverts the normal order of words, so that the verb 'came' comes before the noun 'evening'. Inversion draws attention to the crafted nature of literature and also foregrounds certain words and ideas. For instance, in the line from Milton the inversion allows the interesting (and even paradoxical?) idea of a still evening moving by juxtaposing the words '...came still...'

Irony     The effect produced when a reader sees that there is a gap between the words that are being said and the real significance of those words. There are different kinds of gaps. The gap between words and truth occurs when something the reader knows to be mistaken is said. A second type of gap, or discrepancy, is between the words and meaning. This occurs when the reader sees that the real significance of what is being said is very different from what the speaker supposes. The gap can lie between intention and result. A speaker can intend something but the reader will see that the result will not be what is expected. This is also called dramatic irony. There is also the irony of one character interpreting the world one way, whilst the reader is led to see that this is false. In all cases of irony, someone is put at a disadvantage because others, usually the author and reader, can see more clearly than he or she can.
When you write about irony, you should make clear who is placed in a position of advantage and who is at a disadvantage. You should also remember that irony can produce different emotional effects. It can be bitter, comic, serious, tragic, sad, and so on. In your writing you should try to bring over how irony can make the reader or audience change attitudes to a character. For instance, you may be horrified by the callous inhumanity of Lady Macbeth, who believes that, after the murder of Duncan, 'A little water clears us of this deed'. When, however, she walks in her sleep and is seen to be perpetually washing her hands, you may see the terrible irony that 'a little water' can't clear her of guilt. When you see the irony, your horror may turn to pity.

Metre   The regular rhythms of poetic lines, created by a sequence of stressed or unstressed syllables. A recurring unit of stressed and unstressed syllables is called a foot. Special names are given to these recurring feet, and also to the number of feet in a line. Common English metres are the following:

iambic: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
anapaestic: two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable
trochaic: a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable
dactylic: a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.

The names for the number of feet in a line are as follows:

monometer                  one foot                                      dimeter            two feet
trimeter                        three feet                                  tetrameter        four feet
pentameter                  five feet                                      hexameter       six feet
heptameter                  seven feet                                   octameter        eight feet
There is usually little point in merely labelling a metre. If you wish to discuss metre, you should try to characterise the effect it has by showing how it helps to enact the meaning of the poem. (See also Blank verse, counterpoint, Heroic couplets, Scansion and Stanza.)

Multiple Narration    A story that is told by more than one narrator. Sometimes, as in Wuthering Heights, interesting problems of reliability and perspective are raised when the events are seen from several viewpoints. The reader must be alert to what each narrator knows and aware of the different ways in which they present, interpret and judge what is going on.

Plot    The pattern of events that constitutes the main business of a narrative. Because plot is a literary idea, it's best to define it as the order of events as they are known to the reader. It's often helpful to look at the problem or situation out of which the plot grows and think about the various ways in which plots can be constructed.

Prolepsis/Proleptic   An event the full significance of which is only realised in the future. The term can be used of those events that are only seen in their true light later on in the book. There is, for instance, a proleptic element in the way in which Dickens presents Orlick in Great Expectations. After she's been attacked, Pip's sister wants to see Orlick. This is puzzling, but when we discover towards the end that Orlick was her assailant we can appreciate why she wants to see him.

Relief    The effect experienced by readers and audiences when the tension created by expectation is released. Sometimes a reader or audience responds to relief by laughter, but on other occasions, as in tragedy, a feeling of seriousness is left when the anticipated event has occurred. (See also Expectation and Surprise.)

Resolution       A term for the ways in which a plot is sorted out, usually at the close of a book. Resolution usually has two aspects - a human one and a formal one. Audiences and readers want to know how the lives of characters work out, so they take an interest in whether or not the plans and hopes of the characters are fulfilled. The formal aspect is not detached from this interest. Characters form groups and are often very similar or interestingly different from each other. Such grouping prompts a desire in the reader for a balance, or at least a discernible pattern, in the working out of their respective lives. A simple case of this is the desire to see the good rewarded and the bad punished.
The close of Shakespeare's plays are an interesting balance of the human and formal interests; audiences want to see the lovers married off and they enjoy the way in which the pairings are carefully contrasted with each other. The marriages at the close of As You Like It form a set of interesting contrasts as well as engaging our sympathies to varying degrees. The term can also be used of poetry, to describe the way in which the passage of feelings in a poem or an argument are brought to a satisfying close.

Retrospective Narration   A form of narrative (usually in the first person) that makes use of the past, often to allow the narrator to reflect on what has happened and to discern the differences between past and present. In Great Expectations Pip the narrator often allows himself to think about the mistakes of his youth and, without giving away what has happened to him, indicate how different he is from the former self about which he writes. What is interesting about Great Expectations and several other retrospective nar- rations is their inconsistency. For much of Jane Eyre there is no retrospective distance between narrator and the young Jane, only occasionally does she slip in a remark about how difficult she must have been as a child. Some retrospective narrations deliberately avoid exploiting the distance between the older narrator and the younger narrated self. In Huckleberry Finn the narrating Huck is as naive and prejudiced as the self whom he presents. (See the entries on Narration.)

Reversal      A term originally introduced by Aristotle to discuss drama but which can be used when talking about other sorts of narrative. It refers to the event, usually towards the end of a work, when the fortunes of the central figures are changed. In tragedy the change is for the worse, whilst in comedy reversal paves the way for the happy ending. Because Shakespeare works through expectation rather than surprise, his reversals don't function as dramatic turnabouts. In many nineteenth-century novels, however, secrets are important, so their disclosures work more like those in the plays that Aristotle used for his examples. Reversal is often indistinguishable from discovery. In Great Expectations the return of Magwitch functions as a discovery which brings about a reversal in Pip's fortunes. (See also Discovery.)

Rhyme       The identity in two or more words of the final vowel and any consonants that follow it. When the rhyming words are monosyllabic, the rhyme is said to be masculine, as in 'bold' and 'old', and when they are polysyllabic, they are said to be feminine, as in 'ending' and 'bending'. (You will also note that in the feminine rhymes the last syllable is unstressed.)
Whenever you write about rhyme, you should bring out the effect it creates. Rhyme creates harmony and also the pleasing effect of completing or resolving an idea. When words rhyme, they tend to be more noticeable and hence more important in the poem. When the words rhymed are important, the whole meaning of the poem can be focused. Rhymes, particularly feminine ones, can also be funny. (See also Half-rhyme.)

Scansion   The examination of metrical patterns in verse by noting the sequences of accented and unaccented syllables. If you wish to draw attention to a pattern, you should mark accented syllables with a ' and unaccented ones with a -. There is usually no point simply in labelling a line (see Metre) unless you can discuss any variations, or show that it effectively enacts the meaning of the line. (See also Blank verse, Counterpoint, Heroic couplets and Stanza.)

Soliloquy    A speech delivered when a character is either alone or isolated on the stage. A soliloquy can be public, in which case the character directly addresses the audience, or private, in which case the audience overhears the character talking to himself or herself. In Shakespeare, soliloquies are usually only given to important characters. For instance, Hamlet has a number of private soliloquies, and Iago a number of public ones. Characters very rarely tell lies in soliloquies, so you should pay particular attention to them.

Stanza    A group of lines in a poem that form its basic, structural unit. The shape of a stanza is formed by the number of lines and often by the rhyme scheme. If you choose to write about the stanza form of a poem, you should seek to show how it moulds the meaning of the poem. You can also ask whether the stanza is appropriate to the mood and meaning of the poem.
Famous stanza forms are terza rima (three lines, usually rhyming ABA,BCD); quatrain (four lines); rime royal (seven lines, rhyming ABABBCC); ottava rima (eight lines, rhyming ABABABCC); and the Spenserian stanza (nine lines, rhyming ABABBCBCC). The last line of the Spenserian stanza is an alexandrine - a line of six (a hexameter) rather than five stresses; this line closes the stanza in a leisurely, even languid manner. (See also Rhyme).

Sub-plot    A minor plot which often echoes the concerns of the major plot. You can use the term of both novels and plays. The relation between major and minor plots deserves attention.

Subversion   A popular word for any way in which the language of a book allows the reader to see the events critically and thereby make judgements about the characters. One of the teasing aspects of The Great Gatsby is the way in which Nick's enthusiasm for some aspects of Gatsby's life subverts him in the eye of the reader and makes him a narrator whom we think carefully about when it comes to the issue of trust.

Surprise   The effect created when expectation is not fulfilled. It can, therefore, only be discussed in relation to expectation. Novelists often spring surprises upon readers by unusual coincidences or the reappearance of a character. Shakespeare rarely works by surprise. The rejection of Falstaff and the last scene of The Winter's Tale are rare exceptions. (See also Expectation and Relief.)

Syntax   The construction of sentences; that is, the order of words and their relation with each other. As the construction of a sentence controls the meaning and emotional impact of what is being said, it is always wise, particularly when thinking about poetry or verse drama, to study syntax. It is important to see whether the sentences are long or short, whether they have many or few clauses, and whether, as is usual in English, the subject comes before the object, or the other way round.

Trajectory    The direction of a plot. The term is useful when discussing how the initial conditions of a plot can be expected to develop. Quite often the delight we have in literature lies in the way in which the trajectory of the plot is other than what we were led to expect. In The Winter's Tale, for instance, there is an interesting change from a plot pre- occupied with the difficult relationship between the two Kings to one which centres on the loves of their two children.

Unities    At one time it was believed that a good play should comprise one action, should take place in a day, and should happen in one place. These three requirements were called the unities. Most English drama ignores them, although Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest, comes quite close to observing them.

View, Viewpoint   How an author regards and thereby invites the reader to regard the events of a narrative. The interesting questions to ask are the closeness of the author to the characters and events, the moral light in which they are regarded and any changes that occur in the author's perspective. Charlotte Brontë is very close to Jane Eyre but distant from most of the other characters; George Eliot views everything as a matter of moral concern but is always deeply understanding of human failure, and Dickens shifts the perspective in Great Expectations so that we are sometimes invited to look at things morally and at other times only as the material for comedy.