An allegory is a narrative, whether in prose or in verse, in which the agents and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived by the author to make coherent sense on the "literal', or primary, level of signification, and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of ...
An antihero is the chief person in a modern novel or play whose character is widely discrepant from that which we associate with the traditional protagonist or hero of a serious literary work. Instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power, or heroism, the antihero is petty, ignominious, ...
An atmosphere is the emotional tone pervading a section or the whole of a literary work, which fosters in the reader expectations as to the course of events, whether happy (or more commonly) terrifying or disastrous. Alternative terms frequently used for atmosphere are mood or ambience.
Aestheticism, or the Aesthetic Movement, was a European phenomenon during the latter 19th century that had its chief headquarters in France. In opposition to the dominance of scientific thinking, and in defiance of the widespread indifference or hostility of the middle-clasas society of their time ...
Antimasque is sa form developed by Ben Jonson and in it the characters are grotesque and unruly, the action ludicrous, the humour broad. The term serves as a foil and is a countertype to the elegance, order and ceremony of masque, which in its full development is an elaborate form of court ...
Aphorism is a pithy and pointed statement of a serious maxim, opinion or general truth. One of the best-known aphorisms is also one of the shortest: art is long, life is short. The term occurs first in a work attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates entitled Aphorisms, which consisted of ...
An apologue is a short narrative, in prose or in verse, that exemplifies an abstract moral thesis or principle of human behaviour. It usually states at its conclusion by either the narrator or one of the characters the moral in the form of an epigram. Another word for apologue is fable. Most ...
Anapestic: two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. For instance The cur | few tolls | the knell | of par | ting day. | (Thomas Gray, "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard") . The noun is anapest.
