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Superglossary - Literature Category: General > Literature Date & country: 11/12/2013, USA Words: 1716

Pseudonym
Another term for a pen name.

Psychological Realism
The sense that characters in fictional narratives have realistic 'interiority' or complex emotional

Psychopompos
A spirit-guide who leads or escorts a soul into the realm of the dead. Such a character often appear

Pulp Fiction
Mass market novels printed cheaply and intended for a general audience. The content was usually melo

Pun
A play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning. For example, in Matthew 16:18, Christ

Purgatory
Donald Logan writes

Purist Grammar
The belief in an absolute or unchanging standard of correct grammar. (also called Grammatical Purism

Puritan
Most familiar to modern Americans as the religious denomination of the Mayflower colonists, the Puri

Puritan Interregnum
The term refers to both the Puritan government established under Oliver Cromwell after a civil war a

Purple Patch
A section of purple prose or writing that is too ornate or florid for the surrounding plain material

Purple Prose
Writing that seems overdone or which makes excessive use of imagery, figures of speech, poetic dicti

Pyrrhic
In classical Greek or Latin poetry, this foot consists of two unaccented syllables--the opposite of

Quadrivium
The study of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music, which formed the basis of a master's degree

Qualitative Change
In linguistics, an alteration in the perceived quality of a sound or the basic nature of a sound. Co

Qualitative Meter
Meter that relies on patterns of heavily stress syllables and lightly stressed meters. In English, m

Quantitative Change
In linguistics, an alteration in the length of a sound--particularly vowel sounds. Contrast with qua

Quantitative Meter
Meter that relies not on the alternation of heavily stressed or lightly stressed syllables, but rath

Quarto
A term from early bookmaking. When a single, large sheet is folded once to create two leaves (four p

Quatrain
Also sometimes used interchangeably with 'stave,' a quatrain is a stanza of four lines, often rhymin

Quem Quaeritis
This Latin expression comes from the Vulgate New Testament when the angel addresses the women coming

Quire
A collection of individual leaves sewn together, usually containing between four and twelve leaves p

Radical Innocence
The Romantics valued innocence as something pure, wholesome, fulfilling, natural, and individualisti

Raisonneur
A character in continental literature whose purpose is similar to that of a chorus in Greek drama, i

Rash Boon
A motif in folklore and in Celtic and Arthurian literature in which an individual too hastily promis

Realism
An elastic and ambiguous term with two meanings. (1) First, it refers generally to any artistic or l

Rearstage
The section of the stage farthest away from the viewing audience, the back of the visible stage as o

Rebus
A visual pun in which a written sign stands for a different meaning than its normal one--usually bec

Received Pronunciation
The accent used by upper class British citizens--usually considered a prestigious or 'classy' pronun

Reconstruction
A hypothetical earlier form of a word that probably existed, but for which no direct evidence is ava

Reflexive Construction
A verb combined with a reflexive pronoun functioning as the direct object. For instance, in Spanish,

Refrain
A line or set of lines at the end of a stanza or section of a longer poem or song--these lines repea

Regional Dialect
Another term for geographic dialect.

Regional Literature
Literature that accurately seeks to portray or is associated with a particular geographic region or

Register Dialect
A dialectal variation used only for a particular circumstance or for a specific purpose. For instanc

Relic
The physical remains of a saint or biblical figure, or an object closely associated with a saint, bi

Renaissance
There are two common uses of the word. (1) The term originally described a period of cultural, techn

Renaissance Romance
The original medieval genre of metrical romances gradually were replaced by prose works in the 1500s

Renga
Japanese linked verse--a poetic dialogue formed by a succession of waka in which poets take turns co

Renku
An earthier, humorous variant on the courtly renga introduced by Iio Sogi, Yamazzaki Sokan, and Nish

Repertory
A number of plays an acting company had prepared for performance at any given time. Unlike modern dr

Rephaim
The Oxford Companion to the Bible goes into some detail on this term, and I summarize the material f

Representative Character
A flat character who embodies all of the other members of a group (such as teachers, students, cowbo

Restoration
The restoration, also called the Restoration Period, is the time from 1660, when the Stuart monarch

Retarded Pronunciation
An old-fashioned way of pronunciation that lingers in one dialect even after a newer pronunciation h

Retraction
A writing in prose or verse in which the author 'takes back' an earlier statement or piece of writin

Retroflex
In linguistics, any sound produced with the tongue-tip bent or curled backward--such as the sound of

Revenge Play
A Renaissance genre of drama in which the plot revolves around the hero's attempt to avenge a previo

Revenge Tragedy
Another term for a revenge play.

Rhapsodoi
Wandering poet-singers in the Homeric age of Greece--the equivalent of a bard in the Celtic traditio

Rhetoric
The art of persuasive argument through writing or speech--the art of eloquence and charismatic langu

Rhetorical Climax
Also known as auxesis and crescendo, this refers to an artistic arrangement of a list of items so th

Rhetorical Figures
Figures of speech such as schemes and tropes.

Rhetorical Substition
The manipulation of the caesura to create the effect of a series of different feet in a line of poet

Rhotacism
A shift linguistically from [z] to an [r]. (from Greek, rho or 'r')

Rhyme
Also spelled rime, rhyme is a matching similarity of sounds in two or more words, especially when th

Rhyme Royal
A seven-line stanzaic form invented by Chaucer in the fourteenth century and later modified by Spens

Rhyme Scheme
The pattern of rhyme. The traditional way to mark these patterns of rhyme is to assign a letter of t

Rhythm
The varying speed, loudness, pitch, elevation, intensity, and expressiveness of speech, especially p

Riddle
A universal form of literature in which a puzzling question or a conundrum is presented to the reade

Ridicule
Words designed to arouse laughter and contempt for a person, idea, or institution. The rhetorical go

Rime Cou
The French term for tail-rhyme. See discussion under tail-rhyme.

Rime Riche
The French term for identical rhyme. See identical rhyme.

Rime Royal
An alternative spelling for rhyme royal.

Rising Action
The action in a play before the climax in Freytag's pyramid.

Rising Rhyme
Another term for masculine rhyme in which the final foot ends in a stressed syllable. See meter.

Robertsonian
Following or adhering to the exegeticial readings of medieval literature espoused by American schola

Role
Another term for an actor's part in a play.

Roman
A narrative that represents actual historical characters and events in the form of fiction. Usually

Roman Imperial Period
After long centuries of representative democracy, within only a few generations, power in Roman gove

Roman Republican Period
The period of Roman history between 514 BCE up until 27 CE, when Rome was primarily and (at least of

Roman Stoicism
The philosophy espoused by Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, 'Roman Stoicism' actually originates with

Romantic Comedy
Sympathetic comedy that presents the adventures of young lovers trying to overcome social, psycholog

Romanticism
The term refers to the artistic philosophy prevalent during the first third of the nineteenth centur

Rondeau
A short poem consisting of ten, thirteen, or fifteen lines using only two rhymes which concludes eac

Rondel
A short poem resembling the rondeau. It usually totals fourteen lines containing only two rhyming so

Root
(1) a base morpheme without affixes attached to it. (2) A word in an older language that became the

Root Creation
Creating a new word by inventing its form from scratch--without reference to any pre-existing word o

Round Character
A round character is depicted with such psychological depth and detail that he or she seems like a '

Rounded Vowel
A vowel made with the lips sticking out--i.e., all of the back vowels except [a].

Roundel
A poem in the pattern of the rondeau, but only having eleven lines. Like the rondeau and the rondel,

Roundelay
A term used as a generic label for fixed forms of poetry using limited rhymes--such as the rondeau,

Roundhead
Not to be confused with round character, (see above), a Roundhead is a member or supporter of the pa

Rp
The linguist's abbreviation for received pronunciation, a prestigious British dialect used by the up

Rubaiyat
An Arabic term meaning a quatrain, or four-line stanza. The term is nearly always included in the ti

Rune
In a writing system designed to be scratched or carved on a flat surface such as wood or stone, the

Saga
The word comes from the Old Norse term for a 'saw' or a 'saying.' Sagas are Scandinavian and Iceland

Saints Life
Another term for the medieval genre called a vita. See discussion under vita.

Salic Law
French law stating that the right of a king's son to inherit the French throne passes only patriline

Samoyedic
A non-Indo-European branch of Uralic languages spoken in northern Siberia.

Sapphic Meter
Typically, this meter is found in quatrains in which the first three lines consist of eleven syllabl

Sapphic Ode
Virtually identical with a Horatian ode, a Sapphic ode consists of quatrains in which the first thre

Sapphic Verse
Verse written in Sapphic meter.

Sapphics
Verses written in Sapphic meter.

Sarcasm
Another term for verbal irony--the act of ostensibly saying one thing but meaning another. See furth

Satem Language
One of the two main branches of Indo-European languages. These languages are generally associated wi

Satire
An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of w

Satiric Comedy
Any drama or comic poem involving humor as a means of satire.

Satyr Play
A burlesque play submitted by Athenian playwrights along with their tragic trilogies. On each day of

Scansion
The act of 'scanning' a poem to determine its meter. To perform scansion, the student breaks down ea

Scatology
Not to be confused with eschatology, scatology refers to so-called 'potty-humor'--jokes or stories d