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

Historical Romance
A narrative that takes a small episode or group of episodes from some ancient or famous chronicle an

Hlafdig
(Anglo-Saxon hlaf+dieg, 'loaf-kneader' or 'loaf-deliverer') An Anglo-Saxon wife of a warlord. The te

Hlaford
(Anglo-Saxon hlaf+ord, 'loaf-leader' or 'loaf-giver,' or possibly from hlaf-weard, 'loaf-guardian,'

Hokku
In Japanese poetry, the term hokku literally means 'starting verse.' A hokku was the first starting

Homeric Age Of Greece
Another term for the Heroic Age of Greece.

Homily
A sermon, or a short, exhortatory work to be read before a group of listeners in order to instruct t

Hook
(1) In linguistics, a diacritical mark used in some eastern European languages like Polish and Lithu

Horror Story
A short story, novel, or other work of prose fiction designed to instill in the reader a sense of fe

Hovering Accent
Another term for spondee. See spondee.

Hubris
(sometimes spelled Hybris) The Greek term hubris is difficult to translate directly into English. It

Hugo Award
The familiar nickname for the Science Fiction Achievement Award, given each year since 1954 to an ou

Humanism
A Renaissance intellectual and artistic movement triggered by a 'rediscovery' of classical Greek and

Humility Topos
A common rhetorical strategy in which an author or speaker feigns ignorance or pretends to be less c

Humors
(alias bodily humors) In ancient Greece, Hippocrates postulated that four bodily humors or liquids e

Hut
A structure on the top of the stage cover in the Globe theater. Here, stagehands produced special ef

Hvot Scene
The hvot is a conventional scene in Icelandic sagas in which a grieving or insulted woman incites a

Hybrid Formation
In linguistics, a new expression made by combining together two or more words (or two or more morphe

Hymn
A religious song consisting of one or more repeating rhythmical stanzas. In classical Roman literatu

Hypallage
Combining two examples of hyperbaton or anastrophe when the reversed elements are not grammatically

Hyperbaton
A generic term for changing the normal or expected order of words--including anastrophe, tmesis, hyp

Hyperbole
The trope of exaggeration or overstatement. See tropes for examples.

Hypercatalectic
A hypercatalectic line is a line of poetry with extra syllables in it beyond the expected number due

Hypercorrection
A grammatical form created when grammarians--on the basis of too little information or incorrect gen

Hypertext Novel
Also called hyperfiction, a hypertext novel is one written using some variant of HTML programming la

Hypocrites
(Greek for 'One who plays a part') The classical Athenian word for an actor. Not to be confused with

Hypotaxis
Using clauses with a precise degree of subordination and clear indication of the logical relationshi

Hysteron-Proteron
Using anastrophe in a way that creates a catachresis (see under tropes), an impossible ordering on t

Iamb
A unit or foot of poetry that consists of a lightly stressed syllable followed by a heavily stressed

Iambus
Another term for an iamb. See above.

Ictus
(Latin, 'blow,' or 'stroke') An artificial stress or diacritical accent placed over the top of parti

Ideal Reader
The imaginary audience who would, ideally, understand every phrase, word, and allusion in a literary

Identical Rhyme
The use of the same words as a 'rhymed' pair. For instance, putting the words stone/ stone or time/

Ideograph
Also called a logograph or ideogram, this is a written symbol system in which a single marking or co

Idiolect
The language or speech pattern unique to one individual at a particular period of his or her life. B

Idiom
In its loosest sense, the word idiom is often used as a synonym for dialect or idiolect. In its more

Idola
(Latin, 'idols,' singular form idolum) False images of the mind. Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620

Idyll
A composition in verse or prose presenting an idealized story of happy innocence. The Idylls of Theo

Imagery
A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the 'mental pictures' that readers experience wi

Imagism
An early twentieth-century artistic movement in the United States and Britain. Imagists believed poe

Imperfect Enjoyment
Readers commonly associate this motif or poetic genre with 17th-century male poets in France--but it

Imperfect Foot
A metrical foot consisting of a single syllable, either heavily or lightly stressed. See meter, cf.

Imperfect Rhyme
Another term for inexact rhyme or slant rhyme.

Impersonal Verb
A verb without a real subject--see 'impersonal verb construction,' below.

Impersonal Verb Construction
A verb used without a subject or with a largely non-referential 'it' as the subject. For instance, '

Implied Audience
The 'you' a writer or poet refers to or implies when creating a dramatic monologue. This implied aud

Imprimatur
(Latin, 'let it be printed') An official license or official permission to print or publish a book o

In Medias Res
(latinin the middle[s] of things)

Incorporative
In most languages, different grammatical components reflect different parts of speech. For instance,

Indarba
(Old Irish, 'banishment') A traditional motif of banishment or exile in Celtic literature in which t

Index
In common parlance, an index is a collection of topics, names, or chapter subjects arranged by alpha

Indo-European
The hypothetically reconstructed language that was the ancient ancestor of most European, Middle-Eas

Indo-Germanic
Also called Indo-Aryan, this is an obsolete term for Indo-European.

Indo-Iranian
The branch of Indo-European that includes Persian and Indic.

Induction
The logical assumption or process of assuming that what is true for a single specimen or example is

Inexact Rhyme
Rhymes created out of words with similar but not identical sounds. In most of these instances, eithe

Infant Damnation
A rather grim Protestant doctrine associated with Puritan theologian John Calvin. It is closely asso

Infix
While a prefix is a meaningful syllable or collection of syllables inserted before a main word, and

Infixation
Also called epenthesis, infixation is placing an infix (a new syllable, a word, or similar phonetic

Inflected
An inflective or inflected language is one like Latin, German, or Anglo-Saxon, in which special endi

Inflected Infinitive
In Old English, an infinitive with declension endings attached and used as a noun--a source of much

Inflection
(also spelled inflexion) The alteration of a word to provide additional grammatical information abou

Inflective
An inflective or inflected language is one like Latin, German, or Anglo-Saxon, in which special endi

Informant
In folklore studies, anthropology, and linguistics, an informant is the local individual who tells t

Initial
An enlarged, decorated letter at the beginning of a story, chapter, poem, or section of text in a me

Initial Letter
Another term for an initial. See above.

Initialism
Any word, whether an acronym or an alphabetism, formed from the first letters of other words. See di

Ink
According to Michelle P. Brown, The word [ink] derives from the Latin encaustum (`burnt in

Inkhorn Term
A word--often experimental or pompous--introduced into English during the Renaissance, especially on

Inland Southern
A subdialect of southern. More information

Inorganic -E
A spoken -e added to the end of certain Middle English words that, historically, should not be there

Insular Script
(From Latin insula, island) Also called insular hand, this term refers to a compact style of handwri

Intensifier
A word such as very that strengthens or intensifies the word it modifies.

Interactive Novel
A 'choose-your-own-adventure' style novel in which the reader has the option to choose what will hap

Interdental
In linguistics, this term refers to any sound made by placing the tongue between the upper and lower

Interior Monologue
A type of stream of consciousness in which the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single indi

Interlace
Not to be confused with interlaced rhyme (below), some Anglo-Saxon scholars use the word interlace a

Interlaced Rhyme
In long couplets, especially hexameter lines, sufficient room in the line allows a poet to use rhyme

Internal Audience
An imaginary listener(s) or audience to whom a character speaks in a poem or story. For example, the

Internal Rhyme
A poetic device in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end of the same me

Intonation
Patterns of pitch in sentences.

Intra-Textual Meaning
Meaning that originates not within a work itself, but that originates in a related work in the same

Intransitive
An intransitive verb is a verb that does not have a direct object (and often one that by its very na

Intrigue Plot
The dramatic representation of how two young lovers, often with the assistance of a maidservant, fri

Intrusion
In linguistics, the introduction of a sound into a word that, historically, should not have such a s

Intrusive R
A type of linguistic intrusion in which the letter [r] appears in an etymologically unexpected locat

Intrusive Schwa
In linguistics, the addition of a schwa sound where historically it has no etymological basis. For i

Invective
Speech or writing that attacks, insults, or denounces a person, topic, or institution, usually invol

Inventio
(plural, inventiones from Latin invenire, 'to come upon, to discover', cf. Modern English 'invention

Inversion
Another term for anastrophe.

Invocation Of The Muse
A prayer or address made to the one of the nine muses of Greco-Roman mythology, in which the poet as

Irony
Cicero referred to irony as 'saying one thing and meaning another.' Irony comes in many forms. Verba

Irregular Verb
A verb that doesn't follow common verb patterns. For instance, think/thought and be/am/was. Most irr

Isogloss
When linguists create maps showing where dialects are spoken, the isoglosses would be the boundary l

Isolating Language
In now obsolete language studies, linguists used the label 'isolating' to refer to a language with w

Italian Sonnet
Another term for a Petrarchan sonnet. See discussion under sonnet.

Italic
The branch of Indo-European languages giving rise to Latin and Romance languages like Spanish, Frenc

Italics
A style of printing in which the tops of letters and punctuation marks gently slope to the right. It

Italo-Celtic
Together, the Italic and Celtic branches of Indo-European are called Italo-Celtic, the two groups sh

Ivory Tower
A derogatory term for a place, situation, or philosophical outlook that ignores or overlooks practic

Jacobean
During the reign of King James I, i.e., between the years 1603-1625. (Jacobus is the Latin form of J