A brief history of English literature

Introduction
This study guide is intended for GCE Advanced and Advanced Supplementary
(A2 and AS) level students in the UK, who are taking exams or modules in
English literature. It should be most useful right at the start of the course, or
later as a resource for exercises in revision, and to help you reflect on value
judgements in literary criticism. It may also be suitable for university students
and the general reader who is interested in the history of literature. This guide
reflects a view of literature which is sometimes described as canonical, and
sometimes as a Dead White European Male view. That is, I have not especially
sought to express my own value judgements but to reflect those which are
commonly found in printed guides by judges whose views command more
respect than mine.
I hope that students who visit this page will take issue with the summary
comments here, or discuss them with their peers. But young readers will not
thank teachers for leaving them in the dark about established critical opinion or
the canon of English literature. (If you doubt that there is a canon, look at the
degree course structure for English literature in a selection of our most
prestigious universities.) Students who recognize that they have little or no
sense of English literary culture have often asked me to suggest texts for them
to study - this guide may help them in this process. This is NOT a tutorial, in
the sense of a close reading of any text. And it is not very interesting to read
from start to finish. I hope, rather, that it will be used as a point of reference or
way in to literature for beginners. You will soon see if it is not for you.
And while I have made a selection from the many authors who deserve study, I
have throughout presented them in a chronogical sequence. At the end I
consider briefly questions of genre and literary value. I have not attempted to
record the achivements of writers in other languages, though these include
some of the greatest and most influential writers of all time, such as Dante
Alighieri, Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka and Bertolt Brecht. Happily, examiners of
Advanced level literature have allowed students, in recent years, to study these
foreign authors, in translation, in independent extended literary studies.
Literary forms
Literary forms such as the novel or lyric poem, or genres, such as the horrorstory, have a history. In one sense, they appear because they have not been
thought of before, but they also appear, or become popular for other cultural
reasons, such as the absence or emergence of literacy. In studying the history of
literature (or any kind of art), you are challenged to consider

what constitutes a given form,

how it has developed, and

whether it has a future.

The novels of the late Catherine Cookson may have much in common with
those of Charlotte Bront, but is it worth mimicking in the late 20th century,
what was ground-breaking in the 1840s? While Bront examines what is
contemporary for her, Miss Cookson invents an imagined past which may be of
interest to the cultural historian in studying the present sources of her nostalgia,
but not to the student of the period in which her novels are set. Daniel Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe is a long work of prose fiction, but critics do not necessarily
describe it as a novel. Why might this be? Knowing works in their historical
context does not give easy answers, but may shed more or less light on our
darkness in considering such questions.
Old English, Middle English and Chaucer
Old English

English, as we know it, descends from the language spoken by the north
Germanic tribes who settled in England from the 5th century A.D. onwards.
They had no writing (except runes, used as charms) until they learned the Latin
alphabet from Roman missionaries. The earliest written works in Old English
(as their language is now known to scholars) were probably composed orally at
first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being
written. We know the names of some of the later writers (Cdmon, lfric and
King Alfred) but most writing is anonymous. Old English literature is mostly
chronicle and poetry - lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. By the
time literacy becomes widespread, Old English is effectively a foreign and
dead language. And its forms do not significantly affect subsequent
developments in English literature. (With the scholarly exception of the 19th
century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who finds in Old English verse the
model for his metrical system of "sprung rhythm".)
Middle English and Chaucer

From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English.

Ideas and themes from French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at
about this time, but the first great name in English literature is that of Geoffrey
Chaucer (?1343-1400). Chaucer introduces the iambic pentameter line, the
rhyming couplet and other rhymes used in Italian poetry (a language in which
rhyming is arguably much easier than in English, thanks to the frequency of
terminal vowels). Some of Chaucer's work is prose and some is lyric poetry,

but his greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we find in Troilus and
Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Other notable mediaeval works are the
anonymous Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight (probably by the same
author) and William Langlands' Piers Plowman.
Tudor lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work
of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (15171547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian, Francesco Petrarca
(Petrarch) introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while
Surrey (as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse) thus
inventing the verse form which will be of great use to contemporary dramatists.
A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth comes with such writers as
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sir Walter
Ralegh (1552-1618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and William
Shakespeare (1564-1616). The major works of the time are Spenser's Faerie
Queene, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's sonnets.
Renaissance drama
The first great English dramatist is Marlowe. Before the 16th century English
drama meant the amateur performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on
public holidays. Marlowe's plays (Tamburlaine; Dr. Faustus; Edward II and
The Jew of Malta) use the five act structure and the medium of blank verse,
which Shakespeare finds so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually
exhausts this form, his Jacobean successors producing work which is rarely
performed today, though some pieces have literary merit, notably The Duchess
of Malfi and The White Devil by John Webster (1580-1625) and The
Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626). The excessive and
gratuitous violence of Jacobean plays leads to the clamour for closing down the
theatres, which is enacted by parliament after the Civil war.
Metaphysical poetry
The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose
short love poems are characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest
meaning from experience. The preoccupation with the big questions of love,
death and religious faith marks out Donne and his successors who are often
called metaphysical poets. (This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an
essay of 1779, was revived and popularized by T.S. Eliot, in an essay of 1921.
It can be unhelpful to modern students who are unfamiliar with this adjective,
and who are led to think that these poets belonged to some kind of school or
group - which is not the case.) After his wife's death, Donne underwent a
serious religious conversion, and wrote much fine devotional verse. The best

known of the other metaphysicals are George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew

Marvell (1621-1678) and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).
Epic poetry
Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek
(Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) and Roman (Virgil's neid) poetry. John Milton
(1608-1674) who was Cromwell's secretary, set out to write a great biblical
epic, unsure whether to write in Latin or English, but settling for the latter in
Paradise Lost. John Dryden (1631-1700) also wrote epic poetry, on classical
and biblical subjects. Though Dryden's work is little read today it leads to a
comic parody of the epic form, or mock-heroic. The best poetry of the mid 18th
century is the comic writing of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope is the bestregarded comic writer and satirist of English poetry. Among his many
masterpieces, one of the more accessible is The Rape of the Lock (seekers of
sensation should note that "rape" here has its archaic sense of "removal by
force"; the "lock" is a curl of the heroine's hair). Serious poetry of the period is
well represented by the neo-classical Thomas Gray (1716-1771) whose Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard virtually perfects the elegant style favoured at
the time.
Restoration comedy
On the death of Oliver Cromwell (in 1658) plays were no longer prohibited. A
new kind of comic drama, dealing with issues of sexual politics among the
wealthy and the bourgeois, arose. This is Restoration Comedy, and the style
developed well beyond the restoration period into the mid 18th century almost.
The total number of plays performed is vast, and many lack real merit, but the
best drama uses the restoration conventions for a serious examination of
contemporary morality. A play which exemplifies this well is The Country Wife
by William Wycherley (1640-1716).
Prose fiction and the novel
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known
for the extended prose work Gulliver's Travels, in which a fantastic account of
a series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing familiar English institutions, such
as religion, politics and law. Another writer who uses prose fiction, this time
much more naturalistic, to explore other questions of politics or economics is
Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
The first English novel is generally accepted to be Pamela (1740), by Samuel
Richardson (1689-1761): this novel takes the form of a series of letters;
Pamela, a virtuous housemaid resists the advances of her rich employer, who
eventually marries her. Richardson's work was almost at once satirized by

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) in Joseph Andrews (Joseph is depicted as the

brother of Richardson's Pamela Andrews) and Tom Jones.
After Fielding, the novel is dominated by the two great figures of Sir Walter
Scott (1771-1832) and Jane Austen (1775-1817), who typify, respectively, the
new regional, historical romanticism and the established, urbane classical
views.
Novels depicting extreme behaviour, madness or cruelty, often in historically
remote or exotic settings are called Gothic. They are ridiculed by Austen in
Northanger Abbey but include one undisputed masterpiece, Frankenstein, by
Mary Shelley (1797-1851).
Romanticism
The rise of Romanticism

A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the

revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual
against the consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William
Blake (1757-1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christoph
Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a
significant event in English literary history, though the poems were poorly
received and few books sold. The elegant latinisms of Gray are dropped in
favour of a kind of English closer to that spoken by real people (supposedly).
Actually, the attempts to render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly
convincing. Robert Burns (1759 1796) writes lyric verse in the dialect of
lowland Scots (a variety of English). After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the
most often quoted of writers in English: we sing his Auld Lang Syne every
New Year's Eve.
Later Romanticism

The work of the later romantics John Keats (1795-1821) and his friend Percy
Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822; husband of Mary Shelley) is marked by an attempt
to make language beautiful, and by an interest in remote history and exotic
places. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) uses romantic themes,
sometimes comically, to explain contemporary events. Romanticism begins as
a revolt against established views, but eventually becomes the established
outlook. Wordsworth becomes a kind of national monument, while the
Victorians make what was at first revolutionary seem familiar, domestic and

sentimental.
Victorian poetry
The major poets of the Victorian era are Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Both are prolific and varied, and their work
defies easy classification. Tennyson makes extensive use of classical myth and
Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities
of his writing.
Browning's chief interest is in people; he uses blank verse in writing dramatic
monologues in which the speaker achieves a kind of self-portraiture: his
subjects are both historical individuals (Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto) and
representative types or caricatures (Mr. Sludge the Medium).
Other Victorian poets of note include Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Gerard Manley
Hopkins (1844-1889) is notable for his use of what he calls "sprung rhythm";
as in Old English verse syllables are not counted, but there is a pattern of
stresses. Hopkins' work was not well-known until very long after his death.
The Victorian novel
The rise of the popular novel

In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide

education by the state, and self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly the
result of the popularity of the novel. Publication in instalments means that
works are affordable for people of modest means. The change in the reading
public is reflected in a change in the subjects of novels: the high bourgeois
world of Austen gives way to an interest in characters of humble origins. The
great novelists write works which in some ways transcend their own period,
but which in detail very much explore the preoccupations of their time.
Dickens and the Bronts

Certainly the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and possibly of all
time, is Charles Dickens (1812-1870). The complexity of his best work, the
variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create surface problems for the
modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading. But Great
Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit are works
with which every student should be acquainted.
Charlotte Bront (1816-1855) and her sisters Emily (1818-1848) and Anne
(1820-1849) are understandably linked together, but their work differs greatly.
Charlotte is notable for several good novels, among which her masterpiece is

Jane Eyre, in which we see the heroine, after much adversity, achieve
happiness on her own terms. Emily Bront's Wthering Heights is a strange
work, which enjoys almost cult status. Its concerns are more romantic, less
contemporary than those of Jane Eyre - but its themes of obsessive love and
self-destructive passion have proved popular with the 20th century reader.
The beginnings of American literature

The early 19th century sees the emergence of American literature, with the
stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-64), Herman Melville (1819-91), and Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne
Clemens; 1835-1910), and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-92) and Emily
Dickinson (1830-86). Notable works include Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter,
Melville's Moby Dick, Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Whitman's Leaves of
Grass.
Later Victorian novelists

After the middle of the century, the novel, as a form, becomes firmlyestablished: sensational or melodramatic "popular" writing is represented by
Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne (1861), but the best novelists achieved serious
critical acclaim while reaching a wide public, notable authors being Anthony
Trollope (1815-82), Wilkie Collins (1824-89), William Makepeace Thackeray
(1811-63), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans; 1819-80) and Thomas Hardy
(1840-1928). Among the best novels are Collins's The Moonstone, Thackeray's
Vanity Fair, Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede and Middlemarch, and
Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the
d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.
Modern literature
Early 20th century poets

W.B. (William Butler) Yeats (1865-1939) is one of two figures who dominate
modern poetry, the other being T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965). Yeats
was Irish; Eliot was born in the USA but settled in England, and took UK
citizenship in 1927. Yeats uses conventional lyric forms, but explores the
connection between modern themes and classical and romantic ideas. Eliot
uses elements of conventional forms, within an unconventionally structured
whole in his greatest works. Where Yeats is prolific as a poet, Eliot's reputation
largely rests on two long and complex works: The Waste Land (1922) and Four
Quartets (1943).
The work of these two has overshadowed the work of the best late Victorian,
Edwardian and Georgian poets, some of whom came to prominence during the
First World War. Among these are Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling (1865-

1936), A.E. Housman (1859-1936), Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Rupert

Brooke (1887-1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Wilfred Owen (18931918) and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The most celebrated modern
American poet, is Robert Frost (1874-1963), who befriended Edward Thomas
before the war of 1914-1918.
Early modern writers

The late Victorian and early modern periods are spanned by two novelists of
foreign birth: the American Henry James (1843-1916) and the Pole Joseph
Conrad (Josef Korzeniowski; 1857-1924). James relates character to issues of
culture and ethics, but his style can be opaque; Conrad's narratives may
resemble adventure stories in incident and setting, but his real concern is with
issues of character and morality. The best of their work would include James's
The Portrait of a Lady and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The
Secret Agent.
Other notable writers of the early part of the century include George Bernard
Shaw (1856-1950), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and E.M. Forster (1879-1970).
Shaw was an essay-writer, language scholar and critic, but is best-remembered
as a playwright. Of his many plays, the best-known is Pygmalion (even better
known today in its form as the musical My Fair Lady). Wells is celebrated as a
popularizer of science, but his best novels explore serious social and cultural
themes, The History of Mr. Polly being perhaps his masterpiece. Forster's
novels include Howard's End, A Room with a View and A Passage to India.
Joyce and Woolf

Where these writers show continuity with the Victorian tradition of the novel,
more radically modern writing is found in the novels of James Joyce (18821941), of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930).
Where Joyce and Woolf challenge traditional narrative methods of viewpoint
and structure, Lawrence is concerned to explore human relationships more
profoundly than his predecessors, attempting to marry the insights of the new
psychology with his own acute observation. Working-class characters are
presented as serious and dignified; their manners and speech are not objects of
ridicule.
Other notable novelists include George Orwell (1903-50), Evelyn Waugh
(1903-1966), Graham Greene (1904-1991) and the 1983 Nobel prize-winner,
William Golding (1911-1993).
Poetry in the later 20th century

Between the two wars, a revival of romanticism in poetry is associated with the
work of W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907-73), Louis MacNeice (1907-63)

and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72). Auden seems to be a major figure on the

poetic landscape, but is almost too contemporary to see in perspective. The
Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-53) is notable for strange effects of language,
alternating from extreme simplicity to massive overstatement.
Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century,
evaluation is even more difficult, but writers of note include the American
Robert Lowell (1917-77), Philip Larkin (1922-1985), R.S. Thomas (19132000), Thom Gunn (1929-2004), Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and the 1995 Nobel
laureate Seamus Heaney (b. 1939).
Notable writers outside mainstream movements
Any list of "important" names is bound to be uneven and selective. Identifying
broad movements leads to the exclusion of those who do not easily fit into
schematic outlines of history. Writers not referred to above, but highly regarded
by some readers might include Laurence Sterne (1713-68), author of Tristram
Shandy, R.L. Stevenson (1850-94) writer of Kidnapped and The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), author of The
Importance of Being Earnest, and novelists such as Arnold Bennett (18671931), John Galsworthy (1867-1933) and the Americans F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940), Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), John Steinbeck (1902-68) and
J.D. Salinger (b. 1919). Two works notable not just for their literary merit but
for their articulation of the spirit of the age are Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. The American dramatist Arthur Miller
(b. 1915) has received similar acclaim for his play Death of a Salesman (1949).
Miller is more popular in the UK than his native country, and is familiar to
many teachers and students because his work is so often set for study in
examinations.
Literature and culture
Literature has a history, and this connects with cultural history more widely.
Prose narratives were written in the 16th century, but the novel as we know it
could not arise, in the absence of a literate public. The popular and very
contemporary medium for narrative in the 16th century is the theatre. The
earliest novels reflect a bourgeois view of the world because this is the world
of the authors and their readers (working people are depicted, but
patronizingly, not from inside knowledge). The growth of literacy in the
Victorian era leads to enormous diversification in the subjects and settings of
the novel.
Recent and future trends
In recent times the novel has developed different genres such as the thriller, the

whodunnit, the pot-boiler, the western and works of science-fiction, horror and
the sex-and-shopping novel. Some of these may be brief fashions (the western
seems to be dying) while others such as the detective story or science-fiction
have survived for well over a century. As the dominant form of narrative in
contemporary western popular culture, the novel may have given way to the
feature film and television drama. But it has proved surprisingly resilient. As
society alters, so the novel may reflect or define this change; many works may
be written, but few of them will fulfil this defining rle; those which seem to
do so now, may not speak to later generations in the same way.
Evaluating literature
The "test of time" may be a clich, but is a genuine measure of how a work of
imagination can transcend cultural boundaries; we should, perhaps, now speak
of the "test of time and place", as the best works cross boundaries of both
kinds. We may not "like" or "enjoy" works such as Wthering Heights, Heart
of Darkness or The Waste Land, but they are the perfect expression of
particular ways of looking at the world; the author has articulated a view which
connects with the reader's search for meaning. It is, of course, perfectly
possible for a work of imagination to make sense of the world or of experience
(or love, or God, or death) while also entertaining or delighting the reader or
audience with the detail and eloquence of the work, as in A Midsummer Night's
Dream, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Great Expectations.
Add to this page
Have I missed anything out? Of course I have, in the search for brevity. But
have I missed out writers or their works which are as important as those I have
included, or even more important? If you would like to add a comment or
section to this page, you may submit suggestions to me. I don't guarantee that
I'll add them - this is NOT a forum for personal favourites (not even mine). But
when I see that you are right to recall my attention to an overlooked author or
work, I will be happy to edit this guide, and acknowledge your additions. If
you are a teacher or student, you could see this as a task for a seminar or
discussion. It will help with critical commentary tasks (sometimes called
critical explorations).

1. What's the difference between a metaphor and a simile?

Both metaphors and similes express comparisons between two things that aren't
obviously alike. In a simile, the comparison is stated explicitly with the help of a word
such as like or as: "My love is like a red, red rose / That's newly sprung in June." In a
metaphor, the two things are linked or equated without using like or as: "Love is a rose
but you better not pick it."
2. What's the difference between metaphor and metonymy?
Put simply, metaphors make comparisons while metonyms make associations or
substitutions. The place name "Hollywood," for example, has become a metonym for the
American film industry (and all the glitz and greed that go with it).
3. What's the difference between metaphor and personification?
Personification is a particular type of metaphor that assigns the characteristics of a person
to something non-human, as in this observation from Douglas Adams: "He turned on the
wipers again, but they still refused to feel that the exercise was worthwhile, and scraped
and squeaked in protest."
4.
What's the difference between personification and apostrophe?
A rhetorical apostrophe not only animates something absent or non-living (as in
personification) but also addresses it directly. For instance, in Johnny Mercer's song
"Moon River," the river is apostrophized: "Wherever you're going, I'm going your way."
5. What's the difference between hyperbole and understatement?
Both are attention-getting devices: hyperbole exaggerates the truth for emphasis while
understatement says less and means more. To say that Uncle Wheezer is "older than dirt"
is an example of hyperbole. To say that he's "a bit long in the tooth" is probably an
understatement.
6. What's the difference between understatement and litotes?
Litotes is a type of understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its
opposite. We might say litotically that Uncle Wheezer is "no spring chicken" and "not as
young as he used to be."

7. What's the difference between alliteration and assonance?

Both create sound effects: alliteration through the repetition of an initial consonant sound
(as in "a peck of pickled peppers"), and assonance through the repetition of similar vowel
sounds in neighboring words ("It beats . . . as it sweeps . . . as it cleans!").
8. What's the difference between onomatopoeia and homoioteleuton?
Don't be put off by the fancy terms. They refer to some very familiar sound effects.
Onomatopoeia (pronounced ON-a-MAT-a-PEE-a) refers to words (such as bow-wow and
hiss) that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
Homoioteleuton (pronounced ho-moi-o-te-LOO-ton) refers to similar sounds at the
endings of words, phrases, or sentences ("The quicker picker upper").
9. What's the difference between anaphora and epistrophe?
Both involve the repetition of words or phrases. With anaphora, the repetition is at the
beginning of successive clauses (as in the famous refrain in the final part of Dr. King's "I
Have a Dream" speech). With epistrophe (also known as epiphora), the repetition is at the
end of successive clauses ("When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a
child, I thought as a child").
10. What's the difference between antithesis and chiasmus?
Both are rhetorical balancing acts. In an antithesis, contrasting ideas are juxtaposed in
balanced phrases or clauses ("Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing"). A chiasmus
(also known as antimetabole) is a type of antithesis in which the second half of an
expression is balanced against the first with the parts reversed ("The first shall be last,
and the last shall be first").
11. What's the difference between asyndeton and polysyndeton?
These terms refer to contrasting ways of linking items in a series. An asyndetic style
omits all conjunctions and separates the items with commas ("They dove, splashed,
floated, splashed, swam, snorted"). A polysyndetic style places a conjunction after every
item in the list ("We lived and laughed and loved and left")..
12. What's the difference between a paradox and an oxymoron?
Both involve apparent contradictions. A paradoxical statement appears to contradict itself
("If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness"). An oxymoron is a
compressed paradox in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side ("a
real phony")..
13. What's the difference between a euphemism and a dysphemism?
A euphemism involves the substitution of an inoffensive expression (such as "passed
away") for one that might be considered offensively explicit ("died"). In contrast, a
dysphemism substitutes a harsher phrase ("took a dirt nap") for a comparatively
inoffensive one. Though often meant to shock or offend, dysphemisms may also serve as
in-group markers to show camaraderie.

14. What's the difference between diacope and epizeuxis?

Both involve the repetition of a word or phrase for emphasis. With diacope, the repetition
is usually broken up by one or more intervening words: "You're not fully clean until
you're Zestfully clean." In the case of epizeuxis, there are no interruptions: "I'm shocked,
shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"
15. What's the difference between verbal irony and sarcasm?

In both, words are used to convey the opposite of their literal meanings. Linguist John
Haiman has drawn this key distinction between the two devices: "[P]eople may be
unintentionally ironic, but sarcasm requires intention. What is essential to sarcasm is that
it is overt irony intentionally used by the speaker as a form of verbal aggression" (Talk Is
Cheap, 1998).
16. What's the difference between a tricolon and a tetracolon climax?

Both refer to a series of words, phrases, or clauses in parallel form. A tricolon is a series
of three members: "Eye it, try it, buy it!" A tetracolon climax is a series of four: "He and
we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the
same world."
17. What's the difference between a rhetorical question and epiplexis?

A rhetorical question is asked merely for effect with no answer expected: "Marriage is a
wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?" Epiplexis is a type of
rhetorical question whose purpose is to rebuke or reproach: "Have you no shame?"
Foot type
Iamb
Trochee
Spondee
Anapest
Dactyl
Amphibrach
Pyrrhic

Style
Iambic
Trochaic
Spondaic
Anapestic
Dactylic
Amphibrachic
Pyrrhic

Stress pattern
Unstressed + Stressed
Stressed + Unstressed
Stressed + Stressed
Unstressed + Unstressed + Stressed
Stressed + Unstressed + Unstressed
Unstressed + Stressed + Unstressed
Unstressed + Unstressed

Classical and medieval criticism

Key texts

Plato: Ion, Republic, Cratylus

Aristotle: Poetics, Rhetoric

Horace: Art of Poetry

Longinus: On the Sublime

Syllable count
Two
Two
Two
Three
Three
Three
Two

Plotinus: On the Intellectual Beauties

St. Augustine: On Christian Doctrine

Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy

Aquinas: The Nature and Domain of Sacred Doctrine

Dante: The Banquet, Letter to Can Grande Della Scala

Boccaccio: Life of Dante, Genealogy of the Gentile Gods

Christine de Pizan: The Book of the City of Ladies

Bharata Muni: Natya Shastra

Al-Jahiz: al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin, al-Hayawan

Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz: Kitab al-Badi

Rajashekhara: Inquiry into Literature

Valmiki: The Invention of Poetry (from the Ramayana)

Anandavardhana: Light on Suggestion

Cao Pi: A Discourse on Literature

Lu Ji: Rhymeprose on Literature

Liu Xie: The Literary Mind

Wang Changling: A Discussion of Literature and Meaning

Sikong Tu: The Twenty-Four Classes of Poetry

Renaissance criticism

Key texts

Lodovico Castelvetro: The Poetics of Aristotle Translated and Explained

Philip Sidney: An Apology for Poetry

Jacopo Mazzoni: On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante

Torquato Tasso: Discourses on the Heroic Poem

Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning

Henry Reynolds: Mythomystes

John Mandaville: Composed in the mid-14th century--most probably by a

french physician