Con Man: a man who cheats or tricks someone by gaining their trust and persuading them to believe something that is not true.
Adventure story: A loose but commonly accepted term for a kind of prose narrative addressed for the most part to boys, in which a hero or group of heroes engages in exotic and perilous exploration. It is a masculinized variety of romance , one in which the erotic and religious dimensions common to other types are subordinated to or completely replaced by an emphasis on vigorous outdoor activity and the practical arts of survival amid unexpected dangers, along with a cultivation of such virtues as courage and loyalty. Marvellous events may be witnessed, but usually within a context provided by modern scientific knowledge. The genre flourished in the later 19th century, its most influential master being the French writer Jules Verne, whose series of eighteen Voyages extraordinaires include Voyage au centre de la terre ( Journey to the Centre of the Earth , 1864) and Vingt mille lieues sous les mers ( Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea , 1870). Popular examples in English included H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1886), Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912), and P. C. Wren’s Beau Geste (1924). Partial overlapping with science fiction , as in Verne’s case, or with the thriller and other popular forms, is sometimes found.
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Allegory: A story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. The principal technique of allegory is personification , whereby abstract qualities are given human shape—as in public statues of Liberty or Justice. An allegory may be conceived as a metaphor that is extended into a structured system. In written narrative, allegory involves a continuous parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning in a story, so that its persons and events correspond to their equivalents in a system of ideas or a chain of events external to the tale: each character and episode in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), for example, embodies an idea within a pre-existing Puritan doctrine of salvation. Allegorical thinking permeated the Christian literature of the Middle Ages, flourishing in the morality plays and in the dream visions of Dante and Langland. Some later allegorists like Dryden and Orwell used allegory as a method of satire ; their hidden meanings are political rather than religious. In the medieval discipline of biblical exegesis , allegory became an important method of interpretation, a habit of seeking correspondences between different realms of meaning (e.g. physical and spiritual) or between the Old Testament and the New ( see TYPOLOGY ). It can be argued that modern critical interpretation continues this allegorizing tradition. See also ANAGOGICAL , EMBLEM , EXEMPLUM , FABLE , PARABLE , PSYCHOMACHY , SYMBOL .
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Allusion: An indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work, the nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader’s familiarity with what is thus mentioned. The technique of allusion is an economical means of calling upon the history or the literary tradition that author and reader are assumed to share, although some poets (notably Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot) allude to areas of quite specialized knowledge. In his poem ‘The Statues’ (1939)— When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side What stalked through the Post Office? —W. B. Yeats alludes both to the hero of Celtic legend (Cuchulain) and to the new historical hero (Patrick Pearse) of the 1916 Easter Rising, in which the revolutionaries captured the Dublin Post Office. In addition to such topical allusions to recent events, Yeats often uses personal allusions to aspects of his own life and circle of friends. Other kinds of allusion include the imitative (as in parody), and the structural, in which one work reminds us of the structure of another (as Joyce’s Ulysses refers to Homer’s Odyssey). Topical allusion is especially important in satire. Adjective: allusive.
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Bildungsroman: A kind of novel that follows the development of the hero or heroine from childhood or adolescence into adulthood, through a troubled quest for identity. The term (‘formation-novel’) comes from Germany, where Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–6) set the pattern for later Bildungsromane . Many outstanding novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries follow this pattern of personal growth: Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849–50), for example. When the novel describes the formation of a young artist, as in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), it may also be called a Künstlerroman .
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Burlesque: A kind of parody that ridicules some serious literary work either by treating its solemn subject in an undignified style ( see TRAVESTY ), or by applying its elevated style to a trivial subject, as in Pope’s mock-epic poem The Rape of the Lock (1712–14). Often used in the theatre, burlesque appears in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (in the Pyramus and Thisbe play, which mocks the tradition of interludes ), while The Beggar’s Opera (1728) by John Gay burlesques Italian opera. An early form of burlesque is the Greek satyr play . In the USA, though, burlesque was also a disreputable form of comic entertainment with titillating dances or striptease. See also EXTRAVAGANZA , SATIRE .
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Dialect : A distinctive variety of a language, spoken by members of an identifiable regional group, nation, or social class. Dialects differ from one another in pronunciation, vocabulary, and (often) in grammar. Traditionally they have been regarded as variations from a ‘standard’ educated form of the language, but modern linguists point out that standard forms are themselves dialects which have come to predominate for social and political reasons. The study of variations between different dialects is known as dialectology . Adjective : dialectal
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Hero (Heroine): The main character in a narrative or dramatic work. The more neutral term *protagonist” is often preferable, to avoid confusion with the usual sense of heroism as admirable courage or nobility, since in many works (other than *epic poems, where such admirable qualities are required in the hero), the leading character may not be morally or otherwise superior. When our expectations of heroic qualities are strikingly disappointed, the central character may be known as an *anti-hero or anti-heroine.”
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Irony: A subtly humorous perception of inconsistency, in which an apparently straightforward statement or event is undermined by its context so as to give it a very different significance. In various forms, irony appears in many kinds of literature, from the tragedy of Sophocles to the novels of Jane Austen and Henry James, but is especially important in satire , as in Voltaire and Swift. At its simplest, in verbal irony , it involves a discrepancy between what is said and what is really meant, as in its crude form, sarcasm; for the figures of speech exploiting this discrepancy, see ANTIPHRASIS , LITOTES , MEIOSIS . The more sustained structural irony in literature involves the use of a naïve or deluded hero or unreliable narrator , whose view of the world differs widely from the true circumstances recognized by the author and readers; literary irony thus flatters its readers’ intelligence at the expense of a character (or fictional narrator). A similar sense of detached superiority is achieved by dramatic irony , in which the audience knows more about a character’s situation than the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character’s expectations, and thus ascribing a sharply different sense to some of the character’s own statements; in tragedies , this is called tragic irony . The term cosmic irony is sometimes used to denote a view of people as the dupes of a cruelly mocking Fate, as in the novels of Thomas Hardy. A writer whose works are characterized by an ironic tone may be called an ironist . [ Proleptic irony , used in playwriting, is when the audience is given a clue or “foreshadowing” of an event that will happen later in the play.]
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Minstrel: A professional entertainer of late medieval Europe, either itinerant or settled at a noble court. Minstrels of the 13th and 14th centuries, the descendants of the jongleurs , sang and recited lyrics and narrative poems including chansons de geste and ballads . Their art, sometimes called minstrelsy , declined with the advent of printing. They are distinguished from the troubadours , who were educated amateur poets of higher social rank. In the USA, the minstrel show was a 19th-century form of entertainment with white performers in blackface presenting stereotyped impressions of black American folk culture, and playing banjos.
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms . Oxford University Press, 2020.
Parody: A mocking imitation of the style of a literary work or works, ridiculing the stylistic habits of an author or school by exaggerated mimicry. Parody is related to burlesque in its application of serious styles to ridiculous subjects, to satire in its punishment of eccentricities, and even to criticism in its analysis of style. The Greek dramatist Aristophanes parodied the styles of Aeschylus and Euripides in The Frogs (405 BCE ), while Cervantes parodied chivalric romances in Don Quixote (1605). In English, two of the leading parodists are Henry Fielding and James Joyce. Poets in the 19th century, especially William Wordsworth and Robert Browning, suffered numerous parodies of their works. Adjective : parodic . See also MOCK-HEROIC , TRAVESTY .
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Picaresque novel [ pik-ă- resk ]: In the strict sense, a novel with a picaroon (Spanish, picaró : a rogue or scoundrel) as its hero or heroine, usually recounting his or her escapades in a first-person narrative marked by its episodic structure and realistic low-life descriptions. The picaroon is often a quick-witted servant who takes up with a succession of employers. The true Spanish picaresque novel is represented by the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) and by Mateo Alemán’s more widely influential Guzmán de Alfarache (1599–1604); its imitators include Johann Grimmelhausen’s Simplicissimus (1669) in German, Alain-René Lesage’s Gil Blas (1715–35) in French, and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722) in English. In the looser sense now more frequently used, the term is applied to narratives that do not have a picaroon as their central character, but are loosely structured as a sequence of episodes united only by the presence of the central character, who is often involved in a long journey: Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) are examples of novels that are referred to as being wholly or partly picaresque in this sense, while Byron’s narrative poem Don Juan (1819–24) is a rare case of a picaresque story in verse.
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Satire : A mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, institutions, or societies to ridicule and scorn. Satire is often an incidental element in literary works that may not be wholly satirical, especially in comedy . Its tone may vary from tolerant amusement, as in the verse satires of the Roman poet Horace, to bitter indignation, as in the verse of Juvenal and the prose of Jonathan Swift ( see JUVENALIAN ). Various forms of literature may be satirical, from the plays of Ben Jonson or of Molière and the poetry of Chaucer or Byron to the prose writings of Rabelais and Voltaire. The models of Roman satire, especially the verse satires of Horace and Juvenal, inspired some important imitations by Boileau, Pope, and Johnson in the greatest period of satire—the 17th and 18th centuries—when writers could appeal to a shared sense of normal conduct from which vice and folly were seen to stray. In this classical tradition, an important form is ‘formal’ or ‘direct’ satire, in which the writer directly addresses the reader (or recipient of a verse letter) with satiric comment. The alternative form of ‘indirect’ satire usually found in plays and novels allows us to draw our own conclusions from the actions of the characters, as for example in the novels of Evelyn Waugh or Chinua Achebe. See also LAMPOON .
Source: Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Trickster: Robert D. Pelton, the leading scholar of the trickster, contends that this mythological figure appears in the folklore of nearly every traditional culture. Sometimes the trickster manifests as a god and at other times as an animal. Pelton notes that, in human form, the trickster was a man “seizing the fragments of his own experience and discovering in them an order secured by its very wholeness … weaving together a fabric of meaning through the transforming power of his imagination.” Concerning early African Americans, examples of tricksters may be found among runaway slaves, who, as their masters described in newspaper notices of their escape, might “pretend to be free.” Self-emancipated slaves forged passes, wrote up their own manumission papers, and constructed lives that bore little resemblance to those they had led under their former masters. Enslaved people changed their appearances, sustained nighttime lives completely apart from their masters, and held positions of leadership barely understood by the white ruling class. Another example of a trickster was the fiddler, whose skills were frequently mentioned in runaway advertisements. The fiddler was a musical “physicianer,” or songster, who could play airs from Irish, Scottish, English, and Dutch vernacular tunes as well as African melodies. On the roads to freedom, a fiddler could play at work sites, rural festivals, and taverns, using his music to charm suspicious white audiences to let him pass as free. Part of a class of professional musicians that regularly toured through West African nations, the fiddler became a trickster to survive in the hostile world of New World slavery. Enhancing his deception was the heavy consumption of alcohol by listeners, the songs and booze together creating a hallucinogenic atmosphere. A second type of trickster was the runaway who, as perceived by whites, was a fake preacher. Simon was a runaway who “talks good English, can read and write, is very slow in his speech, can bleed and draw teeth. Pretending to be a great Doctor and very religious and says he is a Churchman.” Such accusations of deception by masters stripped away the hard labor and the pretense of the fugitives as tricksters. That these fugitives, in turn, made use of medical knowledge and, particularly, knowledge of Christianity opened questions about the morality of slavery. Runaway slaves adopted personality traits that allowed them to deceive their white masters. Advertisements described some fugitives as flatterers or laughers, others as cunning, artful, or liars. Names, the principal source of identity, were changed according to need. Jem, a slave from New Jersey, was also called James, Gaul, Mingo, and Mink. Another runaway passed himself off as a Native American. One trickster even faked his own death, leaving his old clothes on the side of a riverbank. Scholars have uncovered other examples of black tricksters who inveigled their ways deep into white society and demonstrated the duplicity of their masters. That is, trickster folklore usually includes the following elements: offers of false friendship by the trickster, solemn and then violated agreements, trickery, deception by the victim, and then freedom; slave traders and masters were by definition tricksters, and so any deception against them was fair game—including elaborate versions of confidence games. In 1758 the printer John Holt formally charged a black servant known as Charles Roberts with stealing lottery tickets in New Haven, Connecticut. Along with an accomplice named George, Roberts broke out of jail but was soon caught and tried. In a settlement, Roberts became indentured to Holt for forty years, or virtually a lifetime. Holt then took his new servant to New York, where he set up a newspaper. There, as Holt angrily described in a runaway notice, Roberts managed to become a trusted assistant, handling bookkeeping and cash; while doing so he embezzled a sizable sum, took out loans in Holt's name, and conspired with white and black confederates to commit robberies, all of which came to light only after Roberts ran away. Later historical investigation indicated that Holt had been using Roberts as the backbone of his printing establishment. Holt's loud protestations of the servant's duplicity brought to light his own past, which included bankruptcy, drunkenness, and embezzlement. Having seized his freedom, Roberts was not heard of again. White tricksters could also victimize unwary blacks. Solomon Northrup (also known as Northup) was but one of many free blacks who found themselves tricked by ruthless whites who, after gaining their confidence, transported blacks to the South and sold them into slavery. Disreputable judges and masters in New Jersey were infamous for this practice. Black tricksters could also victimize the black community. Israel Lewis was but one of several black abolitionists who diverted funds intended for black settlements—in his case, the Wilberforce Colony in Canada, founded in 1830—for his own purposes. While Lewis traveled the North soliciting funds and acting in a respectable manner, he was actually stealing donations. Austin Steward, who gave up a prosperous grocery business in Rochester, New York, to head Wilberforce, became so angry at Lewis's defalcations that he advertised warnings in northern newspapers that Lewis had no authority to collect money for his colony. The trickster legend is a good example of how African folk practices melded into American society, producing survival skills on the one hand and crimes against the black community on the other. Blacks proved themselves capable of using the foundations of white culture to take advantage of their masters' confidence. Likewise, duplicitous confidence men could pervert the brave aims of the black community for their own ill-gotten gain, casting doubt on the respectability that free blacks wished to claim and that white racists doubted was possible.
Source: Hodges, Graham Russell Gao. "Trickster." Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Minstrelsy: Between 1843 and the Civil War, dozens of troupes of white men in blackface performed minstrelsy in cities across America. Minstrelsy was presented as a loosely structured series of songs, jokes, dances, variety acts, and skits and depicted foolish, sensual, and sentimental images of African Americans for native-born workers, Irish immigrants, rural newcomers, and other white working-class males who constituted its primary audience. By presenting images of a degraded Other, minstrelsy helped to bridge ethnic and cultural differences among white workers, who consequently came to define their class allegiances in racial terms. After the Civil War, the production and reception of minstrelsy changed, as women and African Americans performed on the minstrel stage and audiences included more middle-class, white spectators and some African Americans. Blackface acts remained generally racist, however, even as individual performers joined vaudeville, burlesque, and other forms of popular culture in the 1890s. The conventions of white performers “blacking up” derived from European traditions. The black face had long signified a trickster figure in folk rituals of inversion, including charivari shaming rites and many Anglo-American festivals. Thomas D. Rice, George Washington Dixon, and other blackface performers popular in the 1830s combined these musical and theatrical traditions with African American costuming, dancing, and instrumental practices. After the formation of the first minstrel troupe in 1843, blackface musicians appropriated other performance elements from the intercultural life of the plantation South. These included the corn-shucking ritual, which influenced the beginning of the show and the banter among minstrel comics. Both Jacksonian republicanism and northern conceptions of the slave South shaped this working-class entertainment. Idealized images of happy slaves and generous masters (especially evident in the minstrel music of Stephen Foster) pervaded minstrelsy in the 1850s, encouraging audiences to denigrate free as well as enslaved African Americans. At the same time, minstrelsy lampooned professional pretensions by parodying lawyers and politicians and undercut elite power by satirizing the rich. In addition to sentimentalizing light-skinned female slaves, minstrelsy attacked assertive women through its ridicule of the “wench” character; men played both of these female roles in ways that encouraged homosocial enjoyment. Although African Americans had appeared on minstrel stages before 1861, their numbers increased after the Civil War. Successful in part because of their claim to delineate authentic Negro life, black troupes nonetheless continued the stereotypes of the carefree Jim Crow, loyal Uncle Tom, and dandified Zip Coon. The interracial popularity of African American performer Billy Kersands induced some southern theater owners to suspend racially segregated seating practices when his troupe came to town. The success of burlesque in the late 1860s spawned several all-female white troupes performing standard minstrel routines in whiteface. Bourgeois interest in gender difference and sexual desire also led to the popularity of female impersonators. The large companies and sumptuous productions of Jack H. Haverly revived minstrelsy in the 1880s, but the rise of vaudeville soon splintered the troupes and dispersed their performers. Minstrelsy traditions continued to shape the careers of such performers as Bert Williams and Al Jolson; popular entertainment, including the “Amos ‘n’ Andy” radio show; and the larger contours of race relations in the United States. Minstrelsy also proved immensely popular in England and the British Empire; indeed, it influenced the social construction of “whiteness” throughout the world.
Source: McConachie, Bruce. "Minstrelsy." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History : Oxford University Press, 2013