Literary Terms: H - J

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Haiku –

a form of Japanese verse with three lines which are not rhymed and which have five, seven, and five syllables usually involving some aspect of nature.

Harlem Renaissance –

a movement during the 1920s starting in Harlem which focused on Black culture

Heroic couplet –

two lines of rhymed verse in iambic pentameter; generally used in epic poems

Hip-hop –

musical verse which uses rhyme, repetition of sounds and phases

Historical setting –

the moment in history where the action occurs

History –

the actual events

Horror fiction –

a type of fiction that includes an event or events that are very frightening and which may include fantasy or science fiction

Hubris –

arrogance; an attribute where a character (or a person) has an exaggerated sense of him or herself or his or her importance

Hyperbole –

saying more than what is meant; exaggeration

Iambic pentameter –

a common type of pattern of sounds and rhythm used in poetry created by pairing ten syllables for each line into five pairs. Commonly used by Shakespeare in his sonnets

Imagery –

the creation of sensory images through words

Imaginative literature –

literature created by an author’s imagination to convey some personal feeling or observation or message

Imagism –

a poetic movement beginning in the early 1900s where poets began experimenting with open verse and focused on the poet’s response to a situation or object stressing concrete imagery

Imperfect rhyme –

close but not exact rhyme; near rhyme; approximate rhyme

In medias res –

Latin expression meaning “in the middle of things”; an arrangement of events where the story starts somewhere in the middle of the action and then goes forward giving information about what happened before through narration, dialogue, or flashbacks.

Informal diction –

the use words with slang, colloquialisms, and non-Standard English

Initiation theme –

a theme about being initiated into something new

Interpretative literature –

literature intended to say more than just the story on a larger issue and to be interpreted; literature that can have more than one meaning

Inverted sequence –

an order of words that is not conventional

Ironic title –

a title which contains irony often helping to reveal theme

Irony –

created when  there is a discrepancy between an expectation and an actuality