Literary Terms: T - Z

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Tactile imagery –

the creation of an image of touch

Ten-minute plays –

a short play which is performed in no more than ten minutes

Tension –

the result of the friction between the protagonist and antagonist

Tercet –

a three-line poem or stanza in a poem

Terza rima –

a poem or stanza in three lines with the first and third line rhyming: aba bcb cdc and so on

Text –

any written body of words; may be either prose or poetry

Theater of the Absurd –

a movement in drama beginning around the 1960s where exaggerated characters and action using symbols seems absurd

Theme (theme of a story) –

the central idea in a story about life or human nature expressed in a statement.  The theme of a story is different from a conventional theme which is a commonly used theme topic such a love or family. The theme of a story is what idea is conveyed about a topic.  Theme is also different from plot which is the sequence of events in the story.

Third person narrator (third person point of view) –

a story told in third person (he, she, it); may be from the perspective of a character in the story who knows everything (omniscient narrator) or who has limited knowledge (limited narrator)

Third person –

third person point of view tells the story from the perspective of an outsider as opposed to first person where the narrator is telling a story about him or herself using the word I.

Title –

what a story is called; often includes symbolism or irony

Tone –

the attitude of the speaker or narrator such as in an angry or cheerful tone; the attitude with which the story is told as expressed in particular words; a description of people laughing and enjoying themselves conveys a happy tone, for example. Tone helps creates the atmosphere which is the general or overall feeling or emotion or a work.  Tone also helps create mood which is the emotional reaction in the reader resulting from the atmosphere. Mood refers to individual emotions while atmosphere refers to an overall feeling. Sometimes, mood and atmosphere are used interchangeably.

Tragedy –

a form of literature originating in the plays of the Classical Greek era which includes a tragic hero, an otherwise noble person having a superior stature in the community who through some tragic flaw causes himself a fall resulting in an adverse impact upon his community and often his own death; thought to have evolved from the aspect of the dying god in the Dionysian rituals

Tragic flaw – 

an undesirable personality trait that results in the fall of an otherwise good person

Tragic hero –

a character of elevated status who is a good person but for a tragic flaw which brings about his or her downfall

Travel narrative –

a narrative about a journey usually written by the person about his or her own journey

Troubadours –

traveling poets/performers from the Provencal region of France during the Middle Ages reciting lyric poetry about courtly love

Troubadours –

traveling poets/performers from the Provencal region of France during the Middle Ages reciting lyric poetry about courtly love

Understatement –

saying less than what is meant

Universal symbols (archetypes) –

symbols that seem to be part of the human psyche which are generally accepted across time and culture such as the Old Man representing experience and wisdom or the Grim Reaper representing death.

Unreliable narrators –

a narrator who is either not omniscient or is deliberately misleading the reader

Verbal irony –

an irony created within a sentence where there is a difference between what is said and what is meant

Victorian Period –

defined by the period when Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901 and included several artistic movements characterized by a concern for the impact of industrialization on humans and social reform; includes different artistic movements.

Villanelle –

a nineteen-line poem of five three-line stanzas (tercets) followed by a four-line stanza (quatrain) and which includes two repeating rhymes and two refrains

Visual imagery –

the creation of an image of sight