Glossary

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technopaegnia
the art of "shaped" poems in which the visual force is supposed to work spiritually or magically.

temporal setting
the time of a story, poem, or play.

terza rima
a verse form consisting of three-line stanzas in which the second line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third of the next.

tetrameter
a line of poetry with four feet: "The Grass | divides | as with | a comb" (Dickinson).

tetrameter couplet
rhymed pairs of lines that contain (in classical iambic, trochaic, and anapestic verse) four measures of two feet or (in modern English verse) four metrical feet.

theme
(1) a generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work; (2) the statement a poem makes about its subject.

third-person narrator
a character, "he" or "she," who "tells" the story; may have either a limited point of view or an omniscient point of view; may also be an unreliable narrator.

thrust stage
a stage design that allows the audience to sit around three sides of the major acting area.

tone
the attitude a literary work takes toward its subject and theme.

topic
(1) the concrete and literal description of what a story is about; (2) a poem’s general or specific area of concern. Also called subject.

tradition
an inherited, established, or customary practice.

traditional symbols
symbols that, through years of usage, have acquired an agreed-upon significance, an accepted meaning. See archetype.

tragedy
a drama in which a character (usually a good and noble person of high rank) is brought to a disastrous end in his or her confrontation with a superior force (fortune, the gods, social forces, universal values), but also comes to understand the meaning of his or her deeds and to accept an appropriate punishment. Often the protagonist’s downfall is a direct result of a fatal flaw in his or her character.

trochaic
a metrical form in which the basic foot is a trochee.

trochee
a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one ("Homer").

turning point
the third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing. Also called climax.