The following is a glossary of key terms introduced in the readings and study of literature explored in Week 1: The Study of Literature. 

Character 
A character is an imaginary person introduced and active in a work of imaginative literature.  Depending on his or her importance in initiating and controlling the action of a work or resolving its essential conflict, a character will be characterized as either a major or minor character.  The "protagonist" of the story is the character which drives the action of the story.  The "antagonist" is the character which acts as a foil in conflict with the interests and actions of the  "protagonist," usually the major character of the story. 

Conflict 
The essential element of any short story--Edgar Allan Poe's "ideal short stories" notwithstanding--is conflict.  Conflict between characters, conflict between setting and characters, conflict between themes, conflicts between points of view and perspectives--conflict drives the action of the story, justifying the reactions of characters and the author's use of various motifs in developing the story. 

Fiction 
Imaginative literature related in prose, rather than poetry, is called fiction. 

Historical fiction 
Fiction which draws upon real events or people for its background, focus, or theme is called historical fiction. 

Image 
An image is a mental re-creation of an experience of one or more of the five senses.  The word "red," for example, triggers an immediate mental picture of the color, either as a general "wash" of the color or the memory of an object or subject colored in red.  Images that take on meanings in addition to their defined or commonly agreed upon references are called symbols. 

Imaginative literature 
Any literature is "imaginative" that addresses imaginary events, settings, characters, or subjects or which treats historical motifs through the use of subjective, emotional, and figurative language, and through other rhetorical expressions and patterns beyond the conventions of reporting or narrating. 

Motif 
Any element operating in a work of imaginative literature is called a "motif." 

Perspective 
"Perspective" in the development of a short story refers to the "angles of vision" through which the action and interaction of characters are revealed.  Think of "perspective" as the "camera's eye view."  Some scenes "are shot" at a distance, while others are recorded "up close and personal." 

Point of View 
The "voice who tells the story," point of view is typically "third person" or "first person." Sometimes referred to as the "author's point of view" or the "omniscient point of view," the "third person" point of view takes its name from the use of the grammatical "third person" of pronoun reference--"he," "she," "it," and "they."  The use of the "third person" provides the most flexibility for a writer, allowing movement at will between scenes, placement in time, focus on incident, and development of characters. 

"First person" point of view reveals the story through the voice of a single character or multiple characters who relate the narrative as limited from their own perspectives and experiences.  "First person" or "selected first person" point of view is written in the grammatical first person pronoun, using "I" or "we."  Limiting the "telling of a story" to first person expression provides the writer rich opportunities for situational and dramatic irony, not to mention the use of a character as his or her own mouthpiece to espouse opinions or reactions through the distance afforded by an "independent" voice.  Characters used primarily to voice issues of an author are called "personas." 

Setting 
A story's "setting" refers to the place the action unfolds.  In "historical" literature, the setting may be a specific place where some memorable event occurred.  However, setting may general with no specific reference to an actual location.  The setting can also be mental, set within the musings of a character's thoughts, memories, reflections, or fantasies.  Some teachers and literary scholars also refer to "time" as an aspect or element of setting; others treat time as a separate motif. 

Short Story 
The short story is a type of imaginative literature relatively new in the canon of fiction which dates primarily to the 19th century.  Its leading contributors are the French writer Guy de Maupassant, the Russian author Anton Chekhov, and the American Edgar Allen Poe.  The short story is distinguished from other types of fiction by a limited setting, few characters, and the focus on a single incident or conflict. The narrative line--"what happens"--dominates the stories of Guy du Maupassant who wrote stories with surprising or ironic endings.  Chekhov is remembered for his "psychological" stories that explore the inner workings of characters' minds and emotions.  Poe is the "father of the detective" story and the "ideal short story," a tell in which all motifs are predetermined to serve the evocation of single emotional reaction (what Poe referred to as the story's "effect") within the reader. 

Symbol 
While not all images are symbols, all symbols are images which have taken on meanings in addition to those normally associated with them.  Symbolic meaning is the "suggested" or "implied" meaning that an image assumes when a writer places it repeated in an unnatural or unexpected context.  For example, when the color red is associated repeatedly with a character, it may come to "symbolize" or represent the character, even when not present, either by way of foreshadowing or flashback. 

Theme 
The theme is the major point or purpose, the message that can be stated, dramatized, illustrated, or symbolized in a literary work.  Themes can be expressed as a motif (the theme of the "apple" in the Garden of Eden), a topic (the theme of unrequited love), a concept (the theme of democracy), or as a complete statement, framed as a claim ("Evil will endure while good people rest.")   

Time 
Time refers to the range or passage of time that elapses from the beginning until the end of a story.  That does not mean, however, that the presentation of the passage of time follows chronologically from the earliest moment to the last moment in sequence.  In much modern fiction, the sequence of the passage of time is broken up, distorted, extended, or collapsed for one effect or another.  By casual references, a writer may introduce many "time lines" each with its own string of incidents, joined like wagon spokes united to single hub, or all intertwined like strings of spaghetti in a simmering bowl. "Foreshadowing" and "flashback" are two techniques writers use to manipulate time in a work. 

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