#literary theory

• Actantial — Pertaining to actants or their roles; relating to the functional structure of roles within a narrative or a syntactic framework. In literary theory and semiotics, the term describes the structural network of relationships among the agents of an action (the actantial model), highlighting how narrative forces interact to propel the plot, independent of the characters' psychological identities.
• Plot structure — The collection of elements constituting the plot, storyline, or epic structure of a literary work; the structural manner in which events are arranged and linked within a narrative. In clinical psychology, the term sometimes designates the inclination to invent imaginary facts or the tendency toward compulsive fabulation specific to certain personality disorders.
• Archaic plot structure — An archaic or obsolete linguistic variant of the term 'afabulație'; the structural mode, canvas, or weave upon which the plot and storyline of a literary or dramatic work are constructed. It is encountered isolatedly in cultural magazines from the early 20th century or in early criticism studies, later completely replaced by the modern variant.
• Aphoristic — Belonging to or relating to aphorisms; composed of maxims, short sentences, or dense thoughts. It refers to a style characterized by conscious logical fragmentation, maximum semantic concentration, and the elimination of rhetorical padding, specific to speculative philosophy.
• Aphoristic quality — The quality or character of being aphoristic; the intrinsic tendency of a text, speech, or style to express itself through concise, lapidary formulas and condensed thoughts. In modern stylistic analysis, it measures the degree of conceptual concentration and structural essentialization.
• Anachrony — A structural discordance between the chronological order of events in a story and their textual arrangement order within the narrative discourse. Conceptualized in modern narratology by Gérard Genette, this aesthetic device includes fundamental techniques such as analepsis (flashback) and prolepsis (anticipation), being used to break the linearity of time and generate complex psychological or dramatic effects.
• Anagogical — Pertaining to anagoge or anagogy; characterized by a superior spiritual, mystical, or eschatological interpretation designed to elevate the mind from the literal meaning to the divine. In literary theory (such as that of Northrop Frye) and patristics, it defines a structural mode of reading where the text is viewed as a symbol of total cosmic unity or supreme spiritual truths.
• Analepsis — An aesthetic device and syntactic figure of speech in modern narratology consisting of interrupting the chronological thread of a story to insert events, memories, or details that took place prior to the present moment of the action; commonly known in cinematography as a flashback. Structurally conceptualized by Gérard Genette as a dominant form of narrative anachrony, this mechanism breaks temporal linearity to illuminate characters' pasts and provide essential psychological keys of interpretation.
• Angelism — A moral-philosophical and literary current, doctrine, or attitude tending toward complete detachment from material, biological, and sensory reality, idealizing human nature to the point of attributing to it the perfection, purity, and spiritual attributes of an angel. In a critical or figurative sense, it represents a utopian tendency, a form of excessive idealism or rigid purism that willfully ignores the earthly impulses, imperfections, and carnal condition of the human being, risking a total break from reality.
• Angelization — The act of angelizing and its result; the abstract, moral, or artistic process through which a person, character, or concept is portrayed in an idealized, pure, and flawless form, being elevated to the status of an angel. In modern essays and philosophy, the term often denotes an exaggerated attempt at spiritualization that refuses to accept the dual nature of the human being.
• Anglicist — A specialist, researcher, or university faculty member focused on the structural, philological, literary, or linguistic study of the English language and Anglo-Saxon culture. As a professional descriptor, the word individualizes high technical expertise in translation studies, comparative glottology, and the critical analysis of English-language texts.
• Anti-critical — Opposing literary or artistic criticism, rejecting its verdicts, methods, or authority; a person, author, or creator who combats the evaluations of official critics. As an adjective, it describes an essay, pamphlet, or aesthetic stance intended to dismantle the value judgments issued by academic commentators.
• Anticriticism — A doctrinal current or theoretical manifestation identical to metacriticism; a set of arguments, essays, or philosophical stances through which writers and artists challenge the validity, authority, and hermeneutic methods of institutionalized academic criticism. This neologism, borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon cultural sphere, theorizes the independence of the creative act against restrictive analyses.
• Antithesis — A rhetorical device, figure of speech, or syntactic structure through which a symmetrical conceptual opposition is expressed, achieved by negating a thesis simultaneously with asserting its contrary; a rare variant or structural equivalent of antithesis based on the inversion of meanings. In literary analysis, it serves to dramatically emphasize contrasts between two states or ideas.
• Anti-literature — A literary movement, artistic manifestation, or totality of written works that deliberately reject traditional norms, conventional narrative structures, classical character development techniques, and established aesthetic canons; an avant-garde movement (such as the anti-novel or theater of the absurd) that uses the text to deconstruct the very idea of institutionalized literature. In a structural sense, it sabotages traditional epic coherence.
• Anti-memoirs — An autobiographical work or avant-garde memorialistic trend that rejects traditional chronological structure, idealized retrospective character, and strict factual fidelity in favor of a subjective, fragmented, or essayistic reconstitution of the past; a literary concept historically launched by André Malraux. In a structural sense, the text deconstructs the myth of a coherent self and explores the plays of affective memory.
• Antimetabole — A figure of speech, rhetorical device, or syntactic structure consisting of the repetition of the same words or phrases within the same sentence, but in an inverted order and with modified grammatical functions, aiming to generate a strong semantic contrast or a paradox; in a structural sense, it is a specific type of chiasmus focused on the literal inversion of lexical terms.
• Antimetalepsis — An extremely rare figure of speech, rhetorical device, or tropological structure consisting of the inversion, countering, or neutralization of a previous metalepsis; a reverse narrative or conceptual transgression that abruptly restores the structural boundary between the author's plane (extradiegetic) and the characters' plane (intradiegetic), canceling the illusion of direct interaction between the text's levels of reality.
• Anti-realist — Belonging to anti-realism, denying the postulates of realism, or refusing the faithful and objective representation of reality. As a noun, it denotes the philosopher arguing that truth depends on our cognitive systems, or the artist/writer whose works use non-mimetic, abstract, or fantastic techniques to construct an alternative universe detached from the canons of classical realism.
• Poetic art — An aesthetic and literary concept originating from a famous epistle by the Latin poet Horace (Epistula ad Pisones), defining the poetic art, norms, compositional principles, and creative techniques of literary texts. In a modern sense, it designates a text (often a manifesto-poem) in which a writer directly, reflexively, and personally expresses their vision regarding the purpose of literature, the role of the artist in society, and the act of creation itself.