LEXIS

This is a variant for "vocabulary" but with a more literary reference. It has come to replace the older term "diction" to indicate the range of words used in a particular text or passage.

POINT OF VIEW NARRATION

First person narration occurs when the author of a novel apparently becomes one of the characters and uses the pronoun "I". All the events and other people are seen from this perspective and are limited to that viewpoint: the narrator cannot look into the future or to scenes where he or she is not present (unless by report.) There is also a problem with giving personal appearance unless the narrator looks in a mirror or someone else provides a portrait. The main strength of the method is when an unreliable narrator is used, such as a child, to show the confusion, hypocrisy or corruption in adult society by describing it in all innocence, leaving the reader to fill in the full picture.
Third person narration is similar except that the pronouns "he", "she" and "they" are used for the point of view and this can sometimes be combined with omniscient narration (see below.)

OMNISCIENT NARRATION

This term is used of the method of a novelist who remains the author and does not take the point of view of a character. He or she is all-knowing and can describe everything and everyone in the story using the third-person pronouns: he, she, it and they. The advantage is the freedom to relate all events without restriction although the effect can sometimes be to distance the figures so that the reader does not relate closely to them. The narrator may slide into the mind of a character without this being very obvious and this brings the person nearer. A good example is Jane Austen's Emma.

QUOTATIONS IN A LITERATURE ESSAY

Quotations are essential in a literature essay and must be accurate. They may be brief.  There are two ways of introducing them:
1) Short ones may be run into your sentence, enclosing them in quotation marks:
After hearing that Malcolm is to be Prince of Cumberland, Macbeth sees it as a threat: "That is a step/On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap". The end of the line is shown by a forward slash.
If you need to change the pronoun to make the quotation fit your sentence, use square brackets: Macbeth fears that this is a step, "On which [he] must fall down, or else o'erleap."
2) Longer quotations should start on a new line. Do not use quotation marks but indent the passage.
Macbeth hears that Malcolm is to be made Prince of Cumberland and falls into private thoughts:
        The Prince of Cumberland! - That is a step
        On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
        For in my way it lies.

(Act I, sc. iv, line 48 - you do not need to give these references)

COURTLY LOVE

This is a retrospective term used by modern readers to denote a code of practice of love in Medieval times. It was probably more aspirational and fictional than actually practised. In the idealised form, a man loves a disdainful woman from afar and she may be married as well as superior to him in rank.  He serves her, pines for her and, in hyperbolic language, may threaten to die for her because of his torment of unrequited passion.
Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" is an example of this where the two men, Palamon and Arcite, fight over Emelye, who barely knows they exist.
Click here to see my analysis of this Tale on my literary website.

DRAMATIC IRONY

This is most common in plays but can occur in novels: it happens when we, as audience, have knowledge which one (or more) of the characters does not possess and this gives some of their words a twist as we are aware they are in error in a significant way. Another character may also share this information.
Much of Shakespeare's, Othello, depends on tragic dramatic irony as we see that Iago is a villainous liar and that Desdemona is innocent of adultery. When Othello says: "I found not Cassio's kisses on her lips", he means that he was then ignorant of her infidelity but we and Iago know that she never kissed Cassio and that the traces of them were simply not there.
The mode can be used for comic purposes also in classic and popular works.

VERBAL IRONY

In verbal irony the words as printed or spoken do not carry the meaning they have on the surface: the underlying significance may be the exact opposite as in the cruder form called sarcasm. There is usually a trigger word or phrase which alerts the reader or listener to the presence of irony and the duality of intention.
The opening sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is a famous example:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
What the author means is that it is hoped, by wishful thinking, in this small community, that a rich bachelor will marry one of the spinsters available.
The trigger word is "universally" as no truth is accepted by everyone and so it must refer to a few people in this particular setting. Doubt is therefore cast on their deluded, optimistic and self-centred expectations. We assume comedy will follow.