Canon (fiction)

Lore & Background

The canon of a work of fiction is defined as the body of works set within a particular fictional world that are widely considered official or authoritative, especially those created by the original author or developer. It serves as the basis for derivative works, including fan fiction, and is contrasted with non-canonical material. There is no universal agreement on who holds the authority to determine canonicity. Copyright holders often declare themselves the authorities, particularly when they wish to erase or retcon materials approved by the setting's original creator. The concept is especially important regarding reboots or re-imaginings of established franchises, as it influences viewer experience. In some cases, works by the original writer but not the same publisher may have debated canonical status, as copyright was historically exercised by the publisher rather than the author. Campaigning by Victor Hugo led to the Berne Convention, which introduced author's rights. Sometimes, original publishers or literary estates posthumously approve continuation novels as canon, such as *The Royal Book of Oz*, written entirely by Ruth Plumly Thompson after the death of original series writer L. Frank Baum, and designated canonical by the original publisher. In film and television, the original writer often does not decide what is canon. Fan fiction is never regarded as canonical, though influential ideas within fan communities are referred to as fanon.

Reader's Guide

During George Lucas's time, the Star Wars canon was divided into discrete tiers incorporating the Expanded Universe (EU), with higher-tier and newer material abrogating lower-tier and older material in case of contradiction. The makers of Doctor Who have generally avoided pronouncements about canonicity. In literature, original writers have not always approved works as canon, but original publishers or literary estates have posthumously approved subsequent works, such as continuation novels like The Royal Book of Oz and Heidi Grows Up. Fan fiction is never regarded as canonical, though influential ideas within fan communities are referred to as fanon.

Did You Know?

• The official Star Trek website notes that canon is not something set in stone.
• After Disney's acquisition, Lucasfilm designated most Expanded Universe material as the non-canonical 'Legends' continuity.
• The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror episodes are an example of non-canonical material.
• The term 'fanon' is a portmanteau of 'fan' and 'canon'.

Purpose and Definition

A literary device—also called a technique, figure of speech, rhetorical device, stylistic device, or trope—encompasses any deliberate strategy a writer or speaker employs to shape language toward a specific goal. At its core, the aim is to direct an audience's attention, make language or its content memorable, or provoke a particular response whether emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, or otherwise. The concept resists a single clean label because the many synonyms carry subtly different connotations in scholarly contexts. Devices can be sorted into sub-categories such as narrative techniques, poetic tools, argumentative strategies, or linguistic templates, yet they frequently blur across these boundaries. A single figurative device, for instance, might simultaneously serve a narrative and a poetic function. This overlap makes tidy classification difficult, but it also reflects the flexible, multi-purpose nature of language as a creative instrument.

A Web of Terminology

The vocabulary surrounding literary devices is layered and often confusing. The word "trope" originally referred strictly to an artistic effect achieved through figurative, non-literal language—substituting a word or phrase with a less literal one. Over time, its meaning broadened to include recurring motifs, overused character types, and clichés in creative writing. The term traces back through Latin tropus to the Greek tropos, meaning "a turn" or "a change." Meanwhile, "figure of speech" operates on two levels: in its broadest technical sense it is simply another name for any literary device, encompassing both tropes and schemes. Schemes, from the Greek schēma meaning "form or shape," involve rearranging the expected order of words. In everyday conversation, however, people tend to use "figure of speech" to mean specifically a trope. "Rhetorical device" can serve as a general synonym, but more precisely it points to techniques of persuasive and argumentative language designed to make a position more compelling or to prompt an audience to act.

Renaissance Cataloguing and the Classical Inheritance

The systematic study of literary devices reached a high point during the Renaissance, when scholars undertook the ambitious task of enumerating and classifying every figure of speech they could identify. This era of humanist scholarship drew directly on the classical rhetoricians, and the term "figure of speech" itself dates to these Renaissance thinkers who adopted its broad technical meaning. Henry Peacham, in his 1577 work The Garden of Eloquence, compiled a list of 184 distinct figures. Professor Robert DiYanni, writing in his textbook Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay, noted that rhetoricians had catalogued more than 250 different figures, expressions, or nonliteral ways of using words. This tradition of meticulous enumeration reflects a desire to map the full landscape of language's creative possibilities, even as the sheer number of entries reveals how difficult it is to draw firm boundaries between one device and another.

From Storytelling to Sound

Literary devices find their most visible expression in two major domains: narrative and poetry. In storytelling, tools like allegory—where a story carries a second symbolic meaning, as in Orwell's Animal Farm—alongside flashback, foreshadowing, motif, and the frame story (exemplified by Shelley's Frankenstein, which wraps its central tale inside a sea captain's account) shape how audiences experience plot and character. Mood conveys the emotional atmosphere a narrative intends, while tone reveals the writer's own attitude toward subject and reader. In poetry and sonic language, the focus shifts to sound itself. Alliteration repeats initial consonant sounds across words, as Shakespeare demonstrates in a line from Richard II. Assonance echoes similar vowel sounds within neighbouring words, and consonance repeats consonant sounds at any position within a word, as in a passage from Romeo and Juliet. Cacophony and euphony, meanwhile, deploy clusters of phonemes perceived as harsh or pleasant to shape the listener's sensory response.