ENG295 Terms Set #2

Burlesque

A form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion: The sublime may be made absurd; honest emotions may be turned to sentimentality; a serious subject may be treated frivolously subject seriously. The essential quality that makes for burlesque is the discrepancy between subject matter and style. nonsensical matter to ridicule a weighty subject. Burlesque, as a form of art, manifests itself in sculpture, painting, and even architecture as well as in lit. It has ancient lineage ex. the Battle of the Frogs and Mice to travesty Homer Aristophanes made Burlesque popular in France, under Louis XIV, nothing was sacred to the satirist. ex. Chaucer in Sir Thopas burlesqued medieval romance, Cervantes in Don Quixote term as been broadened to include stage entertainments consisting of songs, skits, and dances, usually racous Distinction between burlesque and parody, burlesque is a travesty of a literary form and parody a travesty of a particular work It has been suggested that parody works by keeping a targeted style constant while lowering the subject; burlesque or travesty by keeping a targeted subject constant while lowering the style. Because "travesty" is connected to "transvestite," the procedure may be expected to change the clothing, so to speak, or the style of a normally dignified subject.

Broadsheet/Broadside

Broadsheet is a single large sheet of paper with printing on one side. at one time, popular verses were peddled in this form, as attested by the beginning of Hardy's "After the Fair" The singers are gone from the Corner-market place With their broadsheets of rhyme... Broadsheet is sometimes used for a sheet printed on both sides. Broadside is the same as broadsheet. While broadsheet has fallen into dishes, broadside continues, but the modern examples, far from being cheaply produced, tend to be issued in limited editions, elegantly printed on fine paper and sometimes numbered and signed by the author.

Doppelgänger (character)

German, "double goer." A mysterious double; a common figure in literature. Poe's "William Wilson" and Conrad's The Secret Sharer concern characters haunted by the image of a double. Wilde's, The Picture of Dorian Gray varies varies the theme--so that the doubling function function belongs to a painting.

Encomium

In Greek Literature, a composition in praise of a living person, object, or event--but not a god--delivered before a special audience. Originally, a choral hymn in celebration of a hero at the conclusion of the Olympic games; then, a eulogy of the host at a banquet; and finally, any eulogy--the encomium was apparently first used by Simonides of Ceos and later by Pindar. Encomiastic verse, often in the form of the ode, has been written by many English poets, including Donne, Milton, Dryden, Gray, Wordsworth, and Auden. The Latin title of Erasmus's Praise of Folly is Encomium Moriae (which may be a pun on Saint Thomas More's name)

Romance (novels/prose)

Languages proximately derived from Latin are called Romance languages. the first Old French romances were translated from Latin, in Reniassance criticism, romantic epics were called romances. the term romance has had special meaning as a kind of fiction since the early years of the novel. Incognita, William Congreve made a distinction between novel and romance as works of long fiction, Clara Reeve's The Progress of Romance declared, "the novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it was written. the romance in lofty and elevated language describes what has never happened nor is likely to. this distinction has resulted in two distinct uses of romance... 1) common usage, refers to works with extravagant characters, remote and exotic places, highly exciting and heroic events, passionate love, or mysterious or supernatural experiences. 2) more sophisticated sense, romance refers to works relatively free of the more restrictive aspects of realistic verisimilitude. as hawthorne expressed it in the preface to the House of the Seven Gables, the romance "sins unpardonably, so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart" yet, it has a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation. in america particularly, the romance has proved to be a serious, flexible, and successful medium for the exploration of philosophical idea and attitudes, ranging through such differing works as Hwathorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby Dick, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Faulkner's Absalom, and Warren's World Enough and Time. According to Northrop Frye's very useful scheme of modes, romance occupies the zone between myth and mimesis; in this special application, romance has to do with characters whose powers exceed those of normal human beings but fall short of those of gods.

Bombast

Originally, any sort of ornamental but unnecessary padding; pleonasm. Now mostly limited to ranting, insincere and extravagant language, and outlandish grandiloquence. Elizabeth tragedy, especially early Senecan plays, contains much bombastic style, marked by extravagant imagery. A good example comes from Hamlet: Roasted in wrath and fire, And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks.

Bathos

The effect resulting from the unsuccessful effort to achieve dignity or sublimity of style; an unintentional anticlimax, dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous. The term gained currency from Pope's use of it in a "Martinus Scriblerus" paper (Peri Bathous), which ironically defended the commonplace effects of the English poetasters on the ground that depth (bathos) was a literary virtue of the moderns, as contrasted with the height (hypsos) of the ancients. ex. by Pope Advance the fringed curtains of thy eyes, And tell me who comes yonder. Here, the author (Temple) fails because of the unintentional anticlimax resulting from the effort to treat poetically a commonplace idea.

Black Humor

The use of the morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern lit. the term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering, anxiety, and death. Black humor is a substantial element int the anti novel and the theater of the absurd. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is an archetypal example. Other novelists working in the tradition of black humor include Gunter Grass, Mordecai Richler, Thomas Pynchon, and Kurt Vonnegut. Successful playwrights using black humor include Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, and Eugene Ionesco, who called it "tragic farce"

Hubris (flaw)

overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the protagonist of a tragedy. Hubris leads the protagonist of a tragedy. Hubris leads to the protagonist to break a moral law, attempt vainly to transcend normal limitations, or ignore a divine warning with calamitous results.

Lyric (poetry)

a brief subjective poem strongly marked by imagination, melody, and emotion and creating a single, unified impression. the early Greeks distinguished between lyric and choric poetry. Lyric was the expression of the emotion of a single singer accompanied by a lyre. lyric as individual and personal emotion still holds and is one basis for discriminating between the lyric and other poetic forms. the lyric is essentially melodic because the melody may be secured by a variety of means. subjectivity history starts with the beginnings of our literature Deor's Lament Latin hymns and the Norman Conquest brought in French and Italian elements 1280 "Sumer is icumen in" before 1400, Chaucer had written a fair body of lyrics, modeled on French forms. the Troubadour of France so awakened interest in lyrical forms as to make them common to the various European literatures. Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey in England popularized these Italalian lyric forms, particularly the sonnet, by the time of Tottel's Miscellany, the body of English lyrics was large and creditable. Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Shakespeare. Johnson and Herrick 17th cent. England Cowley introduced the irregular ode, Dryden adopted it. Milton was a great lyric poet. romantic revival brought english lit. some of its noblest poetry in the odes of Gray, Collins, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Burns and Blake raised the lyric to new poet. Coleridge and Wordsworth made it the vehicle of romanticism. Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats modeled the form to perfection. Tom Moore "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms". Bryant, Whittier, LongFellow, and Poe gave it expression in America.Tennyson, the Rossettis, William Morris, Swinburne modern England and America, the lyric is still the most frequently used poetic expression. The tradition has endured into the twenty-first cent., Hardy, Yeats, Auden, Dylan Thomas, Larkin, Geoffrey Hill, Louise Gluck, W.S. Merwin lyric is perhaps the most broadly inclusive of all the various types of verse subjectivity, imagination, melody, emotion but as the lyric spirit has flourished, the manner has been confined in various ways with the result that we have, within the lyric type, numerous subclassifications: hymns, sonnets, ballads, odes, elegies, vera de society. all these are varieties of lyrical expression classified according to differing form, matter, and mood.

Picaresque (novels/prose)

a chronicle, usually autobiographical, presenting the life story of a rascal of low degree engaged in menial tasks and making his living more through his wits than his industry. tends to be episodic and structureless. the picaro, or central figure, through various pranks and predicaments and by his associations with people of varying degree--affords the author an opportunity for satire of the social classes. romantic, adventure story, nevertheless strongly marked by realism in petty detail and by uninhibited expression. As far back as the Satyricon, Petronius at the court of Nero recognized the possibilities of the rogue. Reynard is a typical picaroon. it was not until the 16th century that this rogue literature crystallized into a definite type. A novel called La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sue fortunes y adversidades, probably dating from 1554, was one of the most-read books of the cent. Cervantes took up the manner in Don Quixote. Le Sage's Gil Blas was the most popular. 1594 The Unfortunate Traveller; or, The Life of Jack Wilton by Thomas Nash, the first significant picaresque novel in English. Daniel Defoe, 18th cent. Moll Flanders, Jonathan Wild, Smollet in Ferdinand, Count Fathom 7 chief qualities distinguish the picaresque novel. 1) it chronicles a part of the whole of the life of a rogue, likely to be first person 2) the chief figure is drawn from a low social level, is of loose character, and, if employed at all, does menial work 3) the novel presents a series of episodes only slightly connected 4) progress and development of character do not take place. the central figure starts as a picaro and ends as a picaro, manifesting the same qualities throughout. when change occurs, it is external, brought about by the picaro's falling heir to a fortune or by marrying money 5) the method is realistic. although the story may be romantic in itself, it is presented with a plainness of language and a vividness of detail such as only the realist is permitted. 6) thrown with people from every class and often from different parts of the world, the picaro serves them intimately in some lowly capacity and leans all their foibles and frailties. the picaresque novel may in this way be made to satirize social castes, national types, or ethnic peculiarities 7) the hero usually stops just short of being an actual criminal. the line between crime and petty rascality is hazy, the picaro always manages to draw it. avoids actual crime and turns from one peccadillo to disappear down the road in search of another.

Parody

a composition imitating another--usually serious--piece. it is designed to ridicule a work or its style or author. when the parody is directed against an author or style, it is likely to fall simply into barbed witticisms. When the subject matter of the original composition is parodied, however, it may prove to be valuable indirect criticism or it may even imply a flattering tribute to the original writer. often, a parody is more powerful in its influence on affairs of current importance--politics, for instance, than an original composition. the parody is in literature what the caricature and the cartoon are in art. Known as a potent instrument of satire and ridicule even as far back as Aristophanes, parody has made a definite place for itself in lit. and has become a popular type of literary composition. Parody makes fun of some familiar style, typically by keeping the style more or less constant while markedly lowering or debasing the subject. Thus Dickenson's, The Soul selects her own Society-- Then--shuts the Door-- has been parodied: The Soul selects her own Sorority-- Then--shuts the Dorm--

Allegory

a form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, places, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings outside the narrative itself. represents one thing in guise of another--an abstraction of a concrete image double signification, words represent actions and characters, and ideas giving patently meaningful names to persons and places. the characters are usually personifications of abstract qualities; the action and the setting representative of the relationships among these abstractions. allegory attempts to evoke dual interest--the events, characters, and setting and other ideas they convey may be historical, fictitious, religious, moral, political, personal, satiric Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" is on one level chivalric romance, but it embodies ideological meanings Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" describes the efforts of a Christian to achieve a godly life by triumphing over inner obstacles to his faith, with these obstacles, being represented by such outward objects as the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair. Difficulty to distinguish between "symbol" and allegory is put forth by Coleridge's Statesman's Manual, which argues that "an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into picture-language,"whereas a "symbol always partakes of the Reality which it makes intelligible." this position is attacked by modern theorists of allegory, recent theory has seen in allegory and allegorical representations a recognition of the contingent, arbitrary nature of symbolization in literature--a foregrounding of the process of symbolization or representation itself. among the kinds of allegory are; parable, fable, exemplum, and beast epic.

Clerihew (poetry)

a form of light verse invented by and named for Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875 - 1956), who also wrote detective fiction. in its proper form, the clerihew concerns an actual person, whose name makes up the first line of a quatrain with a strict aabb rhyme scheme and no regularity of rhythm or meter. Bentley himself wrote dozens, and some of the best recent examples are the work of W.H. Auden. two contemporary examples: Cesare Borgia Would probably have preferred the way things were done in Georgia Before the Emancipation Proclamation Henry James Came up with some pretty ridiculous names, E.g., "Caspar Good- wood."

Kunstlerroman (novels/prose)

a form of the apprenticeship novel in which the protagonist is an artist struggling from childhood to maturity toward an understanding of his or her creative mission. the most famous in English is James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Panegyric

a formal composition lauding a person for an achievement; a eulogy. Roman panegyrics were usually presented in praise of a living person, thing, or achievement. in greek, they were often reserved for praise of the dead. this was a popular form of oratory among fulsome speakers who praised living emperors. two famous panegyrics are that of Gorgias, the Olympiacus, in praise of those who established the festivals and that of Pliny the Younger praising Trajan. the term now often bears a derogatory connotation.

Epic (poetry)

a long narrative poem in elevated style presenting characters of high position in adventures, forming an organic whole through their relation to a central heroic figure and through their development of episodes important to the history of a nation or race. According to one theory, the first epics took shape from the scattered work of various unknown poets, and through gradual accretion, these episodes were molded into a sequence. This theory has largely given way to the belief that, although the materials may have developed in this way, the epic itself is the product of a single genius Epics without certain authorship are called folk epics, whether one believes in a folk or a single-authorship theory of origins. Most epics share certain characteristics: 1) the hero is of imposing stature, of national or international importance, and of great historical or legendary significance 2) the setting is vast, covering great nations, the world, or the universe; 3) the action consists of deeds of great valor or requiring superhuman courage 4) supernatural forces--gods, angles, and demons--interest themselves in the action 5) a style of sustained elevation is used; 6) the poet retains a measure of objectivity common devices of epic poets--the poet opens by stating the theme, invoking a Muse, and beginning the narrative in media res--in the middle parts of the thing--giving the exposition later; the poet includes catalogs of warriors, ships, armies; there are extended formal speeches by the main characters, and the poet makes frequent use of epic simile. examples: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Old English Beowulf, the East Indian Mahabharata, the Spanish Cid, the Finnish Kalevala, the French Song of Roland, and the German Nibelungenlied. Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, and Milton's Paradise Lost. Lonfellow's Hiawatha is an attempt at an Indian epic. Whitman's Leaves of Grass, considered as the autobiography of a generic American..Stephen vincent Benet's John Brown's Body, Ezra Pound's Cantos, and Hart Crane's The Bridge--american epics

Aubade (poetry)

a lyric about dawn or a morning serenade--a song of lovers parting at dawn. Originally a French form, it differs from the lamenting Provental Alba in usually being joyous. Shakespeare's "Hark! Hark! the Lark!" and Davenant's "The Lark Now Leaves His Watery Nest" are good examples. such modern instances as John Crowe Ransom's "Parting at Dawn," Marilyn Hacker's "Almost Aubade," and poems called "Aubade" by Dame Edith Sitwell and Philip Larkin show a tinge of irony or cynicism.

Beast Epic (poetry)

a medieval literary form consisting of a series of linked stories grouped around animal characters and often presenting satirical comment on the church or court by means of human qualities attributed to beast characters. the various forms of the beast epic have one episode generally treated as the nucleus for the story, such as the healing of the sick lion by the fox's prescription that he wrap himself in the wolf's skin. some of the other animals common to the form--besides Reynard the Fox, the lion, and the wolf--are the cock (Chanticleer), the cat, the hare, the camel, the ant, the bear, the badger, and the stag. best ex. The Roman De Renart, a poem of thirty thousand lines comprising twenty-seven sets or branches of stories

Roman a Clef (novels/prose)

a novel in which actual persons are presented under the guise of fiction. (like the "Schlussel" in Schlusselroman, the "clef" here means "key" in the sense of a program of true identities.) notable examples have been Madeleine de Scudery's Clelie, Thomas Love Peacock'es Nightmare Abbey, Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale. Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun also Rises, Truman Capote's Answered Prayers, Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge, and almost any of Jack Kerouac's novels.

Bildungsroman (novels/prose)

a novel that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical. Dickens's Great Expectations and Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh" are standard examples. Doris Lessing's five-volume Children of Violence ranks among the most ambitious and impressive modern instances. Bildungsroman and apprenticeship novel are virtually synonymous, both being derived from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, but Bildungsroman is currently the more fashionable.

Closet Drama (genre)

a play (usually in verse) designed to be read rather than acted. Notable examples are Seneca's tragedies, Milton's Samson Agonisters, Shelley's The Cenci, and Browning's Pippa Passes. dramatic poems such as Swinburne's Atalanta in Claydon and other products of the effort to write a literary drama by imitating the syle of an earlier age, such as Greek Drama. Such poetic dramas as Tennyson's Becket and Browning's Strafford are sometimes called closet dramas because, even though they are meant to be acted, they are more successful as literature than as acted drama. In England, the nineteenth century was noted for the production of closet drama, perhaps because the actual stage was so monopolized by burlesque, melodrama, operetta, and such light forms that serious writers were stimulated either to attempt worthier dramas for the contemporary stage or at least to preserve the tradition of literary drama by imitating earlier masterpieces. Charles Lamb declared that all of Shakespeare's tragedies ought to be regarded as closet dramas because they were inevitably debased in production. a note preceding Stephane Mallarme's Igitur says, "this Story is addressed to the intelligence of the reader which stages things itself."

Sonnet (poetry)

a poem almost invariably of fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. the two basic sonnet types are the italian or petrarchan and the English or Shakespearean. the italian form is distinguished by its division into the octave and the sestet--the octave rhyming abbaabba and the sestet cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce. The octave presents a narrative, states a proposition, or raises a question; the sestet drives home the narrative by making an abstract comment, applies the proposition, or solves the problem. The octave-sestet division is not always kept; the rhyme scheme is often varied but within the limitation that no italian sonnet properly allows more than five rhymes or rhymed couplets in the sestet. iambic pentameter is usual. In the English or Shakespearean sonnet, four divisions are used. three quatrains (each within a rhyme scheme of its own, usually rhyming alternate lines) and a rhymed concluding couplet. the typical rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. the Spensarian sonnet complicates the shakespearean form, linking rhymes among the quatrains: abab bcbc cdcd ee. this sonnet is rare ex. Rhichard Wilbur. the sonnet developed in Italy probably between the thirteenth cent. Petrarch, in the 14th century, raised it to its greatest italian perfection and gave it --for english readers at least--his name. the form was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt, who translated Petrarchan sonnets and left more than thirty of his own compositions in English. Surrey. the itaian sonnet pattern was changed, because Shakespeare attained fame for the greatest poems of this modified type, his name has often been given to the English form. ex. Sidney, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Rosetti, Meredith, Auden, and Geoffrey Hill. Longfellow, Robinson, Frost, Cummings, and Berryman, best sonnet writers in America. certain poets following the example of Petrarch have written a series of sonnets linked to one another and dealing with a single subject. such series are called sonnet sequences. ex. Shakespeare's Sonnets, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Spenser's Amoretti...Robert Lowell..

Epithalamium/Epithalamion (poetry)

a poem written to celebrate a wedding. Many ancient poets (Pindar, Sappho, Theocritus, and Catullus) as well as modern poets (the French Ronsard and the English Spenser) have cultivated the form. Perhaps Spenser's Epithalamion (1595)--written to celebrate his own marriage--is the finest English example. the successive stanzas treat such topics as invocation to the muses to help praise his bride; awakening of the bride by music; decking of the bridal path with flowers; adorning of the bride by nymphs; assembling of the guests; description of the physical and spiritual beauty of the bride; the bride at the alter, the marriage feast; the welcoming night; asking the blessing of Diana, Juno, and the stars. any number of later works--from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner to Salinger's "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" --exploit various engaging features of the tradition of epithalamium.

Pastoral

a poetic treatment of shepherds and rustic life, after the Latin for "shepherd"; pastor. the pastoral began in the third century b.c. when theocritus included poetic sketches of rural life in his Idylls. The Greek pastorals existed in three forms: the dialogue or singing-match--usually between two shepherds--often called the eclogue because of the number of singing-matches in Virgil's "Selections"; the monologue, often the plaint of a lovesick or forlorn lover or a poem praising some personage; and the elegy or lament for a dead friend. the pastoral became a highly conventionalized form, with the poet (ex. Virgil) writing of friends and acquaintances as though they were poetic shepherds. the "shepherds " of pastoral often speak in courtly language and appear in dress more appropriate to the drawing room than to rocky hills. modern use, the term often means any poem of rural people and setting. ex. Robert Frost a pastoral poet. Robert Langbaum Out of Africa pastoral. because this classification is based on subject matter and manner rather than on form, we often use the term in association with other poetic types; we thus have pastoral lyrics, elegies, dramas, or even epics. Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais," and Arnold's "Thyrsis" are examples this application is limited to poems that somehow adhere to the literal sense of "pastoral" and include "shepherds" often, in Judeo-Christian environments, the pastoral will include some recollection of the imagery of the Psalms. highly sophisticated concept of the pastoral advanced by William Empson, whereby the pastoral is considered a device for inversion--a means of "putting the complex into the simple"--for example, of expressing complex ideas through simple personages. in Empson's scheme, pastoral is opposed to heroic. using a specialized definition, Empson finds pastoral elements in such a widely differing works as the proletarian novel.

Anti-hero (character)

a protagonist of a modern play or novel who has the converse of most of the traditional attributes of the hero. This hero is graceless, inept, and sometimes stupid or dishonest. first ex. Charles Lumley, in John Wain's "Hurry On Down" (1953), although certainly the concept of a protagonist without heroic qualities is as old as the Picaresque novel. Jim Dixon in Kingsley Amis's novel "Lucky Jim" (1954), Jimmy Porter in John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956), Yossarian in Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22, Tyrone Slothrop in Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Henry Pussycat" in John Berryman's Dream Songs.

Ode (poetry)

a single, unified strain of exalted lyrical verse, directed to a single purpose, and dealing with one theme. the term connotes certain qualities of both manner and form. elaborate, dignified, and imaginative. the ode is more complicated than most lyric types. the division into strophe, anistrophe, and epode. originally a greek form used in dramatic poetry. the ode was a choral. accompanied by music. 3 types of odes: the Pindaric (regular), the Horatian or homostrophic, and the irregular. the pindaric is characterized by the three-strophe division; the strophe and the antistrophe alike in form; the epode different. the meter and line length may vary within any one strophe of the ode. the Horatian consists of one stanza type, which may be almost infinitely varied within its pattern the irregular ode is credited to Cowley, who seems to have thought he was writing Pindaric odes. freedom within the strophe is characteristic the lengths of the lines may vary...much more flexible than the two other types, the irregular ode affords the greatest freedom of expression and greatest license as well. Gray's "The Bard", ex. of strict Pindaric; Collin's "ode to Evening", ex. Horatian; and WordsWroth's "Ode: intimations of Immortality" and example of the irregular Keats odes=devised a number of regular or irregular stanzas, basic being 10 iambic lines--mostly pentameter--with a rhyme scheme combining the heroic quatrain and the sestet of an italian sonnet: ababcdecde. in modern poetry, the public nature, solemn diction, and stately gravity of the ode have on occasion been effectively used for ironic overtones, as in Allen Tate's "ode to the Confederate Dead"

Lai (or Breton lai) (poetry)

a song or short narrative poem. the word has been applied to several different forms in French and English lit. The earliest existing French laid, composed in the 12th cent., were based on earlier songs or verse tales sung by Breton minstrels on themes from Celtic legend; hence, the term "breton lay." Although some of the early French laid were lyric, most were narrative, such as those by Marie de France, who wrote at the court of the English King Henry II about 1175. a few of her laid are related to Arthurian legend. the prevailing verse form of early laid was the 8 syllable line rhyming in couplets. later, laid developed more compacted forms. the word lay was applied to english poems written in the 14th century in imitation of the bReton lays. although a few followed the couplet form, more used the popular tail-rhyme stanza, although any short narrative poem similar to the French lai might be called a "breton lay" in english. themes from various sources were employed, including classical, oriental, and celtic. some of the best known are the Lay of Launfal, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gowther, and Chaucer's Franklin's Tale. since the 16th century, lay has been used in English as synonymous with song. in the early 19th century, lay sometimes meant a short historical ballad, as Scott's lay of the Last Minstrel and Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.

Soliloquy (genre)

a speech delivered while the speaker is along, calculated to inform the audience of what is passing in the character's mind. Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" is an obvious example. Browning's "soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" is indeed a soliloquy; "Porphyria's Lover" and "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" may be soliloquies, although the titles make no explicit statement.

Elegy

a sustained formal poem setting forth meditations on death or another solemn theme. the meditation is often occasioned by the death of a particular person, but it may be a generalized observation or the expression of a solemn mood. Common to both Latin and Greek literatures, the elegy originally signified almost any type of meditation, whether the reflective element concerned death, love, or war, or merely the presentation of information. In classical writing, the elegy was more distinguishable by its use of the elegiac meter than by subject matter. The Elizabethans used the term for love poems, particularly complaints. Up through the end of the seventeenth century, elegy could mean both a love poem and a poem of mourning. Thereafter, the poem of mourning become virtually the only meaning. Notable English elegies include the Old English poem "The Wanderer," The Pearl, Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, Domne's "Elegies," Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Tennyson's In Memoriam, Whitman's "When Lilac's Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," and John Berryman's "Formal Elegy." These poems indicate the variety of method, mood, and subject encompassed by elegy. A specialized form of elegy--popular with English poets--is the pastoral elegy, of which Milton's "Lycidas" is an outstanding example.

Grotesque

a term applied to any decorative art characterized by fantastic representations of human and animal forms often combined into formal distortions of the natural to the point of absurdity, ugliness, or caricature. naed after the ancient paintings and decorations found in the underground chambers of Roman ruins. grotesque is applied to anything having the qualities of grotesque art: bizarre, incongruous, ugly, unnatural, fantastic, abnormal.the tales of the Grotesque and Arabewque suggesting a fairly precise distinction between the spirits of christian northern europe and muslim western asia. Modern critics use "the grotesque" to refer to special types of writing, to kinds of characters, and to subject matters. the interest in the grotesque is usually considered an outgrowth of interest in the irrational, distrust of any cosmic order, and frustration at humankind's lot in the universe. the merging of comic and tragic, loss of faith in the moral universe Walter Bagehot saw the grotesque as a deplorable variation from the normal, Thomas Mann sees it as the "most genuine style" for the modern world and the "only guise in which the sublime may appear now Jorge Borges Flannery O'Connor seems to mean the same thing when she calls the grotesque character "man forced to meet the extremes of his own nature" Mann and Gunter Grass, William Van O'Connor seems to have been on target when he called the grotesque an American genre. "the book of the grotesque" Sherwood Anderson defined a grotesque a character as a person who "took one of the many truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live by it." truth he embraced a falsehood. whenever fictional characters appear who are either physically or spiritually deformed and perform abnormal actions, the work can be called grotesque. it may be used for allegorical statement, as Flannery O'Connor uses it. it may exist for comic purposes as in the work of Eudora Welty. It may be the expression of deep moral seriousness, as it is in the works like Frank Norris's McTeague and Vandover and the Brute. it may partake of satire, as in Nathanael West's novels. it may be a basis for social commentary, as it is in the works of Erskine Caldwell.

Idyll (poetry)

a term describing one or another of the poetic genres that are short and possess marked descriptive, narrative, and pastoral qualities. in this sense, Whittier's "maud Muller" might be called an idyll, and the subtitle of his Snow-Bound is a Winter Idyl. Pastoral and descriptive elements are usually the first requisites of the Idyll, although the pastoral is usually presented in conscious literary manner. the point of view of the idyll is that of a civilized and artificial society glancing from a drawing room window over green meadows or of the weekend farm viewed through a picture window. Historically, the term goes back to the idylls of Theocritus, who wrote short pieces depicting rustic life in Sicily to please the civilized Alexandrians. It has also been applied to long descriptive and narrative poems, particularly Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Both Southey and Tennyson wrote poems called "english Idylls." Celia Thaxter is known for Idyls and Pastorals, and Charles Kingsley wrote Prose Idylls.

Archetype (character)

a term from the psychology of Carl Jung, who holds that behind each individual's "unconscious"--the blocked-off residue of the past--lies the "collective unconscious" of the human race, which gives power to "primordial images" shaped by the experience of our ancestors and expressed in myths, religion, dreams, fantasies, and literature. T.S. Eliot says, "The pre-logical mentality persists in civilized man, but becomes available only to or through the poet. The "primordial image" that taps this "pre logical mentality" is called the archetype. An archetypal critic studies a work in terms of the images or patterns it has in common with other works and thus as a portion of the total human experience. In this sense, the archetype is--as Northrop Frye defines it--"a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one's library experience as a whole."

Metafiction (novels/prose)

a work of fiction, a major concern of which is the nature of fiction itself. John Fowle's The French Lieutenant's Woman is a metafiction, are as many modern works, even as far back as Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Marcel Proust. By now, virtually any serious fiction--that, say, of Samuel Beckett, J.D. Salinger, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Ken Kesey, B.S. Thomas, Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Norman Mailer--contains as one of its structural and thematic dimensions a testing of fiction itself.

Satire

a work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity. Satirists attempt through laughter not so much to tear down as to inspire a remodeling. If attackers simply abuse, they are writing invective; if they are personal and splenetic, they are writing sarcasm; if they are sad and morose over the state of society, they are writing irony or jeremiad. as a rule, modern satire spares the individual and follows Addison's self-imposed rule; to pass over a single foe to charge whole armies. most often, satire deals less with great sinners and criminals than with the general run of fools, knaves, ninnies, oafs, codgers, and frauds. Satire existed in classical antiquity (Aristophanes, Juvenal, Horace, Martial, and Petronius). Through the middle Ages, satire persisted in the Fabliau and Beast epic. in spain, the picaresque novel developed a strong element of satire; in france, moliere and le sage handled the manner deftly, and voltaire established himself as an arch satirist. England Steel Glass and Lodge, condemned vice and folly. Charles I, interest in Satire had declined. revive with the struggle between Cavaliers and Puritans. Dryden, heroic couplet developed into the finest satiric form. 18th century became a period of satire; poetry, essays, drama, and criticism all took on the satirical manner at the hands of such writers as Dryedn, Swift, Addisoin, steels, Pope, fielding. 19th cent. Byron and Thackeray . early american satire naturally followed the English in style. before the revolution, american satire dealt chiefly with the political struggle. Wits, Tumbull, Hopkinson, Frenaeau, Humphreys, Irving's, Homes's, Lowell's, Mark Twain, 20th cent. British writers like George Shaw, Coward, Waugh, Huxley, have maintained satiric spirit in the face of the gravity of naturalism and the earnestness of symbolism. America--sinclair lewis, Kaufman, Hart, Marquand, Heller Satire is of two major types: formal (or direct) satire, which the satiric voice speaks--usually in the first person--either directly to the reader or to a character in the satire, called the adversaries; and indirect satire, which the satire is expressed through a narrative and the characters who are the butt are ridiculed by what they themselves say and do. much of great satire is indirect...Menippean formal satire; 2 types, named for its distinguished classical practioners; horatian is gentle, urbane, smiling, it aims to correct by broadly sympathetic laughter (addison); juvenilian is biting, bitter, angry; it points with contempt and indignation to the corruption of human beings and institutions.Swift for centuries the word satire literally means " a dish filled with mixed fruits" was reserved for long poems, such as the pseudo-Homeric Battle of the Frogs and Mice, the poems of Juvenal and Horace, Langland's The Vision of Piers Plowman, Chaucer's "the Nun's Priest's Tale," Lowell's a Fable for Critics. a lost from its origins, however, the drama has been suited to the satiric spirit, and from Aristophanes to Shaw and Noel Coward, it has commented with penetrating irony or human foibles. notable concentration of its attention on Horatian satire in the comedy of manners of the restoration age. fictional narrative, particularly the novel, that satire has found its chief modern vehicle. Cervantes, Rabelais, Voltaire, Swift, Fielding, Jane Austen, Thackeray, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Heller, Pynchon... In England, Punch maintained a high level of comic satire. in america, the New Yorker has demonstrated the continuing appeal of sophisticated Horatian satire. the motion pictures, the plastic and graphic arts, the newspaper comic strip and political cartoon, and many features on radio and television have all been instruments of satiric comment on human affairs.

Jeremiad

a work that foretells destruction because of the evil of a group. It takes its name from Jeremiah, whose prophecy opens with the Lord saying, "out of the north an evil shall break froth upon all the inhabitants of the land...who have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, and worshiped the works of their own hands."

Melodrama (genre)

a work--usually a play--based on a romantic plot and developed sensationally, with little regard for motivation and with an excessive appeal to the emotions of the audience. The object is to keep the audience thrilled by the arousal anyhow of strong feelings of pity, horror, or joy. poetic justice is superficially secured, with the characters (either very good or very bad) being rewarded or punished according to their deeds. although a melodrama typically has a happy ending, tragedies that use much of the same technique are sometimes referred to as melodramatic. the term literally means a "play with music," and at one time, it was applied to the opera in a broad sense. in strict musical usage, melodrama is confined to works in which a text is spoken, recited, or chanted with a musical commentary that does not qualify as an actual setting of the text. Richard Strauss's Enoch Arden (to Tennyson's poem) and Ralph Vaughan William's An Oxford Elegy are examples. Melodrama came into widespread use in England in the nineteenth century as a device to circumvent the Licensing Act, which restricted "legitimate" plays to the patent theaters but which allowed musical entertainments in other theaters. the use of songs, recitative and incidental music disguised the dramatic nature of popular stage pieces, and they came to be known as melodramas. the first English melodrama is believed to have been Thomas Holcroft's a Tale of Mystery. these melodramas usually exhibited the deplorable characteristics already listed, and finally, the term--by extension--was applied to these characteristics independent of the presence or absence of music.

Gothic

although the Goths were a single Germanic tribe of ancient and medieval times, the meaning of Gothic was broadened to mean Teutonic or Germanic and, later, "medieval" in general. In architecture, Gothic--although it may mean any style not classic--is more specifically applied to the style that succeeded the Romanesque in Western Europe, flourishing from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. it is marked by the pointed arch and fault, vertical effects, stained windows, slender spires, flying buttresses, intricate traceries, wealth and variety of detail, and flexibility of spirit. Applied to literature, the term was used by the eighteenth century neoclassicists as synonymous with "barbaric." Addison said that artists who were unable to achieve the classic graces of simplicity,dignity, and unity resorted to the use of foreign ornaments--"all the extravagances of an irregular fancy." The romanticists of the next generation , however, looked with favor on the Gothic; to them, it suggested whatever was medieval, natural, primitive, wild, free, authentic, romantic. they praised such writers as Shakespeare and Spenser because of their Gothic elements--variety, richness, mystery, aspiration. Later, vigorous celebrators of the Gothic were Ruskin, Pater, and Henry Adams. the comic books and movies devoted to Batman emphasize pointed arches and vertical movement in dark spaces. the 1989 movie ends in a Gothic cathedral in the aptly named Gotham City. Joyce Carol Oates called Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian a "Gothic western"

Ingenue (character)

an innocent, artless, often virginal young girl, common in may literary forms as well as television. sometimes paired with a femme fatale (as happens on Gilligans Island, WKRP in Cincinnati, and Xena: Warrior Princess). In some works, a character begins as an ingenue but develops into something different: Shaw's Saint Joan is also a Miles Gloriousus; Thackeray's Becky Sharp and Nabokov's Lolita become Femmes fatales.

Magic Realism

an international tendency in the graphic and literary arts, especially painting and prose fiction. The frame or surface of the work may be conventionally realistic, but contrasting elements--such as the supernatural, myth, dream, fantasy--invade the realism and change the whole basis of the art. Magical realism in literature enjoyed popularity in many parts o the world just after World War II, with such influential exemplars as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez in South American, Nikos Kazantzakis in Greece, Gunter Grass in Germany, and Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco in Italy. Among those writing in English, quite a few novelists show some affinity with magical realism; john fowles, john barth, thomas pynchon, emma tenant, don DeLillo, and Salman Rushdie.

Stock Character

conventional character types. thus, a boisterous character known as the Vice came to be expected in a morality play. the elizabethan revenge tragedy commonly employed--among other stock characters--a high thinking vengeance-seeking hero (Hamlet), the ghost of a murdered father or son, and a scheming murderer-villain (Claudius). In Elizabethan dramatic tradition in general, one may expect such stock figures as a disguised romantic heroine (portia), a melancholy man (Jaques), a loquacious old counselor (Polonius), a female servant-confidante (Nerissa), a court fool (Feste), a witty clownish servant (Launcelot Gobbo). in fairy tales, the cruel stepmother and prince charming are examples. every type of lit. tends to develop stock characters whose nature readers do well to recognize so they can distinguish between the individual characteristics and the conventional traits drawn front he stock characters from the past, move them from the periphery to the center of attention, and reveal new complexities. Shaw's Saint Joan begins as a standard ingenue. eliot's Gerontion is a gerontion--the word itself is the name of a favorite stock character of Greek comedy: the geezer, codger, "little old man".

Frame Story

framework story is a story inside a framework; a story inside of a story. Perhaps the best known examples are found in the Book of Job, the Arabian Nights, the Decameron, and the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer, introduces in his prologue a group making a pilgrimage. this general setting may be thought of as the framework; the stories that the various pilgrims tell along the way are framework-stories. the extent to which the framework becomes an actual plot within with other plots are inserted varies greatly. In the Decameron, the tellers of the tales assemble and talk, and there is no plot in the framework. in the cantebury tales, there is a plot in the framework, although it is very limited. In a work like Moby Dick--in which the narrator participates in an action within which the story of Ahab's quest for the whale occurs--both framework and framework-story are inextricably mixed. Frankenstein is a frame-tale because the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monster-creature is included in Robert Walton's account of his northward explorations and related in letters to his sister. What most readers think of as the real story of Wuthering Heights is the account of Heathcliff, but that is included inside the first-person account of the outer or frame narrator, Lockwood.Joseph Conrad was fond of a similar form of framing, which led in some cases to three or four degrees of quotations as the nameless narrator tells what a storytelling character (Marlow, say) tells about what other characters say, and so forth. The framework was particularly popular around the turn of the twentieth century with such writers as Kipling in "the Man Who Would Be King"; Joel Chandler Harris in the Uncle Remus stories; Mark Twain in "Jim Baker's Blue Jay Yarn" and Henry James in The Turn of The Screw, in which the story does not return to the frame situation at the end, with the result that the unclosed frame leads unanswered questions.

Theater of the Absurd (genre)

in contemporary lit. and criticism, a term applied to the sense that human beings-cut off from their roots-live in meaningless isolation in an alien universe. although the lit. of the absurd employs many of the devices of expressionism and surrealism, its philosophical base is a form of existentialism that views human beings as moving from the nothingness from which they came to the nothingness in which they will end through an existence marked by anguish and absurdity. Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus is one central expression of this philosophy. Extreme forms of illogic, inconsistency, and nightmarish fantasy mark the lit. expressing this concept. the idea of the absurd has been powerfully expressed in drama and in the novel, where Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Gunter Grass, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. have practiced it with distinction.

Mise-en-abyme

in heraldry, the representation of a small shield on a big shield (escutcheon) is called an abyme. More generally, placement en abyme has to do with any occasion when a small text is imprinted on or contained in a bigger text that it replicates. Fairly often, a film will contain another film, which serves as a commentary of sorts on the outer story. Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes, for example, contains a performance of the ballet The Red Shoes. Nathanael West's the Day of the Locust includes The Burning of Los Angeles, a surrealist painting by the character Tod Hackett. at the end, the novel and painting seem to merge. as one critic has observed, not only does Hamlet contain a play-within-the-play, but it also contains a Hamlet-within-Hamlet. an inner text placed en abyme has a way of making the surrounding outer text seem relatively lifelike, especially if the artificiality of the inner text is emphasized.

Oedipus Complex (flaw)

in psychoanalysis, a libidinal feeling that develops in a child--especially a male child between the ages of three and six --for the parent of the opposite sex. this attachment is generally accompanied by hostility to the parent of the child's own sex. the oedipus complex is named for the ancient Theban hero who unwittingly slew his father and married his mother.

Electra Complex (flaw)

in psychoanalysis, an obsessive attachment of a daughter to her father and, thus, the approximate female counterpart of the Oedipus Complex. It gets its name from Electra. In Greek legend, she was a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. After Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon, Electra and her brother Orestes avenged the death of their father by killing their mother and her lover, Aegisthus.

Foil (character)

literally, a "leaf" of bright metal placed under a jewel to increase its brilliance. in literature, the term is applied to any person who through contrast underscores the distinctive characteristics of another. Thus, Laertes, Fortinbras, and even the Players--all of whom are willing and able to take action with less reason than Hamlet has--serves as foils to Hamlet.

Slapstick

low comedy involving physical action, practical jokes, and such actions as pie-throwing and pratfalls. The name is take from a paddle consisting of two flat pieces of wood so attached to a handle (and maybe spring-loaded) that it makes a racket when a painless blow is struck with it.

Pantoum (poetry)

may consist of any number of four-line stanzas, but in any case, the second and fourth lines of one stanza must reappear as the first and third lines of the following stanza. The stanzas are quatrains rhyming abab. in the final stanza, the first and third lines of the first stanza recur in reverse order, the poem thus ending with the same line with which it began. the pantoum was actually taken over from the Malaysian by Victor Hugo and other French poets. ex. John Ashbery "Hotel Lautreamont" and Robert Morgan "Audubon's Flute"

Concrete Poetry

poetry that exploits the graphic, visual aspect of writing; a specialized application of what Aristotle called opsis ("spectacle") and Pound "phanopoeia." a concrete poem is one that is also a work of graphic art; the painter Paul Klee produced some early examples. The contemporary American anagram "Seascape" shows the way in which such poetry can take advantage of the visible shapes of letters and words to make a picture: oceanoceanocean oceanoceanocean oceanoceanocean

Doggerel (poetry)

rude verse. Any poorly executed attempt at poetry. Characteristic of doggerel are monotony of rhyme and rhythm, cheap sentiment, and trivial, trite subject matter. Some doggerel does, however, because of certain humorous and burlesque qualities--become amusing and earn a place on one of the lower shelves of literature. Samuel Johnson's parody of Percy's "Hermit of Warkworth" is an example: As with my hat upon my head I walk'd along the Strand, I there did meet another man With his hat in his hand.

Ekphrastic (poetry)

sometimes used in reference to the representation of an artwork of any kind in a literary work, such as a poem or string quartet inside a novel, but usually restricted to the representation of a visual or graphic work inside a literary work. The graphic work may be a painting, statue, tapestry, window, shield, urn, or other such potentially representational artifact. In some cases, such as Robert Browning's "Fra Lippo Lippi" or Yeats's "Leda and the Swan," a real graphic work is involved; in other cases--sometimes called "notional ekphrasis" --the work is imaginary, like the shield of Achilles described in the Iliad (XVIII) and Auden's "The Shield of Achilles"

Mock Epic (poetry)

terms for a literary form that burlesques the epic by treating a trivial subject in the "grand style" or uses the epic formulas to make a trivial subject ridiculous by ludicrously overstating it. Usually, the characteristics of the classical epic are employed, particularly the invocation to a deity; the formal statement of theme; the division into the books and cantos; the grandiose speeches (challenges, defiances, boastings) of the heroes; descriptions of warriors (especially their dress and equipment), battles and games; the use of the homeric simile; and the involvement of supernatural machinery (gods directing or participating in the action). when the mock poem is much shorter than a true epic, some prefer to call it mock heroic, a term also applied to poems that mock romances rather than epics. in ordinary usage the terms are interchangeable. Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale is partly a mock heroic in character, Spenser's Muiopotmos, The Fate of the Butterfly , Swift's The Battle of the Books, satirical mock epic in prose, Pope's The Rape of the Lock, a card game is described in military terms, and such airy spirits as the sylphs hover over the scene to aid their favorite heroine. a well executed mock has a manifold effect: to ridicule trivial or silly conduct; to mock the pretensions and absurdities of epic proper. to bestow a humanizing, deflating, or debunking measure of lowering on elevated characters.

Dream Allegory/Vision

the dream was a conventional narrative frame that was widely used in the Middle Ages and is still employed on occasion. The narrator falls asleep and while sleeping dreams a dream that is the actual story told in the dream frame. In the Middle Ages, the device was used for allegory. Among the major dream allegories are the Romance of the Rose; Dante's Comedy; Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess and The House of Fame; The Pearl: The Vision of Piers Plowman; and Skelton's The Boge of Court. The Dream allegory forms the narrative frame for Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Keats's The Fall of Hyperion, and (by the adaptation to something like science fiction) Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward.

Hamartia (flaw)

the error, frailty, mistaken judgment, or misstep through which the fortunes of the hero of a tragedy are reversed. aristotle asserts that this hero should be a person "who is not eminently good or just, yet whose misfortune is brought about by some error or frailty." this error is not necessarily a flaw in character, although hamartia is often inaccurately called the tragic flaw. aristotle sees a movement from happiness to misery as essential to tragedy, and he says, "it is their characters that give men their quality, but their doings that make them happy or the opposite. Hence, hamartia can be an unwitting--even a necessary--misstep in doing rather than an error in character. Hamartia may be the result of bad judgment, bad character, ignorance, inherited weakness, accident, or any of many other possible causes. it must, however, express itself through a definite action or failure to act.

Neoclassicism

the term for the classicism that dominated English Lit. in the restoration age and in the eighteenth century. it draws its name from its finding of models in classical lit. and contemporary French neoclassical writings. It was in part a reaction against the enthusiasm that had blazed in the Renaissance. Against the Reniassance idea of limitless human potentiality was opposed a view of humankind as limited, dualistic, imperfect; on the intensity of human responses were imposed a reverence for order and a delight in reason and rules; the burgeoning of imagination into new and strange worlds was countered by a distrust of innovation and invention: on expanding individualism was imposed a view that saw people most significantly in their generic qualities; on the enthusiasm of mysticism was imposed the restrained good sense of deism. artistic ideals prized order, concentration, economy, utility, logic, restrained emotion, accuracy, correctness, good taste, and decorum. a sense of symmetry, a delight in design, and a view of art as centered in humanity and the belief that literature should be judged according to its service to humanity resulted in the seeking of proportion, unity, harmony, and grace in literary expressions that aimed to delight, instruct, correct human beings, primarily as social animals. it was the great age of the essay, of the letter and epistle, of satire, of moral instruction, of parody, and of burlesque. the play of mind mattered more than the play of feeling, with the result that a polite, urbane, witty, intellectual art developed. Poetic diction and imagery tended to become conventional, with detail subordinated to design. The appeal to the intellect resulted in a fondness for wit and the production of satire in both prose and verse. a tendency to realism marked the presentation of life with stress on the generic qualities of men and women. literature exalted form and avoided obscurity and mystery. it imitated the classics and cultivated such classical forms and types as satire and the ode. the earlier english authors whose works were produced in a benighted age either were ignored or were admired more for their genius than for their art. didactic literature flourished. although blank verse and the spenserian stanza were cultivated somewhat, rhymed couplets were the favorite form of verse. poetic technique as developed by Pope has become a permanent heritage. in the twentieth century, there has been a strong neoclassical tendency, growing out of a reaction against romanticism and out of distrust of the potentialities of human beings, together with a new respect for the place of intellect in life and art. Writers such as T.E. Hulme, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Irving Babbitt, Mark Van Dorem, Edith Sitwell, Hugh Kenner, Louis Zukofsky, Guy Davenport, Richard Wilbur, W.H. Auden, and the New Critics are on many issues at one with neoclassicism.

Farce

the world developed from Late Latin tarsus, connected with a verb meaning "to stuff." Thus, an expansion or amplification in the church liturgy was called a fares. Later, in France, farce meant any sort of extemporaneous addition in a play, especially jokes or gags, with the clownish actors speaking "more than was set down" for them. In the late seventeenth century, farce was used in England to mean any short humorous play, as distinguished from regular five-act comedy. The development in these plays of elements of low comedy is responsible for the modern meaning of farce; a dramatic piece intended to excite laughter and depending less on plot and character than on improbable situations, with the humor arising from gross incongruities, coarse wit, or horseplay. Farce emerges into comedy, and the same play may be called farce by some and comedy by others. James Townley's High Life Below Stairs has been termed the best farce of the eighteenth century. there are elements of farce in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" ex. Brandon Thomas's Charley Aunt, dealing with the extravagant results of a female impersonation, is the best-known american farce, although farce is the stock-in-trade of film and television comedy.

Hagiography

writing about saints. by extension, a biography that praises the virtues of its subject. continuing certain habits of biography derived from classical antiquity and the New Testament--as well as legal requirements of evidence for canonization--hagiogaphy developed conventions that have continued to influence literature, especially drama, as recently as Shaw's Saint Jaon, Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts, Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, and J.d. Salinger's stories about Seymour Glass.