Exam 1
NORMAN INVASION
Not to be confused with D-Day during World War II, medieval historians use this title for a much earlier invasion in 1066. Duke William of Normandy's conquest of England from 1066-1087 had profound impact on English by importing Norman-French vocabulary into Anglo-Saxon, bringing about the formation of Middle English. See also Battle of Hastings and Norman.
TROPOLOGICAL
Not to be confused with either typology or the rhetorical device of the trope, the term tropological refers to the interpretation of literature in which the interpreter focuses on the ethical lesson presented in the text, i.e., "the moral of the story." See more discussion under fourfold interpretation.
Phoneme
a sound that produces meaning, a sign.
Self fashioning
a term coined by Stephen Greenblatt to discuss the process of developing individual identities in Renaissance literature.
In medias res
in the middle of the action; epics begin in the middle, not at a beginning.
PARODY
(Greek: "beside, subsidiary, or mock song"): A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features. The humorist achieves parody by exaggerating certain traits common to the work, much as a caricaturist creates a humorous depiction of a person by magnifying and calling attention to the person's most noticeable features. The term parody is often used synonymously with the more general term spoof, which makes fun of the general traits of a genre rather than one particular work or author. Often the subject-matter of a parody is comically inappropriate, such as using the elaborate, formal diction of an epic to describe something trivial like washing socks or cleaning a dusty attic. Aristotle attributes the first Greek parody to Hegemon of Thasos in The Poetics, though other writings credit the playwright Hipponax with the first creation of theatrical parody. Aristophanes makes use of parody in The Frogs (in which he mocks the style of Euripides and Aeschylus). Plato also caricatures the style of various writers in the Symposium. In the Middle Ages, the first well-known English parody is Chaucer's "Sir Thopas," and Chaucer is himself the basis of parodies written by Alexander Pope and W. W. Skeat. Cervantes creates a parody of medieval romance in Don Quixote. Rabelais creates parodies of similar material in Gargantua and Pantagruel. Erasmus parodies medieval scholastic writings in Moriae Encomium. In Shamela (1741), Henry Fielding makes a parody of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela by turning the virtuous serving girl into a spirited and sexually ambitious character who merely uses coyness and false chasteness as a tool for snagging a husband. In Joseph Andews (1742), Henry Fielding again parodies Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, this time by replacing Richardson's sexually beleaguered heroine, Pamela, with a hearty male hero who must defend his virtue from the sexually voracious Lady Booby. In the Romantic period, Southey, Wordsworth, Browning, and Swinburne were the victims of far too many parodies in far too many works to list here. See also mock epic, satire, and spoof.
ROMANCE, MEDIEVAL
(also called a chivalric romance): In medieval use, romance referred to episodic French and German poetry dealing with chivalry and the adventures of knights in warfare as they rescue fair maidens and confront supernatural challenges. The medieval metrical romances resembled the earlier chansons de gestes and epics. However, unlike the Greek and Roman epics, medieval romances represent not a heroic age of tribal wars, but a courtly or chivalric period of history involving highly developed manners and civility, as M. H. Abrams notes. Their standard plot involves a single knight seeking to win a scornful lady's favor by undertaking a dangerous quest. Along the way, this knight encounters mysterious hermits, confronts evil blackguards and brigands, slays monsters and dragons, competes anonymously in tournaments, and suffers from wounds, starvation, deprivation, and exposure in the wilderness. He may incidentally save a few extra villages and pretty maidens along the way before finishing his primary task. (This is why scholars say romances are episodic--the plot can be stretched or contracted so the author can insert or remove any number of small, short adventures along the hero's way to the larger quest.) Medieval romances often focus on the supernatural. In the classical epic, supernatural events originate in the will and actions of the gods. However, in secular medieval romance, the supernatural originates in magic, spells, enchantments, and fairy trickery. Divine miracles are less frequent, but are always Christian in origin when they do occur, involving relics and angelic visitations. A secondary concern is courtly love and the proprieties of aristocratic courtship--especially the consequnces of arranged marriage and adultery. Scholars usually divide medieval romances into four loose categories based on subject-matter
PICARESQUE NOVEL
(from Spanish picaro, a rogue or thief; also called the picaresque narrative and the Räuberroman in German): A humorous novel in which the plot consists of a young knave's misadventures and escapades narrated in comic or satiric scenes. This roguish protagonist--called a picaro--makes his (or sometimes her) way through cunning and trickery rather than through virtue or industry. The picaro frequently travels from place to place engaging in a variety of jobs for several masters and getting into mischief. The picaresque novel is usually episodic in nature and realistic in its presentation of the seamier aspects of society.
ROMANCE, HISTORICAL
A narrative that takes a small episode or group of episodes from some ancient or famous chronicle and then independently develops those events in much greater detail. Greek writers, for instance, often took small segments from Homeric epics and developed their own independent stories focusing on side-events or sub-plots that take place "in the background"--mostly concerning minor background characters with only occasional cameos by the major Homeric characters like Odysseus, Penelope, Agamemnon, or Ajax. Many medieval romances--such as Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and John Lydgate's Fall of the Princes of Troy--similarly take material from Homeric legend and turn them into chivalric versions of the historical romance--complete with anachronistic knights and courtly love affairs. In the words of Stephen Barney's introduction to Troilus and Criseyde in the third edition of the Riverside Chaucer, "We now name this genre historical romance, a genre frequently and skillfully used by Shakespeare, Stendhal, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Faulkner" (471). While not necessarily always writing medieval romances in poetic form, these later artists certainly have created works in the spirit of the historical romance. Constrast with the historical novel.
CHIVALRY
An idealized code of military and social behavior for the aristocracy in the late medieval period. The word "chivalry" comes from Old French cheval (horse), and chivalry literally means "horsemanship." Normally, only rich nobility could afford the expensive armor, weaponry, and warhorses necessary for mounted combat, so the act of becoming a knight was symbolically indicated by giving the knight silver spurs. The right to knighthood in the late medieval period was inherited through the father, but it could also be granted by the king or a lord as a reward for services. The tenets of chivalry attempted to civilize the brutal activity of warfare. The chivalric ideals involve sparing non-combatants such as women, children, and helpless prisoners; the protection of the church; honesty in word and bravery in deeds; loyalty to one's liege; dignified behavior; and single-combat between noble opponents who had a quarrel. Other matters associated with chivalry include gentlemanly contests in arms supervised by witnesses and heralds, behaving according to the manners of polite society, courtly love, brotherhood in arms, and feudalism. See knight for additional information. This code became of great popular interest to British readers in the 1800s, leading to a surge of historical novels, poems, and paintings dealing with medieval matters. Examples of this nineteenth-century fascination include the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, William Morris's revival of medieval handcrafts, Scott's novels such as Ivanhoe, and the earnestly sympathetic (though unrealistic) depiction of knighthood in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. In Tennyson's poem Guinevere, King Arthur describes the ideals of knighthood thus I made them lay their hands in mine and swear To reverence the King, as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To honor his own word as if his God's, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her.
CHARACTER
Any representation of an individual being presented in a dramatic or narrative work through extended dramatic or verbal representation. The reader can interpret characters as endowed with moral and dispositional qualities expressed in what they say (dialogue) and what they do (action). E. M. Forster describes characters as "flat" (i.e., built around a single idea or quality and unchanging over the course of the narrative) or "round" (complex in temperament and motivation; drawn with subtlety; capable of growth and change during the course of the narrative). The main character of a work of a fiction is typically called the protagonist; the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends (if there is one), is the antagonist. If a single secondary character aids the protagonist throughout the narrative, that character is the deuteragonist (the hero's "side-kick"). A character of tertiary importance is a tritagonist. These terms originate in classical Greek drama, in which a tenor would be assigned the role of protagonist, a baritone the role of deuteragonist, and a bass would play the tritagonist. Compare flat characters with stock characters.
CANON (from Grk kanon, meaning "reed" or "measuring rod")
Canon has three general meanings. (1) An approved or traditional collection of works. Originally, the term "canon" applied to the list of books to be included as authentic biblical doctrine in the Hebrew and Christian Bible, as opposed to apocryphal works (works of dubious, mysterious or uncertain origin). Click here for more information. (2) Today, literature students typically use the word canon to refer to those works in anthologies that have come to be considered standard or traditionally included in the classroom and published textbooks. In this sense, "the canon" denotes the entire body of literature traditionally thought to be suitable for admiration and study. (3) In addition, the word canon refers to the writings of an author that scholars generally accepted as genuine products of siad author, such as the "Chaucer canon" or the "Shakespeare canon." Chaucer's canon includes The Canterbury Tales, for instance, but it does not include the apocryphal work, "The Plowman's Tale," which has been mistakenly attributed to him in the past. Likewise, the Shakespearean canon has only two apocryphal plays (Pericles and the Two Noble Kinsmen) that have gained wide acceptance as authentic Shakespearean works beyond the thirty-six plays contained in the First Folio. NB: Do not confuse the spelling of cannon (the big gun) with canon (the official collection of literary works). The issue of canonical literature is a thorny one. Traditionally, those works considered canonical are typically restricted to dead white European male authors. Many modern critics and teachers argue that women, minorities, and non-Western writers are left out of the literary canon unfairly. Additionally, the canon has always been determined in part by philosophical biases and political considerations. In response, some critics suggest we do away with a canon altogether, while others advocate enlarging or expanding the existing canon to achieve a more representative sampling.
Satire
Don Quixote, An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards. Satire became an especially popular technique used during the Enlightenment, in which it was believed that an artist could correct folly by using art as a mirror to reflect society. When people viewed the satire and saw their faults magnified in a distorted reflection, they could see how ridiculous their behavior was and then correct that tendency in themselves. The tradition of satire continues today. Popular cartoons such as The Simpsons and televised comedies like The Daily Show make use of it in modern media. Conventionally, formal satire involves a direct, first-person-address, either to the audience or to a listener mentioned within the work. An example of formal satire is Alexander Pope's Moral Essays. Indirect satire conventionally employs the form of a fictional narrative--such as Byron's Don Juan or Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and similar tools are almost always used in satire. Horatian satire tends to focus lightly on laughter and ridicule, but it maintains a playful tone. Generally, the tone is sympathetic and good humored, somewhat tolerant of imperfection and folly even while expressing amusement at it. The name comes from the Roman poet Horace (65 BCE-8 CE), who preferred to ridicule human folly in general rather than condemn specific persons. In contrast, Juvenalian satire also uses withering invective, insults, and a slashing attack. The name comes from the Roman poet Juvenal (60-140 CE), who frequently employed the device, but the label is applied to British writers such as Swift and Pope as well.
NARRATION, NARRATIVE
Narration is the act of telling a sequence of events, often in chronological order. Alternatively, the term refers to any story, whether in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do. A narrative is likewise the story or account itself. Some narrations are reportorial and historical, such as biographies, autobiographies, news stories, and historical accounts. In narrative fiction common to literature, the narrative is usually creative and imaginative rather than strictly factual, as evidenced in fairy tales, legends, novels, novelettes, short stories, and so on. However, the fact that a fictional narrative is an imaginary construct does not necessarily mean it isn't concerned with imparting some sort of truth to the reader, as evidenced in exempla, fables, anecdotes, and other sorts of narrative. The narrative can begin ab ovo (from the start and work its way to the conclusion), or it can begin in medias res (in the middle of the action, then recount earlier events by the character's dialogue, memories, or flashbacks). See exemplum and fable.
TONE
The means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude or mood. By looking carefully at the choices an author makes (in characters, incidents, setting; in the work's stylistic choices and diction, etc.), careful readers often can isolate the tone of a work and sometimes infer from it the underlying attitudes that control and color the story or poem as a whole. The tone might be formal or informal, playful, ironic, optimistic, pessimistic, or sensual. To illustrate the difference, two different novelists might write stories about capitalism. Author #1 creates a tale in which an impoverished but hard-working young lad pulls himself out of the slums when he applies himself to his education, and he becomes a wealthy, contented middle-class citizen who leaves his past behind him, never looking back at that awful human cesspool from which he rose. Author #2 creates a tale in which a dirty street-rat skulks his way out of the slums by abandoning his family and going off to college, and he greedily hoards his money in a gated community and ignores the suffering of his former "equals," whom he leaves behind in his selfish desire to get ahead. Note that both author #1 and author #2 basically present the same plotline. While the first author's writing creates a tale of optimism and hope, the second author shapes the same tale into a story of bitterness and cynicism. The difference is in their respective tones--the way they convey their attitudes about particular characters and subject-matter. Note that in poetry, tone is often called voice.
POINT OF VIEW
The way a story gets told and who tells it. It is the method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision, from which the story unfolds. Point of view governs the reader's access to the story. Many narratives appear in the first person (the narrator speaks as "I" and the narrator is a character in the story who may or may not influence events within it). Another common type of narrative is the third-person narrative (the narrator seems to be someone standing outside the story who refers to all the characters by name or as he, she, they, and so on). When the narrator reports speech and action, but never comments on the thoughts of other characters, it is the dramatic third person point of view or objective point of view. The third-person narrator can be omniscient--a narrator who knows everything that needs to be known about the agents and events in the story, and is free to move at will in time and place, and who has privileged access to a character's thoughts, feelings, and motives. The narrator can also be limited--a narrator who is confined to what is experienced, thought, or felt by a single character, or at most a limited number of characters. Finally, there is the unreliable narrator (a narrator who describes events in the story, but seems to make obvious mistakes or misinterpretations that may be apparent to a careful reader). Unreliable narration often serves to characterize the narrator as someone foolish or unobservant. See also authorial voice.
BATTLE OF HASTINGS
This battle in 1066 CE marks the rough boundary between the end of the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) period from about 450-1066 CE and the beginning of the Middle English period from about 1066-1450. No other historical event except perhaps the Great Vowel Shift (c. 1400-1450 CE) has had such a potent influence on the development of English. The battle took place between Duke William the Bastard (later known as King William I or "William the Conqueror") and the last claimant to the Anglo-Saxon throne, King Harold. William felt that King Edward the Confessor (who died childless in the twenty-fourth year of his reign) had promised him the throne of England. Duke William, leading a band of Norman and Picardian mercenaries, traveled from his dukedom in Normandy (northwestern France) to southeast England by sailing across the English channel after receiving the Pope's blessing. After William defeated Harold and pillaged southeast England, the citizens of London surrendered. He continued conquering sections of England until the 1080s, but 1066 was the decisive moment in history that positioned him for inevitable expansion and increasingly centralized control. William rapidly deposed or killed many Anglo-Saxon noblemen, priests, bishops, and archbishops, replacing them with French-speaking officials, favoring those knights who had fought for him previously. As a result of this, by 1100, England became bilingual, with the aristocracy speaking Norman French and the common peasantry speaking Anglo-Saxon. The two languages began to merge, with Anglo-Saxon losing declensions, becoming analytic rather than synthetic in grammatical structure, and incorporating thousands of French and Latin loan-words. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, still largely tribal in nature, were replaced by a complex but highly centralized monarchy operating by French feudal standards. See also Norman and Norman Invasion.
(2) "The Matter of Britain"
stories based on Celtic subject-matter, especially Camelot, King Arthur, and his knights of the round table, including material derived from the Celto-French Bretons and Breton lais.
(4) "The Matter of France"
stories based on Charlemagne, Roland, and his knights. A large number of such romances survive due to their enormous popularity, including the works of Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1190), Hartmann von Aue (c. 1203), Gottfried von Strassburg (c. 1210), and Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1210). England produced its own romances in the fourteenth century, including the Lay of Havelok the Dane and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In 1485, Caxton printed the lengthy romance Le Morte D'Arthur, a prose work that constituted a grand synthesis of Arthurian legends. Gradually, the poetic genre of medieval romance was superseded by prose works of Renaissance romance. See romance, renaissance.
(1) "The Matter of Rome"
stories based on the history and legends of Greco-Roman origin such as the Trojan war, Thebes, mythological figures, and the exploits of Alexander the Great. The medieval poet usually creates an anachronistic work by turning these figures into knights as he knew them.
Cuneiform
the early writing system used by those living in the Fertile Crescent. Writing was completed with a cuneus- a wedge, on wet clay and preserved through drying and/or firing.
TRAGIC FLAW
Another term for the tragic hero's hamartia. See discussion under hamartia and tragedy.
NORMAN CONQUEST
Loosely, another term for the Norman Invasion, though technically some historians prefer to differentiate between the "Norman Invasion" and the "Norman Conquest" by limiting the scope of the invasion to the initial year 1066 when the Normans landed in England and using the term "Norman Conquest" to refer to the twenty-one year period over that in which Duke William expanded and solidified his control over all England. In this class, we will use the two terms synonymously. See Norman Invasion, below.
UR-TEXT
A hypothetical "best" version of a lost literary text based on correlating later manuscripts and examining the differences between them. An Ur-text is not an actual physical manuscript we can examine or see in a museum, but rather an imaginary reconstruction of one that must have existed at some past point in time based on available evidence. This reconstruction cannot be absolutely certain, but it is a useful thought experiment for helping editors decide between textual variants when creating an edition of a literary work. Later manuscripts and printed texts often exist in literary families, with later versions adapted from earlier ones. Scribal corruption, printing errata, authorial revision, and deliberate bowdlerization or alteration by later editors can result in textual variants (slightly differing versions of the same basic text). It isn't always clear which of these versions is most accurate. When a modern editor wants to print her own edition, she will have to decide which version(s) she will use. Likewise, modern scholars who want an authoritative copy for historical and comparative purposes must determine which alterations are clear errors and which ones represent authorial intention. In some cases, textual critics can determine that one copy is most authoritative and use it as the basis of a critical edition. They may be able to examine an author's original typed copy in the case of a recent author like Hemingway or Toni Morrison, for instance. Far more often, however, the matter is muddled. Perhaps, as is the case with some works by Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Byron, and Emily Dickinson, a poem exists in several slightly different versions in the author's own hand, or it exists in versions printed by different publishing houses that have minor alterations in diction, punctuation, and so on. Do those differences indicate that the author or poet changed her mind, and we should trust the more recent version as authoritative? Or does the older version, the first one that the public saw, count as the most important one, and are the later changes made by meddling editors? What about when we can't tell which one she wrote first and we can't ask the author because she has died? This confusion is sharpened keenly in classical, medieval and Renaissance works. Finding "authorial intention" is difficult when, as in the case of certain Shakespearean plays, the first editions were printed in 1623, years after Shakespeare's actual death in 1616. It is even more challenging in the case of anonymous medieval authors when we aren't certain who they were and when they lived exactly. In the case of classical works like the Iliad or the Odyssey, the poem exists in literally thousands of different manuscripts--all copied down centuries after the heyday of Heroic Age Greece, and all varying slightly from each other in small passages. These are so removed from the original author, it may be pointless to use "authorial intention" as the guide to the best text. In fashioning an Ur-text, the textual critic begins with the somewhat controversial assumption that "there is no original text," i.e., that not a single one of the surviving manuscripts represents the lost original one accurately and entirely. He then attempts to establish "families" of manuscripts by finding which ones have the same or similar readings in the same passages. If he can date the manuscripts by paleographic evidence, he can then arrange them into a stemma (plural stemmata), or family tree, with individual branches having the same textual reading for specific lines. In conjunction with other evidence, this often allows the scholar to pinpoint where and when one manuscript tradition branches off from another. For instance, we can speak of the Ellesmere family of manuscripts and the Hengwrt family of manuscripts in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Each family has within its members similar alterations, interpretations, errors, and editorial choices as those found in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt, which appear to be the oldest and least corrupt representatives of that group. Later copyists or scribes in the family reproduced the alterations, interpretations, errors, and editorial choices of earlier copyists or scribes in the same manuscript family. Determining this lineage allows modern scholars to identify and dismiss changes that were later added and confirm material that must have existed in older versions of the text. By placing the different families side by side and travelling up the family tree, the scholar can often gain fairly good insights into what the lost original might have looked like before it "mutated" into different stemma, much like modern geneticists seek to reconstruct divergence in species by identifying when and where specific mutations occurred in DNA. Probably the most famous Ur-texts include the "Q-text," which in Biblical scholarship is thought to be a single source that about 40-70 years after Christ's death branched into the three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (while the non-synoptic gospel of John developed from an independent manuscript family), and the "Ur-Hamlet," an earlier draft of Shakespeare's Hamlet that must have preceded the corrupt bad quartos of the play.
SONG
A lyric poem with a number of repeating stanzas (called refrains), written to be set to music in either vocal performance or with accompaniment of musical instruments. See dawn song and lyric, above and stanza, below.
TROUBADOUR (Provençal "finder, inventor")
A medieval love poet of southern France between 1100-1350 who wrote and sang about the theme of fin amour (courtly love). Troubadours were noteworthy for their creativity and experimentation in metrical forms. They wrote in langue d'oc, and they profoundly influenced Dante, Petrarch, and the development of the love lyric in Europe. The term troubadour is sometimes used interchangeably with trouvère. Cf. trouvère, below.
EPIC
An epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry. It is a poem that is (a) a long narrative about a serious subject, (b) told in an elevated style of language, (c) focused on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group (d) in which the hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people or nation. Usually, the epic has (e) a vast setting, and covers a wide geographic area, (f) it contains superhuman feats of strength or military prowess, and gods or supernatural beings frequently take part in the action. The poem begins with (g) the invocation of a muse to inspire the poet and, (h) the narrative starts in medias res (see above). (i) The epic contains long catalogs of heroes or important characters, focusing on highborn kings and great warriors rather than peasants and commoners. J. A. Cuddon notes that the term primary epic refers to folk epics, i.e., versions of an epic narrative that were transmitted orally in pre-literate cultures; the term secondary epic refers to literary epics, i.e., versions that are actually written down rather than chanted or sung (284). Often, these secondary epics retain elements of oral-formulaic transmission, such as staggered intervals in which the poet summarizes earlier events, standardized epithets and phrases originally used by singers to fill out dactylic hexameters during extemporaneous performance, and so on. The term epic applies most accurately to classical Greek texts like the Iliad and the Odyssey. However, some critics have applied the term more loosely. The Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf has also been called an epic of Anglo-Saxon culture, Milton's Paradise Lost has been seen as an epic of Christian culture, and Shakespeare's various History Plays have been collectively called an epic of Renaissance Britain. Other examples include Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered and the anonymous Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest example known. Contrast with mock epic. See epic simile below. Click here to a download a PDF handout discussing the epic's conventional traits.
NOVEL
Don Quixote is considered by many to be the first modern novel. In its broadest sense, a novel is any extended fictional prose narrative focusing on a few primary characters but often involving scores of secondary characters. The fact that it is in prose helps distinguish it from other lengthy works like epics. We might arbitrarily set the length at 50,000 words or more as a dividing point with the novella and the short story. The English novel is primarily thought of as a product of the eighteenth-century, though many earlier narratives in classical Greek such as Heliodorus's Aethiopica and Daphnis and Chloë (attributed to Longus) easily fulfill the normal requirements of the genre, as the scholar Edmund Gosse has pointed out. Likewise, the Japanese Tale of the Genji and collected writings of Murasaki Shikibu from 1004 CE would clearly qualify as well by our definition--though most Western scholars treat these works as separate from the novel genre because historically they do not play a direct part or direct influence in the evolution of the popular English novel genre today.
GENRE
A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions. The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres and subgenres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc. Many bookstores and video stores divide their books or films into genres for the convenience of shoppers seeking a specific category of literature.
ELLIPSIS (plural, ellipses)
(1) In its oldest sense as a rhetorical device, ellipsis refers to the artful omission of a word implied by a previous clause. For instance, an author might write, "The American soldiers killed eight civilians, and the French eight." The writer of the sentence has left out the word soldiers after French, and the word civilians after eight. However, both words are implied by the previous clause, so a reader has no trouble following the author's thought. See schemes. An ellipsis is similar to an eclipsis, but differs in that an eclipsis has a word or words missing that may not be implied by a previous clause. (2) In its more modern sense, ellipsis refers to a punctuation mark indicated by three periods to indicate material missing from a quotation . . . like so. This mark is common in MLA format for indicating partial quotations.
Narrator, narrative voice- most important in Don Quixote
...
COURTLY LOVE
(Medieval French: fin amour or amour courtois): Possibly a cultural trope in the late twelfth-century, or possibly a literary convention that captured popular imagination, courtly love refers to a code of behavior that gave rise to modern ideas of chivalrous romance. The term itself was popularized by C. S. Lewis' and Gaston Paris' scholarly studies, but its historical existence remains contested in critical circles. The conventions of courtly love are that a knight of noble blood would adore and worship a young noble-woman from afar, seeking to protect her honor and win her favor by valorous deeds. He typically falls ill with love-sickness, while the woman chastely or scornfully rejects or refuses his advances in public but privately encourages him. Courtly love was associated with (A) nobility, since no peasants can engage in "fine love"; (B) secrecy; (C) adultery, since often the one or both participants were married to another noble who was unloved; and (D) paradoxically with chastity, since the passion should never be consummated due to social circumstances, thus it was a "higher love" unsullied by selfish carnal desires or political concerns of arranged marriages. In spite of this ideal of chastity, the knightly characters in literature usually end up giving in to their passions with tragic results--such as Lancelot and Guenevere's fate, or that of Tristan and Iseult. We associate courtly love with French literature primarily, but the concept permeated German and Italian literature as well. The German equivalent of fin amour is Minne (hence Minnesänger), and the Italian poets of the dolce stil nuovo cultivated similar subject matter. The convention of courtly love eventually becomes a source of parody. Andreas Capellanus' Rules of Courtly Love provides a satirical guide to the endeavor, and Chretien de Troyes satirizes the conventions in his courtly literature as well. Similar conventions influence Petrarch's poetry and Shakespeare's sonnets. These sonnets often emphasize in particular the idea of "love from afar" and "unrequited love," and make use of imagery and wording common to the earlier French tradition. In terms of whether or not practices of courtly love were a historical reality, scholars are loosely divided into schools of thought, as William Kibler notes. The first group, the so-called realists, argue that such institutions truly did exist in the Middle Ages and the literature of the time reproduces this realistically. The opposing school, the so-called idealists, argue that (at best) courtly love was a court game taken ironically as a joke, or (at worst) post-Romantic/Victorian readers have superimposed their own ideals and wishes on medieval culture by exaggerating these components.
THEME
A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work. The theme can take the form of a brief and meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life; it may be a single idea such as "progress" (in many Victorian works), "order and duty" (in many early Roman works), "seize-the-day" (in many late Roman works), or "jealousy" (in Shakespeare's Othello). The theme may also be a more complicated doctrine, such as Milton's theme in Paradise Lost, "to justify the ways of God to men," or "Socialism is the only sane reaction to the labor abuses in Chicago meat-packing plants" (Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). A theme is the author's way of communicating and sharing ideas, perceptions, and feelings with readers, and it may be directly stated in the book, or it may only be implied. Compare with motif and leit-motif.
GENDER, GRAMMATICAL
A grammatical category in most Indo-European languages. Three genders commonly appear for pronouns, nouns (and in inflected languages adjectives): masculine, feminine, and neuter. Note that these categories are only vaguely related to biological gender.
SOLILOQUY
A monologue spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character believes himself to be alone. The technique frequently reveals a character's innermost thoughts, including his feelings, state of mind, motives or intentions. The soliloquy often provides necessary but otherwise inaccessible information to the audience. The dramatic convention is that whatever a character says in a soliloquy to the audience must be true, or at least true in the eyes of the character speaking (i.e., the character may tell lies to mislead other characters in the play, but whatever he states in a soliloquy is a true reflection of what the speaker believes or feels). The soliloquy was rare in Classical drama, but Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights used it extensively, especially for their villains. Well-known examples include speeches by the title characters of Macbeth, Richard III, and Hamlet and also Iago in Othello. (Contrast with an aside.) Unlike the aside, a soliloquy is not usually indicated by specific stage directions.
TRAGEDY
A serious play in which the chief character, by some peculiarity of psychology, passes through a series of misfortunes leading to a final, devastating catastrophe. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragedy. He writes in his Poetics (c. 350 BCE): "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; . . . through pity [eleos] and fear [phobos] effecting the proper purgation [catharsis] of these emotions" (Book 6.2). Traditionally, a tragedy is divided into five acts. The first act introduces the characters in a state of happiness, or at the height of their power, influence, or fame. The second act typically introduces a problem or dilemma, which reaches a point of crisis in the third act, but which can still be successfully averted. In the fourth act, the main characters fail to avert or avoid the impending crisis or catastrophe, and this disaster occurs. The fifth act traditionally reveals the grim consequences of that failure. See also hamartia, hubris, anagnorisis, peripeteia, and catharsis. Click the following links to download a handout discussing medieval tragedy, some general thoughts about tragedy, or a comparison of comedy and tragedy.
ANALOGUE (also spelled analog)
A story that contains similar characters, situations, settings, or verbal echoes to those found in a different story. Sometimes analogues reveal that one version was adopted from or inspired by another, or that both tales originate in a lost, older text. When one version is clearly the ancestor of another, literary scholars refer to it as a "source." For instance, Romeo and Juliet and Westside Story are analogues, with Romeo and Juliet being a loose source for the other. The character of Utnapishtim in the Babylonian flood legend is an analogue for the character of Noah in the Hebrew Bible. In other cases, analogues appear that probably have no direct connection to each other. Grettir's Saga, which includes a wrestling bout between the strongest Icelander and an evil spirit, is often thought of as an analogue to Beowulf, in which a hero with the strength of thirty men wrestles with the monster Grendel. Grettir dives under an ocean-side waterfall and does battle with a Troll-wife, just as Beowulf dives into a lake and does battle with Grendel's mother. These two pairs of scenes are analogues to each other. Most of Chaucer's stories in The Canterbury Tales have analogues with varying degrees of correspondence; often these are of French or Italian origin.
MANUSCRIPT
A text written by hand, as opposed to one printed with a printing press. (Manus is Latin for "hand"; scriptum is a Latin participle for "written.") Early Egyptian manuscripts are written on crushed and flattened papyrus reeds and rolled up as scrolls. Later, parchment and vellum (animal skins) became the primary means of transmitting texts. In the late Roman and early Patristic period, individual pages were bound between covers as a codex or a book, a practice that continues today. Paper as we know it became common in the Middle East in the twelfth century, but it took another three hundred years for the art of paper-making to spread through Europe. By Shakespeare's day, printed paper had largely replaced manuscripts written on vellum, but the mechanics of printing often tried to imitate the familiar features of manuscripts. In medieval scholarship, the abbreviation "MS" stands for manuscript, and British scholars often use the plural form "MSS" for manuscripts. "TS" and "TSS"are the equivalent terms for typeset documents. Some important medieval literary manuscripts include the Ellesmere, the Hengwyrt, and the Nowell Codex. You can click here to see the first page of Beowulf from the Nowell Codex. See also parchment, vellum, quire, hair side, and flesh side.
TEXTUAL VARIANT
A version of a text that has differences in wording or structure compared with other texts, especially one with missing lines or extra lines added. In some cases, textual variants reflect the difference between an author's early version or rough draft of a work and a later version or polished final product. Variance in Shakespeare's plays might have come about in the difference between the foul papers (handwritten rough drafts) and the fair copy (the largely corrected versions sent to the printers). Variations in Chaucer's manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales might reflect an earlier, alternative scheme for structuring the work that Chaucer later abandoned in favor of a revised order for the various tales. Other textual variants in literary works are the product of error, scribal corruption, intentional censorship, or errata. See fair copy, errata, foul papers, scribal corruption, and Ur-text. Finally, the author might deliberately make changes in later versions of a poem or story. For instance, Dr. Karen Karbiener notes significant textual variants appear in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the first edition of 1818, the teenage Shelley describes Elizabeth as having a strong resemblence to Shelley herself. Many of the novel's subplots had rather incestuous overtones, and the text focuses more on Victor Frankenstein's moral free will. Karbiener points out how Shelley alters or changes these elements in her 1831 edition from Colburn and Bentley's Standard Novels Series, when Shelley is an older and less radical author.
NOVELLA
An extended fictional prose narrative that is longer than a short story, but not quite as long as a novel. We might arbitrarily assign an approximate length of 20,000-50,000 words. Early prototypes include the Decameron of Boccaccio, the Cento Novelle Antiche, and the Heptameron of Marguerite of Valois. English examples include Henry James's Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Note that some scholars in previous generations distinguished between what they called the novella (short stories in Italian, French, and German that served as later influences on English prose) and the novelette (English extended prose narratives longer than a short story but not quite as long as a novel.) Today, most American critics use the two terms interchangeably.
NARRATOR, UNRELIABLE
An unreliable narrator is a storyteller who "misses the point" of the events or things he describes in a story, who plainly misinterprets the motives or actions of characters, or who fails to see the connections between events in the story. The author herself, of course, must plainly understand the connections, because she presents the material to the readers in such a way that readers can see what the narrator overlooks. This device is sometimes used for purposes of irony or humor. See discussion under authorial voice.
ROMANCE, METRICAL
Any medieval romance written in verse or meter.
ESCHATOLOGICAL NARRATIVE
Eschatalogy in Christian theology is the study of the end of things, including the end of the world, life-after-death, and the Last Judgment. An eschatalogical narrative refers to a story dealing with these matters, a story which explains what the ultimate ending or conclusion of something. The term should not be confused with scatological narratives. Contrast with etiological narrative, below.
TEMPORAL
In grammatical and linguistic discussion, something relating to the element of time. See further discussion under clause.
TEXT
In literary criticism, formalist critics use the term text to refer to a single work of literary art (such as a specific poem, essay, short story). In formalist thinking, this text is an autonomous verbal object--i.e., it is self-enclosed and self-creating, and thus the critic need not necessarily explicate it using the biography of the author, or the historical background of its time-period, or other "extra-textual" details.
The genre first emerged in 1553 in the anonymous Spanish work Lazarillo de Tormes, and later Spanish authors like Mateo Aleman and Fracisco Quevedo produced other similar works. The first English specimen was Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594). Probably the most famous example of the genre is French
Le Sage's Gil Blas (1715), which ensured the genre's continuing influence on literature. Other examples include Defoe's Moll Flanders, Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild, Smollett's Roderick Random, Thomas Mann's unfinished Felix Krull, and Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March. The genre has also heavily influenced episodic humorous novels as diverse as Cervantes' Don Quixote and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
NUMEROLOGY
Number symbolism, especially the idea that certain numbers have sacred meanings. Classical Hebrew writers, following the lead of other Mesopotamian cultures, often embody certain numbers with sacred meanings--such as three, seven, twelve, forty, etc., an idea that develops more fully under the medieval kabalah. Many medieval authors such as Dante use poetic structure to convey theological ideas, such as Dante's use of terza rima in collected groups of thirty-three stanzas per canto in The Divine Comedy, or the Pearl Poet's elaborate numerological symbolism in Pearl. The standard reference book is Vincent Hopper's Medieval Number Symbolism.
ELIZABETHAN
Occurring in the time of Queen Elizabeth I's reign, from 1558-1603. Shakespeare wrote his early works during the Elizabethan period. This term is often juxtaposed with the Jacobean Period, the time following Elizabeth's reign when King James I ruled, from 1603 to 1625.
ANONYMOUS
Of unknown authorship, either because the historical records are missing to shed light on the author's identity, or because the author deliberately hid his identity. Probably 90% of surviving medieval literature lacks authorial attribution. In the case of folklore and much mythology, the oldest versions are also usually anonymous.
Brutus
Peace! Count the clock.
ANACHRONISM
Placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Shakespeare writes the following lines:
PROLOGUE
Prologue- the introduction to Don Quixote in which the author assumes a narrative persona to introduce the tale. (1) In original Greek tragedy, the prologue was either the action or a set of introductory speeches before the first entry (parados) of the chorus. Here, a single actor's monologue or a dialogue between two actors would establish the play's background events. (2) In later literature, a prologue is a section of any introductory material before the first chapter or the main material of a prose work, or any such material before the first stanza of a poetic work.
ARTHURIAN
Related to the legends of King Arthur and his knights. A large body of ancient and recent literature is Arthurian in whole or part.
NARRATOR
The "voice" that speaks or tells a story. Some stories are written in a first-person point of view, in which the narrator's voice is that of the point-of-view character. For instance, in The Adventures of Huck Finn, the narrator's voice is the voice of the main character, Huck Finn. It is clear that the historical author, Mark Twain, is creating a fictional voice to be the narrator and tell the story--complete with incorrect grammar, colloquialisms, and youthful perspective. In other stories, such as those told in the third-person point of view, scholars use the term narrator to describe the authorial voice set forth, the voice "telling the story to us." For instance, Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist presents a narrative in which the storyteller stands outside the action described. He is not a character who interacts with other characters in terms of plot. However, this fictionalized storyteller occasionally intrudes upon the story to offer commentary to the reader, make suggestions, or render a judgment about what takes place in the tale. It is tempting to equate the words and sentiments of such a narrator with the opinions of the historical author himself. However, it is often more useful to separate this authorial voice from the voice of the historical author. For further discussion, see authorial voice, unreliable narrator, and point of view.
AUCTOR / AUCTORITAS
The Latin word auctor is the source for the modern English word author, but the medieval word carries a special resonance and seriousness the modern word lacks. The terms differ in intellectual connotation. Thus, when Chaucer writes of "mine auctor," he suggests his source is especially authoritative because that writer incorporates non-original (but valuable) ideas into his own work. The power of an auctor comes not from his novelty or originality; instead, the author takes conventional, authoritative ideas, and uses these concepts to supplement his own thinking in an original manner. The auctor, thus, uses established, valuable material to supplement his original ideas without slavishly regurgitating them. We see the distinction spelled out most clearly by Saint Bonaventure. Bonaventure famously writes,There are four ways of making a book. There are some who write down the words of others, without adding or changing a thing, and he who does so is a scribe [Latin scriptor]. There are those who write down others' words, and add something; however not their own additions. One who does this is a compiler [L. compilator]. Then, there are those who write down both others' and their own things, but material of others predominates, and their own is added like an annex for clarification. Who does this is called a commentator [L. commentator], rather than an author. But he who writes both what comes from himself and from others, with the material of others annexed for the purpose of confirming his own, ought to be called author [L. auctor]. For Saint Bonaventure, and for literate medieval culture generally, originality was not the point of art or intellectual endeavors. Medieval writers did not think originality for its own sake was a virtue--not the way modern Americans do in these post-Romantic periods. Calling someone an auctor is the highest compliment possible; it implies what the writer has produced is an opus [Latin for "work"]--a masterwork of thought in which the author has synthesized and made use of other writings productively without slavishly following them or merely compiling them. It implies the auctor has created a powerful amalgamation of thought that had never existed before by using these earlier works as a stepping stone. However, it does not imply the author created the work ex nihilo, out of nothing. That sort of "made-up" originality was not seen as valuable or worthwhile. Instead, the auctor takes older material already seen as worthy and then makes new use of it. The traditional or accepted material is what gives him auctoritas (authority); it demonstrates that the writer or poet has mastered the ideas of others, and thus is ready to produce something of his own to supplement and build upon the earlier material.
TRANSLATION
The act of conveying the meaning of words in one language by attempting to say the same thing in another language, as opposed to paraphrasing, summarizing, and transliteration.
ESCHATOLOGY
The branch of religious philosophy or theology focusing on the end of time, the afterlife, and the Last Judgment. See discussion under eschatological narrative.
Cassius
The clock has stricken three (Act II, scene i, lines 193-94). Of course, there were no household clocks during Roman times, no more than there were Blu-Ray disk players! The reference is an anachronism, either accidental or intentional. Elizabethan theater often intentionally used anachronism in its costuming, a tradition that survives today when Shakespeare's plays are performed in biker garb or in Victorian frippery. Indeed, from surviving illustrations, the acting companies in Elizabethan England appeared to deliberately create anachronisms in their costumes. Some actors would dress in current Elizabethan garb, others in garb that was a few decades out of date, and others wore pseudo-historical costumes from past-centuries--all within a single scene or play.
TEXTUAL CRITICISM
The collection, comparison, and collating of all textual variants in order to reconstruct or recreate a single authoritative text--especially one that reflects authorial intention.
ATMOSPHERE (Also called mood)
The emotional feelings inspired by a work. The term is borrowed from meteorology to describe the dominant mood of a selection as it is created by diction, dialogue, setting, and description. Often the opening scene in a play or novel establishes an atmosphere appropriate to the theme of the entire work. The opening of Shakespeare's Hamlet creates a brooding atmosphere of unease. Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher establishes an atmosphere of gloom and emotional decay. The opening of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 establishes a surreal atmosphere of confusion, and so on. Compare with ambiance, above.
AUTO-DA-FÉ (Portuguese, "act of faith"--equivalent to Span. auto-de-fe)
The late medieval church's ceremonial execution en masse of accused witches, Jews, heretics, or Muslims--often performed by burning at the stake. In literature, such scenes become stock material for gothic novels (e.g. Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"). In Voltaire's Candide, Pangloss and Candide are nearly burned to death in such a ritual after Pangloss argues about theology with an Inquisitorial familiar (i.e., a spy).
TRAGIC HERO
The main character in a Greek or Roman tragedy. In contrast with the epic hero (who embodies the values of his culture and appears in an epic poem), the tragic hero is typically an admirable character who appears as the focus in a tragic play, but one who is undone by a hamartia--a tragic mistake, misconception, or flaw. That hamartia leads to the downfall of the main character (and sometimes all he or she holds dear). In many cases, the tragic flaw results from the character's hubris, but for a tragedy to work, the audience must sympathize for the main character. Accordingly, in many of the best tragedies, the tragic flaw grows out of some trait we find admirable. Read here for general thoughts about tragedy. See also hamartia, hubris, anagnorisis, peripeteia, and catharsis. NB: do not confuse the epic hero with the tragic hero.
EPIC HERO
The main character in an epic poem--typically one who embodies the values of his or her culture. For instance, Odysseus is the epic hero in the Greek epic called The Odyssey--in which he embodies the cleverness and fast-thinking Greek culture admired. Aeneas is the epic hero in the Roman epic The Aeneid--in which he embodies the pietas and patriotism Romans admired. If we stretch the term epic more broadly beyond the strict confines of the Greco-Roman tradition, we might read Beowulf as loosely as an epic hero of Beowulf and Moses as the epic hero of Exodus. See epic above, and avoid confusing the epic hero with the tragic hero. See also the Russian equivalent, the bogatyr.
TRANSLATIO (Latin, derived from the verb translatere, "to carry across")
The medieval idea of what modern individuals might mistakenly call "translation." Translatio is the act of taking an older text in a different language and creating a new work that embodies the same ideas in a new language. Unlike modern translation, in which a translator often tries to convey each sentence, word, and phrase as literally and accurately as possible, the medieval idea of translatio was to take the gist of the original work's ideas and to convey them loosely in a new form. Examples include King Alfred's early and Chaucer's later "translations" of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Chaucer's loose "translations" (i.e., new versions) of the Troy myth in Troilus and Criseyde, which in turn was adapted from earlier medieval Italian authors, or his abbreviated version of the French poem, Roman de la Rose. Medieval translators felt little compunction about keeping the same sequence of events, settings, or characters in their translations. The important element to be conveyed was the feeling and philosophy behind the original work.
AUDIENCE
The person(s) reading a text, listening to a speaker, or observing a performance.
TRANSLITERATION
The representation of the symbols appearing in one language's writing system by those of another language's writing system. For instance, Anglo-Saxon had a letter called eth (∂), which does not exist in Modern English. To transliterate this letter, we use the digraph <th> when we write out Anglo-Saxon words. For instance, ∂aes might become thaes. For extended examples of transliteration in Mandarin Chinese, click here.
PHONEME
The smallest sound or part of a spoken word that serves as a building block in a larger syllable or word, and which cannot be broken down further into smaller constitutive sounds. Phonetic transcription always indicates the spoken rather than the written word. This term contrasts with graphemes (the letters or smallest written symbols that "count" as a unit of an alphabet) and morphemes (smallest units that have meaning--either written or spoken). For instance, in the word rerun, the morphemes are re- and run. Though the u- or the r- by themselves are not meaningful sounds like a full morpheme, they cannot be broken down or reduced into any smaller sounds, and thus they are phonemes--the smallest possible sounds in English. Linguists often transcribe English words into phonetic markings to indicate subtle differences in accent, pronunciation, etc., which may or may not correspond to the graphemes (the markings we use to symbolize sounds--i.e., the written word). When they do so, they often enclose the phonetic symbols in slashes /laik ∂Is/ and enclose the graphic markings in chevrons <like this> so the reader can tell whether that linguist is discussing the spoken form of the word or the written form of the word. Contrast with graphemeand morpheme.
AUTHORIAL VOICE
The voices or speakers used by authors when they seemingly speak for themselves in a book. (In poetry, this might be called a poetic speaker). The use of this term makes it clear in critical discussion that the narration or presentation of a story is not necessarily to be identified with the biographical and historical author. Instead, the authorial voice may be another fiction created by the author. It is often considered poor form for a modern literary critic to equate the authorial voice with the historical author, but this practice was common in the nineteenth century. However, twentieth-century critics have pointed out that often a writer will assume a false persona of attitudes or beliefs when she writes, or that the authorial voice will speak of so-called biographical details that cannot possibly be equated with the author herself. In the early twentieth-century, New Critics also pointed out that linking the authorial voice with the biographical author often unfairly limited the possible interpretations of a poem or narrative. Finally, many writers have enjoyed writing in the first person and creating unreliable narrators--speakers who tell the story but who obviously miss the significance of the tale they tell, or who fail to connect important events together when the reader does. Because of these reasons, it is often considered naive to assume that the authorial voice is a "real" representation of the historical author. Famous instances in which the authorial voice diverges radically from the biographical author include the authorial voice in the mock-epic Don Juan (here, the authorial voice appears as a crusty, jaded, older man commenting on the sordid passions of youth, while the author Lord Byron was himself a young man) and the authorial narrator of Cervante's Don Quixote (who attests that the main character Don Quixote is quite mad, and despises his lunacy even while "accidentally" unveiling the hero's idealism as a critique of the modern world's fixation with factual reality). Examples of unreliable narrators include the narrator of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (the speaker, a pilgrim named Geoffrey, appears to be a dumbed-down caricature of the author Geoffrey Chaucer, but one who has little skill at poetry and often appears to express admiration for character-traits that the larger rhetoric of the poem clearly condemns). In a more modern example, the mentally disabled character in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (who is completely unable to interpret the events taking place around him) serves as an unreliable narrator, as does Tom Hanks' character in the film Forest Gump. See also poetic speaker.
TROPE
Trope has two meanings: (1) a rhetorical device or figure of speech involving shifts in the meaning of words--click on the tropes link for examples, (2) a short dialogue inserted into the church mass during the early Middle Ages as a sort of mini-drama.
PARADOX (also called oxymoron)
Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Common paradoxes seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions, such as noting that "without laws, we can have no freedom." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar also makes use of a famous paradox: "Cowards die many times before their deaths" (2.2.32). Richard Rolle uses an almost continuous string of paradoxes in his Middle English work, "Love is Love That Lasts For Aye." Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" notes "And all men kill the thing they love." The taoist master Lao-Tzu makes extraordinary use of paradox in the Tao-te Ching in his discussion of "the Way."
(3) "The Matter of England"
stories based on heroes like King Horn and Guy of Warwick.
Pictogram
the use of images to display meaning (cuneiform)
