ENGLISH FINAL!! BRIT LIT

Novel

An extremely flexible genre In both form and subject matter. usually prose, giving high priority to narration of events, with a certain expectation of length, novels are preponderantly rooted in specific and often complex social world; sensitive to the realities of material life; and often focused on one character or small circle of characters. By contrast with chivalric romance (the main European narrative genre prior to the novel), novels tend to eschew the marvelous in favor of a recognizable social world and credible action. The novel's openness allows it to participate in all modes, and to be co-opted for a huge variety of subgenres. In english literature the novel dates from the late 17th century and has been astonishingly successful in appealing to a huge readership ex.)

Arthurian romance

Arthurian romance grew out of chronicles purporting to record the history of King Arthur, his knights, and their martial or amatory adventures The cult of chivalry was a European phenomenon. Arthurian romances portrayed its ideals, and its organization and trappings. Arthurian characters and deeds were emulated in tournaments, sometimes in Arthurian dress, and in ceremonia part of Arthurian romance, though, is the mixture of myth, adventure, love, enchantment, and tragedy.

Fabilau

French "Little story" -A genre A short funny often bawdy (dealing with sexual matters in a comical way) narrative in low style.. imitated and developed from French Models most subtly by Chaucer ex.) Miller's Prologue and Tale

Iambic Hexameter

Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet.

Mock Epic

Mock-epic draws heavily on the technique of satire, which means that it uses irony, exaggeration, and sarcasm to mock its original subject, usually in an undignified and grandiose manner. ex.) The Rape of the Lock

Travel Narrative

The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoir. ex.) Robinson Crusoe

Chivalric Romance

The principal kind of romance found in medieval Europe from the 12th century onwards, describing (usually in verse) the adventures of legendary knights, and celebrating an idealized code of civilized behaviour that combines loyalty, honour, and courtly love.

Courtly love

a highly conventionalized medieval tradition of love between a knight and a married noblewoman, first developed by the troubadours of Southern France and extensively employed in European literature of the time. The love of the knight for his lady was regarded as an ennobling passion and the relationship was typically unconsummated. came into being during the Middle Ages and that constituted a revolution in thought and feeling

Iambic pentameter

a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable, for example Two households, both alike in dignity.

Alexandrine

an alexandrine line. a line of verse of 12 syllables consisting regularly of 6 iambs with a caesura after the third iamb

Mock Heroic

of a literary work or its style) imitating the style of heroic literature in order to satirize an unheroic subject.

Prose

the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse.

Heroic Couplet

(in verse) a pair of rhyming iambic pentameters, much used by Chaucer and the poets of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Alexander Pope. ex.) the canterbury tales

Framed Tale

-A frame story (also known as a frame tale or frame narrative) is a literary technique whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories. The frame story leads readers from a first story into another, smaller one (or several ones) within it. -Canterbury Tales is a frame story because each of its characters narrates or tells their "own" story as the novel progresses. Therefore, you have stories within the story. Some narratives, particularly collections of narratives, involve a frame narrative that explains the genesis of, and or gives a perspective on, the main narrative or narratives to follow... ex.) Canterbury Tales

Tragedy

A genre A dramatic representation of the fall of kings or nobles, beginning in happiness and ending in catastrophe ..opposite of comedy ex.) King Lear, Shakespeare

Elegy

A genre. In classical literature elegy was a form written in elegiac couplets (a hexameter followed by a pentameter) devoted to many possible topics The sonnet sequences of both Sidney and Shakespeare exploit this genre.. by the later 17th century the term came to denote the poetry of loss, especially through the dead of a loved person ex.)

Pastoral

A genre. Pastoral is set among shepherds, making often refined allusion to other apparently unconnected subjects (sometimes politics) from the potentially idyllic world of high literary if illiterate shepherds. Pastoral represents recreational rural idleness .. ex.)

Epic

A genre. -An extended narrative poem celebrating martial heroes, invoking divine inspiration, beginning in medias res, written in a high style, and divided into long narrative sequences. ex.)

Spenserian Stanza

A verse form The stanza developed by Spenser for the Faerie Queene nine iambic lines, the first 8 of which are pentameters, followed by one hexameter, rhyming ababbcbcc