English 1302 Final
mode
"An unspecific critical term usually identifying a broad but identifiable literary method, mood, or manner that is not tied exclusively to a particular form or genre. [Some] examples are the satiric mode, the ironic, the comic, the pastoral, and the didactic."
exegesis
(1) In Roman times, the term exegesis applied to professional government interpretation of omens, dreams, and sacred laws. (2) In post-Roman times, more commonly, exegesis is a scholarly or theological interpretation of the Bible. Exegesis is associated with the fourfold interpretation. In the twelfth century, fourfold interpretation was a model for reading biblical texts according to one of four possible levels of meaning. The idea had a profound influence on exegesis and theology, but its principles also influenced medieval literature and medieval writers. Dante (c. 1300), for instance, claimed that his writings can be interpreted according to four possible levels of meaning (The Divine Comedy being the classic example). The text can be read as (1) a literally or historically true and factual account of events (2) an allegorical text revealing spiritual or typological truths, (3) a tropological lesson that makes a moral point, or (4) an anagogical text predicting eschatological events in the last days or revealing truths about the afterlife. Often medieval interpreters saw a single passage or verse as operating on multiple levels simultaneously. Among medieval scholars, the term "Robertsonian" is often used in reference to critics who seek to apply exegetical principles of interpretation to secular texts—especially typological readings. (The name "Robertsonian"comes from an American scholar, D. W. Robertson, who is the most outspoken and well-known of such critics in the last half of the twentieth-century.) Other critics hotly contest such readings of literary text, especially when the literal subject-matter seems greatly at odds with the exegetical material.
bildungsroman
(Germ. "formation novel") The German term for a coming-of-age story, a bildungsroman is a novel in which an adolescent protagonist comes to adulthood by a process of experience and disillusionment. This character loses his or her innocence, discovers that previous preconceptions are false, or has the security of childhood torn away, but usually matures and strengthens by this process. Examples include Wieland's Agathon, Herman Raucher's Summer of '42, Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. The most famous examples are in German, including Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and Thomas Mann's Königliche Hoheit.
anagnorisis
(Greek for "recognition") A term used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the moment of tragic recognition in which the protagonist realizes some important fact or insight, especially a truth about himself, human nature, or his situation. Aristotle argues that the ideal moment for anagnorisis in a tragedy is the moment of peripeteia, the reversal of fortune. Critics often claim that the moment of tragic recognition is found within a single line of text, in which the tragic hero admits to his lack of insight or asserts the new truth he recognizes. This passage is often called the "line of tragic recognition." An example is when Oedipus realizes that he murdered his father and married his mother. What is the moment of anagnorisis in Othello?
anticlimax
(also called bathos) In fiction and drama, this refers to action that is disappointing in contrast to the previous moment of intense interest. In rhetoric, the effect is frequently intentional and comic.
pun
(also called paronomasia) A play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning. For example, in Matthew 16:18, Christ puns in Koine Greek: "Thou art Peter [Petros] and upon this rock [petra] I will build my church." Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, puns upon Romeo's vile death (vile=vial, the vial of poison Romeo consumed). Shakespeare's poetic speaker also puns upon his first name (Will) and his lover's desire (her will) in the sonnets, and John Donne puns upon his last name in "Hymn to God the Father." Originally, puns were a common literary trope in serious literature, but after the eighteenth century, puns have been primarily considered a low form of humor. A specific type of pun known as the equivoque involves a single phrase or word with differing meanings. For instance, one epitaph for a bank teller reads "He checked his cash, cashed in his checks, / And left his window. / Who's next?" The nineteenth-century poet, Anita Owen, uses a pun to side-splitting effect in her verse:Another type of pun is the asteismus, in which one speaker uses a word one way, but a second speaker responds using the word in a different sense. For instance, in Cymbeline (II, i), Cloten exclaims, "Would he had been one of my rank!" A lord retorts, "To have smell'd like a fool," twisting the meaning of rank from a noun referring to "noble status" to an adjective connoting "a foul smell." Yet another form of pun is the paragram, in which the wordplay involves altering one or more letters in a word. It is often considered a low form of humor, as in various knock-knock jokes or puns such as, "What's homicidal and lives in the sea? Answer: Jack the Kipper." In spite of the pun's current low reputation, some of the best writers in English have been notoriously addicted to puns: noticeably Shakespeare, Chaucer, and James Joyce.
comedy
(from Greek: komos, "songs of merrimakers") In the original meaning of the word, comedy referred to a genre of drama during the Dionysia festivals of ancient Athens. The first comedies were loud and boisterous drunken affairs, as the word's etymology suggests. Later, in medieval and Renaissance use, the word comedy came to mean any play or narrative poem in which the main characters manage to avert an impending disaster and have a happy ending. The comedy did not necessarily have to be funny, and indeed, many comedies are serious in tone. It is only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that comedy's exclusive connotations of humor arose.
antithesis
(plural: antitheses) Using opposite phrases in close conjunction. Examples might be, "I burn and I freeze," or "Her character is white as sunlight, black as midnight." The best antitheses express their contrary ideas in a balanced sentence. It can be a contrast of opposites: "Evil men fear authority; good men cherish it." Alternatively, it can be a contrast of degree: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind."
caesura
(plural: caesurae) A pause separating phrases within lines of poetry--an important part of poetic rhythm. The term caesura comes from the Latin "a cutting" or "a slicing." Some editors will indicate a caesura by inserting a slash (/) in the middle of a poetic line. Others insert extra space in this location. Others do not indicate the caesura typographically at all.
classicism
A broad and general term (like romanticism, with which it is often contrasted) that refers to a complex set of beliefs, attitudes, and values presumed to be grounded in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. Some would even call classicism a doctrine or set of doctrines. However, when used in connection with the arts or, more specifically, with literature, the term is somewhat less formidable. It is used to call to mind certain characteristics praised in the critical writings and found the artistic achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans. These include qualities such as simplicity, directness, order, clarity, decorum, balance, unity, and an emphasis on reason. Today classicism is not used exclusively to refer to Greek and Roman works; the term can be used in connection with any work that exhibits some combination of these qualities and that thereby captures something of the spirit of the ancient Graeco-Roman tradition. English literature has been strongly marked by classicism, the ideals and characteristics of which were resurrected most notably in the Renaissance and the subsequent movement we refer to as neo-classicism.
foil
A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. For instance, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Laertes the unthinking man of action is a foil to the intelligent but reluctant Hamlet.
lampoon
A coarse or crude satire ridiculing the appearance or character of another person.
Freytag's Pyramid
A diagram of dramatic structure, one that shows complication and emotional tension rising like one side of a pyramid toward its apex, which represents the climax of action. Once the climax is over, the descending side of the pyramid depicts the decrease in tension and complication as the drama reaches its conclusion and denouement. Freytag designed the chart for discussing tragedy, but it can be applied to many kinds of fiction.
melodrama
A dramatic form characterized by excessive sentiment, exaggerated emotion, sensational and thrilling action, and an artificially happy ending. Melodramas originally referred to romantic plays featuring music, singing, and dancing, but by the eighteenth century they connoted simplified and coincidental plots, bathos, and happy endings. These melodramatic traits are present in Gothic novels, western stories, popular films, and television crime shows, to name but a few more recent examples.
kenning
A form of compounding in Old English, Old Norse, and Germanic poetry. In this poetic device, the poet creates a new compound word or phrase to describe an object or activity. Specifically, this compound uses mixed imagery (catachresis) to describe the properties of the object in indirect, imaginative, or enigmatic ways. The resulting word is somewhat like a riddle since the reader must stop and think for a minute to determine what the object is. Kennings may involve conjoining two types of dissimilar imagery, extended metaphors, or mixed metaphors. Kennings were particularly common in Old English literature and Viking poetry. The most famous example is hron-rade or hwal-rade ("whale-road") as a poetic reference to the sea. Other examples include Thor-Weapon as a reference to a smith's hammer, battle-flame as a reference to the way light shines on swords, gore-cradle for a battlefield filled with motionless bodies, and word-hoard for a person's eloquence. In Njal's Saga we find Old Norse kennings like shield-tester for warrior, or prayer-smithy for a man's heart, or head-anvil for the skull. In Beowulf, we also find Anglo-Saxon banhus ("bone-house") for body, goldwine gumena ("gold-friend of warriors") for a generous prince, beadoleoma ("flashing light") for sword, and beaga-gifa ("ring-giver") for a lord.
postmodernism
A general (and often hotly debated) label referring to the philosophical, artistic, and literary changes and tendencies after the 1940s and 1950s up to the present day. We can speak of postmodern art, music, architecture, literature, and poetry using the same generic label. The tendencies of postmodernism include (1) a rejection of traditional authority, (2) radical experimentation--in some cases bordering on gimmickry, (3) eclecticism and multiculturalism, (4) parody and pastiche, (5) deliberate anachronism or surrealism, and (6) a cynical or ironic self-awareness (often postmodernism mocks its own characteristic traits). In many ways, these traits are all features that first appeared in modernism, but postmodernism magnifies and intensifies these earlier characteristics. It also seems to me that, while modernism rejected much of tradition, it clung to science as a hopeful and objective cure to the past insanities of history, culture and superstition. Modernism hoped to tear down tradition and longed to build something better in its ruins. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is often suspicious of scientific claims, and often denies the possibility or desirability of establishing any objective truths and shared cultural standards. It usually embraces pluralism and spurns monolithic beliefs, and it often borders on solipsism. While modernism mourned the passing of unified cultural tradition, and wept for its demise in the ruined heap of civilization, so to speak, postmodernism tends to dance in the ruins and play with the fragments. ()
dramatic monologue
A literary device that is used when a character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and feelings, those that are hidden throughout the course of the story line, through a poem or a speech. This speech, where only one character speaks, is recited while other characters are present onstage. This monologue often comes during a climactic moment in a work and often reveals hidden truths about a character, their history and their relationships. Also it can further develop a character's personality and also be used to create irony. The most famous examples of this special type of monologue can be found within the poems of Robert Browning, poem such as "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Orders his Tomb," and "Andrea Del Santo". Browning's use of dramatic monologue has a special effect on his works. The revelations of his characters not only develop themselves, but they also create settings within the monologues with their use of vivid imagery. In Browning's works, the characters almost seem to take control of the story line, creating a poem of their own. Other authors whose works included dramatic monologues are Robert Frost and T.S. Elliot.
naturalism
A literary movement seeking to depict life as accurately as possible, without artificial distortions of emotion, idealism, and literary convention. The school of thought is a product of post-Darwinian biology in the nineteenth century. It asserts that human beings exist entirely in the order of nature. Human beings do not have souls or any mode of participating in a religious or spiritual world beyond the biological realm of nature, and any such attempts to engage in a religious or spiritual world are acts of self-delusion and wish-fulfillment. Humanity is thus a higher order animal whose character and behavior are, as M. H. Abrams summarizes, entirely determined by two kinds of forces, hereditary and environment. The individual's compulsive instincts toward sexuality, hunger, and accumulation of goods are inherited via genetic compulsion and the social and economic forces surrounding his or her upbringing. Naturalistic writers--including Zola, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser--try to present their subjects with scientific objectivity. They often choose characters based on strong animal drives who are "victims both of glandular secretions within and of sociological pressures without" (Abrams 175). Typically, naturalist writers avoid explicit emotional commentary in favor of medical frankness about bodily functions and biological activities that would be almost unmentionable during earlier literary movements like transcendentalism, Romanticism, and mainstream Victorian literature. The end of the naturalistic novel is usually unpleasant or unhappy, perhaps even "tragic," though not in the cathartic sense Aristotle, Sophocles, or Elizabethan writers would have understood by the term tragedy. Naturalists emphasize the smallness of humanity in the universe; they remind readers of the immensity, power, and cruelty of the natural world, which does not care whether humanity lives or dies. Examples of this include Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," which pits a crew of shipwrecked survivors in a raft against starvation, dehydration, and sharks in the middle of the ocean, and Jack London's "To Build a Fire," which reveals the inability of a Californian transplant to survive outside of his "natural" environment as he freezes to death in the Alaskan wilderness.
Gothic
A literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. This style usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, despair, the grotesque and other "dark" subjects. Gothic literature was named for the apparent influence of the dark gothic architecture of the period on the genre. Also, many of these Gothic tales took places in such "gothic" surroundings. Other times, this story of darkness may occur in a more everyday setting, such as the quaint house where the man goes mad from the "beating" of his guilt in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." In essence, these stories were romances, largely due to their love of the imaginary over the logical, and were told from many different points of view. This literature gave birth to many other forms, such as suspense, ghost stories, horror, mystery, and also Poe's detective stories. Gothic literature wasn't so different from other genres in form as it was in content and its focus on the "weird" aspects of life. This movement began to slowly open many people's eyes to the possible uses of the supernatural in literature.
epic
A long narrative poem about a serious subject, told in an elevated style of language, focused on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group in which the hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people or nation. Usually, the epic has a vast setting, and covers a wide geographic area, it contains superhuman feats of strength or military prowess, and gods or supernatural beings frequently take part in the action. The poem begins with the invocation of a muse to inspire the poet and, the narrative starts in medias res. The epic contains long catalogs of heroes or important characters, focusing on highborn kings and great warriors rather than peasants and commoners. Examples include the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf, and Paradise Lost.
ode
A long, often elaborate stanzaic poem of varying line lengths and sometimes intricate rhyme schemes dealing with a serious subject matter and treating it reverently. The ode is usually much longer than the song or lyric, but usually not as long as the epic poem. Conventionally, many odes are written or dedicated to a specific subject. For instance, "Ode to the West Wind" is about the winds that bring change of season in England. Keats has a clever inversion of this convention in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," in which his choice of the preposition on implies the poem actually exists in the artwork on the urn itself, rather than as a separate piece of literary art in his poetry. Classical odes are often divided by tone, with Pindaric odes being heroic and ecstatic and Horatian odes being cool, detached, and balanced with criticism. Andrew Marvell's "Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland" is an example of a Horatian ode.
sonnet
A lyric poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a single, complete idea or thought with a reversal, twist, or change of direction in the concluding lines. There are three common forms: Petrarchan, Shakespearean, and Miltonic.
neologism
A made-up word that is not a part of normal, everyday vocabulary. Often Shakespeare invented new words in his place for artistic reasons. For instance, "I hold her as a thing enskied." The word enskied implies that the girl should be placed in the heavens. Other Shakespearean examples include climature (a mix between climate and temperature) and abyssm (a blend between abyss and chasm), and compounded verbs like outface or un-king. Contrast with kenning. Occasionally, the neologism is so useful it becomes a part of common usage, such as the word new-fangled that Chaucer invented in the 1300s. A neologism may be considered either a rhetorical scheme or a rhetorical trope, depending upon whose scholarly definition the reader trusts
flashback
A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary (such as saying, "But back when King Arthur had been a child. . . ."). Flashback allows an author to fill in the reader about a place or a character, or it can be used to delay important details until just before a dramatic moment.
intrusive narrator
A mode of narration in fiction whereby the authorial voice 'intrudes' on the events of the narrative, thus 'breaking the frame', and potentially dispelling the illusion that what we are reading is real. Intrusive narration often involves a first-person voice which directly addresses the reader, and is a device closely associated with the realist novelists of the 19th c. such as George Eliot and Tolstoy, though it is also in evidence in the 18th c. novel, for instance in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749). In The Art of Fiction (1992), David Lodge argues that from the beginning of the 20th c. the intrusive narrator fell out of favor. For one, it tends to reduce the realism of the characters and events depicted, and perhaps the story's emotional intensity as well. Also, in an increasingly skeptical and relativistic age, people are simply less likely to trust an ostensibly omniscient narrator. Hence the tendency in the early 20th c. for authors to delegate responsibility for narration to their characters. In postmodern metafiction ( q.v. ), however, the intrusive narrator is back with a vengeance. The extended authorial commentary, or even the appearance of the author in works such as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (1967) and Alasdair Gray's Lanark (1981), is motivated by a deep distrust of the mechanics of realism ( q.v. ).
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.
impressionism
A nineteenth-century movement in literature and art which advocated a recording of the artist's personal impressions of the world, rather than a strict representation of reality. Example:"I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes - the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze colour. The twigs shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the shutter came to." (from Joesph Conrad's Heart of Darkness)
Platonic love
A philosophy of love set forth by Plato in his Symposium and Phaedrus (c. 360 B.C.). The lover of beauty, according to Platonic love philosophy, should not reserve his admiration for purely physical beauty, although appreciating an attractive body can be the first step toward worshipping beauty of a more spiritual nature. (In Phaedrus, Socrates specifically talks about male-male relationships, asserting the superiority of nonsexual male friendships over merely physical homosexual relationships.) According to the philosophy of Platonic love, we should progress from contemplating physical to mental to conceptual to spiritual beauty (and so forth) until we have attained a vision of beauty at its highest level, namely, the eternal and true Ideal Beauty from which the soul is normally separated and next to which all worldly beauty pales. Today, most people use the phrase Platonic love to refer to love that does not involve sexual relations, without realizing that the term has a much deeper and more complex meaning.
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.
canto
A sub-division of an epic or narrative poem comparable to a chapter in a novel. Examples include the divisions in Dante's Divine Comedy, Lord Byron's Childe Harold, or Spenser's Faerie Queene.
hamartia or tragic flaw
A term from Greek tragedy that literally means "missing the mark." Originally applied to an archer who misses the target, a hamartia came to signify a tragic flaw, especially a misperception, a lack of some important insight, or some blindness that ironically results from one's own strengths and abilities. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist frequently possesses some sort of hamartia that causes catastrophic results after he fails to recognize some fact or truth that could have saved him if he recognized it earlier. The idea of hamartia is often ironic; it frequently implies the very trait that makes the individual noteworthy is what ultimately causes the protagonist's decline into disaster. For instance, for the character of Macbeth, the same ambition that makes him so admired is the trait that also allows Lady Macbeth to lure him to murder and treason. Similarly, what ennobles Brutus is his unstinting love of the Roman Republic, but this same patriotism causes him to kill his best friend, Julius Caesar. These normally positive traits of self-motivation and patriotism caused the two protagonists to "miss the mark" and realize too late the ethical and spiritual consequences of their actions.
existentialism
A twentieth-century philosophy arguing that ethical human beings are in a sense cursed with absolute free will in a purposeless universe. Therefore, individuals must fashion their own sense of meaning in life instead of relying thoughtlessly on religious, political, and social conventions. These merely provide a façade of meaning according to existential philosophy. Those who rely on such conventions without thinking through them deny their own ethical responsibilities. The basic principles ofexistentialism are (1) a concern with man's essential being and nature, (2) an idea that existential "angst" or "anguish" is the common lot of all thinking humans who see the essential meaninglessness of transitory human life, (3) the belief that thought and logic are insufficient to cope with existence, and (4) the conviction that a true sense of morality can only come from honestly facing the dilemma of existential freedom and participating in life actively and positively. The ethical idea is that, if the universe is essentially meaningless, and human existence does not matter in the long run, then the only thing that can provide a moral backdrop is humanity itself, and neglecting to build and encourage such morality is neglecting our duty to ourselves and to each other. The major existential philosophers include the Danish theologian Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Hans Georg Gadamer. The major existential literary figures include Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, and Franz Kafka. While the movement is largely atheistic, a profound branch of Christian existentialism has emerged in writers such as Jacques Maritain, Paul Tillich, and Gabriel Marcel.
slave narrative
A type of narrative written by a former African American slave that typically recounts that individual's life as a slave and how he or she managed to escape from what has euphemistically been referred to as the "peculiar institution." Although autobiographical, slave narratives were chiefly intended to convince the reader that slavery needed to be abolished because of its devastating impact on human lives and the human spirit. (The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 2nd ed.) From Frances Smith Foster, Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-bellum Slave Narratives, [2d. ed., 1994]: "In the slave narrative the mythological pattern is realized in four chronological phases. First comes the loss of innocence, which is objectified through the development of an awareness of what it means to be a slave. This can be compared to the descent from perfection or mortification. The mortification process includes purgation, for as the slave learns the meaning of slavery, he also tries to purge himself of those elements that would facilitate enslavement. Second is the realization of alternatives to bondage and the formulation of a resolve to be free. This decision begins the ascent to the ideal, or invigoration. The resolution to quit slavery is, in effect, a climax to a conversion experience. The third phase is the escape. Whether it occurs between two sentences or forms the largest portion of the narrative, it is part of the struggle to overcome evil. The interest at this point is in the details, the pitfalls and obstacles, the sufferings and moments of bravery encountered in the process of achieving freedom. Although the first attempt sometimes ends in capture, the outcome is never in doubt. The narrative, after all, was written by a freeman. The fourth phase is that of freedom obtained. It is the arrival at the City of God or the New Jerusalem and it corresponds to the jubilation period of ancient ritual" (85). Examples include Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
objectivity
Ability of an author to keep his opinions and preachments out of a poem, a play, a short story, a novel, or any other literary work that he writes. Modern readers tend to admire objectivity in an author.
quatrain
Also sometimes used interchangeably with "stave," a quatrain is a stanza of four lines, often rhyming in an ABAB pattern. Three quatrains form the main body of a Shakespearean or English sonnet along with a final couplet.
realism
An elastic and ambiguous term with two meanings. (1) First, it refers generally to any artistic or literary portrayal of life in a faithful, accurate manner, unclouded by false ideals, literary conventions, or misplaced aesthetic glorification and beautification of the world. It is a theory or tendency in writing to depict events in human life in a matter-of-fact, straightforward manner. It is an attempt to reflect life "as it actually is"--a concept in some ways similar to what the Greeks would call mimesis. Typically, "realism" involves careful description of everyday life, "warts and all," often the lives of middle and lower class characters in the case of socialist realism. In general, realism seeks to avoid supernatural, transcendental, or surreal events. It tends to focus as much on the everyday, the mundane, and the normal as events that are extraordinary, exceptional, or extreme. As J. A. Cuddon notes, realism "more crudely [. . .] suggests jackets off, sleeves rolled up, 'no nonsense'" attitudes toward literary art. (2) Secondly and more specifically, realism refers to a literary movement in America, Europe, and England that developed out of naturalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although realism and the concern for aspects of verisimilitude have been components of literary art to one degree or another in nearly all centuries, the term realism also applies more specifically to the tendency to create detailed, probing analyses of the way "things really are," usually involving an emphasis on nearly photographic details, the author's inclusion of in-depth psychological traits for his or her characters, and an attempt to create a literary facsimile of human existence unclouded by convention, , formulaic traits of , sentiment, or the earlier extremes of naturalism. This tendency reveals itself in the growing mania for photography (invented 1839), the tendency toward hyper-realistic paintings and sculpture, the continuing rise of the popular prose novel, the growth of "realism" in philosophical movements, and in the increasingly realistic stage productions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The movement contrasts with (and is often used as an antonym for) literary forms such as the , science-fiction, fantasy, magic realism, , surrealistic art, and . (https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_R.html)
catharsis
An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work. 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).
Homeric epithet
An epithet is a short, poetic nickname—often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase--attached to the normal name. Frequently, this technique allows a poet to extend a line by a few syllables in a poetic manner that characterizes an individual or a setting within an epic poem. (1) The Homeric epithet in classical literature often includes compounds of two words such as, "fleet-footed Achilles," "Cow-eyed Hera," "Grey-eyed Athena," or "the wine-dark sea." In other cases, it appears as a phrase, such as "Odysseus the man-of-many-wiles," or whatnot. (2) The historical epithet is a descriptive phrase attached to a ruler's name. For instance, King Alfred the Great, Duke Lorenzo the Magnificent, Robert the Devil, Richard the Lionheart, and so on. (3) The generally descriptive epithet would appear in Old Norse and Germanic cultures to help distinguish individuals, thus giving us (in Njal's Saga) colorful names such as Hallbjorn Half-Troll, Ulf the Squinter, Hjorleif the Womanizer, and Ketil Flat-Nose.
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.
deconstruction
An interpretive movement in literary theory that reached its apex in the 1970s. Deconstruction rejects absolute interpretations, stressing ambiguities and contradictions in literature. Deconstruction grew out of the linguistic principles of De Saussure who noted that many Indo-European languages create meaning by binary opposites. Verbal oppositions such as good/evil, light/dark, male/female, rise/fall, up/down, and high/low show a human tendency common transculturally to create vocabulary as pairs of opposites, with one of the two words arbitrarily given positive connotations and the other word arbitrarily given negative connotations. Deconstructionists carry this principle one step further by asserting that this tendency is endemic to all words, and hence all literature. For instance, they might try to complicate literary interpretations by revealing that "heroes" and "villains" often have overlapping traits, or else they have traits that only exist because of the presence of the other. Hence these concepts are unreliable in themselves as a basis for talking about literature in any meaningful way. Oftentimes, detractors of deconstruction argue that deconstructionists deny the value of literature, or assert that all literature is ultimately meaningless. It would be more accurate to assert that deconstructionists deny the absolute value of literature, and assert that all literature is ultimately incapable of offering a constructed meaning external to the "prison-house of language," which always embodies oppositional ideas within itself. Deconstruction is symptomatic in many ways of postmodernism. In the more radical fringes of postmodernism, postmodern artists, dramatists, poets, and writers seek to emphasize the conventions of story-telling (rather than hide these conventions behind ) and break away from conventions like realism, cause-and-effect, and traditional plot in narratives. Such a text might be called "deconstructed" in a loose sense.
antihero
Anti-hero is a literary device used by writers for a prominent character in a play or book that has characteristics opposite to that of a conventional hero. The protagonist is generally admired for his bravery, strength, charm, ingenuity etc. while an anti-hero is typically clumsy, unsolicited, and unskilled and has both good and bad qualities.
authorial intention
Defined narrowly, an author's intention in writing a work, as expressed in letters, diaries, interviews, and conversations. Defined more broadly, "intentionality" involves unexpressed motivations, designs, and purposes, some of which may have remained unconscious. The debate over whether critics should try to discern an author's intentions (conscious or otherwise) is an old one. (The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 2nd ed.)
didactic
Designed to teach, didactic refers to literature or other types of art that are instructional or informative. The term didactic also refers to texts that are overburdened with instructive and factual information, sometimes to the detriment of a reader's enjoyment.
elegy
Elegy is a form of literature which can be defined as a poem or song in the form of elegiac couplets, written in honor of someone deceased. It typically laments or mourns the death of the individual. Elegy is derived from the Greek work "elegus", which means a song of bereavement sung along with a flute. The forms of elegies we see today were introduced in the 16th century. "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" by Walt Whitman are the two most popular examples of elegy.
leit-motif
From the German term for "lead motif," a leit-motif originally was coined by Hans von Wolzuegen to designate a musical theme associated with a particular object, character, or emotion. For instance, the ominous music in Jaws plays whenever the shark is approaching. That particular score is the leit-motif for the shark. Other examples are found in musical compositions such as "Peter and the Wolf" and many Wagnerian operas. In literature, critics have adapted the term leit-motif to refer to an object, animal, phrase, or other thing loosely associated with a character, a setting, or event. For instance, the color green is a leit-motif associated with Sir Bercilak in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; thus, the appearance of the Green Chapel and a green girdle should cause the reader to recall and connect these places and items with the Green Knight. In Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, the moon is a leit-motif associated with the fairy court, and it appears again in the stage scenery and stage discussion of Bottom's play about Pyramis and Thisbe. The leit-motif is not necessarily a symbol (though it can be). Rather, it is a recurring device loosely linked with a character, setting, or event. It gives the audience a "heads-up" by calling attention to itself and suggesting that its appearance is somehow connected with its appearance in other parts of the narrative.
hyperbole
Hyperbole, derived from a Greek word meaning "over-casting" is a figure of speech, which involves an exaggeration of ideas for the sake of emphasis. It is a device that we employ in our day-to-day speech. For instance, when you meet a friend after a long time, you say, "Ages have passed since I last saw you." You may not have met him for three or four hours or a day, but the use of the word "ages" exaggerates this statement to add emphasis to your wait. Therefore, a hyperbole is an unreal exaggeration to emphasize the real situation.
hokku
In Japanese poetry, the term hokku literally means "starting verse." A hokku was the first starting link of a much longer chain of verses known as renga or linked verse. The hokku was traditionally three lines long, with a syllable count of 5/7/5 syllables in the three lines (i.e., the hokku was identical in structure to the modern haiku, the independent genre that later developed out of the hokku). The hokku was always the the most important and best known part of a renga much in the way that the first verse and chorus of a popular song are often well-known even when the other verses are poorly known or ignored. Because the hokku ultimately evolves into what we today call the haiku, it is common to the find scholars make a distinction between "modern haiku" (haiku) and "classical haiku" (hokku).
ballad
In common parlance, song hits, folk music, and folktales or any song that tells a story are loosely called ballads. In more exact literary terminology, a ballad is a narrative poem consisting of quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter. Common traits of the ballad are that (a) the beginning is often abrupt, (b) the story is told through dialogue and action (c) the language is simple or "folksy," (d) the theme is often tragic--though comic ballads do exist, and (e) the ballad contains a refrain repeated several times. One of the most important anthologies of ballads is F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Famous medieval and Renaissance examples include "Chevy Chase," "The Elfin Knights," "Lord Randal," and "The Demon Lover." A number of Robin Hood ballads also exist. More recent ballads from the 18th century and the Scottish borderlands include "Sir Patrick Spens," "Tam Lin," and "Thomas the Rhymer."
art for art's sake
In defiance of society's expectation that art should have usefulness and social value, French symbolist writers argue that art is supremely valuable because it has no goal beyond its own existence; it exists only to be beautiful: art for art's sake.
Juvenalian satire
In literature, any bitter and ironic criticism of contemporary persons and institutions that is filled with personal invective, angry moral indignation, and pessimism. The name alludes to the Latin satirist Juvenal, who, in the first century A.D., brilliantly denounced Roman society, the rich and powerful, and the discomforts and dangers of city life. Samuel Johnson modeled his poem London on Juvenal's third satire and The Vanity of Human Wishes on the tenth. Gulliver's Travels (1726) established Jonathan Swift as the master of Juvenalian satire. In the 20th century, Karl Kraus's indictments of the prevailing corruption in post-World War I Austria were in the Juvenalian tradition.
stream of consciousness
In literature, stream of consciousness is a method of narration that describes in words the flow of thoughts in the minds of the characters. Another appropriate term for this device is "interior monologue" where the individual thought process of a character associated to his or her actions are portrayed in form of a monologue. Therefore, it is different from the "dramatic monologue" or "soliloquy" where the speaker addresses the audience or the third person. The following is an example from Toni Morrison's Beloved:
unities (also known as the "three dramatic unities")
In the 1500s and 1600s, critics of drama expanded Aristotle's ideas in the Poetics to create the rule of the "three unities." A good play, according to this doctrine, must have three traits. The first is unity of action (realistic events following a single plotline and a limited number of characters encompassed by a sense of verisimilitude). The second is unity of time, meaning that the events should be limited to the two or three hours it takes to view the play, or at most to a single day of twelve or twenty-four hours compressed into those two or three hours. Skipping ahead in time over the course of several days or years was considered undesirable, because the audience was thought to be incapable of suspending disbelief regarding the passage of time. The third is unity of space, meaning the play must take place in a single setting or location. It is notable that Shakespeare often broke the three unities in his plays, which may explain why these rules later were never as dominant in England as they were in French and Italian Neoclassical drama.
invocation of the muse
Invocation is the act of asking for help or support especially from a god. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invocation) Invocation of the muse is a prayer or address made to the one of the nine muses of Greco-Roman mythology, in which the poet asks for the inspiration, skill, knowledge, or appropriate mood to create a poem worthy of his subject-matter. The invocation of the muse traditionally begins Greco-Roman epics and elegies.
carpe diem
Literally, the phrase is Latin for "seize the day," from carpere (to pluck, harvest, or grab) and the accusative form of die (day). The term refers to a common moral or theme in classical literature that the reader should make the most out of life and should enjoy it before it ends. Poetry or literature that illustrates this moral is often called poetry or literature of the "carpe diem" tradition. Examples include Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," and Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."
malapropism
Misusing words to create a comic effect or characterize the speaker as being too confused, ignorant, or flustered to use correct diction. Typically, the malapropism involves the confusion of two polysyllabic words that sound somewhat similar but have different meanings. For instance, a stereotyped black maid in Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes series cries out as she falls into the jungle river, "I sho' nuff don't want to be eaten by no river allegories, no sir!" Dogberry the Watchman in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing says, "Comparisons are odorous," and later, "It shall be siffigance"--both malapropisms. In Sheridan, we find pineapple instead of pinnacle, and we read in Twain's Huckleberry Finn how one character declares, "I was most putrified with astonishment" instead of "petrified," and so on. The best malapropisms sound sufficiently similar to the correct word to let the audience recognize the intended meaning and laugh at the incongruous result.
motif
Motif is an object or idea that repeats itself throughout a literary work. In a literary work, a motif can be seen as an image, sound, action or other figures that have a symbolic significance and contributes toward the development of theme. Motif and theme are linked in a literary work but there is a difference between them. In a literary piece, a motif is a recurrent image, idea or a symbol that develops or explains a theme while a theme is a central idea or message. Sometimes, examples of motif are mistakenly identified as examples of symbols. Symbols are images, ideas, sounds or words that represent something else and help to understand an idea or a thing. Motifs, on the other hand, are images, ideas, sounds or words that help to explain the central idea of a literary work i.e. theme. Moreover, a symbol may appear once or twice in a literary work, whereas a motif is a recurring element.
episodic structure
Occurring in a long string of short, individual scenes, stories, or sections, rather than focusing on the sustained development of a single plot. These episodes may be unrelated to each other directly, or they may be loosely connected together in terms of overall events. Picaresque narratives, medieval romances, and collections like 1001 Arabian Nights are often said to be episodic.
criticism
Reflective, attentive consideration and analysis of a literary work. The term comes from the Greek kritikos, which refers to the ability to discern or judge.
hubris
The Greek term hubris is difficult to translate directly into English. It is a negative term implying both arrogant, excessive self-pride or self-confidence, and also a hamartia, a lack of some important perception or insight due to pride in one's abilities. It is the opposite of the Greek term arête, which implies a humble and constant striving for perfection and self-improvement combined with a realistic awareness that such perfection cannot be reached. As long as an individual strives to do and be the best, that individual has arête. As soon as the individual believes he has actually achieved arête, however, he or she has lost that exalted state and fallen into hubris, unable to recognize personal limitations or the humble need to improve constantly. This leads to overwhelming pride, and this in turn leads to a downfall.
Italian or Petrarchan sonnet
The Petrarchan sonnet has an eight line stanza (called an octave) followed by a six line stanza (called a sestet). The octave has two quatrains rhyming abba, abba, the first of which presents the theme, the second further develops it. In the sestet, the first three lines reflect on or exemplify the theme, while the last three bring the poem to a unified end. The sestet may be arranged cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce.
Seven Virtues
The Seven Virtues opposed the Seven Deadly Sins. In one scheme, the Seven Virtues are based on the three spiritual virtues listed by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13: Faith, Hope and Charity, followed by the four Cardinal or "Pagan" virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice. (The idea was that any person, whether he or she was a Christian or not, might possess the four Cardinal Virtues. Only a Christian in medieval belief would possess faith in God, hope for an afterlife, and caritas—the type of charity in which one does good deeds out of love for God alone.) An alternative but equally popular version of the Seven Virtues was the "remedial" or "contrarian" model, which listed specific virtues as the "cures" or "remedies" that stand in opposition to each of the seven sins. For example, humility cures pride and kindness cures envy. Prudentius devised this model in 410 AD in his allegorical poem the Psychomachia ("The Battle for the Soul").
Shakespearian sonnet
The Shakespearean sonnet uses three quatrains; each rhymed differently, with a final, independently rhymed couplet that makes an effective, unifying climax to the whole. Its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Typically, the final two lines follow a "turn" or a "volta," (sometimes spelled volte, like volte-face) because they reverse, undercut, or turn from the original line of thought to take the idea in a new direction.
diction
The choice of a particular word as opposed to others. A writer could call a rock formation by many words--a stone, a boulder, an outcropping, a pile of rocks, a cairn, a mound, or even an "anomalous geological feature." The analytical reader then faces tough questions. Why that particular choice of words? What is the effect of that diction? The word choice a writer makes determines the reader's reaction to the object of description, and contributes to the author's style and tone. Compare with concrete diction and abstract diction. It is also possible to separate diction into high or formal diction, which involves elaborate, technical, or polysyllabic vocabulary and careful attention to the proprieties of grammar, and low or informal diction, which involves conversational or familiar language, contractions, slang, elision, and grammatical errors designed to convey a relaxed tone.
falling action
The part of a literary plot that occurs after the climax has been reached and before the conflict has been resolved. (Dictionary.com)
poetic justice
The phrase and the idea was coined by Thomas Rymer in the late 1600s. He claimed that a narrative or drama should distribute rewards and punishments proportionately to the virtues and villainies of each character in the story. Thus, when a particularly vicious character meets a despicable end appropriate for his crimes,we say it is "poetic justice." This formula for resolving plots has fallen into disfavor in later centuries, and no widely influential critics today advocate such a formula without qualifications.
heroic couplet
Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. The second line is usually end-stopped. It was common practice to string long sequences of heroic couplets together in a pattern of aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff (and so on). Because this practice was especially popular in the Neoclassic Period between 1660 and 1790, the heroic couplet is often called the neoclassic couplet if the poem originates during this time period. Note that "heroic" in this case has nothing to do with subject-matter.
free verse
Unrhymed Poetry with lines of varying lengths, containing no specific metrical pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us with many examples. Consider the following lines from "Song of Myself."
Seven Deadly Sins
Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Avarice, Pride, and Sloth were commonly considered the primary temptations afflicting humanity in medieval sermons and iconography, with Pride being the worst. These seven often functioned as allegorical characters in medieval morality plays, but they also appear in many Renaissance plays such as Marlowe's Faustus. Some models of the sins saw them as contrasts to the seven holy virtues (i.e., the four cardinal or pagan virtues and the three spiritual virtues).
pulp fiction
fiction dealing with lurid or sensational subjects, often printed on rough, low-quality paper manufactured from wood pulp.
