GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Notes
Sonnets
154 sonnets; most important are 18, 116, and 130
Doggerel
A derogatory term used to describe poorly written poetry of little or no literary value. eg: Shakespeare used doggerel in dialogue between the Dromio twins in The Comedy of Errors for comic effect
Psychological Criticism
The application of the analytical tools of psychology and psychoanalysis to authors and/or fictional characters in order to understand the underlying motivations and meanings of a literary work. Concerned with the universals of human consciousness and how the psyche manifests itself in literature. Considers authorial biography and personality as legitimate objects of study. Jargon (of Freudian criticism in particular): Oedipal complex, libido, id, ego, superego, subconscious, repression, resistance Consider too Bloom's Freudian idea of the "strong-poet," a father figure who exerts an anxious influence on later writers.
Caesura
The pause that breaks a line of Old English verse. Also any particularly deep pause in a line of verse. eg: "Hwaet! we Gar-Dena | | on geardagum..." (Beowulf); "Arma virumque cano | | Troiae qui primus ab oris" (Aeneid)
Genesis: Cain and Abel
Tiller of the ground/shepherd, respectively. Lord appreciates Abel's offerings more, Cain murders Abel and is driven into the land east of Eden after being marked by God for protection. See Steinbeck's East of Eden
Subordinate conjunction
a conjunction (like 'since' or 'that' or 'who') that introduces a dependent or subordinate clause. eg: "Since you're awake, I'll turn on the TV"
Personification
a figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes. See Emily Dickinson's "The Train"
Imperative
a form of a verb expressing a command; that which is necessary or required. eg: "Do it now!"
Subjunctive
a mood that represent an act or state (not as a fact but) as contingent, possible, or counterfactual. "If I were a rich man"
Villanelle
a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain. The villanelle uses only two rhymes which are repeated as follows: aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa. Line 1 is repeated entirely to form lines 6, 12, and 18, and line 3 is repeated entirely to form lines 9, 15, and 19; thus, eight of the nineteen lines are refrain. Dylan Thomas's poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is an example of a villanelle.
Litotes
a type of understatement in which an idea is expressed by negating its opposite or negation eg: describing a particularly horrific scene by saying, "It was not a pretty picture." of Paul in the Book of Acts: "I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city" (Acts 21:39)
Terza Rima
an Italian form of iambic verse consisting of eleven-syllable lines arranged in tercets (three-line stanzas), the middle line of each tercet rhyming with the first and last lines of the following tercet (called an interlocking rhyme scheme). Invented by Dante for the Commedia
Romeo and Juliet
Characters: the lovers, Friar Laurence, the Nurse, Mercutio, Benvolio, Tybalt
Euphuism
Derived from Lyly's Euphues to characterize writing self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech. Polonius' dialogue in Hamlet is often reminiscent of euphuism, as in "To thine own self be true"
1500-1558
Early Tudor period (Henry VII, VIII, Edward VI, and Mary). John Skelton, Thomas More
In Memoriam
Four lines of iambic tetrameter, ABBA. Derived from Tennyson's poem of the same name
Linguistic Criticism
Incl. Formalism, New Criticism, etc.; those forms broadly concerned with language
Genesis: Abraham and Isaac
Isaac a gift from god to the aging Abe and Sarah; God demands his sacrifice as a burnt offering, but retracts this command at the last minute
First Person Narration
Look for the pronoun "I". Omniscient or limited. Consider Shelley's "Ozymandias"
Exodus
Moses hidden from Pharaoh, adopted by Egyptian princess, becomes a prince. Sees God in burning bush in the wilderness who helps him convince the Hebrews to follow him. Ten plagues released on Pharaoh for not letting his people go (bloody water, frogs, locusts, fire and brimstone, death of firstborn(origin of Passover)). Hebrews, in escaping, cross the Red Sea parted by Moses. See also: Aaron (Moses' brother), the golden calf (idolatry), Mount Sinai, covenant, manna, the Ten Commandments
Georgic
Not to be confused with pastoral, deals instead with the labour (rather than ease) of country people--pushing ploughs, raising crops, etc. eg: Virgil's Georgics, from which the term is derived
400-1300CE
Old English, Caedmon ("Hymn"), Beowulf
Jonah
Ordered to go to Nineveh, refuses and tries to escape, swallowed by whale, repents and argues with God. See Moby-Dick
Formalism
Russian, 1920s. Major Ideas: Explores how literature defamiliarizes expectations about linguistic structure to create new meaning through story, plot, voice, etc.
Participle
Verb that can be used as a adjective. *Present ends in -ing*-----*Past ends in ed.-d,-t,-en,-n. eg: "John has often played with the ball"
Old English Verse
Verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause called a caesura Example: Beowulf: "Protected in war; so warriors earn / Their fame, and wealth is shaped with a sword"
Spenserian Sonnet
a sonnet consisting of three quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab bcbc cdcd ee. eg: "One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand" by Spenser
Synaesthesia
describing one kind of sensation in terms of another, thus mixing senses. eg: Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale": "Tasting of Flora and the country green... O for a beaker of the warm South"
Homeric epithet
A repeated descriptive phrase, as found in Homer's epics. "The wine dark sea"
New Criticism
Anglo-American, mid-20C. dominant Major Figures:TS Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, IA Richards, John Crowe Ransom, FR Leavis Major idea: close reading and examination of text for inherent meaning in complex language Jargon: ambiguity, irony, symbol, meaning
Genesis: Tower of Babel
Builders aspire to the heavens, God curses them with not being able to understand each other and they're scattered across the earth
The Tempest
Characters: Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, Caliban, Ferdinand, Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian...Caliban and post-colonialism (especially Robert Browning's "Caliban in Setebos" (1864))
Sonnet
Fourteen-line lyric poem that is usually written in iambic pentameter and that has one of several rhyme schemes.
NT/Gospels
Immaculate conception of Jesus, three Magi come to visit, Herod's massacre of the innocents fails, Christ baptized by John the Baptist, tempted by Satan in the wilderness, performs miracles, convenes the Last Supper with his apostles, Judas betrays him in Gethsemane (for thirty pieces of silver), Jesus is crucified and risen. See also Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20, Matthew 13:1-23, Luke 8:1-15)
1300-1500CE
Middle English, Gutenberg Bible (1456). Langland (Piers Plowman), Chaucer, Thomas Malory
Neoclassical unities
Principles derived from Aristotle's Poetics (popular in the neoclassical movement 17th and 18th century), which speak of the essential unities of narrative: time, place, and action. Takes place in one day, within the confines of a single locale, and contains only a single dramatic plot, no subplot.
Pathetic Fallacy
The attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to nature; for example angry clouds; a cruel wind. The term was invented by Ruskin (cf. his famous line on "The cruel crawling foam")
Antagonist
The main character opposing the protagonist; often a "villain". eg: Iago from Othello
Protagonist
The main character, usually the "hero". Shakespeare's Othello is an example
ballad stanza
Typical stanza of folk ballad. Length of lines, as in sprung rhythm and Old English verse, is determined by the number of stressed syllables only. Rhyme scheme abcb. eg: Coleridge's "Mariner"
Blank Verse
Unrhymed iambic pentameter verse. eg: Tennyson's "Ulysses": "One equal temper of heroic hearts, / Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"
Free Verse
Unrhymed verse without a strict meter. eg: Whitman's "Song of Myself": "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you"
First Person Plural Narration
Using the pronoun "we"
Gerund
a verb ending in -ing and functions as a noun; example: "eating worms is bad for your health"
Predicate
tells something about the subject (a verb and its cohorts)
Vocative
the case (in some inflected languages) used when the referent of the noun is being addressed directly (in short, direct address). "Sit, Ubu!"
Infinitive
the unconjugated form of a verb that generally appears with the word 'to' in front of it. "To be, or not to be"
Richard III
"Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York"
Metonymy
A term for a phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of that thing. eg: Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Richelieu: ("The pen [writing] is mightier than the sword [war/fighting].")
Feminist, Black, and Post-Colonial Criticism
All work within Marxist/New Historicist frameworks. Essentially critique Euro-American society's dominance and marginalization of the other from diff. perspectives Jargon: patriarchy, imperialism, phallocratic/phallocentric, hegemony, Euro-American dominance
Second Person Narration
Author speaks using the pronoun "you" to bring the reader into the work
Third Person Narration
Either narrated by named characters or those referred to by pronouns. eg: Jane Austen's novels or Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
1558-1603
Elizabethan. Sidney, Spenser, Lyly, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson
Hudibrastic
From Samuel Butler's "Hudibras," refers to the couplets of rhymed tetrameter (8 syllables long), which Butler employed in "Hudibras." Any deliberate, humorous, ill-rhymed, ill-rhythmed couplets. eg: "We grant, although he had much wit / He was very shy of using it"
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.
Macbeth's famous speech from 5.5
Job
Satan and God compete to sway Job's faith; God curses him with poverty and sickness but he remains faithful and has his goods restored to him. "The patience of Job" important.
Biblical allusion
See Morrison's Song of Solomon, Faulker's Absalom! Absalom!, Proust's Sodom and Gomorrah, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Butler's The Way of All Flesh, Ibsen's The Master Builder, etc.
Samuel and Kings
Son of first Hebrew king Saul, David defeats the Philistine Goliath, composes the Psalms. His son Solomon (by Bathsheba) is a figure of wisdom. His other son Absalom rebels (the subject of Dryden's poem Absalom and Achitopel and Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom!)
Spenserian
Stanza of 9 lines in total; 8 lines of iambic pentameter, with five feet, followed by an alexandrine (iambic hexameter). Rhyme scheme: (ababbcbcc). Created for The Faerie Queene
Alliteration
The use of a repeated consonant or sound, usually at the beginning of a series of words. eg: "I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet / When far away an interrupted cry / Came over houses from another street...". "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost
Substantive
a group of words that is used in place of a noun. eg: "*Playing the banjo* is extremely annoying"
Hyperbole
purposeful exaggeration for effect. eg: Emerson's "the shot heard round the world" (The Concord Hymn)
Anthropomorphism
the attribution of humanlike characteristics, such as emotions or physical characteristics, to nonhuman inanimate objects, animals, or forces of nature. Differs from personification in that it's not a one-off reference, but a sustained part of a work's structure. See Aslan from the Narnia series, Orwell's Animal Farm, or a deity like Zeus who acts and behaves like a human
Auxiliary
A 'helping verb' (often a form of "be", "have", or "do") eg: "I *am* working on it"
Shakespearean/English Sonnet
A sonnet form composed of three quatrains and a final couplet written in iambic pentameter, with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.
Taming of the Shrew
Cf. Chaucer's Wife of Bath's tale Characters: Petruchio, Lucentio, Grumio, Gremio, Hortensio, Tranio, Vincentio, Baptista, Bianca, Katherine
Archetype/Myth Criticism
Influenced by Jung's theories and those of James G. Frazer in The Golden Bough. Major thinkers: Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell Major Ideas: Looks for recurring symbols, plots, motifs, character types, etc. across world literatures. Myth critics believe that these persistent, powerful stories point to universal needs in the human psyche--the collective unconscious
Voice
The perspective from which a story is written; first-person, third-person, etc.
Sprung rhythm
The rhythm created and used in the nineteenth century by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Like Old English verse, it fits a varying number of unstressed syllables in a line - only the stresses count in scansion. eg: Hopkins' "Pied Beauty": "Glory be to God for dappled things-- / For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow / For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim..."
Indicative
relating to the mood of verbs that is used in simple declarative statements in the present tense. eg: "John plays with the ball"
Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet
A 14-line sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abbaabba and of a sestet (or two tercets) rhyming cdecde. eg: Milton's "When I Consider How My Light is Spent"
Sestina
A 39-line poem of six stanzas of six lines each and a final stanza (called an envoi) of three lines. Rhyme plays no part in the sestina. Instead, one of six words is used as the end word of each of the poem's lines according to a fixed pattern. eg: Kipling's "Sestina of Tramp-Royal"
Picaresque
A chronicle, usually autobiographical, presenting the life story of a rascal of low degree making her/his living more through wits than industry. A picaresque tale tends to be episodic and structureless, and the picaro, or central figure, tends not to develop or change in the course or her/his adventures. Eg: Twain's Huckleberry Finn or Defoe's Moll Flanders
Skeltonics
A form of humorous poetry, using very short rhymed lines and a pronounced rhythm; made popular by Renaissance poet John Skelton. Similar to doggerel, the only difference being the quality of the thought expressed. eg: O ye wretched Scots / Ye puant pisspots" (Skelton's "How the Doughty Duke of Albany")
Decorum
A principle of neoclassical drama. The relation of style to content in the speech of dramatic characters, as when a figure's social station matches a particular mode of speech. eg: Moliere, Wilde
Allusion
A reference to someone or something, usually literary. eg: "Call me Ishmael" in Moby-Dick, referring to the biblical figure of Ishmael (son of Abraham). Consider too titular allusions like Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury," which echoes Macbeth
Masculine rhyme
A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable. eg: Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening": "Whose woods these are I think I know. / His house is in the village though"
Rhyme Royal
A seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval/Renaissance poets. eg: Wyatt's "They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek": "With naked foot stalking in my chamber. / I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, / That now are wild, and do not remember"
Apostrophe
A speech addressed to someone not present, or to an abstraction. The form often lends itself to parody. eg: Donne, in "The Sun Rising," addressing the sun: "Busy old fool, unruly sun..."
New Historicism
A subset of Marxist criticism. Major ideas: specific institutions of culture produce effects on the consciousness of society's members and the works they produce Jargon: ideology (and its effects on consciousness)
Pastoral literature
A work that gives an idealized vision of the lives of people, especially shepherds, in the country or in nature. eg: Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"
Merchant of Venice
Characters: Shylock, Portia, Antonio, Bassanio...Issues of Judaism, conversion, anti-Semitism. Portia's act as lawyer. Mercy v. Justice. "Hath not a Jew eyes?"
Marxist criticism
Essential idea: texts are not timeless works subject to universal standards of evaluation. Individuals, consciousnesses, and their products (like literature) are shaped by historical and cultural context. Discusses class relations and historical materialism. Jargon: base and superstructure, class, proletariat, means of production, bourgeoisie, imperialism, dialectical materialism
Bildungsroman
German for the "novel of education". Follows the education and maturation of a character from naivete and inexperience through the harsh realities of the adult world. eg: Joyce's Portrait, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye
Feminine Rhyme
Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. A pair of lines ending "running" and "gunning" would be an example of feminine rhyme. Properly, in a feminine rhyme (and not simply a 'double rhyme'), the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final ones unstressed. eg: Sonnet 20 by Shakespeare: "Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion... / With shifting change, as is false women's fashion"
Daniel
Set in Babylonian captivity. Skilled interpreter of dreams, appointed to high office by King Darius, thrown into a den of lions by jealous court officials. "Writing on the wall" from Daniel's interpretation of prophecy for King Belshazzar
Flat and Round Characters
Terms coined by EM Forster to describe characters built around a single dominant trait (flat) and those with psychological complexity (round). eg: Dickens' Mr. Micawber from David Copperfield (flat) v. Anna Karenina from Tolstoy (round)
Hamartia
Aristotle's term for what is popularly called the 'tragic flaw'. Differs from tragic flaw, however, in that hamartia implies fate, whereas tragic flaw implies an inherent psychological flaw in the tragic character. eg: Oedipus' hasty temper and Macbeth's ambition
Othello
Characters: Othello, Iago, Desdemona, Emilia, Roderigo, Brabanzio, Duke of Venice...NB Harold Bloom on Iago as the prototype of evil; Coleridge on motiveless malignity
Structuralism
Continental Europe, mid-20C.; assoc. with Saussurean linguistics in particular Major ideas: Like semiotics, interested in the linguistic underpinnings of literature; meaning is produced by structure of language Jargon: sign, signifier, signified; look too for binary oppositions and spatial metaphors when describing a text's structure, story architectures, center, perimeter
Lacanian criticism
Famous texts: "The Mirror Stage in the Formation of the I" Major ideas: how selfhood is formed in a childhood act of misrecognition of the self, in which he becomes alienated from himself and enters the symbolic order; language shapes and maps an individual's consciousness Related thinkers: Freud, Saussure, Hegel Jargon: mirror, phallus, signifier/signified, substitution, desire, jouissance, objet petit a, imaginary/symbolic/real orders
Genesis: Noah's Flood
God decides to destroy the wickedness of man Chooses Noah to collect two and two of all flesh and restart life on earth; rainbow appears after the flood to symbolize a new compact with man
Reader-Response Criticism
Major Focus: studying what happens in a reader's mind in the act of reading; the subjective experience of the literary text Similar Schools: Reception Aesthetics Major Figures; Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Barthes Jargon: implied/ideal reader, horizon of expectations
Post-Structuralism
Major schools/ideas: deconstruction; focus on the gaps, displacements, excesses of a text rather than its ordered, deliberate structure Major Figures: above all, Derrida Deconstructionist Jargon: erasure, trace, bracketing, differance, slippage, dissemination, logocentrism, indeterminacy, decentering, acceptance of multiple meanings. Post-Structuralist Jargon: mimesis, alterity, marginality, desire, lack
Book of Genesis: Creation
Seven-day creation (light and darkness, heaven/firmament, earth and foliage, lights in the firmament, animals of sea and sky, beasts of the earth and man in God's image, rest, in that order)
Synecdoche
a form of metonymy that's restricted to cases where a part is used to signify the whole. eg: Eliot's "Prufrock": "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas"
Ottava Rima
a stanza of eight lines (usually iambic pentameter) with the rhyme scheme abababcc. See Byron's Don Juan
Pastoral elegy
A lament for the dead that is sung by a shepherd; the shepherd is a figure for the author, and the subject of the elegy is another poet (e.g. Milton's "Lycidas"; Shelley's "Adonais")
Alexandrine
A line of iambic hexameter. The final line of a Spenserian stanza is an alexandrine. eg: "A needless alexandrine ends the song / That like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along". The second line is an alexandrine from Pope's "Essay on Criticism"
Epithalamium
A poem or other work written to celebrate a wedding. eg: Spenser's poem of the same title: "Song! made in lieu of many ornaments, / With which my love should duly have been dect, / Which cutting off through hasty accidents, / Ye would not stay your dew time to expect..."
