HONORS ENGLISH SUMMER LITERARY TERMS

Irony

A broad term referring to the recognition of a reality different from appearance. Verbal irony is a figure of speech in which the actual intent is express in words that carry the opposite meaning. We may say I could care less while meaning I couldn't care less. Irony is likely to be confused with sarcasm, but it differs it from sarcasm in that it is usually less harsh. Its presence may be marked by sort of grim humor and unemotional detachment, a coolness in expression at a time when one's emotions appear to be really heated. Characteristically, it speaks words of praise to imply blame and words of blame to imply praise. In a popular song, a farmer says to the wife who has abandoned him, "You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille. " At a certain depth of irony, saying what you do not mean gives way to being unable to say what you mean, as in Prufrock's outburst, "It is impossible to say just what I mean!" (which ironically, seems to be just what he means). The effectiveness of irony is the impression it gives of restraint. The ironist writes with tongue in cheek; for this reason irony is more easily detected in soeech than in writing, because the voice can, through its intonation, easily warn the listener of a double significance. One of the most famous ironic remarks in literature is Job's "No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." Antony's insistence, in his oration over the dead Caesar, that "Brutus is an honorable man" bears a similar ironic stamp. Goldsmith, Austen, and Thackeray, in one novel or another, make frequent use of irony. Swift is an archironist. His "Modest Proposal" for saving a starving Ireland, by suggesting thag the Irish sell their babies go the English landlords to be eaten, is perhaps the most savagely sustained ironic writing in literature. Pope used irony brilliantly in poetry. The novels of Hardy and James are elaborate artistic expressions of the ironjc spirit, for irony applies not only to statement but also to event, situation, and structure. One of Hardy's volumes of short stories is called Life's Little Ironies, and even the "little" is ironic. In drama, irony has a special meaning, referring to knowledge held by the audience but hidden from the characters. In tragic irony, characters use the words that mean one thing to them but have foreboding, different meaning to those who understand the situation better. In contemporary criticism irony is used to describe a poet's "recognition of incongruities" and his or her controlled acceptance of them. Recent criticism, prompted particulary by Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, has concentrated on many sorts of irony as the typical habit of the eiron, who does not and cannot speak directly. Other critics important in the analysis of irony are Kenneth Burke, Wayne Booth, and Harold Bloom.

Flashback

A device by which a work presents material that occurred prior to the opening scene of the work. Various methods may be used, among them recollections of characters, narration by the characters, dream sequences, and reveries. Notable examples in the theater occur in Elmer Races dream girl in Arthur Miller's death of a salesman. Maugham use the flashback skillfully and effectively in cakes and ale it is employed consistently in the novels of John P. Marquand. Commonly enough, as in John O'Hara's novel 10 North Frederick and the film version thereof, work movie again with the funeral or other such turmoil that and then go back to show what passed before, so that a large part of the work is technically one protracted flashback.

Simile

A figure in which a similarity between two objects is directly expressed, as in Milton's "A dungeon horrible, on all sides around. / as one group furnace flame...." hear the comparison between the dungeon (Hell) in the great furnace is directly expressed in the as. Most families are introduced by as or like or even buy such a word as "compare," "liken," or "resemble." In the preceding illustration the simile between Hell and a furnace is based on the great heat of the two. A simile is generally the comparison of two things essentially unlike on the basis of a resemblance in one aspect. It is, however, no simile to say, "my house is like your house," although, of course, comparison does exist. Another way of expressing it is to say that in a simile both tenor in vehicle are clearly expressed in our joined by some overt indicator of resemblance such as "like" or "as."

Allusion

A figure of speech that makes brief reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object. Biblical allusions are frequent in English literature, such as Shakespeare's "A Daniel come to judgement" in The Merchant of Venice. Strictly speaking, allusion is always indirect. It seeks, by tapping the knowledge and memory of the reader, to secure a resonant emotional effect from the associations already existing in the reader's mind. When, for example, Melville names a ship the Pequod in Moby Dick, the reader knowing the Pequod tribe to be extinct will suspect the vessel to be fated for extinction. The effectiveness of allusion depends on a body of knowledge shared by writer and reader. Complex literary allusion is characteristic of much modern writing, and discovering the meaning and value of the allusions is frequently essential to understanding the work. A good example is T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and the author's notes to that poem. James Joyce employed allusions of all kinds many obscure and very complex. Donald Davie's title Essex Poems alludes to Thomas Hardy's title Wessex Poems. Although usage has never been precise, allusion ought to be distinguished carefully from outright quotation, obvious echo, and direct or annotated reference.

Personification

A figure that endows animals, ideas, abstractions, and inanimate objects with human form; the representing of imaginary creatures or things as having human personalities, intelligence, and emotions; also an impersonation in drama of one character or person, whether real or fictious, by another person. Keats's representation of the Grefian urn as the Sylvab historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rnyne is an obvious personification, as are his earlier references to the urn as an "unravished bride of quietness" and as a "foster child of silence and slow time." Personification is called Prosopopoeia, especially when the personified figure speaks, as Wisdom does in the Book of Proverbs.

Pun

A play on words based on the similarity of sound between two words with different meanings. And example is Thomas Hood's: "They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell." The pun is a humble thing, and many find it trifling or irritating. Even so, puns are found in the most sublime scriptures (as with Aramaic qalmâ, "gnat," and galmâ, "camel," in Matthew 23.24) and throughout Shakespeare's works (drawing the contempt of critics as diverse as Samuel Johnson and Thomas Wolfe-see quibble). From its earlier low or marginal status, the pub has steadily risen in dignity, to the point of being a main structural principle of Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan Wake. Most puns are exotic, parochial, and short-lived; some, however, such as those involving "son" and "sum" and "I" and "eye," are important staples of English literature

Sonnet

A poem almost invariably of 14 lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. The two basic sonnet types are the Italian or petrarchan and the English or Shakespearean. The Italian form is distinguished by its division into the octave and the sestet: The octave rhyming ABBAABBA and the sestet CDECDE, CDCDCD, or CDEDCE. The octave typically presents a narrative, state a proposition, or raises a question; the sestet drives home the narrative by making an abstract comment, applies the proposition, or solves the problem. The octave-sestet division is not always kept; the rhyme scheme is often buried but with in the limitation that no Italian sonnet properly allows more than five rhymes or rhymed couplets in the sestet. Iambic pentameter is usual. Certain poets have, however, experimented with other meters. In the English or a Shakespearean sonnet, four divisions are used: three quatrains (each with a rhyme scheme of its own, usually rhyming alternate lines) and a rhymed concluding couplet. The typical rhyme scheme is a and a rhymed concluding couplet. The typical rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The Spenserian sonnet complicates the Shakespearean form linking rhymes among the quadrants; ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. (Note how the rhyme scheme resembles that of Spenserian stanza.) The Spenserian sonnet is very where among modern poets of any distinction. Thomas Hardy and Richard Wilbur are virtually alone in using the form. The sonnet developed in Italy, probably in the 13th century. Petrarch, in the 14th century, raised it to its greatest Italian perfection and gave it, for English readers at least, his name. The form was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt, who translated Petrarchan sonnet and left more than 30 of his own compositions in England. Surrey, and associate, shares with Wyatt the credit for introducing the form to England and it's important as an early modifier of Italian sonnet. Gradually, the Italian sonnet pattern was change, and, because Shakespeare attained of fame for the greatest poems of his modified type, his name has often been given to the English form. Among the most famous sonneteers in England have been Sidney, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, D. G. Rossetti, Meredith, Auden, and Geoffrey Hill. Longfellow, Robinson, Frost, Cummings, and Berryman are generally credited with writing some of the best sonnets in America. Certain poets following the example of Petrarch have written a series of sun it's linked to one another and dealing with a single, although sometimes generalize, subject. Such series are called sonnet sequences. Some of the most famous in English literature are Shakespeare's sonnets, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Spencer's Ammoretti, Rossetti's house of life, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet from the Portuguese, and Meredith's modern love. John Berryman, Allen Tate, W. H. Auden, aunt Marilyn Hacker have done distinguish work in the sonnet sequence in this century. In the last decade of his life, Robert Lowell Road scores of 14 line poem is that, without rhyming or adhering to any very strict pattern of rhyme, manage to preserve the appearance of sonnets, along with something of their spirit, passion, and personal focus

Dramatic Monologue

A poem that reveals "a soul in action" through the speech of one character in the dramatic situation. The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatkc moment in the speaker's life. The circumstances surrounding the conversation, one side of which we hear as the dramatic monologue, are may clear up by implication, and an insight into the character of the speaker may result. Although quite an old form, the dramatic monologue was brought to a very high level by Robert Browning, who is often credited with its creation (although scores of speeches in Dante's Comedy and especially in the Inferno amount to posthumous dramatic monologues). Tennyson used the form on occasion, and modern poets have found it congenial, as a witness the work of Robert Frost, Allen Tate, and T.S. Eliot. The name dramatic monologue was not used by the 19th century masters of the form and, furthermore, there are important differences among the dramatic monologue (best exemplified by Browning's "My Last Duchess"), the soulioquy (Browning's "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"), and the Epistle (Browning's "Cleon" and "An Epistle"), although all three involve a single sustained utterance, typically by a character about whom the reader knows something beforehand. Most of this successful poems of this category are spoken not by newly created three dimensional figures but by historical personages (such as Fra Lippo Lippi and Lucretius), characters from myth, legend, or literature (such as a duke, bishop, Caliban, and a gerontion, or "little old man"). Some early 20th century poems by Elliot and Conrad Aiken seem to belong among dramatic monologues, but in some cases (Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prudrock" and "Gerontion," for example) the utterance is not patently delivered in a charged dramatic situation to a readily identifiable interlocator, so that the poems may be related less to the fully formed dramatic monologue than to the interior monologue or some type of meditative poetry

Narrative Poem

A poem that tells a story. Epics, Ballads, and Metrical Romances are among the many kinds of narrative poems.

Stanza

A recurrent grouping of two or more verse lines in terms of length, metrical, form, and, often, rhyme scheme. However, the division into stanzas is sometimes made according to thought as well as form, in which each case the stands it is a unit like a prose paragraph. Stropheis another term used for stanza, but one should avoid burst in the sense, because the word has so many other meanings. For convenience, stanza is limited two units that are regular, wind, and recurrent; other subdivisions are called strophe

Climax

A rhetorical term for a rising order of importance in the ideas expressed. Such an arrangement is called climactic, and the item of greatest importance is called the climax. Earlier, the term meant such an arrangement of succeeding clauses that the last important word in one is repeated as the first important word in the next, each succeeding clause rising in intensity or importance. In large compositions--the essay, short story, drama, or novel--the climax is the point of highest interest, whereat the reader makes the greatest emotional response. In dramatic structure, climax designates the turning point in the action, the crisis at which the rising action reverses and becomes the falling action. In Freytag's five-part view of dramatic structure, the climax is the third part of third act. Both narrative fiction and drama have tended to move the climax, in the sense of turning action and of highest response as well, nearer the end of the work and thus have produced structures less orderly than those that follow Freytag's Pyramid. In speaking of dramatic structure, climax is synonymous with crisis. However, crisis is used exclusively in the sense of structure, whereas climax is used as a synonym for crisis and as a description of the intensity of interest in the reader or spectator. In this latter sense climax sometimes occurs at points other than crisis.

Soliloquy

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

Metaphor

An analogy identifying one object with another and ascribing to the first object one or more qualities of the second. I. A. Richard's distinction between the tenor and vehicle of a metaphor mah be useful. The tenor is the idea being expressed or the subject of the comparison; the vehicle is the image by which this idea is conveyed or the subject communjcaged. When Shakespeare writes: That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sand—-the tenor is old age, the vehicle is the season of late fall or early winter, conveyed through a group of images unusually rich in implications. The tenor and vehicle taken together constitute the figure, trope, or "turn" in meaning that the metaphor conveys. At one extreme, the vehicle may be merely a means of decorating the tenor; at the other extreme, the tenor may be merely an excuse for having the vehicle. Allegory, for example, may be thought of as an elaborate metaphor in which the tenor is never expressed, although it is implied. In the simplest kinds of metaphors there is an obvious direct resemblance objectively existing between tenor and vehicle, and in some metaphors, particulary those that lend themselves to elaborate conceits, the relation between tenor and vehicle is in the mind of the maker of the metaphor, rather than in specific qualities of vehicle or tenor. Aristotle praised the metaphor as "the greatest thing by far" for poets-a sentiment seconded by Ezra Pound, who endorsed Aristotle's calling apt metaphor "the hallmark of genius"-and saw it as the product of their insight, which permitted them to find the similarities in seemingly dissimilar things. It ought to be noted that Aristotle's attention to the art of finding resemblances resembles the lineaments of his doctrine of formal mimesis; art in a way is a metaphor for nature. Modern criticism follows Aristotle in placing a similarly high premium on poets' abilities to make metaphors, and analytical criticism tends to find almost as much rich suggestiveness in the differences between the things compared as it does in the recognition of surprising but unsuspected similarities. Cleanth Brooks used the term "functional metaphor" to describe the way in which the metaphor is able to have "referential" and "emotive" characteristics and to go beyond them and become a direct means in itself of representing a truth incommunicable by any other means. Clearly, when a metaphor performs this function, it is behavinf as a symbol. Metaphors mah be simple, that is, may occur in the single isolated comparison, or a large metaphor may function as the controlling image of a whole work (see Edward Taylor's poem quoted in the article on controlling image), or a series of vehicles may all be associated with a single tenor, as in Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy. In this last kind of case, however, unless the images can harmoniously build the tenor without impressing the reader with a sense of their incongruity, the possibility if mixed figure is imminent. According to a fairly ingenuous notion of language, abstractions can be treated only in terms that are not abstract, presumably because the primitive mind cannot handle abstractions. But no evidence establishes the existence of any such limitations. To presume there any human being has to have a grasp of physical "pulling away" (abstrahere) before being able to grasp an abstract "abstraction" is little more than bigotry. Even so, mentally negotiable systems of signs do resemble metaphoric displacements and substitutions enough for Emerson to assert, "Every word was once a poem... Language is fossil poetry."

Parable

An illustrative story teaching a lesson. A true parable paralels, detail for detail, the situation that calls forth the parable for illustration. A parable is, in this sense, an allegory. In Christian countries the most famous parables are those told by Christ, the best known of which is that of the Prodigal Son.

Symbolism

And its broad sense symbolism is the use of one object to represent or suggest another; or, in literature, the series and extensive use of symbols. Recently, The word has taken on a pejorative connotation of mere rhetoric without reality, surface without substance, spaciousness and tokenism, all smoke and no fire, all hat and no cattle. In America in the middle of the 19th century, symbolism of the sort typical of romanticism was the dominant literary mode. In this movement the details of the natural World in the actions of people were used to suggest ideas. Romantic symbolism is the fundamental practice of transcendentalists. Emerson, The chief exponent of the moment, declared that "particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts" and that "nature is the symbol of spirit," and Henry David Thoreau made life it's all a symbolic action in Walden. The symbolic method was presented in the poetry of these two and also in that of Walt Whitman. Symbolism was a distinctive feature of the novels of Hawthorne- notably the scarlet letter and the marble faun- and of Melville, who is Moby dick is probably the most original work of symbol a stick or in American literature. Symbolism is also the name of a movement that originated in France in the last half of the 19th century, strongly influence British riding around the turn of the 20th century, and has been a dominant force in much British and American literature ever cents. The symbolism sees the immediate, unique, and personal emotional response as the proper subject of art, and its full expression as the ultimate aim of art. Because the emotions experienced by a poet in a given moment are unique to that person in that moment and are finally both fleeting and incommunicable, The power is reduced to the use of a complex and highly private kind of symbolization in an effort to give expression to an evascent and ineffable feeling. The result is a kind of writing consisting of what Edmund Wilson has called "a medley of metaphor" in which symbol is lacking a parent logical relation are put together in a pattern, one of whose characteristics is an indefiniteness as great as the indefiniteness of experience it's self and another of who is the characteristics is the conscious effort to use words for their evocative musical effect, without much attention to precise meaning. As Baudelaire, One of the principal forerunners of the movement, said, human beings live in a "forest of symbols," which results from the fact that the materiality and individuality of the physical world dissolves into "the dark and confuse unity" of the unseen world. In this process synaesthesia takes place. Baudelaire and the later Symbolists, particularly Mallarmé and Valéry, were deeply influenced by Poe's theories and poetic practice. Other important French writers in the movement are Rimbaud, Verlaine, Laforgue, Gourmont, and Claudel, as well as Maeterlinck in the drama Huysmans in the novel. Modern Irish writers, particularly Yeats in poetry, Synge in the drama, and Joyce in the novel, were notably responsive to the movement. In Germany, Rilke and Stefan George were great Symbolist poets. In America, the imagist influence on T. S. Eliot, symbolism has affected much of the best British and American poetry. One of the most evocative passages of symbolist poetry is that a beginning "garlic and sapphires in the mud" in Elliott's "burnt Norton."

Narrator

Anyone who accounts a narrative. In fiction the term is used for the ostensible author or teller of a story. In fiction presented in the first person, the "I" who tells the story is the narrator; the narrator may be in any of various relations to the events described, ranging from being their center (the protagonist) through various degrees of importance (minor characters) to being merely a witness. In fiction told from an omniscient point of view, the author acts self-consciously as narrator, recounting the story and freely commenting on it. A narrator is always present, at least by implication, in any work, even a story in which a self-effacing author relates to events with apparent objectivity. A narrator may be reliable or unreliable. If the narrator is reliable, the reader accepts without serious question the statements of fact and judgement. If the narrator is unreliable, the reader questions or seeks to qualify the statements of fact and judgement.

Hyperbole

Exaggeration. The figure maybe used to heighten effect, or it may be used for humor. Macbeth is using hyperbole here: No; this my hand will rather This multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.

Theme

Hey central idea. In nonfiction pros it may be thought of as the general topic of discussion, the subject of the discourse, the thesis. In poetry, fiction, and drama it is the abstract concept that is made concrete through representation in person, action, and image. No proper theme is simply a subject or in activity. Both theme in these this imply a subject and a predicate of some kind-not just vice in general, say, but some such proposition as "Vice seems more interesting than virtue but turns out to be destructive." "Human wishes" is a topic or subject; the "vanity of human wishes" is a theme

Imagery

Imagery in its literal sense means the collection of images in a literary work. In another sense it is synonymous with trope or figure of speech. Here the trope designates a special usage of words in which there is a change in their basic meanings. Patterns of imagery, often without the conscious knowledge of author or reader, are sometimes taken to be keys to a deeper meaning of work. A few critics tend to see the "image pattern" as indeed being the basic meaning of the work and a better key to its interpretation than the explicit statements of the author or the more obvious events of plot or action. One notable contribution of the new critics was their awareness of the importance of the relationships among images to the meaning of lyric poetry. Such patterning is important in fiction, as well, contrasting images of light and dark being among the most conspicuous.

Mood/Atmosphere

In a literary work the mood is the emotional-intellectual attitude of the author toward the subject. A group of poems about death may range from a mood of noble defiance in Donne's "Death, Be Not Proud," to pathos in Frost's "Out, Out-," to irony in Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young," to morbidly joyous acceptance in Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." If a distinction exists between mood and tone, it will be fairly the subtle one between mood as the attitude of the author toward the subject and tone as the attitude of the author toward the audiencd. In cases in which the writer uses ostensible "authors" within the work, mood and tone can be quite distinct, as in Irving's use of Diedrich Knickerbocker. Byron, in canto 3 of Don Jusn, has a "poet" (presumably Southey) write a poem beginnjng "The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!" which seems solemn, brave, and freedom-loving in mood; yet the tone of Byron (not the mood of the imaginary "poet") is mocking and satiric.

Figurative Language

Intentional departure from the normal order, construction, or meaning of words. Figurative language embodies one or more figures of speech.

Foil

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

Rising Action

Part of the Drammatic plot that has to do with complication of the action. It begins with exciting force, gains in interest and power as the opposing groups come into conflict (The hero usually being in the ascendancy), and proceeds to the climax

Repetition

Reiteration of a word, sound, phrase, or idea. Repetition is favored by orators. The use of the repetend or refrain makes repetition more obvious than is usual in prose. One of the most notable examples is Poe's "The Bells." Repetition is present in rhyme, in meter, and in stanza forms. It appears to be an inescapable element of poetry. Whitman, for example, who eschews repetition in the form of rhyme, meter, or stanza, employees it widely in his elaborate verbal and grammatical parallelism and anaphora. Repetition at the verbal level precludes the registration of significant repetition at a lower (acoustic) level, so that we do not usually claim that a repeated word is an instance of alliteration, nor does a word rhyme with itself; a repetition of a word, even in a rhyming position, does not qualify even as identical rhyme. Since Freud's essay "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920), repetition has been reorganized as an important element in narratives

Setting

The background against which actions take place. The elements making up a Settings are: (1) The geographical location, its topography, scenery, and such physical arrangements as the location of the windows in the doors in a room; (2) The occupations and daily manner of living of the characters; (3) The time or period in which the action takes place, for example, epoch in history or season of the year; and (4) The general environment of the characters, for example, religious, mental, moral, social, and emotional conditions. When setting dominates, or when the work is written largely to present the manners and customs of a locality, The result is local color writing or regionalism. The term is often applied to the stage setting of a play

Antagonist

The character directly opposed to the protagonist. A rival, opponent, or enemy of the protagonist. Ex: Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird

Protagonist

The chief character in a work. The word was originally applied to the "first" actor in early Greek drama. The actor was added to the Chorus and was its leader; hence, the continuing meaning of protagonist as the "first" or chief player. In Greek drama an agon is a contest. The protagonist and the antagonist, the second most important character, are the contestants. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet is himself the protagonist, as his fortunes are the chief interest of the play. King Claudius and Laertes are his antagonists. The sentence "The Protagonists of Christopher Marlowe's tragedies are usually the super-personality type" illustrates a normal use of the word.

Characterization

The creation of imaginary person so that they seem lifelike. There are three fundamental methods of characterization. (1) The X clicked presentation by the author of the character through direct exposition either in an introductory block or more often piecemeal throughout the work illustrated by an action (2) The presentation of the character in action with little or no explict comments by the author, and the expectation that the reader can deduce that attributes of the actor from the actions; and (3) The representation from within a character, without comment by the author, of the impact of actions and emotions on the characters inner self. Regardless of the method by which a character is presented, the author may concentrate on a dominant trait to the exclusion of other aspects of personality, or the author may attempt to present fully rounded creation. If the presentation of a single dominant trait is carried to an extreme, not believable character but a caricature result. If this method is handled with skill, it can produce striking and interesting two dimensional characters that lack depth. Mr. Micaweber in David Copperfield comes close to being such a two dimensional character through the emphasis that dickens puts on a very small group of characteristics. Sometimes such characters are given descriptive names such as Mr. Hammerdown, The auctioneer in vanity fair. On the other hand, the author may present so convincing a congeries of personality traits that complex rather than a simple character emerges; such a character is three dimensional or in E.M. Forster's term, "round". The fascination of Richardsons Clarice Harlow, for example, lies partly in her "divided mind," which involves a dialectical tension between impulses so virtuous

Foreshadowing

The presentation of material in a work in such a way that later events are prepared for. Foreshadowing can result from the establishment of a mood or atmosphere, as in the opening of Conrad's heart of darkness or the first act of Hamlet. It can result from an event that adumbrates the later action, as does the scene with the witches at the beginning of Macbeth. It can result from the appearance of physical objects or facts, as the clues do in a detective story, or from the revelation of a fundamental and decisive character trait, as in the opening chapter of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. In all cases, the purpose of foreshadowing is to prepare the reader or viewer for action to come.

Meter

The recurrence in poetry of a rhythmic pattern, or the rhythm established by the regular occurrence of similar units of sound. The four basic kinds of rhythmic patterns are: 1. Quantittative, in which the rhythm is established by patterns of long and short syllables; this is the classical meter; 2. Accentual, in which the occurence of a syllable marked by stress or accent determines the basic unit regardless of the number of unstressed or unaccented syllables surrounding the stressed syllable; old english versification employs this kind of meter, as does sprung rhythm; 3. Syllabic, in which the number of syllables in a line is fixed, although the accent varies; much Romance and Japanese versification employs this meter; and 4. Accentual-syllabic, in which both the number of syllables and the number of accents are fixed or nearly fixed; when the term meter is used in English, it often refers to accentual-syllabjc rhythm. The rhythmic unit within the line is called a foot. In English, accentual-syllabic verse, the standard feet are: iambic, trocraic, anapestic, dactyllic, spondiac, and pyrrhic, although others sometimes occur. The number of feet in a line forms another means of describing the meter. The following are the standard English meters: monometer, one foot; dimeter, two; trimeter, three; tetrameter, four; pentameter, five; hexameter, six, also called the alexandrine; heptameter, seven, also called the fourteener when the feet are iambic.

Alliteration

The repetition of initial identical consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in successive or closely associated syllables, especially stressed syllables. Ex: She sells seashells by the sea-shore

Falling Action

The second half or resolution of a dramatic plot. It follows the climax, beginning often with a tragic force, exhibits the failing fortunes of the hero (in tragedy) and the successful efforts of the counterplayers, and culminates in the catastrophe.

Conflict

The struggle that grows out of the interplay of two opposing forces. Conflict provides interest, suspense and tension. At least one of the opposing forces is customarily a person. This person, usually the protagonist, may be involved in conflicts of four different kinds: (1) A struggle against nature, as in Jack London's "to build a fire"; (2) I struggle against another person, usually the antagonist as in Stevensons treasure Island and most melodrama; (3) A struggle against society as in the novels of dickens and George Eliot; or (4) The struggle for mastery by two elements within the person as in the restoration heroic drama or in macbeth. A fifth possible kind of conflict is often cited, The struggle against fate or destiny; however, except where the gods themselves actively appear, such a struggle is realized through the action of one or more of the four basic conflicts. Seldom do we find a simple, single conflict, but rather a complex one partaking of two or even all of the preceding elements. For example, the basic conflict in hamlet may be interpreted as a struggle within hamlet himself, but it is certainly also a struggle against his uncle as antagonist and, if the Freudian interpretations of motive are accepted, even a struggle against nature and destiny. Dreiser's sister carrie records a girls struggle against society, as represented by the city, and yet it is a struggle against her animal nature and even partly with herself. Even so seemingly simple story as London's "to build a fire" In which the protagonists battles the cold unsuccessfully, is also the record of an inner conflict. Conflict implies not only the struggle of a protagonist against someone or something, but also the existence of some motivation for the conflict or some goal to be achived thereby. Conflict is the raw material out of which plot is constructed. In the terminology associated with Greek drama, the conflict, in the form of an extended debate, was called the agon. Our terms protagonist and antagonist are derived from the roles these characters play in the conflict

Point of View

The vantage point from which an author presents a story. If the author serves as a seemingly all-knowing maker, The point of you is called omniscient. At the other extreme, a character in the story- major, minor, or marginal- May tell the story as he or she experienced it. Such a character is usually called a first-person narrator; if the character does not comprehend the implications of what is torn, the character is called a native narrator. The author me tell the story in the third person and yet present it as it is seen and understood by a single character, restricting information to what the character sees, hears, feels, and thinks; search a point of view is said to be limited. The author made employees such a point of view and restrict the presentation to the interior responses of the point of you character, resulting in the interior monologue. The author may present material by a process of narrative exposition, in which actions and conversations are presented in -summary rather than in detail; this method is called panoramic. On the other hand, the author may present actions and conversations in detail, as they occur, and more or less objectively- without a thought, comment; such a method is usually called scenic. If the author never speaks in his or her own person and is not obviously intrude, the author is said to be self-effacing. In extended works, author is frequently employed several methods. Since the flourishing of Joseph Conrad and Henry James, both of whom wrote technique- centered prefaces, Point of you has often been considered the technical aspect of fiction that leads the critic most readily into the problems and the meanings of work. Since about the middle of the 19th century, a particular sort of novel, defined by its artistic management a point of you, has become a favorite: a charismatic but mysteriously hero and the meanings of work. Since about the middle of the 19th century, a particular sort of novel, defined by its artistic management a point of view, has become a favorite: a charismatic but mysteriously hero (Heathcliff, Ahab, Holmes, Kurtz, Gatsby, Leverkühn, Willy Stark, McMurphy, Seymour Glass) is presented by bureaucratic but sympathetic narrator (Lockwood, Ishmael, Watson, Marlow, Carraway, Zeitblom, Jack Burden, Bromden, Buddy Glass).

Dramatic Irony

The words or acts of a character may carry a meaning unperceived by the character but understood by the audience. Usually, the character's own interests are involved in a way he or she can not understand. The irony resides in the contrast between the meaning intended by the speaker and the different significance seen by others. The term is occasionally applied also to nondramatic narrative and is sometimes extended to include any situation (such as mistaken identity) in which some of the actors on the stage or some of the characters in a story are blind to facts known to the spectator or reader. So understood, dramatic irony is responsible for much of the interest in fiction and drama because the reader or spectator enjoys being in on the secret.

Freytag's Pyramid

This pyramid has been widely accepted as a heuristic means of getting at the structure of many kinds of fiction in addition to drama. Appropriate entries for the terms on the pyramid, plot, and dramatic structure

Tone

Tone has been used, following I. A. Richard's example, for the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literacy work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, sombre, playful, serious, ironic, condescending, or many another possible attitude. Tone or tone color sometimes designates a musical quality in language that Sidney Lanier discussed in The Science of English Verse, which asserts that the sound of words have quality is equivalent to timbre in music. "When the ear exactly coordinate a series of sounds with primary reference to their tone-color, The result is a conception of (in music, flute-tone as distinct from violin-tone, and the like; in verse, rhyme as opposed to rhyme, vowel varied with vowel, phonetic syzygy, and the like), in general... tone-color."

Blank Verse

Unrhymed but otherwise regular verse, usually iambic pentameter. This form, generally accepted as that best adapted to dramatic verse in English, is commonly used for long poems whether dramatic, philosophic, or narrative. The freedom gained through the lack of rhyme is offset by the demands for variety, which may be obtained by the skillful poet through a number of means: the shifting of the caesura, or pause, from place to place within the line; the shifting of the stress among syllables; the use of the run-on-line, which permits thought-grouping in small or large blocks (verse paragraphs); the variation in tonal qualities by changing the level of diction from passage to passage; and, finally, the adaption of the form to reflect differences in the speech of characters and in emotion. Blank verse seems to have found general favor in England first as a medium for dramatic expression, but with Milton it was turned to epic use and since then has been employed in the writing of idylls and lyrics. The distinction of the first use of blank verse in English is customarily given to Surrey, who used it in his translation of parts of the Aenid. The earliest dramatic use of blank verse in English was in Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc , 1561; the earliest use in didactic poetry was in Gascoigne's Steel Glass, 1576; but it was only with Marlowe (prior to 1593) that the form first reached the hands of a master capable of using its range of possibilities and passing it on for Shakespeare and Milton to develop. After suffering something of an eclipse during the eighteenth century, blank verse enjoyed a new robustness in the work of Woodsworth, Tennyson, and Browning during the nineteenth century. In the modern age memorable blank verse has been written by Yeats, Robinson, Pound, Eliot, Frost, and with particular distinction and dignity, Stephens.

Onomatopoeia

Words that by their sound suggest their meaning: "hiss," "buzz," "whirr," "sizzle." However, onomatopoeia becomes a much subtler device when, in an effort to suit sound to sense, the poet creates verses that themselves carry their meaning in their sounds. A notable example appears in The Princess by Tennyson: The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumberable bees. The rhythm, the succession of sounds, and the effect of rhymes all contribute to the effect by which a poem as a pattern of sounds echoes the sense that its words denote. Such devices fall into several subdivisions. The "Gr-r-t" in Browning's "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" comes close to being a direct transcription of noise and is not actually a word (it is not in any dictionary). Some onomatopoeic forms represent a sound, like "coo," while others, like "cuckoo," refer to the thing that makes the sound. Some forms are not recognizably mimetic or echoic and must be classified as merely formulaic or coventional onomatopoeia. No dog ever uttered a sound resembling "bow-wow," and yet we use that word to mean both the sound and the creature. By a sort of sentimental or associative bonding, most people feel that words somehow "sound like" what they mean or connote. But "soft," say, with its three unvoiced consonants, is hardly a soft sound, and "hard," with no unvoiced consonants, is hardly hard. Mallarmé complained that the French for "day" (jour) sounds dark, whereas "night" (nuil) sounds bright. "Big" is a relatively small syllable, "small" relatively big. One needs, therefore, to exercise caution in the search for relations between sound and sense. The great Swiss linguist Saussure argued convincingly that there is no such relation, even in exclamations or onomatopoeia, except according to conventions that are completely arbitrary and, as he said, "unmotivated." It remains possible for onomatopoeia to retain or suggest the form of a sound without really echoing its substance. A dog, for instance, may not say "bow-wow," but whatever it does say rhymes, as do "bow" and "wow." The cuckoo may not say "cuckoo," but whatever it does say is repetitive and reduplicative, as is "cuckoo." Although now discredited, the old sentimental associative case was well argued by Pope in An Essay on Criticism: 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows: But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar: When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow. Tennyson's "murmuring of innumerable bees" has been prized as an example of apt onomatopoeia, but John Crowe Ransom responded that sound and sense are mutually irrelevant, that Tennyson's line means what it means because of the discursive significance of the words and that one could completely change the meaning of the line without changing the meaning of the sound very much: "murdering of innumerable bees." The sentiment favoring answerable or significant onomatopoeia remains robust, however, and it has been observed by recent existentialist-phenomological critics that poetry percusively directs our attention to sound as such, with all its powers and mysteries, and the heart of many sophisticated poems seem situated in a region of onomatopoeia made significant-as, say, Eliot's The Waste Lands ends with a fable of interpreting a single onomatopoeic Sanskrit syllable: "DA"