The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet, Exams of Literature

Download The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet and more Exams Literature in PDF only on Docsity! The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 1 THE ENGLISH MAJOR’S LITERARY TERMINOLOGY CHEAT SHEET A Note from the Author/Collator/Editor/Fellow Cheater: Here’s a collection of literary terms that will, either immediately or in the future, be important for you to understand. There are terms and concepts here that you’ll need to incorporate into an analysis of a piece of fiction, the scansion of a poem, or the interpretation a drama. You don’t have to memorize these, but you should be familiar with them. If one of your professors uses a word you don’t understand, you should write it down and check here for its meaning. If it’s not included here, check the sources I list at the end. A posteriori: In rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, a belief or proposition is said to be a posteriori if it can only be determined through observation. In general, these are inductive arguments in which the thinker puts forth a belief or proposition as a universal rule she or he puts forth in response to an example seen in nature; the specific observed example comes first, and the logical argument follows on a universal level later. A priori: In rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, an argument is said to be a priori if its truth can be known or inferred independently of any direct perception. Logic, geometry, and mathematics are usually held as such. In general, these a priori arguments rely upon deductive reasoning—fashioning a general statement that should (in terms of logic) be true, and then applying the argument to a specific instance; the universal statement comes first, and then specific applications in the real world are expected to match it. Accent: The emphasis or stress placed on a syllable in poetry. Traditional poetry commonly uses patterns of accented and unaccented syllables (known as feet) that create distinct rhythms. Much modern poetry uses less formal arrangements that create a sense of freedom and spontaneity. The following line from Hamlet: “To be or not to be: that is the question” has five accents, on the words “be,” “not,” “be,” and “that,” and the first syllable of “question.” Act: The major structuring principle of drama; it is traditionally subdivided into scenes. Elizabethan theater adopted this formal structure from classical antiquity, dividing the plot into five acts; in the 19c, the number of acts was reduced to four, in the 20c generally to three. Sometimes acts are abandoned altogether in favor of a loose sequence of scenes. Actor: An agent that stands at the intersection of text, transformation, and performance in drama and thereby distinguishes the performing arts from literary texts in the narrow sense of the term. The actor is the mediator of the combined concerns of the author and the director in the performance, the last phase of drama. Traditional actor training distinguishes between the internal method (with a focus on individual qualities of the actor) and the external method (stressing technique). Affective fallacy: The “wrong belief in subjective effects.” It is an important term of new criticism, attacking any kind of interpretation that considers the reader’s emotional reactions to a text as relevant to the scholarly analysis of text. See also intentional fallacy. Alienation: A term from Marxism, suggesting that we live in an unnatural state, in a state of estrangement from our true human nature, which is caused by the economic conditions of production in a capitalist society. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 2 Alienation effect: According to the German playwright and theoretician Bertolt Brecht, the alienation effect should guarantee that dramatic performances, actors—and above all the audience—maintain a critical distance from the play in order to be aware of the artificial and illusory nature of a theatrical performance. See also defamiliarization. Allegory: A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. The most famous example in English is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, where the hero named Christian flees the City of Destruction and travels through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, and finally arrives at the Celestial City. The entire narrative is a representation of the human soul’s pilgrimage through temptation and doubt to reach salvation in heaven. Medieval works were frequently allegorical, such as the plays Mankind and Everyman. Other important allegorical works include mythological allegories like Apuleius’ tale of Cupid and Psyche in The Golden Ass and Prudentius’ Psychomachiae. More recent non- mythological allegories include Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Butler’s Erewhon, and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Kay Boyle’s story “Astronomer’s Wife” and Christina Rossetti’s poem “Up- Hill” both contain allegorical elements. An allegory is an act of interpretation, a way of understanding, rather than a genre in and of itself. Poems, novels, or plays can all be allegorical, in whole or in part. These allegories can be as short as a single sentence or as long as a ten-volume book. The label “allegory” comes from an interaction between symbols that creates a coherent meaning beyond that of the literal level of interpretation. Alliteration: A type of rhyme in which the first consonant is repeated within the same line. See also assonance. The following description of the Green Knight from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight gives an example of alliteration: And in guise all of green, the gear and the man: A coat cut close, that clung to his sides An a mantle to match, made with a lining Of furs cut and fitted—the fabric was noble. . . . Allusion: A reference to a familiar literary or historical person or event, used to make an idea more easily understood. For example, describing someone as a “Romeo” makes an allusion to Shakespeare’s famous young lover in Romeo and Juliet. Ambiguity: In common conversation, it is a vague or equivocal expression when precision would be more useful. Intentionally vague expressions in literature—any wording, action, or symbol that can be read in divergent ways—leave something in the text undetermined in order to create multiple possible meanings. William Empson called ambiguity “any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language.” Anachronism: Placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period. Shakespeare has one in Julius Caesar: Brutus: Peace! Count the clock. Cassius: The clock has stricken three (Act II, scene i, lines 193-94). Elizabethan theater often intentionally used anachronism in its costuming, a tradition that survives today when Shakespeare’s plays are performed in biker garb or in Victorian frippery. Indeed, from surviving illustrations, the acting companies in Elizabethan England appeared to deliberately create anachronisms in their costumes. Some actors would dress in current Elizabethan garb, others in garb that The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 5 name as the author, it proves impossible to prove that voice is identical with the author’s personal beliefs. For example, the voice of “Geoffrey” in The Canterbury Tales appears to be ignorant of details that the historical author Geoffrey Chaucer knew intimately, so his fictional character cannot be equated safely with the historical author Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote the work. Likewise, the voice speaking in the poem, “Daddy,” by Sylvia Plath, refers to multiple suicide attempts and a father’s early death, and these two details lure readers into equating that voice with the suicide attempts and abusive father in the poet Sylvia Plath’s own life—even though the age of the father’s death and the number of suicide attempts do not match Plath’s age when she attempted suicide or her total number of suicide attempts. Trying to make a direct connection here results in the biographical fallacy. Blank Verse: Loosely, any unrhymed poetry, but more generally, unrhymed iambic pentameter verse (composed of lines of five two-syllable feet with the first syllable unaccented, the second accented). Blank verse has been used by poets since the Renaissance for its flexibility and its graceful, dignified tone. Milton’s Paradise Lost is in blank verse, as are most of Shakespeare’s plays. Bowdlerization: The attempt to change or remove passages or sections in a larger work while still letting the work be published—a sort of mini-censorship. A text altered in this way is “bowdlerized.” This term comes from the name of Reverend Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who edited The Family Shakespeare (1815-18). In his edition, Bowdler removed whatever he considered “unfit to be read by a gentleman in the company of ladies.” Cadence: The melodic pattern just before the end of a sentence or phrase—e.g., an interrogation or an exhortation. More generally, the natural rhythm of language depending on the position of stressed and unstressed syllables. Cadence is a major component of individual writers’ styles. A cadence group is a coherent group of words spoken as a single rhythmical unit, such as a prepositional phrase, “of parting day” or a noun phrase, “our inalienable rights.” Caesura: A pause in a line of poetry, usually occurring near the middle. It typically corresponds to a break in the natural rhythm or sense of the line but is sometimes shifted to create special meanings or rhythmic effects. The opening line of Poe’s “The Raven” contains a caesura following “dreary”: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary....” Canon: A term originally used for holy texts. It now refers to the entirety of those literary texts which are considered to be the most important in literary history. 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. Carpe Diem: A Latin term meaning “seize the day.” This is a traditional theme of poetry, especially lyrics. A carpe diem poem advises the reader or the person it addresses to live for today and enjoy the pleasures of the moment. Two celebrated carpe diem poems are Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.” Catharsis: This term from Aristotle’s theory of drama means “cleansing” in Greek. It is the effect of purification achieved (by audiences watching a play or readers reading a literary work) through the contemplation of how others experience pain and suffering. Censorship: The attempt to either stop a particular work from being printed, an attempt to stop a work from being taught in schools, or an attempt to make it illegal or buy or sell copies of that work. In medieval and early Renaissance times, for instance, the Inquisition had a list known as the “Index of The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 6 Banned Works,” and any titles on this list were supposed to be destroyed or confiscated by the church. In Hitler’s Germany, as an example, any work by a Jewish author or any work that criticized the Nazi party was to be publicly burned. Character: A figure presented in a literary text, including main character or protagonist and minor character. Recurring character types in drama are called stock characters. Characterization: The figures in a literary text can either be characterized as types or individuals. Types that show only one dominant feature are called flat characters. If a figure is more complex, the term round character is applied. In both cases, a figure has to be presented either through showing (dramatic method) or telling (narration). See also modes of presentation. Chiasmus: An arrangement of letters, words, and phrases in the form of a cross (from the Greek letter “X”); it is most commonly used in two adjacent lines of a poem. For example, take “Never let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You.” Fool Kiss You Kiss Fool You Chorus: In classical Greek theater the chorus, a group of reciters or chanters, was positioned in the orchestra between the audience and the actors. Early Greek drama did not depend on dialogue between the figures of a play as much as on dialogue between figures and the chorus. The chorus generally recited lyrical poems, either commenting on the action of the play or addressing the actors in a didactic manner. Climax: (also crisis or turning point) The crucial element of traditional plot when the action undergoes decisive changes. In linear plots the climax is preceded by exposition and complication and followed by the resolution. Close reading: A central term in new criticism. It is often used as a synonym for intrinsic or text- immanent interpretation. See also affective fallacy and intentional fallacy. Closet drama: A stylized sub-genre of drama which is not intended to be performed but to be read in private. Collective unconscious: In 20c Jungian psychology, this term refers to a shared group of archetypes (atavistic and universal images, cultural symbols, and recurring situations dealing with the fundamental facts of human life) passed along from each generation to the next in folklore and stories or generated anew by the way we must face similar problems to those our ancestors faced. Within a culture, the collective unconscious forms a treasury of powerful shared images and symbols found in our dreams, art stories, myths, and religious icons. Colonialism: The term refers broadly and generally to the habit of powerful civilizations to “colonize” less powerful ones. On the obvious level, this process can take the form of a literal geographic occupation, outright enslavement, religious conversion at gun-point, or forced assimilation of native peoples. On a more subtle level, this process can take the form of bureaucratic policy that incidentally or indirectly leads to the extinction of a minority’s language or culture, economic exploitation of cheap labor, and globalistic erasure of cultural differences. The term is often applied in academic discussions of literature from the colonial period. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 7 Comedy: A sub-genre of drama with witty, humorous themes intended to entertain the audience. It is often regarded as the stylized continuation of primitive regeneration cults, such as the symbolic expulsion of winter by spring. This fertility symbolism culminates in the form of weddings as standard happy endings of traditional comedies. Comedy of manners or Restoration comedy: A popular form of English drama in the second half of the 17c, mainly portraying citizens from the upper ranks of society in witty dialogues. Coming-of-age story: 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. In German, a tale in the genre is called a Bildungsroman or an Erziehungsroman. Examples include Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and Thomas Mann’s Königliche Hoheit. Complication or conflict: An element of traditional plot. During the complication, the initial exposition is changed in order to develop into a climax; in linear plots, it is preceded by the exposition and followed by the climax and denouement. Conceit: An elaborate or unusual comparison—especially one using unlikely metaphors, simile, hyperbole, and contradiction. Before the beginning of the 17c, the term “conceit” was a synonym for “thought” and roughly equivalent to “idea” or “concept.” It gradually came to denote a fanciful idea or a particularly clever remark. In literary terms, the word denotes a fairly elaborate figure of speech, a clever and fanciful metaphor, usually expressed through elaborate and extended comparison, which presents a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things—for example, elaborately comparing a beautiful woman to an object like a garden or the sun. The conceit was a popular device throughout the Elizabethan Age and Baroque Age and was the principal technique of the 17c English metaphysical poets. This usage of the word “conceit” is unrelated to the best-known definition of “conceit” as an arrogant attitude or behavior. The conceit figures prominently in the works of John Donne, Emily Dickinson, and T.S. Eliot. One of the most famous conceits is Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” a poem in which Donne compares two souls in love to the points on a geometer’s compass. In Richard II, Shakespeare compares two kings competing for power to two buckets in a well, for instance. A conceit is usually classified as a subtype of metaphor. Contrast with epic simile. Concrete poetry: A movement in poetry focusing especially on the outward visual form of a poem, including the shape and layout of letters, lines, and stanzas. Confessional Poetry: A form of poetry in which the poet reveals very personal, intimate, sometimes shocking information about himself or herself. Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and John Berryman wrote poetry in the confessional vein. Conflict: The opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on. Conflict may also be completely internal, such as the protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies (drug addiction, self-destructive behavior, and so on); William Faulkner The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 10 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 verisimilitude) 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. See also différance. Deduction: The process of logic in which a thinker takes a rule for a large, general category and assumes that specific individual examples fitting within that general category obey the same rule. For instance, a general rule might be that “Objects made of iron rust.” When the logician then encounters a shovel made of iron, he can assume deductively that the shovel made of iron will also rust just as other iron objects do. This process is the opposite of induction. Induction fashions a large, general rule from a specific example. Deduction determines the truth about specific examples using a large general rule. Deductive thinking is also called syllogistic thinking. Defamiliarization: A stylistic device used to make the reader aware of literary conventions; related to the Brechtian alienation effect. See also metafiction and Russian formalism. Denotation: The definition of a word, apart from the impressions or feelings it creates in the reader. The word “apartheid” denotes a political and economic policy of segregation by race, but its connotations— oppression, slavery, inequality—are numerous. Denouement: French term for “resolution,” the last element of a linear plot in which the complication of the action is resolved after the climax. Detective novel: A sub-genre of the novel that centers on uncovering a crime. Deus ex machina: (from the Greek theos apo mechanes) An unrealistic or unexpected intervention to rescue the protagonists or resolve the story’s conflict. The term means “The god out of the machine,” and it refers to stage machinery. A classical Greek actor, portraying one of the Greek gods in a play, might be lowered out of the sky onto the stage and then use his divine powers to solve all the mortals’ problems. The term is a negative one, and it often implies a lack of skill on the part of the writer. In a modern example of deus ex machina, a writer might reach a climactic moment in which a band of pioneers were attacked by bandits. A cavalry brigade’s unexpected arrival to drive away the marauding bandits at the conclusion, with no previous hint of the cavalry’s existence, would be a deus ex machina conclusion. Such endings mean that heroes are unable to solve their own problems in a pleasing manner, and they must be “rescued” by the writer himself through improbable means. In some genres, the deus ex machina ending is actually a positive and expected trait. In various vitae, or Saint’s Lives, divine intervention is one of the normal climactic moments of the narrative to bring about the rescue of a saint or to cause a mass conversion among conventional pagan characters. 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 The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 11 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. Différence: Jacque Derrida’s French term (untranslatable in English), which puns on the verb différer meaning “to differ” and “to defer,” which he uses as an antonym for logocentrism. Basically, Derrida’s starting spot is the linguist Saussure’s theory about the arbitrary nature of language (the combination of phonetic sounds we use as a “sign” has no logical connection with the object it refers to). Derrida then pushes this idea to its logical extreme, “that to differ or differentiate is also to defer, postpone or withhold [meaning].” Thus absolute meaning continuously and endlessly remains one step removed from the system of signs/words/symbols we use to discuss meaning. See also deconstruction. Discourse: A term referring to oral or written expression within a certain thematic framework, as for example historical, economic, political, or feminist discourse. See also genre and text type. Dissonance: A combination of harsh or jarring sounds, especially in poetry. Although such combinations may be accidental, poets sometimes intentionally make them to achieve particular effects. Dissonance is also sometimes used to refer to close but not identical rhymes. When this is the case, the word functions as a synonym for consonance. Browning, Hopkins, and many other poets have made deliberate use of dissonance. Double entendre: A remark that is intended by the speaker to be interpreted in two different ways by different hearers. For example, some of Captain Absolute’s comments in Sheridan’s The Rivals are understood literally by Mrs Malaprop and ironically by the audience. Drama: One of the three classical literary genres, involving the levels of text, transformation, and performance. Besides the written word, drama also relies on aspects of the performing arts, including a number of non-verbal means of expression mainly of a visual kind, such as stage design, scenery, facial expressions, gestures, make-up, props, and lighting. Dramatic Irony: Occurs when the audience of a play or the reader of a work of literature knows something that a character in the work itself does not know. The irony is in the contrast between the intended meaning of the statements or actions of a character and the additional information understood by the audience. A celebrated example of dramatic irony is in Act V of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where two young lovers meet their end as a result of a tragic misunderstanding. Here, the audience has full knowledge that Juliet’s apparent “death” is merely temporary; she will regain her senses when the mysterious “sleeping potion” she has taken wears off. But Romeo, mistaking Juliet’s drug-induced trance for true death, kills himself in grief. Upon awakening, Juliet discovers Romeo’s corpse and, in despair, slays herself. Dramatic Poetry: Any lyric work that employs elements of drama such as dialogue, conflict, or characterization, but excluding works that are intended for stage presentation. A monologue is a form of dramatic poetry. Dystopia: (from the Greek, dys topos, “bad place”) The opposite of a utopia; an imaginary society in fictional writing that represents, as M. H. Abrams puts it, “a very unpleasant imaginary world in which ominous tendencies of our present social, political, and technological order are projected in some disastrous future culmination.” For instance, while a utopia presents readers with a place where all the The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 12 citizens are happy and ruled by a virtuous, efficient, rational government, a dystopia presents readers with a world where all citizens are universally unhappy, manipulated, and repressed by a sinister, sadistic totalitarian state. This government exists at best to further its own power and at worst seeks actively to destroy its own citizens’ creativity, health, and happiness. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed are all fictional dystopias. Eclogue: In classical literature, a poem featuring rural themes and structured as a dialogue among shepherds. Eclogues often took specific poetic forms, such as elegies or love poems. Some were written as the soliloquy of a shepherd. In later centuries, “eclogue” came to refer to any poem that was in the pastoral tradition or that had a dialogue or monologue structure. A classical example of an eclogue is Virgil’s Eclogues, also known as Bucolics. Giovanni Boccaccio, Edmund Spenser, Andrew Marvell, Jonathan Swift, and Louis MacNeice also wrote eclogues. Eighteenth century: The period also known as the neoclassical, golden or Augustan age. It brought major innovations and changes in English literature due to the introduction of newspapers and literary magazines as well as the evolution of the novel and the essay as new forms. Elegy: A classical form of lyric poetry. A lyric poem that laments the death of a person or the eventual death of all people. In a conventional elegy, set in a classical world, the poet and subject are spoken of as shepherds. In modern criticism, the word elegy is often used to refer to a poem that is melancholy or mournfully contemplative. Peter Sacks, in his The English Elegy, calls it a “poem of mortal loss and consolation.” Milton’s “Lycidas” and Shelley’s “Adonais” are elegies. Elizabethan age: The period in English history, culture, and literature during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). The term is sometimes used synonymously with Renaissance. Elizabethan theater: A period of renewal for drama in the English Renaissance under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603); William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are among its most important representatives. End rhyme: A rhyme scheme based on identical syllables at the end of certain lines of a poem. English or Shakespearean sonnet: The traditional sonnet form in English literature, which consists of three quatrains and one couplet and uses iambic pentameter as its meter; its fourteen lines follow the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg. Enjambment: The running over of the sense and structure of a line of verse or a couplet into the following verse or couplet. Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is structured as a series of enjambments, as in lines 11-12: “My vegetable love should grow / Vaster than empires and more slow.” Epic: A long and complex form of narrative poetry. It differs drastically from lyric poetry in length, narrative technique, portrayal of characters, and plot. At the center of a complex plot stands a national hero who has to prove himself in numerous adventures and endure trials of cosmic dimensions. In the modern age, the epic has been overshadowed by the novel. See also romance. Epics are typically written in a classical style of grand simplicity with elaborate metaphors and allusions that enhance the symbolic importance of a hero’s adventures. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Milton’s Paradise Lost are all epics. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 15 Free Verse: (also Vers Libre) Poetry that lacks regular metrical and rhyme patterns but that tries to capture the cadences of everyday speech. The form allows a poet to exploit a variety of rhythmical effects within a single poem. Free-verse techniques were widely used in the 20c by such writers as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, and William Carlos Williams. Freytag’s Pyramid: Gustav Freytag, a 19c German novelist, developed a diagram to analyze common patterns in linear plots of stories and novels: Exposition: Setting the scene. The writer introduces the characters and setting, providing description and background. Inciting Incident: (also The Complication) Something happens to begin the action. A single event usually signals the beginning of the main conflict. Rising Action: A set of conflicts and crises that develop the plot. Climax: The moment of greatest tension, often the most exciting event. It is the event that the rising action builds up to and that the falling action follows. Falling Action: Events happen as a result of the climax and the plot will quickly resolve. Resolution: The main problem/conflict is resolved/completed/addressed. Dénouement: The ending. At this point, any remaining secrets, questions or mysteries which remain after the resolution are solved by the characters or explained by the author. This can be the most difficult part of the plot to identify, as it is often very closely tied to the resolution. Gender theory: A recent development of feminist literary theory that no longer focuses exclusively on women, but includes issues concerning both genders in the interpretation of literary texts. Genre: The term to classify the traditional literary forms of epic (i.e., fiction), drama, and poetry. These categories or genres are still commonly used, although the epic has been replaced by the novel and short story. In the English-speaking world, genre denotes fiction, drama, and poetry. See also discourse and text type. Georgic: A poem about farming and the farmer’s way of life, named from Virgil’s Georgics. Several English poets in the 18c produced georgics in imitation of Virgil, including John Dyer (The Fleece) and James Grainger (The Sugar-Cane). Gothic novel: A sub-genre of the novel with an eerie, supernatural setting. It was particularly popular in the 19c. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 16 Greek theater: An open-air amphitheater consisting of an orchestra and a skene (stage building). The audience was seated in circles around the orchestra. The actors moved between the skene and the orchestra, and the chorus was positioned in the orchestra between the audience and the actors. In the comedies and tragedies of classical Greek drama, all actors wore masks. Haiku: (also Hokku) The shortest form of Japanese poetry, constructed in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. The message of a haiku poem usually centers on some aspect of spirituality and provokes an emotional response in the reader. Early masters of haiku include Basho, Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Masaoka Shiki. English writers of haiku include the Imagists, notably Ezra Pound, H. D., Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, and William Carlos Williams. Hermeneutics: A traditional term for the scholarly interpretation of a text. Heroic Couplet: A rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter (a verse with five iambic feet). The following lines by Alexander Pope are an example: Truth guards the Poet, sanctifies the line And makes Immortal, Verse as mean as mine. Historical novel: A sub-genre of the novel with characters and plot in a realistic-historical context. New journalism, which recounts real events in the form of a novel, is a related movement in the second half of the 20c. History play: A sub-genre of drama. In the English tradition, it dates back to the Renaissance and dramatizes historical events or personalities. Hyperbole: A rhetorical figure which consists in an exaggerated statement that is not meant to be taken literally, as when Hamlet says: I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. Iambus: A poetic foot in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable, as for example in The curfew tolls the knell of parting day Ideology: A complex of ideas which seems to form a conceptual unit and which informs the way we think about things in a stereotypical manner. There are many ideologies in competition on certain subjects: for example, in relation to women, it is ideological knowledge which suggests that women stay at home and look after their children, when the majority of women in Britain in fact go out to work. At any particular point in time certain ideologies are dominant within a particular culture, and others are muted. Imagery: (from the Latin “imago,” or “picture”) Refers mainly to the use of concrete language to lend a visual quality to abstract themes in a poem. See also imagism. The array of images in a literary work. Also, figurative language. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” offers a powerful image of encroaching anarchy: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart.... Imagism: A literary movement in the early 20c closely associated with Ezra Pound. It attempts to reduce and condense poetry to essential “images.” Concrete language without decorative elements is employed to achieve a strong visual effect or imagery. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 17 Individualization: A characterization that emphasizes a multiplicity of character traits in a literary figure, rather than one dominant feature. See also typification. Intentional fallacy: The “wrong belief in the author’s intention.” It is an important term of new criticism, aimed against interpretations which try to reconstruct the author’s original intentions when writing a text and thereby neglect intrinsic aspects of the text. See also affective fallacy. Interior monologue: A narrative technique in which a figure is exclusively characterized by his or her thoughts without any other comments; it is influenced by psychoanalysis and related to the stream-of- consciousness technique. Internal rhyme: A type of rhyme which is not based on end rhyme but rather on alliteration or assonance; most Old English and some Middle English poetry uses internal rhyme. An example is in the opening line of Poe’s “The Raven”: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.” Here, “dreary” and “weary” make an internal rhyme. Interpretation: A modern term for hermeneutics and exegesis, i.e., the search for the meaning of a text; sometimes seen in opposition to evaluative literary criticism. Intertextuality: A text is never produced or interpreted in a vacuum, but always through our conscious or unconscious awareness of other, related texts. An intertextual analysis focuses upon these links between texts and studies the ways in which other texts influence the conditions of production and reception of a particular text. Introductory paragraph: The first paragraph of a scholarly paper, which informs the reader about the focus, methodology, and structure of the entire paper. See also thesis statement. Irony: In literary criticism, the effect of language in which the intended meaning is the opposite of what is stated. The title of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is ironic because what Swift proposes in this essay is cannibalism—hardly “modest.” There is a contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs. In dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters. Flannery O’Connor’s short stories employ all these forms of irony, as does Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado.” Journal: A regularly-issued scholarly publication which contains essays and sometimes notes, book reviews, or review essays. See also secondary source. Literary criticism: The systematic, scholarly approach to literary texts, often used synonymously with interpretation. See also literary theory. Literary history: A context-oriented approach which mainly deals with the chronological and periodical classification of literary texts. This movement is informed by historical methodology; it dates and categorizes literary works and examines the influence of earlier on later works. Literary theory: (also “critical theory”) The philosophical and methodological basis of literary criticism, including varying approaches to texts; the respective schools can be grouped according to text-, author-, reader-, and context-oriented approaches. Literature: A vague umbrella term for written expression; it conventionally refers to primary and secondary sources. See also text. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 20 history of motifs, as well as author-oriented biographical or psychoanalytic literary criticism and reception history in order to free literary criticism from extrinsic elements—i.e., those outside the text—and bring the focus back to the literary text as such. See also structuralism, affective fallacy, intentional fallacy, and close reading. New historicism: recent context-oriented approach which builds on post-structuralism and deconstruction but also includes historical dimensions in the discussion of literary texts, presupposing a structural similarity between literary and other discourses within a given historical period. Note: short secondary source in a scholarly journal. It treats a very specific aspect of a topic in only a few paragraphs. Novel: important genre of prose fiction which developed in England in the 18c; the epic and the romance are indirect precursors. Structurally, the novel differs from the epic through more complex character presentation and point of view techniques, its emphasis on realism, and a more subtle structuring of the plot. Novella or novelette: sub-genre of prose fiction. Due to its shortness and idiosyncratic narrative elements, it assumes a position between the short story and the novel. Objective Correlative: An outward set of objects, a situation, or a chain of events corresponding to an inward experience and evoking this experience in the reader. The term frequently appears in modern criticism in discussions of authors’ intended effects on the emotional responses of readers. This term was originally used by T. S. Eliot in his 1919 essay “Hamlet.” Occasional Verse: Poetry written on the occasion of a significant historical or personal event. Vers de societe is sometimes called occasional verse although it is of a less serious nature. Famous examples of occasional verse include Andrew Marvell’s “Horatian ode upon Cromwell’s Return from England,” Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”—written upon the death of Abraham Lincoln—and Edmund Spenser’s commemoration of his wedding, “Epithalamion.” Octave: A poem or stanza composed of eight lines. The term “octave” most often represents the first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet. An example of an octave is taken from a translation of a Petrarchan sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt: The pillar perisht is whereto I leant, The strongest stay of mine unquiet mind; The like of it no man again can find, From East to West Still seeking though he went. To mind unhap! for hap away hath rent Of all my joy the very bark and rind; And I, alas, by chance am thus assigned Daily to mourn till death do it relent. Ode: traditional form of lyric poetry on a serious, mostly classical theme and consisting of several stanzas. Name given to an extended lyric poem characterized by exalted emotion and dignified style. An ode usually concerns a single, serious theme. Most odes, but not all, are addressed to an object or individual. Odes are distinguished from other lyric poetic forms by their complex rhythmic and stanzaic patterns. An example of this form is John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.” Old English or Anglo-Saxon period: earliest period of English literature and language between the invasion of Britain by Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) in the fifth century CE and the conquest The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 21 of England by William the Conqueror in 1066; the most important genres are the epic and poetry (including charms and riddles). Omniscient point of view: point of view which describes the action from an omniscient, God-like perspective by referring to the protagonist in the third person. It is therefore often imprecisely termed third-person narration. Onomatopoeia: linguistic term for a word which resembles the sound produced by the object it denotes (e.g., “cuckoo”); in poetry, it attempts to emphasize the meaning of a word through its acoustic dimension. A celebrated example of onomatopoeia is the repetition of the word “bells” in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells.” Oral Transmission: A process by which songs, ballads, folklore, and other material are transmitted by word of mouth. The tradition of oral transmission predates the written record systems of literate society. Oral transmission preserves material sometimes over generations, although often with variations. Memory plays a large part in the recitation and preservation of orally transmitted material. Breton lays, French fabliaux, national epics (including the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the Spanish El Cid, and the Finnish Kalevala), Native American myths and legends, and African folktales told by plantation slaves are examples of orally transmitted literature. Ottava Rima: An eight-line stanza of poetry composed in iambic pentameter (a five-foot line in which each foot consists of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable), following the abababcc rhyme scheme. This form has been prominently used by such important English writers as Lord Byron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and W.B. Yeats. Oxymoron: A phrase combining two contradictory terms. Oxymorons may be intentional or unintentional. The following speech from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet uses several oxymorons: Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Paradox: A statement that appears illogical or contradictory at first, but may actually point to an underlying truth. “Less is more” is an example of a paradox. Literary examples include Francis Bacon’s statement, “The most corrected copies are commonly the least correct,” and “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” from George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Paraphrase: summary in one’s own words of a passage from a secondary or primary source. See also quotation. Parenthetical documentation: part of the critical apparatus of a scholarly paper. It allows the reader to retrace the original sources of paraphrases and quotations by giving author (or title of the source) and page number(s) in parentheses; alternative documentation system to footnotes. Pastoral: A term derived from the Latin word “pastor,” meaning shepherd. A pastoral is a literary composition on a rural theme. The conventions of the pastoral were originated by the third-century Greek poet Theocritus, who wrote about the experiences, love affairs, and pastimes of Sicilian shepherds. In a pastoral, characters and language of a courtly nature are often placed in a simple setting. The term “pastoral” is also used to classify dramas, elegies, and lyrics that exhibit the use of country settings and The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 22 shepherd characters. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais” and John Milton’s “Lycidas” are two famous examples of pastorals. Pathos: (from Greek suffering) the power of a work of literature to arouse feelings of sadness and pity in the reader or audience. Performance: last phase in the transformation of a dramatic text into a staged play. See also drama and actor. Performing arts: umbrella term for artistic expressions that center on the performance of an actor in a stage-like setting. See also drama and film. Persona: A Latin term meaning “mask.” Personae are the characters in a fictional work of literature. The persona generally functions as a mask through which the author tells a story in a voice other than his or her own. A persona is usually either a character in a story who acts as a narrator or an “implied author,” a voice created by the author to act as the narrator for himself or herself. Personae include the narrator of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Personification: Also known as Prosopopoeia. A figure of speech that gives human qualities to abstract ideas, animals, and inanimate objects. William Shakespeare used personification in Romeo and Juliet in the following lines, where the moon is portrayed as being envious, sick, and pale with grief—all markedly human qualities: Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief. Philology: summarizes an approach in traditional literary criticism. It deals especially with “material” aspects of texts, such as the editing of manuscripts, and the preservation or reconstruction of texts. Picaresque novel: sub-genre of the novel. It recounts the episodic adventures of a vagrant rogue (Spanish: “picaro”) who usually gets into trouble by breaking social norms; it attempts to expose social injustice in a satirical way. Plot: logical combination of different elements of the action in a literary text. In an ideal linear plot, the initial situation or exposition is followed by a complication or conflict which creates suspense and then leads to a climax, crisis, or turning point. The climax is then followed by the resolution or denouement, which usually marks the end of a text. Poetic Justice: An outcome in a literary work, not necessarily a poem, in which the good are rewarded and the evil are punished, especially in ways that particularly fit their virtues or crimes. For example, a murderer may himself be murdered, or a thief will find himself penniless. Poetic License: Distortions of fact and literary convention made by a writer — not always a poet — for the sake of the effect gained. Poetic license is closely related to the concept of “artistic freedom.” An author exercises poetic license by saying that a pile of money “reaches as high as a mountain” when the pile is actually only a foot or two high. Poetics: This term has two closely related meanings. It denotes (1) an aesthetic theory in literary criticism about the essence of poetry, or (2) rules prescribing the proper methods, content, style, or diction of poetry. The term “poetics” may also refer to theories about literature in general, not just poetry. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 25 parallel positions in two or more lines. Rhymes are classified into different types according to where they fall in a line or stanza or according to the degree of similarity they exhibit in their spellings and sounds. Some major types of rhyme are “masculine” rhyme, “feminine” rhyme, and “triple” rhyme. In a masculine rhyme, the rhyming sound falls in a single accented syllable, as with “heat” and “eat.” Feminine rhyme is a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as with “merry” and “tarry.” Triple rhyme matches the sound of the accented syllable and the two unaccented syllables that follow: “narrative” and “declarative.” Robert Browning alternates feminine and masculine rhymes in his “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”: Gr-r-r — there go, my heart’s abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you! What? Your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims — Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with flames! Triple rhymes can be found in Thomas Hood’s “Bridge of Sighs,” George Gordon Byron’s satirical verse, and Ogden Nash’s comic poems. Rhythm: A regular pattern of sound, time intervals, or events occurring in writing, most often and most discernably in poetry. Regular, reliable rhythm is known to be soothing to humans, while interrupted, unpredictable, or rapidly changing rhythm is disturbing. These effects are known to authors, who use them to produce a desired reaction in the reader. An example of a form of irregular rhythm is sprung rhythm poetry; quantitative verse, on the other hand, is very regular in its rhythm. Rhythmic-acoustic dimension: umbrella term for elements of poetry such as sound, rhyme, meter, and onomatopoeia. Romance: most classical romances were written in prose, most medieval ones in verse. Because of its advanced use of point of view and the structuring of plot, the romance is regarded as the first direct precursor of the novel, despite its verse form. In contrast to the epic, the romance is more focused in terms of plot and less concerned with cosmic or national issues. Romanticism: movement in literary history in the first half of the 19c. It appears more or less simultaneously in American and English literature. Nature poetry and individual, emotional experiences play important roles. Romanticism may be seen as a reaction to the Enlightenment and the political changes throughout Europe and America at the end of the 18c. In America, Romanticism partly overlaps with transcendentalism. Round character: figure which is characterized through a number of different character traits. See also flat character and characterization. Russian formalism: text-oriented approach developed during and after World War I. It was interested in the nature of literary language and is famous for the concept of defamiliarization. See also structuralism. Satire: A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a famous example. Chekhov’s Marriage Proposal and O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” have strong satirical elements. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 26 Satirical novel: sub-genre of the novel, It points out the weaknesses of society by exaggerating social conventions. Scansion: The analysis or “scanning” of a poem to determine its Meter and often its rhyme scheme. The most common system of scansion uses accents (slanted lines drawn above syllables) to show stressed syllables, breves (curved lines drawn above syllables) to show unstressed syllables, and vertical lines to separate each foot. In the first line of John Keats’ “Endymion,” “A thing of beauty is a joy forever:” the word “thing,” the first syllable of “beauty,” the word “joy,” and the second syllable of “forever” are stressed, while the words “A” and “of,” the second syllable of “beauty,” the word “a,” and the first and third syllables of “forever” are unstressed. In the second line: “Its loveliness increases; it will never” a pair of vertical lines separate the foot ending with “increases” and the one beginning with “it.” A thing of beauty is a joy forever | | Its loveliness increases; it will never Scene: subdivision of acts in traditional drama, and therefore the smallest unit in the overall structure of a play. Secondary source: scholarly text types, including notes, essays, book reviews, and monographs that usually deal with primary sources. Semiotics: one of the recent text-oriented approaches which defines the text as an interdependent network of signs. It expands the notion of text to include non-verbal systems of signs, such as film, painting, fashion, geography, etc. The basis for this complex theory is the concept of language of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure which is based on the terms signifier and signified. See also deconstruction and post-structuralism. Sestet: Any six-line poem or stanza. Examples of the sestet include the last six lines of the Petrarchan sonnet form, the stanza form of Robert Burns’ “A Poet’s Welcome to his love-begotten Daughter,” and the sestina form in W.H. Auden’s “Paysage Moralise.” Setting: dimension of literary texts including the time and place of the action. The setting is usually carefully chosen by the author in order to support indirectly plot, characters, and point of view. Short story: short genre of prose fiction that is related to fairy tales and myths. Medieval and early modern cycles of narratives are indirect models. Formally, the short story generally differs from the novel in length, in its less complex plot and setting, its less differentiated characterization of figures, and its less complex use of point of view. Showing: mode of presentation which, in contrast to narration or telling, relies on dramatic presentation (e.g., direct speech). Sign: meaningful element within a closed system (e.g., text). See also semiotics. Signified: the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure divided language into two basic dimensions: the mental concept (e.g., the idea of a tree), termed the signified; and that concept’s manifestation in language (the sequence of sounds or letters in the word “T-R-E-E”), termed the signifier. See also semiotics and deconstruction. The English Major’s Literary Terminology Cheat Sheet — 27 Signifier. See signified. Simile: rhetorical figure which “compares” two different things by connecting them with “like,” “than,” “as,” or “compare” (e.g., “Oh, my love is like a red, red rose”). See also metaphor. Examples: “coffee as cold as ice” or “He sounded like a broken record.” The title of Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” contains a simile. Soliloquy. See monologue. Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem, usually composed in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes. There are three major types of sonnets, upon which all other variations of the form are based: the “Petrarchan” or “Italian” sonnet, the “Shakespearean” or “English” sonnet, and the “Spenserian” sonnet. A Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave rhymed abbaabba and a “sestet” rhymed either cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce. The octave poses a question or problem, relates a narrative, or puts forth a proposition; the sestet presents a solution to the problem, comments upon the narrative, or applies the proposition put forth in the octave The Shakespearean sonnet is divided into three quatrains and a couplet rhymed thus: abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet provides an epigrammatic comment on the narrative or problem put forth in the quatrains. The Spenserian sonnet uses three quatrains and a couplet like the Shakespearean, but links their three rhyme schemes in this way: abab bcbc cdcd ee. The Spenserian sonnet develops its theme in two parts like the Petrarchan, its final six lines resolving a problem, analyzing a narrative, or applying a proposition put forth in its first eight lines. Examples of sonnets can be found in Petrarch’s Canzoniere, Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, and Adrienne Rich’s poem “The Insusceptibles.” Petrarchan (Italian) abbaabba cdecde Shakespearean (English) abab cdcd efef gg Spenserian abab bcbc cdcd ee Spatial dimension of film: umbrella term for a number of heterogeneous aspects in film, such as film stock, lighting, camera angle, camera movement, point of view, editing, and montage. See also mise-en scéne. Spenserian Stanza: A nine-line stanza having eight verses in iambic pentameter, its ninth verse in iambic hexameter, and the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. This stanza form was first used by Edmund Spenser in his allegorical poem The Faerie Queene. Spondee: In poetry meter, a foot consisting of two long or stressed syllables occurring together. This form is quite rare in English verse, and is usually composed of two monosyllabic words. The first foot in the following line from Robert Burns’s “Green Grow the Rashes” is an example of a spondee: “Green grow the rashes, O” Sprung Rhythm: Versification using a specific number of accented syllables per line but disregarding the number of unaccented syllables that fall in each line, producing an irregular rhythm in the poem. Gerard Manley Hopkins, who coined the term “sprung rhythm,” is the most notable practitioner of this technique. Stage: the various designs of theater stages can be reduced to the two basic types of the amphitheater and the proscenium stage; most other common forms combine elements of these two.