Literary Devices and Comedy in Drama: An Overview - Prof. Hernando Real, Apuntes de Filología Inglesa

¡Descarga Literary Devices and Comedy in Drama: An Overview - Prof. Hernando Real y más Apuntes en PDF de Filología Inglesa solo en Docsity! red0;Protagonist. • Antagonist. • Foil: A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. For instance, in the film Chasing Amy, the character Silent Bob is a foil for his partner, Jay, who is loquacious and foul-mouthed. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Laertes the unthinking man of action is a foil to the intelligent but reluctant Hamlet. The angry hothead Hotspur in Henry IV, Part I, is the foil to the cool and calculating Prince Hal. • Antihero. • Hyperbole: the trope of exaggeration or overstatement. • Tone: the attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, objective. Similar to Mood. • Personification: giving human qualities to animals or objects. Example: a smiling moon, a jovial sun. • Imagery: language that evokes one or all of the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching. • Point of view: This angle of vision, the point of view from which the people, events, and details of a story are viewed (Objective Point of View, Third Person Point of View, First Person Point of View and Omniscient and Limited Omniscient Points of View) • Alliteration: repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words. • Metaphor: comparison of two UNLIKE things. Simile, personification, anthropomorphism, hyperbole, parable (Biblical), fable, and analogy are metaphors. • Hyperbaton: An inversion of normal word order. A generic term for a variety of figures involving transposition (see below), it is not synonymous with anastrophe (only one word altered) • Simile: is the comparison of two unlike things using like or as. Related to metaphor. Example: He eats like a pig. Vines like golden prisons. • Metonymy: substituting a word for another word closely associated with it. Example: bowing to the sceptered isle. (Great Britain) • Synedoque: is when one uses a part to represent the whole. Example: lend me your ears (give me your attention). • Oxymoron: putting two contradictory words together. Examples: hot ice, cold fire, wise fool, sad joy, eloquent silence. • Caesura: a natural pause or break. Example: England - how I long for thee! • Aphaeresis: The loss of one or more letters from the beginning of a word, as in till foruntil. • Chiasmus: type of rhetoric in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first. Greek X. Example: "There's a bridge to cross the great divide. . . . There's a cross to bridge the great divide. . . ." Coleridge:Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike. • Stichomythia: a form of dialogue originating in Greek drama in which single lines are uttered by alternate speakers. • Epizeuxis: A figure by which a word is repeated with vehemence or emphasis, as in the following lines: Alone, alone, all all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea. - Coleridge. • Epistrophe: repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect (as Lincoln's “of the people, by the people, for the people”) • Anaphora: The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs. One of the devices of repetition, in which the same phrase is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines. • Enjambment: the running over of a sentence from one line of verse into the next. • Antithesis: contrary ideas expressed in a balanced sentence. It is the juxtaposition of two words, phrases, clauses, or sentences contrasted or The term is a negative one, and it often implies a lack of skill on the part of the writer. • Subplot: a secondary or minor plot within a play or other literary work which may contrast with the principal plot, highlights it, or be unrelated. It involves characters of lesser importance than those involved in the major plot. • Understatement: This device is used to understate the obvious. On a day of extreme weather, like it is really really hot, one might say, "Is it warm enough for you?" or on a very very cold day one might say, "Balmy out isn't it?" • Act: An act is part of a play, considered a major division. • Scenes: the place where some act or event occurs. Sometimes the term is used for an incident or situation in real life. It is also the division of an act of a play or a unit of dramatic action in which a single point is made or one effect obtained. • Anachronism: an error in chronology, or placing an event, person, item, or language expression in the wrong period. • Mise-en-scène: arrangement of scenery and properties to represent the place where a play or movie is enacted. • Pantomime: Act out without words but with gestures and bodily movements only. • Setting: is determining Time and Place in fiction. • Epanalepsis: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated at the end of the line. • Anadiplosis: Rhetoric repetition of the words or phrase at the end of one sentence, line, or clause at the beginning of the next. • Anastrophe: EXERCICES. 1. "What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?" (Macbeth) ALLITERATION, IAMBIC PENTAMETER BUT THE FIRST LINE IT DOESN'T WORK: IT IS ANAPHAESTIC, HYPERBOLY. 2. "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! Her beauty hangs upon the neck of night, Like a rich jewel in a Ethiop's ear"; (Romeo and Juliet) SIMILE, PERSONIFICATION, ALLYTERATION, METAPHOR. 3. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and the women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances" (As You Like It). CONCEIT: extended metaphor. "The world (men and women and "to die and to be born" el texto no lo dice pero lo suponemos) is a stage(players and exits and entrances) 4. Man learns from history that man learns nothing from history. (Hegel) PARADOX "We have the same mistakes again and again". Aporia. 5. Death is a slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men. (Jonh Donne). PERSONIFICATION 6. "Cold fire, sick health" (Romeo and Juliet) OXYMORON: no puede haber un fuego frio, METAPHOR. 7. "And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never!" (King Lear) EPIZEUXIS INTRODUCTION. RENAISSANCE THEATRE: AN OVERVIEW The origins of theatre is associted to myths and rituals. Greek and Romans: part of ceremonies, funerals, etc. Unconscious Dramma. 1st attempt 55BC. Invasion 43 AD until 410. Re-birth: Religious drama (10th century). Drama comes to the market, because of the damages in the graves, tombs, etc. The Paegant Wagon. Hellmouth wagon. With the shift to the streets, acting was transferrred from the priesthood to the amateurs of the guilds or professional players. Audience: clergy, aristocrats, burgesses, paesants, around 100 people at each staging. Mystery plays/ Miracle plays. - The mystery plays were performed in English by secular performers in secular costume. - Talked and/or recited. - A series of religious scenes. - Folk music and dance. - Corpus Christi - Cycles: chains of scenes from the Old and New Testament, from the creation to the Final Judgement Day. - Written anonymously, probably by friars (the earliest ones preserved belong to 1370). - The most important plays left belong to the Cycles of York, Wakefield, Chester and Coverty. Morality plays: allegorical dramma that appears at the end of the middle ages. Allegorical drama that became popular in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages (15th and 16th centuries). Tended to be written by schoolmaters for their students to perform. Stages: open-air scaffolds, or indoors (halls of great housesor collegue halls). Character personify moral qualities (such as charity or vice) or abstractions (as death or youth). Purpose: teaching a moral lesson. Action: the dramatization of the life of man, from birth until death, when he is judged. A famous morality plays was Mankind, which tells the story of its hero (Mankind) whose inherent weaknesses are assaulted by such personified diabolic forces as the Seven Deadly Sins but who may choose redemption and obtain help from the Four Daughters of God (Mercy, Justice, Temperance and Truth) The interlude appears at the end of the 15th century. A new kind of Morality play appeared. In the earlier Moralities, time/no. of actors were not a problem. But, when performances moved indoors, and as they passed into the hands of professional actors, compression began to be necessary (time/no. actors). Piece for 2-4 actors. Secularization Two meanings: a short play in dialogue between two or more performers, or a dramatic diversion in the pause or interlude between the parts of a banquet or another entertainment. Main characteristics of the interlude. The interludes are, together with the masques and paegants, the most representative dramatic forms of Pre- Elizabethan stage. They represent a transition between the medieval and the Renaissance theatre (from the mystery and morality play to the fist tragedies). Audience: more limited and refined, the aristocraty or the university population. Comic purpose, no moral teaching. Themes: folk tales, actual events, anecdotes. Stagind: With respect to the elaborate tecnhical sophistication of the morality, the interlude scene is rather bare. Other dramatic forms during the Renaissance: - Masques: form of court entertainment, usually in verse, and including music, dance, disguises, special effects. - Mythological or allegorical plot. - Dance with masques anf public participation. - Very rich productions. 1. Old Comedy: Aristophanes (I446 BC- ca. 386 BC). The structure was divided into these parts: - Prologos: entry of the character come to the stage and present himsel. - Parodos: means entry of the chorus. - Agon: means devate/ debate?. The plot explains here. - Parabasis: means comic forwards?. Pure entertainment. - Epeisodia: which means episodes. Were separated by brief choral songs. -Exodos: (+ cordax: a dance) weding, feat... Features: Comedy mask (smiling) Exaggerated costume, with grotesque masks (which included hair), and usually a large phallus for male characters. Obscenity: obscene language. Usually unsubstancial plot, but politically oriented. The purpose was to influence civic ideologic, to provide political and social critique. Aristotle: THE NAME OF THE ROSE (pelicula). He said about comedy that it was the opposite of tragedy. Averated belong averate..?. Comic figures mainly "average to belong average" in terms of moral character, "base" and "ugly". Everyday figures (vs. kings, princes, etc in Tragedy). "Laughable", but they cause neither pain or disaster. Comic plots: if character are everyday figures, they would have common problems of ordinary people. Humorous incidents. Happy endind. What's the goal of staging comedy- according to Aristotle? All form of MIMESIS: evocation of intellectual pleasure. Also, teaching some moral. 2. MIDDLE COMMEDY. - Athenian comedy of the period c.400- c. 323 BC (between Old and New Comedy). - The parabasis disappeared. - The role of the chorus declined sharply. - The exaggerated costume and the phallus were given up. - The plot: realities of ordinary life. More strongly plotted than Old Comedy. - Purpose: increasing interest in daily life and character development, less interest in social/political commentary. - Theophrastus (c. 371- c. 287 BC): The Characters (c. 319 BC) Treaty including 30 characters types. Each type is said to be an illustration of an individually who represents a group, characterized by his most prominent trait, etc. - The Stingy Man (Aneleutheria). - The Show- Off ( Alazoenia). - The Arrogant Man ( Huperephania). - The Coward ( Deilia). - The Oligarchical Man ( Oligarchia). NEW COMEDY - Comedy of the period c. 323- c. 263 BC - Menander (ca. 342- 291 BC) - Pattern: five acts, separated by irrelevant choral interludes performed by a chorus. - Emphasis on the romantic content of the play. Costume is abandoned, to more simple costume. - Set: Athens. - Scarce political comments. -Realistic social comedies: stereotyped episodes in the private life of the well-to- do family. -BEGINNING OF THE COMEDY OF MANNERS. Influence Shakespeare/ Jonson. Roman comedy Plautus and Terence: imitators and adaptators of New Comedy. Fabulae palliatae, "plays Greek cloaks". Later mid 2nd Century BC: Italian characters and settings (with Greek structure): Fabulae togatae, "plays in togas". Plautus (c. 254 BC- 184 BC). Very popular. All based on Greek comedies. Added Roman allusions. Varied poetic meters, witty jokes. Some techniques: stichomythia, Slapstick (kind of humour really base), Songs. Plautus usual plots: - love affairs (with the obstacle of the father) - rivalry between fathers and sons - errors arising from mistaken identities. Influence on Shakespeare. TERENSE (195/185-159 BC). - More complex plot- combined stories from Greek originals. Double plots (contrasts in human behaviour). Less boisterous than Plautus- more elegant language. Used Greek characters. - PROLOGUE: in his prologue talk about metatheatre: playwrighting and the spectacle. Dramatic suspense: he did not tell the audience what going to be appeared in the prologue. - Less popular Roman comedy: Stock characters: old man, young man in love, young maiden, clever servant, parasite. Influence on Shakespeare/Jonson. Roman comedy: Ocassions: annual state festival, special ocassions like triumphs and funerals. Comic characters during Medieval times: Mystery an Morality. Plays and Interludes. Commedia dell'arte (since 12th century). Improvised comic performance popular between the 16th and 18th centuries. Travelling companies of proessional actors with their with their own portable stage. Three- act plots- improvised. Common plot: lovers and servant against a rich father. Included acrobatics, mime, and slapstick. Stock characters: Zanni (servant), Harlequin (in love with Columbine, usually has magic powers. among his magic powers), Columbine( , Pantalone (Columbine's father, a merchant) (VOLPONE). Distinctive costume and masks. ELIZABETHAN COMEDY Romantic comedy, best exemplified by Shakespeare. Satire, best exemplified by Ben Jonson. Citizen comedy (always set in London, really really common people, usually the protagonist are tailors, fishers... This common people are much moral, honest and notable than the nobility), best exemplified by Thomas Dekker. Shakespeare comedy - loghter tone than in his tragedy. - happy ending-marriage. Themes: imagination and reason. We as humans have different perceptions of life, as a madman, the poet and the lover demonstrate. Echoes throughout the play: This is considered the epilogue. Symbols: The very important thing about symbol is that they changing meanings. First of all, the moon is a symbol of mutability and change. Is a symbol to virginity, the romantic idea of love, is a symbol of imagination too. The symbol of athens means law and order: civilization. it's also thiranical. Wood represents freedom, love, but also represents danger. The ass (botton) represents sexuality, been stupid. blank verses: UNRYTHME iambic pentameter... ( we use this verses to normal people, as a class marker, a social marker. It is associated with the civilised courtier. Dignified rational discourse of rule and law and the dramatic tensions it generates. language: comic prose. I.ii. and III.i . Metatheatre: The play within the play hepls: To reflect upon MSND itself, to reflect upon the theatrical event ( the nature of theatre). As a parody of Romeo and Juliet. A REFLECTION ON THEATRE: Mirror up to nature taken to the extreme and portrayed as stupid. Actors/ playwights thinking about the audience- the spectacle is for them III.i To coment on the life of touring companies. To comment on the behaviour of the audience. In the 5º act, amateur companies. wrong punctuation. Comic when they try "high" language. Pyramus's death. ARISTOTLE POETICS Purpose of art. Immitate: he includes all kind of poetry (Epic poetry, Tragedy, Comedy, Dithrambic poetry and others) are forms of imitations (MIMESIS). The kind of poetry he differ in their means, the objects of imitation, and the manner of imitation. Besides IMITATION, poetry also seeks to DELIGHT in the work of imitation. Comedy is the imitation of men worse than average, aimed at the Ridiculous (a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harms to others). Tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and having magnitude. It has to be complete and has to be built up with pleasurable language. They have to include incidents that arouse PITY AND FEAR in order to accomplish the CATHARSIS of such emotions. Pity is “occasioned by underserved misfortune”. Pity moves us emotionally towards an object, and Fear does the opposite; it drives us away. Catharsis: the effect that tragedy causes, a purpling or purification. It is a kind of art, therapy. Release of the emotions of pity and fear built up in a dramatic performance. ELEMENTS OF TRAGEDY: The three unites: 1. The unity of Action: just one plot and one message. He insisted in 1 plot and easily the point. 2. The unit of time: a single course of time. “Real time” performances would be most preferable. Use of flash backs. 3. The unity of place: a single setting, not to confuse the audience. Elements of tragedy. Listed according to the importance for Aristotle. Plot He defined plot as the life soul of Tragedy. Must be complete and lineal. Arrangement of the incident: they have to be probable and necessary, they must follow the logics of probability and necessary. Plot: the freytag’s triangle. Begginning (incentive moment). Complication, rising action, desis. Climax, crisil, reversal.END. caused stressed effects resolutions downplayed. A simple plot is the one in which the change in the hero’s fortunes takes place without Peripety of Discovery. A complex plot is when the change involves one or the other or both. Elements of the complex plot: - Peripety is the change from one state of things within the play to the opposite of the kind described. - Anagnorisis (Discovery): a change from ignorance to knowledge, better if arousing from incidents and peripety. - Suffering: an action of a destructive or painful nature, such as murders on the stage, tortures, woundings, etc. Edipo’s history. Character. The agent fot the action. Second most important theatrical element. Used to bring forth a plot. Characters “shall be good”- with certain moral purpose. Manly and clever, close to reality and consistent. Makes easier the process of the identification of the play. Clever and consistentm mainly and close to reality. Inferior women and slaves. The tragic hero (admiration to him). The protagonist must be admired by the audience (best soldier, best poet). Hamartia (tragic flaw): the protagonist is almost perfect, but he has a defect (arrogance, ambition, indecision…) Thought It’s basically the moral message of the play. Aristotle called this “dianoia”, or “the process of thought.” (Must be universal and clear) Diction: this refers to the words used and their placement in the text of a play. Often, differences in diction within a play indicate differences in characters (like in MSND). Poetics (la metafora era muy importante dentro de la poesia y quien sabia dominarla perfectamente era un buen poeta). Music All of the audio elements of theatre, not just instrumental or vocal songs ( noises, sound effects…). The tone, pitch, and volume are used to create a musical element in voice. Spectacle Is the visual element of the theatre. Is the least important.Well-written and well-perfomed thatre could even be enjoyed by the blind. ELIZABETH TRAGEDY Influenced by Aristotle´s Poetics and Seneca (revenge play – a wronged hero seeks revenge- Hamlet). What happend with the units? The unities are not usually respected. The characters are as important as plot. Their hamartia has a leading role in the development of the action. 5 acts (Horace´s Ars Poetica). The audience: in MSND were very important. The audience algo gains importance – commercial part of drama (because of the money, they want the audience to come to the theatre every single Sunday).Another important change in Elizabeth Tragedy is that in Renaissance: Inclusiong of scenes what were narrated in Greek tragedy (fights, death…) The Elizabethan audience enjoyed the performance of violence. Inclusion of comedy: scenes that aim to create comic relief Doctor Faust as a morality play Structure: from the birth to his death. He wanted power. We are told about his life. The protagonist were allegoric characters, they were not men. Bad angel, good angel… all of them represented Comic interludes. The appearance of the CHORUS. -Gluttony: eats whole loud hay; his thirst of knowledge. -Sloth: when falls asleep -Lust: Helena. -Envy: same power as the Pope, etc… Doctor Faustus is criticizing this new dogma of Protestantism and the idea of predestination, because people feel more lost because it is not a matter of repentance or good actions. BEN JONSON’S VOLPONE Ben Jonson BIOFRAPHY Ben Jonson and his art -Does Jonson respect the unities? Yes, except the unity of action (subplot); Time: a day; Place: Venice (Volpone’s house, Corvino’s house, places on the street; court) Jonson’s comedy of humor (handout) -Comedy of Humours: a form of comedy in which the focus is placed upon a particular trait of personality of one or more characters. -Simplified humors. -Also influenced by the stock characters from the classical tradition of Terence and Plautus, as well as from the Italian commedia dell’arte. -Explicit mentions: II.ii 90-96; song II.ii 120-30; II.ii 156-170. Besides, the main characters have a particular trait or humor. What is it? GREED Satire -“A mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, or societies to ridicule and scorn” (CODLT) -Flourished in England in the 17th century. -We can say that the central theme in Volpone is the DEVASTATING SOCIAL AND MORAL EFFECT OF EARLY CAPITALISM. -Title page: Simul & iucunda, & idonea dicere vitae. -But is this play didactic? -A satire structurally excludes a positive moral perspective from the action. Its strength bases on the disjunction between: the social assumptions and the resolution of the plot and the implicit moral judgment by the author. IDEA: the more pronounced the disjunction, the more satiric the work. -In England, morality play vs. satire: unlike the morality, satire rarely shows the efficacy of virtue, much less the ordering presence of a just and benevolent deity. -The satiric playwright has much to criticize but offers no positive alternative to contemporary reality. VOLPONE OF THE FOX Setting -Why Venice? Considered one of the worst places on earth. For the Jacobeans Italy was the classic contemporary land of sensational evil-doing. The oldest and most advanced centre of mercantile capitalism. -A different setting for the audience not to feel directly attacked ( it could have been set in London) Characters - Volpone: a character who is very intelligent and controls other people for his own interests. He pretends (cheats) to his own interests. FABLES. Roman comedy: stocked character of the roman CAPTATOR; a character who promises to give things because he is going to die. -Fly: parasite, greek and roman comedy. He does everything to serve his owner right, but also for his own interests. -Voltore: lawyer, criticism of law. -Corbaccio: doctor, greedy old man. -Corvino: jealous, guardian of his wife until he is told he is going to be rewarded for prostituting her. ALL BIRDS WHICH FEED FROM OTHER DEAD BODIES. Themes Gold rules the world: Greed -Read I.i 1.27 Identify the main semantic fields: GOLD=GOD; religious words “Saint, shrine” Metaphors and comparisons: What’s the power of gold? Virtue, honour, fame, art, it’s the center of universe. Inversion of values. -Read I.i 28-69 What is the “cunning purchase of my wealth”? Getting more and more richer. Comment on Volpone and Mosca’s relationship so far: Mosca is fluttering Volpone. Mosca manipulates Volpone for getting money. -Read I.i 70.What’s Volpone doing here? Justificatios for what he is doing. -EXTENSION: SATIRE ON AVARICE. Read I.v. 102-129. Mosca is tempting and manipulating Volpone; he makes him NEED Celia. Read II.iv. 1-36. Heat, hot, fire for having seen Celia. Read II.v. Celia has stained Corvino’s honor. -Parasitism -Mtatheatre