Terms by Name Flashcards
(50 cards)
Alexandrine
A line of iambic hexameter. The final line of a Spenserian stanza is ().
Example: “A needless () ends the song/that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.” The second line of the couplet from Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism is ().
Anthropomorphism
The assigning of human attributes, such as emotions or physical characteristics, to nonhumans, most often plants and animals. It differs from personification in that it is an intrinsic premise and an ongoing pattern applied to a nonhuman character throughout a literary work.
Example: The character of Aslan in C.S. Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia” is a lion, but is addressed and behaves as a human.
Example: All the characters of George Orwell’s anti-Communist novel “Animal Farm” are ().
Example: The Greek god Zeus is supposed to be superhuman but is often given to human emotions and behaviors.
Apostrophe
A speech addressed to someone not present, or to an abstraction. “History! You will remember me…” is an example of (). The innate grandiosity of () lends itself to parody.
Caesura
The pause that breaks a line of Old English verse. Also, any particularly deep pause in a line of verse.
Example: “Hwaet! we Gar-Dena | | on gerdagum…” (“Lo, we Spear-Danes, in days of yore…”) –Beowulf
Example: “Arma virumque cano, | | Troiae qui primus ab oris…” (“I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy…”) –Aeneid
Decorum
One of theneoclassical principles of drama. () is the relation of style to content in the speech of dramatic characters. For example, a character’s speech should be appropriate to his or her social station.
Example: “In Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” the characters regularly exhibit () in the way they speak.
Doggerel
A derogatory term used to describe poory written poetry of little or no literary value.
Example: Shakespeare is known to have purposely employed () in dialogue between the Dromio twins in “The Comedy of Errors” for comedic effect.
Epithalamium
A work, especially a poem, written to celebrate a wedding.
Example: Edmund Spenser’s “()”:
Song! made in lieu of many ornaments,
With which my love should duly have ben dect,
Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
Ye would not stay your dew time to expect,
But promist both to recompens;
Be unto her a goodly ornament,
And for a short time an endlesse moniment.
Euphuism
A word derived from Lyly’s () (1580) to characterize writing that is self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech. This was a popular and influential mode of speech and writing in the late sixteenth century.
Example: The character Polonius in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” demonstrates this literary device, exemplified by his most famous lines:
“To thine own self be true.”
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Feminine Rhyme
Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. A pair of lines ending “running” and gunning” would be an example of () rhyme. Properly, in a () rhyme (and not simply a “double rhyme”) the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables unstressed.
Example: Sonnet 20 - “A woman’s face with nature’s own hand” by William Shakespeare:
A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false woman’s fashion…
Flat Character
Term coined by E.M. Forster to describe a character built arond a single dominant trait
Example: The character of Mrs. Micawber in Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield” is ().
Round Character
Term coined by E.M. Forster to describe a character shaded and developed with psychological complexity.
Example: Anna Karenina in Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” is ().
Georgic
() poems deal with people laboring in the countryside, pushing plows, raising crops, etc.
Example: The work from which this term was derived is an excellent example of the term itself: Virgil’s ()s. Essentially it’s a poem about the virtues of the farming life.
Hamartia
Aristotle’s term for what is popularly called “the tragic flaw.” () differs from tragic flaw in that hamartia implies fate, whereas tragic flaw imples an inherent psychological flaw in the tragic character.
Example: Oedipus, in his hasty temper, is tragically flawed. Macbeth, in his lust for power, is also tragically flawed.
Homeric Epithet
A repeated descriptive phrase, as found in Homer’s epics.
Example: “Rosy-fingered dawn,” “the wine-dark sea,” and “the ever-resourceful Odysseus” are all examples.
Hudibrastic
A term derived from Samuel Butler’s similarly titled work. It refers specficially to the couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (at least, 8 syllables long) which Butler employed in that work, or more generally to any deliberate, humorous, ill-rhythmed, ill-rhymed couplets. Butler had a genius for “bad” poetry.
Example:
We grant, although he had much wit
He was very shy of using it
As being loathe to wear it out
And therefore bore it not about,
Unless on holidays, or so
As men their best apparel do.
Beside, tis’ known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak.
Litotes
An understatement created through a double negative (or more preceisly, negating the negative).
Example: From the Book of Acts in the Bible: “Paul answered, ‘I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city.”
Example: From Beowulf: “That [sword] was not useless to the warrior now.”
Masculine Rhyme
A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka, regular old rhyme).
Example: Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Wods on a Snowy Evening” illustrates this term:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Metonymy
A term for a phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of that person.
Example: The famous line, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play “Richelieu,” is an example of (). The sentence is essentially saying that the written word is often more powerful and influential thanacts of war and violence, but it uses the pen to represent the written word, and the sword to represent violent acts.
*Synecdoche is closely related. Sometimes it is considered a subclass of metonymy. Sometimes they are considered distinct: when A is used to refer to B, it is a synecdoche is A is a component of B and a metonym if A is commonly associated with B, but not part of it as a whole.
Neoclassical Unities
Principles of dramatic structure derived (and applied somewhat too strictly) from Aristotle’s “Poetics.” They are called the () because of their popularity in that movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The essential ones are of time, place and action:
To observe () of time, a work should take place within the span of one day.
To observe () of place, a work should take place within the confines of a single locale.
To observe () of action, a work should contain a single dramatic plot, with not subplots.
Pastoral Elegy
A type of poem that takes the form of an elegy (a lament for the dead) sung by a shepherd. In this conventionalized form, the shepherd who sings the elegy is a stand-in for the author, and the elegy is for another poet.
Example: Milton’s “Lycidas” and Shelley’s “Adonais” (a lament for John Keats).
Pastoral Literature
A work that deal with the lives of people, especially shepherds, in the country or in nature.
Example: Christopher Marlowe’s poem “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” is a classic example of ().
Pathetic Fallacy
A term coined by John Ruskin. It refers specifically to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects.
Example: Ruskin’s famous line: “The cruel crawling foam.”
Picaresque
A novel, typically loosely constructed along an incident-to-incident basis, that follows the adventures of a more or less scurrilous rogue whose primary concerns are filling his belly and staying out of jail.
Example: Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” and Defoe’s “Moll Flanders” (a rare female example).
Skeltonics
A form of humorous poetry, using very short, rhymed lines and a pronounced rhythm, made popular by John Skelton. The only real difference between () and a doggerel is the quality of thought expressed.
Example: From “How the Doughty Duke of Albany” by John Skelton:
O ye wretched Scots,
Ye puant pisspots
It shall be your lots
To be knit up with knots
