Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
1. acronym
A word formed by combining the initial letters or syllables of a series of words to for a name, as radar, from radio detecting and ranging.
1. acronym
Kenneth Branagh
Derek Jacobi
3. adaptation
The rewriting of a work from its original form to fit it for another medium; also the new form of such a rewritten work.
3. adaptation
4. aesthetics The study or philosophy of the beautiful in nature, art and literature. It has both a philosophical dimension What is art? What is beauty? What is the relationship of the beautiful to other values?
4. aesthetics
Picassos Housegarden
5. agrarian
Literary people living in an agricultural society, or espousing the merits of such a society, as the Physiocrats did. In literary history and criticism, however, the term is usually applied to a group of Southern
5. agrarian
American writers who published in Nashville, Tennessee, between 1922 and 1925 The Fugitive, a LITTLE MAGAZINE of poetry and some criticism championing agrarian REGIONALISM but attacking the old high-castle Brahmins of the Old South.
5. agrarian
Hamlin Garland
Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity. -Bernard Berenson
6. allegory A form of extended METAPHOR in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. Thus, an allegory is a story in which everything is a symbol. RPMrebellion, open thinking, manliness; Nursehate, control, judgment, conformity
6. allegory (cont.) Samuel Coleridge: the traditional distinction between a symbol and allegory is that an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into picturelanguage, whereas a Symbol always partakes of the Reality which it makes intelligible.
Wizard of Oz
6. allegory
7. alliteration
The repetition of initial identical consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in successive or closely associated syllables, especially stressed syllables.
7. alliteration
8. allusion A figure of speech that makes brief reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object. The effectiveness of allusion depends on a body of knowledge shared by writer and reader. A good example is T.S. Eliots The Waste Land and the authors notes to that poem.
8. allusion RPMs shorts refer to Moby Dick, classic book by Melville (90). Also, to the Bible and Pontius Pilatea patient says, I wash my hands of the whole deal (232). Harding makes reference to the Lone Ranger, Batman, or Zorro saying RPM is a masked man superhero (258).
8. allusion
9. anachronism
9. anachronism
10. analogy
A comparison of two things, alike in certain aspects; particularly a method used in EXPOSITION an DESCRIPTION by which something unfamiliar is explained or described by comparing it to some thing more familiar.
Will Castle Eliza : Dorothy :: Higgins : Wizard
10. analogy
10. analogy
3. find is to kind as feign is to: pane pretend line mean 4. pane is to pain as weigh is to: scale pounds weight way 5. bring is to brought as sing is to: sang melody song record
10. analogy 6. dime is to tenth as quarter is to: twenty-five fourth home coin
7. plates is to dishes as arms is to: Legs hands farms weapons rhlschool.com
11. anapest
A metrical FOOT consisting of three syllables, with two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one.
12. anecdote
A short NARRATIVE detailing particulars of an interesting EPISODE or event. The term most frequently refers to an incident in the life of an important person and should lay claim to an element of truth.
12. anecdote
Though anecdotes are often used as the basis for short stories, an anecdote lacks complicated PLOT and relates a single EPISODE.
12. anecdote
John Falstaff
13. annotation
The addition of explanatory notes to a text by the author or an editor to explain, translate, cite sources, give bibliographical data, comment, GLOSS, or PARAPHRASE.
13. annotation
A VARIOUM EDITION represents the ultimate in annotation. An annotated BIBLIOGRAPHY, in addition to the standard bibliographical data includes comments on the works listed.
13. annotation
Northrop Frye
14. antagonist
The character directly opposed to the PROTAGONIST. A rival, opponent, or enemy of the PROTAGONIST.
non-character entities can be antagonistic (settings or events)
14. antagonist
Nurse Ratched
15. anthology
Literally a gathering of flowers, the term designates a collection of writing, either prose or poetry, usually by various authors.
15. anthology
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism, what will be grasped at once. -Cyril Connolly
A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on the stage.
17. assonance (as in poetry) Same or similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds. Assonance differs from RHYME in that RHYME is a similarity of vowel and consonant. Lake and fake demonstrate RHYME; lake and fate assonance.
John Donne
18. autobiography
18. autobiography
Maya Angelou
Charles Bukowski
18. autobiography
19. avant-garde
Applied to new writing that shows striking (and usually selfconscious) innovations in style, form, and subject matter.
19. avant-garde
John Ashbery
Frank OHara
20. bard
In modern use, simply a POET. Historically the term refers to poets who recited verses glorifying the deeds of heroes and leaders to the accompaniment of musical instrument such as the harp.
20. bard
Shakespeare
Our literature is substitute for religion, and so is our religion. -T.S. Eliot
21. Bildungsroman
A NOVEL that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical.
22. biography A written account of a persons life, a life history. LETTERS, MEMOIRS, DIARIES, JOURNALS, and AUTOBIOGRAPHIES ought to be distinguished from biography proper.
22. biography
MEMOIRS, DIARIES, JOURNALS, and AUTOBIOGRAPHIES are closely related to each other in that each is recollection written down by the subject of the work.
22. biography
Paul Burrell
Princess Diana
Kurt Vonnegut
24. canon
In a figurative sense, a standard of judgment; a criterion. In a literal sense, the absolute bestthe hall of fameas determined by the qualified readership.
24. canon
Harold Bloom
25. catharsis In the Poetics Aristotle, in defining TRAGEDY. Sees it objective as being through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation [catharsis]of these emotions,
25. catharsis
but he does not explain what proper purgation means. Whatever Aristotle means thereby, catharsis remains one of the great unsettled issues.
in Othello
To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature. -Ernst Fischer
26. character
26. character
Lennie Small
Don Quixote
27. clich From the French word for stereotype plate; a block for printing. Hence, any expression so often used that its freshness and clarity have worn off is called a clich, a stereotyped form.
27. clich
Jerry Seinfeld
George W. Bush
28. climax A rhetorical term for a rising order of importance in the ideas expressed, Such an arrangement is called climatic, and the item of greatest importance is called the climax.
28. climax
H.G. Wells
29. collage
In the pictorial arts the technique by which materials not usually associated with one another, such as newspaper clippings, labels, cloth, wood , bottle tops, or theater tickets, are assembled and pasted together on a single surface.
29. collage
confidant
a close friend or associate to whom secrets are confided or with whom private matters and problems are discussed
could be the reader, if narrator offers exclusive information
30. conflict
The struggle that grows out of the interplay of two opposing forces. Conflict provides interest suspense, and tension.
30. conflict
1.) a struggle against nature 2.) a struggle against another person, usually the ANTAGONIST 3.) a struggle against society 4.) a struggle for mastery by two elements within the person
30. conflict
William Faulkner
In an incarcerate society, free literature can exist only as denunciation and hope. -Eduardo Galeano
31. consonance
The relation between words in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables agree but the vowels that precede them differ, as add-read, millball, and torn-burn.
31. consonance
John Milton
T.S. Eliot
32. couplet
32. couplet
33. denouement
Literally, unknotting. The final unraveling of a plot; the solution of a mystery; an explanation or outcome. Denouement is sometimes used as a synonym for FALLING ACTION.
33. denouement
Scooby-Doo Stories
34. dialogue
Conversation of two or more people. Embodies certain values 1.)advances the action and is not mere ornament 2.)consistent with the character of the speakers.
34. dialogue 3.)gives impression of naturalness without being verbatim record 4.)presents the interplay of ideas and personalities 5.)varies according to the various speakers 6.)serves to give relief from passages
34. dialogue
Ernest Hemingway
James Thurber
35. diction
35. diction
Shirley Jackson
Any novel plainly designed to teach a lesson, it is properly used as a synonym for the EDUCATION NOVEL.
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair
A cheaply printed, paperbound TALE of adventure or detection, or originally selling for a bout ten cents; an American equivalent of the British PENNY DREADFUL.
Malaeska
38. discourse Mode or category of expression, in grammar, we speak of discourse as direct or indirect. Discourse refers to ways of speaking that are bound by
38. discourse
ideological, professional, political, cultural, or sociological communities. Way in which the use of language in a particular domain helps to constitute the objects it refers to.
38. discourse
A character who develops or changes as a result of the actions of the plot. Eliza Doolittle, Pip, Marguerite Johnson, Pi Patel, Esperanza Cordero
Sandra Cisneros
Don Quixote
40. dystopia
Literally, bad place. the term is applied to accounts of imaginary worlds, usually in the futre, in which present tendencies are carried ou to their intensely unpleasant culminations. (George Orwells 1984, Ursula K. Le Guins The Dispossessed)
40. dystopia
41. elegy A sustained and formal poem setting forth meditations on death or another solemn theme. The meditation often is occasioned by the death of a particular person, but it may be generalized observation or the expression of a solemn mood.
41. elegy
42. ellipsis
The omission of one or more words that, while essential to a grammatic structure, are easily supplied. () only three periods!
43. epic A long narrative poem in elevated style presenting characters of high position in adventures forming and organic whole through their relation to a central heroic figure and through their development of episodes important to the history of a nation or race. The epic itself is the product of a single genius.
43. epic
Odysseus
Trojan Horse
44. epiphany Literally a manifestation or showing-forth, usually of some divine being. The Christian festival of Epiphany commemorates the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the form of the Magi.
45. euphemism
A device in which indirectness replaces directness of statement, usually in an effort to avoid offensiveness.
45. euphemism
husky big-boned hefty portly plump fluffy
-Joseph Joubert
Its purpose is to explain something. Identification, definition, classification, illustration, comparison, and analysis.
Harry Potter
47. Expressionism
A movement affecting painting and literature, which followed and went beyond IMPRESSIONISM in its efforts to objectify inner experience. Expressionism was strongest in theater in the 1920s,
47. Expressionism
The Muse
Lady and Her Cat Millie Shapiro Jeff Buckley
flat character
a literary character whose personality can be defined by one or two traits and does not change in the course of the story
foil
A foil character is either one who is opposite to the main character or nearly the same as the main character. The purpose of the foil character is to emphasize the traits of the main character by contrast only. A foil is a secondary character who contrasts with a major character.
William Blake
50. foreshadowing The presentation of material in a work in such a way that later events are prepared for. Foreshadowing can result form the establishment of a mood or atmosphere, as in the opening of Conrads Heart of Darkness or the first act of Hamlet.
50. foreshadowing (cont.) It can result from the appearance of physical objects or facts, as do the clues do in a detective story, or from the revelation of a fundamental and decisive character trait. In all cases, the purpose of foreshadowing is to prepare the reader or viewer for action to come.
50. foreshadowing
50. foreshadowing
Literature is a form of permanent insurrection. Its mission is to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep men in a constant state of dissatisfaction with themselves. -Mario Vargas Llosa
51. history play (as in Shakespeare) Strictly speaking, any drama whose time setting is in some period earlier than that in which it is written. It is most widely used, however, as a synonym for CHRONICLE PLAY.
King John
52. hubris
overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the PROTAGONIST of a tragedy. Hubris leads the protagonist to break a moral law, attempt vainly to transcend normal limitations, or ignore a divine warning with calamitous results.
52. hubris
Poseidon
53. hyperbole
Exaggeration. The figure may be used to heighten effect or it may be used for humor.
53. hyperbole
Kurt Vonnegut
A foot consisting of an unaccented syllable and an accented ( ). The most common rhythm in English verse.
Shakespeare
55. idiom A use of words peculiar to a given language; an expression that cannot be translated literally. To carry out literally means to carry something out (of a room perhaps), but idiomatically it means to see that something is done, as to carry out a command.
55. idiom
James Thurber
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around. -David Lodge
56. 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.
56. imagery
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
57. Imagism The objectives of Imagist are: 1.) to use the language of common speech but to employ always the exact wordnot the nearly exact word; 2.) to avoid the clich; 3.) to create new rhythms as the expressions of a new MOOD;
57. Imagism (cont.) 4.) to allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject; 5.) to present an image (that is, to be concrete, firm, definite in their picturesharsh in outline); 6.) to strive always for concentration; 7.) to suggest rather than offer complete statements
58. Impressionism A highly personal manner of writing in which the author presents materials as they appear to an individual temperament at a precise moment and from a particular vantage point rather than as they are presumed to be in actuality.
58. Impressionism
Ninfee Bianche Claude Monet
1899
60. internal rhyme (as in poetry) Rhyme that occurs at some place before the last syllables in a line. In the opening line of Eliots GerontionHere I am, an old man in a dry monththere is internal rhyme between am and man and between I and dry.
Li-Young Lee
A great literature is chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immoveable certainties of the nation. -H.L. Mencken
61. irony
A broad term referring to the recognition of reality different from appearance. Verbal irony is a FIGURE OF SPEECH in which the actually intent is expressed in words that carry the opposite meaning.
61. irony
62. Knstlerroman A form of the APPRENCESHIP NOVEL in which the protagonist is an artist struggling from childhood to maturity toward an understanding of his or her creative mission. The most famous Knstlerroman in English is James Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
62. Knstlerroman
Chaim Potok
63. limerick A form of light verse that follows a definite pattern: five anapestic lines of which the first,second, and fifth, consisting of three feet, rhyme; and the third and fourth lines, consisting of two feet, rhyme.
There once was a man from Nantucket, Who kept all of his cash in a bucket, But his daughter, named Nan, Ran away with a man, And as for the bucket, Nantucket. But he followed the pair to Pawtucket, The man and the girl with the bucket; And he said to the man, He was welcome to Nan, But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.
63. limerick
64. masque In medieval Europe there existed, partly as survivals or adaptations of ancient pagan seasonal ceremonies, species of games or SPECTACLES characterized by a procession of masked figures.
64. masque
65. maxim
A concise statement, usually drawn from experience and inculcating some practical advice; an ADAGE. Hoyles When in doubt, win the trick is a maxim in bridge.
65. maxim
Ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country.
John F. Kennedy
66. memoir
A form of autobiographical writing dealing usually with the recollections of one who has been a part of or has witnessed significant events. Memoirs differ from AUTOBIOGRAPHY proper in that they are usually
66. memoir
concerned with personalities and actions other than those of the writer, whereas autobiography stresses the inner and private life of its subject.
66. memoir
James Frey,
67. metaphysical Although sometimes used in the broad sense of philosophical poetry, the term is commonly applied to the work of the seventeenth-century writers called the Metaphysical Poets.
67. metaphysical
They formed a school in the sense of employing similar methods and of revolting against the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry, in particular the PETRARCHAN CONCEIT.
67. metaphysical
John Donne
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 patters are:
69. motif A simple element that serves as a basis for expanded narrative; or, less strictly, a conventional situation, device, interest, or incident. In literature, recurrent images, words, objects, phrases, or actions that tend to unify the work are called motives.
Patterns of day and night, blonde and brunette, summer and winter, north and south, white and black; and the game of chess. In books, recurring themes, images, ideas, characters, etc.
69. motif
70. mood
In literary work the mood is the emotional-intellectual attitude of the author toward the subject.
70. mood
Literature is both my joy and my comfort: it can add to every happiness and there is no sorrow it cannot console. -Pliny the Younger
71. muses Nine goddesses represented as presiding over the various departments of art and science. They are the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. In literature, their traditional significance I that of inspiring and helping poets.
71. Muses (1)Calliope (epic) (6)Polyhymnia (sacred choric (2)Clio (history) poetry) (3)Erato (lyrics and (7)Terpischore love poetry) (choral dance (4)Euterpe (music) and song) (5)Melpomene (8)Thalia (comedy) (tragedy) (9)Urania (astronomy)
71. Muses
http://shekinah.elysiumgates.com/muse/muses.jpg
72. Naturalism A term best reserved for a literary movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It draws its name from its basic assumption that everything real exists in NATURE, and
72. Naturalism (cont.) conceived as the world of objects, actions, and forces that yield their secrets to objective scientific inquiry. Naturalism is a response to the revolution in thought that science has produced. From Freud it gains a vielw of the determinism of the iner and subconscious self.
72. Naturalism (cont.) Naturalist ic worlks tend to emphasize either a biological or socioeconomic determinism. Pessimistic about human capabilities life is a vicious trap; frank in portrayal of humans and animals being driven by fundamental urgesfear, hunger, and sex.
72. Naturalism
Stephen Crane
74. noir
An adjective taken over from the phrase FILM NOIR to apply to any work, especially one involving crime, that is notably dark, brooding cynical, complex, and pessimistic.
74. noir
http://www.slushpile.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/irish%20noir.jpg
75. novel (and nonfiction novel) Novel is used in its broadest sense to designate any extended fictional narrative almost always in prose. Nonfiction Novel is a classification offered by Truman Capote for his in Cold Blood,
J.D. Salinger
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. -Ezra Pound
76. novella
A short tale or short story, a book of 50-100 pages; longer than a short story, but not as long or involved as a NOVEL.
76. novella
77. ode
A single, unified strain of exalted lyrical verse, directed to a single purpose, and dealing with one theme.
77. ode
John Keats
characters. A freedom in movement in both time and place, and freedom of the narrator to comment on the meaning of actions.
Joseph Stalin
To my mind that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity. -Mark Twain
80. onomatopoeia
Words that by their sound suggest their meaning: hiss, buzz, whirr, sizzle.
80. onomatopoeia
81. oxymoron
A self-contradictory combination of worlds or smaller verbal units. Oxymoron itself is an oxymoron, from the Greek meaning sharp-dull.
81. oxymoron
82. palindrome
Writing that reads the same for left to right and from right to left, such as the word civic or the statement attributed to Napoleon, Able was I ere I saw Elba.
82. palindrome
82. palindrome
Racecar Hannah I did roll--or did I? Poop
83. parallelism Such an arrangement that one element of equal importance with another is similarly developed and phrased, the principle of parallelism dictates that coordinate ideas should have coordinate presentation.
83. parallelism
84. paraphrase A restatement of an idea in such a way as to retrain the meaning while changing the diction and form. A paraphrase is often an amplification
84. paraphrase
of the original for the purpose of clarity, though the term is also used for any rather general restatement of an expression or passage.
84. paraphrase
85. parody
A composition imitating another, usually serious, piece. It is designed to ridicule a work or its style or author.
85. parody
86. persona
Literally, a mask. The term is widely used to refer to a second half created by an author and through whom the narrative is told.
86. persona
The persona can be not a character but an implied author; that is, a voice not directly the authors but created by the author and through which the author speaks.
86. persona
John Berryman
87. personification A figure that endows animals, ideas, abstractions, and animate objects with human form; the representing of imaginary creatures or things as having human personalities, intelligence and emotions.
87. personification
The ITALIAN SONNET A SONNET divided into an OCTAVE rhyming abbaabba and a SESTET rhyming cdecde.
Petrarch
89. plot
Although an indispensable part of all fiction and drama, plot is a concept about which there has been much disagreement. A plot, Aristotle maintained, should have unity:
89. plot
it should imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.
89. plot
90. pragmatism
A term, first used by C.S. Peirce in 1878, describing a doctrine that determines value through the test of consequences or utility.
90. pragmatism
Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but molds it to its purpose.
-Oscar Wilde
91. prelude A short poem, introductory in character, prefixed to a long poem or to a section of a long poem. Rarely, as in the case of Wordsworths famous Prelude, a poem so entitled may itself be lengthy, although Wordsworths Prelude was written as an introduction to a much longer but incomplete work.
91. prelude
92. prologue
An introduction most frequently associated with drama and especially common in England in the plays of Restoration and the eighteenth century.
92. prologue
94. 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;
94. protagonist
hence the continuing meaning of protagonist and the first or chief player. In Greek drama AGON is contest, the protagonist and the ANTAGONIST, the second most important character, are contestants.
Batman/Spiderman
95. proverb
A saying that briefly and memorably expresses some recognized truth about life; originally preserved by oral tradition, though it may be transmitted in written literature as well. Proverbs may owe their appeal to metaphor, antithesis, a play on words, rhyme, or alliteration or parallelism.
95. proverb
One may recollect generally that certain thoughts or facts are to be found in a certain book; but without a good index such a recollection may hardly be more available than that of the cabin boy,who knew where the ships tea kettle was because he saw it fall overboard. -Horace Binney
97. quatrain
A stanza of four lines. Robert Frosts In a Disused Graveyard consists of four quatrains, in iambic tetrameter, each in a different rhyme scheme.
97. quatrain
98. Realism Realism is, in the broadest literary sense, fidelity to actuality in its representation; a term loosely synonymous with VERISIMILITURD; and in this sense it has been a significant element in almost every school of writing.
98. Realism
99. refrain
One or more words repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza. The most regular is the use of the same line at the close of each stanza (as is common in BALLAD).
99. refrain
100. Renaissance This word, meaning rebirth, is commonly applied to the period of transition from the medieval to the modern world in Western Europe.
100. Renaissance
Commonwealth Interregnum (16491660), Early Tudor Age (c. 1500-1557), Elizabethan Age (1558-1603), Jacobean Age (1603-1625), Caroline Age (1625-1642)
100. Renaissance
The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them. -Samuel Butler
101. requiem
A chant embodying a preayer for the repse of the dead a dirge; a solemn mass beginning as in Requiem aeternam dona eis, Donime. In our time the word has been broadened to mean almost anything sad.
101. requiem
The events following the CLIMAX. Synonym for FALLING ACTION. Shows what is resolved in the end of a work.
The passage of regular or approximately equivalent time intervals between definite events or the recurrence of specific sound or kinds of sound.
105. romance
The term romance has had special meanings as a kind of fiction since the early years of the novel.
105. romance
What one knows best iswhat one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise. -Chamfort
106. Romanticism
The freeing of the artist and writer from restraints and rules and suggesting that phase of individualism marked by the encouragement of revolutionary political ideas. The term designates a literary and philosophical theory
106. Romanticism
that tends to see the individual at the center of all life, and it places the individual, therefore, at the center of art, making literature valuable as an expression of unique feelings and particular attitudes.
round character A round character is a major character in a work of fiction who encounters conflict and is changed by it. Round characters tend to be more fully developed and described than flat, or minor characters.
108. satire A work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity. In America, Eugene
the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.
108. satire
ONeill, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, George Kaufman and Moss Hart, John P. Marquand, and Joseph Heller have commented satirically on human beings and their institutions. Two major types: FORMAL SATIRE and INDIRECT SATIRE.
108. satire
109. scansion
A system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into FEET, indicating the locations of binomial ACCENTS, and counting the syllables.
109. scansion
110. schema The mental connections made in the mindwhat controls learning and behavior. Psychologically, that which fascinates and compels.
The easiest books are generally the best, for whatever author is obscure and difficult in his own language certainly does not think clearly. -Lord Chesterfield
Ray Bradbury
112. semantics
The study of meaning; sometimes limited to linguistic meaning; and sometimes used to discriminate between surface and substance.
112. semantics
Michel Foucault
113. semiotics
The study of the rules that enable social phenomena, considered as SIGNS, to have meaning. When semiotics is used in literary criticism, it deals not with the simple relation
113. semiotics
between sign and significance, but with literary conventions, such as those of prosody, genre, or received interpretations of literary devices at particular times.
113. semiotics
Jacques Derrida
114. Sentimentalism The term is used in two senses: (1) an overindulgence in emotion, especially the conscious effort to induce emotion in order to enjoy it; (2) an optimistic overemphasis of the goodness of humanity (SENSIBILITY).
114. Sentimentalism
The ENGLISH SONNET, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. It is called the Shakespearean sonnet because Shakespeare was its most distinguished practitioner.
Let us answer a book of ink with a book of flesh and blood. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
117. sonnet A poem almost invariable of fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. The two basic sonnet types are the ITALIAN or PETRARCHAN and the ENGLISH or SHAKESPEAREAN.
117. sonnet
Petrarch
A character who changes little if at all. Things happen to the static characters without modifying their interior selves. Opposite of dynamic.
Henry Higgins
120. 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 mad according to thought as well as form, in which case the stanza is a unit like a prose paragraph.
120. stanza
Eliot's Gerontion is a gerontionthe world itself is the name of a favorite stock character of Greek (and later) comedy: the geezer, codger, little old man.
The total range of awareness and emotive-mental response of an individual, form the lowest prespeech level to the highest fully articulated level of rational thought.
James Joyce
123. Surrealism
A movement in art emphasizing the expression of the imagination as realized in dreams and presented without conscious control.
123. Surrealism
William Burroughs
124. symbolism In its broad sense symbolism is the use of one object to represent or suggest another; or, in literature, the serious and extensive use of SYMBOLS. Men = people in world; Nurse = oppression; Chief = oppressed peoples; McMurphy = change, hope, awareness; Control panel = ???; Ward = society; Monopoly = mens attempt to control something
124. symbolism
125. symposium A Greek world meaning a drinking together or banquet. The world later came to mean discussion by different persons of a single topic or a collection of speeches or essays on a given subject.
125. symposium
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it. -E.M. Forster
126. synopsis A summary of the main points of a composition so made as to show the relation of parts to the whole; an ABSTIACT. A synopsis is usually more connected than an outline, because it is likely to be given in complete sentences.
126. synopsis
127. syntax
Syntax is the rule-governed arrangement of worlds in sentences. Syntax seems to be that level of language that most distinguishes poetry from prose.
127. syntax
128. tall tale A kind of humorous tale, common on the American frontier, that uses realistic detail a literal manner, and common speech to recount extravagantly impossible happenings, usually resulting form the superhuman abilities of a character.
John Henry
129. Theatre of the Absurd A term invented by Martin Esslin for the kind of drama that presents a view of the absurdity of the human condition by abandoning of usual or rational devices and by the used of nonrealistic form.
It expounds and existential ideology and views its task as essentially metaphysical. The most widely acclaimed play of the school is Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot (1953).
Samuel Beckett
130. theme A central idea. Both theme and thesis imply a subject and a predicate of some kindnot just vice in general, say, but some such proposition as Vice seems more interesting than virtue but turns out to be destructive.
130. theme
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.
-Ernest Hemingway
131. thesis
An attitude or position on a problem taken by a writer or speaker with the purpose of proving or supporting it. The term is also used for the paper written to support the thesis.
131. thesis
132. tone Tome has been used for the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in literary work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, sombre, playful, serious, ironic, condescending, or many another possible attitudes.
132. tone
A feat of strength and virtuosity. Tour de force is used in criticism to refer to works that make outstanding demonstrations of skill.
134. tragedy A term with many meanings and applications. In drama it refers to a particular kind of play, the definition of which was established by Aristotles Poetics, in narrative, particularly in Middle Ages, it refers to a body of work recounting the fall of a persons of high degree.
134. tragedy
I do not read a book: I hold a conversation with the author. -Elbert Hubbard
136. Transcendentalism A reliance of the intuition and the conscience, a form of idealism; a philosophical ROMANTICISM reaching America a generation or two
136. Transcendentalism
after it developed in Europe. Transcendentalists believed in living close to nature and taught the dignity of manual labor and in democracy and individualism.
136. Transcendentalism
136. Transcendentalism
137. trope In rhetoric a trope is a FIGURE OF SPEECH involving a turn or change of sensethe use of a word in a sense other than the literal; in this sense figures of comparison as well as ironical expressions are tropes.
137. trope
Example of irony
137. trope
Example of irony
138. utopia A fiction describing an imaginary ideal world. DYSTOPIA, meaning bad place, is the term applied to unpleasant imaginary places, such as those in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwells 1984.
138. utopia
Used in two senses: (1) as a unit of poetry, in which case it has the same significance as STANZA or LINE; and (2) as a name given generally to metrical composition.
Robert Lowell
Sylvia Plath
140. vignette
A SKETCH or brief narrative characterized by precision and delicacy. The term is also applied to SHORT-SHORT STORIES less than 500 words in length.
140. vignette
Sandra Cisneros
-Franz Kafka