The
glossary of Literary and Cultural Terms begins on page 2907 of the
textbook. You can also access the textbook's
entire glossary online.
A
- B - C - D - E
- F - G - H - I
- J - K - L - M
- N - O - P - Q
- R - S - T - U
- V - W - X - Y
- Z
A
Accent
Stress or emphasis
on a syllable, as opposed to the syllable's length of duration, its
quantity. Metrical accent denotes the metrical pattern ( Ù -) to which
writers fit and adjust accented words and rhetorical emphases, keeping
the meter as they substitute word-accented feet and tune their rhetoric.
Accentual Verse
Verse with lines established by counting accents only, without
regard to the number of unstressed syllables. This was the dominant
form of verse in English until the time of Chaucer. AcrosticÊÊ Words
arranged, frequently in a poem or puzzle, to disclose a hidden word
or message when the correct combination of letters is read in sequence.
Aesthetics
The study of the beautiful; the branch of philosophy concerned
with defining the nature of art and establishing criteria of judgment.
Allegory
A story that suggests another story. The first part of this word
comes from the Greek allos, "other." An allegory is present in literature
whenever it is clear that the author is saying, "By this I also mean
that." In practice, allegory appears when a progression of events
or images suggests a translation of them into conceptual language.
Allegory is thus a technique of aligning imaginative constructs, mythological
or poetic, with conceptual or moral models. During the Romantic era
a distinction arose between allegory and symbol. With Coleridge, symbol
took precedence: "an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions
into picture-language," but "a symbol always partakes of the reality
which it makes intelligible."
Alliteration
"Adding letters" (Latin ad+littera, "letter"). Two or more words,
or accented syllables, chime on the same initial letter (lost love
alone; after apple-picking) or repeat the same consonant. Alliterative
RevivalÊÊ The outburst of alliterative verse that occurred in the
second half of the 14th century in west and northwest England.
Alliterative Verse
Verse using alliteration on stressed syllables for its fundamental
structure. AllusionÊÊ A meaningful reference, direct or indirect,
as when William Butler Yeats writes, "Another Troy must rise and set,"
calling to mind the whole tragic history of Troy.
Allusion
Anapest
A metrical foot:
Anthropomorphism
The practice of giving human attributes to animals, plants, rivers,
winds, and the like, or to such entities as Grecian urns and abstract
ideas.
Antithesis
(1) A direct contrast or opposition. (2) The second phase of dialectical
argument, which considers the opposition-the three steps being thesis,
antithesis, synthesis. (3) A rhetorical figure sharply contrasting
ideas in balanced parallel structures.
Apology
A justification, as in Sir Philip Sidney's The Apology for Poetry
(1595).
Archetype
(1) The first of a genre, like Homer's Iliad, the first heroic
epic. (2) A natural symbol imprinted in human consciousness by experience
and literature, like dawn symbolizing hope or an awakening; night,
death or repose.
Assonance
Repetition of middle vowel sounds: fight, hive; pane, make. Assonance,
most effective on stressed syllables, is often found within a line
of poetry; less frequently it substitutes for end rhyme.
Back
to the top
B
Ballad
A narrative poem
in short stanzas, with or without music. The term derives by way of
French ballade from Latin ballare, "to dance," and once meant a simple
song of any kind, lyric or narrative, especially one to accompany
a dance. As ballads evolved, most lost their association with dance,
although they kept their strong rhythms. Modern usage distinguishes
three major kinds: the anonymous traditional ballad (popular ballad
or folk ballad), transmitted orally; the broadside ballad, printed
and sold on single sheets; and the literary ballad (or art ballad),
a sophisticated imitation of the traditional ballad.
Blank verse
Unrhymed iambic
pentameter. See also Meter. In the 1540s Henry Howard, earl of Surrey,
seems to have originated it in English as the equivalent of Virgil's
unrhymed dactylic hexameter. In Gorboduc (1561), Thomas Sackville
and Thomas Norton introduced blank verse into the drama, whence it
soared with Marlowe and Shakespeare in the 1590s. Milton forged it
anew for the epic in Paradise Lost (1667).
Back
to the top
C
Caesura
A pause in a
metrical line, indicated by punctuation, momentarily suspending the
beat (from Latin "a cutting off"). Caesuras are masculine at the end
of a foot, and feminine in mid-foot.
Chiasmus
A rhetorical
balance created by the inversion of one of two parallel phrases or
clauses; from the Greek for a "placing crosswise," as in the Greek
letter c (chi).
Classicism
A principle in
art and conduct reflecting the ethos of ancient Greece and Rome: balance,
form, proportion, propriety, dignity, simplicity, objectivity, rationality,
restraint, unity rather than diversity. In English literature, classicism
emerged with Erasmus (1466-1536) and his fellow humanists. In the
Restoration and 18th century, classicism, or neoclassicism, expressed
society's deep need for balance and restraint after the shattering
Civil War and Puritan commonwealth. Classicism continued in the 19th
century, after the Romantic period, particularly in the work of Matthew
Arnold. T. E. Hulme, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot expressed it for
the 20th century.
Cliche
An overused expression,
once clever or metaphorical but now trite and timeworn.
Closed Couplet
The heroic couplet,
especially when the thought and grammar are complete in the two iambic
pentameter lines.
Comedy
One of the typical
literary structures, originating as a form of drama and later extending
into prose fiction and other genres as well. Comedy, as Susanne Langer
says, is the image of Fortune; tragedy, the image of Fate. Each sorts
out for attention the different facts of life. Comedy sorts its pleasures.
It pleases our egos and endows our dreams, stirring at once two opposing
impulses, our vindictive lust for superiority and our wishful drive
for success and happiness ever after. The dark impulse stirs the pleasure
of laughter; the light, the pleasure of wish fulfillment.
Conceit
Any fanciful,
ingenious expression or idea, but especially one in the form of an
extended metaphor.
Connotation
The ideas, attitudes,
or emotions associated with a word in the mind of speaker or listener,
writer or reader. It is contrasted with the denotation, the thing
the word stands for, the dictionary definition, an objective concept
without emotional coloring.
Consonance
(1) Repetition
of inner or end consonant sounds, as, for example, the r and s sounds
from Gerard Manley Hopkins's God's Grandeur: "broods with warm breast."
(2) In a broader sense, a generally pleasing combination of sounds
or ideas; things that sound well together.
Couplet
A pair of rhymed
metrical lines, usually in iambic tetrameter or pentameter. Sometimes
the two lines are of different length.
Back
to the top
D
Dactyl
A three-syllable
metrical foot: . It is the basic foot of dactylic hexameter, the six-foot
line of Greek and Roman epic poetry.
Dead Metaphor
A metaphor accepted
without its figurative picture: "a jacket," for the paper around a
book, with no mental picture of the human coat that prompted the original
metaphor.
Deism
A rational philosophy
of religion, beginning with the theories of Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
the "Father of Deism," in his De Veritate (1624). Deists generally
held that God, the supreme Artisan, created a perfect clock of a universe,
withdrew, and left it running, not to return to intervene in its natural
works or the life of humankind; that the Bible is a moral guide, but
neither historically accurate nor divinely authentic; and that reason
guides human beings to virtuous conduct.
Denotation
The thing that
a word stands for, the dictionary definition, an objective concept
without emotional coloring. It is contrasted with the connotation,
ideas, attitudes, or emotions associated with the word in the mind
of user or hearer.
Determinism
The philosophical
belief that events are shaped by forces beyond the control of human
beings
Dialect
A variety of
language belonging to a particular time, place, or social group, as,
for example, an 18th-century cockney dialect, a New England dialect,
or a coal miner's dialect. A language other than one's own is for
the most part unintelligible without study or translation; a dialect
other than one's own can generally be understood, although pronunciation,
vocabulary, and syntax seem strange.
Dialogue
Conversation
between two or more persons, as represented in prose fiction, drama,
or essays, as opposed to monologue, the speech of one person. Good
dialogue characterizes each speaker by idiom and attitude as it advances
the dramatic conflict. The dialogue as a form of speculative exposition,
or dialectical argument, is often less careful to distinguish the
diction and character of the speakers.
Diatribe
Greek for "a
wearing away": a bitter and abusive criticism or invective, often
lengthy, directed against a person, institution, or work.
Diction
Word choice in
speech or writing, an important element of style.
Doggerel
(1) Trivial verse
clumsily aiming at meter, usually tetrameter. (2) Any verse facetiously
low and loose in meter and rhyme.
Dramatic Irony
A character in
drama or fiction unknowingly says or does something in ironic contrast
to what the audience or reader knows or will learn.
Dramatic Monologue
A monologue in
verse. A speaker addresses a silent listener, revealing, in dramatic
irony, things about himself or herself of which the speaker is unaware.
Back
to the top
E
Elegy
Greek for "lament":
a poem on death or on a serious loss; characteristically a sustained
meditation expressing sorrow and, frequently, an explicit or implied
consolation
Empathy
Greek for "feeling
with": identification with the feelings or passions of another person,
natural creature, or even an inanimate object conceived of as possessing
human attributes. Empathy suggests emotional identification, whereas
sympathy may be largely an intellectual appreciation of another's
situation.
Empricism
Empiricism is
basic to the scientific method and to literary naturalism. It is opposed
to rationalism, which discovers truth through reason alone, without
regard to experience.
End Rhyme
Rhyme at the
end of a line of verse (the usual placement), as distinguished from
initial rhyme, at the beginning, or internal rhyme, within the line.
Enjambment
Run-on lines
in which grammatical sense runs from one line of poetry to the next
without pause or punctuation. The opposite of an end-stopped line.
Enlightenment
A philosophical
movement in the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly in France, characterized
by the conviction that reason could achieve all knowledge, supplant
organized religion, and ensure progress toward happiness and perfection.
Epic
A long narrative
poem, typically a recounting of history or legend or of the deeds
of a national hero. During the Renaissance, critical theory emphasized
two assumptions: (1) the encyclopedic knowledge needed for major poetry,
and (2) an aristocracy of genres, according to which epic and tragedy,
because they deal with heroes and ruling-class figures, were reserved
for major poets. Romanticism revived both the long mythological poem
and the verse romance, but the prestige of the encyclopedic epic still
lingered. In his autobiographical poem The Prelude, Wordsworth
self-consciously internalized the heroic argument of the epic.
Epic Simile
Sometimes called
a Homeric simile: an extended simile, comparing one thing with another
by lengthy description of the second, often beginning with "as when"
and concluding with "so" or "such."
Epiphany
In religious
tradition, the revelation of a divinity. James Joyce adapted the term
to signify a moment of profound or spiritual revelation, when even
the stroke of a clock or a noise in the street brings sudden illumination,
and "its soul, its whatness leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance."
For Joyce, art was an epiphany.
Essay
A literary composition
on a single subject; usually short, in prose, and nonexhaustive. The
word derives from French essai "an attempt," first used in the modern
sense by Michel de Montaigne, whose Essais (1580-1588) are classics
of the genre. Francis Bacon's Essays (1597) brought the term and form
to English.
Euphony
Melodious sound,
the opposite of cacophony. A major feature of verse, but also a consideration
in prose, euphony results from smooth-flowing meter or sentence rhythm
as well as attractive sounds.
F
Fable
(1) A short, allegorical story in verse or prose, frequently of
animals, told to illustrate a moral. (2) The story line or plot of
a narrative or drama. (3) Loosely, any legendary or fabulous account.
Feminine Ending
An extra unstressed
syllable at the end of a metrical line, usually iambic.
Feminine Rhyme
A rhyme of both
the stressed and the unstressed syllables of one feminine ending with
another.
Foot
The metrical
unit; in English, an accented syllable with accompanying light syllable
or syllables.
Free Verse
French vers libre;
poetry free of traditional metrical and stanzaic pattern
G
Genre
A term often
applied loosely to the larger forms of literary convention, roughly
analogous to "species" in biology. The Greeks spoke of three main
genres of poetry-lyric, epic, and drama. Within each major genre,
there are subgenres. In written forms dominated by prose, for example,
there is a broad distinction between works of fiction (e.g., the novel)
and thematic works (e.g., the essay). Within the fictional category,
we note a distinction between novel and romance, and other forms such
as satire and confession. The object of making these distinctions
in literary tradition is not simply to classify but to judge authors
in terms of the conventions they themselves chose.
H
Heroic Couplet
The closed and balanced iambic pentameter couplet typical of the
heroic plays of John Dryden; hence, any closed couplet.
Historicism
(1) Historical
relativism. (2) An approach to literature that emphasizes its historical
environment, the climate of ideas, belief, and literary conventions
surrounding and influencing the writer.
Hyperbole
Overstatement
to make a point, as when a parent tells a child "I've told you a thousand
times."
I
Iambus (or Iamb
-- there's a typo in the Longman textbook)
A metrical foot:
Idealism
(1) In philosophy
and ethics, an emphasis on ideas and ideals, as opposed to the sensory
emphasis of materialism. (2) Literary idealism follows from philosophical
precepts, emphasizing a world in which the most important reality
is a spiritual or transcendent truth not always reflected in the world
of sense perception.
Image
A concrete picture,
either literally descriptive, as in "Red roses covered the white wall,"
or figurative, as in "She is a rose," each carrying a sensual and
emotive connotation. A figurative image may be an analogy, metaphor,
simile, personification, or the like. ImpressionismÊÊ A literary style
conveying subjective impressions rather than objective reality, taking
its name from the movement in French painting in the mid-19th century,
notably in the works of Manet, Monet, and Renoir. The Imagists represented
impressionism in poetry; in fiction, writers like Virginia Woolf and
James Joyce. Industrial RevolutionÊÊ The accelerated change, beginning
in the 1760s, from an agricultural-shopkeeping society, using hand
tools, to an industrial-mechanized one.
Internal Rhyme
Rhyme within
a line, rather than at the beginning (initial rhyme) or end (end rhyme);
also, rhyme matching sounds in the middle of a line with sounds at
the end.
Irony
In general, irony
is the perception of a clash between appearance and reality, between
seems and is, or between ought and is. The myriad shadings of irony
seem to fall into three categories: (1) Verbal irony-saying something
contrary to what it means; the appearance is what the words say, the
reality is their contrary meaning. (2) Dramatic irony-saying or doing
something while unaware of its ironic contrast with the whole truth;
named for its frequency in drama, dramatic irony is a verbal irony
with the speaker's awareness erased. (3) Situational irony-events
turning to the opposite of what is expected or what should be. The
ironic situation turns the speaker's unknowing words ironic. Situational
irony is the essence of both comedy and tragedy: the young lovers
run into the worst possible luck, until everything clears up happily;
the most noble spirits go to their death, while the featherheads survive.
Italian Sonnet
(or Petrarchan
Sonnet)ÊÊ A sonnet composed of an octave and sestet, rhyming abbaabba
cdecde (or cdcdcd or some variant, without a closing couplet).
J
K
L
Lyric
A poem, brief
and discontinuous, emphasizing sound and pictorial imagery rather
than narrative or dramatic movement.
M
Manners
Masculine Ending
Masculine Rhyme
Materialism
Metaphor
Meter
The measured
pulse of poetry. English meters derive from four Greek and Roman quantitative
meters (see also Quantitative Verse), which English stresses more
sharply, although the patterns are the same. The unit of each pattern
is the foot, containing one stressed syllable and one or two light
ones. Rising meter goes from light to heavy; falling meter, from heavy
to light. One meter-iambic-has dominated English poetry, with the
three others lending an occasional foot, for variety, and producing
a few poems.
Rising Meters ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
Iambic: Ù - (the iambus)
Anapestic: Ù Ù -(the anapest)
Falling Meters ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
Trochaic: -Ù (the trochee)
Dactylic: -Ù Ù (the dactyl) The number of feet in a line also gives
the verse a name: ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
1 foot: monometer
2 feet: dimeter
3 feet: trimeter
4 feet: tetrameter
5 feet: pentameter
6 feet: hexameter
7 feet: heptameter All meters show some variations, and substitutions
of other kinds of feet, but three variations in iambic writing are
virtually standard: ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
Inverted foot: -Ù (a trochee)
Spondee: -- Ionic double foot: Ù Ù -- The pyrrhic foot of classical
meters, two light syllables ( Ù Ù ), lives in the English line only
in the Ionic double foot, although some prosodists scan a relatively
light iambus as pyrrhic.
Examples of meters and scansion:
Iambic Tetrameter An-ni- hil-a- ting all that's made To a green thought
in a green shade. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
Andrew Marvell, "The Garden" Iambic Tetrameter (with two inverted
feet) ÊÊÊClose to the sun in lone- ly lands, ÊÊÊRinged with the az-
ure world, he stands. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Eagle" Iambic Pentameter Love's not Time's
fool, though ros- y lips and cheeks Within his bend- ing sick- le's
com- pass come ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 When to the ses- sions of sweet si-
lent thought ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30 Anapestic Tetrameter (trochees substituted)
The pop- lars are felled; farewell to the shade ÊÊÊAnd the whis- pering
sound of the cool colonnade ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
William Cowper, "The Popular Field" ÊÊÊTrochaic Tetrameter Tell me
not in mournful numbers ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life" Dactylic Hexameter This
is the forest prim- eval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks Bearded
with moss.... ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Evangeline"
Metonymy
"Substitute naming."
A figure of speech in which an associated idea stands in for the actual
item: "The pen is mightier than the sword" for "Literature and propaganda
accomplish more and survive longer than warfare," or "The White House
announced" for "The President announced." See also synecdoche.
Mimesis
A term meaning
"imitation." It has been central to literary criticism since Aristotle's
Poetics. The ordinary meaning of imitation as creating a resemblance
to something else is clearly involved in Aristotle's definition of
dramatic plot as mimesis praxeos, the imitation of an action. But
there are many things that a work of literature may imitate, and hence
many contexts of imitation. Works of literature may imitate other
works of literature: this is the aspect of literature that comes into
such conceptions as convention and genre. In a larger sense, every
work of literature imitates, or finds its identity in, the entire
"world of words," in Wallace Stevens's phrase, the sense of the whole
of reality as potentially literary, as finding its end in a book,
as StŽphane MallarmŽ says.
Muse
The inspirer
of poetry, on whom the poet calls for assistance. In Greek mythology
the Muses were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne ("Memory")
presiding over the arts and sciences.
N
Naturalism
(1) Broadly,
according to nature. In this sense, naturalism is opposed to idealism,
emphasizing things accessible to the senses in this world in contrast
to permanent or spiritual truths presumed to lie outside it. (2) More
specifically, a literary movement of the late 19th century; an extension
of realism, naturalism was a reaction against the restrictions inherent
in the realistic emphasis on the ordinary, as naturalists insisted
that the extraordinary is real, too.
Novel
The extended
prose fiction that arose in the 18th century to become a major literary
expression of the modern world. The term comes from the Italian novella,
the short "new" tale of intrigue and moral comeuppance most eminently
disseminated by Boccaccio's Decameron (1348-1353). The terms novel
and romance, from the French roman, competed interchangeably for most
of the 18th century.
O
Octave
(1) The first
unit in an Italian sonnet: eight lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming
abbaabba. See also Meter. (2) A stanza in eight lines.
Ode
A long, stately
lyric poem in stanzas of varied metrical pattern. Old EnglishÊÊ The
language brought to England, beginning in 449, by the Jute, Angle,
and Saxon invaders from Denmark; the language base from which modern
English evolved. Old English LiteratureÊÊ The literature of England
from the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the mid-5th century until the beginning
of the Middle English period in the mid-12th century.
Onomatopoeia
The use of words
formed or sounding like what they signify-buzz, crack, smack, whinny-especially
in an extensive capturing of sense by sound.
Oxymoron
A pointed stupidity:
oxy, "sharp," plus moron. One of the great ironic figures of speech-for
example, "a fearful joy," or Milton's "darkness visible."
P
Palimpsest
A piece of writing on secondhand vellum, parchment, or other surface
carrying traces of erased previous writings.
Panegyric
A piece of writing
in praise of a person, thing, or achievement.
Paradox
An apparently
untrue or self-contradictory statement or circumstance that proves
true upon reflection or when examined in another light.
Parody
Originally, "a
song sung beside" another. From this idea of juxtaposition arose the
two basic elements of parody, comedy and criticism. As comedy, parody
exaggerates or distorts the prominent features of style or content
in a work. As criticism, it mimics the work, borrowing words or phrases
or characteristic turns of thought in order to highlight weaknesses
of conception or expression.
Pastiche
A literary or other artistic work created by assembling bits and
pieces from other works.
Pastoral
From Latin pastor,
a shepherd. The first pastoral poet was Theocritus, a Greek of the
3rd century B.C. The pastoral was especially popular in Europe from
the 14th through the 18th centuries, with some fine examples still
written in England in the 19th century. The pastoral mode is self-reflexive.
Typically the poet echoes the conventions of earlier pastorals in
order to put "the complex into the simple," as William Empson observed
in Some Versions of Pastoral (1935). The poem is not really about
shepherds, but about the complex society the poet and readers inhabit.
Pathetic Fallacy
The attribution
of animate or human characteristics to nature, as, for example, when
rocks, trees, or weather are portrayed as reacting in sympathy to
human feelings or events.
Pentameter
A line of five
metrical feet. (See Meter.)
Persona
A mask (in Latin);
in poetry and fiction, the projected speaker or narrator of the work-that
is, a mask for the actual author.
Personification
The technique
of treating abstractions, things, or animals as persons. A kind of
metaphor, personification turns abstract ideas, like love, into a
physical beauty named Venus, or conversely, makes dumb animals speak
and act like humans.
Petrarchan Sonnet
Another name
for an Italian sonnet.
Picturesque, The
TheÊÊ A quality
in landscape, and in idealized landscape painting, admired in the
second half of the 18th century and featuring crags, flaring and blasted
trees, a torrent or winding stream, ruins, and perhaps a quiet cottage
and cart, with contrasting light and shadow. It was considered an
aesthetic mean between the poles of Edmund Burke's A Philosophical
Inquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756).
Platonism
Any reflection
of Plato's philosophy, particularly the belief in the eternal reality
of ideal forms, of which the diversities of the physical world are
but transitory shadows.
Pre-Raphaelite
Characteristic
of a small but influential group of mid-19th-century painters who
hoped to recapture the spiritual vividness they saw in medieval painting
before Raphael (1483-1520).
Prosody
The analysis
and description of meters; metrics (see also Meter). Linguists apply
the term to the study of patterns of accent in a language.
Q
Quantitative Verse
Verse that takes account of the quantity of the syllables (whether
they take a long or short time to pronounce) rather than their stress
patterns.
Quatrain
A stanza of four
lines, rhymed or unrhymed. With its many variations, it is the most
common stanzaic form in English.
R
Rationalism
The theory that reason, rather than revelation or authority, provides
knowledge, truth, the choice of good over evil, and an adequate understanding
of God and the universe.
Rhetoric
From Greek rhetor,
"orator": the art of persuasion in speaking or writing. Since ancient
times, rhetoric has been understood by some as a system of persuasive
devices divorced from considerations of the merits of the case argued.
Rhyme
(sometimes Rime,
an older spelling)ÊÊThe effect created by matching sounds at the ends
of words. The functions of rhyme are essentially four: pleasurable,
mnemonic, structural, and rhetorical. Like meter and figurative language,
rhyme provides a pleasure derived from fulfillment of a basic human
desire to see similarity in dissimilarity, likeness with a difference.
Run-on Line
A line of poetry
whose sense does not stop at the end, with punctuation, but runs on
to the next line.
S
Satire
Poking corrective
ridicule at persons, types, actions, follies, mores, and beliefs
Shakespearean Sonnet
(or English Sonnet)ÊÊ
A sonnet in three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef
gg.
Simile
Sonnet
A verse form of 14 lines, in English characteristically in iambic
pentameter and most often in one of two rhyme schemes; the Italian
(or Petrarchan) or Shakespearan (or English). An Italian
sonnet is composed of an octave, rhyming abbaabba, and a sestet,
rhyming cdecde or cdcdcd, or in some variant pattern,
but with no closing couplet. A Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains
and a couplet, and rhymes abab cdcd efef gg.
In both types, the content tends to follow the formal outline suggested
by rhyme linkage, giving two divisions to the thought of an Italian
sonnet and four to a Shakespearean one.
Spondee
A
metrical foot of two long, or stressed, syllables: --.
Sprung Rhythm
Gerard
Manley Hopkins's term to describe his variations of iambic meter to
avoid the "same and tame." His feet, he said, vary from one to four
syllables, with one stress per foot, on the first syllable.
Stanza
A
term derived from an Italian word for "room" or "stopping place" and
used, loosely, to designate any grouping of lines in a separate unit
in a poem: a verse paragraph. More strictly, a stanza is a grouping
of a prescribed number of lines in a given meter, usually with a particular
rhyme scheme, repeated as a unit of structure. Poems in stanzas provide
an instance of the aesthetic pleasure in repetition with a difference
that also underlies the metrical and rhyming elements of poetry.
Stress
In poetry, the accent or emphasis given to certain syllables, indicated
in scansion by a macron (-). In a trochee, for example, the stress
falls on the first syllable: su-mmeÙ r. See also Meter.
Sublime
In
literature, a quality attributed to lofty or noble ideas, grand or
elevated expression, or (the ideal of sublimity) an inspiring combination
of thought and language. In nature or art, it is a quality, as in
a landscape or painting, that inspires awe or reverence.
Symbol
Something
standing for its natural qualities in another context, with human
meaning added: an eagle, standing for the soaring imperious dominance
of Rome.
Synecdoche
The
understanding of one thing by another-a kind of metaphor in which
a part stands for the whole, or the whole for a part: a hired hand
meaning "a laborer."
T
Tragedy Fundamentally,
a serious fiction involving the downfall of a hero or heroine. As
a literary form, a basic mode of drama. Tragedy often involves the
theme of isolation, in which a hero, a character of greater than ordinary
human importance, becomes isolated from the community. Then there
is the theme of the violation and reestablishment of order, in which
the neutralizing of the violent act may take the form of revenge.
Finally, a character may embody a passion too great for the cosmic
order to tolerate, such as the passion of sexual love. Renaissance
tragedy seems to be essentially a mixture of the heroic and the ironic.
It tends to center on heroes who, though they cannot be of divine
parentage in Christianized Western Europe, are still of titanic importance,
with an articulateness and social authority beyond anything in our
normal experience.
Tragic Irony
The essence of tragedy, in which the most noble and most deserving
person, because of the very grounds of his or her excellence, dies
in defeat. See also Irony.
Trochee
A metrical
foot going -Ù
U
V
W
Wit and Humor
Wit
is intellectual acuity; humor, an amused indulgence of human deficiencies.
Wit now denotes the acuity that produces laughter. It originally meant
mere understanding, then quickness of understanding, then, beginning
in the 17th century, quick perception coupled with creative fancy.
Humor (British humour, from the four bodily humors) was simply a disposition,
usually eccentric. In the 18th century, humour came to mean a laughable
eccentricity and then a kindly amusement at such eccentricity.
X
Y
Z
Zeugma
The
technique of using one word to yoke two or more others for ironic
or amusing effect, achieved when at least one of the yoked is a misfit,
as in Alexander Pope's "lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball."
