(Ewa) sonnet :P - The sonnet is one of the most popular forms of English poetry. Its most frequent theme is love, although some sonnets may focus on life, religion and even politics. The sonnet probably originated in Italy in the 13th century. Early sonnets were set to music, with accompaniment provided by a lute. In Italian 'sonnet' meant 'little sound' or 'song'; T here are two main forms of the sonnet in English poetry: the Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet, and the English, or Shakespearean sonnet
.Content and form in a literary text. - . A literary work is a work of art. 2. A literary work does not exist independent of its contexts: social, historical or literary. At the same time, neither does it assume a subservient role to those contexts. 3. All works of literature use certain conventions or techniques of expression. 4. In a literary work, form and content are fused together, and are integral parts of each other 5. Conflict and contrast are the most characteristic organising principles of literary works, especially of dramatic and narrative texts. 5. Literature usually presents personal experience, although it is not as a rule a direct representation of real-life events. 6. Literary works require analysis and interpretation because their statements are not always direct but are ambiguous. 7. Literary works are artefacts of culture.
Adventure novel - focuses on exciting events
Alliteration - is a phonetic stylistic device which consists in the repetition of similar consonant sounds in close succession. It is used to create melody, establish mood, call attention to important words, and point out similarities and contrasts, e.g. 'west wind'; 'Love's Labour's Lost'; 'Sense and Sensibility'; 'Pride and Prejudice'; 'Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before' ("The Raven" by E. A. Poe). Alliterative verse was a characteristic feature of Old English poetry
Antagonist - a character who opposes the main hero or protagonist
aside - Sometimes a character makes a comment, known as an aside, which other characters are not 107 supposed to hear
assonance - also known as vocalic rhyme is a similarity of sounds, especially vowels, between words or syllables, e.g. born/warm
Autobiographical novel - is based partly or wholly on the author's life experience
Ballad - One of the oldest forms of poetry is a special kind of narrative poem known as the ballad. These anonymous stories in songs were concerned with sharp conflicts and deep human emotion. The first ballads were sung by minstrels who travelled from town to town to entertain people. The language of the early ballads was quite simple because they were composed, as a rule, by uneducated people
Blank verse - also called heroic verse, in unrhymed iambic pentametre, is one of the most common metrical patterns in English poetry.
Catharsis - a tragedy performed in the theatre was believed by Aristotle to produce an emotionally therapeutic effect in the audience: the purgation of pity and fear Tragedy arouses in us both pity and fear. This feeling is called catharsis, i.e. purgation. A tragic hero arouses pity or fear if he or she is neither thoroughly evil nor thoroughly good. The term catharsis refers to a sudden emotional breakdown or climax that constitutes overwhelming feelings of great sorrow, pity, laughter or any extreme change in emotion that results in the restoration, renewal and revitalisation.
Characters - may usually be classified as protagonists and antagonists. We can also distinguish between active (dynamic) and static (passive) characters. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change
Christian novel - eflects Christian faith and often contains a plot that revolves around the Christian life, evangelism or conversion. The plot may be directly religious, allegorical or symbolic.
Classical literary genres - lyric, comedy, tragedy and satire.
Climatic structure - Its plot begins quite late in the story and there are a limited number of characters and scenes. The events have usually a cause-and-effect-structure. Examples of plays with a climactic plot structure include Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Macbeth
comedy - Comedy is a literary work that takes a cheerful view of life. It usually begins in adversity and ends in prosperity and happiness (happy end),
Conceit - an old word for concept) is a kind of complex metaphor which draws a parallel between two very distant concepts
Detective novel - describes a mystery, often involving a murder, which is solved by a professional or amateur detective. A good detective novel displays excellent logic of reasoning in unravelling the mystery or crime.
Deux ex machina - a Latin phrase meaning 'god from the machine', referring to the practice in ancient theatre of lowering a deity onto the stage to resolve a crisis in the plot. The phrase is now applied to any improbable event, chance or coincidence used by a dramatist to rescue characters from an impossible situation.
Dialogue - Dialogue is what characters say to each other. Dialogue is essential in a drama because it (1) advances the plot, (2) reveals characters, their moods, relationships to each other, (3) foreshadows events, etc. Dialogue is often rich in subtext
Dramatic irony - dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something that a character has not realised.
Dramatic monologue - type of lyric poetry in which a speaker addresses not the reader but a silent (hypothetical) listener
epic and lyric poetry - A narrative poem is one that tells us a story, e.g. the epic. Narrative or epic poetry usually deals with the past (history, legends, myths). A lyric is a non-narrative poem in which the poet expresses his feelings, makes a statement about life or creates an image
Episodic structure. - The episodic structure involves a plot which covers an extended span of time, numerous locations, a large number of characters, diverse events (including comic and serious episodes) and parallel plots or subplots. An example of a play with episodic structure is Shakespeare's King Lear.
Epistolary novel - is written in the form of letters
Ethnic or multicultural novel - is written by a member of or about an ethnic minority group
Explain the difference between the climactic and episodic structure of a dramatic play - Climactic structure Its plot begins quite late in the story and there are a limited number of characters and scenes. The events have usually a cause-and-effect-structure. Examples of plays with a climactic plot structure include Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Macbeth. Episodic * Plot begins relatively early in the story and moves through a series of episodes *Covers a longer period of time: weeks, months, and sometimes years * Many short, fragmented scenes; sometimes an alternation of short and long scene
Fables - are short allegorical stories about animals and objects which have human and mysterious qualities. They contain a distinct moral message, e.g. they illustrate the consequences of human weaknesses or foils, such as greed, envy, laziness, etc
Fairy tales - Fairy tales are traditional stories with elements of fantasy. They are usually set in a fantasy land and present stock characters such as 'a princess', 'a cruel stepmother', 'the greedy king', a 'good' or 'bad' giant, as well as supernatural objects, such as the magic tablecloth, golden egg etc
Farce - is a type of comedy that relies entirely on highly improbable actions and situations which involve ridiculous complications without regard for human values The farce presents highly exaggerated and caricatured types of characters and often has an unlikely plot. Farces employ sexual mix-ups, verbal humour and physical comedy
Features of tragedy - Tragedy is the oldest form of drama. It raises significant issues about the nature of human existence or human relationships; This conflict and the final overthrow of the individual make up a tragic drama. Tragedy has a solemn theme and plot. In general, tragedy involves the fall (death) of the leading characters.
Flashback - (a term derived from the language of cinema): it refers to an episode in narrative fiction that happened earlier in the story
Foreshadowing - a suggestion of what is going to happen in the story; is the technique of giving the reader a hint of what is to come sometime later in the story, while flashback is an interruption in the action of a story to show an episode that happened at an earlier time. A flashback provides background information necessary to an understanding of the characters or the plot.
Frame narrative - It is a story which is contained within another story. The purpose of such narration is to give the reader a freedom of opinion.
Free verse - is a typical form of modern poetry. It usually has no regular stanza and metric pattern
Function of literature - entertaining, informative, aesthetic, intellectual
Hamartia - Aristotle's term for a 'tragic flaw' (mistake) which causes the character's downfall
Hubris - an overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the protagonist of a tragedy. Hubris leads the protagonist to break a moral law or ignore a divine warning with disastrous results
Iambic pentametre - one of the most common metrical forms in English poetry, consisting of lines with five feet in which the iamb (unstressed and stressed syllable) is the dominant foot
Intertextuality - the term was introduced by the French semiotician Julia Kristeva in 1966, who objected to the traditional view that the author is "influenced" by earlier authors and their texts; Kristeva argued that all signifying systems transform earlier signifying systems. According to this theory, a literary work is not the product of a single author, but of its relationship to other texts. "Any text is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another." An example of intertextuality through allusion is in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (see p. 21) and that of intertextuality through parody is Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels [see pp. 107-8].
Irony - constitutes a special mode of expression frequently found in literature. Irony is based on a certain incongruity between what is said and what is actually meant. It is like saying one thing while you mean another. The surface meaning of words in ironical speech is different from their underlying meaning. Irony sets up a double audience: those who understand only the surface meaning, and those who understand that and also the underlying one. Irony is often used in criticism.
limited omniscience - When the narrator has omniscient knowledge about one or two characters, but not all,
Metaphor - is the most frequent figure of speech. It compares two unlike objects having something in common. In Greek, this word meant "transfer" because it transfers meaning from one word to another. The metaphor can convey experience which would otherwise be hard to name. Thus instead of saying X we say Y having in mind X
metonymy - is the association of one object with another, e.g. "crown" may mean kingdom; bottle means wine; "I've drunk a cup"
minor and major plot - The major plot refers to the main action whereas the minor plot develops parallel to the major one but it has secondary importance for the play
modern tragicomedy - In the 20th century, many theorists do not make a sharp distinction between the comic and the tragic. Modern tragicomedy and the Theatre of the Absurd have blurred the traditional distinction between the two dramatic genres. Tragicomic elements can be seen in modern drama, in the plays of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Slawomir Mrozek.
monologue - when character speaks alone
neutral omniscience - When a narrator allows the reader to make his or her own judgments about characters or the events
Nontraditional structure. - Some recent drama, however, defies the above definitions – its form is ambiguous. Avant-garde drama often arranges events in a random or illogical way to suggest the chaos or absurdity of life. An example of such a play is Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Novel - a long story written in prose dealing with invented people (characters) and events
ode - is a lengthy, song-like poem with an elaborate stanzaic structure and elevated style
omniscient narrator - knows everything about the characters, including their thoughts and feelings.
Onomatopeia - is a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating some natural sounds, e.g. hiss, splash, buzz, cuckoo, mew, bow-wow, bang, roar, murmur, etc. However, many words are merely thought to be onomatopoeic although they are not clearly imitative of the thing they denote, e.g. horror, terror, thriller. Onomatopoeia is often effectively used in poetry, as - for example - in Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem "The Bells": "Silver bells... how they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle", or in "The Raven": "And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
other types of novels - Fantasy novel ; Gothic novel , Historical novel , Pastoral novel , Panoramic novel , Realist novel , Romantic novel , Social novel , Novel of apprenticeship (Bildungsroman, Sentimental novel , Novel of manners , Utopian novel , Dystopian novel
Oxymoron - is a combination of two words whose meanings are opposite, e.g. awfully nice, sweet sorrows, darkness visible, little big Man
pastoral poetry - Pastoral poetry celebrates idealised rural life and love between shepherds and shepherdesses.
Peripeteia - reversal of fortune for the protagonist, from failure to success or from success to failure.
physical plot, psychological plot. - The latter is an invisible chain of "mental" events or thoughts occurring in the mind of the protagonist. For example, the psychological plot in Hamlet concerns the thoughts of Prince Hamlet. Frequently, the physical and psychological plots are interwoven in a play. Plot in a dramatic play is usually segmented into acts and scenes.
Plot - the story that is told in a novel or play or movie etc.
Plot structure - There are several types of dramatic structure. The main two structures are called the climactic structure and the episodic structure. However, we may find a number of traditional dramatic plays which combine the climactic and episodic structure.
Rhetorical question - a question which is not intended to obtain information but for emphasis, Rhetorical questions encourage the listener to reflect on what the implied answer to the question must be
rhyme - Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar syllable sounds. There are three kinds of rhymes: single or masculine rhymes between words ending in stressed syllable: day/say, awake/forsake; double or feminine rhymes between words in which the first syllable is stressed and the last is unstressed, e.g. daily/gaily; triple rhymes between words in which the first syllable is stressed and the last two are unstressed, e.g. tenderly/slenderly. Rhymes can be full or complete, e.g. deep/sleep or incomplete, e.g. flesh/fresh. Rhymes are arranged within a stanza. We may distinguish between end-of-line rhymes and internal rhymes. End-of-line rhymes appear at the terminal words or syllables in a line. Internal rhymes occur inside a verse. For example: "Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary..."(E.A. Poe); "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" (G(eorge) B(ernard) Shaw, Pygmalion). Rhymed words share all sounds following the word's last stressed syllable. The rhyme scheme is the pattern of end-of-line rhymes in a stanza, e.g. abba.
rhythm - Rhythm is a flow of speech characterised by regular recurrence of certain phonetic elements such as beat or accent. It is based on the opposition of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm may be regular or varied. Sprung rhythm refers to the poetry of the late Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, in which a stressed syllable is combined with any number of unstressed syllables
Satire - is a form of writing whose main aim is to expose human follies and vices, ridicule and scorn people, institutions or events and customs. Satire may be an independent literary form or it may appear in other forms of literature, both in verse and prose. Direct satire openly ridicules its object whereas indirect satire, often found in poetry and prose, has to be deduced by the reader.
short story - usually refers to short fiction written since the mid 19th century.As a rule, it has one central character and very few others. Exposition and the details of setting are minimised. Frequently, a short story is limited to a single episode and the denouement is sometimes described in a few sentences.
Simile - is a comparison between two things of unlike nature that have something in common. It is recognisable by the use of the word "like" or "as". Similes frequently appear in verse and prose as well as in ordinary speech, e.g. "He fell like a stone". "She looked like a doll". Similes are also used in colloquial phrases, e.g. sly as a fox, busy as a bee, to work like a horse, stubborn as a mule, etc
soliloquy - special kind of monologue in a traditional drama is soliloquy when a character steps to the side of the stage to think aloud. The most famous soliloquy is perhaps Hamlet's "To be or not to be."
spatial and temporal setting - (a) spatial setting which refers to place and (b) temporal setting which refers to time. For example, the spatial and temporal setting of E. A. Poe's poem "The Raven" is a gloomy room on a December night.
Stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue - is a narrative technique characteristic of the modern novel. With reference to the novel, it denotes the flow of thoughts and feelings which pass through a character's mind.
Symbol - The most common symbols are letters, which are symbols of words and sounds. A symbol can be an actual object, such as the crucifix (a symbol of Christianity). Symbols are used often in poetry and other types of literature. Symbolism is the applied use of symbols: iconic representations that carry particular conventional meanings
Symbolism - may be understood as representation of reality by symbols or a system of symbols or symbolic meaning in a literary text
synecdoche - is a trope similar to metonymy in which part is used to signify the whole, e.g. a farm hand means a farm labourer; sail means ship.
The high and low style - The high or grand style was devoted to dignified themes in epic and lyric poetry as well as tragedy, and the low style was characteristic of comedy and satire. The difference between the high and low style is mainly in the use of language. The high style uses words and expressions rarely found in ordinary speech whereas the low style imitates colloquial speech with its characteristic coarseness. Contrary to many contemporary writers, William Shakespeare deliberately mixed features of the high style and the low style in his dramas.
the mock epic poetry - The mock epic is a type of epic poetry which satirises some contemporary issues
The origins of drama - It seems that drama developed from ritual, first in Greece and then in its revived form in the Middle Ages. The first works of dramatic literature date back to the 6th century BC. The origins of ancient Greek drama can be found in: 1. folk celebrations, 2. myths, 3. seasonal festivals with appropriate symbolic actions.
The protagonist - is often the main character (the central or main figure) of a story The principal opponent of the protagonist is a character known as the antagonist, who represents or creates obstacles that the protagonist(s) must overcome
Theatre of the Absurd - a type of theatre which presents characters cut off from religious and social roots and who live in meaningless isolation in an alien (absurd) universe
Theme - is the unifying and universal idea explored in a literary work. It may reappear in other literary works, e.g. tragic love, loneliness, death, etc. It may be explicit (directly stated) or implicit (indirectly stated, implied). Sometimes theme may be confused with motif. A theme in John Keats' poem "Ode to a Nightingale" is incompatibility between the ideal and the real world
Tragic relief - a tragic or near-tragic episode in a Comedy
Tragic vision - is based on the following interrelated elements: 1. The conclusion is catastrophic and inevitable. 2. The protagonist's fall is caused by some uncontrollable forces (fate, fortune or chance). 3. The protagonist's fall reveals his or her powerlessness and limitations. 4. Tragedy reveals not only man's liability to suffering but also to greatness and nobility. 5. Suffering is an enduring and often inexplicable force in human life. The protagonist's suffering often seems disproportionate to his or her culpability. 6. Suffering is often but not always redemptive, bringing out the capacity for accepting moral responsibility. 7. Man is responsible for his actions.
Tragicomedy - is a blending of tragic and comic elements. Unlike comedy, tragicomedy reveals deep emotions and deals with the problems of human suffering, mortality and death
types of irony - 1. verbal irony, 2. irony of situation, 3. cosmic irony or irony of fate, 4. dramatic irony, 5. Socratic irony.
Unities - In the Poetics, Aristotle said that a tragedy should have a single action, take place within a short time, and be confined to one location (one day, one major action and one setting).
Verisimilitude - appearance of being true or real; plausibility
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