English Literature
Introduction to key terms of Literature
Introduction to key terms of Literature
Internal rhyme
full rhyme between two or more words within the same line of verse, e.g. "And a clatter and a chatter from within [...]" (Swinburne, Itylus)
Rhyme scheme description
schematic representation of the sequence of end rhymes = rhyme scheme,
rhyming lines are indicated by identical lower case letters, e.g. aabb, abcabc, etc.; lines that don't rhyme are indicated by "x", e.g. axbaxb (two "x" doesn't mean that these lines rhyme!), if a line also has metrum, this is indicated by numbers, e.g.x4a3x4a3
subdivides a poem , end-rhymes link lines in verse, a new rhyme frequently marks the beginning og a new unit of meaning, rhymes also creates link between ryhming words by means of repetition on phonological level ( heighten contrast), =intratextual parallels, rhymes highlight coherence of text
Embracing rhyme
abba/axxa
Alternate rhyme
abab/xaxa
Couplet
two lines aa
Stanza
A stanza is sequence of lines that is visually marked off as a separate unit. A stanza consists of one or more verse sequences, and a poem consists of one or more stanzas
Heroic couplet
a5a5, pentameter (often iambic) line, end rhyme with following pentameter line, e.g. "An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then, in patience our proceeding be"
(Hamlet 5.1.291)
Rime royal
a seven-line, iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc
Petrarchan/Italian sonnet
14 lines, 2 quatrains/1 octave (abba abba), 2 tercets/1 sestet (cde cde/cdc cdc). Functions of verse sequences: Presentation of a problem in the octave, the solution in the sestet, first line of sestet (line 9) as turning point
Shakespearean/English sonnet
14 lines, 3 quatrains (abab cdcd efef), 1 couplet (gg). Specific functions of verse sequences: presentation of problem in 3 quatrains, solution in couplet
New Historicist
What new historicists do
> Juxtapose literary and non-literary texts
> Defamiliarise the canonical literary text, see it as new
> Close-reading of the historical text
> Focus on issues of state power, patriarchal structures, colonisation
> Influenced by Derrida (“reality is textualised”)
> Influenced by Foucault (“social structures determined by dominant discursive practices”)
> Stephen Greenblatt Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, 1980.
New Historicism/ Cultural Materialism:
Basic definition
— Attention to cultural history
— “historicity of texts and the textuality of history
”“a method based on the parallel reading of literary and non- literary texts, usually of the same historical period”
- Countermovement to New Criticism
— New Criticism: work = self-contained, “nothing outside the text” - historical texts = co-text rather than con-text
- refuses to privilege the literary text
— not: “historical background” - Literary and non-literary texts inform each other
— “the textuality of history, the historicity of the text” (Louis Montrose)
Historicist rather than historical:
- Interested in history as represented in written documents
- history-as-text
- historical events are lost, all that remains are texts
Marxist Criticis
What Marxist Critics do
> Search for ‘covert’ content and relate it to Marxist themes: — Class struggle, capitalism, economics
> Relate the context of a work to the social class of the author — Assumption: the author is unaware of what he/she says in work
> Relate the work to the social assumptions of the time in which it is ‘consumed’
> Karl Marx (1818-1883)
> Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
> Louis Althusser (and Etienne Balibar). Reading Capital. Trans. 1971
Marxist Criticism
Basic definition
“Marxist literary criticism maintains that a writer’s social class, and its prevailing ‘ideology’ (outlook, values, tacit assumptions, half-realised allegiances, etc.) have a major bearing on what is written by a member of that class.”
> Authors are formed by their social context
> “Less historical” than new historicist or cultural materialist criticism (“class struggle” vs. historical documents)
Psychoanalytic Critics
What Psychoanalytic Critics do
> Search for ‘covert’ content (unconscious) and privilege it as being what the work is “really” about.
> Attention to unconscious motives and feelings of both author and characters
> Demonstrate presence of classic psychoanalytic symptoms in a text
> “Psychic” context of literary work rather than social or historical context
> Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
> Jacques Lacan
Feminist psychoanalytic critics:
> Luce Iragaray
> Julia Kristeva
Psychoanalytic Criticism
Basic definition
“Psychoanalytic criticism is a form of literary criticism which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature.”
> the unconscious, repression, sublimation, displacement
— e.g. repressed sexual urgesàsublimated as intense religiouslonging
— e.g. sword as displaced rape (via phallic symbolism)> Psyche as ego (consciousness), super-ego (conscience), id (unconscious)
> Sexuality (e.g. Oedipal complex)
Deconstruction
What Poststructuralist Critics do
> “Read the text against itself” à expose meanings that are contrary to surface meaning
> Look at features of words
— Sound similarities, etymology, dead metaphors> Expose disunity rather than unity of the text
> Deconstruct their own readings by reading a passage over and over
> Look for shifts, breaks, discontinuities
> Roland Barthes. The Death of the Author. 1967. (1915-1980) – structuralismàpost-structuralism(?)
> Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) “there is nothing outside the text”
Deconstruction
Basic definition
Structuralism (“language shapes the world”)
<--
Post-structuralism
(“no fixed landmark beyond linguistic processing”), (“all is constructed, all can be deconstructed”)
--> Deconstruction
Feminist Criticism
What Feminist Critics do
> Rethink the canon, rediscovery of texts written by women
> Revalue women’s experiences
> Examine representations of women in literature
> Challenge representations of women as ‘other’, ‘lack’,
> Examine power relations, patriarchal structures
> Recognise the role of language in construction of gender
> Ask whether there is a ‘female language’
> Ask whether differences are biological (sex) or socially constructed (gender)
> Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949
> Cixous, Hélène
> Luce Irigaray
Feminist Criticism
Basic definition
“The feminist literary criticism of today is the direct product of the ‘women’s movement’ of the 1960. This movement was, in important ways, literary from the start, in the sense that it realised the significance of the images of women promulgated by literature, and saw it as vital to combat them and question their authority and their coherence.”
Defamiliarsation
Taking something familiar out of its context and thus making it unfamiliar. The reader/audience is thereby forced to engage with the otherwise familiar in a new context.
Palimpsests
historically(medieval “palimpsest”): when an earlier text/older lower text (hypotext) on parchment is scraped off and a new text/upper text (hypertext) is written in its place;
Genette: a text that cannot exist without an earlier text because it refers to it directly or indirectly by adapting the story or major themes (--> Homer's Odyssey: Virgil's Aeneid, James Joyce's Ulysses)
Genette’s Palimpsests:core points
> Texts do not exist in isolation
> Instead, they are connected in diverse ways with other texts (context, co-text, intertextuality, metatextuality...)
> Hypertext + hypotext = palimpsestical relation
Conclusion:We need to be aware of the other texts “surrounding” any given text
We need to be aware of the categories by which we connect these texts, text do not exitst in isolation/text are always embedded in other textts / context
Subject of poetics: --> transtextuality(= architextuality + other transtextual relationship)/textual transcendence (=Erhabenheit) of the text(=all tat sets te text in a relationship, (obvious/concealead) with other text)
(-->is not the text to be considered in ist singularity(= critisism)
--> architextuality)
5 types of transtextual relationship:
intertextuality,paratextuality,metatextuality,architextuality,hypertextuality
Hypertextuality
newer(upper text)hypertext and earlier(older,lower) hypotext
relationshipp uniting text B(hypertext) to an earlier text A (hypotext),not commentary
general notion of a text in the second degree : a text derived from anther preexistent text
But here text B is not speaking of text A at all but being unable to to exist without A, from which it originates through process of transformation, which it evokes more or less perceptibly without necessarily speaking of/citing it
hypertext is more considered properly literary work than is the metatext
different type of transformation: simple/direct transformation, complex indirect transformation( f.e imitation
Metatextuality
commentary
unites a given textt to another, of which it speaks without necessaringly citing it, without summoning it,(without naming it)
Intertextuality
how texts relate to each other: reference,
quoting(explicit), plagiarism(undeclared, borrrowing),references to tradition
relationship of copresence between two texts or among several texts, the actual presence of one text within another ( allusion ..
Paratextuality
eveything which surrounder the text ( bookcover, introduction),setting of the text (title, page, layout, etc.) --> how much to take into account? (e.g. are chapter titles part of the story?)
( secondary signals(allographic/autographic):(sub-,inter-)title, pre-/postfaces, notices, forewords,terminal/marginal/infrapaginal notes, epigraphs(engraved inscription),illustrations, blurbs(klappentext),book covers, dust jacket(Buchumschlag)
Architextuality
taxonomic(= classification, systematic) nature, silent /titular features, e.g. genre, self-declaration ("A Poem about Grief") determining the generic status of text is not the business of the text but that of the reader/critic/public
titular( Poems, Essays,The romance of the Rose) ,subtitular(A Novel, A story, Poemes appended to the title)
entire set of general or transcendent categories(types of discourse, modes of enunciation, literary genres) from which emerges each singular text
Lyric (Aristotle,first person speaking)
Poetry (modern), Poems (Jahn)
Epic (Aristotle,narrators and characters speaking)
Narrative (modern), Prose (Jahn)
Drama (Aristotle,characters do all the speaking)
Drama (modern) Plays (Jahn)
Criteria for catergorising
genre (drama,poetry,narrative),language, nation, aesthetic evaluation (high-brow, low-brow,popular, pulp fiction), social (children's,womens'sworking class literature), historical categories (classical,medieval,contemporary, ), time period(OE,ME,EME)media-related ( oral, written, audiovisual),relation to reality(realsitic, mimetic("imitating") vs. fantasty(anti-mimetic) literature), conventionality of mode of representation (traditidional vs innovative/experimental) --> be able to recall three
Literary Genres
Genre as strategy
genre =a set of constitutive conventions and codes, altering from age to age, but shared by a kind of implicit contract between writer and reader. The writer may play with these prevailing generic conventions and decide to deliberately not follow them. Conventions generate (for ther reader )a set of expectations that enable the reader to make the work intelligible(=verständlich), to relate it to the world as defined and ordered by codes in the prevailing culture/naturalize it, by relating it(the work) to the world as defined and ordered by codes in the prevailing culture.
Tragedy
a serious play in which the protagonist dies in the end
Comedy
a humorous play with a happy ending
Comic relief
is the introduction of comic characters,
speeches, or scenes in a serious or tragic work, especially in dramas. Such elements were almost universal in Elizabethan tragedy ( Abrams)
Tragic relief
a tragic (or near-tragic) episode in a comedy. Tragic relief often has the function of allowing the spectators
to empathize with a protagonist or to give them some breathing space between particularly hilarious scenes.”(Jahn)
Critics that claim history is textual/narrated
Louis Montrose, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Hayden White
“The Textuality of History and the Historicity of Texts”
History is a narrative construct
Literature is embedded in the culture of the society that produces it
Old English literature
c. 800 - 1066
Middle English literature
c. 1350 - 1476 (?)
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Flashcards
Speed-up/acceleration
discourse time < story time, e.g. in a summary of events
“Ice crept down from the north, and for ten thousand years covered the islands” (Mitchener Hawaii)
Slow-down/deceleration
discourse time > story time
10 pages of text to describe a 2 second’s action (“teacher drops a pen”)
isochrony/real time /congruent presentation
discourse time = story time, e.g. dialogue, detailed action, scenic narrative mode
ellipsis
Ø discourse time = story time (when a part of the story is not covered by the discourse)
[Martha's last thoughts before she falls asleep:]
Roses, green grass, books and peace. Martha woke up with a start when they got to the cottage, and gave a little shriek which made them all laugh. Mummy's waking shriek, they called it.
pause
discourse time = Ø story time (story halts, discourse continues, e.g. with descriptions)
A knight there was, and what a gentleman/, who, from the moment that he first began/ to ride about the world, loved chivalry,/ truth, honour, freedom and all courtesy.
Order (in narrative/drama)
When?
chronology
natural sequence of events
anachrony
the events are not told in the order in which they happend(flashbacks/flashforwards): objective anachrony (factual events), subjective anachrony (a characters flashbacks/flashforwards, memory); repetitive anachrony (already narrated), completive anchrony (events occur in a flashback that are omitted in the primary story line)
flashback (analepsis)
a part of the story that describes or shows something that has happened in the past
flashforward (prolepsis)
a part of the story that shows something that will happen in the future
Frequency ( in narrative / drama)
How often? → singulative (recounting 1 event 1 time), repetitive (recounting 1 event n times, e.g. several narrator figures describing the same event from their point of view), iterative (recounting n events 1 time)
Frame narrative vs. Embedded narrative
when a story is told within a story, the outer story is called frame narrative and the inner story embedded narrative
matrix
first-degree narrative (outermost narrative): containing an embedded narrative
hypo-narrative
second-degree narrative: embedded narrative
third-degree narrative
a narrative embedded in a second-degree narrative
mise-en-abyme
when an embedded narrative/a play within a play is very similar in structure or themes of the frame narrative or play; a play of signifiers within a text, of sub-texts mirroring each other
Metanarrative/-drama
Any narrative which is concerned with the idea of storytelling, spec. one which alludes to other narratives, or refers to itself and to its own artifice (OED)
Metalepsis
a paradoxical transgression (Überschreitung/Verstoss)of the boundaries between narrative levels or logically distinct worlds
Poetry
> relative brevity,
> compression, condensation and reduction of the represented subject-matter,
> increased subjectivity,(attitude /perspective of lyric persona, individual mode of linguistic expression /theme (individual experience)
>lack of any plot, spatial/temporal realtions compressed
> musicality and proximity to songs,("lyric"= songs accompained of lyre)metre, rhythm, frequent recurrence of structuzres, compactness,succinctness of formulation
> ultra-complex structure, high degree of lingusitic equivalence/parallelism
>structural and phonological(sound,metre,rhythm, rhyme schme) complexity,
> morphological(individual words/formation) and syntactic(sentence) ,semantic(meaing, figurative) complexity,
>Lines, metric(scheme of stressed/unstresses syllables)/stanzaic structure
> deviation from everyday language and increased artificiality,
> increased aesthetic self-referentiality/self reflexivity ( due to parallelism/equivalence, governng the combination of elements on systagmatic axis
> read and enjoy,
> think about why we enjoy it
> analyse how an effect is achieved
> describe it in the appropriate terms
> The identification of tropes and schemes
— the effect poetry has on you is intentional (...)
— language as a material to be formed by the artist
-- wordplay: “poetry excels at making readers encounter words in new and enriching ways” giving words strange application, creating ambiguities( words refers to two objects (glass), using words in grammatical unusal wys(noun used for verb)
> The identification of metre, rhyme, rhythm
— the musicality of a poem
— poetry as something “aural”, to be read aloud
Tropes
wordplay based on the meaning of words, e.g. metaphor,conceit, allegory,metonymy,synecdoche,personification, pun, apostrophe, oxymoron, pleonasm
Schemes
wordplay based on the order of words, e.g. alliteration
particualr arrangement of words, metre/rhyme/stress dictate/shape these unusual arrangements
(= rhetorical figures + word order)
1. phonological figures:Alliteration,Consonance,Assonance,Onomatopoeia:
2. morphological figures:Repetition,Anaphora,Epiphora,Epanalepsis,Anadiplosis,Polyptoton,Figura etymologica,Synonymy
3. syntactic figures:Parallelism,Chiasmus,Asyndeton,Polysyndeton,Inversion,Hysteron proteron,Ellipsis,Zeugma
Simile
a comparison drawn between two distinct objects or ideas connected with "as" or "like" → "[stars] like wonder-wounded hearers" (Hamlet 5.1.243)
make unfamiliar or complex idea moe understamdable by linkening it to somtehing familiar, distinction between the two ideas, two parts are like each other but are NOT the same
Analogy?
Metaphor
A comparison that speaks of an idea or object as if it were another → "I will speak daggers to her but use none" (Hamlet 3.2.384); tenor: the object or idea described in a metaphor; vehicle: the object or idea used to describe the tenor
figure of speech in which one thing is said actually to be another
, goes further than simile: comparisons are drwan, but the two objects are converged adn are now indistinguishable, make it more understandable to reader, one object is brought into view through another
I will speak daggers to her but use none (Hamlet 3.2.384)
Tenor: hateful, hurtful speech Vehicle: daggers
Conceit
when a metaphor is extended and explored so that it becomes the governing idea of a poem; two divergent ideas are surprisingly brought together (Williams 224),
an especially ingenious type of comparison in which two divergent ideas are surprisingly brought together to produce apt and successful tropes.
conceit extent comparison so it becomes a principle of the poem's logic, especially ingenious type of comparison in which two divergent ideas are surprisngly brought together to procus apt and successful tropes
metaphysical poets(illogical conceits, =metaphysical conceits) [in whose works] the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together”
Allegory
an extended metaphor in which events and actions within a narrative imply a separate series of events and actions "outside" the poem, e.g. George Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegory for Stalinist Russia
a poem proceeds as though it is described one set of events or occurences but implies that such events actually refer to a different set of circumstances not directly stated within the poem , tow simultanious menaings: literal one takes place within text, symbolic one that points to events /ideas outside text, symbolic treatment of an abtract /historical complexity allows difficult, contentious or abstract conundrums to be interrogated in accessible/safer terms, allegories reach coherent conclusion on a subject through sustained comparison ( so distinguishable from personification
Metonymy
when something associated with an object or idea stands in for the idea itself
based on association, slightly looser arrangment( westminster, White house as the governemnt, the crown as the monarchy), buildings/objects associated with ( rather than being the same as) government/monarchy, metonymic shorthand for larger notion itself
Synecdoche
a form of metonymy in which one part of an object or idea stands in for the whole of that object or idea, pars pro toto
use an inextricable(untrenntlich) part of a larger abstract idea ( rather than just something associated with it) to stand in for that idea , the stage ( refer to theater culture, stage =part of theater), motoring ( refer to whole leisure pursuit involving cars, cars must have motors), synecdoche illustrates the wider practice of poetry, ( which is to evoke multiple associations and larger ideas from immediate/individual ideas/words)
Pun
Wordplay that depends on a similarity in sound but a difference in meaning: homonym (same spelling and pronunciation, different meaning), homophone (same sound, different spelling), homograph (same spelling, different pronunciation)
humorous device, disturbing effect, meaning of word is arbitrary(eigenmächtig), dependent on context and escapes the complete control of the speaker
Personification
when an abstract concept or inanimate object is given human attributes
extended metaphor, treating object/concept as thugh it were human, (prosopopoeia: absent, supernatural, inanmate is treates as real : sorrow= priestess in hte vaults of death), personficication makes something available for human interaction , by treating somehting alien in human terms ( = anthropomorphism= vermenschlichung), excite emotions
Apostrophe
A vocalized address within a poem directed at an inanimate object, abstract concept or an absent figure ("O, bed … !")
adress is made directyl to an absent figure, notion that is abstract, object that is inanimate(animal but not human, moment of pure adress on the speaker's parat, for something to be adressed you imply that it has a human capacity to listen, make the adresse present in the peom helps to contitute the poet themselves: object is treates as a subject, an I which implies a certain type of you in its turn, to adress a figure is to create a figure who can now perceive you too
Oxymoron (contrasts)
a combination of two apparently contradictory terms → "O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!" (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet) cold fire
Pleonasm
accumulation of expressions that mean the same thing, e.g. *main protagonist, hot fire
Alliteration
succession of words with the same initial sound or succession of accented syllables with the same consonant or consonantal group → "When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush" (Gerald Manley Hopkins, Spring)
Onomatopoeia
use of words to imitate sounds → "Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle / Can patter out their hasty orisons" (Wilfried Owen, Anthem for a Doomed Youth)
Anaphora
repetition of a word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses or lines → "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee" (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18)
Ellipsis
omission of sentence components → "Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends." (Virginia Woolf, The Waves)
Zeugma
application of one verb to more than one object in different senses → "Here, thou, great Anna! Whom three realms obey, / Dost sometimes counsel take - and sometimes tea." (Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock)
Verse
a line of verse consists of a sequence of metrical groups or units. Metrical groups consist of one stressed syllable and one, two, or three unstressed syllables
Meter
rhythm is created by stressed and unstressed syllables that together form rhythmical groups (feet) that in combination make up the meter
Scansion
technique to find out and describe the rhythm of a line
