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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Lernkarten
Decorum
set of expectations according to age, gender, social status, nationality
Characterisation
through words, deeds, looks
literary, linguistic and cultural means whereby that figure is constructed
characterisation is concerned with : how chracters are supplied with charactersitics or semantic features.
— By what they do
— By what they say
— What do others say about him
— By how they look (body, face, clothes)
— By the relationships they have with others
— By their values and norms
— By how many times they enter the stage in which combination (character configuration)
emphazos on characterisation ( than on character):The kinds of charachter and the process of characterisation(= ways in which characters are constructed) ( not describe fictional characters as though they really existed
What questions can we ask about characterisation – it can be:
> Figural or authorial?
— by “showing” or “telling”
> By others or by self?
— Character x says “Hamlet is suicidal” vs. Hamlet: “O that this too
too sallied flesh would melt”
> Explicit or implicit characterisation
— “Explicit characterisation of other is also implicit characterisation of self” (Nünning), i.e. what do Polonius’ words about Hamlet say about Polonius himself?
Round character
a character that has multiple sides to them, is not just defined by one character trait but has several that can contradict each other (feels like a real person), interiorised, psychologically complex, develop
multi-dimensional, individual with large number of characteristics
Flat character
a character that is reduced to only a few, if not one, characteristic, known through exterior appearance, simpler, predictable, " caricatures"
one-dimensional, small, internally consistent collection of features
Individual
complex literary chracter, large number of chracteristics, emphazis on uniqueness /personal individuality , multi-facetted, large number of personal traits,( resemble genuine human being),
round character tend to be more individual, they set themselves apart from other characters by having several characteristics
--> novel/tragedy
Type
characters reduced to one characteristic,few specific human chracteristics/individual features, chracterised as a representative of a social class ,often found in comedies , satire,romance, western(film)
psychological type: embodies particualr mode of human behaviour, (e.g. grouch (nörgeler)
social type: particualr profession/social class
ethnic, regional, national, gender stereotypes
Static character
a character that does not develop throughout the story, charcter remains unchanged
Dynamic character
develop over the course of the story
Figural characterisation ( showing)
by what the characters do or say (implicit(verbal/non-verbal), i.e. through their words,gesturesactions, and explicit, i.e. through explicit self-commentary or commentary by others)
information is supplied by the speech, gestures, actions of characters
Authorial/narratorial characterisation (telling)
for example explicitly(ausdrücklich) by descriptions in the secondary text /description in stage direction (e.g. telling names, ) or by implicit(stillschweigend inbegriffen) means, correspondence and contrast /similarities and difference /strategic arrangements of scenes/situationse.g. implicitly characterising names
Techniques of characterisation
JAHN:characterizing strategies variously issuing from a play’s ‘implied author’ or its real author (cf. Pfister 1988: 184, 194). Among the authorial phenomena listed by Pfister are ‘telling names’, explicit characterizations in stage directions (whose subject can hardly be an ‘implied’ author), and strategic arrangements of scenes and situations (mainly parallels and contrasts). All narratorial agents of the epic forms of drama appear to fall under ‘figural’ characterization in Pfister, confounding the levels of action and fictional mediation”
narratorial vs. figural characterization (identity of characterizing subject: narrator or character?)
> “Our modified model, in contrast [to Pfister’s], aims at capturing a play’s characterizing subjects at the level of fictional action (figural characterization, issuing from characters) and at the level of narratorial mediation (narratorial characterization, issuing from narrators). In our view, neither the author nor an implied author can act as characterizing subject, at least not in the play itself (which is what we are interested in)”
Implicit characterisation
present the traits and behaviour,action,manner of speaking of a character and allow the recipient to draw his or her own conclusions
“An implicit characterization is a (usually unintentional) auto- characterization in which somebody’s physical appearance or behavior is indicative of a characteristic trait. X characterizes him- or herself by behaving or speaking in a certain manner. Nonverbal behavior (what a character does) may characterize somebody as, for instance, a fine football player, a good conversationalist, a coward, or a homosexual, while verbal behavior (the way a character speaks, or what a character says in a certain situation) may characterize somebody as, for instance, having a certain educational background (jargon, slang, dialect), as belonging to a certain class of people (sociolect), or as being truthful, evasive, ill-mannered, etc. Characters are also implicitly characterized by their clothing, their physical appearance (e.g., a hunchback) and their chosen environment (e.g., their rooms, their pet dogs, their cars)
Explicit characterisation
the traits and features of the characters are stated outright
.”> e.g., red-faced, gap-toothed, large-hipped Wife of Bath as an implicit comment that she is not a young beauty.
> However, we call this an explicit characterisation, even if it is not directly stated that she is no young beauty
Non-verbal characterisation
characterised by physiognomy and facial expression, gestures, masks, costume, behaviour
Verbal characterisation
characterised by voice-quality, verbal behaviour, dia-/sociolect, register, stylistic texture
Mimesis( showing)
the poet tries to create the illusion that it is not he or she who speaks
> “More mimetic” genres (film, drama, radio-plays, cartoons)
Aristotle’s Poetics (also Plato):
— Mimesis: Imitation (representation) of human acts and speech
— Diegesis: Narration (retelling) of human acts and speech
Mimesis --> Diegesis
> Hamlet: “To be or not to be”
> Hamlet says “to be or not to be”
> Hamlet, worried about his inaction is plaged by doubts. Was it nobler in the mind to suffer the slings of fortune or to take arms against his own life?
> Hamlet wonders whether to be or not to be
> Hamlet, after finding that it is not in his heart to commit murder, is contemplating suicide.
Diegesis (telling)
the poets him-/herself is the speaker and does not even attempt to suggest that anyone but him-/herself is speaking
“More diegetic” genres (narrative fiction, short stories...)
Soliloquy (in drama)
when a character is alone on stage while speaking, or is regardless of any hearers
convenient way to convey information about character's motives and state of mind, or for purpose of exposition, or to guide the judgments and response of the audience
expository soliloquy in Dr Faustus, best-known dramatic soliloquiy in Hamlet
Monologue (in drama)
when a character speaks alone, but in the explicit presence of others,
Extended speech of character vs. exchange in dialogue
High degree of subjectivity
> Dialogical tendencies within monologues
— when a character addresses an absent figure or object (e.g., Macbeth’s “dagger speech”)
Dialogue (in drama)
a succession of remarks and counterremarks between two or more characters(duologue / polylogue),Addressee is on stage
Various functions
— action and progression of drama
— characterisation
— negotiation of central (or markedly marginal) themes
> “Monological tendencies” within dialogues
— e.g., when Hamlet dominates the dialogue (with the players,
with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern etc.)
Aside (in drama)
Monological: a character voices a thought which is not expressed anywhere else, in such a way that only the audience understands, is a remark that occurs in a dialogue, but is not meant to be heard by any of the speaker’s interlocutors (it is ‘monological’ because it is basically a self-communication). dialogical: unnoticed by other characters on the stage, a group of initiated characters conduct a conspiratorial conversation, ad spectatores: a character addresses a comment directly to the audience
Dramatic convention (in drama)
> Set of rules known to and accepted by director, actor, audience
> “Contract” about what the audience is willing to believe
— e.g. soliloquy: A character’s thoughts are revealed in a speech form that “has no real parallel in everyday communication” (Nünning 87)
— e.g. teichoscopy: a character reports on something that happens offstage (e.g. a battle scene in Julius Caesar)
— “Suspension of disbelief” (Coleridge 1817)
Dramatic irony
based on a discrepancy between the awareness of the characters and that of the audience, i.e. the audience knows something the character(s) doesn't/don't know
Reported discourse
Mum was in the kitchen, clattering gently about, and both doors were open so that she and Donald could call out remarks to each other.
Indirect discourse
For a moment he kept quite still, hoping he hadn't really heard her say it, that it was just a voice inside his head
Free indirect discourse
A representation of a character's words ('free indirect speech') or verbalized thoughts ('free indirect thought') Without any verbum dicendi or quotation marks; in the character's own words, person/tense shift: She realised that her explanations didn’t make any sense.What on earth should she do now?
Surely, surely they weren't asking him to go out, in the deep twilight, just at the time when there was the greatest danger of actually meeting the Pig-man.
Put simply, FID is a technique for rendering a character's speech or thought. FID does this 'indirectly' in the sense that it transposes pronouns and tenses into the pronoun/tense system of the narrative's ordinary narrative sentences (for instance, it may shift a first person into a third person, and the present tense into the past). But there are no quotation marks, and often any identification of speaker or thinker (he said, she thought etc.) is also dropped. As a consequence, there is often no formal difference between FID (reporting a character's speech or thought) and a plain narratorial statement. [...] It was twelve o'clock; he had plenty of time to catch the plane [can be] just the rendering of a character's thought or a piece of information given by the narrator, or even both.
Direct discourse
direct discourse A direct quotation of a character's speech ('direct speech') or (verbalized) thought ('direct thought'). Direct speech is often placed within quotation marks, explicitly signaling the transition from quoting to quoted discourse [...]. Tagged direct discourse is framed by a clause of attributive discourse;
Then his mother called, ‘Eric! Do be a sweet, good boy, and take this stuff out to the Pig-man. My hands are covered with cake mixture. I'll let you scrape out the basin when you come in.
free direct discourse
untagged direct discourse (alternatively, free direct discourse) is free of attributive discourse. The main property of direct discourse is that the deictic elements of the quoted inset, especially its tenses and pronouns, are wholly independent of the deixis of the quoting discourse.
no reporting clause, no quotation marks:She realised that her explanations didn’t make any sense. What on earth shall I do now?
Donald had come home and was sitting—in Dad's chair, but never mind—reading the paper and smoking.
Free direct speech,Free indirect speech, Direct speech, Indirect speech
Free direct speech: is in the tense/place that signify character's NOW/HERE( it is well known that..),
Free indirect speech: is in the tense/place that signifys narrator's NOW/HERE( no tense switch from narrative time: it was the only way to live)
Direct speech: represents character's speech inside quotation marks, "original tone"
Indirect speech:represents character's speech in the voice of narrator( s/he reports,using a reporting verb : the wolves said)
Showing (mimesis) vs Telling (diegesis)
Different discourses
stream of consciousness
textual rendering of mental processes, especially any attempt to capture the random, irregular, disjointed, associative and incoherent character of these processes.” interior monologue = extended passage of direct thought
“The main techniques of representing the sound and rhythm of a character's stream of consciousness are ‘interior monologue’, ‘direct thought’, and ‘free indirect thought’. [...] Interior monologue is a special case of direct thought:
Story
What is narrated, basic narrative events (the "story"), events that happen in sequence
The king dies and then the queen dies.
The story:
> A ghost appears, Hamlet finds it hard to decide, kills Polonius, kills Claudius, dies himself.
Plot
Why and how events happen (the "plot)", narrative connection of events,causality, why they happen
how events relate, causes them
The king dies and then the queen dies of grief.
The king dies and then the queen kills herself as she had promised her husband on their wedding day.
The plot:
> Since he is grappling with his grief, his conscience and the expectations others may have of him, Hamlet finds it very hard to decide how to react to the ghost’s revelation.
Emplotment
How a story is transformed into a plot (how is a stream of events arranged into a trajectory of → themes, motives, plot lines)
Discourse
How a story is narrated, ( the "discourse")how the events are told (style, atmosphere), (character's') discourse:narrative representation of a character’s speech and (verbalised) thought acts
way story is told( e.g indirect speech, perspective of homodiegetic narrator)
The sun was setting over the castle tinting its walls blood-red. A strange hush seemed to descend with it on the queen’s bedroom, where she lay on her bed, breathing laboriously. A hot tear slowly crept down her cheek and with a deep sigh of grief she died.
Narrative
something that is told, tells a story by different means (≠ drama)
“anything that tells or presents a story, be it by oral or written text, picture, performance, or a combination of these. Narratives can be found in conversation, jokes, novels, plays, films, comic strips, etc.”
Narrative Prose
Theme
the general concept(s) (doctrine) discussed/discribed in a piece of work , e.g. religion, quest for power, etc.
Themes in Hamlet: Madness, revenge, mortality, religion, art/culture, lies/deceit, sex, gender, family
Motif
a plot element (type of incident, device, reference, formula)that frequently returns in literature; a recurring element in a text, e.g. the lighthouse, the motif of the two star-crossed lovers
