ABECEDARIAN: see Acrostic.

ABSTRACT DICTION / ABSTRACT IMAGERY: Language that describes qualities that cannot be perceived with the five senses. For instance, calling something "pleasant" or "pleasing" is abstract, while calling something "yellow" or "sour" is concrete. The preference for abstract or concrete imagery varies from century to century. Philip Sidney praised concrete imagery in poetry in his 1595 treatise, Apologie for Poetrie. A century later, Neoclassical thought tended to value the generality of abstract thought. In the early 1800s, the Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley once again preferred concreteness. In the 20th century, the distinction between concrete and abstract has been a subject of some debate. Ezra Pound and T. E. Hulme attempted to create a theory of concrete poetry. T. S. Eliot added to this school of thought with his theory of the "objective correlative." Contrast with Concrete Diction / Concrete Imagery, below.

ACCENTUAL RHYTHM: See Sprung Rhythm, below.

ACEPHALOUS: From Greek "headless," acephalous lines are lines in normal iambic pentameter that contain only nine syllables rather than the expected ten. The first syllable, which is stressed, "counts" as a full metric foot by itself.

ACROSTIC: A poem in which the first or last letters of each line vertically form a word, phrase, or sentence. Apart from puzzles in newspapers and magazines, the most common modern versions involve the first letters of each line forming a single word when read downwards. An acrostic that involves the sequential letters of the alphabet is said to be abededarian.

Acrostics may have first been used as a mnemonic device to aid with oral transmission. In the Old Testament, many of the Hebrew Psalms include acrostic devices. Chaucer also wrote acrostics such as his ABC in his younger days. Acrostics are also common in Kabbalistic charms and word squares, including the Cirencester word square of Roman origin:

ROTAS

OPERA

TENET

AREPO

SATOR

The charm dates to the late 300s CE, and it is of uncertain meaning, but it involves both acrostic and palindrome features.

ADDITIVE MONSTER: In contrast with the Composite Monster (see below), mythologists and folklorists use the label additive monster to describe a creature from mythology or legend that has an altered number of body parts rather than body parts from multiple animals added together. For instance, the Scandinavian Ettin, a troll or giant with two-heads, is an additive monster. Sleipnir, the magical horse in Norse mythology, is a regular horse, except it has eight legs. Deities and demons in the Hindu pantheon often have multiple arms or eyes. The term has also been loosely applied to fantastic creatures that have modified limbs as well. For instance, the gyascutis is a fantastic medieval beast that resembles a sheep, except its limbs vary in length. Its front legs are drastically shortened, and its hind legs are drastically lengthened, which allows it to remain level as it grazes on the incline of steep hills.

ALLEGORY: The word derives from the Greek allegoria ("speaking otherwise): The term is often used loosely to describe any story in verse or prose which has a double meaning. This narrative acts as an extended metaphor in which a person, abstract idea, or event represents not only itself on the literal level, but it also stands for something else on the symbolic level. An allegorical reading usually involves moral or spiritual concepts that may be more significant than the actual, literal events described in a narrative. Typically, an allegory involves the interaction of multiple symbols, which together create a moral, spiritual, or even political meaning. The act of interpreting a story as if each object in it had an allegorical meaning is called allegoresis.

If we wish to be more exact, an allegory is an act or reading rather than a genre in and of itself. There can be allegorical poems, allegorical novels, or allegorical plays. These can be as short as a single sentence or as long as a ten volume book. The label allegory comes from an interaction between symbols that creates a coherent meaning on beyond that of the literal level of interpretation. Probably the most famous allegory in English literature is Paul Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), in which the hero Everyman flees the City of Destruction and travels through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, and finally arrives at the Celestial City. The entire narrative is a representation of the average human soul's pilgrimage through temptation and doubt to reach salvation in heaven. Other important allegorical works include mythological allegories like Apuleius' tale of Cupid and Psyche in The Golden Ass, Prudentius' Psychomachiae, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Butler's Erewhon, and George Orwell's Animal Farm. Contrast allegory with symbolism, below.

ALLIOSIS: While presenting a reader with only two alternatives may result in the logical fallacy known as false dichotomy or either/or fallacy, creating a parallel sentence using two alternatives in parallel structure can be an effective device rhetorically and artistically. Alliosis is the rhetorical use of any bicolon parallel sentence that presents two choices to the reader. For more information, see schemes.

ALLITERATION: Repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others. For instance, the phrase "buckets of big blue berries" alliterates with the consonant b. Coleridge describes the sacred river Alph in Kubla Khan as "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion," which alliterates with the consonant m. Most frequently, the alliteration involves the sounds at the beginning of words in close proximity to each other. Alliteration is an example of a rhetorical scheme. See alliterative verse and alliterative prose below. See also alliterative revival.

ALLITERATIVE PROSE: Many texts of Old English and Middle English prose uses the same techniques as alliterative verse. Aelfric (c. 955-1010 CE) and Wulfstan (d. 1023) wrote many treatises using skillful alliteration. The Herefordshire texts known collectively as the "The Katherine Group" (Hali Meiohad, Sawles Warde, Seinte Katerine, Seinte Marherete, Seinte Iuliene) are an example in Middle English.

ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL: The general increase in alliterative poetry composed in the second half of the 14th century in England. Alliteration had been the formalistic focus in Old English poetry, but after 1066 it began to be replaced by the new convention of rhyme, which southern courtly poets were using due to the influence of continental traditions in the Romance languages like Latin and French. A surge of regionalism or nationalism, however, seemed to encourage a return to the older alliterative type of poetry for a half-century. During this time, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and other important medieval poems were written using alliterative techniques. See alliteration, above.

ALLITERATIVE VERSE: A traditional form of Anglo-Saxon poetry in which each line has at least four stressed syllables, and those stresses fall on syllables in which three or four words alliterate (repeat the same consonant sound). Alliterative verse largely died out in English within a few centuries of the Norman Conquest. The Normans introduced continental conventions of poetry, including rhyme and octosyllabic couplets. The last surge of alliterative poetry in the native English tradition is known as the alliterative revival during the Middle English period. See alliteration, above.

ALLUSION: A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification. Allusions can originate in mythology, biblical references, historical events, or legends. Authors often use allusion to establish a tone, create an implied association, contrast two objects or people, make aan unusual juxtaposition of references, or bring the reader into a world of experience outside the limitations of the story itself. Authors assume that the readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning to the new context. For instance, if a teacher were to refer to his class as a horde of Mongols, the students will have no idea if they are being praised or vilified unless they know what the Mongol horde was and what activities it participated in historically. This historical allusion assumes a certain level of education or awareness in the audience, so it should be taken as a compliment rather than an attempt at obscurity.

ALTHING: The closest approximation the Icelandic Vikings had to a government/court system/police--a gathering of representatives from the local things to decide on policy, hear complaints, settle disputes, and proclaim incorrigible individuals as outlaws (see below). The thing was a gathering for each local community in Iceland, but the althing was a gathering for the entire island's male population.

AMBIGUITY: In common conversation, ambiguity is a negative term applied to a vague or equivocal expression when precision would be more useful. Sometimes, however, intentional ambiguity in literature can be a powerful device, leaving something undetermined in order to open up multiple possible meanings. When we refer to literary ambiguity, we refer to any wording, action, or symbol that can be read in divergent ways.

AMPHIBRACH: A three-syllable poetic foot consisting of a light stress, heavy stress, and a light stress, short on both ends. Amphibrachs are quite rare in English, but they can be found in special circumstances, especially when the poet manipulates the caesura to create an unusual effect. See caesura, below. An example of an English word forming an amphibrach is crustacean.

ANACHRONISM: Placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Shakespeare writes the following lines:

Cassius: The clock has stricken three (Act II, scene i, lines 193-94).

Of course, there were no household clocks during Roman times, no more than there were DVD players! The reference is an anachronism, either accidental or intentional. Elizabethan theater often intentionally uses anachronism in its costuming, a tradition that survives today when Shakespeare's plays are performed in biker garb, or in Victorian frippery. Indeed, from surviving illustrations, the acting companies in Elizabethan England appeared to deliberately create anachronisms in their costumes. Some actors would dress in current Elizabethan garb, others in garb that was a few decades out of date, and others wore pseudo-historical costumes from past-centuries--all within a single scene or play.

ANADIPLOSIS: repeating the last word of a clause at the beginning of the next clause. As Nietzsche said, "Talent is an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment." Extended anadiplosis is called Gradatio. For instance, in The Caine Mutiny the captain declares: "Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard. Standard performance is sub-standard. Sub-standard performance is not allowed." Biblically speaking, St. Paul claims, "We glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope, and hope maketh man not ashamed." On a more mundane level, the character of Yoda states in Star Wars, Episode I: "Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hatred; hatred leads to conflict; conflict leads to suffering." Gradatio creates a rhythmical pattern to carry the reader along the text, even as it establishes a connection between words. Anadiplosis and gradatio are examples of rhetorical schemes.

ANALOGUE: A story that contains similar characters, situations, settings, or verbal echoes to those found in a different story. Sometimes analogues reveal that one version was adopted from or inspired by another, or that both tales originate in a lost, older text. When one version is clearly the ancestor of another, literary scholars refer to it a "source." In other cases, analogues appear that probably have no direct connection to each other. Grettir's Saga, which includes a wrestling bout between the strongest Icelander and an evil spirit, is often thought of as an analogue to Beowulf, in which a man with the strength of thirty men wrestles with Grendel. Grettir dives under an ocean-side waterfall and does battle with a Troll-wife, while Beowulf dives into a lake and does battle with Grendel's mother. These two pairs of scenes are analogues to each other.

ANAGNORISIS: (Greek for "recognition") A term used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the moment of tragic recognition in which the protagonist realizes some important fact or insight, especially a truth about himself, human nature, or his situation. Aristotle argues that the ideal moment for anagnorisis in a tragedy is the moment of peripetia, the reversal of fortune. Critics often claim that the moment of tragic recognition is found within a single line of text, in which the tragic hero admits to his lack of insight or asserts the new truth he recognizes. This passage is often called the "line of tragic recognition." See further discussion under tragedy.

ANAPHORA: The intentional repetition of beginning clauses in order to create an artistic effect. For instance, Churchill declared, "We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost shall be." The repetition of "We shall..." creates a rhetorical effect of solidarity and determination. Anaphora is the opposite of epistrophe, in which the poet or rhetorician repeats the concluding phrase over and over for effects. Often the two can be combined effectively as well. For instance, Saint Paul writes to the church at Corinthians, "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they the ministers of Christ? I am more." Here, artful use of anaphora and epistrophe combined help Paul make his point more emphatically. Both anaphora and epistrophe are examples of rhetorical schemes. They serve to lend weight and emphasis.

ANAPODOTON: Deliberately creating a sentence fragment by the omission of a clause: "If only you came with me!" If only students knew what anapodoton was! Good writers never use sentence fragments? Ah, but they can. And they do. When appropriate. Anapodoton is an example of a rhetorical scheme.

ANASTROPE: Inverted word order as a rhetorical scheme. It is a type of hyperbaton in which the adjective appears after the noun when we expect to find the adjective before the noun. For example, Shakespeare speaks of "Figures pedantical" (LLL 5.2.407). Faulkner describes "The old bear [. . .] not even a mortal but an anachronism indomitable and invincible out of an old dead time." T. S. Eliot writes of "Time present and time past," and so on.

ANCILLARY CHARACTERS (Latin ancilla: "helper" or "maid"): Characters who are not the primary protagonist or antagonist, but who highlight these characters or interact with them in such a way as to provide insight into the narrative action. Typical ancillary characters include foils, choric characters, deuteragonists, and stock characters. See character for more information.

ANGLICAN CHURCH: The Protestant Church in England that originated when King Henry VIII broke his ties to the Vatican in Rome (the Catholic Church).

ANTAGONIST: See character, below.

ANTICLIMAX: (also called bathos) a drop, often sudden and unexpected, from a dignified or important idea or situation to one that is trivial or humorous. Also a sudden descent from something sublime to something ridiculous. In fiction and drama, this refers to action that is disappointing in contrast to the previous moment of intense interest. The effect is frequently intentional and comic. For example: "Usama Bin Laden: Wanted for Crimes of War, Terrorism, Murder, Conspiracy, and Nefarious Parking Practices."

ANTIHERO: A protagonist who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a traditional hero. While the traditional hero may be dashing, strong, brave, resourceful, or handsome, the antihero may be incompetent, unlucky, clumsy, dumb, or clownish.

ANTIMETABOLE: a rhetorical scheme involving repetition in reverse order. This device is also called epanados. See schemes.

ANTITHESIS (plural: antitheses): Using opposite phrases in close conjunction. Examples might be, "I burn and I freeze," or "Her character is white as sunlight, black as midnight." The best antitheses express their contrary ideas in a balanced sentence. It can be a contrast of opposites: "Evil men fear authority; good men cherish it." Alternatively, it can be a contrast of degree: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind." Antithesis is an example of a rhetorical scheme.

APHAEARESIS (plural: aphaeareses): deleting a syllable from the beginning of a word to create a new word. For instance, in King Lear, we hear that, "the king hath cause to plain" (3.1.39). Here, the word complain has lost its first syllable. In Hamlet 2.2.561, Hamlet asks, "Who should 'scape whipping" if every man were treated as he deserved, but the e- in escape has itself cleverly escaped from its position! Aphaeraresis is an example of a rhetorical scheme or trope.

APOCALYPSE: From the Greek word for "unveiling," an apocalypse originally referred to a mystical revelation of a spiritual truth, but has changed to refer specifically to mystical visions concerning the end of the world. The most famous Apocalypse in the Christian tradition is the book commonly known as Revelation in the New Testament. Attributed to John of Patmos, legend states that John wrote it in exile about the year 70 AD, though surviving manuscripts are much later in date. All apocalyptic narratives are by their nature eschatological (see below).

APOCOPE: Deleting a syllable or letter from the end of a word. In The Merchant of Venice, one character says, "when I ope my lips let no dog bark," and the last syllable of open falls away into ope before the reader's eyes (1.1.93-94). In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare proclaims, "If I might in entreaties find success--/ As seld I have the chance--I would desire / My famous cousin to our Grecian tents" (4.5.148). Here the word seldom becomes seld.

APOSTROPHE: Not to be confused with the punctuation mark, apostrophe is the act of addressing some abstraction that is not physically present: For instance, John Donne commands, "Oh, Death, be not proud." King Lear proclaims, "Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, / More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child / Than the sea-monster."

APOTROPAIC: Designed to ward off evil influence or malevolent spirits by frightening these forces away. In many cultures, elaborate artwork depicting monsters would be created to have an apotropaic affect. For instance, the fierce "celestial dogs" carved outside the entrance to Tibetan temples would keep evil spirits from entering the holy ground, and Amerindian shamans would wear frightening, grotesque "medicine masks" when they visited sick members of their tribe to terrify the evil spirits making them sick. It has been suggested that the presence of gargoyles and grotesques on medieval cathedrals is a remnant of older pagan practices, in which monstrous apotropaic figures would be carved on the front of ships and over the entrances to buildings to ward off evil influences.

APRON STAGE: A stage that projects out into the auditorium area. This enlarges the square footage available for actors to walk and move upon. This feature was not common in the days of classical Greco-Roman theater, but it was a common architectural trait in Elizabethan times and remains in use in some modern theaters.

ARCHETYPE: An original model or pattern from which other later copies are made, especially a character, an action, or situation that seems to represent common patterns of human life generally. Often, archetypes include a symbol, a theme, a setting, or a character that some critics think have a common meaning in an entire culture, or even the entire human race. Archetypes recur in different times and places in myth, literature, folklore, dreams, and rituals. The psychologist Carl Jung believed that the archetype originates in the collective unconscious of mankind in shared experiences of a race, such as birth, death, love, family life, struggles--all of which would be expressed in the subconscious of an individual who would recreate them in myths, dreams, and literature. The study of these archetypes in literature is known as archetypal criticism or mythic criticism. Archetypes are also called universal symbols.

ARCHON, EPONYMOUS: An official in classical Athens. The holder of this office arranged the production of tragedies and comedies at annual festivals honoring Dionysus. Each year was named after the officiating eponymous archon.

ARENA STAGE: A theater arrangement in which viewers sit encircling the stage completely. The actors enter and exit by moving along the same aisles the audience uses. This often encourages interaction between cast and audience. This type of theatrical arrangement is also called theater in the round.

ASIDE: In drama, a few words or a short passage spoken by one character to the audience. It is a theatrical convention that the aside is not audible to other characters on stage. Compare with soliloquy, below.

ASYNDETON: The artistic elimination of conjunctions in a sentence to create a particular effect. See schemes for more information.

ATMOSPHERE (also called mood): the emotional feelings inspired by a work. The term is borrowed from meteorology to describe the dominant mood of a selection as it is created by diction, dialogue, setting, and description. Often the opening scene in a play or novel establishes an atmosphere appropriate to the theme of the entire work. The opening of Shakespeare's Hamlet creates a brooding atmosphere of unease. Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher establishes an atmosphere of gloom and emotional decay. The opening of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 establishes a surreal atmosphere of confusion, and so on.

AUDITORY IMAGERY: Descriptive language that invokes noise, music, or other things that can be heard. See imagery.

AUTHORIAL VOICE: The voice or speaker used by authors when seemingly speaking for themselves. The use of the term makes it clear in critical discussion that the narration or presentation of a story is not necessarily to be identified with the biographical and historical author. Instead, the authorial voice may be another fiction created by the author. It is often considered poor form for a literary critic to equate the authorial voice with the historical author, but this practice was common in the nineteenth-century. However, twentieth-century critics have pointed out that often a writer will assume a false persona of attitudes or beliefs when he or she writes, or that the authorial voice will speak of so-called biographical details that cannot possibly be equated with the author himself. In the early twentieth-century, new critics also pointed out that linking the authorial voice with the biographical author often unfairly limited the possible interpretations of a poem or narrative. Finally, many writers have enjoyed writing in the first person and creating unreliable narrators--speakers who tell the story but who obviously miss the significance of the tale they tell, or who fail to connect important events together when the reader does. Because of these reasons, it is often considered naive to assume that the authorial voice is a "real" representation of the historical author.

Famous instances in which the authorial voice diverges radically from the biographical author include the authorial voice in the mock-epic Don Juan (here, the authorial voice appears as a crusty, jaded, older man commenting on the sordid passions of youth, while the author Lord Byron was himself a young man) and the authorial narrator of Cervante's Don Quixote (who attests that the main character Don Quixote is quite mad, and despises his lunacy even while "accidentally" revealing the hero's idealism as a critique of the modern world's fixation with factual reality).

Examples of unreliable narrators include the narrator of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (the speaker, a pilgrim named Geoffrey, appears to be a dumbed-down caricature of the author Geoffrey Chaucer, but who has little skill at poetry and often appears to express admiration for character-traits that the larger rhetoric of the poem clearly condemns) and the mentally disabled character in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (who is unable to interpret the events taking place around him). See also poetic speaker.

AUXESIS: Another term for rhetorical climax. See climax, rhetorical, below.

BABUIN: A fanciful monster, silly creature, or a leering face drawn in the margins of a medieval manuscript. We get our modern word "baboon" from this French term for the little grotesque creatures that illuminators drew and doodled. Typically, the babuin is engaged in silly antics, such as playing or interacting with the letters on the page, chasing other babuins, or even engaging in copulatory and scatological activities.

BACHIC FOOT: A three-syllable foot of poetry consisting of a light stress followed by two heavy stresses. This verse pattern was not unknown in Greek verse, but is fairly rare in English verse. An example of a phrase that corresponds in meter to the Bachic foot is "a strong king." See meter.

BAD QUARTO: In the jargon of Shakespearean scholars, a "bad quarto" is a copy of the play that a disloyal actor would recreate from memory and then submit for publication in a rival publishing house without the consent of the author. These bad quartos are often grossly inaccurate, but may contain useful stage directions not included in the original. See quartos, folios, and octavos, below.

BALLAD: In common parlance, song hits, folk music, and folktales or any song that tells a story are loosely called ballads. In more exact literary terminology, a ballad is a narrative poem consisting of quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter. Common traits of the ballad are that (a) the beginning is often abrupt, (b) the story is told through dialogue and action (c) the language is simple or "folksy," (d) the theme is often tragic--though comic ballads do exist, (e) the ballad contains a refrain that is repeated several times. One of the most important anthologies of ballads is F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Famous medieval and renaissance examples include "Chevy Chase," "The Elfin Knights," "Lord Randal," and "The Demon Lover." A number of Robin Hood ballads also exist. More recent ballads from the 18th century and the Scottish borderlands include "Sir Patrick Spens," "Tam Lin," and "Thomas the Rhymer." See also common measure.

BARD: (1) An ancient Celtic poet, singer and harpist who recited heroic poems by memory. These bards were the oral historians, political critics, eulogizers, and entertainers of their ancient societies. (2) The word in modern usage has become a synonym for any poet. Shakespeare in particular is often referred to as the Bard or the Bard of Avon in spite of the fact he wrote in the Renaissance, long after the heyday of Celtic bards.

BATHOS: Not to be confused with pathos, bathos is the humorous arrangement of items so that a list of important or prestigious ideas precedes an inappropriate or inconsequential item. For instance, "In the United States, Usama bin Laden is wanted for conspiracy, murder, terrorism, and unpaid parking tickets." Many modern humorists like Lewis Grizzard make liberal use of bathos, but the technique is common in older literature as well. Famous examples appear in Lord Byron's mock-epic Don Juan and Alexander Pope's satires. See rhetorical schemes for more information.

BEAST FABLE: A short, simple narrative with speaking animals as characters designed to teach a moral or social truth. Examples include the fables of Aesop and Marie de France, Kipling's Jungle Books, and Just So Stories, George Orwell's Animal Farm, and Chaucer's "Nun's Priest's Tale." Contrast with fable, below.

BEAT: A heavy stress or accent in a line of poetry. The number of beats or stresses in a line usually determines the meter of the line. See meter.

BESTIARY: A medieval treatise listing, naming, and describing various animals and their attributes, often using an elaborate allegory (see above) to explain the spiritual significance in terms of Christian doctrine. The oldest bestiaries adapt material from Pliny and classical sources, though by the early 1200s, French bestiaries had doubled or tripled the entries found in Pliny by adding new materials. The oldest surviving reference to this sort of bestiary which uses Christian doctrine is a marginal notation in a copy of Genesis dating from the early fifth-century, which refers the reader to the Physiologus for details about the animals in Genesis. The Physiologus (literally, "the Natural Philosopher" or "the Biologist") was particularly widespread, appearing in Greek, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, French, and Italian texts; its name comes from the opening lines in Latin, "Physiologus ait..." ["The biologist says..."]. Corresponding to bestiaries, lapidaries were treatises on the magical and spiritual properties of stones and gems, and herbaries or botanies discussed the magical and herbal properties of plants and trees. Often these materials would be packaged in single manuscripts, such as De Animalibus et Aliis Rebus (Concerning Animals and Other Things).

BLANK VERSE: (also called unrhymed iambic pentameter) Unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even-numbered syllables bearing the accents. Blank verse has been called the most "natural" verse form for dramatic works, since it supposedly is the verse form most close to natural rhythms of English speech, and it has been the primary verse form of English drama and narrative poetry since the mid-Sixteenth Century. Such verse is blank in rhyme only; it usually has a definite meter. (Variations in this meter may appear occasionally). The Earl of Surrey first used the term blank verse in his 1540 translation of The Aeneid of Virgil. As an example, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus' speech to Hippolyta appears in blank verse:

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name (5.1.12-17).

BLOCKING: The spatial grouping and movement of characters on stage. Typically, good blocking ensures that all characters are visible to the audience, that the stage is not cluttered with a clump of actors in any one area, and that important action or actors remain positioned in such a way as to emphasize their centrality to the story.

BLOCKING AGENT: A person, circumstance, or mentality that prevents two potential lovers from being together romantically. The blocking agent was a common genre trait for classical Roman comedies, for many of Shakespeare's plays, and remains a feature even in modern genres such as Harlequin romances.

BOB: See discussion under "Bob-and-Wheel."

BOB-AND-WHEEL: A metrical devise in some alliterative-verse poetry, especially that of the Pearl Poet. The first short line of a group of rhyming lines is known as the "bob" and the subsequent four are called the "wheel." The bob contains one stress preceded by either one or occasionally two unstressed syllables. Each line of the wheel contains three stresses. Together, the bob-and-wheel constitutes five lines rhyming in an ABABA pattern. The "bob," since it matches the alliterative pattern of the first part of the stanza, but also fits the rhyme scheme of the last five lines, serves as a structural bridge between the alliterative sections and the rhyming sections of the poem. Click here for an example.

BRETONS: The Celtic inhabitants of Brittany ("Little Britain") in France. The term is related to British "Briton." The Bretons may be responsible for carrying Arthurian legends into France, where they influenced Chretien de Troyes and other continental writers.

BREVE: A mark in the shape of a bowl-like half circle that indicates a light stress or an unaccented syllable.

BODILY HUMORS: See "Humors, Bodily."

BODY POLITIC, THE: The monarchial government, including all its citizens, its army, and its king. Political theory in the Elizabethan period thought of each kingdom as a "body," with the king functioning as its head. Events affecting the body politic, such as political turmoil, warfare, and plague, would be mirrored in the macrocosm, the microcosm, and the Chain of Being (See below).

BOX SET: A theatrical structure common to modern drama in which the stage consists of a single room setting in which the "fourth wall" is missing so the audience can view the events within the room. Contrast with the theater in the round and apron stage.

BUSKINS: Originally called kothorni in Greek, buskins is a Renaissance term for elegantly laced boots worn by actors in ancient Greek tragedy. The buskins later became elevator shoes that made the actor wearing them unusually tall to emphasize the royal status or importance of the character.

CACOPHONY: From the Greek meaning "bad sound," the term in poetry refers to the use of words that combine sharp, harsh, hissing, or unmelodious sounds. It is the opposite of euphony.

CADENCE: The melodic pattern just before the end of a sentence or phrase--for instance an interrogation or an exhortation. More generally, the natural rhythm of language depending on the position of stressed and unstressed syllables. Cadence is a major component of individual writers' styles. A cadence group is a coherent group of words spoken as a single rhythmical unit, such as a prepositional phrase, "of parting day" or a noun phrase, "our inalienable rights."

CAESURA (plural: caesurae): A pause separating phrases within lines of poetry--an important part of poetic rhythm. The term caesura comes from the Latin "a cutting" or "a slicing."

CARPE DIEM: Literally, the phrase is Latin for "seize the day," from carpere (to pluck or harvest or grab) and die (day). The term refers to a common moral in classical literature that the reader should make the most out of life and should enjoy it before it ends. Poetry that illustrates this moral is often called poetry of the "carpe diem" tradition. Examples include Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," and Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."

CANCEL: A bibliographical term referring to a leaf which is substituted for one removed by the printers because of an error. For instance, the first quarto of Troilus and Cressida has a title page existing in both cancelled and uncancelled states, leaving modern readers in some doubt as to whether the play should be considered a comedy, history, or tragedy.

CANON: Canon has three general meanings. (1) An approved or traditional collection of works. Originally, the term "canon" applied to the list of books to be included as authentic biblical doctrine in the Christian Bible, as opposed to apocryphal works (works of dubious, mysterious or uncertain origin). (2) Today, literature students typically use the word canon to refer to those works in anthologies that have come to be considered standard or traditionally included in the classroom and published textbooks. (3) In addition, the word canon refers to the writings of an author that are accepted as genuine, such as the "Chaucer canon" or the "Shakespeare canon." Chaucer's canon includes the Canterbury Tales, for instance, but it does not include the apocryphal work, "The Plowman's Tale," which has been mistakenly attributed to him in the past.

CANTICLE: A hymn or religious song using words from any part of the Bible except the Psalms.

CANTO: A sub-division of an epic or narrative poem comparable to a chapter in a novel. Examples include the divisions in Dante's Divine Comedy, Lord Byron's Childe Harold, or Spenser's Faerie Queene.

CATASTROPHE: The "turning downward" of the plot in a classical tragedy. By tradition, the catastrophe occurs in the fourth act of the play after the climax. (See tragedy.)

CATHARSIS: An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work. He writes in his Poetics (c. 350 BCE): "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; . . . through pity [eleos] and fear [phobos] effecting the proper purgation [Catharsis] of these emotions" (Book 6.2). (See Tragedy.)

CENSORSHIP ORDINANCE OF 1559: This law under Queen Elizabeth required the political censorship of public plays and all printed materials in matters of religion and the government. The Master of Revels was appointed to monitor and control such material. All of Shakespeare's early works were written under this act.

CHAIN OF BEING: An elaborate cosmological model of the universe common in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Great Chain of Being was a permanently fixed hierarchy, with the Judeo-Christian God at the top of the chain, and inanimate objects like stones and mud at the bottom. Intermediate beings and objects, such as angels, humans, animals, and plants, were arrayed in descending order of intelligence, authority, and capability between these two extremes. The Chain of Being was seen as designed by God. The idea of the Chain of Being resonates in art, politics, literature, cosmology, theology, and philosophy throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It takes on particular complexity because different parts of the Chain were thought to correspond to each other. (See Correspondences.)

CHARACTER: Any representation of an individual being presented in a dramatic or narrative work through extended verbal representation. The reader can interpret characters as endowed with moral and dispositional qualities expressed in what they say (dialogue) and what they do (action). E. M. Forster describes characters as "flat" (i.e., built around a single idea or quality and unchanging over the course of the narrative) or "round" (complex in temperament and motivation; drawn with subtlety; able to grow and change through the course of the narrative). The main character of a work of a fiction is typically called the protagonist; the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends (if there is one), is the antagonist. If a single secondary character aids the protagonist throughout the narrative, that character is the deuteragonist (the hero's "side-kick"). Compare flat characters with stock characters, below.

CHARACTERIZATION: An author or poet's use of description, dialogue, dialect, and action to create in the reader an emotional response to a character or to make the character more vivid and realistic. Careful readers note each character's attitude and thoughts, actions and reaction, as well as any language that reveals geographic, social, or cultural background.

CHIASMUS: a literary scheme involving a specific word order. Click here for more information.

CHIVALRY: An idealized code of military and social behavior for the aristocracy in the late medieval period. The word "chivalry" comes from Old French "cheval" (horse) and literally means "horsemanship." Normally, only rich nobility could afford the expensive armor, weaponry, and warhorses necessary for mounted combat, so the act of becoming a knight was symbolically indicated by giving the knight silver spurs. The right to knighthood in the late medieval period was inherited through the father, but it could also be granted by the king or a lord as a reward for services. The tenets of chivalry were attempts to civilize what was the rather brutal activity of warfare. The ideals involve sparing non-combatants such as women, children, and helpless prisoners; the protection of the church; honesty in word and bravery in deeds; loyalty to one's liege; dignified behavior; and single-combat between noble opponents who had a quarrel. Other matters associated with chivalry include gentlemanly duels supervised by witnesses and heralds, behaving according to the manners of polite society, courtly love (see below), brotherhood in arms, and feudalism. See knight, also.

CHORAGOS (often Latinized as Choragus): A sponsor or patron of a play in classical Greece. Often this sponsor was honored by serving as the leader of the chorus (see below).

CHORIC FIGURE: Any character in any type of narrative literature that serves the same purpose as a chorus in drama by remaining detached from the main action and commenting upon or explaining this action to the audience. See chorus, below.

CHORUS: (1) A group of singers who stand alongside or off stage from the principal performers in a dramatic or musical performance. (2) The song or refrain that this group of singers sings. In ancient Greece, the chorus was originally a group of male singers and dancers who participated in religious festivals and dramatic performances as actors, commenting on the deeds of the characters and interpreting the significance of the events within the play. Shakespeare alters the traditional chorus by replacing the singers with a single figure--often allegorical in nature. For instance, "Time" comes on stage in The Winter's Tale to explain the passing years. Likewise, "Rumor" appears in Henry IV, Part Two to summarize the gossip about Prince Hal. See also choragos and choric figure, above.

CHRONICLE: A history or a record of events. It refers to any systematic account or narration of events that makes minimal attempt to interpret or analyze that history. Medieval chronicles include Joinville's account of the Crusades. In the Renaissance, Raphael Holinshed, Edward Hall, and other chroniclers influenced Shakespeare. Chronicles were popular in England after the British defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. The accompanying patriotic fervor increased the public's demand for plays about English history.

CHRONOLOGY: The order in which events happen, especially when emphasizing a cause-effect relationship in history or in a narrative..

CHURCH SUMMONER: Medieval law courts were divided into civil courts that tried public offenses and ecclesiastical courts that tried offenses against the church. Summoners were minor church officials whose duties included summoning offenders to appear before the church and receive sentence. By the fourteenth-century, the job became synonymous with extortion and corruption, because many summoners would take bribes from the individuals summoned to court.

CLERIHEW: A funny poem of closed-form with four lines rhyming ABAB, usually about a famous person from history or literature.

CLICHÉ: A hackneyed or trite phrase that has become overused. Clichés are considered bad writing and bad literature. Cliché rhymes are rhymes that are considered trite or predictable. Cliché rhymes in poetry include love and dove, moon and June, trees and breeze. Sometimes, to avoid cliché rhymes, poets will go to hyperbolic lengths, such as the trisyllabic rhymes in Lord Byron's Don Juan.

CLIMAX, LITERARY (From Greek word for "ladder"): The moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved. It is also the peak of emotional response from a reader or spectator and usually the turning point in the action. The climax usually follows or overlaps with the crisis of a story, though some critics use the two terms synonymously. (Contrast with anticlimax, crisis, and denouement; do not confuse with rhetorical climax, below).

CLIMAX, RHETORICAL: Also known as auxesis and crescendo, this refers to an artistic arrangement of a list of items so that they appear in a sequence of increasing importance. See rhetorical schemes for more information. The opposite of climax is bathos.

CLOSED POETIC FORM: Poetry written in a a specific or traditional pattern according to the required rhyme, meter, line length, line groupings, and number of lines within a genre of poetry. Examples of a closed-form poetry include haiku, limericks, and sonnets, which have set numbers of syllables, lines, and traditional subject-matter. Contrast with open poetic form.

CLOSURE: A sense of completion or finality at the conclusion of play or narrative work. See also denouement.

CLOWN: (1) A fool or rural bumpkin in Shakespearean vocabulary. Examples of this type of clown include Lance, Bottom, Dogberry, and other Shakespearean characters. (2) A professional jester. Examples of this type include Touchstone, Feste, and Lear's Fool. See Fool, below.

COLLOQUIALISM: A word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing. (Compare with cliché, above and jargon and slang, below.)

COMEDY: In the original meaning of the word, comedy referred to a genre of drama during the Dionysia festivals of ancient Athens. Derived from Greek komos--songs of merry-makers--the first comedies were loud and boisterous drunken affairs. Later, in medieval and Renaissance use, the word comedy came to mean any play or narrative poem in which the main characters manage to avert an impending disaster and have a happy ending. The comedy did not necessarily have to be funny, and indeed, many comedies are serious in tone. It is only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that comedy's exclusive connotations of humor arose. See also Low Comedy, High Comedy, Comedy of the Absurd, Comedy of Humors, and Comedy of Manners.

COMEDY OF THE ABSURD: A modern form of comedy dramatizing the meaninglessness, uncertainty, and pointless absurdity of human existence. A famous examples is Waiting for Godot.

COMEDY OF MANNERS: A form of comedy consisting of five or three acts in which the attitudes and customs of a society are critiqued and satirized according to high standards of intellect and morality. The dialogue is usually clever and sophisticated, and characters are valued according to their linguistic and intellectual prowess. It is the opposite of the slapstick humor found in a farce or in the fabliaux.

COMEDY OF HUMORS: A renaissance drama in which numerous characters appear as the embodiment of stereotypical "types" of people, each character having the physiological and behavioral traits associated with a specific humor in the human body. The majority of the cast consists of such stock characters. (See "Humors, Bodily" for more information.) Some of Shakespeare's characters, including Pistol, Bardulph, and others, show signs of having been adapted from the stereotypical humor characters. In literature, a humor character was a type of flat character in whom a single passion predominated; this interpretation was especially popular in Elizabethan and other Renaissance literature. See also stock character.

COMIC RELIEF: A humorous scene, incident, or bit of dialogue occurring after some serious or tragic moment. Comic relief is deliberately designed to relieve emotional intensity and simultaneously heighten and highlight the seriousness or tragedy of the action. Macbeth contains Shakespeare's most famous example of comic relief in the form of a drunken porter.

COMITATUS: (Latin: "companionship" or "band"): The term describes the tribal structure of the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic tribes, in which groups of men would swear fealty to a lord in exchange for food, mead, and heriot, the loan of fine armor and weaponry. The men who swore such an oath were called thegns (roughly akin to modern Scottish "thane"), and they vowed to fight for their lord in battle. It was considered a shameful disaster to outlive one's own lord. The comitatus was the functional military and government unit of early Anglo-Saxon society. The term was first coined by the classical historian Tacitus when he described the Germanic tribes north of Rome.

COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE: a genre of Italian farce from the sixteenth-century characterized by stock characters, stock situation, and spontaneous dialogue. Typically, the plot is an intrigue plot and involves a soubrette who aids two young lovers in foiling the rigid constraints of their parents. In the end, the couple achieves a happy marriage. Commedia dell'arte may have influenced Shakespeare's comedies, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor.

COMMON MEASURE: A closed poetic quatrain rhyming ABAB, in which the lines of iambic tetrameter alternate with lines of iambic trimeter. This pattern is most often associated with ballads (see above), and occasionally referred to as "ballad measure."

COMPOSITE MONSTER (in architecture, often called a "chimera" after the Greek monster): The term is one mythologists use to describe the fantastical creatures in Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and medieval European legends in which the beast is composed of the body-parts of various animals. For instance, in Greek mythology, the chimera has the body of a lion, tale of a serpent, wings of a bat, and a goat-head, a lion-head, and a serpent's head. Likewise, the sphinx has a lion's body and a woman's head and breasts; the Centaur has a horse's body, but a human torso and a human head where the horse-head should be; the minotaur has a bull's head and a man's body; and the harpy has an avian body and a woman's head, breasts, and arms. Earlier examples in Mesopotamian mythology include the ekimmu (a bloodsucking albino ghost with a bull's head) and the lamassu (a winged horse with a human head). In the medieval period, composite monsters include the formecolion, with an ant's body and a lion's head; the mermaid, with a human top and a fish bottom; and the cockatrice, which mingles parts of a rooster and a serpent. Contrast with Additive Monster, above.

Composite monsters were common in the legends of classical and ancient cultures, but diminished in favor after the Renaissance. Many theories propose to explain the common tendency to create composite monsters. Theories include mistranslation in traveler's tales, in which an animal is describing as having a head like such-and-such a creature, but the simile is lost in translation; the encounter of fossil remnants of extinct animals, or bones found jumbled together and misassembled; and the heraldic practice of dimidiation, in which a nobleman's son might take two animals found on his father's and mother's coats of arms combine them into a composite creature to illustrate his geneology.

An example in 20th century films includes The Fly. In this1950s horror classic, a fly and a human trade bodies and heads.

CONCEIT: Before the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, this term was a synonym for "thought" and roughly equivalent to "idea" or "concept." It gradually came to denote a fanciful idea, or a particularly clever remark. In literary terms, the word denotes a fairly elaborate figure of speech, which often incorporates unlikely metaphors, simile, hyperbole, and oxymorons. One of the most famous conceits is John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," in which Donne compares two souls in love to the points on a geometer's compass. Shakespeare also uses conceits regularly in his poetry. In Richard II, Shakespeare compares two kings to buckets in a well, for instance.

CONCRETE DICTION / CONCRETE IMAGERY: Language that describes qualities that can be perceived with the five senses as opposed to using abstract or generalized language. For instance, calling a fruit "pleasant" or "good" is abstract, while calling a fruit "cool" or "sweet" is concrete. The preference for abstract or concrete imagery varies from century to century. Philip Sidney praised concrete imagery in poetry in his 1595 treatise, Apologie for Poetrie. A century later, Neoclassical thought tended to value the generality of abstract thought. In the early 1800s, the Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley once again preferred concreteness. In the 20th century, the distinction between concrete and abstract has been a subject of some debate. Ezra Pound and T. E. Hulme attempted to create a theory of concrete poetry. T. S. Eliot added to this school of thought with his theory of the "objective correlative". Contrast with Abstract Diction / Abstract Imagery, above.

CONCRETE POETRY: Poetry that draws much of its power from the way the text appears situated on the page. The actual shape of the lines of text may create a swan's neck, an altar, a geometric pattern, or a set of wings, which in some direct way connects to the meaning of the words. Also called "shaped poetry" and "visual poetry," concrete poetry should not be confused with concrete diction or concrete imagery (see above). The object here is to present each poem as a different shape. It may appear on the page, on glass, stone, wood, or other materials. The technique seems simple, but can allow great subtlety. Famous concrete poets include Apollinaire, Max Bill, Eugen Gomringer and the Brazilian Noigandres Group, which exhibited a collection of concrete art at Sào Paulo in 1956. In Germany, this school of poetry is called konkretisten by critics. It includes Ernst Jandl, Achleitner, Heissenbüttel, Mon, and Rühm. Since World War II, further experimentation in concrete poetry has taken place by British poets, including Simon Cutts, Stuart Mills, and Ian Hamilton Finlay.

CONFLICT: The opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on. Conflict may also be completely internal, such as the protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies (drug addiction, self-destructive behavior, and so on; William Faulkner famously claimed that the most important literature deals with the subject of "the human heart in conflict with itself." Conflict is the engine that drives a plot. Examples of narratives driven mainly by conflicts between the protagonist and nature include Jack London's "To Build a Fire" (in which the Californian struggles to save himself from freezing to death) and Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" (in which shipwrecked men in a lifeboat struggle to stay alive and get to shore). Examples of narratives driven by conflicts between a protagonist and an antagonist include Mallory's Le Morte D'arthur, in which King Arthur faces off against his evil son Mordred, each representing civilization and barbarism respectively. Examples of narratives driven by internal struggles include Daniel Scott Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon," in which the hero struggles with the loss of his own intelligence to congenital mental retardation, and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the protagonist ends up struggling with his own guilt after committing a murder. In complex works of literature, multiple conflicts may occur at once. For instance, in Shakespeare's Othello, one level of conflict is the unseen struggle between Othello and the machinations of Iago, who seeks to destroy him. Another level of conflict is Othello's struggle with his own jealous insecurities and his suspicions that Desdemona is cheating on him.

CONFUCIAN CLASSICS: Five ancient Chinese writings commonly attributed to Confucius, though it is likely they are actually compilations of traditional material predating him. The five classics include the I Ching (The Book of Changes), the Shu Ching (The Book of History), the Shih Ching, (The Book of Odes), the Record of Rites (Li Chi), and the Spring and Autumn Annals. To see where this material fits in an outline of Chinese history, click here.

CONNOTATION The extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary. For instance, the terms civil war, revolution and rebellion have the same denotation, in that they all refer to an attempt at social or political change. However, civil war carries historical connotations for Americans beyond that of revolution or rebellion. Likewise, revolution is often applied more generally to scientific or theoretical changes, and it does not necessarily connote violence. Rebellion, for many English speakers connotes an improper uprising against a legitimate authority (thus we speak about "rebellious teenagers" rather than "revolutionary teenagers"). In the same way, the words house and home both refer to a domicile, but home connotes certain singular emotional qualities and personal possession in a way that house doesn't. I might own four houses I rent to others, but I might call none of these my home, for example. Much of poetry involves the poet using connotative diction that suggests meanings beyond "what the words simply say." Contrast with denotation.

CONTEXTUAL SYMBOL: A unique or original symbol an author creates within the context of an individual work or an author's collected works. Examples include the Snopes family in Faulkner's collected works, who together function as a symbol of the South's moral decay, or the town of Castle Rock, Maine, which in Stephen King's works function as a microcosmic symbol of human society. Contrast with cultural symbol, below.

CONVENTION: (See also Genre) A common feature that has become traditional or expected within a specific genre of literature or film. In Harlequin romances, it is conventional to focus on a male and female character who struggle through misunderstandings and difficulties until they fall in love. In western films of the early twentieth-century, for instance, it has been conventional for protagonists to wear white hats and antagonists to wear black hats. The wandering knight-errant who travels from place to place, seeking adventure while suffering from the effects of hunger and the elements, is a convention in medieval romances. It is a convention for an English sonnet to have fourteen lines with a specific rhyme scheme, abab, cdcd, efef, gg, and so on. The use of a chorus and the unities are dramatic conventions of Greek tragedy, while, the aside, and the soliloquy are conventions in Elizabethan tragedy. Conventions are often referred to as poetic, literary, or dramatic, depending upon whether the convention appears in a poem, short story or novel, or a play.

CORPUS CHRISTI PLAY: A religious play performed outdoors in the medieval period that enacts an event from the Bible, such as the story of Adam and Eve, Noah's flood, the crucifixion, and so on. The word is derived from the religious festival of Corpus Christi ("The Body of Christ"). See also cycle and mystery play, below.

CORRESPONDENCES: An integral part of the medieval and Renaissance model of the universe known as the "Chain of Being" (see above). The idea was that different links on the Chain of Being were interconnected and had a sort of sympathetic correspondence to each other. Each type of being or object (men, beasts, celestial objects, fish, plants, and rocks) had a place within a hierarchy designed by God. Each type of object had a primate, which was by nature the most noble, rare, valuable, and superb example of its type. For instance, the king was primate among men, the lion among beasts, the sun among celestial objects, the whale among fish, the oak among trees, and the diamond among rocks. Often, there was a symbolic link between primates of different orders--such as the lion being a symbol of royalty, or the king sleeping in a bed of oak. This symbolic link was a "correspondence." However, correspondences were thought to exist in the material world as well as in the world of ideas. Disturbances in nature would correspond to disturbances in the political realm (the body politic), in the human body (the microcosm), and in the natural world as a whole (the macrocosm). For instance, if the king were to become ill, Elizabethans might expect lions and beasts to fall sick, rebellions to break out in the kingdom, individuals to develop headaches or fevers, and stars to fall from the sky. All of these events could correspond to each other on the chain of being, and each would coincide with the others.

COSMIC IRONY: Another term for situational irony. See irony, below.

COTHURNI: See buskins.

COUPLET: Two lines--the second line immediately following the first--of the same metrical length that end in a rhyme to form a complete unit. Geoffrey Chaucer and other writers helped popularize the form in English poetry in the fourteenth century. An especially popular form is the heroic couplet, which was rhymed iambic pentameter. It was popular from the 1600s through the late 1700s. Much Romantic poetry in the early 1800s used the couplet as well. A couplet that occurs after the volta in an English sonnet is called a gemmel (see sonnet, volta, gemmel).

COURTLY LOVE (Medieval French: "Fin Amour."): Possibly a cultural trope in the late twelfth-century, or possibly a literary convention that captured popular imagination, courtly love refers to a code of behavior that gave rise to modern ideas of chivalrous romance. The term itself was popularized by C. S. Lewis' scholarly studies, but its historical existence remains contested in critical circles. The conventions of courtly love are that a knight of noble blood would adore and worship a young noble-woman from afar, seeking to protect her honor and win her favor by valorous deeds. He typically falls ill with love-sickness, while the woman chastely or scornfully rejects or refuses his advances in public, but privately encourages him. Courtly Love was associated with (A) nobility, since no peasants can engage in "fine love"; (B) secrecy; (C) adultery, since often the one or both participants were married to another noble who was unloved; and (D) paradoxically with chastity, since the passion could never be consummated due to social circumstances, thus it was a "higher love" unsullied by selfish carnal desires. Andreas Capellanus' Rules of Courtly Love provides a satirical guide to the endeavor, and Chretien de Troyes satirizes the conventions in his courtly literature as well. Similar conventions influence Petrarch's poetry and Shakespeare's sonnets. These sonnets often emphasize in particular the idea of "love from afar" and "unrequited love," and make use of imagery and wording common to the earlier French tradition.

CRESCENDO: See climax, rhetorical, above.

CRISIS: The turning point of uncertainty and tension resulting from earlier conflict in a plot. At the moment of crisis in a story, it is unclear if the protagonist will succeed or fail in his struggle. The crisis usually leads to or overlaps with the climax of a story, though some critics use the two terms synonymously. See climax, literary, above.

CULTURAL SYMBOL: A symbol that is widely or generally accepted as meaning something specific within an entire culture or social group, as opposed to a contextual symbol created by a single author that has meaning only within a single work or group of works. Examples of cultural symbols in Western culture include the cross as a symbol of Christianity, the American flag as a symbol of American culture and the colonial history of thirteen colonies growing into fifty states, the gold ring as a symbol of marital commitment, the Caduceus as a symbol of medicine, and the color black as a symbol of mourning. Examples of cultural symbols in other cultures include white as a symbol of mourning in Japan, the Yin-Yang sphere as an oriental symbol of oppositional forces in balance, the white crane as a symbol of longevity in Mandarin China, and so forth. Any writer within a specific culture could use one of these symbols and be relatively confident that the reader would understand what each symbol represented. Thus, if a writer depicted a pedophilic priest as trampling a crucifix into the mud, it is likely the reader would understand this action represents the way he tramples Christian ideals, and so forth. Contrast with contextual symbol and archetype, above.

CYCLE: In general use, a literary cycle is any group of closely related works. More specifically, a cycle refers to the complete set of mystery plays performed during the Corpus Christi festival in medieval religious drama (typically 45 or so plays, each of which depicted a specific event in human history from the creation of the world to the last judgment). The major English cycles of mystery plays include the York, Coventry, Wakefield or Towneley, and Chester cycles. See Corpus Christi play, above.

DACTYL: A three-syllable foot consisting of a heavy stress and two light stresses. See meter. Examples of words that constitute dactyls include notable, horrible, and parable.

DANEGELD: The practice of paying extortion money to Vikings to make them go away, often associated in particular with the Anglo-Saxon king "Aethelred Unraed." His nickname means "Aethelred the Unready," or more accurately translated, "Aethelred the Uncounciled." At various points in history, British kings paid as much as 20,000 pounds in silver to appease the Vikings and prevent invasion--a disastrous policy that bankrupted the island and encouraged the return of extortionate Vikings every few years. It ultimately led to large portions of northern England being settled by the Vikings in the area known as the Danelaw, which in turn played a key part in the evolution of the English language through the incorporation of Scandinavian loan-words. Words like skiff, ship, and shirt, for instance, are all loan-words borrowed from the Vikings.

DECONSTRUCTIONISM: A interpretive literary movement that reached its apex in the 1970s that rejects absolute interpretations, stressing ambiguities and contradictions in literature. Deconstructionism grew out of the linguistic principles of De Saussure, who noted that many languages create meaning by binary opposites. The word oppositions such as good/evil, light/dark, male/female, and high/low show a human tendency common in all cultures to create vocabulary as pairs of opposites, with one of the two words arbitrarily given positive connotation and the other word arbitrarily associated with negative connotations. Deconstructionists carry this principle one step further by asserting that this tendency is endemic to all words, and hence all literature. For instance, they might try to complicate literary interpretations by revealing that "heroes" and "villains" often have overlapping traits, or else have traits that only exist because of the presence of the other. Hence these concepts are unreliable in themselves as a basis for talking about literature in any meaningful way. Oftentimes, detractors of deconstructionism argue that deconstructionists deny the value of literature, or assert that all literature is ultimately meaningless. It would be more accurate to assert that deconstructionists deny the absolute value of literature, and assert that all literature is ultimately incapable of offering constructed meaning external to the "prison-house of language," which always embodies oppositional ideas within itself.

DENOTATION: The minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary, disregarding any historical or emotional connotation. Contrast with connotation, above.

DENOUEMENT: A French word meaning "unknotting" or "unwinding." Denouement refers to the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, which usually occurs toward the final stages of the plot. It is the unraveling of the main dramatic complications in a play, novel or other work of literature. In drama, the term is usually applied to tragedies or to comedies with catastrophes in their plot. It usually takes place in the final chapter or scene, after the climax is over. Usually the denouement ends as quickly as the writer can arrange it--for it occurs only after all the conflicts have been resolved.

DEUS EX MACHINA (from Greek theos apo mechanes): An unrealistic or unexpected intervention to rescue the protagonists or resolve the conflict. The term means "The god out of the machine," and refers to stage machinery. A classical Grecian actor, portraying one of the Greek gods in a play, might be lowered out of the sky onto the stage and then use his divine powers to solve all the mortals' problem. The term is a negative one, and often implies a lack of skill on the part of the writer. In a modern example of deus ex machina, a writer might reach a climactic moment in which a band of pioneers were attacked by bandits. A cavalry brigade's unexpected arrival to drive away the marauding bandits at the conclusion, with no previous hint of the cavalry's existence, would be a deus ex machina conclusion.

DEUTERAGONIST: A sidekick who accompanied the main protagonist. (See under character, above)

DEUTERONOMIC LAW: The belief that God could choose to wait several generations before punishing a sinful race for the sins of the fathers. Thus, the children or descendants of the original criminals or evildoers would suffer the consequences of their ancestors' choices. The idea originates in an old testament Biblical passage found in Deuteronomy 5:9: ". . . For I am the Lord thy God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon their children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." A similar passage in Ezekiel 18:2 and Jeremiah 31:29-30 ("The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge") was also read as an echo of this idea, though in general, the doctrine is referred to as Deuteronomical by Renaissance theologians. Renaissance historians, especially those influenced by Tudor propaganda, saw the War of the Roses and its series of incompetent kings (like Henry VI) and cruel tyrants (Richard III) as God's punishment descending upon Britain for allowing Henry IV to usurp the throne three generations earlier.

DIACOPE (also called Epizeuxis or Repetition): Uninterrupted repetition, or repetition with only one or two words between each repeated phrase. Poe might cry out, "Oh, horror, horror, horror!" Diacope is an example of a rhetorical scheme.

DIALECT: The language of a particular district, class, or group of persons. It encompasses the sounds, spelling, grammar, and diction employed by a specific people as distinguished from other persons either geographically or socially. Dialect is a major technique of characterization that reveals the social or geographic status of a character. For example, Mark Twain uses exaggerated dialect in his Huckleberry Finn to differentiate between characters:

Huck: "I'll take the canoe and go see, Jim. It mightn't be, you know."

Other famous uses of dialect include the novels Silas Mariner and Middlemarch by George Eliot.

DIALOGUE: the lines spoken by a character or characters in a play, essay, story, or novel, especially a conversation between two characters, or a literary work that takes the form of such a characterization. Bad dialogue is pointless. Good dialogue either provides characterization or advances the plot. In plays, dialogue often includes within it hints akin to stage directions.

DICTION: The choice of a particular word as opposed to others. A writer could call a rock formation by many words--a stone, a boulder, an outcropping, a pile of rocks, a cairn, a mound, or even an "anomalous geological feature." The questions always become, "Why that particular choice of words? What is the effect of that diction?" The word choice a writer makes determines the reader's reaction to the object of description, and contributes to the author's style and tone (see below). Compare with concrete diction and abstract diction, above. It is also possible to separate diction into high or formal diction, which involves elaborate, technical, or polysyllabic vocabulary and careful attention to the proprieties of grammar, and low or informal diction, which involves conversational or famililar language, contractions, slang, elision, and grammatical errors designed to convey a relaxed tone.

DIGRAPH: Any use of two alphabetical letters to create a single sound. For instance, in phonograph, the letters <ph> spell the /f/ sound. Likewise, in the word dumb, the letters <mb> create the /m/ sound, and in pick, the <ck> creates the /k/ sound. English regularly uses digraphs like <ch>, <th> and <sh> to indicate sounds for which there is no single symbol in the commonly used alphabet.

DIMETER: A line of two metrical feet. See meter.

DIONYSIA: The Athenian religious festivals celebrating Dionysus in March-April. Goats were sacrificed, and then tragic plays performed in honor of the god, interspersed with brief comedies. (The word tragedy itself originates in the Greek tragos--a goat song.) See tragedy, Lenaia.

DIPODY: In classical prosody, syzygy describes the combination of two feet into another² single metrical unit. Often used interchangeably with the more general term syzygy, this dipody involves the substitution of two normal feet, usually iambs or trochees, under a more powerful beat, so that a "galloping" or "rolling" rhythm results. See meter, rhythm. It is common in children's rhymes, nursery rhymes, and ballads. J. A. Cuddon lists two examples in his Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory that are two lengthy to reproduce here, but serve to illustrate the effect well.

DIRGE: See under discussion of elegy, below.

DITHYRAMB: An ancient Athenian poetic form sung during the Dionysia (see above). The first tragedies may have originated from the dithyrambs. See tragedy.

DONNÉE: (French, "given"): The assumptions upon which a writer constructs a work of literature. Some common examples include the assumption that young love is fickle, that society is bleak or dangerous for survivors of warfare, that guilt is inescapable, that following one's heart leads to happiness/sadness, and so on. Contrast with cliché and theme.

DOUBLE DACTYL: A comic verse written with two quatrains, with each line written in dactylic dimeter. The second line may be a name, and the sixth or seventh line a single word.

DOUBLE ENTENDRE: (French, "Double Meaning"): The deliberate use of ambiguity in a phrase or image-especially sexual or humorous meaning.

DOUBLE PLOT: When an author uses two related plots within a single narrative. See subplot and plot.

DOUBLE RHYME: A rhyme that involves two syllables rather than one. For instance, rhyming lend/send is a single rhyme, in which each word consists of a single syllable. However, the words lending/sending constitute a double rhyme, because two syllables are used. In English, most double rhymes create a feminine ending.Contrast with triple rhyme (below) and feminine ending (under meter).

DRAMA: A composition in prose or verse presenting, in pantomime and dialogue, a narrative involving conflict between a character or characters and some external or internal force (see conflict). Playwrights usually design dramas for presentation on a stage in front of an audience. Aristotle called it "imitated human action." Drama may have originated in religious ceremonies. Thespis of Attica (Sixth Century BCE) was the first recorded composer of a tragedy, which at that time was performed by a single actor. Aeschylus added a second actor to allow conflict and dialogue. Sophocles and Euripides added a third. Medieval drama may have evolved independently from rites commemorating the birth and death of Christ. During the late medieval period and the early Renaissance, drama gradually altered to the form we know today. The mid-Sixteenth Century in England in particular was one of the greatest periods of world drama. In traditional Greek drama, as defined by Aristotle, a play was to consist of five acts and follow the three dramatic unities. In more recent drama during the last two centuries, plays have more frequently consisted of three acts, and playwrights have felt more comfortable disgarding the confines of Aristotlean rules involving verisimilitude. See also unities, comedy, tragedy, revenge play, miracle play, morality play, and mystery play. An individual work of drama is called a play.

DRAMATIC CONVENTION: See convention.

DRAMATIC IRONY: See irony.

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE: A poem in which a poetic speaker addresses either the reader or an internal listener at length. It is similar to the soliloquy in theater. Two famous examples are Browning's "My Last Duchess" and "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister."

DRAMATIC POINT OF VIEW: See point of view.

DRAMATIC UNITIES: See Unities, three.

DREAM VISION: (Visio) A genre popular of poetry in the Middle Ages. By convention, a fictionalized version of the writer goes to sleep in a pleasant, natural springtime setting (May mornings being particularly popular). He has a dream which he relates to the reader. During the dream, he encounters a mentor or guide who takes him on a journey in which he encounters various historical or fictional figures engaged in allegorical activities. Through his interactions, the dreamer learns valuable spiritual, political, or intellectual truths and is transformed by the experience. One of the earliest literary works to influence the genre is Macrobius' (c. 400 CE) commentary on the Somnium Scipionis. Medieval examples from the continent include the Roman de la Rose (13th century), and Dante's Divine Comedy. Medieval examples in the British Isles include the Welsh Dream of Rhonabwy and English works such as Piers Plowman, Pearl, and Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. More modern versions include Bunyan's prose narrative The Pilgrim's Progress, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and films such as The Wizard of Oz.

DYING RHYME: Another term for feminine endings. See discussion under meter.

DYNAMIC CHARACTER: See round character.

ECHOIC WORDS: Another term for onomatopoeia. See onomatopoeia under tropes.

ELEGY: In classical Greco-Roman literature, "elegy" refers to any poem written in elegaic meter (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines). More broadly, elegy came to mean any poem dealing with the subject-matter common to the early Greco-Roman elegies--complaints about love, sustained formal lamentation, or a somber meditations. Typically, elegies are marked by several conventions of genre:

(1) The elegy, much like the classical epic, typically begins with an invocation of the muses, and then continues with allusions to classical mythology.

(2) The poem usually contains a poetic speaker who uses the first person

(3) The speaker raises questions about justice, fate, or providence.

(4) The poet moves on to a lengthy digression about the conditions of his own time or his own situation

(5) The digression allows the speaker to move beyond his original emotion or thinking to a higher level of understanding.

(6) The conclusion of the poem provides consolation or insight into the speaker's situation. In Christian elegies, the lyric reversal often moves from despair and grief to joy when the speaker realizes that death or misfortune is but a temporary barrier separating one from the bliss of eternity.

(7) The poem tends to be longer than a lyric, but not as long as an epic.

In the case of pastoral elegies, there are several other common conventions:

Famous elegies include Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais," and Arnold's "Thyrsis." Closely related to the pastoral elegy, there is the dirge or threnody, which is shorter than the elegy and often represented as a text meant to be sung aloud. The term monody refers to any dirge or elegy presented as the utterance of a single speaker.

ELEMENTS, THE FOUR: The alchemical theory that all matter was composed of four components: earth, air, fire, and water. Each element had two spectrums of quality: hot/cold and dry/wet. For instance, earth was cold and dry. Water was cold and wet. Fire was hot and dry, and so on. Varying combinations of elements resulted in the four bodily humors (see below) of the physical body. Like the chain of being, the elements were arranged hierarchically, with varying elements given qualities that made them subordinate or dominant. The lowest, earth, was beneath all the other elements. The highest, fire, was above all the others. References to the elements appear frequently in medieval and Renaissance literature, and often have complex political, spiritual, and cosmological significance that is easily overlooked if one does not recall the hierarchical nature of the elements in alchemical models.

ELISION: When the poet takes a word that ends in a vowel, and a following word that begins with a vowel, and blurs them together to create a single syllable. Contrast with synaeresis, syncope, and acephalous lines.

ELIZABETHAN: Occurring in the time of Queen Elizabeth I's reign, from 1558-1603. Shakespeare wrote his early works during the Elizabethan period.

ELLIPSIS: The artful omission of a word implied by a previous clause. See schemes.

ENALLAGE: Intentionally misusing grammar to characterize a speaker or to create a memorable phrase. Boxing manager Joe Jacobs, for instance, became immortal with the phrase, "We was robbed!" Or, the editors of Punch magazine might tell their British readers, "You pays your money, and you takes your chances." See schemes.

ENCLOSING METHOD: Another term for framing method. See below.

END-STOPPED RHYME: A line ending in a full pause, often indicated by appropriate punctuation such as a period or semicolon. This is in contrast to enjambement or run-on lines, in which the grammatical sense of the sentence continues uninterrupted into the next line. Here is an example from Robert Browning's "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister":

ENJAMBEMENT (also called run-on line): A line having no pause or end punctuation but having uninterrupted grammatical meaning continuing into the next line. Here is an example from George S. Viereck's "The Haunted House":

You will note there is no punctuation or pause at the end of lines one, two, and three. Instead, the meaning continues uninterrupted into the next line. Contrast this technique with end-stopped rhymes, above.

ENLIGHTENMENT (also called the neoclassic movement): the philosophical and artistic movement growing out of the Renaissance and continuing until the nineteenth century. The Enlightenment was an optimistic belief that humanity could improve itself by applying logic and reason to all things. It rejected untested beliefs, superstition, and the "barbarism" of the earlier medieval period, and embraced the literary, architectural, and artistic forms of the Greco-Roman world. Enlightenment thinkers were enchanted by the perfection of geometry and mathematics, and by all things harmonious and balanced. The period's poetry, as typified by Alexander Pope, John Dryden, and others, attempted to create perfect, clockwork regularity in meter. Typically, these Enlightenment writers would use satire to ridicule what they felt were illogical errors in government, social custom, and religious belief.

For me, I have found one useful exercise to understand the difference between the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement that followed. This exercise is the examination of the architecture of English and continental gardens in each period. In the Enlightenment, the garden would be kept neatly trimmed, with only useful or decorative plants allowed to grow, and every weed meticulously uprooted. The trees would be planted according to mathematical models for harmonious spacing, and the shrubbery would be pruned into geometric shapes such as spheres, cones, or pyramids. The preferred garden walls would involve Greco-Roman columns perfectly spaced from each other in clean white marble, smoothly burnished in straight edges and lines. If a stream or well were available, the architect might divert it down a carefully designed irrigation path, or pump it into the spray of a marble fountain. Such a setting was considered ideal for hosting civilized gatherings and leisurely strolls through the grounds. Such features were common in gardens from the 1660s up through the late 1790s. Nature was something to be shaped according to the dictates of human will and tamed according to the rules of human logic.

On the other hand, the later Romanticists might be horrifed at the artificial design imposed upon nature. The ideal garden in the Romantic period might be planted in the ruins of an ancient cloister or churchyard. Wild ivy might be encouraged to grow along the the picturesque, rough-hewn walls. Rather than ornamental shrubbery, fruit trees would be planted. The flowers might be loosely clustered according to type, but overgrown random patterns caused by the natural distribution of wind and rain were considered more aesthetically pleasing. Even better, rather than planting a garden, a Romanticist nature-lover would be encouraged to walking in the untamed wilderness, clambering up and down the uneven rocks and gullies of a natural stream. Many Romanticists who inherited enlightenment gardens simply tore the structures down and allowed the grounds to run wild. Nature was considered something larger than humanity, and the passions it inspired in its untamed form were considered healthier (more "natural") than the faint-hearted passions originating in falsely imposed human design.

EPANALEPSIS: Repeating a word from the beginning of a clause at the end of the clause: "Year chases year." Or "Man's inhumanity to man." As Voltaire reminds us, "Common sense is not so common." As Shakespeare chillingly phrases it, "Blood will have blood." Under Biblical lextalionis one might demand "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life."

EPIC: An epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry. It is a poem that is (a) a long narrative about a serious subject, (b) told in an elevated style of language, (c) focused on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group, (d) in which the hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people or nation. Usually, the epic has (e) a vast setting, and covers a wide geographic area, (f) it contains superhuman feats of strength or military prowess, and gods or supernatural beings frequently take part in the action. The poem begins with (g) the invocation of a muse to inspire the poet and, (h) the narrative starts in medias res (see above). (i) The epic contains long catalogs of heros or important characters, focusing on highborn kings and great warriors rather than peasants and commoners. The term applies most directly to classical Greek texts like the Iliad and the Odyssey. However, some critics have applied the term more loosely. The Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf has also been called an epic of Anglo-Saxon culture, Milton's Paradise Lost is seen as an epic of Christian culture, and Shakespeare's various History Plays have been collectively called an epic of Renaissance Britain. Contrast with mock epic, below.

EPIC SIMILE: A formal and sustained simile (see under Tropes). Like a regular simile, an epic simile makes a comparison between one object and another using "like" or "as." However, unlike a regular simile, which appears in a single sentence, the epic simile may be developed at great length, often up to fifty or a hundred lies. Examples include Homer's comparison between Odysseus clinging to the rocks and an octopus with pebbles stuck in in its tentacles, or Virgil's comparison of the city of Carthage and a bee-hive. For an example of a Homeric epic simile from The Odyssey, click here.

EPIGRAM (from Greek epigramma "an inscription"): (1) an inscription in verse or prose on a building, tome, or coin, (2) a short verse or motto appearing at the beginning of a longer poem or the title page of a novel, at the heading of a new section or paragraph of an essay or other literary work to establish mood or raise thematic concerns, (3) a short, humorous poem, often written in couplets, that makes a satiric point. Coleridge once described this third type of epigram using an epigram himself: "A dwarfish whole, / Its body brevity, and wit its soul."

EPILOGUE: A conclusion added to a literary work such as a novel, play, or long poem. It is the opposite of a prologue. Often, the epilogue refers to the moral of a fable. Sometimes, it is a speech made by one of the actors at the end of a play asking for the indulgence of the critics and the audience. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream contains one of the most famous epilogues. Contrast with prologue.

EPENTHIS (also called infixation): Adding an extra syllable or letters in the middle of a word. Shakespeare might write, "A visitating spirit came last night" to highlight the unnatural status of the visit. More prosaically, Ned Flanders from The Simpsons might say, "Gosh-diddly-darn-it, Homer."

EPIPHANY: Christian thinkers used this term to signify a manifestation of God's presence in the world. It has since become in modern fiction and poetry the standard term for the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or scene. In particular, the epiphany is a revelation of such power and insight that it alters the entire world-view of the thinker who experiences it. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night takes place on the Feast of the Epiphany, and the theme of revelation is prevalent in the work. James Joyce used the term epiphany to describe personal revelations such as that of Gabriel Conroy in the short story "The Dead" in Dubliners.

EPISODE: An scene involving the actors rather the chorus, or sections of such scenes in a Classical Greek tragedy. Divisions separating the episodes were called stasima. During the stasima, the chorus sang.

EPISODIA: The Greek word for episode. See above.

EPISTROPHE: Repetition of a concluding word or endings: "He's learning fast; are you earning fast?" When the epistrophe focuses on sounds rather than entire words, we normally call it rhyme. Epistrophe is an example of a rhetorical scheme.

EPITHALAMION (Greek, "at the Bridal Chamber"): A wedding hymn sung in classical Greece outside the bride's room on her wedding night. Sappho is believed to have been the first poet to begin the tradition. Renaissance poets revived the tradition, including Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Ben Jonson, Herrick, Crashaw, Dryden, and Marvell. The genre largely fell out of favor during the Enlightenment, but it enjoyed a brief respite during the Romantic period.

EPITAPH: Not to be confused with epithet or epigram, an epitaph refers literally to an inscription carved on a gravestone. In a more general sense, the final words spoken by a character before his death. In many of Shakespeare's plays, it is common for the last words a character speaks to come true, especially if he utters a curse. Shakespeare's own epitaph in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, is rather famous: GOOD FREND FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE BLESTE BE Y MAN Y SPARES THES STONES AND CVRST BE HE Y MOVES MY BONES." The Norton Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare provides the best available photo-facsimile of it. Other famous epitaphs include John Keats grave inscription: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." A long list of such literary epitaphs can be found here.

EPITHET: A short, poetic nickname in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase attached to the normal name. Frequently, this technique allows a poet to extend a line by a few syllables in a poetic manner that characterizes an individual or a setting within an epic poem. The Homeric epithet in classical literature often includes compounds of two-words such as, "fleet-footed Achilles," "Cow-eyed Hera," "Grey-eyed Athena," or "the wine-dark sea." In other cases, it appears as a phrase, such as "Odysseus the man-of-many-wiles," or whanot. The historical epithet is a descriptive phrase attached to a ruler's name. For instance, King Alfred the Great, Duke Lorenzo the Magnificent, Robert the Devil, Richard the Lionheart, and so on. Not to be confused with epitaph or epigram.

EPIZEUXIS: Another term for diacope, above.

ESCHATALOGICAL NARRATIVE: Eschatalogy in Christian theology is the study of the end of things, including the end of the world, life-after-death, and the Last Judgement. An eschatalogical narrative refers to a story dealing with these matters, a story which explains what the ultimate ending or conclusion of something.

ETIOLOGICAL NARRATIVE: Etiology is the branch of philosophy and medicine dealing with the origins of things, or how things came to be. An etiological narrative in folklore, mythology/religion, or literature, is a story that explains how a social custom, geographical feature, animal, or plant came into existence. For instance, Ovid's Metamorphosis explains that the reason so many serpents exist in India is due to the fact that Perseus spilled some Gorgon's blood there, and where each drop of blood fell, a serpent arose; it also explains how Mount Olympus came to be so tall--giants and titans piled one mountain on top of another in order to reach the heavens and battle Jupiter. Unusual rock formations in Wales are often explained in etiological narratives. For instance, an unusual rock formation might be explained using a story about King Arthur riding his horse over the rocks, resulting in the geological formation. Some Scandinavian legends about trolls and giants are etiological narratives explaining how a mountain range or a valley came into existence. For instance, an ice-giant damned a river to create a lake, or a troll dug up a valley to create a moutain pass. Contrast with eschatological narrative, above.

EUPHONY (from Greek "good sound"): Attempting to group words together harmoniously, so that the consants permit an easy and pleasing flow of sound when spoken, as opposed to cacophony, when the poet intentionally mixes jarring or harsh sounds together in groups that make the phrasing either difficult to speak aloud or grating to the ear.

EXACT RHYME: Exact rhyme or perfect rhyme is rhyming two words in which both the consonant sounds and vowel sounds match to create a rhyme. The term "exact" is sometimes used more specifically to refer to two homophones that are spelled dissimilarly but pronounced identically at the end of lines. Since when poetry is spoken aloud, the effect of rhyme depends upon sound rather than spelling, even words that are spelled dissimilarly can rhyme. Examples of this sort of exact rhyme include the words pain/pane, time/thyme, rein/reign, and bough/bow. However, it is equally common to use exact rhyme in reference to any close rhyme such as line/mine, dig/pig, and so on. Contrast exact rhyme with eye rhymes, and inexact rhymes or imperfect rhymes. The last two examples include subtypes such as half rhyme, near rhyme, or slant rhyme, which you can see below. Exact rhyme is also referred to as perfect rhyme, full rhyme, or true rhyme.

EXIT / EXUENT: Common Latin stage directions found in the margins of Shakespearean plays. Exit is the singular for "He [or she] goes out." Exuent is the plural form for multiple individuals. Often the phrase is accompanied with explanatory remarks, such as "Exuent omnes" (Everybody goes out), or "Exit solus" (He alone goes out).

EXODOS (Greek; "leaving," cf. Latin exodus): the last piece of a Greek tragedy, an episode occuring after the last choral ode.

EYE RHYME: Rhyming words that seem to rhyme because parts of them are spelled identically but are pronounced differently in modern English. Examples include forth/worth, come/home, bury/fury, stove/shove, or ear/bear. There are two common origins for eye rhyme. The first origin is in the Great Vowel Shift. The pronunciation of certain words has varied from century to century, and in the 1300s, English underwent radical changes in the pronunication of vowels. Similar, though less dramatic changes have been creeping through pronunication in later centuries as well. For instance, in the sixteenth-century, the words Rome/loom were pronounced similarly enough to create a rhyme. In older literature, what appear to be eye-rhymes to modern readers may simply be full rhymes in the original speaker's dialect. In later times, as literacy grew increasingly common, and poetry was more frequently experienced visually on the page rather than aloud as an oral performance, eye rhymes became a popular technique amongst literate poets. Thus, in the late seventeenth-century, we find poets like Andrew Marvell writing the following verse:

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor in thy marble vault shall sound

My echoing love song. Then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity. . . .

FABLE: A brief story illustrating a moral. Usually a fable includes non-human animals or inanimate things as the principal characters. The sixth century (BCE) Greek writer Aesop is most famous as an author of fables, but Phaedrus and Babrius in the fisrt century (CE) expanded on his works. A famous collection of Indian fables was the Sanskrit Bidpai (circa 300 CE), and in the medieval period, Marie de France (c. 1200 CE) composed 102 fables in verse. After the 1600s, fables increasingly became common as a form of children's literature. See also Beast Fable.

FABLIAU (plural, fabliaux): A humorous, frequently ribald or "dirty" narrative popular with French poets, who traditionally wrote the story in octosyllabic verse. The tales frequently revolve around sexual mishaps, scatalogy, mistaken identity, and bodily humor. Chaucer included several fabliaux in the Canterbury Tales, including the stories of the Friar, the Miller, the Reeve, and the Cook. Examples from French literature include Audigier du Long Cul (Audigier of the Long Ass).

FAIR COPY: A corrected--but not necessarily entirely correct--manuscript that a dramatist might submit to a theatre company, as distinct from the draft version known as "foul papers."

FAMILIAR ADDRESS: Not to be confused with the animal known as a Witch's Familiar (see below), the familiar address is the use of informal pronouns in Middle English and Early Modern English. Pronouns such as "Thou, thy, thee, and thine" are familiar or informal pronouns used to speak either affectionately to someone of equal or lesser rank, or to speak contemptuously and callously to a lesser. Pronouns such as "You [nominative], your, you [objective], and yours" imply a more formal and respectful sort of address. In Shakespeare's plays and in Middle English literature, these pronouns provide actors with a strong hint concerning the tone in which words should be spoken.

FAMILIAR, WITCH'S: A demonic spirit masquerading as a small animal such as a black cat, goat, dog, or toad. In Renaissance witchcraft beliefs, it was held that such spirits presented themselves to witches and served them. The three Weird Sisters in Macbeth open the play in a scene in which their familiars summon them away to do mischief.

FARCE (from Latin Farsus, "stuffed"): A farce is a form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter through highly exaggerated caricatures of people in improbable or silly situations. Traits of farce include (1) physical bustle such as slapstick, (2) sexual misunderstandings and mix-ups, (3) broad verbal humor such as puns. Many literary critics (especially in the Victorian period) have tended to view farce as inferior to "high comedy" that involves brilliant dialogue. Many of Shakespeare's early works, such as The Taming of the Shrew, are considered farces. Contrast with comedy of manners, above.

FEMININE ENDING / FEMININE RHYME: see under discussion of meter below.

FEUDALISM: The medieval model of government predating the birth of the modern nation-state. Feudal society is a military hierarchy in which a ruler or lord offers mounted fighters a fief (medieval "beneficium"), a unit of land to control in exchange for a military service. The individual who accepted this land became a vassal, and the man who granted the land become known as his liege or his lord. The deal was often sealed by swearing oaths on the Bible or on the relics of saints. Often this military service amounted to forty days' service each year in times of peace or indefinite service in times of war, but the actual terms of service and duties varied considerably on a case-by-case basis. For instance, in the late medieval period, this military service was often abandoned in preference for cash payment, or agreement to provide a certain number of men-at-arms or mounted knights for the lord's use.

In the late medieval period, the fiefdom often became hereditary, and the firstborn son of a knight or lesser nobleman would inherit the land and the military duties from his father upon the father's death. Feudalism had two enormous effects on medieval society. (1) First, it discouraged unified government, because individual lords would divide their lands into smaller and smaller sections to give to lesser nobles and knights. These lesser noblemen in turn would subdivide their own lands into even smaller fiefs to give to even less important rulers and knights. Each knight would swear his oath of fealty (loyalty) to the ones who gave him his lands, which was not necessarily the king or higher noblemen, let alone an abstraction like "France" or "England." Feudal government was always an arrangement between individuals, not between nation-states and citizens. (2) Second, it discouraged trade and economic growth . The land was worked by peasant farmers called serfs, who were tied to individual plots of land and forbidden to move or change occupations without the permission of the lord. The feudal lord might claim one-third to one-half of their produce in taxes and fees, and the serfs owed him a set number of days each year in which they would work the lord's fields in exchange for the right to work their own lands. Often, they were required to grind their grain in the lord's mill, and bake all their bread in the lords' oven, in exchange for other fees. In theory, the entire community would be divided into bellatores (the noblemen who fought), labores (the agricultural laborers who grew the food), and oratores (the clergy who prayed and attended to spiritual matters). In actuality, this simple tripartite division known as the Three Estates of Feudalism proved unworkable, and the necessity of skilled craftsmen, merchants, and other occupations was quite visible in spite of the theoretical model espoused in sermons and political treatises.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: A deviation from what speakers of a language understand as the ordinary or standard use of words in order to achieve some special meaning or effect. Perhaps the two most common figurative devices are the simile--a comparison between two distinctly different things using "like" or "as" ("My love's like a red, red rose") --and the metaphor--a figure of speech in which two unlike objects are implicitly compared without the use of "like" or "as." These are both examples of tropes. Any figure of speech that results in a change of meaning is called a trope. Any figure of speech that creates its effect in patterns of words or letters in a sentence, rather than twisting the meaning of words, is called a scheme. Perhaps the most common scheme is parallelism. For a more complete list of schemes and tropes, see the schemes and tropes pages.

FIGURE OF SPEECH: A scheme or a trope used for rhetorical or artistic effect. See figurative language, above.

FIRST FOLIO: A set of Shakespeare's plays published in 1623. The "First Folio" included some thirty-six plays, and the editor of this publication took some care in the selection and accuracy of his texts, or at least more care than those editors who published earlier quartos. See folio and quarto below.

FLASHBACK: A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memory.

FLAT CHARACTER: Also called a static character, a flat character is a simplified character that does not change or alter his or her personality over the course of a narrative, or one without extensive personality and characterization. The term is used in contrast with a round character. See character, round character, and characterization.

FLYTING: A contest of wits and insults between two warriors. Each tries to demonstrate his superior vocabulary, cleverness, and bravery. The verbal rivalry between Unferth and Beowulf in Beowulf is one such example in Anglo-Saxon literature.

FOIL: A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. For instance, in the film Chasing Amy, the character Silent Bob is a foil for his partner, Jake, who is loquacious and foul-mouthed. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Laertes the man of action is a foil to the reluctant Hamlet. The angry hothead Hotspur in Henry IV, Part I, is the foil to the cool and calculating Prince Hal.

FOLIO: A term from the early production of paper and vellum in the medieval period. When a single, large sheet is folded once and sewn to create two leaves, or four pages, and then bound together, the resulting text is called a "folio." On a single sheet, the page visible on the right-hand side of an open book or the "top" side of such a page is called the recto side (Latin for "right"), and the reverse or "bottom" side of such a page (the page visible on the left-hand side of an open book) is called the verso side. Folios are typically large books, twice the size of a quarto and four times the size of an octavo printing. Compare folio with quarto and octavo, below.

FOLKLORE: Sayings, verbal compositions, stories, and social rituals passed along by word of mouth rather than written down in a text. It includes superstitions, modern "urban legends," proverbs, riddles, spells, nursery rhymes, songs, legends or lore about the weather, animals, and plants, jokes and anecdotes, rituals at births, deaths, marriages, and yearly celebrations, traditional dance and plays performed during holidays or at communal gatherings. Many works of literature originated in folktales before being written down. Examples in American culture include the story of George Washington and the cherry tree; George Washington throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac river; Paul Bunyon and his blue ox, Babe; Pecos Bill roping a twister; and Johnny Appleseed. Many "fairy tales" in Europe originate in folklore, such as "Snow White" and "Jack and the Beanstalk." Contrast with Mythology, below.

FOLKLORIC MOTIFS: recurring patterns of imagery or narrative that appear in folklore and folkloric stories. Common folkloric motifs include the wise old man as a mentor, the damsel in distress, the "bed trick," and the "trickster tricked." Some of these folkloric motifs appear in fabliaux (see above), in mythology, in archetypal stories (see archetype), and in some of Shakespeare's plays.

FOOL: Originally a jester-at-court who would entertain the king and nobles, the court jester was often a dwarf or a mentally incompetent individual. His role was to amuse others with his physical or mental incapacity. (While this may sound cruel to a modern reader, the practice also constituted a sort of medieval social security for such individuals who would otherwise be left to starve; a fool at court would at least be assured of food, shelter, and clothing.) In later centuries, the court fool was often a professional entertainer who would juggle, tell jokes, and generally amuse the king and his guests with keen wit. Such performers were often given an unparalled degree of freedom in their speech. As long as they spoke their words in rhyme or riddle, the fool theoretically had the freedom to criticize individuals and mock political policy. In Shakespearean drama, the fool becomes a central character due to this immunity. The fool is also sometimew referred to as the clown, though "clown" can refer to any bumpkin or rural person in Elizabethan usage (see clown above).

FOUL PAPERS: Rough drafts of a manuscript that have not been corrected and are not to be sent to the printers. Some of Shakespeare's surviving manuscript variants might be the result of the difference between his foul papers and "fair copy" (see above).

FOOT: A basic unit of meter consisting of a set number of strong stresses and light stresses. See meter.

FORM: The "shape" or organizational mode of a particular poem. In most poems (like sonnets), the form consists of a set number of lines, a set rhyme scheme, and a set meter for each line. In concrete poetry (see above), the form of a poem may reflect the theme, topic, or idea of the words in the actual shape of the text on a piece of paper. In free verse or open-form poetry, the rigid constraints of form are often discarded in order to achieve a variety of effects.

FRAME NARRATIVE: The result of inserting one or more small stories within the body of a larger story that encompasses the smaller ones. Often this term is used interchangeably with both the literary technique and the larger story itself that contains the smaller ones, called "framed narratives." Examples include Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in which the over-arching frame narrative is the story of a band of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury, who pass the time in a storytelling contest. The framed narratives are the invidual stories told by the pilgrims who participate. Another example is Boccaccio's Decameron, in which the frame narrative consists of a group of Italian noblemen and women fleeing the plague, and the framed narratives consist of the tales they tell each other to pass the time while they await the disease's passing.

FRAMING METHOD: The same features, wording, setting, or topic used at both the beginning and end of a work so as to "frame" it or "enclose it." This technique often provides a sense of cyclical completeness or closure.

FREE VERSE: Poetry based on the natural rhythms of phrases and normal pauses, rather than the constraints of metrical feet.

FRENCH SCENE: A numbering system for a play in which a new scene is numbered whenever characters exit or enter the stage.

FREYTAG'S PYRAMID: A diagram of dramatic structure, which shows complication and emotional tension rising like one side of a pyramid toward its apex, which represents the climax of action. Once the climax is over, the descending side of the pyramid depicts the decrease in tension and complication as the drama reaches its conclusion and denouement.

FU POETRY: Flowery, irregular "prose-poem" form of Chinese literature common during the Han period. It was first perfected around the year 100 BCE, but became increasingly common thereafter. Cf. shih poetry.

FULL RHYME: Another term for perfect rhyme, true rhyme, or exact rhyme, see above.

GALLERY: The elevated seating areas at the back and sides of a theater.

GEMEL: A final couplet that appears at the end of a sonnet. See couplet (above) and sonnet (below).

GENRE: A type of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions. The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include murder mysteries, western films, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc.

GHOST CHARACTERS: These term should not be confused with characters who happen to appear on stage as ghosts. Shakespearean scholars use the word "ghost characters" to refer to characters listed in the stage directions or the list of dramatis personae but who appear to say nothing, take no explicit part in the action, and are neither addressed nor mentioned by any other characters in the play. For instance, some quarto editions of Much Ado About Nothing list such characters in the first stage directions and again in Act III.

GLOBE: One of the theatres in London where Shakespeare performed. Shakespeare's acting company built it on the Bankside south of the Thames--an area often called "Southwerke" which was notorious for its brothels and taverns, since it lay outside the jurisdiction of London proper. Technically polygonal rather than a perfect sphere, it was sufficiently circular to earn its name. The area above the stage, which contained a small orchestra for playing music and a small cannon for making explosive sound effects, was referred to in actor's slang as "the heavens." The area directly underneath the stage, accessible through a trapdoor known as the Hellmouth (q.v.) was known as "hell."

GOTHIC: The word "Gothic" originally referred to the Goths, one of the Germanic tribes that helped destroy Rome. It later came to signify "Germanic," then "medieval," especially in reference to the medieval architecture and art used in western Europe betweeen 1100 and 1500 CE. (The earlier art and architecture of medieval Europe between 700-1100 AD is known as "Romanesque.") Characteristics of Gothic architecture include the pointed arch and vault, the flying buttress, stained glass, and the use of gargoyles and grotesques fitted into the nooks and crannies unoccupied by images of saints and biblical figures. A grotesque refers to a stone carving of a monstrous or mythical creature either in two dimensions or full-relief, but which does not contain a pipe for transferring rainwater. A gargoyle is a full-relief stone carving with an actual pipe running through it, so that rainwater will flow through it and out of a water-spout in its mouth. Manuscripts from the Gothic period of art likewise have strange monsters and fantastical creatures depicted in the margins of the page, and elaborate vinework or leaf-work painted along the borders. The term has come to be used much more loosely to refer to literature that is gloomy or frightening. Contrast with Gothic Literature and Gothic Novel (below).

GOTHIC LITERATURE: poetry, short stories, or novels designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural. Conventions include wild and desolate landscapes, ancient buildings such as ruined monasteries; cathedrals; castles with dungeons, torture chambers, secret doors, and winding stairways; apparitions, phantoms, demons, and necromancers; an atmosphere of brooding gloom; and youthful, handsome heroes and heroines who face off against corrupt aristocrats, wicked witches, and hideous monsters.

The phrase "gothic" originally applied to a tribe of Germanic barbarians during the dark ages, but eventually was used to refer to the gloomy and impressive style of medieval architecture common in Europe, hence "Gothic Castle" or "Gothic Architecture." The term became associated with ghost stories and horror novels because early Gothic novels were often associated with the Middle Ages and with things "wild, bloody, and barbarous of long ago" as J. A. Cuddon puts it in his Dictionary of Literary Terms. See Gothic, above, and Gothic Novel, below.

GOTHIC NOVEL: a type of romance wildly popular between 1760 up until the 1820s that has influenced the ghost story and horror story. The stories are designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural. Conventions include wild and desolate landscapes, ancient buildings such as ruined monasteries, cathedrals, castles with dungeons, torture chambers, secret doors, and winding stairways; apparitions such as phantoms, demons, and necromancers; an atmosphere of brooding gloom; and youthful, handsome heroes and heroines who face off against corrupt aristocrats, wicked witches, and hideous monsters.

The phrase "gothic" originally applied to a tribe of Germanic barbarians during the dark ages, but eventually was used to refer to the gloomy and impressive style of medieval architecture common in Europe, hence "Gothic Castle" or "Gothic Architecture." The term became associated with ghost stories and horror novels because early Gothic novels were often associated with the Middle Ages and with things "wild, bloody, and barbarous of long ago" as J. A. Cuddon puts it in his Dictionary of Literary Terms. (It may also be because Horace Walpole, one of the early writers, wrote his works in a faux medieval castle). The best known early example is Horace Walpole's The Caste of Otranto. Later British writers in the Gothic tradition include "Monk" Lewis, Charles Maturin, William Beckford, Ann Radcliffe, and Mary Shelley. American Gothic writers include Charles Brockden Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe. Famous novels such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula are also considered gothic novels. In modern cartoons, Scooby Doo would also fall into the category of gothic drama in animated form. Gothic novels are also called gothic romances.

Gradatio: Extended anadiplosis (see above). Unlike regular anadiplosis, gradatio continues the pattern of repetition from clause to clause. For instance, in The Caine Mutiny the captain declares: "Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard. Standard performance is sub-standard. Sub-standard performance is not allowed." Biblically speaking, St. Paul claims, "We glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope, and hope maketh man not ashamed." On a more mundane level, the character of Yoda states in Star Wars, Episode I: "Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hatred; hatred leads to conflict; conflict leads to suffering." Gradatio creates a rhythmical pattern to carry the reader along the text, even as it establishes a connection between words. Anadiplosis and gradatio are examples of rhetorical schemes.

GREAT DIONYSIA: See Dionysia.

GREAT VOWEL SHIFT: A remarkable change in the pronunciation of English, thought to have occurred largely between 1400 and 1450. Much of Middle English poetry was written before the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) took place, and thus is pronounced differently than modern English. Click here for more information.

GROUNDLINGS: While the upper class paid two pennies to sit in the raised area with seats, the majority of viewers who watched Shakespeare's plays were groundlings. They paid a single penny for admission to the ground level of the Globe theatre and remained standing for the entire play (often up to four hours in length). The word "groundling" for such audience members first appears in Hamlet. From this and other contexts, it appears that the groundlings were boisterous and not very bright, with a pension for eating nuts and throwing the shells at the actors on stage.

GUSTATORY IMAGERY: Imagery dealing with taste. This is opposed to visual imagery, dealing with sight, auditory imagery, dealing with sound, tactile imagery, dealing with touch, and olfactory imagery, dealing with scent. See imagery.

HAIKU: A poetic form derived from Japanese literature. The haiku traditionally consits of three lines. The first line contains five syllables, the second line contains seven, and the last line five. The traditional subject-matter is a description of a location, natural phenomona, or wildlife, which is described in a poetic manner without authorial commentary or moral judgment explicitly stated.

HALF-RHYME: See inexact rhyme.

HAMARTIA: A term from Greek tragedy that literally means "missing the mark." Originally applied to an archer who misses the target, a hamartia came to signify a tragic flaw, especially a misperception, a lack of some important insight, or some blindness that ironically results from one's own strengths and abilities. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist frequently possesses some sort of hamartia that causes catastrophic results after he fails to recognize some fact or truth that could have saved him if he recognized it earlier. The idea of hamartia is often ironic; it frequently implies the very trait that makes the individual noteworthy is what ultimately causes the protagonist's decline into disaster. For instance, for the character of Macbeth, the same ambition that makes him so admired is the trait that also allows Lady Macbeth to lure him to murder and treason. Similarly, what ennobles Brutus is his unstinting love of the Roman Republic, but this same patriotism causes him to kill his best friend, Julius Caesar. These normally positive traits of self-motivation and patriotism caused the two protagonists to "miss the mark" and to realize too late the ethical and spiritual consequences of their actions.

HEAVY-STRESS RHYME: Another term for a masculine ending in a rhyme.

HELL MOUTH: In medieval art the hell mouth was a stylized painting in which the entry to hell resembles a gaping demon's mouth. In medieval manuscripts, the image first appeared in connection with St. John's Book of Revelation and in texts dealing with the Last Judgement. Eventually, when medieval theater developed, it was common to paint the entry onto a stage to resemble a gaping demon's mouth. The hell mouth would either be located on one side of the stage or it would be a trap-door in the floor. During morality plays and mystery plays, actors playing demons would enter through the hell mouth in order to dramatically grab sinners and drag them off to hell. By the time of the Renaissance, the term hell mouth was used to refer to any trap-door in the bottom of the stage. (At the Globe theatre, the entire area under the stage was referred to as "hell," and the area above the stage, where musicians played, was referred to as "the heavens.")

HEPTAMETER: A line consisting of seven metrical feet. Also called septenary.

HEROIC COUPLET: Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. The second line is usually end-stopped. It was common practice to string long sequences of heroic couplets together in a pattern of aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff (and so on). Because this practice was especially popular in the neoclassic period between 1660 and 1790, the heroic couplet is often called the neoclassic couplet. Note that "heroic" has nothing to do with subject-matter.

HEXAMETER: A line consisting of six metrical feet.

HIGH COMEDY: Elegant comedies characterized by witty banter and sophisticated dialogue rather than the slapstick physicality and blundering common to low comedy.

HOMILY: A sermon, or a short, exhortatory work to be read before a group of listeners in order to instruct them spiritually or morally. In the Renaissance, the content of English sermons was governed by law after King Henry VIII, becoming an avenue for monarchist propaganda.

HOVERING ACCENT: Another term for spondee. See spondee.

HUBRIS (sometimes spelled Hybris): A Greek term that is difficult to translate directly. It is a negative term implying both arrogant, excessive self-pride or self-confidence, and also a hamartia (see above), a lack of some important perception or insight due to pride in one's abilities. It is the opposite of the Greek term arête, which implies a constant striving for perfection and self-improvement combined with a humble awareness that such perfection cannot be reached. As long as an individual strives to do and be the best, that individual has arête. As soon as the individual believes he has actually achieved arête, however, he or she has lost that exalted state and fallen into hubris, unable to recognize personal limitations or the humble need to constantly improve.

HUMORS: (alias Bodily Humors) In ancient Greece, Hippocrates postulated that there were four bodily humors, corresponding to the four elements (see above), which determined a man's health and psychology. An imbalance among the humors--blood, phlegm, black bile (or tears), and yellow bile (or choler)--resulted in pain and disease, and that good health resulted through a balance of the four humors. For many centuries this idea was held as the basis of medicine and was much elaborated. Galen introduced a new aspect, that of four basic temperaments reflecting the humors: the sanguine (buoyant type); the phlegmatic, (sluggish type); the choleric, (angry and quick-tempered type); and the melancholic (depressed type). In time, any personality aberration or eccentricity was referred to as a humor. In literature, a humor character was a type of flat character (see character) in whom a single passion predominated; this interpretation was especially popular in Elizabethan and other Renaissance literature. One of the most extensive treatments of the subject was Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The theory found its strongest advocates among the comedy writers, notably Ben Jonson and his followers, who used humor characters to illustrate various modes of behavior. Rudolf Virchow's theory of cellular pathology superseded the Hippocratic model in the 19th century.

HYMN: A religious song consisting of one or more repeating rhythmical stanzas. In classical Roman literature, hymns to Minerva and Jupiter survive. More recently a vast number of hymns exist in Catholic and Protestant religious lyrics. A particularly vibrant tradition of hymn-writing comes from the South's African-American population during the nineteenth century.

HYPALLAGE: Combining two examples of hyperbaton or anastrophe when reversed elements are not grammatically or syntactically parallel. It is easier to give examples than to explain hypallage. Virgil writes, "The smell has brought the well-known breezes" when we would expect, in terms of proper cause-and-effect, to have the breezes bring well-known smells. In Henry V, Shakespeare writes, "Our gayness and our gift are besmirched / With rainy marching in the painful field" (4.3.110), when logically we would expect "with painful marching in the rainy field." Roethke playfully states, "Once upon a tree / I came across a time." In each example, not just one hyperbaton appears, but two when the two words switch places with the two spots where we expect to find them. The result often overlaps with hysteron-proteron, in that it creates a catachresis (See under tropes).

HYPERBATON: A generic term for changing the normal or expected order of words. "One ad does not a survey make." The term comes from the Greek for "overstepping" because one or more words "overstep" their normal position and appear elsewhere. For instance, Milton in Paradise Lost might write, "High on a throne of royal gold . . . Satan exalted sat." In normal, everyday speech, we would expect to find, "High on a throne of royal gold . . . Satan sat exalted." Here are some examples:

"This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."--Variously attributed to Winston Churchill or Mark Twain

"I was in my life alone"--Frost

"Constant you are, but yet a woman"--1 Henry IV, 2.3.113

"Grave danger you are in. Impatient you are." --Yoda, in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

"From such crooked wood as state which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned." --Kant

"pity this busy monster manunkind not." --e. e. cummings.

Hyperbaton is an example of a rhetorical scheme. Click on the scheme link to see the various subtypes.

HYPERBOLE: the trope of exageration. See tropes for examples.

HYPOCRITES (Greek for "One who plays a part): The classical Athenian word for an actor. Not to be confused with Hippocrates, the physician who founded the hippocratic oath.

HYSTERON-PROTERON: Using anastrophe in a way that creates a catachresis (see under tropes); an impossible ordering on the literal level. For instance, Virgil has the despairing Trojans in the Aeneid cry out in despair as the city falls, "Let us die, and rush into the heart of the fight." Of course, the expected, possible order would be to "rush into the heart of the fight," and then "die." Literally, Virgil's sequence would be impossible unless all the troops died, then rose up as zombies and ran off to fight. In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare writes, "I can behold no longer / Th'Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral, / With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder" (3.10.1). We would expect to turn the rudder and then flee or fly, nor fly and then turn the rudder!

IAMBIC PENTAMETER: See meter.

IDENTICAL RHYME: The use of the same words as a "rhymed" pair. For instance, putting the words stone/stone or time/ time at the concluding positions in two lines. Contrast with exact rhyme, perfect rhyme, rhyme, eye rhyme, and inexact rhyme.

IMAGERY: A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a poem, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. Imagery is not limited to vision, but also includes auditory, tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic sensation (movement).

IN MEDIAS RES: (Latin: "In the middle[s] of things") The classical tradition of opening a story not in the chronological point at which the sequence of events would start, but rather at the midway point of the story. Later on in the narrative, the hero will recount verbally to others what events took place earlier. Usually in medias res is a technique used to heighten dramatic tension or to create a sense of mystery. (Contrast with flashback, in which the past events are experienced as a memory, and epanalepsis, in which the entire story is cut into chronological pieces and experienced in a seemingly random pattern.)

IMPERFECT FOOT: A metrical foot consisting of a single syllable, either heavily or lightly stressed. See meter, cf. acephalous line.

INEXACT RHYME: Rhymes created out of words with similar but not identical sounds. In most of these instances, either the vowel segments are different while the consonants are identical, or vice versa. This type of rhyme is also called approximate rhyme, slant rhyme, near rhyme, half rhyme, off rhyme, analyzed rhyme, or suspended rhyme. The example below comes from William Butler Yeats:

My heart recovering with covered eyes;

Whereever I had looked I had looked upon

My permanent or impermanent images.

Inexact rhyme has also been used for splendid intentional effect in poems such as Philip Larkins' "Toads" and "Toads Revisited," and has been increasingly popular with postmodern British poets after World War II.

INTERNAL AUDIENCE: An imaginary listener(s) or audience to whom a character speaks in a poem or story. For example, the duke speaking in Browning's "My Last Duchess" appears to be addressing the reader as if the reader were an individual walking with him through his estate admiring a piece of art. There are suggestions that this listener the duke addresses might be an ambassador or diplomat sent to arrange a marriage between the widower duke and a young girl of noble birth.

INVOCATION OF THE MUSE: A prayer or address made to the one of the nine muses of Greco-Roman mythology, in which the poet asks for the inspiration, skill, knowledge, or appropriate mood to create a poem worthy of his subject-matter. The invocation of the muse traditionally begins Greco-Roman epics and elegies.

INTRIGUE PLOT: The dramatic representation of how two young lovers, often with the assistance of a maidservant, friend, or soubrette, foil the blocking agent represented by a parent, priest, or guardian.

IRONY: Irony comes in many forms. Verbal Irony is a trope in which a speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words ostensibly express. Often this sort of irony is sarcastic, but the listeners in the story may not realize the speaker's sarcasm as quickly as the readers do. Dramatic Irony (the most important type for literature) involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. In that situation, the character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store, or when the character anticipates a particular outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way. Situational Irony is a trope in which accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the poetic justice of a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked.

ITALIAN SONNET: See sonnet.

JACOBEAN: (or Jocobean) During the reign of King James I, between the years 1603-1625. (Jacobus is the Latin form of James, hence Jacobean). Shakespeare wrote his later works in the Jacobean period.

JARGON: Words and phrases used in an occupation, trade, or field of study. We might speak of medical jargon, sports jargon, or military jargon, for instance.

KENNING: A poetic device in which the poet creates a new compound word or phrase to describe an object or activity. Specifically, this compound uses mixed imagery (catachresis) to describe the properties of the object in indirect, imaginative, or enigmatic ways. The resulting word is somewhat like a riddle, in the reader must stop and think for a minute to determine what the object is. They may involve conjoining two types of dissimilar imagery, extended metaphor, or mixed metaphor. Kennings were particularly common in Old English literature and Viking poetry. The most famous example is hron-rade ("whale-road") as a poetic reference to the sea. Other examples include "Thor-Weapon" as a reference to a smith's hammer, "battle-flame' as a reference to the way light shines on swords, "gore-bed" for a battle-field filled with motionless bodies, and "word-hoard" for a man's eloquence.

Kennings are less common in Modern English than in earlier centuries, but some common modern examples include "beer-goggles" (to describe the way one's judgment of appearances becomes hazy while intoxicated) and "surfing the web" (which mixes the imagery of skillful motion through large amounts of material with the imagery of an interconnected net linked by strands or cables).

KNIGHT: A military aristocrat in medieval Europe and England who swore service as a vassal to a liege lord in exchange for control over land. The term comes from the Old English word cniht, meaning young man or servant-boy. The process of becoming a knight was a long one, and small boys would begin their training as a page at court, serving food or drink to their elders, running messages and errands. They would be expected during this period to learn the niceties of polite society and respect for their elders. The next phase of training was serving as squire to another knight. The squire would be expected to polish and clean his knight's armor and weapons, care for and feed the horses, and wait upon his master during jousts or military service. He would also learn the finer points of fighting and riding. The final stage of knighthood was a semi-religious ceremony, which varied in its details from one geographic area to another. In the late medieval period, the position of knight often became hereditary, and the title Sir or Don was indicative of this rank. Associated with knighthood in the later Middle Ages were cultural phenomena such as feudalism, the cult of chivalry and courtly love.

KOTHORNI: See buskins, above.

LAI (plural lais, also spelled lay): A short narrative or lyrical poem, usually in octosyllabic couplets, intended to be sung. The typical theme is courtly love or romance, and many are based on older Celtic legends imported to France by the Bretons. The oldest narrative lais, usually referred to as the contes or les lais de Marie de France, were composed by an Anglo-Norman woman named Marie. (In spite of her common scholarly epithet, she appears to have lived in England). Her exact identity is a matter of much scholarly discussion. The oldest Old French lais outside of Provençal were written by Gautier de Dargiès (early 1200s). The term "Breton Lay" was applied to English poems in the 1300s that were set in Brittany and were similar to those of Marie de France. A dozen or so examples of the Breton lay survive in English, the best known examples being Sir Orfeo, Havelok the Dame, Sir Launfal, and Chaucer's Franklin's Tale. In the last 400 years, poets have used the term lay more generally as a loose term for any historical ballad or any narrative poem focusing on adventure and the supernatural.

LAWS OF HOSPITALITY: The custom in classical Greece and other ancient cultures that, if a traveler comes to a town, he can ask any person there for food, shelter, and gifts to help him on his journey. In Greek tradition, the host was considered responsible for his guest's comfort and safety, and a breach of those laws of hospitality was thought to anger Zeus (Roman Jupiter), the king of the gods.

LEIT-MOTIF: From the German term for "lead motif," a leit-motif originally was coined by Hans von Wolzuegen to designate a musical theme associated with a particular object, character, or emotion. For instance, the ominous music in Jaws plays whenever the shark is approaching. That particular score is the leit-motif for the shark. Other examples are found in musical compositions such as "Peter and the Wolf," and many of the operas of Wagner. In literature, critics have adapted the term leit-motif to refer to an object, animal, phrase, or other thing loosely associated with a character, a setting, or event. For instance, the color green is a leit-motif associated with Sir Bercilak in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, thus the appearance of the Green Chapel, and a green girdle should cause the reader to recall and connect these places and items with him. In Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, the moon is a leit-motif associated with the fairy court, and it appears again in the stage scenery and stage discussion of Bottom's play about Pyramis and Thisbe. The leit-motif is not necessarily a symbol,(though it can be), but it is at least a recurring device loosely linked with a character, setting, or event. Contrast with theme and motif, below.

LENAIA: An Athenian religious festival occurring shortly after the Dionysia. While the Dionysia focused on tragedies, with only short interludes of comedy, in the Lenaia, comedies were performed as the main entertainment. Contrast with Dionysia. See Comedy.

LIGHTING: The placement, type, direction, and brightness or dimness of lights used on stage. Often lighting can establish mood, highlight specific characters, actions, or scenes, or serve symbolic purposes.

LIMERICK: A five-line closed-form poem in which the first two lines consist of anapestic trimeter, which in turn are followed by lines of anapestic dimeter, and a final line in trimeter. They rhyme in an AABBA pattern. Typically, they are used in comic or bawdy verse, making extensive use of double entendre.

LIMITED POINT OF VIEW: See under point of view.

LISTS: An arena or field for chivalric combat and tournaments, with bleachers or balconies set to one side where nobility may sit to observe. The lists would normally have pavillions (fancy round tents) at either end to house contestants, who would fight with each other on horses. The most famous events held at the lists were jousts, in which mounted knights would ride toward each other and attempt to knock their combatants off their horses by using a blunted lance (if training) or a hardwood lance (if dueling or conducting a trial by combat). Sometimes, especially during the late medieval period, the lists would have a long fence or barrier running lengthwise, so that each contestant's horse would be forced to keep to one side of the field, thus reducing the risk of a knight being trampled to death. If such a barrier was set up, the contestants were technically "tilting" rather than "jousting," though in common usage, the two words were used interchangeably. Rules for jousting and tilting varied considerably from place to place and century to century.

LOW COMEDY: In contrast with high comedy, low comedy consists of silly, slapstick physicality, crude pratfalls, violence, and bodily humor rather than dialogue or banter. See Comedy.

LU SHIH: (Chinese, "regulated song") A verse form popular in China in the T'ang and Sung dynasties. It was also referred to as the chin-t'i shih to keep it distinct from the ku-shih or "old songs" The verse was characterized by extensive parallelism and an elaborate tonal pattern. This formal structure also influenced the fu or prose poem.

LYRIC (from Greek lyra "song"): The lyric form is as old as Egypt (surviving examples date back to 2600 BCE), and examples exist in early Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and other sources. If literature from every culture through the ages were lumped into a single stack, it is likely that the largest number of writings would be these short verse poems. There are three general meanings for lyric:

(1) A short poem (usually no more than 50-60 lines, and often only a dozen lines long) written in a repeating stanzaic form, often designed to be set to music. Unlike a ballad, the lyric usually does not have a plot (i.e., it may not tell a complete story), but it rather expresses the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts of a single poetic speaker (not necessarily the poet) in an intensely personal, emotional, or subjective manner. Often, there is no chronology of events in the lyrics, but rather objects, situations, or the subject-matter is written about in a "lyric moment." Sometimes, the reader can infer an implicit narrative element in lyrics, but it is rare for the lyric to proceed in the straightforward, chronological "telling" common in fictional prose. For instance, in William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper," the reader can guess from the speaker's words that the speaker has come unexpectedly upon a girl reaping and singing in the Scottish Highlands, and that he stops, listens, and thinks awhile before continuing on his way. However, this chain of events is not explicitly a center of plot or extended struggle between protagonist and antagonist, but rather a trigger for a moment of contemplation and appreciation. Thus it is not a plot in the normal sense of the word.

(2) Any poem having the form and musical quality of a song

(3) As an adjective, lyric can also be applied to any prose or verse characterized by direct, spontaneous outpouring of intense feeling. Often, the lyric is subdivided into various genres, including the aubade, the dramatic monologue, the elegy, the epithalamion, the hymn, the ode, and the sonnet. Contrast with ballad, elegy, and ode.

MACHIAVELLIAN: As an adjective, the word refers generally to sneaky, ruthless, and deceitful behavior, especially in regard to a ruler obsessed with power who puts on a surface veneer of honor and trustworthy behavior in order to achieve evil ends. The term originates in a treatise known as The Prince. This work was written by Niccólo Machiavelli, an early sixteenth-century political advisor who worked for the Borgia family in Italy. In contrast to the medieval ideal of the ruler as God's holy deputy and dispenser of justice, Machiavelli stressed that effective rulers often must engage in evil (or at least immoral) activities to ensure the stability of their rule. He suggests that, based on the evidence of history and his own personal observations, the rulers that have remained in power have not been kindly, benevolent men concerned with justice and fairness, but rather ruthless individuals willing to do anything to ensure the security of their state and their own personal power.

MACHIEVELLE: A villain, especially an aristocratic power-monger, or deceitful betrayer, who behaves according to the principles established by Machiavelli. The machievelle became a stock character in many Renaissance plays. Examples from Shakespeare include Richard of Gloucester in Richard III and Edmund in King Lear.

MACROCOSM: (Cf. Microcosm) The natural universe as a whole, including the biological realms of flora and fauna, weather, and celestial objects such as the sun, moon, and stars. See Chain of Being.

MALAPROPISM: Misusing words to create a comic effect or characterize the speaker as being too confused, ignorant, or flustered to use correct diction. Typically, the malapropism involves the confusion of two polysyllabic words that sound somewhat similar but have different meanings. For instance, a stereotypified black maid in Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes series cries out as she falls into the jungle river, "I sho' nuff don't want to be eaten by no river allegories, no sir!" Dogberry the Watchman in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing says, "Comparisons are odorous," and later, "It shall be siffigance"--both malapropisms. In Sheridan, we find pineapple instead of pinnacle and so on. The best malapropisms are close enough in sound to the correct word so that the audience can both recognize the intended meaning and laugh at the incongruous result.

MANUSCRIPT: A text written by hand, as opposed to printed with a printing press. (Manus is Latin for "Hand," Scriptum is Latin for "Written"). Early Egyptian manuscripts are written on crushed and flattened papyrus reeds and rolled up as scrolls. Later, parchment and vellum (animal skins) became the primary means of transmitting texts. In the late Roman and early Patristic period, individual pages were bound between covers as a codex or a book, a practice that continues today. Paper as we know it became common in the Middle East in the twelfth century, but it took another three hundred years for the art of paper-making to spread through Europe. By Shakespeare's day, printed paper had largely replaced manuscripts written on vellum, though the mechanics of printing often tried to imitate the familiar features of manuscripts.

MARGINALIA: Drawings, notation, illumination, and doodles appearing in the margins of a medieval text, rather than the central text itself.

MASCULINE ENDING / MASCULINE RHYME : See under discussion of meter.

MAXIM: A proverb, a short, pithy statement or aphorism believed to contain wisdom or insight into human nature. In much of the dialogue in Viking sagas, for instance, the characters will quote short maxims to each other to make a point.

MEAD-HALL: A structure built by a lord as a social center for his immediate community, especially his thegns and warriors. Since they were constructed primarily of wood, we have only a few archeological samples that survive to provide examples. We know from descriptions in Anglo-Saxon texts that they were filled with mead-benches, which were elaborately carved and decorated with gold. Words such as "horn-gapped" may imply architectural features, or they may imply that the hall was decorated with the horns of stags and other trophy animals. The lord would gather his warriors at his mead-halls to eat, drink, pass out gifts and treasure, and renew the oath-bonds between himself and his men.

MELODRAMA: A dramatic form characterized by excessive sentiment, exaggerated emotion, sensational and thrilling action, and an artificially happy ending. Melodramas originally referred to romantic plays featuring music, singing, and dancing, but by the eighteenth century they connoted simplified and coincidental plots, bathos, and happy endings. These melodramatic traits are present in Gothic novels, western stories, popular films, and television crime shows.

METAPLASMUS: a type of neologism in which misspelling a word create a rhetorical effect. To emphasize dialect, one might spell dog as "dawg." To emphasize that something is unimportant, we might add -let or -ling at the end of the word, referring to a deity as a "godlet", or a prince as a "princeling." To emphasize the feminine nature of something normally considered masculine, try adding -ette to the end of the word, creating a smurfette or a corvette. To modernize something old, the writer might turn the Greek god Hermes into the Hermenator. Likewise, Austin Powers renders all things shagedelic. For more information, see the subdivisions of metaplasmus under schemes.

METER: A recognizable though varying pattern of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress. Compositions written in meter are verse. There are many possible patterns of verse. Each unit of stress and unstressed syllables is called a "foot." The following examples are culled from M. H. Abram's Glossary of Literary Terms, sixth edition, which has more information.

Example: "The cúrfew tólls the knéll of párting dáy" (Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.")

Anapestic (the noun is "anapest") two light syllables followed by a stressed syllable: "The Assyrian came dówn like a wólf on the fóld." (Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennacherib."

Trochaic (the noun is "trochee") a stressed followed by a light syllable: "Thére they áre, my fífty men and wómen."

Dactylic (the noun is "dactyl"): a stressed syllable followed by two light syllables: "Éve, with her básket, was / Déep in the bélls and grass."

Iambs and anapests, since the strong stress is at the end, are called "rising meter"; trochees and dactyls, with the strong stress at the beginning, are called "falling meter." Additionally, if a line ends in a standard iamb, with a final stressed syllable, it is said to have a masculine ending. If a line ends in a lightly stressed syllable, it is said to be feminine. To hear the difference, read the following examples out loud and listen to the final stress:

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."

Feminine Ending:

"'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the housing,

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mousing."

We name a metric line according to the number of "feet" in it. If a line has four feet, it is tetrameter. If a line has five feet, it is pentameter. Six feet, hexameter, and so on. English verse tends to be pentameter, French verse tetrameter, and Greek verse, hexameter. When scanning a line, we might, for instance, describe the line as iambic pentameter (having five feet, with each foot tending to be a light syllable followed by heavy syllable).

METRICAL FOOT: See discussion under meter.

METRICAL SUBSTITUTION: A way of varying poetic meter by taking a single foot of the normal meter and replacing it with a foot of different meter. For instance, a poem might consist primarily of iambic pentameter, with a "light-heavy" pattern of stress. The poet might add variety by occasionally inserting a foot consisting of two stresses (spondeic substitution) or a foot with a reversed pattern of "heavy-light" stress (trochaic substitution). See meter.

MICROCOSM: (cf. Macrocosm) The human body. It was thought that the body was a "little universe" that reflected changes in the macrocosm, or greater universe.

MIDDLE COMEDY: Greek comedies written in the early 300s BCE, in which the exaggerated costumes and the chorus of the Old Comedy were eliminated. We have no surviving examples of these of the Middle Comedies, but they are alluded to and described in other works.

MIDDLE ENGLISH: The version of English spoken after the Norman Conquest from 1066 up to about 1450 or so. Before the Norman Conquest, the common version of English was Old English or Anglo-Saxon, a Germanic language that is difficult to read without specialized training. An influx of Norman French and Latin vocabulary after the Normans conquered England resulted in rapid changes in spoken English. Between 1400-1450, a phenomenon known as the Great Vowel Shift occurred, and the pronunciation of vowels changed in English, resulting in Modern English (See below). To avoid irritating your teacher, do not confuse Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.

MILES GLORIOSUS: the braggart soldier, a stock character in classic (Roman) drama. The braggart soldier is cowardly but boasts of his past deeds, and he becomes involved in sexual catastrophes, bullying, and thievery. (The miles gloriosus is frequently of low morals. Shakespeare's Falstaff has been compared to the miles gloriosus in classical literature.)

MIMESIS: Mimesis is usually translated as "imitation" or "representation," though the concept is much more complex than that and doesn't translate easily into English. It is an imitation or representation of something else rather than attempting to literally duplicate the original. For instance, Aristotle in The Poetics defined tragedy as "the imitation [mimesis] of an action." In his sense, both poetry and drama are attempts to take an instance of human action and re-present its essence while translating it into a new "medium" of material. For example, a play about World War II is an attempt to take the essence of an actual, complex historical event involving millions of people and thousands of square miles over several years and recreate that event in a simplified representation involving a few dozen people in a few thousand square feet over a few hours. The play would be a mimesis of that historic event using stage props, lighting, and individual actors to convey the sense of what World War II was to the audience. In the same way, the process of mimesis might involve creating a film about World War II (translating the event into images projected onto a flat screen or monitor using chemical images on a strip of photosynthetic film), or writing a poem about World War II would constitute an attempt at distilling that meaning into syllables, stress, verse, and diction. Picasso might attempt to embody warfare as a montage of destruction--his painting Guernica is the result. The degree to which each form of art accurately embodies the essence of its subject determines--for many classical theorists of art--the degree of its success.

Additionally, mimesis may involve translating art from one type of media into another. A classical musician or composer might be entranced by an earlier bit of folkloric art, the legend of William Tell. He attempts to imitate or represent the stirring emotions of that story by creating a stirring song that has the same effect; thus, the famous "The William Tell Overture" results. A story has been translated into a musical score. It is also possible to attempt mimesis of one medium into the same medium. For instance, American musician Aaron Copland was inspired by the simplicity of Quaker music, so he attempted to re-create that music mimetically in "Apalachian Spring," much like he earlier attempted to mimetically capture the American spirit in "Fanfare for the Common Man."

In literature, mimesis is likewise used to describe the way literature describes or mimics other media (other bits of art, architecture, music and so on). For instance, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is largely Keats' poetic attempt to capture the eternal and changeless nature of visual art depicted on an excavated piece of pottery. Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" involves an elaborate architectural recreation of three pagan temples, and the artwork on the walls of those temples, as well as the verbal construction of entire coliseum to enclose a knightly combat. These are both mimetic passages seeking to turn one type of non-verbal art into verbal art through mimetic principles.

MIRACLE PLAY: Not to be confused with medieval morality plays, a miracle play is a medieval drama depicting either biblical stories, the miracle(s) performed by a saint, or the matyrdom of a saint in Christian traditions. (Some critics prefer the third definition and reject the first two). Miracle plays were usually presented in a cycle, such as dramas dealing with the Virgin Mary, the fall of man, and so on. In France, a sharp division is made between a mystery play and a miracle play, but it is common for the terms to be used interchangeablely elsewhere. An example of a modern miracle play is the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck's Sister Beatrice. The general emphasis in a miracle play is to astonish and inspire the viewer with a sense of wonder at the numinous. Contrast with morality play and mystery play.

MIRROR SCENE: A scene that does not contribute directly to the plot (i.e., it contains characters divorced from the main narrative, and the events it deals with do not further the action.) but which do mirror the basic concerns of the play in terms of theme or symbolism. For instance, the scene with the gardeners in Richard II relates symbolically to the fact that Richard, as King, is not tending his own little Eden, the isle of Britain. The scene with Christopher Sly in the opening of The Taming of the Shrew does not relate directly to Petruchio's wooing of Kate, but it does establish the theme of how appearance might not match reality.

MOCK EPIC: In contrast with an epic (see above), a mock epic is a long, humorous poem that merely imitates features of the classical epic. The poet often takes an elevated style of language, but incongruously applies that language to mundane or ridiculous objects and situations. It focuses frequently on the exploits of an antihero, whose activities illustrate the stupidity of the class or group he represents. Various other attributes common to the classical epic, such as the invocation of the muse or the intervention of the gods, or the long catalogs of characters, appear in the mock epic as well, only to be spoofed. For instance, Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock gives, in hyperbolic language, a lengthy account of how a 17th century lord cuts a lady's hair in order to steal a lock of it as a keepsake, leading to all sorts of social backlash when the woman is unhappy with her new hairdo. Lord Byron's Don Juan gives a lengthy list of the sexual conquests and catastrophes associated with a precocious young lord, Don Juan.

MODERN ENGLISH: The English language as spoken between about 1450 and the modern day. The language you are speaking now and the language Shakespeare spoke are both considered examples of modern English. Modern English is distinct from Middle English (spoken c. 1100 to 1450) in that vowels are pronounced differently after the Great Vowel Shift. Both Middle English and Modern English are distinct from Old English in that Old English and Middle English had numerous letters (such as the letters ash, thorn, and eth) and some sounds (such as yogh) that were used much more commonly. Old English also used elaborate declensions that have mostly fallen out of use in Modern English. To avoid irritating your teacher, do not confuse Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. A good rule of thumb is that, (a) if you can read it easily, it's probably modern English, (b) if you can read it with some difficulty, but there are many words "misspelled" and an occasional strange letter, it's probably Middle English, and (c) if you can't read it all, and it looks like a foreign language, you are probably looking at Old English. See Middle English and Modern English.

MONODY: Any elegy or dirge represented as the utterance of a single speaker. Compare with dramatic monologue.

MONOLOGUE: (contrast with soliloquy and interior monologue) An interior monologue represents not spoken words, but rather the internal or emotional thoughts or feelings of an individual, such as William Faulkner's long interior monologues within The Sound and The Fury. Monologue can also be used to refer to a character speaking aloud to himself, or narrating an account to an audience with no other character on stage.

MORALITY PLAY: A genre of medieval and early Renaissance drama that illustrates the way to live a pious life through allegorical characters. The characters tend to personified abstractions of vices and virtues. For instance, characters named Mercy and Conscience might work together to stop Shame and Lust from stealing Mr. Poorman's most valuable possession, a box of gold labeled Salvation. A morality play, unlike a mystery play or a miracle play, did not necessarily use Biblical or strictly religious material, i.e., they usually did not contain specific characters found in the Bible, such as saints or the disciples or Old Testament figures.Unlike the miracle play, which was designed to depict astonishing and moving miraculous events believed to have occurred literally to specific historical figures in specific settings, the morality play took place internally and psychologically in every human being. The protagonist often had a name that represented this universality, such as "Everyman," "Mankind," "Soul," "Adam," or whatnot. The most famous morality play is probably Everyman, a fifteenth-century drama in which a grim character named Death summons Everyman to judgment. On his way to meet Death, Everyman discovers that all his old buddies are abandoning him except one. His friend Good Deeds is the only one that will accompany him to meet Death, while Beauty, Fellowship, Kindred, Knowledge, and Strength fall by the wayside on his journey. Other famous examples include The Castle of Perseverance and Mankind. Contrast with mystery play and miracle play.

MOTIF: a conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula, which appears frequently in works of literature. For instance, the "loathly lady" who turns out to be a beautiful princess is a common motif in folklore, and the man fatally bewitched by a fairy lady is a common folkloric motif appearing in Keat's "La Belle Dame sans Merci." In medieval Latin lyrics, the "Ubi sunt?" [where are . . .?] motif is common, in which a speaker mourns the lost past by repeatedly asking, what happened to the good-old days? ("Where are the snows of yesteryear?") Frequently, critics use the word motif interchangeably with theme and leit-motif.

MUSE, INVOCATION OF: See invocation of the muse.

MYSTERY PLAY: A religious play performed outdoors in the medieval period that enacts an event from the Bible, such as the story of Adam and Eve, Noah's flood, the crucifixion, and so on. Although the origins are uncertain, Mary Marshall and other early scholars suggested that the plays developed out of the Latin liturgy of the church, in particular out of the Quem Quaeritis trope of Easter Day festivals. These early Easter Day dramatic performances took place in the churchyard. Later, these plays gradually became secular and used vernacular languages rather than Latin, and they gradually moved out of the churchyard and ecclesiastical control, becoming outdoor performances controlled by the craftsmen in each city, according to this theory. Other scholars such as V. A. Kolve refute this idea, however. In any case, we do know that these religious plays were staged and performed by secular audiences. Typically, the various guilds in each city (such as the Carpenter's Guild, the Butcher's Guild, and so on) would sponsor and perform one play during the Corpus Christi festival (see above), competing with each other for the most elaborate performance. Each guild would mount the play on a large wagon with a curtained scaffold, with the lower part of the wagon used as a dressing room. Between forty and fifty of these wagons (one for each guild) would move from spot to spot in the city, so that spectators could watch several performances in a single day. They often involved elaborate representations of heaven and hell, mechanical devices to create "special effects," and lavish costuming. The dramatizations became increasingly elaborate, and they show signs of the development of psychological realism. The use of mystery in the name may originate in either the idea of spiritual mysteries, which was the focus of each play, or it may result from the Latin word misterium (a guild). The mystery plays were an important precursor to the miracle plays and morality plays (see above) in medieval drama, and they set the stage for the flowering of Renaissance drama that was to come.

MYTHOGRAPHY: The commentary, writings, and interpretations added to myths. Medieval writers, such as the four scribes collectively called the "Vatican Mythographers," would take Greek and Roman myths and write elaborate Christianized allegories to explain the meaning of the text. Another examples of medieval mythography is the Ovid moralisée, a retelling of Ovid's Metamorphoses in which French scribes interpret the legends as Cristological commentary in the New Testament.

MYTHOLOGY: A system of stories about the Gods, often explicitly religious in nature, that were once believed to be true by a specific cultural group, but may no longer be believed as literally true by their descendents. Like religions everywhere, mythology often provided etiological and eschatological narratives (see above) to help explain why the world works the way it does, to provide a rationale for customs and observances, to establish set rituals for sacred ceremonies, and to predict what happens to individuals after death. If the protagonist is a normal human rather than a supernatural being, the traditional story is usually called a legend rather than a myth. If the story concerns supernatural beings who are not deities, but rather spirits, ghosts, fairies, and other creatures, it is usually called a folktale rather than a myth (see folklore, below). Samples of myths appear in the writings of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid.

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES: In medieval and Renaissance Europe, many scholars believed in a beautiful song created by the movement of the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, and planets). The music of spheres supposedly was infinitely beautiful, but humankind was unable to hear it, either (a) because of their sinful separation from God, or (b) because they were so used to its presence, their minds automatically filtered it out as background noise.

NARRATION, NARRATIVE: Narration is the act of telling a sequence of events, often in chronological order, or alternatively, any story, whether in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do. A narrative is the story or account itself. Some narrations are reportorial and historical, such as biographies, autobiographies, news stories, and historical accounts. In narrative fiction common to literature, the narrative is usually creative and imaginative rather than strictly factual, as evidenced in fairy tales, legends, novels, novelettes, short stories, and so on. However, the fact that a fictional narrative is an imaginary construct does not necessarily mean it isn't concerned with imparting some sort of truth to the reader, as evidenced in exempla, fables, anecdotes, and other sorts of narrative.

NEAR RHYME: Another term for inexact rhyme.

NEOCLASSIC: An adjective referring to the Enlightenment.

NEOCLASSIC COUPLET: See discussion under heroic couplet.

NEOLOGISM: A made-up word that is not a part of normal, everyday vocabulary. Often Shakespeare invented new words in his place for artistic reasons. For instance, "I hold her as a thing enskied." The word enskied implies that the girl should be placed in the heavens. Other Shakespearean examples include climature (a mix between climate and temperature) and abyssm (a mix between abyss and chasm), and compound verbs like "outface" or "unking." Contrast with kenning, above. Occasionally, the neologism is so useful it becomes a part of common usage, such as the word new-fangled that Chaucer invented in the 1300s. A neologism may be considered either a rhetorical scheme or a rhetorical trope, depending upon whose definition the reader trusts.

NEW COMEDY: The Greek comedy the developed circa 300 BCE, stressing romantic entanglements, wit, and unexpected twists of plot.

OBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW: See point of view, below.

OCTAVE: Not to be confused with octavo, below, an octave is the first part of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet; an octave is a set of eight lines that rhyme according to the pattern ABBAABBA. See Sonnet, below.

OCTAVO: Not to be confused with octave, above, octavo is a term from the early production of paper and vellum in the medieval period. When a single, large uncut sheet is folded once and attached to create two leaves, or four pages, and then bound together, the resulting text is called a folio. If the folio is in turn folded in half once more and cut, the resulting size of page is called a quarto. If the quarto is in turn folded in half and cut once more, the result is an octavo. Thus, an octavo is a book made of sheets of material folded three times, to create eight leaves, or sixteen pages, each about 4 inches wide and 5 inches high, to make a tiny book. On a single sheet, the page visible on the right-hand side of an open book or the "top" side of such a page is called the recto side (Latin for "right"), and the reverse or "bottom" side of such a page (the page visible on the left-hand side of an open book) is called the verso side. Compare octavo with folio (above) and quarto (below).

ODE: A stanzaic poetic form of varying line lengths and sometimes intricate rhyme schemes. The ode is usually much longer than the song or lyric, but usually not as long as the epic poem.

OFF RHYME: Another term for inexact rhyme.

OLD COMEDY: The Athenian comedies dating to 400-499 BCE, featuring invective, satire, ribald humor, and song and dance. See also discussion under stock character.

OLD ENGLISH: Also known as Anglo-Saxon, Old English is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. It is a Germanic language that was introduced to the British Isles by tribes such as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in a series of invasions in the fifth century. Poems such as Beowulf are samples of Old English. Old English was common in England from about 449 AD up to about 1100 AD. The Norman Conquest in 1066 introduced a new ruling class of Normans who spoke French, and the influx of French vocabulary altered Old English, eventually resulting in Middle English. See Middle English and Modern English. To see a medieval manuscript written in Old English, click here. To avoid irritating your teacher, do not confuse Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.

OLFACTORY IMAGERY: Imagery dealing with scent. See imagery.

ONOMATOPOEIA: The use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic effect. For instance, buzz, click, rattle, grunt make sounds akin to the noise they represent. A higher level of onomatopoeia is the use imitative sounds throughout a sentence to create an auditory effect. For instance, Tennyson writes in The Princess about "The moan of doves in immemorial elems, / And murmuring of innumerable bees." All the /m/ and /z/ sounds ultimately create that whispering, murmuring effect Tennyson describes. In similar ways, poets delight in choosing sounds that match their subject-matter, such as using many clicking k's and c's when describing a rapier duel (to imitate the clack of metal on metal), or using many /s/ sounds when describing a serpent, and so on.

ONEIROMANCY: the belief that dreams could predict the future, or the act of predicting the future by analyzing dreams. Elements of oneiromantic belief may have influenced the genre of medieval Dream Visions (see above). Likewise, in Renaissance literature such as Shakespeare's plays, Shakespeare readily adapted oneiromantic beliefs into the dreams of his characters to create foreshadowing.

OPEN POETIC FORM: A poem of variable length, which can consist of as many lines as the poet wishes to write. Open poetic form contrasts with closed poetic form, in which the specific subgenre of poetry requires a predetermined number of stanzas, lines, feet, or other components. Not to be confused with free verse poetry. Free verse poetry is a subtype of open poetry, but it is not constrained by any conventions at all regarding meter or rhyme. For example, Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman" is in open poetic form. Although "The Highwayman" has a set structure for rhyme and meter, the number of stanzas necessary to tell the poem is not predetermined by a required length, as is the case in a limerick or a sonnet. However, Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself" is written in open poetic form and it is also written in free verse form. Whitman's lines vary in length, and the meter varies from passage to passage, and any rhymes appear haphazardly rather than as part of a predetermined pattern required by a genre's constraints.

ORAL FORMULAIC: Having traits associated with works intended to be spoken aloud before an audience of listeners. Examples of oral formulaic traits are (1) repetition of words or passages, (2) use of epithets after or before a character's name, (3) mnemonic devices to help the speaker with recitation, (4) subdivision into sections suitable for recital during a single evening, (5) summaries of previous material in each section to help a listening audience keep track of complicted plot, and (6) episodic structure that allows the speaker to "ad lib" sections if he or she forgets a passage. Critics have argued that literature such as Beowulf, the Tain, and Homer's Odyssey show signs of oral formulaic structure, which suggests the poems may have existed for centuries as recited materials before being written down as a text.

ORAL TRANSMISSION: The spreading or passing on of material by word of mouth. Before the development of writing and the rise of literacy, oral transmission and memorization was the most common means by which narrative and poetic art could spread through a culture. See ballad, bard, epic, folklore, oral-formulaic, etc.

ORCHESTRA (Greek "dancing place"): (1) In modern theaters, the ground-floor area on the first loor where the audience sits to watch the play; (2) in classical Greek theaters, a central circle where the chorus performed

ORDER OF THE GARTER: An elite order of knights first founded around 1347-48 by King Edward III. The Knights of the Garter traditionally wore as their emblem a lady's garter around one leg. According to one legend, this emblem and the order's motto came about when King Edward kneeled down to pick up a garter that had fallen from Joan of Kent's leg, much to her embarrassment. King Edward supposedly placed it on his own leg (or in some versions of the legend, placed it back on her leg), and turned to admonish the courtiers who were snickering. He said in French "Honi soit qui mal y pense" ("Shame to him who thinks evil of it," or, more popularly, "Evil to him who evil thinks"). This became the motto of his elite knights. Some scholars dismiss this legend as folklore, and instead suggest that the garter might symbolize the homage paid by knights to ladies; others suggest that the circular nature of the garter is an allusion to King Arthur's round table; King Edward had attempted to revive the Arthurian legends in association with his own court, and the round table played a prominent part in the Arthurian myth. The Knights of the Garter (KG) exist to this day in England, and meet every year at Windsor Castle. Click here for more information and some photos from recent induction ceremonies. Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor is set at Windsor during one of these annual inductions, and it may have first been performed for Elizabeth when the Lord Chamberlain (Shakespeare's immediate boss) was being inducted into the Order of the Garter. The scribe writing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight concludes the story by writing down the order's motto at the end of the tale.

ORGANIC UNITY: An idea common to Romantic Poetry and influential up through the New Critics, the theory of organic unity is that all elements of a good literary work are interdependent upon each other to create an emotional or intellectual whole. If any one part of the art is removed--whether it is a character, an action, a speech, a description, or authorial observation--the entire work diminishes in potency as a result. The idea also suggests that the growth or development of a piece of good literature--from its beginning to its end--occurs naturally according to an understandable sequence. That sequence may be chronological, logical, or otherwise step-by-step in some productive manner.

OUTLAW: An individual determined to be an outlaw at a thing or an althing (see althing, above) was considered outside the normal bounds of kinship relations. He was considered outside the law (hence the term), and anyone who met him would be allowed to kill him or rob him without repercussions from the rest of the community. Many of the major heros in Icelandic sagas are outlaws or become outlaws over the course of the saga.

OUTSIDE SPEAKER: The speaker of a poem presented in third-person point of view.

PARALLELISM: When the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length. For instance, "King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise, and equitable." The previous sentence has parallel structure in use of adjectives. However, the following sentence does not use parallelism: "King Alfred tried to make clear laws that had precision and were equitable."

If the writer uses two parallel structures, the result is isocolon parallelism: "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

If there are three structures, it is tricolon parallelism: "That government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth." Or, as one student wrote, "Her purpose was to impress the ignorant, to perplex the dubious, and to startle the complacent." Shakespeare used this device to good effect in Richard II when King Richard laments his unfortunate position:

PARAPHRASE: A brief restatement in one's own words of all or part of a literary or critical work.

PASTORAL: An artistic composition dealing with the life of shepherds or with a simple, rural existence. It usually idealized shepherds' lives in order to create an image of peaceful and uncorrupted existence. More generally, pastoral describes the simplicity, charm, and serenity attributed to countrylife, or any literary convention that places kindly, rural people in nature-centered activities. The Greek Theocritus (316-260 BCE) first used the convention in his Idylls, though pastoral compositions also appear in Roman literature, in Shakespeare, and in the writings of the Romantic poets.

PENTAMETER: Poetry that consists of five feet. Each foot has a set number of syllables. See meter.

PERFECT RHYME: Another term for exact rhyme or true rhyme. See exact rhyme.

PERIPETEIA: (Also peripetea, Gk. "sudden change.") The sudden reversal of fortune in a story, play, or any narrative in which there is an observable change in direction. In tragedy, this is often a change from stability and happiness toward the destruction or downfall of the protagonist.

PERSONA (Latin: "Mask"): An external representation of oneself which might or might not accurately reflect one's inner self, or an external representation of oneself that might be largely accurate, but involves exaggerating certain characteristics and minimizing others. Contrast with poetic speaker, below.

PLAY: A specific piece of drama, usually enacted on a stage by diverse actors who often wear makeup or costumes to make them resemble the character they portray. See drama.

PLOT: The structure and relationship of actions and events in a work of fiction. In order for a plot to begin, some sort of catalyst is necessary. While the temporal order of events in the work constitutes the "story," we are speaking of plot rather than story as soon as we look at how these events relate to one another, and how they are rendered and organized so as to achieve their particular effects. Note that, while it is most common for events to unfold chronologically (in which the first event happens first, the second event happens second, and so on), many stories structure the plot in such a way that the reader encounters happenings out of order. A common technique along this line is to "begin" the story in the middle of the action, a technique called beginning in medias res (Latin for "in the middle[s] of things"). Some narratives involve several short episodic plots occurring one after the other (like chivalric romances), or they may involve multiple subplots taking place simultaneously with the main plot (as in many of Shakespeare's plays).

POETIC SPEAKER: the narrative or elegaic voice in a poem such as a sonnet that speaks of his or her situation or feelings. It is a convention in poetry that the speaker is not the same individual as the historical author of the poem. For instance, consider the poet Lord Byron's mock epic Don Juan. Lord Byron wrote the poem as a young man in his late twenties. However, the speaker of the poem depicts himself as being an elderly man looking back cynically on the days of youth. Clearly, the "voice" talking and narrating the story is not identical with the author. In the same way, the speaker of the poem "My Last Duchess" characterizes himself through his words as a Renaissance nobleman in Italy who is cold-blooded--quite capable of murdering a wife who displeases him--but the author of the poem was actually Robert Browning, a mild-mannered English poet writing in the early nineteenth-century. Many students (and literary critics) attempt to decipher clues about the author's own attitudes, beliefs, feelings, or biographical details through the words in a poem. However, such an activity must always be done with caution. Shakespeare may write a sonnet in which the poetic speaker pours out his passion for a woman with bad breath and wiry black hair (Sonnet 130), but it does not mean that Shakespeare himself was attracted to halitosis, or that his wife had black hair, or that he had a fling with such a woman. See also authorial voice, above.

POETRY: A variable literary genre characterized by rhythmical patterns of language. These patterns typically consist of patterns of meter (high and low stress), syllabification (the number of syllables in each line of text), rhyme, alliteration, or combinations of these elements. The poem typically involves figurative language such as schemes and tropes, and it may bend (or outright break) the conventions of normal communicative speech in the attempt to embody an idea or convey a linguistic experience.

POINT OF VIEW: The way a story gets told and who tells it. It is the method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision, from which the story is told. Point of view governs the reader's access to the story. Many narratives appear in the first person (the narrator speaks as "I" and is a character in the story who may or may not influence events within it). Another common type of narrative is the third-person narrative (the narrator seems to be someone standing outside the story who refers to all the characters by name or as he, she, they, and so on). When the narrator reports speech and action, but never comments on the thoughts of other characters, it is the dramatic third person point of view or objective point of view. The third-person narrator can be omniscient--a narrator who knows everything that needs to be known about the agents and events in the story, and is free to move at will in time and place, and who has privileged access to a character's thoughts, feelings, and motives. The narrator can also be limited--a narrator who is confined to what is experienced, thought, or felt by a single character, or at most a limited number of characters. Finally, there is the unreliable narrator (a narrator who describes events in the story, but seems to make obvious mistakes or misinterpretations that may be apparent to a careful reader). Unreliable narration often serves to characterize the narrator as someone foolish or unobservant.

POINT OF VIEW CHARACTER: The central figure in a limited point of view narration, the character through whom the reader experiences the author's representation of the world. See point of view, above.

POLYSYNDETON: Using many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect in a sentence. For example, "This term, I am taking biology and English and history and math and music and physics and sociology." All those ands make the student sound like she is completely overwhelmed. It is the opposite of asyndeton, above. Both polysyndeton and asyndeton are examples of rhetorical schemes.

PRIMOGENITURE: The late medieval custom of allowing the firstborn legitimate male child to inherit all of his father's properties, estates, wealth, and titles upon the father's death. Primogeniture was a key issue in determining succession to the royal throne, and plays an important part in Edmund's villainy in King Lear, and King Henry V's claim to the French throne in Henry V, and numerous other Shakespearean plays. In medieval times, primogeniture lead to huge social problems since Western Europe was producing large numbers of secondborn militarily trained knights who had no means of making a livelihood. Since the firstborn son inherited everything, the only "fair" option for the other sons was becoming celibate and then joining the church hierarchy as clerics or entering monasteries. Since this was not always a preferable option for hot-blooded young men, many involved themselves in coups to gain the family estate, took up lives of brigandage, or became mercenaries and wandered from one war to another seeking their fortunes. When Pope Urban II called the first crusade to reclaim Jerusalem, the church saw that part of the solution to this problem was to provide a legitimate arena of warfare for these dispossessed knights.

PRIVATE SYMBOL: A symbol that an individual artist arbitrarily assigns a personal meaning to, as opposed to a cultural symbol. Nearly all members of an ethnic, religious, or linguistic group might share a cultural symbol and agree upon its meaning with little discussion, but private symbols may only be discernable in the context of one specific story or poem. Examples of private symbols include the elaborate mythologies created by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion or William Butler Yeats' use of Constantinople as a symbol to represent human poetic artifice in "Sailing to Byzantium."

PROBLEM PLAY: There are two common meanings to this term. (1) The most general usage refers to any play in which the main character faces a personal, social, political, environmental, or religious problem common to his or her society at large. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is representative of a problem play in that Loman must face the challenges of what the author considers false values in a capitalistic society. (2) In a narrower sense, Shakespearean scholars apply the term problem play to a group of Shakespeare's plays, also called "bitter comedies," especially Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well, that explore dark and ignoble aspects of human psychology without attempting to solve or resolve the plot to the reader's satisfaction beyond a superficial level. Because of the uneasy endings, the plays do not seem to follow the standard conventions of Renaissance comedy.

PROCATALEPSIS (Greek "anticipation"): procatalepsis is a rhetorical strategy in which the writer raises an objection and then immediately answers it; by doing so, the rhetor seeks to strengthen his argument by dealing with possible objections before his audience can raise counter-arguments.

PROFANITY ACT OF 1606: This law passed under King James I required that any profanity in a publically performed play or in published material would result in a 10 pound fine for the performer or printer, a substantial sum. Three of Shakespeare's quartos show signs of revision to meet the requirement of the Profanity Act, such as omissions of obscenity, the word "God" changed to "heaven," or "Jove," etc. Contrast with the Censorship Ordinance, above.

PROLOGUE: In original Greek tragedy, the prologue was either the action or a set of introductory speeches before the first entry (parados) of the chorus. In later literature, a prologue is a section of any introductory material before the first chapter or the main material of a prose work, or any such material before the first stanza of a poetic work.

PROPARALEPSIS (plural: proparalepses): adding an extra syllable or letters to the end of a word. For instance, Shakespeare in Hamlet creates the word climature by adding the end of the word temperature to climate (1.1.12). The wizardly windbag Glyndwr (Glendower) proclaims that he "can call spirits from the vasty deep" in 1 Henry IV (3.1.52). See schemes for more information.

PROPS (abbreviation of "properties"): Objects, furniture and similar items used on stage either to provide verisimilitude of setting, to help characterize the actors holding or wearing them, or other visual aides to serve practical, symbolic, or demonstrative purposes on the stage.

PROSCENIUM: An arch that frames a box set and holds the curtain, thus creating a sort of invisible boundary through which the audience views the on-stage action of a play.

PROSKENION: A raised stage constructed before the skene in classical Greek drama. The proskenion sharply divided the actors from the chorus, and the elevated height made the actors more visible to the audience.

PROSTHESIS: Adding an extra syllable or letters to the beginning of a word: Shakespeare writes in his sonnets, "All alone, I beweep my outcast state." He could have simply wrote weep, but beweep matches his meter and is more poetic. Too many students are all afrightened by the use of prosthesis. Prosthesis creates a poetic effect, turning a run-of-the-mill word into something novel. Prosthesis is an example of a rhetorical scheme.

PROSODY (1): the mechanics of verse poetry--its sounds, rhythms, versification, meter, stanzaic form, alliteration, assonance, euphony, onomatopoeia, and rhyme. (2) The study or analysis of the previously listed material.

PROTAGONIST: The main character in a work, on whom the author focuses most of the narrative attention. See character, above.

PUN (also called Paranomasia): A play on two words that are similar in sound but differ in meaning. For example, in Matthew 16:18, Christ puns in Greek: "Thou art Peter [Petros] and upon this rock [petra] I will build my church." Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, puns upon Romeo's vile death (vile=vial, the vial of poison Romeo consumed). Shakespeare's poetic speaker also puns upon his first name (Will) and his lover's desire (her will) in the sonnets, and John Donne puns upon his last name in "Hymn to God the Father." Originally, puns were a common literary trope in serious literature, but after the eighteenth century, puns have been primarily considered a low form of humor. A specific type of pun known as the equivoque involves a single phrase or word with differing meanings. For instance, one epitaph for a bank teller reads "He checked his cash, cashed in his checks, / And left his window. / Who's next?" The nineteenth-century poet, Anita Owen, uses a pun to magnificent effect in her verse:

O dreamy eyes,

They tell sweet lies of Paradise;

And in those eyes the lovelight lies

And lies--and lies--and lies!

Another type of pun is the asteismus, in which one speaker uses a word one way, but a second speaker responds using the word in a different sense. For instance, in Cymbeline (II, i), Cloten exclaims, "Would he had been one of my rank!" A lord retorts, "To have smell'd like a fool," twisting the meaning of rank from a noun referring to noble status to an adjective connoting a foul smell. Yet another form of pun is the paragram, in which wordplay appears by altering one or more letters in the word. It is often considered a low form of humor, as in various knock-knock jokes or puns such as, "What's homicidal and lives in the sea? Answer: Jack the Kipper." In spite of the pun's current low reputation, some of the best writers in English have been notoriously addicted to puns: noticeably Shakespeare and James Joyce.

PURGATION: See catharsis.

QUATRAIN: Also sometimes used interchangeably with "stave," a quatrain is a stanza of four lines, often rhyming in an ABAB pattern. Three quatrains form the main body of a Shakespearean or English sonnet along with a final couplet. See sonnet, below.

QUARTO: A term from early bookmaking. When a single, large sheet is folded once to create two leaves, (four pages counting the front and back), and then bound together, the resulting text is called a folio. If the folio is folded in half once more, the resulting size of page is called a quarto. Thus, a quarto is a sheet of material folded twice, to create four leaves, or eight pages, which results in a medium-sized book. On a single sheet, the page visible on the right-hand side of an open book or the "top" side of such a page is called the recto side (Latin for "right"), and the reverse or "bottom" side of such a page (the page visible on the left-hand side of an open book) is called the verso side. Compare quarto with bad quarto and folio (above) and octavo (below).

RAISONNEUR (French: "Reasoner"): A character in continental literature whose purpose is similar to that of a chorus in Greek drama, i.e., this choric figure remains at a distance from the main action and provides a reasoned commentary about what takes place. However, a raisonneur doesn't necessarily sing like the chorus and appears in other types of literature (short stories, novels, poems) rather than in dramatic works.

RECOGNITION: See anagnorisis.

RECTO: see discussion under quarto.

RENAISSANCE: There are two common uses of the word.

Thus, the rhyme scheme for each stanza in the poem above is ABABCCDD. It is conventional that every stanza follow the same rhyme scheme, though it is possible to have interlocking rhyme scheme such as terza rima. It is also common for poets to deliberately vary their rhyme scheme for artistic purposes--such as Philip Larkin's "Toads," in which the poetic speaker complains about his desire to stop working so hard, and his rhymes degenerate into half-rhymes as an indication that he doesn't want to go to the effort of perfection. Among the most common rhyme schemes in English, we find heroic couplets (AA, BB, CC, DD, EE, FF, etc.) and quatrains (ABAB, CDCD, etc.), but the possible permutations are theoretically infinite.

RHYTHM (from Greek, "Flowing"): the varying speed, loudness, pitch, elevation, intensity, and expressiveness of speech, especially poetry. In verse the rhythm is normally regular; in prose it may or may not be regular. See Sprung Rhythm for an exception to this general rule. Also see meter, dipody, and syzygy.

RIDDLE (from Old English roedel, from roedan meaning "to give council" or "to read"): A universal form of literature in which a puzzling question or a conundrum is presented to the reader. The reader is often challenged to solve this enigma, which requires ingenuity in discovering the hidden meaning. A riddle may involve puns, symbolism, or unusual imagery.

For instance, a Norse riddle asks, "Tell me what I am. Thirty white horses round a red hill. First they champ. Then they stamp. Now they stand still." The answer is the speaker's teeth; these thirty white horses circle the "red hill" of the tongue; they champ and stamp while the riddler speaks, but stand still at the end of his riddle. Another famous example is the riddle of the sphinx from Sophocles' Oedipus Trilogy. The sphinx asks Oedipus, "What goes on four feet, on two feet, and three But the more feet it goes on, the weaker is he?" The answer is a human being, which crawls as an infant, walks erect on two feet as an adult, and totters on a staff (the third leg) in old age.

The earliest known English riddles are recorded in the Exeter Book, and probably date back to the 8th century. Examples, however, can be found in Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and Chinese, and many other languages. Authors of Anglo-Latin riddles include Aldhelm of Sherborne; Archbishop Tatwine of Canterbury, and Abbot Eusebius of Wearmouth. A large Renaissance collection can also be found in Nicolas Reusner's Aenigmatographia (1602).

RISING ACTION: The action in a play before the climax.

RISING RHYME: Another term for masculine rhyme endings in which the final rhyme in a poetic line end in a stressed syllable. See meter.

ROMAN STOICISM: The philosophy espoused by Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, "Roman Stoicism" actually originates with earlier Greek thinkers. Stoicism asserts that the natural world consists of suffering, and that the appropriate response of a human being is to face this suffering with dignity and a lack of tears while doing one's duty, acknowledging that life and pleasure are transitory. The philosophy is often contrasted with Epicurean philosophy, which asserted that wisdom lay in a "carpe diem" existence in which humanity, faced with the transience of life, should strive to enjoy itself as much as possible by using reason and moderation to find pleasure. Both Epicureanism and Stoicism dealt with the same problem: the brevity of life. However, they reached opposite conclusions concerning the appropriate response to that problem.

ROMANCE, GOTHIC: See gothic novel

ROMANCE, MEDIEVAL: In medieval use, romance referred to episodic French and German poetry dealing with the chivalric adventures of knights in warfare and courtly love. The medieval metrical romances resembed the earlier chansons de gestes and epics. A large number survive due to their popularity, including the works of Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1190), Hartmann von Aue (c. 1203), Gottfried von Strassburg (c. 1210), and Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1210). England produced its own romances in the 14th century, including the Lay of Havelok the Dane and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In 1485, Caxton printed the lengthy romance Le Morte D'arthur, a prose work that constituted a grand synthesis of Arthurian legends. Gradually, the poetic genre of medieval romance was superseded by prose works of renaissance romance. See romance, renaissance, above.

ROMANCE, MODERN: In contrast with medieval romance and Renaissance meanings of romance, which can be found just above this entry, in the 20th century, the meaning of a romance has become more restricted. Modern speakers refer to romances when they mean formulaic stories recounting the growth of a passionate sexual relationship. The conventional plotline involves a third-person narrative or a first-person narrative told from the viewpoint of a young woman between the ages of eighteen and her late twenties. She encounters a potential paramour in the form of a slightly older man. The two are prevented from forming a relationship due to social, psychological, or interpersonal constraints. The primary plot involves the two overcoming these constraints through melodramatic efforts. The story traditionally ends happily with the two characters professing their love for each other and building a life together. See melodrama, romance, medieval, and romance, renaissance.

ROMANCE, RENAISSANCE: The original medieval genre of metrical romances gradually were replaced by prose works in the 1500s. At that point the meaning of a "romance" expanded to include any lengthy story involving episodic encounters with supernatural or exciting events in Spanish and French stories written in the 1500s and 1600s. The connotations were of wild adventures, rather than romantic longing. See romance, medieval and romance, modern, below.

ROMANTIC COMEDY: Sympathetic comedy that presents the adventures of young lovers trying to overcome social, psychological, or interpersonal constraints to achieve a successful union. Commedia delle arte is a general type of drama that falls into this category.

ROMANTICISM: The term refers to the artistic philosophy prevalent during the first third of the nineteenth century (about 1800-1830). Romanticism rejected the earlier philosophy of the Enlightenment, which stressed that logic and reason were the best response humans had in the face of cruelty, stupidity, superstition, and barbarism. Instead, the romantics asserted that reliance upon emotion and natural passions provided a valid and powerful means of knowing and a reliable guide to ethics and living. The romantic movement typically asserts the unique nature of the individual, the privileged status of imagination and fancy, the human need for emotional outlets, a rejection of civilized corruption, and a desire to return to natural primitivism and escape the spiritual destruction of urban life. The major romantic poets included William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysche Shelley, and Lord Gordon Byron. See Enlightenment.

ROUND CHARACTER: Also called a dynamic character, a round character is depicted with psychological depth and detail. Typically the round character changes or evolves over the course of a narrative, or appears to have the capacity for such change. The round character contrasts with the flat character, a character who serves a specific or minor literary function in a text, and who may be a stock character or simplified stereotype. Typically, a short story has one round character and several flat ones. However, in longer novels and plays, there may be many round characters. The terms flat and round were first coined by the novelist E. M. Forster in his study, Aspects of the Novel. See flat character, character, characterization, and stock character.

RUN-ON LINE: See discussion under enjambement. Not to be confused with a run-on sentence, a grammatical error.

SAGA: The word comes from the Old Norse term for a "saw" or a "saying." Sagas are Scandinavian and Icelandic prose narratives about famous historical heros, families, or the exploits of kings and warriors. Until the 12th century, most sagas were folklore, and passed from person to person by oral transmission. Thererafter, scribes wrote them down. The Icelandic sagas have their setting when Iceland was first settled by Vikings (930-1030 AD). Examples include Grettir's Saga, Njál's Saga, Egil's Saga, and the Saga of Eric the Red. The saga is marked by literary and social conventions including warriors who stop in the midst of combat to recite extemporaneous poetry, individuals wearing blue cloaks when they are about to kill someone, elaborate geneologies and "back-story" before the main plot, casual violence, and recitations of the names and features of magical swords and weapons. Later sagas show signs of being influenced by continental literature--particularly French tales of chivalry and knighthood. For modern readers, the appearance of these traits often seems to sit uneasily with the surrounding material. In common usage, the term saga has been erroneously applied to any exciting, long narrative. See epic.

SALIC LAW: French law stating that the right of a king's son to inherit the French throne passes only patrilineally rather than matrilineally. In England, however, the Queen Consort (a queen married to a ruling husband) can become a Queen Regnant (a queen ruling in her own right) if her husband dies and there are no other male relatives in line to inherit the throne. Likewise, in French Salic Law, if the queen remarries after the king dies, any children she has from the new husband cannot claim the throne. Likewise, if a male king dies without heirs, only his brothers and their male offspring can claim the throne. This right does not pass to male children of the Queen that she might have later. However, under English law, a male descended from the Queen can ascend to the throne. The differences between Salic and English Law regarding inheritance play a key part in Shakespeare's Henry V, in which King Henry must determine whether he can justly claim the throne of France.

SATIRE: An attack on human stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, moral, or social standards. Satire was an especially popular technique used during the Enlightenment, in which it was believed that an artist could correct folly by using art as a mirror to reflect society. When people viewed the satire, and saw their faults magnified in a distorted reflection, they could see how ridiculous their behavior was and then correct that tendency within themselves.

SATIRIC COMEDY: Any drama or comic poem involving humor as a means of satire.

SATYR PLAY: A burlesque play submited by Athenian playwrights along with their tragic trilogies. On each day of the Dionysia, one tragedy was performed, followed by one satyr play.

SCANSION: The act of "scanning" a poem to determine its meter (see below). To perform scansion, the student breaks down each line into individual metrical feet and determines which syllables have heavy stress and which have lighter stress. According to the early conventions of English poetry, each foot should have at least one stressed syllable, though feet with all unstressed syllables are found occasionally in Greek and other poetic traditions.

SCATOLOGY: Not to be confused with eschatatology, scatology refers to so-called "potty-humor"-- jokes or stories dealing with feces designed to illicit either laughter or disgust. Anthropologists have noted that scatological humor occurs in nearly every human culture. In some cultures and time periods, scatology is treated as vulgar or low-brow (for instance, the Victorian time period in England). At other times, scatological elements appear in stories that are not necessarily meant to be low-brow. For instance, many serious medieval legends of demons link them to excrement. Scatology also appears in medieval plays such as Mankind and in various French fabliaux (singular "fabliau," see above).

SCENE: A dramatic sequence that takes place within a single locale (or setting) on stage. Often scenes serve as the subdivision of an act within a play.

SCENERY: the visual environment created onstage using a backdrop and props. The purpose of scenery is either to suggest vaguely a specific setting or produce through verisimilitude the illusion of actually watching events in that specific setting.

SCHISM: A split or divide in the church. The greatest medieval schism was that between the Roman Catholic church and the Greek Orthodox church (which continues to this day). Roman Catholics have traditionally believed the Petrine doctrine. The Petrine doctrine is the belief that Saint Peter was given special authority by Christ. (In the Gospel narratives, Christ states, "You are Peter [petrus], the Rock [petros], and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. To you will give the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. What you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Medieval and modern Catholics believed the Archbishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope) was in direct apostolic lineage back to Saint Peter. That means the Archbishop who annointed the Pope had been annointed by others all the way back to Saint Peter. Thus, the Pope inherited the same special authority Saint Peter had.

The Orthodox Greek church did not share this belief. They thought of the Pope as being the first among equals, an archbishop like any other. He did not have authority to command the whole church. The two halves of the medieval church in the West and the East argued about this, but that was about it for several centuries. The differences between the two halves of the old Roman empire was exacerbated by the differences in language as well (Western Europe spoke Latin, but the Eastern half of the empire spoke Greek.)

In 1054 a political struggle took place between the Holy Roman Empire (created when the Pope crowned Charlemagne) and the Byzantine Empire when they could not achieve a compromise concerning who was in charge. Western Christians believed the Pope in Rome was the supreme authoirty. The Eastern Christians believed the Patriarch and the council of Bishops of Constantinople was the supreme authority. Papal legates excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople. The Pope excommunicated the Patriarch. The Patriarch of Constantinople returned the favor by excommunicating him, and diplomatic ties withered between West and East, with the two halves growing apart in language, custom, church ritual, and political ties.

In Renaissance Britain, a major schism occurred when Henry VIII split from the Roman Catholic Church to found his own, state-run Anglican Church, appointing himself head of it. See Anglican church, above.

SCRIM: A flimsy curtain that becomes transparent when backlit, permitting action to take place under varying lighting.

SECOND-PERSON POINT OF VIEW: See discussion under point of view.

SEPTENARY: Another term for heptameter--a line consisting of seven metrical feet.

SESTET: (1) the last part of an Italian or Petrachan sonnet, it consists of six lines that rhyme with a varying pattern. Common rhyme patterns include CDECDE or CDCCDC. See Sonnet, below. (2) Any six-line stanza or a six-line unit of poetry.

SETS: The physical objects necessary as scenery in a play and props (if they are left on-stage rather than in a character's possession).

SEQUEL: A literary work complete in itself, but continuing the narrative of an earlier work. From Latin sequi, to follow. It is a new story that extends or develops characters and situations found in an earlier work.

SETTING: The general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which the action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs; the setting of an episode or scene within a work is the particular physical location in which it takes place. For example, the general setting of Joyce's "The Dead," is a quay named Usher's Island, west of central Dublin in the early 1900s, and the initial setting is the second floor apartment of the Misses Morkan. Setting can be a central or peripheral factor in the meaning of a work.

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET: See discussion under sonnet.

SHAPED POETRY: See Concrete Poetry, above.

SHIH POETRY: Shih is Chinese for "songs." There is no general word for poetry in Chinese, but there are words for different genres of poetry. Shih is the basic or common Chinese verse. The term encompassed folksongs, hymns, and libretti. The earliest extant shih in five-word lines may date back to 100 BCE. Contrast with fu poetry.

SHORT STORY: "A brief prose tale," as Edgar Allan Poe labeled it. This work of narrative fiction may contain description, dialogue and commentary, but usually plot functions as the engine driving the art. The best short stories, according to Poe, seek to achieve a single, major, unified impact.

SIMILE: See discussion under tropes.

"SINGLE EFFECT THEORY": Edgar Allan Poe's theory about what constituted a good short story. According to Poe, a good short story achieved its unity by achieving a single emotional effect on the reader. He writes of it in his review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales and describes it as "a certain unique single effect to be wrought out" (Quoted in Thomas Woodson, ed., Twentieth-Century Interpretations of "The Fall of the House of Usher" from Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1969.)

SITUATIONAL IRONY:See discussion under irony.

SKENE: (Greek "tent"): In classical Greek theaters, the skene was a building in the front of the orchestra that contained front and side doors from which actors could quickly enter and exit. The skene probably also served as an area for storing costumes and props

SLANG: Informal diction or the use of vocabulary considered inconsistent with the preferred wording common among the educated or elite in a culture.

SLANT RHYME: Another term for inexact rhyme. See above.

SLAPSTICK COMEDY: Low comedy in which humor depends almost entirely on physical actions and sight gags. The antics of the three stooges and the modern fourth stooge, Adam Sandler, often fall into this category.

SOLILOQUY: A monologue that is spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character believes himself to be alone. The technique frequently reveals a character's innermost feelings, such as thoughts, state of mind, motives or intentions, or provides necessary information to the audience. The convention in terms of drama is that whatever a character says in a soliloquy to the audience must be true, or at least true in the eyes of the character speaking (i.e., the character may tell lies to mislead other characters in the play, but whatever he states in a soliloquy is a true reflection of what the speaker believes or feels). The soliloquy was rare in Classical drama, but Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights used it extensively, especially for their villains. Well-known examples include speeches by the title characters of Macbeth and Hamlet, and Iago in Othello. (See aside, above.)

SONG: A lyric poem with a number of repeating stanzas (called refrains), written to be set to music in either vocal performance or with accompaniment of musical instruments. See lyric, above and stanza, below.

SONNET: A lyric poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a single, complete idea or thought. There are three common forms:

(1) Italian or Petrarchan

(2) English or Shakespearean

(3) Miltonic

The Shakespearean sonnet uses three quatrains; each rhymed differently, with a final, independently rhymed couplet that makes an effective, unifying climax to the whole. Its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Typically, the final two lines follow a "turn" or a "volta," (sometimes spelled volte, like volte-face) because they reverse or turn from the original line of thought to take the idea in a new direction.

The Miltonic sonnet is similar to the Petrarchan sonnet, but does not divide its thought between the octave and the sestet--the sense or line of thinking runs straight from the eighth to ninth line. Also, Milton expands the sonnet's repertoire to deal not only with love as the earlier sonnets did, but to include politics, religion, and personal matters.

SOUBRETTE: A maidservant of independent and saucy temperament in the Italian commedia dell'arte. This stock character helps two or more young lovers overcome the blocking agent that prevents their happy union.

SPEAKER, POETIC: See Poetic Speaker.

SPONDEE: In meter, a spondee is a metrical foot that consists of two successive strong beats. The spondee typically is "slower" and "heavier" to read than an iamb or a dactyl. Examples of spondees include dead man, black hole, and love song.

SPRUNG RHYTHM: Also called "accentual rhythm," sprung rhythm is a term invented by the poet-priest Gerard Manley Hopkins to describe his personal metrical system in which the major stresses are "sprung" from each line of poetry. The accent falls on the first syllable of every foot and a varying number of unaccented syllables following the accented one, but all feet last an equal amount of time when being pronounced. Hopkins wrote in his Preface to Poems (1918) the following definition:

The result of this technique is unusual metrical irregularity, but Hopkins claimed that sprung rhythm is found in most speech and in prose and music.This poetic method actually predates Hopkins, as it was not unknown in Old English and Middle English alliterative verse. However, Hopkins' poetry helped revitalize interest in accentual rhythm, and sprung rhythm has had a profound influence on T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Ted Hughes, as well other modernists. See also scansion and meter, above.

STANZA: . An arrangement of lines of verse in a pattern usually repeated throughout the poem. Typically, each stanza has a fixed number of verses or lines, a prevailing meter, and a consistent rhyme scheme. A stanza may be a subdivision of a poem, or constitute the entire poem. Early English terms for a stanza were "batch," "stave," and "fit." (Contrast with couplet as an alternative unit of poetry, and contrast with genres like ballad, haiku, and ode.)

STASIMON (plural stasima): From Greek "stationary song," a stasimon is an ode sung by the chorus in a Greek play after the chorus takes its position in the orchestra. The stasima also serve as dividing segments separating episodia of dialogue spoken by the actors. See also chorus, episodia, and orchestra.

STAVE: Another term for stanza. See stanza.

STEREOTYPE: A character who is so ordinary or unoriginal that the character seems like an oversimplified representation of a type, gender, class, or occupation. Cf. Stock Character, below.

STICHOMYTHY: Dialogue consisting of one-line speeches designed for rapid delivery and snappy exchanges. Usually, the verbal parrying is accompanied by the rhetorical device of antithesis (see under schemes) and repetitive patterns. The result is highly effective in creating verbal tension and conflict. The earliest examples come from Greek tragedy, where the technique was quite common. Examples also appear in Hamlet (III, iv), Richard III (IV, iv), and Love's Labour's Lost. Molière was fond of it as well in Les Femmes Savantes. Stichomythy has become increasingly rare in modern drama, however.

STOCK CHARACTER: A character type that appears repeatedly in a particular literary genre, and which has certain conventional attributes or attitudes. In the Old Comedy of Greek drama, common stock characters included the alazon (the imposter or self-deceiving braggart), the bomolochos (the buffoon); and the eiron, the self-derogatory and understating character. In modern detective fiction, the prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold, the hard-drinking P.I., and the corrupt police-officer are stereotype. Stock characters in western films might include the noble sheriff, the whorehouse madam, the town drunkard, etc. Stock characters in Elizabethan drama include the miles gloriosus (the braggart soldier), the melancholic man, the heroine disguised as a handsome young man, the gullible country bumpkin, and the machievelle as a villain.

STRESS: see discussion under meter and sonnets.

STYLE: The author's words and the characteristic way that writer uses language to achieve certain effects. An important part of interpreting and understanding fiction is being attentive to the way the author uses words. What effects, for instance, do word choice and sentence structure have on a story and its meaning? How does the author use imagery, figurative devices, repetition, or allusion? In what ways does the style seem appropriate or discordant with the work's subject and theme?

SUBLUNARY: The area of the cosmos within the orbit of the moon, including the earth. This area was thought to be imperfect and subject to decay, death and mutability, while the stars, planets, heavenly bodies, and celestial realms were "fixed," i.e., perfect, unchanging, and immune to death and decay. In medieval and Renaissance Christian cosmology, it was believed that the earth was similarly perfect and unchanging until Adam's fall from grace, after which old age, erosion, unstable weather, decay, and mutability appeared in the sublunary realms.

SUBPLOT: A secondary plot, often involving a deuteragonist's struggles, which takes place simultaneously with a larger plot, usually involving the protagonist. The subplot often echos or comments upon the direct plot either directly or obliquely.

SUBSTITION, METRICAL: See metrical substition.

SUBSTITION, RHETORICAL: The manipulation of the caesura to create the effect of a series of different feet in a line of poetry. Contrast with metrical substitution, above.

SYMBOL: A word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level. For instance, consider the stop sign. It is literally a metal octagon painted red with white streaks. However, everyone on the road will be much more safe if he understands that this object also represents the act of coming to a complete stop--an idea hard to encompass briefly without some sort of symbolic substitute. In literature, symbols can be cultural, contextual, or personal. (See cultural symbol, contextual symbol, and personal symbol). An object, a setting, or even a character can represent another, more general idea. Allegories are narratives read in such as way that in nearly every element serves as an interrelated symbol, and the narrative's meaning can be read either literally or as a symbolic statement about a political, spiritual, or psychological truth. See also allegory.

SYMBOLIC CHARACTER: Symbolic characters are characters whose primary literary function is symbolic, even though the character may retain normal or realistic qualities. For instance, in Ellison's Invisible Man, the character Ras is on a literal level an angry young black man who leads rioters in an urban rampage. However, the character Ras is a symbol of "race" (as his name phonetically suggests), and he represents the frustration and violence inherit in people who are denied equality.

SYMBOLISM: Frequent use of words, places, characters, or objects that mean something beyond what they are on a literal level. Often the symbol may be ambiguous in meaning. When multiple objects or characters each seem to have a restricted symbolic meaning, what often results is an allegory. Contrast with leit-motif and motif.

SYMPLOCE: Repeating words at both the beginning and the ending of a phrase: In St. Paul's letters, he seeks symploce to reinforce in the reader the fact that his opponents are no better than he is: "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they of the seed of Abraham? So am I." Symploce is an example of a rhetorical scheme.

SYNAERISIS: When two vowels appear side-by-side within a single word, and the poet blurs them together into a single syllable to make his meter fit. Contrast with elision, syncope, and acephalous lines.

SYNCOPE: When a desperate poet drops a vowel sound between two consonants to make the meter match in each line. It can also be used as a rhetorical device for any time a writer deletes a syllable or letter from the middle of a word. For instance, in Cymbeline, Shakespeare writes of how, "Thou thy worldy task hast done, / Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages" (4.2.258). In 2 Henry IV, we hear a flatterer say, "Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time" (1.2.112). Here, the -i- in saltiness has vanished to create a new word, and it acts as an example of a rhetorical scheme.

SYNECDOCHE: A rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part. See examples under tropes.

SYNESTHESIA: A rhetorical trope involving shifts in imagery. See examples under tropes.

SYNTAX: Word order and sentence structure, as opposed to diction, the actual choice of words. Standard English syntax prefers a Subject-Verb-Object pattern, but poets may tweak syntax to achieve rhetorical or poetic effects.

SYZYGY: (from Greek "Yoke"): In classical prosody, syzygy describes the combination of any two feet into another single metrical unit. It is often used interchangeably with the more precise term dipody,which refers more specifically to the metrical substitution of two normal feet, usually iambs or trochees, under a more powerful beat, so that a "galloping" or "rolling" rhythm results. See meter, rhythm, dipody.

TACTILE IMAGERY: Verbal description that invokes the sense of touch. See imagery.

TERCET: A three-line unit or stanza of poetry. It typically rhymes in an AAA or ABA pattern.

TERZA RIMA: A three-line stanza form with interlocking rhymes that move from one stanza to the next. The typical pattern is ABA, BCB, CDC, DED, and so on. Dante chose terza rima's tripartite structure as the basic poetic unit of his trilogy, The Divine Comedy.

TETRALOGY: (1) In a general sense, a collection of four narratives that are contiguous and continuous in chronology. Just as three books that tell a continuous story constitute a trilogy, four books that tell a continous narrative are a tetralogy. (2) A set of four plays that constitute a long historical cycle, written in approximately the same half of Shakespeare's career. Scholars refer to Shakespeare as writing a "First Tetralogy" (containing Richard III and associated works) and a "Second Tetralogy" (containing Richard II, Henry IV, part I., Henry IV, part 2, and Henry V.) Contrast with sequel and trilogy.

TETRAMETER: A line consisting of four metrical feet. See discussion under meter.

TERMINUS A QUO: The earliest possible date that a literary work could have been written, a potential starting point for dating a manuscript or text. Latin for "boundary from that point."

TERMINUS AD QUEM: The latest possible date that a literary work could have been written, a potential ending point for dating a manuscript or text. Latin for "boundary up to this point."

THEATER IN THE ROUND: A performance taking place on an arena stage. See arena stage.

THEATER OF DIONYSUS: The outdoor theater in Athens where Greek drama began as a part of religious rituals.

THEGN: A warrior who has sworn his loyalty to a lord in Anglo-Saxon society. In return for a gift of weaponry, and provisions of food and drink at the Mead-hall, the thegn vows to fight for his lord and die in his service. He also takes up the task of avenging his lord's death if that lord (hlaford) should die. (Compare with Modern English "Thane").

THEME: A central idea or statement that unifies and controls the entire work. The theme can take the form of a brief and meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life; it may be a single idea such as "progress" (in many Victorian works), "order and duty" (in many early Roman works), "seize-the-day" (in many late Roman works), or "jealousy" (in Shakespeare's Othello). The theme may also be a more complicated doctrine, such as Milton's theme in Paradise Lost, "to justify the ways of God to men," or "Socialism is the only sane reaction to the labor abuses in Chicago meat-packing plants" (Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). A theme is the author's way of communicating and sharing ideas, perceptions, and feelings with readers, and it may be directly stated in the book, or it may only be implied. Compare with motif and leit-motif.

THING: While the althing (see above) was the closest organization the Icelandic Vikings had to America's federal government/court system/police, the thing was the closest approximation the Icelandic Vikings had to local government/court systems/police. The thing was a gathering of representatives from the local area to vote on policy, hear complaints, settle disputes, and proclaim incorrigible individuals as outlaws (see below).

THREE ESTATES: See feudalism. Or click here for expanded historical discussion of feudalism.

THREE DRAMATIC UNITIES: See Unities, three.

THRENODY: Another term for a dirge.

THIRD-PERSON POINT OF VIEW: See point of view.

THRUST STAGE: another term for an apron stage.

TIRING HOUSE: An enclosed area in an Elizabethan theatrer where the actors awaited their cue to go on stage, changed their costumes, and stored stage props.

TONE: The means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude. By looking carefully at the choices an author makes (in characters, incidents, setting; in the stylistic choices and diction, etc.), we can isolate the tone of a work and sometimes infer from it the underlying attitudes that control and color the work as a whole.

TRAGEDY: A serious play in which the chief figures, by some peculiarity of character, pass through a series of misfortunes leading to a final, devastating catastrophe. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragedy. He writes in his Poetics (c. 350 BCE): "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; . . . through pity [pathos] and fear effecting the proper purgation [Catharsis] of these emotions" (Book 6.2). Traditionally, a tragedy is divided into five acts. The first act introduces the characters in a state of happiness, or at the height of their power, influence, or fame. The second act typically introduces a problem or dilemma, which reaches a point of crisis in the third act, but which can still be successfully averted. In Act Four, the main characters fail to avert or avoid the impending crisis or catastrophe, and this disaster occurs. The fifth act traditionally reveals the grim consequences of that failure. See also Hamartia, Hubris, Anagnorisis, Peripeteia, and Catharsis.

TRAGIC FLAW: Another term for hamartia. See discussion under hamartia and tragedy.

TRAGICOMEDY: A experimental Renaissance literary work--either a play or prose piece of fiction--containing elements common to both comedies and tragedies.

TRAVEL LITERATURE: Writings that describe either the author's journey to a distant and alien place, or which discuss the customs, habits, and wildlife of a distant place. The oldest surviving travel literature is an account from 1300 BCE, an anonymous record of Egyptian naval voyages called The Journeying of the Master of the Captains of Egypt. Herodotus' Histories recount his travels in Egypt, Africa, and elsewhere in the late 400s BCE. In China, we find accounts of travels to India by a certain Fa-Hian (c. 400 CE), and Shuman Hwui-Li's travels to the the farthest Eastern reaches of the Chinese Empire. Roman travel literature includes writings by Gaius Solinus (c. 250 CE).

Medieval travel writings include the Arabian traveller, Ibn Battutah (1304-78), who spent twenty-eight years travelling through Spain, South Russia, India, Africa, Egypt, and other locations. In roughly the same time period, Friar Jordanus of Sérac travelled to Armenia and India and recounted the stories he heard there of the Far East.

European travel writings reached their peak in the Renaissance, when the discovery of the Western hemisphere and increasingly accurate maps and navigational tools led explorers to ever-more-distant discoveries. Many, like the Spanish explorer Francisco de Alvarez (c. 1465-1541), set out in search of the fantastic places described in medieval legend, such as the fabled Kingdom of Prester John in the east; others searched for the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola in the west. In these cases, medieval travel writing served as a spur toward European expansion and colonization. Shakespeare's The Tempest shows signs of influence from this genre, as does Othello's description of his adventures abroad in Othello.

TRIAL BY COMBAT: A means of resolving disputes between knights in which both agree to meet at an agreed-upon time and place and fight with agreed-upon weapons. The knight who was in the right and honest in his words would be the one to win the day, since in popular medieval theology, it was thought that God would favor the just. In actual point of fact, the late medieval church condemned trial by combat as barbaric, though records of it persist through the early 1300s. The habit of gentlemanly duels, which continued through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Early Romantic period, along with the Western American practice of the gun-fight, are remnants of this earlier practice among knights. Shakespeare accounts examples of this behavior in the opening scenes of Richard II. See lists, chivalry, and feudalism.

TRILOGY: A group of three literary works that together compose a larger narrative. One of the earliest type of trilogy was the common practice of Athenian playwrights, who would submit tragedies as groups of three plays for performance in the dionysia. Contrast with tetralogy and sequel.

TRIMETER: A line consisting of three metrical feet.

TRIPLE RHYME: A trisyllabic rhyme involving three separate syllables to create the rhyme in each word. For instance, grinding cares is a triple rhyme with finding stairs. Fearfully is a triple rhyme with tearfully. Triple rhymes are not unusual in some Italian poetry, but single and double rhymes are much more common in English. However, triple rhymes and polysyllabic rhymes are frequently employed for humorous effect in English literature. Lord Byron uses polysyllabic rhyme for humorous effect when he writes an apostrophe to the husbands of pedantic women: "But--Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual! Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?" Ogden Nash likewise uses forced rhyme in order to produce the effect of surrendering to a difficult bit of verse when he writes, "Farewell, farewell, you old rhinocerous, / I'll stare at something less prepocerous."

TROCHAIC RHYME: Another word for double rhyme in which the final rhyming word consists of a heavy stress followed by a light stress.

TROCHEE: A two-syllable foot consisting of a heavy stress followed by a light stress. See discussion under meter.

TROPE: Trope has two meanings. (1) a short dialogue inserted into the church mass during the early Middle Ages as a sort of mini-drama, (2) a rhetorical device involving shifts in the meaning of words--see tropes for examples.

TROUBADOUR (Provencal "finder, inventor"): A medieval love poet of southern France between 1100-1350 who wrote and sang about the theme of fin amor (courtly love). Troubadours were noteworthy for their creativity and experimentation in metrical forms. They wrote in langue d'oc, and they profoundly influenced Dante, Petrarch, and the development of the love lyric in Europe. The term troubadour is sometimes used interchangeably with trouvère. Cf. trouvère, below.

TROUVÈRE (Old French, "finder, inventor"): A medieval poet of northern France, especially Picardy, who wrote and sang in lang d'oïl and composed chasons de gestes (songs about the adventures of knights) and romans bretons as well. The term trouvère is sometimes used interchangeably with troubadour. Cf. troubadour, above.

TRUE RHYME: Another term for perfect rhyme or exact rhyme. See exact rhyme.

TSMESIS: intentionally breaking a word into two parts for emphasis. Goldwyn once wrote, "I have but two words to say to your request: Im Possible." Milton writes, "Which way soever man refer to it." In English, this rhetorical scheme is fairly rare, since only the compounds of "ever" readily lend themselves to it, but it is much more common in Greek and Latin. Tsmesis is an example of a rhetorical scheme.

TUDOR: A reference to the period in England during which the ruling monarchs came from the Tudor family (1485-1603). Tudor was the name of a Welshman, Owen Tudor, born in the 1400s. His line became the ruling dynasty when his son Henry Tudor ended the War of the Roses by killing Richard III in 1485. The last ruling Tudor monarch was Henry Tudor's granddaughter, queen Elizabeth I, who died in 1603.

TUDOR INTERLUDE: Short tragedies, comedies, or history plays performed by either professional acting troupes or by students during the early sixteenth century.

TURN: Also called a volta, a turn is a sudden change in thought, direction, or emotion at the conclusion of the sonnet. This invisible turn is followed by a couplet or gemmel (in English sonnets) or a sestet (in Italian sonnets).

TZ'U: A Chinese genre of poetry invented during the T'ang period. It was akin to a song libretto with a tonal pattern similar to the lu-shih, but with irregular meter. Not to be confused with -tzu, an honorific suffix meaning "master" or "teacher."

UNDERSTATEMENT: See litotes under tropes.

UNITIES, THREE (Also known as the "Three Dramatic Unities"): In the 1500s and 1600s, critics of drama expanded Aristotle's ideas in the Poetics to create the rule of the "three unities." A good play, according to this doctrine, must have three traits. The first is unity of action (realistic events following a single plotline and a limited number of characters encompassed by a sense of verisimilitude--see below). The second is unity of time, meaning that the events should be limited to the two or three hours it takes to view the play, or at most to a single day of twelve or twenty-four hours. Skipping ahead in time over the course of several days or years was considered undesirable, because the audience itself was thought to be incapable of suspending disbelief regarding the passage of time. The third is unity of space, meaning the play must take place in a single setting or location. It is notable that Shakespeare often broke the three unities in his plays, which may explain why these rules later were never as dominant in England as they were in French and Italian Neoclassical drama.

UNIT SET: A series of lowered or raised platforms on stage, often connected by various stairs and exits, which form the various locations for all of a play's scenes. A unit set enables the scene to change rapidly, without intermissions or the drawing of the curtain in order to place new sets.

UNIVERSAL SYMBOL: Another term for an archetype.

VARIORUM: A variorum edition is any published version of an author's work that contains notes and comments by a number of scholars and critics. The term is a shortened version of the Latin phrase cum notis variorum ("with the notes of various people"). The New Variorum Shakespeare is possibly the best known variorium edition in English.

VEHICLE: A means of conveyance or transport. In literature, vehicle is extended to mean the method by which an author accomplishes her purpose. Thus, one might say, "Swift uses the vehicle of satire to express his ideas," or that "Darwin employs the vehicle of clear diction to best communicate a scientific theory."

VERBAL IRONY: See irony, above.

VERISIMILITUDE: The sense that what one reads is "real," or at least realistic and believable. For instance, the reader possesses a sense of verisimilitude when reading a story in which a character cuts his finger, and the finger bleeds. If the character's cut finger had produced sparks of fire rather than blood, the story would not possess verisimilitude. Note that even fantasy novels and science fiction stories that discuss impossible events can have verisimilitude if the reader is able to read them with suspended disbelief.

VERSIFICATION: Another name for prosody.

VERSO: See discussion under quarto.

VILLANELLE: a genre of poem consisting of nineteen lines--five tercets and a concluding quatrain. The form requires that whole lines be repeated in a specific order, and that only two rhyming sounds occur in the course of the poem. A number of English poets, including Oscar Wilde, W. E. Henley, and W.H. Auden have experimented with it. Here is an example by W. E. Henley:

A dainty thing's the Villanelle,

Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme.

It serves its purpose passing well.

A double-clappered silver bell,

That must be made to clink in chime,

A dainty thing's the Villanelle.

And if you wish to flute a spell,

Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime,

It serves its purpose passing well.

VIRELAY: An old French term for a short poem consisting of short lines using two rhymes and having two opening lines that recurr intermittently. A second form of the virelay consists of stanzas made up of shorter and longer lines, the lines of each kind rhyming within one stanza and with the rhymes of the short lines lines rhyming with the long lines of the preceding stanza. The form never became popular in English because of the difficulties with the set rhyming of English words and the potential for monotony, but Chaucer apparently wrote many virelays in his youth.

VIRGULE: A forward-slash mark ( / ) used in scansion to mark the boundaries of poetic feet. See meter and scansion, above.

VISUAL IMAGERY: Imagery that invokes colors, shapes, or things that can be seen. See imagery.

VISUAL POETRY: See concrete poetry, above.

VOICE: See speaker, poetic.

VOLTA: Also called a turn, a volta is a sudden change in thought, direction, or emotion near the conclusion of a sonnet. This invisible volta is then followed by a couplet or gemmel (in English sonnets) or a sestet (in Italian sonnets). Typically, the first section of the sonnet states a premise, asks a question, or suggests a theme. The concluding lines after the volta resolve the problem by suggesting an answer, offering a conclusion, or shifting the thematic concerns in a new direction.

VULGATE: The Latin translation of the Bible, prepared in the fourth century CE and used as the authorized version in Roman Catholic liturgical services. The term "Vulgate" is also used more loosely in reference to any commonly recognized or accepted version of a work.

WELL-MADE PLAY (French, "la piece bien faite"): A form of French theater developed in the 1800s. Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou popularized it. The well-made play involves secrets and timely arrivals of surprise characters and sudden twists in plot introduced by external threats. In modern critical parlance, ther tem is considered pejorative and it refers to any overly neat and precisely constructed play with artificial authorial interventions to cause problems for the characters. Well-made plays continued to be popular through the 1950s. A recent example is Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap from 1952. Ibsen's A Doll's House also exhibits traits of the well-made play.

WERGILD: (lit. "Man-Gold) The legal system of many Germanic tribes, including the Anglo-Saxons. This tradition allowed an individual and his family to make amends for a crime by paying a fine known as wergild to the family of another man whom he had injured or killed. The price varied, depending upon the nature of the injury and the status of the injured man. Surviving laws of Wihtfrid (8th century AD) show how elaborate the wergild system had become by the nineth century, including a varying price in silver for each tooth knocked out during a fight. If an individual cannot pay the wergild, the injured family was considered within its legal rights to kill a member of the culprit's family of similar rank and status. This process often led to extended blood-feuds lasting several generations. NB: Wergild should not be confused with Danegeld, the practice of paying extortive Vikings to go away without attacking.

WHEEL: See under discussion of Bob-and-Wheel

WHEEL-AND-BOB: Another term for Bob-and-Wheel.

WYRD: Often translated as "fate," Wyrd is an Anglo-Saxon term that embodies the concept of inevitability in Old English poetry. Unlike destiny, in which one imagines looking forward into the future to see the outcome of one's life, wyrd appears to be linked to the past. As an example illustrating this difference, one might claim, "It is my destiny to eat too many hamburgers, develop high cholesterol, and die of a heart attack in Pittsburgh at age 53." The speaker is predicting what will inevitably happen to him, what is fated to occur sometime in the future. On the other hand, one might claim, "It is my wyrd to be born as a caucasian child to impoverished parents who neglected to feed me properly, so that my health is always bad." In the first case, the speaker describing destiny implies that the future is set, and therefore the outcome of his life is beyond his control. In the second case, the speaker describing wyrd implies that the past is unchangable, and therefore the current circumstances in which he finds himself are beyond his control. In Anglo-Saxon narratives, heroic speakers like Beowulf describe themselves as being "fated" (i.e., having a wyrd) that requires them to act in a certain way. It is Beowulf's wyrd to help King Hrothgar, not because some abstract destiny wills it so, but because in the past, Hrothgar helped Beowulf's father, and it is Beowulf's duty to return that favor. The exact circumstances are beyond Beowulf's control, but Beowulf can choose how he reacts to that "fate."

Although wyrd dies out in Middle English and Early Modern usage, some scholarly speculation has posited that the three "weird" sisters in Macbeth may actually be the three "wyrd" sisters, thus the three fates in an archetypal form.

X: No entries available

YUËH-FU (Chinese "music bureau"): A form of Chinese poetry in mixed meter and short lines, with a five-word line being most common. The number of stanzas was likewise variable.The conventions of the genre include a monologue or dialogue presented in dramatic form revolving around some misfortune. The name comes from the music bureaus that were a fixture of Chinese decoration. These bureaus contained sheets of popular songs and ballad-type lyrics. Cf. ballad.

ZEITGEIST (German "Time-ghost" or "Spirit of the Age"): The preferences, fashions, and trends that characterize the intangible essence of a specific historical period.

Copyright Dr. L. Kip Wheeler 1998-2002. Permission is granted for non-profit, educational, and student reproduction. Last updated August 5, 2002.  kip@hwaet.org