Lexicon 1

The Lexicon of IB English (last updated 24 August 2015)

accent Three basic types: word accent or the normal stress on syllables; rhetorical accent, in which the placement of stress is determined by the meaning of the sentence; and metrical accent, in which the placement of stress is determined by the metrical and rhythmic pattern of the line.

accented-syllabic verse Verse in which the number of syllables and the number of stressed and unstressed syllables are relatively consistent from line to line. The meter of choice for poets writing in English.

act A major division in the action of a play. Most plays from the Elizabethan era until the nineteenth century were divided into five acts by the playwrights or by later editors. In the nineteenth century many writers began to write four-act plays. Today one-, two-, and three-act plays are most common.

action The series of events that constitute the PLOT. Orderly action differs from aimless or episodic activity an action customarily has a beginning, middle, and end.

actor A person who performs in a drama in any form; the term has replaced the earlier PLAYER.

aesthetics The study or philosophy of the beautiful in nature, art, and literature. It has both a philosophical dimension—What is art? What is beauty? What is the relationship of the beautiful to other values?—and a psychological dimension—What is the source of aesthetic enjoyment? How is beauty perceived and recognized? From what impulse do art and beauty arise? The aesthetic study of literature concentrates on the sense of the beautiful rather than on moral, social, or practical considerations. When pursued rigorously, it leads to "ART FOR ART'S SAKE" and aestheticism.

allegory A story or narrative, often told at some length, which has a deeper meaning below the surface. A modern example is George Orwell's Animal Farm, which on a surface level is about a group of animals who take over their farm but on a deeper level is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and the shortcomings of Communism.

alliteration The repetition of the same consonant sound, especially at the beginning of words. For example, "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion" (Kubla Khan by S.T. Coleridge).

allusion A reference to another event, person, place, or work of literature, such as “A Daniel come to judgment,” a Biblical allusion in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The allusion is usually implied rather than explicit and often provides another layer of meaning to what is being said. Allusions may deepen the reader’s appreciation by rendering the work more universal.

ambiguity Use of language where the meaning is unclear or has two or more possible interpretations or meanings. It could be created through a weakness in the way the writer has expressed himself or herself, but often it is used by writers quite deliberately to create layers of meaning in the mind of the reader.

anachronism Something that is historically inaccurate, for example the reference to a clock chiming in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

anachrony (not to be confused with ANACHRONISM) The literary technique of presenting material out of chronological order. There are three major types of anachrony: ANALEPSIS, PROLESPSIS, and ELLIPSES.

anadiplosis A kind of REPETITION in which the last word or phrase of one sentence or line is repeated at the beginning of the next, as in these lines from Bartholomew Griffin’s Fidessa: “For I have loved long, I crave reward / Reward me not unkindly: think of kindness, / Kindness becommeth those of high regard / Regard with clemency a poor man’s blindness.”

analepsis The insertion of scenes that have occurred in the past. The most common form of this device is FLASHBACK, but analepsis itself is a broader term. For example, analepsis may involve an image or figure of speech that harks back to something encountered earlier. Sometimes a retrospective thought or meditation disrupts the chronological flow of material being recounted. An example of analepsis from Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire: “Carolyn was surprised when she read the exam questions because, although she had spent the entire weekend studying, she couldn’t answer a single one.”

Lexicon 2

analogy A comparison of two things, alike in certain aspects; particularly a method used in exposition and

description by which something unfamiliar is explained or described by comparing it to something more familiar. In argumentation and logic, analogy is frequently used to justify contentions. Analogy is widely used in poetry but also in other forms of writing; a SIMILE is an expressed analogy, a METAPHOR an implied one.

analysis A method by which a thing is separated into parts, and those parts are given rigorous, logical, detailed scrutiny, resulting in a consistent and relatively complete account of the elements of the thing and the principles of their organization.

anapest A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, with two accented syllables, followed by an accented one:

( ˘ ˘ ). Examples: contradict, interfere, in the buff. Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” contains many

anapestic lines, such as: “For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”

anaphora One of the devices of REPETITION, in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences. It is one of the most obvious of the devices used in the poetry of Walt Whitman, as the opening lines from one of his poems show: “As I ebb’d with the ocean of life, / As I wended the shores I know, / As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok.”

anecdote A short NARRATIVE detailing particulars of an interesting EPISODE or event. The term most frequently refers to an incident in the life of an important person and should lay claim to an element of truth. Though anecdotes are often used as the basis for short stories, an anecdote lacks complicated PLOT and relates a single EPISODE.

antagonist The character directly opposed to the protagonist.

anticlimax [in language] An arrangement of details such that the lesser appears at the point where something greater is expected. The term is customarily used to describe an effect resulting from a decrease in importance in the items of a series. [in plot] An unexpectedly trivial or significant conclusion to a series of significant events; an unsatisfying resolution that often occurs in place of a conventional climax.

antihero A protagonist of a modern play or novel who has the converse of most of the traditional attributes of the hero. This hero is graceless, inept, sometimes stupid, sometimes dishonest.

antithesis A rhetorical figure in which two ideas are directly opposed [and are] presented in a grammatically parallel way, thus creating a perfect rhetorical balance. For example: “I long and dread to close” (from Rich’s “Toward the Solstice”) or “Man proposes, God disposes” (Kempis). *does not have to be a short statement]

aphorism A concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words. The opening sentence of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms is famous: “Life is short, art is long, opportunity is fleeting, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult.” APHORISM usually implies specific authorship and compact, telling expression.

apostrophe An interruption in a poem or narrative so that the speaker or writer can address a dead or absent person or particular audience directly.

approximate rhyme A form of rhyme in which words contain similar sounds but do not rhyme perfectly. Most is the result of either CONSONANCE or ASSONANCE, usually the former. Intentional approximate rhyme is the product of poetic license and is used to create specific sound effects. Examples: rhyme/writhe, summer/humble, horse/hearse. Also called HALF-RHYME, imperfect rhyme, NEAR RHYME, oblique rhyme, pararhyme, and SLANT RHYME.

apron stage The apron is the part of the stage extending in front of the PROSCENIUM ARCH. A stage is an apron stage if all or most of it is in front of any framing structures. The Elizabethan stage, which the audience surrounded on three sides, is an example of art apron stage.

archaism Obsolete phrasing, idiom, syntax, or spelling. Used intentionally, an archaistic style can be useful in recreating the atmosphere of the past.

Lexicon 3

arena stage A stage surrounded on all sides by the audience, actors make exits and entrances through the aisles.

Usually used in theater in the round. Sometimes, the stage is against a wall, with the audience on three sides.

arras A curtain hung at the back of the Elizabethan playhouse to partition off an alcove or booth. The curtain could be pulled back to reveal a room or a cave.

“art for art’s sake” The doctrine, corresponding to the French “l’art pour l’art,” that art is its own excuse for being, that its values are aesthetic and not moral, political, or social. See AESTHETICS.

aside A dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on stage.

assonance Same or similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds. Assonance differs from RHYME in that RHYME is a similarity of vowel and consonant. Lake and fake demonstrate RHYME; lake and fate demonstrate assonance. See NEAR RHYME.

asyndeton A condensed form of expression in which elements customarily joined by conjunctions are presented in a series without conjunctions. The most famous example is probably Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered).

atmosphere The prevailing MOOD created by a piece of writing, particularly – but not exclusively – when that mood is established in part by SETTING or landscape. It is, however, not simply setting but rather an emotional aura that helps establish the reader’s expectations and attitudes. Examples are the somber mood established the description of the prison door in the opening chapter of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the brooding sense of fatality engendered by the description of Egdon Heath at the beginning of Hardy’s The Return of the Native, the sense of “something rotten in the state of Denmark” established by the scene on the battlements at the opening of Hamlet, or the opening stanza of Poe’s “The Raven.”

autobiography The story of a person’s life as written by that person. Although a common loose use of the term includes memoirs, diaries, journals and letters, distinctions among these forms need to be made. Diaries, journals, and letters are not extended, organized narratives prepared for the public eye; autobiographies and memoirs are. But, whereas memoirs deal at least in part with public events and noted personages other than the author, an autobiography is a connected narrative of the author’s life, with some stress on introspection.

ballad A narrative poem that tells a story (traditional ballads were songs) usually in a straightforward way. The theme is often tragic or contains a whimsical, supernatural, or fantastical element.

ballad stanza A four-line stanza used in the traditional ballad. Usually characterized by abcb rhyme scheme, although the rhyme may be approximate rather than perfect.

beat Informally, the idea of RHYTHM in general as well as units of rhythm in particular. In a related usage, beat is a theatrical term for an informal measure of time, as when a performer is directed not to enter immediately but to “wait two or three beats.”

bildungsroman A novel that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical. Dickens’ Great Expectations is a standard example.

blank verse Unrhymed poetry that adheres to a strict pattern in that each line is an iambic pentameter (a ten-syllable line with five stresses). It is close to the natural rhythm of English speech or prose, and is used a great deal by many writers including Shakespeare and Milton. The freedom through the lack of RHYME is offset by the demands for variety, which may be obtained by the skillful poet through a number of means: the shifting of the CAESURA, or pause, from place to place within the line; the shifting of the STRESS among syllables; the use of the RUN-ON LINE, which permits thought-grouping in large or small blocks; the variation in tonal qualities by changing the level of DICTION from passage to passage; and finally, the adaptation of the form to reflect differences in the speech of characters and in emotion.

blues A term initially used to refer to slow, melancholy LYRICs composed and sung by black slaves in the American South.

Lexicon 4

box set A stage set that realistically represents a room with three walls, the FOURTH WALL being imagined on

the side toward the audience.

cacophony The opposite of EUPHONY; a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds. Most specifically used in the criticism of poetry. Cacaphony may be an unconscious flaw, or it may be used consciously for effect, as in Browning.

caesura A conscious break in a line of poetry (“I never had noticed it until / Twas gone, - the narrow copse,” from Edward Thomas). It is also employed without dashes, as in “To err is human, to forgive, divine” with the caesura falling between human and to.

catastrophe The outcome or conclusion of a play; usually applied specifically to tragedy. (DENOUEMENT is a parallel term applied to both comedy and tragedy.)

catharsis A purging of the emotions which takes place at the end of a tragedy.

character A figure in a literary work. Character also carries the nonliterary CONNOTATION of personality and even of morality (or lack thereof) and is sometimes applied to institutions or inanimate things (i.e. “the character of a coffee house”).

characterization The creation of imaginary persons so that they seem lifelike. Accomplished, most often, through indirect methods such as what the character says, does, thinks, looks like; as well as foils and symbols or associations

chiasmus A pattern in which the second part is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed, as in Coleridge’s line, “Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike,” or Pope’s “Works without show, and without pomp presides.” In general, any elements subject to arrangement can take on this chiastic or mirror-image design (X-shaped, like the Greek letter chi).

chorus A masked group that sang and danced in Greek tragedy. The chorus usually chanted in unison, offering advice and commentary on the action but rarely participating. See also STROPHE, ANTISTROPHE, and EPODE.

cinquain Commonly, a five-line stanza.

cliché A phrase, idea, or image that has been used so much that it has lost much of its original meaning, impact, and freshness: “just the tip of the iceberg”

climax [in language] A rhetorical term for a rising order of importance in the ideas expressed. Such an arrangement is called climactic, and the item of the climax. [in literature] In large compositions, the climax is the point of highest interest, whereat the reader makes the greatest emotional response. In DRAMATIC STRUCTURE, climax designates the turning point in the action, the CRISIS at which the rising action reverses and becomes the falling action. In Freytag’s five-part view of dramatic structure, the climax is the third part or third act. Both narrative fiction and drama have tended to move the climax, in the sense of turning action and of highest response as well, nearer the end of the work and thus have produced structures less orderly than those that follow Freytag. In speaking of dramatic structure, climax is synonymous with crisis. However, crisis is used exclusively in the sense of structure, whereas climax is used as a synonym for crisis AND as a description of the intensity of interest in the reader or spectator. In this latter sense, it sometimes occurs at points other than the crisis.

close reading The thorough and nuanced analysis of a literary text, with particular emphasis on the interrelationships among its constituent elements (allusions, images, etc.)

closed couplet Two successive lines rhyming and containing a grammatically complete, independent statement, as in this one by Pope: “Avoid extremes, and shun the fault of such / Who still are pleas’d too little or too much.”

colloquial Ordinary, everyday speech and language, including the use of slang, contractions, and lively conversational rhythms.

comedy Originally simply a play or other work which ended happily. Now we use this term to describe something that is funny and which makes us laugh. In literature the comedy is not a necessarily a lightweight form. A play like Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, for example, is, for the most part a

Lexicon 5

serious and dark play but as it ends happily, it is often described as a comedy. See also COMEDY OF

MANNERS, DRAWING ROOM COMEDY, FARCE, HIGH COMEDY, LOW COMEDY, SLAPSTICK.

comedy of manners Concerns the manners and conventions of an artificial, highly sophisticated society. The stylized fashions and manners of this group dominate the surface and determine the pace and tone of this sort of comedy. Characters are more likely to be types than individuals. Plot, though often involving a clever handling of situation and intrigue, is less important than atmosphere, dialogue, and satire. The dialogue is witty and finished, sometimes brilliant. The appeal is more intellectual than imaginative. SATIRE is directed in the main against the follies and deficiencies of typical characters, such as fops, would-be wits, jealous husbands, cox-combs, and others who fail somehow to conform to the conventional attitudes and manners of elegant society. A distinguishing characteristic of the comedy of manners is its emphasis on an illicit love duel, involving at least one pair of witty and often amoral lovers. This prevalence of the "love game" is explained partly by the manners of the time and partly by the special satirical purpose of the comedy itself. See HIGH COMEDY, REALISTIC COMEDY, DRAWING ROOM

COMEDY.

comic relief The use of humorous characters, speeches, or scenes in an otherwise serious or tragic drama.

complication The part of the plot preceding the climax that establishes the entanglements to be untangled in the denouement. Part of the RISING ACTION.

compound rhyme Rhyme between primary and secondary stressed syllables, as in childhood and wildwood or airborne and careworn.

conceit An elaborate, extended, and sometimes surprising comparison between things that, at first sight, do not have much in common. More common in poetry.

concrete poetry Poetry that exploits the graphic, visual aspect of writing. Also called: pattern poetry or shaped verse.

conflict The struggle that grows out of the interplay of two opposing forces; provides interest, suspense, and tension.

connotation An implication or association attached to a word or phrase. A connotation is suggested or felt rather than being explicit. Connotations may be (1) private and personal, the result of individual experience, (2) group (national, linguistic, racial), or (3) general or universal, held by all or most people. See DENOTATION.

consonance The repetition of the same consonant sounds in two or more words in which the vowel sounds are different. Examples include: grope and cup, restored and word, drunkard and conquered. An example, also of end rhyme, is found in “Strange Meeting” by Wilfred Owen: "And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, / By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell". Where consonance replaces the rhyme, as here, it is called HALF-RHYME.

context Matter that surrounds the word or text in question. The idea of context is normally invoked as a way of determining meaning. Polonius’ advice, “To thine own self be true,” for example may mean something in isolation, but in the context of the character’s longer speech the clause is ironic, since it does not agree with other fatherly advice in the same speech. In turn, the meaning of a whole speech is a function of its place in the context of an episode, scene, act, and play.

controlling image An IMAGE or METAPHOR that runs throughout and determines the form or nature of a literary work.

convention Any feature of a literary work that has become standardized over time, such as the ASIDE. Often refers to an unrealistic device (Danish characters speaking English in Hamlet) that the audience tacitly agrees to accept.

couplet Two consecutive lines of verse with end rhymes. See CLOSED COUPLET.

crisis The point at which the opposing forces that create the conflict interlock in the decisive action on which a plot will turn. Crisis is applied to the episode or incident wherein the situation of the protagonist is certain either to improve or worsen, and is not synonymous with CLIMAX, as crisis is considered a structural element and climax may include the emotional response to that event.

criticism The analysis, study, and evaluation of individual works of art, as well as the formulation of general

Lexicon 6

principles for the examination of such works. A major aspect of literary theory and practice.

crossed rhyme A term applied to couplets, usually hexameter or longer, in which the words preceding the caesura rhyme, as in Swindberg’s lines: “Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from they breath; / We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.” Such a couplet tends to break into four short lines rhyming abab. The term is also sometimes applied to quatrains with an abab rhyme pattern.

culture In a state of nature, humankind survives by directly struggling with the environment; in time, the elements of that struggle – practices, habits, customs, beliefs, traditions – become institutions, the body of which is known as culture. Because culture changes from place to place and from time to time, we speak variously of English culture, Elizabethan culture, Victorian culture, working-class culture, and so forth. For literary purposes, we may speak of a work as both a creature and a creator of culture; we may study Elizabethan culture through Shakespeare’s plays, and vice versa. Drama and fiction tend to be popular accounts of cultural and social problems in the first place, so they are the most interesting subjects for cultural analysis; and certain sorts of work – such as those explicitly designed to praise or blame in an overtly social context – yield the best results to such analysis. A cultural approach to literature assumes beforehand that a work exists most interestingly as part of a social context.

curtain A piece of heavy material that screens the stage from the audience and by being raised and lowered or closed marks the beginning and end of an ACT or SCENE. The curtain came into use along with the development of the PROSCENIUM ARCH. By metonymic extension, curtain is used for a line, speech, or situation just before the curtain falls. The endings of parts of a drama are sometimes called curtains, as in “curtain speech” for a final speech.

curtain line [A line given immediately before the end of a scene or act.]

curtain speech A final speech [given immediately before the end of a scene or act]. Also applies to a talk given in front of the curtain after a performance.

dactyl A foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented, as in ( ˘ ˘ ). Examples include:

portable, marginal, ecstasy, pat-a-cake.

denotation The basic meaning of a word, independent of its emotional coloration or associations. See CONNOTATION.

denouement The ending of a play or nove where "all is revealed" and the plot is unraveled. May be applied to both TRAGEDY and COMEDY, but a tragic denouement is commonly called CATASTROPHE.

deus ex machina Latin for "a god out of a machine." In Greek drama, a mechanical device called a mechane could lower "gods" onto the stage to solve the seemingly unsolvable problems of mortal characters. Also used to describe a playwright's use of a forced or improbable solution to plot complications - for example, the discovery of a lost will or inheritance that will pay off the evil landlord.

dialect When the speech of two groups or of two persons representing two groups both speaking the same “language” exhibits very marked differences, the groups or persons are said to speak different dialects.

dialogue Conversation between two or more people. Dialogue, sometimes used in general expository and philosophical writing, embodies certain values:

1. It advances the action and is not mere ornamentation. 2. It is consistent with the character of the speakers. 3. It gives the impression of naturalness without being a verbatim record of what may have

been said, because fiction is concerned with the “semblance of reality,” not with reality itself. 4. It presents the interplay of ideas and personalities among the people conversing; it sets forth

a conversational give and take – not simply a series of remarks of alternating speakers. 5. It varies according to the various speakers participating. 6. It serves to give relief from passages essentially descriptive or expository.

diction The choice of words that a writer makes. Certain sorts of diction can become an author’s typical habit and distinctive stylistic signature. See POETIC DICTION.

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didactic A work that is intended to preach or teach, often containing a particular moral or political point.

digression The insertion of material often not closely related to the subject in a work. In a well-knit plot, a digression violates unity.

dimeter A line of verse consisting of two metrical feet.

director The individual in charge of the artistic organization of the staging, as distinct from the strictly technical or financial aspects of the production.

dissonance Harsh and inharmonious sounds, a marked breaking of the music of poetry, which may be intentional.

distich Any two consecutive lines of poetry in similar form. A two-line stanza that does not necessarily rhyme. See COUPLET.

dizain A verse of ten lines.

double entendre A statement that is deliberately ambiguous, one of whose possible meanings is risqué or suggestive of some impropriety. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio executes a notable double entendre when he tells the Nurse (who has asked about the time of day), “Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.” The entendre here is double because a dial does have a “hand” and the circumference is marked with “pricks”; by adding “bawdy” to this statement, Mercutio explicitly doubles the meanings of “hand” and “prick” and brings out the still-current vulgar sense of the latter. Not a PUN, which is understood to mean a play on different words that happen to sound alike; a double entendre has to do with a single word that happens to have more than one meaning.

double part Permits one performer to play two or more roles, perhaps a minor figure who appears early and another who appears late.

double rhyme See FEMININE RHYME.

drama J. M. Manley defines drama as (1) a story (2) told in action (3) by actors who impersonate the characters. This admits such forms as PANTOMIME, but many believe that spoken dialogue must be present.

dramatic illusion The illusion of reality created by drama and accepted by the audience for the duration of the play.

dramatic monologue A poem or prose piece in which a character addresses a silent listener. The speaker provides information about his or her personality, the setting, key events, and any other people/characters associated with the situation at hand.

dramatic poetry A term that, logically, should be restricted to poetry employing dramatic form or some element of dramatic technique. The dramatic quality may result from the use of monologue, dialogue, vigorous diction, blank verse, or the stressing of a tense situation and emotional conflict.

dramatic structure A well-built tragedy will commonly show the following divisions, each representing a phase of the dramatic conflict: introduction (or EXPOSITION), rising action (or COMPLICATION), CLIMAX or CRISIS (turning point), falling action, and CATASTROPHE (or DENOUEMENT). Has been adapted to other genres as well.

dramatis personae The characters in a drama, novel, or poem. Also a listing of the characters in the program of a play, at the beginning of a printed version of play, or sometimes at the beginning of a novel. Sometimes contains brief characterizations of the persons and notations about their relationships.

dramatist The author of a play; playwright.

dramaturge One who represents the playwright and guides the production. In some cases, the dramaturge researches different aspects of the production or earlier productions of the play.

dramaturgy The art of writing plays

drawing room comedy A type of COMEDY OF MANNERS concerned with life in polite society. The action generally takes place in a drawing room.

dumb show A pantomimic performance used in a play. The term is applied particularly to such specimens of silent acting as appeared in Elizabethan drama. The dumb show provided a spectacular element and was often accompanied by music.

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dynamic character A character who develops or changes as a result of the actions of the plot.

ecphonesis (also ecphomena) A outcry or exclamation, sometimes indicated by “oh” or “ah,” along with an exclamation point.

ellipses (not necessarily using the punctuation device) A chronological gap indicating that material has been omitted. This device enable an author to skip over long or short chronological periods rather than directing the reader or audience backward or forward in time. Some authors use this to invite the reader to “fill in the gap,” whereas others use it to achieve brevity.

empathy A feeling on the part of the reader of sharing the particular experience being described by the character or writer.

end rhyme Rhyme at the ends of lines in a poem. The most common kind of rhyme.

end-stopped lines A verse line with a pause or a stop at the end of it. The absence of enjambment (or run-on lines). As in Pope’s: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, / Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.”

enjambment A line of verse that flows on into the next line without a pause. The first and second lines from Milton given below, carried over to the second and third, illustrate: “Or if Sion hill / Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook, that flow’d / Fast by the oracle of God…” Also called RUN-ON LINE.

epanalepsis The repetition at the end of a clause of a word or phrase that occurred at its beginning, as in Shakespeare’s lines from King John (2.1): “Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer’d blows: / Strength match’d with strength and power confronted power.”

epigram Originally an “inscription” and them simply a short poem, now either a short poem with a brief, pointedly humorous, quotable ending or simply a terse, witty statement in and of itself. For example, Auden’s volume of poetry About the House is full of witty little epigrams: “Money cannot buy / The fuel of Love: / But is excellent kindling.”

epigraph A passage printed on the title page or first page of a literary work or at the beginning of each section of such a work. Epigraphs, which tend to set the TONE or establish the THEME of what follows, are generally taken from earlier, influential texts by other authors.

epilogue A concluding statement that has become rare. More generally the final remarks of an actor addressed to the audience. Opposed to a PROLOGUE.

epiphany Literally a manifestation or showing-forth; an event in which the essential nature of something – a person, a situation, an object – was suddenly perceived.

episodic structure A term applied to writing containing a series of incidents or episodes that are loosely connected by a larger subject matter or thematic structure but that could stand on their own. A work that has a sustained story line or that would not be a complete work without one of its parts does not exhibit episodic structure.

epistrophe A rhetorical term applied to the REPETITION of the closing word or phrase at the end of several clauses, as in Sidney’s “And all the night he did nothing by weep Philoclea, sigh Philoclea, and cry out Philoclea.”

eponymous hero The person after whom a literary work, film, etc., is named.

euphemism Expressing an unpleasant or unsavory idea in a less blunt and more pleasant way. To say “at liberty” instead of “out of work,” “senior citizens” instead of “old people,” “in the family way” instead of “pregnant.”

euphony Pleasing sounds. Opposite of CACOPHONY. Generously allowing for subjective interpretation, we can suppose that unvoiced consonants are more abrupt (p, t, k, f, s), voiced consonants are relatively softer (b, d, g, v, z), and simple vowels nicely varied between front and back, high and low are relatively more pleasing than diphthongs and monotones. *“Diarrhea” may be one of the most euphonious words in the English language.]

exciting force Starts the conflict of opposing interests and sets in motion the RISING ACTION of the play. Example: the witches’ prophecy to Macbeth, which stirs him to schemes for making himself king.

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exposition The introduction creates the tone, gives the setting, introduces the characters, and supplies other

facts necessary to understanding the situation (i.e. backstory).

eye rhyme Rhyme that appears correct from the spelling but is not so from pronunciation, as watch and match, love and move, or laughter and daughter.

falling action The second half or resolution of a dramatic plot. In tragedy: it follows the CLIMAX, exhibits the falling fortunes of the hero, the successful efforts of the antagonist, and culminates in the CATASTROPHE.

farce A dramatic piece intended to excite laughter and depending less on plot and character than on improbable situations, the humor arising from gross incongruities, coarse wit, or horseplay. There are elements of farce in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, though not so much as his other comic plays.

feminine ending Compare with MASCULINE ENDING. An extrametrical unstressed syllable added to the end of a line in iambic and anapestic rhythm. This variation, which may give a sense of movement and irregularity, is commonly used in blank verse. The most famous soliloquy in English begins with four lines that all have feminine endings: “To be, or not to be, that is the question: / Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep – …” *emphasis added+

feminine rhyme A rhyme in which the rhyming stressed syllables are followed by an undifferentiated identical unstressed syllable, as waken and forsaken. Stream and beam are rhymes; streaming and beaming are feminine rhymes. Also called DOUBLE RHYME. Double is a misnomer; genuine doubleness of rhyme is called COMPOUND RHYME, as in wildwood and childhood. See also MASCULINE RHYME.

figurative language Language that is symbolic or metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally. Embodies one or more FIGURES OF SPEECH.

figure poem A poem written so that its printed shape suggests its subject matter.

figures of speech The various uses of language that depart from customary construction, order, or significance. Figures of speech are of two major kinds: rhetorical figures, which are departures from customary usage to achieve special effects without a change in the radical meaning of the words; and tropes, which involve basic changes in the meaning of words.

fixed forms A name sometimes given to definite patterns of line and stanza, i.e. BALLAD, haiku, SONNET, etc.

flashback A device by which a work presents material that occurred prior to the opening scene of the work.

flat character A character constructed around a single idea or quality, who is easily characterized. See ROUND

CHARACTER.

foil Applied to any person who through contrasts underscores the distinctive characteristics of another.

folk drama Theatrical performances by the folk, that is, ordinary people—including plays, dramatic renditions of religious stories and lore, and traditional ceremonies and activities (i.e. sword dances) associated with seasonal festivals. Originated in fertility rites to agricultural gods. Now defined more broadly to include works written by playwrights and performed by professional actors, so long as the works express the culture, language, beliefs, and traditions of the folk. J.M. Synge plays are considered folk drama.

foot The unit of rhythm in verse, whether quantitative or accentual-syllabic. The line of verse usually consists of a definite number of specific feet. The most common are: IAMB, TROCHEE, ANAPEST, DACTYL, and SPONDEE. See also METER, SCANSION.

foreshadowing The presentation of material in a work in such a way that later events are prepared for. Foreshadowing can result from the establishment of a mood or atmosphere, as in the opening of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or the first act of Hamlet. It can result from an event that adumbrates the later action, as does the scene with the witches at the beginning of Macbeth. It can result from the appearance of physical objects or facts, as the clues do in a detective story, or from the revelation of a fundamental and decisive character trait, as in the opening chapter of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. In all cases, the purpose of foreshadowing is to prepare the reader or view for action to come.

Lexicon 10

form A term designating the organization of the elementary parts of a work of art in relation to its total

effect; distinguished from content.

fourth wall The invisible wall of a room through which the audience conventionally witnesses what occurs on a stage imagined as a room with four walls and a ceiling, the fourth wall being presented as just behind the CURTAIN. See also BOX SET.

free verse Verse written without any fixed structure (either in METER or RHYME). Very little of published verse is truly “free” in every respect: poets may give up rhyme and meter, but replace it with PARALLELISM and ANAPHORA (as in Whitman). Sometimes called OPEN FORM.

Freytag’s pyramid A diagram of the structure of a five-act tragedy (inciting moment, rising action, climax or crisis, falling action, moment of last suspense). This pyramid has been widely accepted as a heuristic means of getting at the structure of many kinds of fiction in addition to drama.

genre A particular type of writing, e.g. prose, poetry, drama. Genre classification implies that there are groups of formal or technical characteristics among works of the same generic kind regardless of time or place of composition, author, or subject matter.

half rhyme See APPROXIMATE RHYME.

hamartia An error or wrong act through which the fortunes of the protagonist are reversed in a tragedy. It must express itself through a definite action or failure to act.

heptameter A line of verse consisting of seven metrical feet.

heptastich A seven-line stanza.

heroic couplet A pair of rhymed lines written in iambic pentameter.

heroic quatrain Four lines of iambic pentameter (or, rarely, tetrameter) rhyming abab, a component of the Shakespearean SONNET. Also called heroic stanza.

hexameter A line of verse consisting of six metrical feet.

high comedy Comedy that appeals to the intellect, often focusing on the pretensions, foolishness, and incongruity of human behavior. COMEDY OF MANNERS with its witty dialogue is a type of high comedy.

history play Strictly speaking, any drama whose time setting is in some period earlier than that in which it is written. It is most widely used, however, as a synonym for chronicle play.

hubris Excessive pride or ambition. In ancient Greek tragedy, hubris often causes the protagonist's fall.

hyperbaton (anastrophe) A rhetorical figure involving a reversal of word order to make a point. The most famous example is Churchill’s witty example of how grammatical propriety—in this case, the rule that says sentences should never end with prepositions—can produce terrible results: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put!”

hyperbole Deliberate and extravagant exaggeration. The figure may be used to heighten effect, or it may be used for humor. Lady Macbeth is using hyperbole here: “All the perfumes of Arabia / Will not sweeten this little hand.”

iamb (iambus) A foot consisting of an unaccented syllable and an accented: (˘ ). The most common rhyme in English

verse, examples include: afloat, respect, in love.

identical rhyme A syllable both begins and ends the same way as the rhyming syllable, without being the same word; for example, rain and reign and rein.

idiom A use of words peculiar to a given language; an expression that cannot be translated literally (i.e. “to carry out”)

image A distinctive element of the language of art by which experience in its richness and complexity is communicated, as opposed to the simplifying and conceptualizing processes of science and philosophy. The image is, therefore, a portion of the essence of the meaning of the literary work, not just decoration. Images may be either literal or figurative, a literal image being one that involves no necessary change or extension in the obvious meaning of the words, one in which the words call up a

Lexicon 11

sensory representation of the literal object or sensation; and a figurative image being one that involves a “turn” on the literal meaning of the words.

imagery The use of words to create a picture or "image" in the mind of the reader. Images can relate to any of the senses, not just sight, but also hearing, taste, touch, and smell. "Imagery" is often used to refer to the use of descriptive language, particularly to the use of metaphors and similes. Patterns of imagery, often without the conscious knowledge of author or reader, are sometimes taken to be keys to a deeper meaning of a work. Such patterning is important in fiction, as well contrasting images of light and dark being among the most conspicuous.

improvisation A work or performance that is done on the spur of the moment, without conscious preparation or preliminary drafts or rehearsals.

in medias res Literally means “in the midst of things.” The technique of opening the story in the middle of the action and then supplying information about the beginning of the action through flashbacks and other devices for exposition. Usually applied to the epic.

inciting moment The name used by Freytag for the event or force that sets in motion the RISING ACTION or a play. Also called EXCITING FORCE.

indeterminancy The concept that the meaning or reference of a text is ultimately undecidable; sometimes applied to all human discourse, sometimes limited to certain realms bounded by semantic, psychological, or cultural constraints, and sometimes limited (as by Marjorie Perloff) to certain modern movements in the arts. The general notion supposes that no final or determinate appeal is possible outside a given system of signs.

internal rhyme Rhyme that occurs at some place before the last syllables in a line, as in the opening line of Eliot’s “Gerontion”: “Here I am, an old man in a dry month” where the internal rhyme is between “an” and “man” and “I” and “dry.”

intertextuality The condition of interconnectedness among texts, or the concept that any text is an amalgam of others, either because it exhibits signs of influence or because its language inevitability contains common points of reference with other texts through such things as ALLUSION, quotation, GENRE, STYLE, and even revisions.

inversion See also HYPERBATON (ANASTROPHE). The placing of a sentence element out of its normal position. Probably the most offensive common use of inversion is the placing of the adjective after the noun in such expressions as "house beautiful" or "lady fair." Of the several varieties of inversion, the commonest are noun-adjective, object-verb, and adverb-auxiliary. The last sort is made possible by the peculiar structure of verb forms in Germanic languages, thereby a fairly neutral clause such as "I have never seen such a mess" gains a measure of emphasis in the inverted form "Never have I seen such a mess." Once in a while, as in "Jerk though he may be," even conjunctions can be dramatically relocated. The device is often happily employed in poetry. Where the writer of prose might say: "I saw a vision of a damsel with a dulcimer," Coleridge writes: “A damsel with a dulcimer / In a vision once I saw.”

irony At its simplest level, irony means saying one thing while meaning another. It occurs where a word or phrase has one surface meaning but another contradictory, possibly opposite meaning is implied. Irony is frequently confused with sarcasm. Sarcasm is spoken, often relying on tone of voice, and is much more blunt than irony. The effectiveness of irony is the impression it gives of restraint. The ironist writes with tongue in cheek; for this reason irony is more easily detected in speech than in writing, because the voice can, through its intonation, easily warn the listener of a double significance.

kenning A figurative phrase used on Old Germanic languages as a synonym for a simple noun; often picturesque metaphorical compounds. Some kennings for “ship” from Beowulf: “the bent-necked wood,” “the ringed prow,” “the foamy-necked,” “the sea-wood,” and “sea-farer.”

lexicon A word list or workbook; a vocabulary; a standard term for dictionary.

light verse A term encompassing many different forms of verse, all of which aim to entertain the reader. Forms of light verse include limericks, nursery rhymes, parodies, and nonsense verse. May be satiric or witty. Distinguished from other verse by its tone rather than by its subject matter.

Lexicon 12

litotes A form of UNDERSTATEMENT in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite: “She was

not unmindful” when one means that “She gave careful attention.” Opposite of HYPERBOLE.

local color Writing that exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, habits of thought, and topography peculiar to a certain region, primarily for the portrayal of the life of a geographical setting. Local color writing is marked by dialect, eccentric characters, and sentimentalized pathos or whimsical humor; and it emphasizes the VERISIMILITUDE of detail without being much concerned with truth to the larger aspects of life.

loose sentence A sentence grammatically complete before the end; the opposite of PERIODIC SENTENCE. A complex loose sentence consists of an independent clause followed by a dependent clause. Most of the complex sentences we use are loose (the term implies no fault in structure), the PERIODIC SENTENCE being usually reserved for emphasis, drama, and variety. Loose sentences with too many dependent clauses become limp. “Although I just ate, I’m still hungry” is periodic; “I’m still hungry, although I just ate” is loose.

low comedy Comedy that lacks the intellectual appeal of HIGH COMEDY, depending instead on boisterous buffoonery, "gags," and jokes for its comic effect.

lyric A song-like poem or a short poem expressing personal feeling.

malapropism An inappropriateness of speech resulting from the use of one word for another, which resembles it. The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet says “confidence” for “conference,” and the malapropism prompts Benvolio to say, “She will indite *for “invite”+ him to some supper.” The vernacular indulges occasionally in malapropism, as when someone says, “Mind your own beeswax.”

masculine ending A line of verse that ends on a stressed syllable, as does any regular iambic line. Compare with FEMININE ENDING.

masculine rhyme Rhyme that falls on the stressed, concluding syllables of the rhyme words. Masculine rhyme accounts for a majority of rhymes in English. “Mount” and “fount” make a masculine rhyme; “mountain” and “fountain” a FEMININE RHYME.

meiosis Intentional UNDERSTATEMENT for humorous or satiric effect. See LITOTES.

melodrama A work, usually a play, based on a romantic plot and developed sensationally, with little regard for motivation and with an excessive appeal to the emotions of the audience. The object is to keep the audience thrilled by the arousal anyhow of strong feelings of pity, horror, or joy. Poetic justice is superficially secured, the characters (either very good or very bad) being rewarded or punished according to their deeds. Though typically a melodrama has a happy ending, tragedies that use much of the same technique are sometimes referred to as melodramatic.

metafiction A literary term popularized by Robert Scholes to describe novels that specifically and self-consciously examine the nature and status of fiction itself and that often seek to test fiction as a form in one way or another. Theorist Patricia Waugh described metafiction as “fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality.” Novelist and theorist John Barth said that metafiction is a “novel that imitates a novel rather than the real world.”

metaphor A comparison of one thing to another in order to make the description more vivid; actually states that one thing is the other. For example, a simile would be: "The huge knight stood like an impregnable tower in the ranks of the enemy", whereas the corresponding metaphor would be: "The huge knight was an impregnable tower in the ranks of the enemy". (See TENOR AND VEHICLE. See also SIMILE and PERSONIFICATION.)

meter See also SCANSION. The regular use of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry; the recurrence in poetry of a rhythmic pattern, or the rhythm established by the regular occurrence of similar units of sound. The four basic kinds of rhythmic patterns are:

1. Quantitative—the rhythm is established by patterns of long and short syllables; this is the classical meter

2. Accentual—the occurrence of a syllable marked by stress or accent determines the basic unit regardless of the number of unstressed or unaccented syllables surrounding the stressed

Lexicon 13

syllable

3. Syllabic—the number of syllables in a line is fixed, although the accent varies 4. Accentual-syllabic—both the number of syllables and the number of accents are fixed or

nearly fixed; the common use of the term meter

metonymy The substitution of the name of an object closely associated with a word for the word itself. We commonly speak of the monarch as “the crown,” an object closely associated with royalty thus being made to stand for it.

mise-en-scène The stage setting of a play, including the use of scenery, props, and stage movement.

mock drama A play whose purpose is to ridicule the theater of its time.

monologue A composition giving the discourse of one speaker. By convention, a monologue represents what someone would speak aloud in a situation with listeners, who do not speak. Different from SOLILOQUY or ASIDE.

monometer A line of verse with one metrical foot.

mood [IBO uses this term more as synonymous with ATMOSPHERE; not to be lumped in with TONE.]

motif A dominant theme, subject or idea which runs through a piece of literature. Often a "motif" can assume a symbolic importance.

motivation The reasons for a character's actions in a drama. For drama to be effective, the audience must believe that a character's actions are justified and plausible given what they know about him or her.

narrative A piece of writing that tells a story.

narrator Anyone who recounts a narrative. See also POINT-OF-VIEW.

near rhyme See CONSONANCE and ASSONANCE.

neologism A new word or phrase that has been coined to express economically a meaning not conveyed by any single word in the dictionary. “Nannygate”—a neologism referring to the scandal that erupted when candidates for high-ranking government positions were found to have employed illegal immigrants as childcare providers and to have violated tax laws by not paying social security and other taxes on these workers—is based on “Watergate,” which refers to the scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. As a literary term, neologism refers to an original word or phrase invented by an author to convey or create. … Rapper Snoop Dogg *Snoop Lion+ employs what has come to be called “Snoop Latin,” which involves inserting “izz” or “izzay” into monosyllabic words, thereby creating neologisms like “fizzake.”

octameter A line of verse consisting of eight metrical feet.

octastich A group of eight lines of verse.

octave An eight-line stanza; the term chiefly denotes the first eight-line division of the Italian sonnet.

octet A group of eight lines of poetry. Sometimes used as a synonym for OCTAVE.

onomatopoeia The use of words whose sound copies the sound of the thing or process that they describe. On a simple level, words like "bang", "hiss", and "splash" are onomatopoeic, but it also has more subtle uses.

open form poetry See FREE VERSE.

orchestra Literally the "dancing place"; the circular stage where the Greek chorus performed.

oxymoron A figure of speech which joins together words of opposite meanings, e.g. "the living dead", "bitter sweet", etc.

pageant A movable stage or wagon (often called a pageant wagon) on which a set was built for the performance of medieval drama. The term can also refer to the spectacle itself.

pantomime Silent acting using facial expression, body movement, and gesture to convey the plot and the characters' feelings.

Lexicon 14

paradox A statement that appears contradictory, but when considered more closely is seen to contain a good

deal of truth. Richard Bentley’s statement that there are “none so credulous as infidels” is an illustration, as is “less is more” in Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto.”

parallelism Such an arrangement that one element of equal importance with another is similarly developed and phrased. The principle of parallelism dictates that coordinate ideas should have coordinate presentation. Within a sentence, for instance, where several elements of equal importance are to be expressed, if one element is cast in a relative clause the others should be expressed in relative clauses. Conversely, of course, the principle of parallelism demands that unequal elements should not be expressed in similar constructions. Practiced writers are not likely to attempt, for example, the comparison of positive and negative statements, of inverted and uninverted constructions, of dependent and independent clauses. And, for an example of simple parallelism, the sentence immediately preceding may serve.

paraphrase A restatement of an idea in such a way as to retain the meaning while changing the diction and form.

parody A composition imitating another, usually serious, piece. It is designed to ridicule a work or its style or author. parody : literature :: caricature : cartoon

pastiche A French word for a parody or literary imitation. Perhaps for humorous or satirical purposes, perhaps as a mere literary exercise, perhaps in all seriousness, a writer imitates the style or technique of some recognized writer or work.

pentameter A line of verse consisting of five metrical feet. The most commonly used line length in English verse.

periodic sentence A sentence not grammatically complete before its end; the opposite of a LOOSE SENTENCE. The periodic sentence is effective when it is designed to arouse interest and curiosity, to hold an idea in suspense before its final revelation.

peripeteia A reversal of fortune, for better or worse, for the protagonist. Used especially to describe the main character's fall in Greek tragedy.

persona Generally, the speaker. Although often serves as the “voice” of the author, it should not be confused with the author, for the persona may not accurately reflect the author’s personal opinions, feelings, or perspective on the subject.

personification The attribution of human feelings, emotions, or sensations to an inanimate object. Personification is a kind of metaphor where human qualities are given to things or abstract ideas, and they are described as if they were a person.

perspective Different from the literary usage of point-of-view in that a story can technically be told in the same point-of-view but told from a different perspective.

play A literary genre whose plot is usually presented dramatically by actors portraying characters before an audience.

play-within-the-play A brief secondary drama presented to or by the characters of a play that reflects or comments on the larger work. An example is the Pyramus and Thisbe episode in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

player A performer in a play; a somewhat commoner term than actor in Shakespeare’s world. Now seldom used.

plot The sequence of events in a poem, play, novel, or short story that make up the main storyline.

poetic diction Language chosen for a supposedly inherent poetic quality: imagination, elevation, other difference from ordinary discourse.

point of view The vantage point from which an author tells a story. A narrative is typically told from first person (“I”) or third person (“he”); second person (“you”) is rare. First person is generally more personal, though perhaps less reliable. Third person offers a wider perspective.

polysyndeton The use of more conjunctions than is normal. Milton’s Satan for example “pursues his way, / And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.”

Lexicon 15

problem play A drama that argues a point or presents a problem (usually a social problem). Ibsen is a notable writer

of problem plays.

program A theatrical term for the schedule of a single planned entertainment; also the printed pamphlet thereof.

program notes Material included in a program, such as information about works being performed and summaries of the careers of the performers.

prolepsis The insertion of scenes that preview future events or developments. FORESHADOWING is a type of prolepsis, but like ANALEPSIS, prolepsis is a broader term. Prolepsis, more commonly, involves a figure of speech in which an event or action that is anticipated is treated as if it has already occurred or is presently occurring, even though this is temporally impossible. John Keats uses this device in his poem “Isabella” when the speaker says: “So the two brothers and their murder’d man / Rode past fair Florence…” This device is also used in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke Skywalker says, “I’m not afraid,” and Yoda responds, “You will be.”

prologue An introduction most frequently associated with drama.

proscenium The part of the stage in a modern theater that lies between the orchestra and the curtain. Sometimes the term is used merely as a synonym for the stage itself. See PROSCENIUM ARCH.

proscenium arch An arched structure over the front of the stage from which a curtain often hangs. The arch frames the action onstage and separates the audience from the action.

prose Any kind of writing which is not verse—usually divided into fiction and non-fiction

prose poem A poem printed as prose, with both margins justified.

protagonist The main character or speaker in a poem, monologue, play, or story.

pun A play on words that have similar sounds but quite different meanings. An example is Thomas Hood’s: “They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell.”

pyrrhic A foot of two unaccented syllables ( ˘ ˘ ). As an occasional phenomenon, the pyrrhic foot is unavoidable in English, with its large population of unstressed syllables and combinations of slight prepositions and articles; but it is virtually inconceivable that a whole poem could be written in the foot. Pyrrhic feet occur most often as variants in iambic verse; it is not unusual to find one or two pyrrhics in most lines of blank verse with normal emphasis, as in this section from Julius Caesar: “The evǀil that ǀ men do ǀ lives afǀter them; / The good ǀ is oft ǀ interǀred with ǀ their bones.”

quatrain A stanza of four lines. The possible rhyme schemes vary from an unrhymed quatrain to almost any arrangement of one-rhyme, two-rhyme, or three-rhyme lines. Perhaps the most common form is the abab sequence; other popular rhyme patterns are aabb, abba, aaba, abcb.

quip A retort or sarcastic jest; hence any witty saying.

realism The literary philosophy holding that art should accurately reproduce an image of life. Avoiding the use of dramatic conventions such as asides and soliloquies, it depicts ordinary people in ordinary situations. Ibsen's A Doll’s House is an example of realism in drama. See VERISIMILITUDE.

relativism The denial of the validity of principles that are everlasting, ubiquitous, changeless, and absolute. 1. Contextual—the meaning of some such symbol as whiteness is relative to its immediate

context and cannot be referred to some absolute extrinsic standard (Frost’s “Design”). 2. Cultural—any artifact or convention has meaning only in a way relative to its immediate

cultural context. Examples: brides wear white in some societies, but in others, white is a color for death. Americans associate cowardice with yellow, which in many parts of Asia, is associated with courage.

3. Critical-historical—literature as an institution has no permanent role or significance, but fluctuates—in function, structure, status, etc.—from place to place and time to time.

repartee Witty and pointed verbal exchanges usually found in the COMEDY OF MANNERS.

repetition Reiteration of a word, sound, phrase, or idea. One of the most notable examples is Poe’s “The Bells”

Lexicon 16

where repetition is present in rhyme, in meter, and in stanza forms.

reversal The change in fortune for a protagonist.

rhetoric The art of persuasion through speaking and writing. Classical theorists identified five components: (1) invention—the argument itself or its supporting evidence; (2) disposition—the arrangement of that evidence; (3) style—diction, patterns, images, rhythms of speech, etc.; (4) memory; (5) delivery. Also three types: (1) deliberative—to persuade toward a course of action regarding public policy; (2) epideictic—to praise or blame, demonstrating the rhetorical skill of the orator; (3) forensic—to establish, through a forum-like setting (i.e. a court) either a positive or negative opinion of someone’s actions. The term sometimes connotes empty rhetoric.

rhetorical question A question propounded for its rhetorical effect and not requiring a reply or intended to induce a reply. Since the answer to the question is obvious, a deeper impression will be made by raising the question than by the speaker’s making a direct statement. Most rhetorical questions generate strong negative answers, i.e. “Who cares?”

rhyme Corresponding sounds in words, usually at the end of each line but not always. The correspondence of sound is based on the vowels and succeeding consonants of the accented syllables, which must be preceded by different consonant sounds. The types of rhyme are classified according to two schemes: (1) the position of the rhymes in the line, and (2) the number of syllables involved. See: END RHYME, INTERNAL RHYME, BEGINNING RHYME, MASCULINE RHYME, FEMININE RHYME. See also: ASSONANCE, CONSONANCE, EYE

RHYME, NEAR RHYME, SLANT RHYME.

rhyme scheme The pattern of the rhymes in a poem. For the purpose of analysis, rhyme schemes are usually presented by the assignment of the same letter of the alphabet to each similar sound in a stanza.

rhythm The "movement" of the poem as created through the meter and the way that language is stressed within the poem. In both prose and poetry the presence of rhythmic patterns lend both pleasure and heightened emotional response, for it establishes a pattern of expectations and it rewards the listener or reader with the pleasure of a series of fulfillments of expectation. In poetry three different elements may function in a pattern of regular occurrence: quantity, accent, and number of syllables. In prose, despite the absence of the formal regularity of pattern here described for verse, cadence is usually present.

rising action The part of a dramatic PLOT that has to do with the complication of the action. It begins with the EXCITING FORCE, gains in interest and power as the opposing groups come into conflict and proceeds to the CLIMAX.

romantic comedy A comedy in which serious love is the chief concern and source of interest, especially the type of comedy developed on the early Elizabethan stage by such writers as Robert Greene and Shakespeare. Characteristics commonly found include: love as chief motive; much out-of-door action; an idealized heroine (who usually masks as a man); love subjected to great difficulties; poetic justice often violated; balancing of characters; easy reconciliations; happy ending.

round character A character sufficiently complex to be able to surprise the reader without losing credibility.

run-on lines The opposite of END-STOPPED LINES. See ENJAMBMENT.

satire The highlighting or exposing of human failings or foolishness within a society through ridiculing them. Satire can range from being gentle and light to being extremely biting and bitter in tone, e.g. Swift's Gulliver's Travels or A Modest Proposal, and George Orwell's Animal Farm

scansion A system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into FEET, indicating the locations of binomial ACCENTS, and counting the syllables. The graphic scansion method is a written means of indicating the mechanical elements of rhythmical effects. The METER, once scanning has been performed, is named according to the number of feet employed in a line. The major feet are: IAMB, TROCHEE, ANAPEST, DACTYL, SPONDEE, and PYRRHIC. A verse of one foot is called MONOMETER; two, DIMETER; three, TRIMETER; four, TETRAMETER; five, PENTAMETER; six, HEXAMETER; seven, HEPTAMETER; eight, OCTAMETER.

scene Division of an act in a drama. By traditional definition a scene has no major shift in place or time frame, and it is performed by a static group of actors onstage (in French drama, if an actor enters or exits, the group is altered and the scene, technically, should change). The term also refers to the

Lexicon 17

physical surroundings or locale in which a play's action is set.

scenery The backdrop and SET (furniture and so on) onstage that suggest to the audience the surroundings in which a play's action takes place.

scenography Painting of backdrops and hangings.

semantics The study of meaning; sometimes limited to linguistic meaning; and sometimes used to discriminate between surface and substance.

septet A stanza of seven lines.

sestet The second, six-line division of an Italian sonnet. Following the octave, the sestet usually makes specific a general statement that has been presented in the octave of indicates the personal emotion of the author in a situation that the octave has developed. Technically, any six-line poem or stanza is a sestet.

set The physical equipment of a stage, including furniture, properties, lighting, and backdrops.

setting The background against which action takes place. The elements making up a setting are: 1. The geographical location, its topography, scenery, and such physical arrangements as the

location of the windows and doors in a room 2. The occupations and daily manner of living of the characters 3. The time or period in which the action takes place, for example, epoch in history or season of

the year 4. The general environment of the characters, for example, religious, mental, moral, social, and

emotional conditions. When setting dominates, or when a work is written largely to present the manners and customs of a locality, the result is LOCAL COLOR writing or regionalism.

simile A comparison of one thing to another in order to make description more vivid. Similes use the words "like" or "as" in this comparison. A simile is generally the comparison of two things essentially unlike, on the basis of resemblance in one aspect. It is not a simile to say, “My house is like your house” even though a comparison does exist.

slant rhyme See NEAR RHYME.

slapstick Low comedy that involves little plot or character development but consists of physical horse-play or practical jokes.

solecism A violation of prescriptive grammatical rules: “He don’t” and “between you and I”

soliloquy A speech in which a character, alone on stage, expresses his or her thoughts and feelings aloud for the benefit of the audience, often in a revealing way.

sonnet A fourteen-line poem, usually with ten syllables in each line. There are several ways in which the lines can be organized, but often they consist of an OCTAVE and a SESTET.

spectacle In Aristotle's terms, the costumes and scenery in a drama—the elements that appeal to the eye.

spondee A foot composed of two accented syllables ( ). The ideal form is rare in English because most of our

polysyllabic words carry one primary accent. Examples: daylight, carpool, sea breeze.

stage The physical area, normally a raised platform, on which theatrical performances take place.

stage business Minor physical action, including an actor's posture and facial expression, and the use of props, all of which make up a particular interpretation of a character. [Not to be confused with blocking.]

stage directions Material that an author, editor, prompter, performer, or other person adds to a text to indicate movement, attitude, style, or quality of a speech, character, or action. Some of the simplest and oldest are “enter,” “exit” or “exuent,” “aside.” Have come to include adverbs, and in more modern drama, larger chunks of information. Stage directions that reference location on the stage assume a layout from the viewpoint of a performer facing the audience: center, left, right, up, down.

stanza The blocks of lines into which a poem is divided. (Sometimes these are, less precisely, referred to as

Lexicon 18

verses, which can lead to confusion as poetry is sometimes called "verse".)

static character A character who changes little if at all.

stichic poetry Stich is a word or stem meaning line. [Stichic poetry is a continuous fixed form where there are no stanza breaks; the opposite of STROPHIC POETRY.]

stichomythia Dialogue in which two speakers engage in a verbal duel in alternating lines.

stock character A stereotypical character type whose behavior, qualities, or beliefs conform to familiar dramatic conventions, such as the clever servant or the braggart soldier. (Also called type character.)

stream of consciousness

A technique in which the writer records thoughts and emotions in a "stream" as they come to mind, without giving order or structure

stress The emphasis given a spoken syllable.

strophic poetry Strophe is a STANZA. [Strophic poetry is a fixed form with lines arranged into stanzas; the opposite of STICHIC POETRY.] To avoid fuzziness, some writers limit STANZA to regular, recurrent, and usually rhymed subdivisions of a poem, leaving strophe to cover irregular and unrhymed subdivisions.

structure The way that a poem or play or other piece of writing has been put together. This can include the meter pattern, stanza arrangement, and the way the ideas are developed, etc. Often authors advertise their structure as a means of securing clarity (as in some college textbooks), whereas at other times their artistic purpose leads them to conceal the structure (as in narratives) or subordinate it altogether (as in some INFORMAL ESSAYS). In fiction, the structure is generally regarded today as the most reliable as well as the most revealing key to the meaning of the work. In the contemporary criticism of poetry, too, structure is used to define not only verse form and formal arrangement but also the sequences of images and ideas that convey meaning.

style The individual way in which a writer has used language to express his or her ideas. Style combines two elements: the idea to be expressed and the individuality of the author. From the point of view of style it is impossible to change the diction to say exactly the same thing; for what the reader receives from a statement is not only what is said, but also certain CONNOTATIONS that affect the consciousness. Just as no two personalities are alike, no two styles are exactly alike. It has been observed that even infants have individual styles. Even in so limited a medium as Morse code, each sender has a style, called a “fist.” A mere recital of some categories may suggest the infinite range of manners the word style covers: we speak, for instance, of journalistic, scientific, or literary styles; we call the manners of other writers abstract or concrete, rhythmic or pedestrian, sincere or artificial, dignified or comic, original or imitative, dull or vivid, low or plain or high. But if we are actually to estimate a style, we need more delicate tests than these; we need terms so scrupulous in their sensitiveness as to distinguish the work of each writer from that of all other writers, because, as has been said, no two styles are exactly comparable. A study of styles for the purpose of analysis will include, in addition to the infinity of personal detail suggested above, such general qualities as: DICTION, sentence structure and variety, IMAGERY, RHYTHM, REPETITION, coherence, emphasis, and arrangement of ideas. There is a growing interest in the study of style and language in fiction.

subplot A subordinate or minor story in a piece of fiction. This secondary plot interest, if skillfully handled, has a direct relation to the main plot.

subtext A level of meaning implicit in or underlying the surface meaning of a text.

suspense Anticipation as to the outcome of events, particularly as they affect a character for whom one has sympathy. Suspense is a major device for securing and maintaining interest. It may be either of two major types: in one, the outcome is uncertain and the suspense resides in the question of who or what or how; in the other, the outcome is inevitable from foregoing events and the suspense resides in the audience’s anxious or frightened anticipation, in the question of when.

suspension of disbelief An audience's willingness to accept the world of the drama as reality during the course of a play.

symbol Like images, symbols represent something else. In very simple terms a red rose is often used to

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symbolize love; distant thunder is often symbolic of approaching trouble. Symbols can be very subtle and multi-layered in their significance.

synaesthesia The description of one kind of sensation in terms of another—that is, the description of sounds in terms of colors, as a “blue note,” of colors in terms of sound, as “loud shirt,” of sound in terms of taste, as “how sweet the sound,” of colors in terms of temperature, as a “cool green.”

synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to stand for the whole thing or the whole signifies the part. To be clear, a good synecdoche ought to be based on an important part of the whole, and usually, the part standing for the whole ought to be directly associated with the subject at hand. Thus, under the first restriction we say “threads” for “clothes” and “wheels” for “car,” and under the second we speak of infantry on the march as “foot” rather than as “hands” just as we use “hands” rather than “foot” for people who work at manual labor.

syntax The way in which sentences are structured. Sentences can be structured in different ways to achieve different effects. Syntax seems to be that level of language that most distinguishes poetry from prose.

tableau An interlude in which the actors freeze in position and then resume action as before or hold their positions until the curtain falls. Tableau vivant means “living picture.”

technique The sum of working methods or special skills. Technique may be applied very broadly, as when one says, “The symbolic journey is a major technique in Joyce’s Ulysses,” or very narrowly to refer to the minutiae of method, or in an intermediate sense, as in STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. In all cases, however, technique refers to how something is done rather than to what is done. Technique, FORM, STYLE, and “manner” overlap somewhat, with technique connoting the literal, mechanical, or procedural parts of execution.

tenor and vehicle Terms used by I. A. Richards [in The Philosophy of Rhetoric] for the two elements of a METAPHOR. The tenor is the subject that the vehicle illustrates; the vehicle is the figure that carries the weight of the comparison. According to Richards’ definition, a METAPHOR always involves these two ideas. If it is impossible to distinguish them, we are dealing with a literal statement. If we can distinguish them, even slightly, we are dealing with METAPHOR.

tercet A group of three lines of verse. See TRIPLET.

terza rima A three-line stanza, supposedly devised by Dante, with an interlocking rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc, etc.

tetrameter A line of verse consisting of four metrical feet.

theater in the round The presentation of a play on an arena stage surrounded by the audience.

theme A central idea. In nonfiction prose it may be thought of as the general topic of discussion, the subject of the discourse, the THESIS. In poetry, fiction, and drama it is the abstract concept that is made concrete through representation in person, action, and image. No proper theme is simply a subject or an activity. Both theme and thesis imply a subject and a predicate of some kind – not just vice in general, say, but some such proposition as “Vice seems more interesting than virtue but turns out to be destructive.” “Human wishes” is a topic or subject; the “vanity of human wishes” is a theme.

thrust stage A stage extending beyond the proscenium arch, usually surrounded on three sides by the audience.

tiring house From "attiring house," the backstage space in Elizabethan public theaters used for storage and as a dressing room. The term also refers to the changing space beneath the medieval pageant wagon.

tone The attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. The tone of a text is created through the combined effects of a number of features, such as diction, syntax, rhythm, etc. The tone is a major factor in establishing the overall impression of the piece of writing.

tragedy In drama, a particular kind of play. In narrative, it refers to a body of work recounting the fall of persons of high degree. It concerns in general the effort to exemplify what has been called “the tragic sense of life”; that is, the sense that human beings are inevitably doomed, through their own failures or errors the ironic action of their virtues, or through the nature of fate, destiny, or the human condition to suffer, fail, and die, and that the measure of a person’s life if to be taken by how he or she faces that inevitable failure. The tragic impulse celebrates courage and dignity in the face of

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defeat and attempts to portray the grandeur of the human spirit.

tragicomedy A play that employs a plot suitable to TRAGEDY but ends happily, like a COMEDY. The action seems to be leading to a tragic CATASTROPHE until an unexpected turn in events, often in the form of a DEUS EX

MACHINA, brings about the happy DENOUEMENT.

trimeter A line of verse consisting of three metrical feet.

triple rhyme Rhyme in which the rhyming stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed, undifferentiated syllables, as in meticulous and ridiculous.

triplet A TERCET in which all three lines rhyme (aaa).

tristich A stanza of three lines.

trochee A foot consisting of an accented and an unaccented syllable ( ˘

). Examples: party, trochee, tercet,

bummer, little. Trochees are generally unpopular for sustained writing because they soon degenerate into rocking rhythm.

understatement Saying less than is actually meant, generally in an ironic way. When someone says “pretty fair” but means “splendid,” that is an understatement.

verisimilitude The term indicates the degree to which a work creates the appearance of truth.

weak ending The final syllable of a line of verse that is stressed to conform to the meter but would be unstressed in ordinary speech. See WRETCHED ACCENT.

well-made play Drama that relies for effect on the suspense generated by its logical, cleverly constructed plot rather than on characterization. Plots often involve a withheld secret, a battle of wits between hero and villain, and a resolution in which the secret is revealed and the protagonist saved.

wit and humor Although neither originally was concerned with the laughable, both words now find their chief uses in this connection. At present the distinction between them is difficult to draw. … It is for the most part agreed that wit is primarily intellectual, the perception of similarities in seemingly dissimilar things—the "swift play and flash of mind"—and is expressed in skillful phraseology, plays on words, surprising contrasts, paradoxes, epigrams, and so forth, whereas humor implies a sympathetic recognition of human values and deals with the foibles and incongruities of human nature, good-naturedly exhibited.

wretched accent In a line of verse, the stress placed on a syllable that would be unstressed in everyday speech but that is “forced” to conform to the meter. See WEAK ENDING.

zeugma A device that joins together two apparently incongruous things by applying a verb or adjective to both which only really applies to one of them, e.g. "Kill the boys and the luggage" (Shakespeare's Henry V).

Sources: Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. Print. Jacobus, Lee A. The Bedford Introuction to Drama. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005. Print. Murfin, Ross and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. 2nd ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. Print.