Poetry technical descriptive/ form terminology

Classical, or Neo-Classical

Movements which believe all writing should imitate precedents and genres created during the classical civilisations of Greek/ Rome. Popular in late 17th/ early 18th century.

Epic

A long poem concerned with large events of conflict, often testing the values of the civilisation that produced it e.g. Aeneid.

Epithalamium

A poem celebrating a wedding.

Mock-epic  

A poem using the devices of an epic in order to create a parody (mockery) of the epic's grandeur.

Burlesque

Satire that uses caricatures

Denouement

The culmination/ result of an action, plan or plot.

Ludic

“ludo” = a game. It is a text that plays games with the reader’s expectations/ the expectations which surround the text.

Empiricism

Basing knowledge on direct, sensory perceptions of the world. Seeking out facts which are established by experience not theory.

Foreground

To emphasise/ make prominent.

Intertextuality  

A term used to describe the many ways in which texts can be interrelated e.g. Direct quotations- a parody.

Meta

Means 'above or beyond'. Often used in words like metatext/ metatheatre. Used when the reader is made aware of the conventions of fiction e.g. Character addresses audience directly.

Modernism

Any text created around 1920-1939. It is usually aggressively different from older texts.

Parody

The ridicule of another text through mockery/ hostile imitation.

Postmodernism

The texts tend to be aware of their own artifice (ruse), have intertextual allusions and be ironic.

Reportage

The inclusion of documentary material in a text.

Semantics

The study of how words create meaning.

Signified/ signifier

Meaning is created through the partners of signifier (indicator) and signified (the indicated) to create a sign.

Stream of consciousness

The removal of conventional sentence structures and grammar to imitate the free flow of thoughts.

Transgressive

The crossing of a boundary of culture/ taste, usually with subversive (undermining to authority) undertones.

Valorise

To invest with value

Writing back

The appropriation of a text/ genre and the rewriting in response, used often by feminist writers/ post-colonial writers e.g. The Handmaid's tale.

Trope

Any of the devices where art language differentiates itself from functional language.

Diatribe

An impassioned rant/ speech of denunciation.

Allegory

A rhetorical device that creates a close, one-to-one, comparison.