UIL Literary Criticism

Abbey Theatre

The Abbey Theatre is an Irish national theatre founded in 1904, known for producing works by prominent playwrights such as W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Sean O'Casey. It has been instrumental in the development of modern Irish theatre. Primarily produced plays that explore social issues and themes relevant to Irish identity. Burned in 1951.

Abecedarian, abecedarius, Abecedary

A form of poetry in which each line or stanza begins with successive letters of the alphabet. Additionally, every word in each line should start with the same letter, but that’s really difficult, so it isn’t often done. (Alaric Alexander Watts did it, though - “An Austrian army, awfully arrayed . . . “)

ABC, A B C, A.B.C.

1. an alphabetical acrostic (Geoffrey Chaucer’s prayer, “Chaucer’s A B C)

2. a primer teacher the alphabet or other elementary parts of a field of study

ABC-Book, Abcee-Book, Absey-Book

a primer or horn-book that introduces a subject

Abridgment

a shortened version of a work but one that attempts to preserve essential elements

Absolute

a term applied to anything totally independent of conditions, limitations, controls, or modifiers

1. In vocabulary - a word, such as “unique” that cannot be compared or qualified

2. In grammatical structure - a phrase that is free of the customary syntactical relationships to other parts of the sentence (“How can I, that girl standing there” - W. B Yeats)

3. Certain comparative and superlative forms when there is no specific context (higher education, or last resort)

4. In criticism - inviolable standards by which a work should be measured

abstract

1. (n) an abridgment that summarizes the principal ideas in a longer work

2. (adj.) opposite of concrete; removed from any real world'

3. (adj) in graphic art - nonrepresentational or nonobjective

absurd

the sense that human beings live in meaningless isolation in an alien universe - some absurdist novelists: Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Gunter Grass, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Theater of the Absurd

drama that presents a view of the absurdity of the human condition by the abandoning of usual or rational devices and by the use of nonrealistic form; portrays not a series of connected incidents telling a story, but a pattern of images presenting people as bewildered creatures in an incomprehensible universe - The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco, Waiting for Godot - by Samuel Beckett, also Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, Edward Albee, Arthur Kopit, Harold Pinter

academic

1. with a neutral connotation, schools and academies in general

2. with a negative connotation, aridly theoretical in ideas or pedantic, conventional, and formalistic in style

academic drama

plays written and performed in schools and colleges in the Elizabethan Age