Unit 3 Literary Terms

catharthis

applied to tragedy by Aristotle to describe an emotional cleansing, purging, or feeling of relief; a tragedy, by evoking these emotions, cleansed the audience of all other, and lesser, emotions and left an after-feeling of relief and uplift
ex | Sophocles' 'Oedipus Rex'

chorus

a group of players in Greek drama whose only function in the play is to comment on and interpret the events in the play; in later plays and stories, it is sometimes a single character who serves the function of it
ex | stage manager in Thronton Wilder's 'Our Town'

chronicle

a history, especially a bare or simple chronological record of events, without interpretive or literary treatment
ex | Chronicle History - type of historical play based upon the chronicles of England, such as Shakespeare's 'Henry V'

circumlocation

the use of many or several words to express an idea that may be expressed by few or one; indirect or roundabout language
ex | "The consensus of opinion is in the affirmative," instead of simply, "The vote is yes."

classicism

a general term in contrast to Romanticism; denotes the principles and characteristics of Greek and Roman literature; thus it usually embodies formal elegance, dignity, order, clarity and serenity

cliche

a time-worn phrase or expression or an overused situation in a piece of writing
ex | a rescue in the nick of time

climax

the point in the plot of greatest excitement, intensity, or impressiveness; may also be the crisis and each episode of a long narrative or each act in a play may have a smaller one of its own

closet drama

a play intended to be read rather than acted upon a stage, for it usually presents difficulties of production on a stage
ex | Shelly's 'Prometheus Unbound'

coincidence

an accidental happening or development in the plot, unmotivated by the traits or actions of any of the characters; certain amount is true-to-life, but too much can destroy the plausibility of the story

colloquialism

a word or expression permissible in informal or conventional language, but not in formal speech or writing; in writing, it is an informal style that reflects the way people spoke in a distinct time and/or place

comedy

a light and amusing drama, usually having a happy ending and usually light and humorous in tone; also means the phase of a play expressing the comic or cheerful; bits of it are often introduced into tragedies
ex | Sheridan's 'The School for Scandal'

comic relief

humor inserted by the author to relieve the audience's or reader's emotional tension after a tragic or deeply emotional scene
ex | the comic actions of the drunken porter in the knocking at the gate scene following the murder of King Duncan in 'Macbeth'

complication

the twists and turns of the plot from the beginning to the turning point (crisis), as a result of obstacles encountered by the chief characters

conceit

an ingenious, fanciful, or affected notion or expression, especially when given in the form of an exaggerated, affected, or extended metaphor; a comparison between two startlingly different objects
ex |
"She is all States, all princes I;
Nothing else is"

conflict

the struggle which constitutes the main dramatic quality of the plot; a character may contend against forces outside of himself; also if both opposing forces are tangible, like two fighting groups, the struggle is said to be "external"; if the two opposing forces are mental, the struggle is said to be "internal"
ex | man v. man, man v. self, man v. nature, man v. abstract force

connotation

the suggestive meaning of a word, apart from its explicit and literal meaning, hence, a secondary or implied meaning, often having emotional overtones
ex |
"Home is the place where, where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."

connotative

meanings of words are frequently suggested by voice inflections, facial expressions, gestures, and body movements and are often used as instruments of propaganda

convention

a literary convention is a practice that is followed so often in literature that it has become the standard
ex | happy ending, boy meets girl

couplet

two successive lines of verse that rhyme
ex |
"The lovely lady, Christabel,
Whom her father loved so well."
- Coleridge

couplet, heroic

two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter
ex |
"What dire offense from am'rous causes springs,
What might contests rise from trivial things."