Literary Criticism Terms (C)

Cacophony

The opposite of euphony: a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds.

Caesura

A pause of break in a line of verse. Originally, in classical literature, it characteristically divided a foot between two words, usually near the middle of a line.

Calvinism

No literary definition. May refer to a branch of Protestantism (developed by French theologian John Calvin in the sixteenth century) that emphasizes God's absolute sovereignty and the authority of the Bible. Five Points of __ (TULIP).

Calypso

A type of music that originated in the West Indies, particularly Trinidad. It is a ballad-like improvisation in African rhythms. The singers — who compose as they sing — frequently deal satirically in current topics.

Campus Novel

A work, usually comic, set at a university.

Carmen Figuratum

A figure poem, one so written that the form of the printed words suggests the subject matter.

Caroline Age

Applied in general to the period of Charles I reign and in particular to the spirit of the court, which was defined by its melancholy literature, decadent drama, and emphasis on classicism. It was in these times that Puritan migration to America was heaviest. Lasted from 1625 to 1649.

Carpe Diem

“Seize the day." The phrase was used by Horace, among others, and has come to be applied generally to literature, especially to lyric poems, which exemplify the spirit of "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die." The theme was very common in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English love poetry.

Catalectic Trochaic Trimeter

A line of verse consisting of three trochaic (stressed-unstressed) feet, where the final unstressed syllable is omitted or "missing."

Catharsis

In the Poetics, Aristotle — in defining Tragedy- sees its objective as being "through pity and fear effecting purgation of these emotions," but he does not explain what "proper purgation" means. In his time, it had both a medical and a religious signification. In medical terms, it referred to the discharge from the body of the excess of elements produced by a state of sickness and thus the return to bodily health. Viewed in this sense, it is the process by which an unhealthy emotional state produced by an imbalance of feeling is corrected and emotional health restored.

Caudate Sonnet

An Italian form, rarely adopted into English, in which a standard fourteen-line sonnet is augmented by the addition of other lines, including "tails".

Cavalier Lyricists

The followers of Charles I (1625-1649) were called Cavaliers, as opposed to the supporters of Parliament, who were called roundheads. The Cavalier Lyricists, a group of the former who composed lighthearted poems, including Thomas Carew, Richards Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling. These were soldiers and courtiers first and authors of lyrics only incidentally. Although he was a country parson and not a courtier, Robert Herrick is often classed with this group because many of his poems included in Hesperides are in the vein of the Cavaliers.

Chain Rhyme

Uncommon in English, this device incorporates elements of echo and identical rhyme so that the sound of the last syllable of one line recurs as the sound of the first syllable of the next but with a change of meaning.

Chanson d'adventure

A poem recounting a romantic adventure, often involving a journey on horseback or a sea voyage.

Chanson de Geste

A "song of great deeds." A term applied to the early French epic. The earliest and best existing example- the Chanson de Roland-dates from c. 1100. The early chansons de geste are written in ten-syllable lines marked by assonance and grouped in strophes of varying length. Cycles developed, such as that of Charlemagne (gestes du roi); that of William of Orange, which reflects the efforts of Christian heroes against the invading Saracens; and that dealing with the strife among the rebellious Northern barons.

Charm

A primordial formulaic utterance — related to the spell, the curse, and the riddle — designed to have magical influence in the conduct of life. It may involve a request for good luck or the "apotropaic" desire to ward off evil; it may be motivated by something as mundane as the need to find lost objects or win a contest.

Chiaroscuro

Contrasting light and shade. Originally applied to painting, the term is used in the criticism of various literary forms involving the contrast of light and darkness.

Chiasmus

A pattern in which the second part is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.

Choree

Obsolete equivalent of trochee; now preserved only in choriambus (this term + iambus).

Chronicle Play

A type of drama flourishing in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, which drew its English historical materials from the sixteenth-century chronicles, such as Holinshed's, and stressed the patriotism of the times. It enjoyed increasing popularity with the outburst of nationalistic feeling which resulted from the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) and served as a medium for teaching English history. The structure of the earlier plays of this type was very loose, unity consisting mainly in the inclusion of the events of a single king's reign. The number of characters was large. The plays featured pageantry (coronations, funerals) and other spectacular elements, such as battles on the stage. The serious action was often relieved by comic scenes or subplots, as in Shakespeare's famous "Falstaff plays" (King Henry the Fourth, I, II; King Henry the Fifth). The tendency to merge with romantic comedies appeared as early as Greene's James TV (c. 1590); in Shakespeare's Cymbeline (c. 1610) the chronicle material is completely subordinated to the demands of romantic comedy. Shakespeare's Richard III (c. 1593) exemplifies the tendency of the chronicle play to develop into tragedy of character — a movement that culminates in such plays as King Lear (1605) and Macbeth (1605). The term history play is sometimes applied to a restricted group of these plays — such as Shakespeare's King Henry the Fifth — which are unified but are neither comedy nor tragedy. The earliest true chronicle play is perhaps The Famous Victories of Henry V (c. l586). Peele's Edward 1 (1590-1591) and Marlowe's Edward 11 (1592) are among the best non-Shakespearean plays of this type.

Cinquain

Originally applied to a medieval five-lined stanza of varying meter and rhyme scheme, it is now often used for any five-line stanza. More precisely, it us applied to the five-lined stanza used by Adelaide Crapsey, consisting of five unrhymed lines of two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively.

Classicism

As a critical term, a body of doctrine thought to be derived from or to reflect the qualities of ancient Greek and Roman culture, particularly in literature, philosophy, art, or criticism. It stands for certain definite ideas and attitudes, mainly drawn from the critical utterances of the Greeks and Romans or developed through an imitation of ancient art and literature. These include restraint, restricted scope, dominance of reason, sense of form, unity of design and aim, clarity, simplicity, balance, attention to structure and logical organization, chasteness in style, severity of outline, moderation, self-control, intellectualism, decorum, respect for tradition, imitation, conservatism, maturity, and good sense.

Clerihew

A form of light verse invented by and named for Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who also wrote detective fiction. In its proper form, it concerns an actual person, whose name makes up the first line of a quatrain with a strict aabb rhyme scheme but no regularity of rhythm or meter.

Climax

A rhetorical term for a rising order of importance in the ideas expressed. Such an arrangement is called climatic, and the item of greatest importance is called this. Earlier, the term meant such an arrangement of succeeding clauses that the last important words in one is repeated as the first important word in the next, each succeeding clause rising in intensity or importance.

Cockney School

A derogatory title applied by Blackwood's Magazine to a group of nineteenth-century writers including Hazlitt, Leign Hunt, and Keats, because of their alleged poor taste in such matters as diction and rhyme.

Coda

A conclusion. In a work, it usually restates or summarizes or integrates the preceding themes or movements. Marilyn Hacker had written a sonnet sequence entitled this. The term is also applied to a tailpiece added to a caudate sonnet and the last element of a syllable.

Colliteration

A name suggested for the effect, similar to alliteration, of beginning accented syllables with similar consonants

Colonial Period

From the founding of the colony at Jamestown until the Stamp Act in 1765 finally forced the colonists to see themselves as separate from their motherland, the writing produced in America was generally utilitarian, polemical, or religious. Three major figures emerges in this period: Edward Taylor, Johnathan Edward, and Benjamin Franklin.

Comedy

In medieval times, the word was applied to nondramatic literary works marked by a happy ending and a less exalted style than that in tragedy.

Comic Irony

No literary definition. Most likely irony that arises when the element of humor is added to the equation.

Comic Relief

A humorous scene, incident, or speech in the course of a serious fiction or drama, introduced — it is sometimes thought — to provide relief from emotional intensity and — by contrast — to heighten the seriousness of the story. Notable examples are the drunken porter scene in Macbeth, the gravedigger scene in Hamlet, and Mercutio's personality in Romeo and Juliet.

Commedia Dell'arte

Improvised comedy; a form of Italian low comedy dating from very early times in which the actors — who usually performed conventional or stock parts, such as the "pantaloon" (Venetian merchant) — improvised their dialogue, though a plot or scenario was provided. A "harlequin" interrupted the action at times with low buffoonery. A parallel or later form was the masked comedy.

Compound Rhyme

Rhyme between primary and secondary stressed syllables as in such pairs as "childhood" and "wildwood" or “castigate” and “masticate.”

Conceit

Originally the term implied something conceived in the mind. Its later application to a type of poetic metaphor retains the original sense in that it implies ingenuity whether applied to the Petrarchan conventions if the Elizabethan period or the elaborate analogies of the writers of metaphysical verse.

Concordance

An alphabetical index of most or all of the words in a text or in the works of an author. Today, these are usually produced by computers.

Consonance

The relation between words in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables agree, but the vowels that precede them differ, as "add/read," "mill/ball," and "torn/burn."

Consonance Rhyme

Where the consonant sounds rhyme but the vowel sounds do not, such as "bag" and "log" or "ground" and "bond."

Contemporary Period

Typical characteristics of this period include reality-based stories with strong characters and a believable story. Settings usually keep to the current or modern era, so futuristic and science fiction novels are rarely included in this category. American Literature from 1945 to present.

Controlling Image

An image or metaphor that runs throughout and determines the form or nature of a literary work. Frost's sonnet "The Silken Tent" involves the controlling image that the title indicates.

Correlative

May refer to correlative verses which take the form of abbreviated sentences having a linear correlative relationship.

Cosmic Irony

A literary device where the universe seems to have a sense of humor and purposefully creates situations that are opposite or satirical of the expected outcome, causing amusement or amusement.

Counterpoint

No literary definition. Potentially referring to Counterpoint Rhythm, which was a term used by Gerard Manley Hopkins to describe the superimposing of a different rhythm on one already established.

Coup De Théâtre

A surprising and usually unmotivated stroke in a drama that produces a sensational effect; by extension, anything designed solely for effect.

Courtesy Book

A class of books that, flourishing in late Renaissance time, dealt with the training of the "courtly" person. Often in a dialogue form, this discussed such questions as the qualities of a gentleman or court lady, the etiquette of courtly love, the education of the future courtier or prince, and the duties of a state counselor.

Cross-Alliteration

Alliteration of two separate consonants or clusters arranged as xyxy or xyyx. Examples are Browning's line "Which Clause of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me" ("My Last Duchess") and Henry Jame's phrase "the shadow of a change and the chill of a shock" ("The Beast in the Jungle").

Curtal Sonnet

Gerard Manley Hopkins's name for a sonnet that has been curtailed. The challenge, according to Hopkins, was to shorten the octave and sestet while preserving the numerical ratio of the first subdivision to the second. Since 8:6::6:4:5, this kind of sonnet is divided into parts consisting of six lines and four and a half lines. The octave is shortened to a sestet and rhymes abcabc. The sestet is shortened to an augmented quatrain and rhymes either dbcd or dcbd. A half-line rhyming c ends the poem.

Cynghanedd

Originally a medieval Welsh term covering a wide and sophisticated range of verse devices, the term was revived in the late nineteenth century by Gerard Manley Hopkins to refer to various harmonious patterns of interlaced multiple alliteration (see CROSS-ALLITERATION). Simpler sorts of alliteration are linear and unilateral— as in the common American lunch-counter order "A cup of coffee and a piece of pie" or Keats's deliberately archaistic line "A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings." Interlacing alliteration, however, in such patterns as xyyx and xyxy (much the commonest) produces a quadratically ornate effect, such as sometimes occurs in vernacular phrases ("tempest in a teapot," "partridge in a pear tree") and the biblical collocation of swords-ploughshares and spears-pruning-hooks. There is conspicuous and complex cynghanedd in Macbeth's description of life as a "tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing" and in Wordsworth's noble tribute to Milton: "... and yet thy heart / The lowliest duties on herself did lay."