Part 7: Random New Stuff v2

9 Muses

Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polymnia, Terpsichore, Talia and Urania

3 Graces

Aglaia (Brightness), Euphrosyne (Joyfulness), and Thalia (Bloom)

3 Fates

Clotho (the spinner), Lachesis (the allotter), and Atropos (the inevitable, a metaphor for death)

Parnassus

A greek mountain famed as the haunt of Apollo and the Muses. The word has also been used as a title for a collection or anthology of poetry

Nemesis

The Greek goddess of retributive justice or vengeance. The term nemesis is applied to the divine retribution, when an evil act brings about its own punishment. the term is also applied to both agent and act of merited punishment. It thus often becomes synonymous with fate, although a sense of justice is often associated with the term

Pegasus

The winged horse of Grecian fable said to have sprung from Medusa's body at her death. It is also associated with the inspiration of poetry because he is supposed to by one blow of his oof to have caused Hippocrene, the inspiring fountain of the Muses, to flow from Mount Helicon. Some poets will ask for the aid of this term rather than the Muses

Zoe / Zooey

Female first name that means "life". Zoe is also the daughter of King Midas (the guy who turned everything into gold by touch)

Unities

The principles of dramatic structure involving unities of action, time, and place. The most important unity and the only one enjoined by Aristotle is that of action

Stanislavsky Method

Method Acting

Stichomythia

A form of repartee (which is a quip / comeback) developed in classical drama and often employed by Elizabethan writers

Flyting

An extended and vigorous verbal exchange. In Old English poetry, it was a boasting match between warriors before combat

Jewish-Americans

Arthur Miller, JD Salinger, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow

Scottish

David Hume, Adam Smith, John Barbour, Sir Walter Scott, John Knox, Robert Burns, Alexander Montgomerie, Hugh MacDiarmid

Welsh

King Arthur legends / folktales; Gruffydd ap Cynan, Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Irish

George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Iris Murdoch, Oscar Wilde

Celtic

Literature produced by either the Ancient Britons, the Welsh, the Cornish, the Bretons, the Irish, the Manx, or the Gaels is known as

Eiron

A basic comic character in Greek drama, typically a swindler, trickster, hypocrite, or picaresque rogue

Miles Gloriosus

The braggart soldier – a stock character in Comedy. The type appeared in Greek Comedy as the Alazon

Agroikos

A character added by Northrop Frye to the traditional three stock characters of Greek Old Comedy. The usual agroikos is a rustic who is easily deceived, a form of the country bumpkin

Koran / Quran

A Muslim collection of scriptural writings

Skald / Scald

An ancient Scandinavian poet, especially of the Viking period, corresponding roughly to the Anglo-Saxon scop

Bard

Modern use: a poet. Historically, the term refers to poets who recited verses glorifying the deeds of heroes and leaders. Technically referring to the early poets of the Celts

Troubadour

A name given to the lyric poets and composers of Provence (southern france) in the 12th and 13th centuries. The name comes from a word meaning "to find," suggesting that the ____ was regarded as an inventor and experimenter

Gleeman

A musical entertainer among the Anglo-Saxons. Traveling professional who recited poetry composed by others, although some of them were original poets

Jongleur

A French term for a professional musical entertainer of medieval times, analogous to the Anglo-Saxon gleeman and the later minstrel

Minstrel

A musical entertainer or traveling poet of the later Middle Ages who carried on the tradition of the earlier gleeman and jongleur. They flourished especially in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The typical one was a gifted wandering entertained, skilled with the harp and tabor, singing songs, reciting romances, and carrying news

Ollave / Ollamh / Ollam / Ollav

Among the early Irish, a person of wisdom and learning; a poet sometimes ranking below druid but above bard

Incunabulum

A term applied to any book printed in the last part of the 15th century (before 1501). Since the first printed books resembled in size, form, and appearance the medieval manuscript, incunabula are commonly large and ornate. Famous English incunabulums are Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, and Le Morte D'arthur by Malory

Trivium

The three studies leading to the bachelor's degree in the medieval universities: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Quadrivium is also a term: in the medieval university curriculum, the four subjects leading to the Master of Arts degree: arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy

Patronage

Until well into the 19th century, many authors survived bc of patronage from a wealthy benefactor. Given the conditions of performance and publication, a writer generally couldn't make a living simply by income from the work alone. Patrons are important in the lives of authors from Chaucer to Wordsworth

Grimm’s Law

In 1822, Jakob Grimm formulated a principle that describes a complex of relations among consonants in Indo-European languages. This table summarizes a sampling of these shifts as heard in Latin and English

Brook Farm

The early-nineteenth-century utopian experiment in communal living initially sponsored by the Transcendental Club, whose members included, for a short time, Hawthorne, is known as

Nihil Obstat

"Nothing obstructs" used in the Roman Catholic Church to grant permission to publish a book

Penny Dreadful

A cheaply produced paperbound novel or novelette of mystery, adventure , or violence popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in England. Equivalent to the American Dime Novel

Dime Novel

Cheaply printed, paperbound tale of adventure or detection, originally selling for about ten cents; an american equivalent of the British penny dreadful

Yellow Journalism

Newspapers and magazines specializing in scandal and sensation. Flourished in the 21st century. The term comes from New York World in which the "Yellow Kid" cartoon appeared

Underground Press

The mid-1960s saw the beginning of a large number of underground publications by numerous groups, some of them clandestine but many associated with universities. Many of these publications were newspapers, but a number were magazines publishing essays, poetry, and fiction--usually of an experimental, avante garde, or politically radical sort

Pulp Magazines

Magazines printed on tough pulp paper, cheaply produced, with lurid illustrations and gaudy covers, and featuring tales of love, crime, and adventure. They were the successors to the dime novel. They gained new life with the Tarantino film Pulp Fiction (1994)

The Nine Worthies

Late medieval and early Renaissance literature reflects the widespread tradition of the heroes known as the "nine worthies". They are separated in three groups1. Pre-Christian Pagans: Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar; 2. Pre-Christian Jews: Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus; 3. Christians: Arthur, Charlemagne, Godfrey/Boulogne. They are impersonated in the burlesque play in Shakespeare's Love's Labour Lost.

Ultimate Thule

The farthest possible place. Used often in the sense of a remote goal

Vade Mecum

An article that one keeps constantly on hand. By association, the term has come to mean any book much used, such as a handbook. The phrase means “go with me"

Chivalry

System of manners and morals. Presented in medieval romance in a highly idealized form, amounting almost to a religious faith for the upper classes and it has furnished colorful subject matter for much later literature

Touchstone

A term used metaphorically as a critical standard by Matthew Arnold in "The Study of Poetry." A touchstone is a hard black stone once used to test the quality of gold or silver by comparing the streak left on the stone by one of these metals with that made by a standard alloy of the metal. Touchstones for Arnold were "lines and expressions of the great masters," which the critic should always hold in mind and apply " as a touchstone to other poetry

Purple Patch

A piece of notably fine writing. Now and then, authors in a strongly emotional passage will give free play to most of the stylistic tricks in their bag. They will write prose intensely colorful and more than usually rhythmic. When there is an unusual piling up of these devices in such a way as to suggest a self-conscious literary effort, the inspection is spoken of as a purple patch- a colorful passage standing out from the writing around it

Tour de Force

A feat of strength and virtuosity. Used in criticism to refer to works that make outstanding demonstrations of skill

Canon

A standard of judgement. Also applied to the authorized or accepted list of books belonging in the Christian Bible. Often extended to mean the accepted list of books of any author

Genre

Used to designate the types or categories into which literary works are grouped according to form, technique, or, sometimes, subject matter. The French term means "kind", "genus" or "type". The traditional genres include tragedy, comedy, epic, lyric, and pastoral

Four Types of Composition

1. Description; 2. Exposition; 3. Narration; 4. Argumentation

Freytag’s Pyramid

Exposition / Protasis, Complication, Rising Action, Climax, Reversal, Falling Action, Catastrophe

Prose

In its broadest sense, the term is applied to all forms of written or spoken expression not having a regular rhythmic pattern

Syllable

Onset, coda, nucleus

Syntax

Diction consists of vocabulary (words one at a time) and syntax (patterns of arrangement). It is the rule-governed arrangement of words in a sentence

Thesis

An attitude or position on a problem taken by a writer or speaker with the purpose of proving or supporting it. The term is also used for the paper written to support the _____.

Trope

In rhetoric, this is a figure of speech involving a "turn" or change of sense--the use of a word in a sense other than the literal; in this sense, figures of comparison as well as ironic expressions are ______

High Comedy

Pure or serious comedy, as contrasted with low comedy. It appeals to the intellect and arouses thoughtful laughter by exhibiting the inconsistencies and incongruities of human nature and by displaying the follies of social manners

Low Comedy

Elemental comedy, in that it lacks seriousness of purpose or subtlety of manner and has little intellectual appeal. Some features are: quarreling, fighting, noisy singing, boisterous conduct in general, boasting, burlesque, trickery, buffoonery, clownishness, drunkenness, coarse jesting, wordplay, and scolding

Aesthetic Distance

Term used to describe the effect produced when an emotion or an experience--whether autobiographical or not--is so objectified that it can be understood as being independent of the immediate experience of its maker

Typology

The study of allegorical symbols, especially with the Bible, in which much of the Old Testament is read as a type of the revelation to come in the New Testament. Both Jonah and Solomon are types of Christ, who offers an interpretation in Matthew 12: "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

Bowdlerize

To expurgate (removing content that is objectionable or unsuitable) a piece of writing by omitting material considered offensive or indecorous, especially to female modesty, according to Bowdler's introduction

Annotation

The addition of explanatory notes to a text by the author or an editor to explain, translate, cite sources, give bibliographic data, comment, gloss, or paraphrase

Ekphrasis or Ecphrasis

Sometimes used in reference to the representation of an artwork of any kind in a literary work, such as a poem inside a novel. Another example is Yeats's "Leda and the Swan", where a real graphic work is involved

Macabre

Originally "danse macabre" or "Dance of Death", the obscure word relates to both subject and style -- a gruesome combination of farce and tragedy. Jacobean tragedies of Webster has this heavily, as does Edgar Allen Poe

Intrusive Narrator

An omniscient narrator who freely and frequently interrupts a narrative to explain, interpret, or qualify- sometimes in the form of essays. An intrusive narrator must be accepted as authoritative unless strong clues point to an ironic intention

Unreliable Narrator

A narrator who may be in error in his or her understanding or report of things and who thus leaves readers without the guides needed for making judgments. The unreliable narrator is most frequently found in works by a self-effacing author. Some might just be wrong about conclusions about things, so we must await the outcome of events. Sometimes a character (like Huck Finn) is uncomprehending of situations he describes (due to their naivety or maybe just stupidity). Others like Holden Caulfield as in Catcher in the Rye may be unreliable due to their lack of sophistication/experience/maturity

Tone

The attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. ____ may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, sombre, playful, serious, ironic, condescending, amongst others. Sometimes designates a musical quality in language that Sidney Lanier discussed which asserts that the sounds of words have qualities equivalent to timbre in music

Mood

In a literary work, the ____ is the emotional-intellectual attitude of the author toward the subject

Empathy

The act of identifying ourselves with an object and participating in its physical and emotional sensations, even to the point of making our own physical responses--as when standing before a statue of a discus thrower, we flex our muscles to hurl the discus

Sympathy

Which we have a fellow-feeling for someone, for empathy implies an 'involuntary projection of ourselves' into something or someone else. Some see empathy as the key to the nature and meaning of art. The term is a translation of Hermann Lotze's Einfuhlung--"feeling into" -- and it entered our critical vocabulary in the 20th century. Now loosely synonymous with "sympathy"

Verbum Infas Formula

A conventional paradoxical topos, meaning "the unspeaking word", applied to the infant (infans, "not speaking") Christ, who incarnates the Word (verbum). The paradox recurs in many TS Eliot poems as both, "Word without a word" and "Word within a word, unable to speak a word"

Figurative Language

Departure from the normal order, construction, or meaning of words. It embodies one or more figures of speech

Figure of Speech

The various uses of language that depart from customary construction, order, or significance. This term have two major kinds: rhetorical figures, which are departures from customary images 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

Symploce

A figure of speech combining anaphora and epistrophe, resulting in the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, along with the repetition of another or the same word or phrase at the end of these successive clauses

Epistrophe

Not a term in the book but symploce is…but it’s anaphora but at the end of lines…