LITERATURE HUMANITIES TERMS

Honor

(The Iliad, The Odyssey) To achieve honor is to be a doer of deeds or to be a speaker of words, with only the greatest heroes being able to excel in both. Honor is a form of immortality, insured only by speech itself, that is by the activity of the oral bard.

Obey (NOT SUPER IMPORTANT)

Etymologically, it means to “under-listen”; and within Homer, it means “hearken, give ear.” To “consider what is said.”

Wrath (NOT SUPER IMPORTANT)

“A cosmic sanction… a social force whose activation brings drastic consequences on the whole community,” and it “is incurred by the breaking of basic religious or social tabus” that lead to the indiscriminate punishment of the whole community or social group. 

Menis is the irrevocable cosmic sanction that prohibits some characters from taking their superiors for equals and others for taking their equals for inferiors.”

Homeric Simile

A detailed comparison in the form of a simile that is many lines in length.

Dactylic Hexameter

The type of hexameter (= a line or rhythm in poetry with six stressed syllables) used in ancient Greek poetry, that usually consists of five dactyls and either a spondee or trochee.

Muthoi

Homeric poetry calls its most powerful utterances or speeches muthoi (myth). It was often used to describe Nestor’s speeches in the Iliad. Myth is derived from this word, but it was originally used to refer to speeches, tales, stories, etc.

Epithet 

A short descriptive phrase that follows or precedes a noun e.g. “rosey-fingered” dawn or “swift-footed” Achilles. The excessive use of epithets is considered a characteristic of Homer’s style. 

Patronymic (or Patronym)

A component of a personal name based on the given name of one’s father, or grandfather (more specifically an avonymic). Male equivalent of _.

Xenia

Ancient Greek concept of hospitality, or guest-friendship, a sacred and fundamental social custom involving the welcoming of guests with food, shelter, and gifts, considered a religious obligation to the God Zeus.

Aristeia 

A scene in epic poetry where a hero displays their finest moments, achieving peak prowess and glory in battle, often leading to superhuman feats and significant kills. (Comes from “aristos” which translates as “best”)

Supplication

“Take him by the knees and I think I can persuade him: Strictly defined as a humble entreaty, in the context of epic poetry “supplication” refers to an earnest appeals made to someone of higher authority. The verbal request is often accompanied by a humbling physical gesture: kneeling in front of them and placing one hand on their knee and under their chin.

Sophistry

Reasoning that seems plausible on a superficial level but is actually unsound, or reasoning that is used to deceive. 

Periphrasis

Use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter form of expression.

Apostrophe

Figure of speech that “turns away” to address another audience mid-speech. Often when a speaker addresses a person who is not absence, a person who is dead, or a personified object.

Ekphrasis

The use of a detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device. Expository digression (like the similes).

Language

Language embeds life-ways, sensory processing, reflects time and place

Genre

Embeds social values

Message

Can advance particular ideology, reflect geopolitics of its authorship. 

Textual Object

Textual transmissions, variants, also history of a text’s reception

Canon

Reflects a community’s ideas about a textual tradition

Type Scenes

Literary convention employed by a narrator across a set of scenes, or related to scenes (place, action) already familiar to the audience.

Midrash

Exposition or investigation; plural, Midrashim. 1) A mode of biblical interpretation prominent in the Talmudic literature. 2) Separate body of commentaries on Scripture using this interpretative mode. 

Assonance

Effect created when two syllables in words that are close together have the same vowel sound, but different consonants, or the same consonants but different vowels, for example, sonnet and porridge or cold and killed.

Polysyndeton

The repetition of conjunctions in close succession for rhetorical effect, as in ‘Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea’ (Shakespearre, Sonnet 65).

Hubris

In Greek tragedy, excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis; in extended usage, excessive pride or self-confidence. According to Aristotle: ‘doing and saying things at which the victim incurs shame, not in order that one may achieve anything other than what is done, but simply to get pleasure from it. For those who act in return for something do not commit hubris, they avenge themselves. The cause of the pleasure for those committing hubris is that by harming people, they think themselves superior; that is why the young and the rich are hubristic, as they think they are superior when they commit hubris’

Priamel

A kind of paratactic comparison (i.e. comparison by listing or enumeration)> Examples are Sappho fragment 16, ‘some people like x, others y, but I say the best thing is to get your hearts desire. A focusing device: To understand D you need to compare it with A, B, and _.

Past Participle

The form of a verb, typically ending in -ed in English, which is used in forming perfect and passive tenses and sometimes as an adjective, e.g. looked in have you looked?, and lost in I’ve lost it and lost property.

Polytropos 

The epithet most frequently associated with Odysseus (over 80 times). It is typically translated as “man of twists and turns” but it can also mean resourceful/enduring or shifty. 

Iambic Pentameter

A line of verse composed of ten syllables arranged in five metrical feet (iambs), each of which consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The line can be rhymed, as in sonnets or heroic couplets (pairs of end-rhymed lines found in epic or narrative poetry), or unrhymed, as in blank verse. The term derives from the Greek words iambos (“metrical foot”) and pentametros (“having five)

Anagnorisis

A type scene in which a person suddenly recognizes the stranger

Peripetia

A change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity. Changes of character as well as external changes. Ex: A character who becomes rich and famous from poverty and obscurity has undergone peripeteia, even if his character remains the same. 

Synedoche

A figure of speech in which a more inclusive term is used for a less inclusive one or vice versa, as a whole for a part or a part for a whole. Ex: “Something is wrong with the wombs of the city” - The wombs are the “part” that stand in for the “whole”: the women in the city

Metonymy

A figure of speech characterized by the action of substituting for a word or phrase denoting an object, action, institution, etc., a word or phrase denoting a property or something associated with it, ex: as when referring to the monarchy as ‘the crown’ or the theatre as ‘the stage,’

Anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. For instance, “Let them know that you are as mighty as the skies. Let them know that you are as great as the earth. Let them know that you crush every rebel….”

Ethos

Aristotle identifies three primary methods of rhetorical persuasion: ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos persuades through an appeal to the speaker’s authority, credibility and character.  

Anthropomorphic

That ascribes human personality or characteristics to something non-human, as an animal, object, etc. This term can also refer to the application of human characteristics to a God

Metaphor

a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

Simile

a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion, crazy like a fox ).

Motif

a recurring element in a work of art, literature, or music, such as an image, a symbol, a sound, a word, or a theme