Fairy Tales and Closed Spaces

Flashcards reviewing key vocabulary and concepts from lecture notes.

Fairy Tale Pattern

Includes the character’s quest of identity, the search for the other self, and a relationship ending in perfect unity through marriage.

Open Space

An exterior unit matching the character’s inner harmony, often achieved after being tested and finding one’s place in society.

Horizon of Expectations

Fairy tale patterns and open spaces cover this, and express the human wish for bliss and harmony for each individual and their relationships.

Outsiders

Literary works from the late 19th/early 20th century featuring harmonized/open spaces (e.g., Jane Austen, Frances Hodgson Burnett).

Mid-Victorian Literary Period

NOT characterized by fairy tale patterns and open spaces; books reflect a time of social, religious, and economic trouble.

Domestic Fiction

Jane Austen's focus, rejecting gothic novel and sentimental fiction, with a mind governed by reason where passion is punished.

Social Dimension (Jane Austen)

Adds the compatibility of the couple, analysis of social behaviour, of gestures and conventions to Victorian Literature.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Offered fresh American perspective on English problems with children treated as innocent.

Closed Spaces

Relate to a character’s inner world, dismayed or frustrated with unfulfilled wishes, or to the social space in which the character feels entrapped.

Realism

Literature meant to mirror reality, especially since the 19th century was characterized by a strong sense of responsibility and duty.

Michel Foucault

Authored 'Discipline and Punish,' discussing the history of punishment in Europe, moving from physical to psychological torment.

Victorian Writers on Punishment

Transposed changes concerning criminal punishment in prisons (from physical to inner torture) from the system of justice to the space of the whole society

Hostile Universe

A theme where the universe and society are both hostile to man, contrasting with earlier writers who presented harmony between characters and their environment.

Puritan Pilgrimage

The journey from innocence, through experience, temptation, suffering, to sublimation and self-contentment.