LGRM1124 voc

alliteration

repetition of initial consonant sounds (‘winter’s wind’), always at the stard

chiasmus

The inversion of established sequence (‘fair foul & foul fair’).

closure

When a narrative ends in such a way as to satisfy the expectations and answer the questions that it has raised.

comedy

Drama that deals with humorously confusing situations, in which the ending is, nevertheless, happy. It frequently involves people from the lower and middle classes and often ends in one or more marriages.

diegetic

Characters, events, or things occurring in/of the story world=

Existing/occuring in/of the story world.

dramatic irony

When a spectator knows more than a character.

epic poem

A long narrative poem celebrating martial heroes, invoking divine inspiration, beginning in medias res, written in a high style.

euphemism

A mild/positive expression instead of a bad/offensive word. 

focalizer

The reader's access to events is filtered through point of view of a deigetic character, but the text is not a first-person narration.

formalism

A school of literary studies that studies the formal/linguistic features of text and compare with other arts/linguistic practices (ordinary language).

free verse

Poetic style that is unstructured. There is no consistent meter or rhyme scheme.

hegemony

The idea that the ruling class imposes its views on the rest of society, who accept their worldview as common sense or ‘reality’ even though it goes against their interests.

hyperbole

An overstatement or exaggeration (‘Jeff is the antichrist’).

ideology

A common worldview is shaped by ruling class, so it often obscures the real situation (as if ‘every individual soul matters’ but really ‘every labourer just a cog in the machine’) > helps to avoid socialist revolt.

interpretation

The act of expressing the meanings - including ideas, values, and feelings - communicated by a text. It can take a number of forms (intentional vs symptomatic). Commonly found in critical writing.

intertextuality

All texts are composed of preexisting texts. It can therefore be distinguished from ‘allusion’ and ‘imitation’ as an inevitable, rather than selective, condition of texts. The recontextualization of existing materials.

irony

A mismatch between statement and context. For example, saying "it's a beautiful day" when it is raining.

media

Technological devices (books, radios, cellphones) that enable communication and/or block communication.

metaphor

Identification of one thing with another with which it is not literally identifiable but with which it shares hidden similarities. For example “the king is a wolf”.

metonymy

Using a word to refer to another word that is closely associated with it. For example, "the crown decrees..." in which the crown refers to authority of the monarchy. 

narrative

The representation of a story, event, or series of events. Includes story and discourse.

narrator

The voice or perspective that tells the story and shapes the reader’s access to events in terms of information, emotion, and ideology.

ode

A lyric poem in an elevated style, often addressed to a natural force, a person, or an abstracted quality (‘liberty’, ‘love’, ‘nature’).

omniscient

A perspective that knows everything.

oxymoron

The combination of incompatible terms (jumbo shrimp).

parallelism

The reuse of equivalent syntactic structures.

paratext

Material outside the narrative that is in some way connected to it. 

personification

Describing non-human entities as having huaman qualities. 

simile

A direct comparison between two things using the word “like” or “as”. For example, “the king is like a wolf”.

sonnet

A fourteen-line poem, usually in rhyming iambic pentameter, with a turn or ‘volta’ at the end. We can distinguish between Petrarchan & Shakespearean.

storyworld

The world in which the story takes place. 

structuralism

A method of interpretation not interested in individual devices/texts but underlying rule system (grammar, not individual utterance). Literary studies should not examine one story but storytelling as such.

suspens

Uncertainty (and the desire to diminish it) about how the story will develop.

synecdoche

Refers to the use of a part to express a whole. For example “Brussels has decided” implies that the EU Parliament (Brussels) has decided.

tragedy

Drama that deals with the fall of kings or nobles, beginning in happiness and ending in catastrophe. Later transferred to other social settings.

action

The sequence of events in a story. The action and the entities are the five basic components of story. Some prefer the term "events," since "action" is also used synonymously with act. \n

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adaptative reading

One of three fundamental modes of interpretation (see also intentional and symptomatic readings). Adaptive readings range from interpretations freed from concerns for overreading or underreading to fresh adaptations of the story either in the same medium or in a different one, as, for example, the film versions of Flaubertt Madame Bovary or Shakespeare's Henry V.

agon

Most narratives are driven by a conflict. In Greek tragedy, the word for the conflict, or contest, is the "agon." From that word come the terms protagonist and antagonist.

analepsis

Flashback. The introduction into the narrative of material that happens earlier in the story. The opposite of prolepsis.

anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.

antagonist

The opponent of the protagonist. He or she is commonly the enemy of the hero.

assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other. Example: no pain, no gain.

asyndeton

Eliminate conjunctions between phrases. From Greek word that means unconnected. For example: I came, I saw, I conquered.

aubade

A dawn poem in which the lover expresses sadness over the arrival of the day and the necessary separation of the lovers.

blank verse

Poetry written with a regular meter (rhythm) but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter.

caesura

A stop or pause in the middle of a line of verse, often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary, such as a phrase or clause. 

couplet

A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length.

dramatic monologue

A poem in which the voice of a historical or fictional character, who is clearly not the poet, speaks to an implied though silent audience.

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elegy

poetry of loss A poem or song written in honor of someone deceased, typically in the form of elegiac couplets. This term originally referred to a particular metrical form, but later started referring to the poetry of loss, especially through the death of a loved person.

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end-stopping

A line of poetry in which a sentence or phrase comes to a conclusion at the end of the line. The end of line is end of grammatical unit.

enjambment

The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped.

epithalamium

A wedding poem, celebrating the marriage and wishing the couple good fortune.

georgic poem

Treats the countryside as a place of productive labor.

iambic pentameter

A line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable. 

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For example: Two households, both alike in dignity.

limerick

A poem that consists of five lines in a single stanza with a rhyme scheme of AABBA.

lyric poem

A short poetic form in which the expression of personal emotion, often by a voice in the first person, is more important than a clear narrative sequence.

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panegyric

Refers to speeches or writings of praise. Also called eulogy. 

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pastoral poem

treat the countryside as a peaceful place of recreation and love among shepherds.

poetic foot

The rhythm created by emphasizing syllables. Includes a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables.

topographical poem

A poem devoted to the meditative description of a particular place.

3rd-person limited

A point of view in which the narrator tells the story from one character's perspective at a time. 

acceleration

Summarizing events to move quickly through a story. For example: we arrived in India after a long journey.

bildungsroman

A coming of age novel that deals with the formative years of the main character, and in particular, with the character's psychological development and moral education.

camera-eye narrator

The narrator does not give the reader anyone's thoughts or emotions, but only describes expressions and actions.

constituent events

Events that are essential to chain of events in the story.

crux

A critical point in the text, often a gap, where a lack of cues or the presence of ambiguous cues creates room for a major disagreement in the intentional interpretation of the narrative.

deceleration

Slowing the passage of time to bring attention something. For example: time slowed down as he fired the gun.

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direct discourse

Speech that is made directly from the speaker to the receiver. If you see quotation marks in a text, this is direct discourse. For example: “I must ask you to choose your weapon, Rodney.”

discourse

Story as told/presented in language/medium (can be non-linear).

duration

How much time discourse devotes to different events. Can choose to speed up or slow down.

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ellipsis

An event is not included in the discourse.

epistolary novel

A novel in which writers use letters, journals, and diary entries in their works, or they tell their stories or deliver messages through a series of letters. A novel written as a series of letters.

extradiegetic

Outside the storyworld.

focalization

The presentation of a scene through the subjective perception of a character. The term can refer to the person doing the focalizing (the focalizer) or to the object that is being perceived (the focalized object).

free indirect style

In this point of view, a third-person narrator stops describing the worldview of a given character—telling us what he or she thinks—and instead presents that worldview as if it were the narrator’s.  As I like to think of it, free indirect discourse describes moments in a third-person narrative when the narrator becomes infected by the perspective of one of its characters. For example: She wasn’t happy. Why was life so depressing?

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gap

the inevivitable voids, large or small, in any narrative that th reader has to fill it in from experience or imagination (can be filled if nonfiction). Wolfgang Iser : “unmentioned features of fictional world”.

genre

A conventional group of literary texts with similar characteristics. Knowledge of these groups helps authors to produce texts (recipes) and readers to process them (expectations).

indirect discourse

A statement of what a person said, without quoting the exact words. For example: He said that Rodney should choose his weapon.

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intradiegetic

Inside the storyworld.

iterative

Multiple events, a single representation of these events. For example: I always have a couple of beers on Sundays. 

naratee

The narratee refers to an (implicit) entity in the storyworld who is the addressee of the narrator. Who the narrator imagines is receiving the story.

narration

The actual formulation of a story in language, images, sounds, etc.

narrative jamming

Deliberately obscuring perspective.

narrative perception

An automatic attempt to reconstruct story.

narrator

The voice/perspective that tells the story and shapes reader’s access to events in terms of information, emotion, and ideology.

omniscient narrator

A narrative perspective that knows everything. All-knowing. 

repeating/repetition

A single event, multiple representations of this event. For example: \[Jim\] I had a beer and felt ill. \[Sophie\] Jim had one beer too many again. \[Jill\] Sophie got upset after Jim drank too much. \[Kevin\] There was a couple at the bar who got into a nasty fight while their friend was watching.

singulative

A single event occurs; a single representation of this event. For example: I tried beer once and really disliked the taste.

story

The linear/chronological sequence of events involving entities such as characters and setting.

supplementary events

Events that are present but not necessary to advance the story.

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unreliable narrator

A narrator that provides inaccurate or incomplete information about events. In other words, a narrator whose perceptions and moral sensibility differ from those of the implied author.

canon

List of important ‘great books’ we should read and admire

First, distinguish true sources of divine reveletion authentic or not)

Second, genres

Third, writers

→ important but disputed, depends on questionable ideas and exclude non canonical text

speculative fiction

genre which are not reality (Sci-fi, fantasy)

non sense verse

humourous forms of writing ajin to children’s literature and fantasy that sound meaningful but use made-up words and nonsense statements that resists explanation

principal of minimal deparature

whenever we interpret a message concerning an alternate world, we reconstrue this world as being the closest possible to the reality we know.

minus device

textual feature that is not explicitly present but not expected by the reader and active in our mind as we read

volta

or turn, is a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion.

imagined communities

nation as a socially-constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of a group (Anderson)

literary history

studying multiple works as creative reponses to ther historical context and the development of genres and schools of writing

literary criticism

studyinf individual works as complex rhetorical texts that use language in unusual, non-instumental ways