Lit Crit 2022-2023

Character

The creatures in art that seem to be human beings; the moral constitution of the human personality or moral uprightness

Characterization

the creation of imaginary persons so that they seem lifelike

Ethos

In Renaissance times it meant "character" but Aristotle called it "moral character" in his Poetics

La Femme Inspiratrice

a type of real person or literary character: the woman who inspires an artist

dramatis personae

The characters in a drama, novel, or poem or a listing of these characters

Hero or Heroine

the central character (masculine or feminine) who is the focus of interest in a work.

Protagonist

The chief character in a work, originally the "first" actor in Greek drama

Antihero

A protagonist of a modern play or novel who has the converse of most of the traditional attributes of the hero. Is graceless, inept, sometimes stupid, sometimes dishonest. Ex: Yossarian in Joseph Heller's Catch 22.

confidant

A character who takes little part in the action but is close to the protagonist

Choral Character

stands aside from the action and comments on it or speaks about it as a communal voice

Raisonneur

a character who is the level-headed personification of reason. Common in the well-made play, much like the confidant in a novel

Deuteragonist

The role second in importance to the protagonist in Greek drama. Also a character who serves as a foil to the leading character

Antagonist

The character directly opposed to the protagonist; a rival, opponent, or enemy of the protagonist

Counterplayers

characters who plot against the hero or heroine

Villian

an evil character, potentially or actually guilty of serious crimes; acts in opposition to the hero; the chief antagonist

Dynamic Character

develops or changes as a result of the actions if the plot

Static Character

changes little if at all; things happen to this characters without modifying their interior selves

Round Character

is sufficiently complex to be able to surprise the reader without losing credibility according to E.M. Forster

Flat Character

is constructed around a single idea or quality, such as the humorous characters of the 17th century

Straight Man

the character who asks the seemingly serious questions or makes the grave comment that triggers the comic or satiric retort.

Adversarius

same as the straight man in a formal satire

Clown

comic character originally with a marked rustic quality, much like the hick, bumpkin, or yokel. Later, servants who make jokes or circus or rodeo characters whose ineptitude parodies the virtuosity of the central characters, often with outlandish costume and makeup.

buffoon

Comic character - akin to the clown, fool, and jester - given to raillery, boasting, and indecency

stock characters

character types. Ex: a scheming murderer, a disguised romantic heroine, the wicked stepmother, and prince charming

Vice

A stock character in the morality play, a tempter both sinister and comic, predecessor of the villain

Surrogate

A person or a thing substituted for, or speaking for another; a character who embodies the ideals of the author or who utters speeches expressing the author's opinions

Miles Gloriosus

The braggart soldier, a stock character in comedy. Originally in Greek drama as the Alazon, he is cowardly, parasitical, bragging, and the subject of victimization by practical jokers. Ex: Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff

Mrs. Grundy

A character from Thomas Morton's play Speed the Plough, who does not actually appear but of whose judgements everyone in the play is very much afraid. The question "what will Mrs. Grundy say?" points to her symbolic value as a ridiculously strict upholder of social conventions

Braggadocio

a noisy braggart who is actually a coward.

Wellerism

named for Dickens's characters Sam and Tony Weller. A type of expression with a structure of three parts: an utterance, a speaker, and a situation

Machinery

In the Neoclassical Period, the term was used "to signify that part which the deities, angles or demons are mad to act in a poem." Derived from the Deus Ed Machina, the mechanical means Greek dramatists used to introduce a god on the stage

Chorus

The groups of dancers and singers who participated in religious festivals and dramatic performances

Agroikos

A character added by Northrop Frye to the traditional STOCK CHARACTER of Greek OLD COMEDY. Usually a rustic who is easily deceived, a form of the country bumpkin.

Eiron

a basic comic character - a swindler or trickster who pretends to be ignorant to trick people

Alazon

the braggart in Greek comedy; he is the opposite or the eiron because he pretends to know more than he does.

Nemesis

The Greek goddess of retributive justice or vengeance

670 Caedmon, Hymns

First poet known by name

690 Adamnan, Life of St. Columba

First biography in Britain

731 Bede, "Ecclesiastical History"

First history of the English people

787

First Danish invasion

800 Nennius, "History of the Britons"

First mention of King Arthur

875-900 Easter trope, Quem Quaeritis

Beginning of medieval drama

893 Asser, Life of Alfred the Great

First life record of a layman

975 St. Aethelworld's Regularis Concordia

Earliest evidence of English drama

1096-1099

First Crusade

1100 "Play of St. Catherine"

First "miracle" or saints play in England

1136 Geoffrey of Monmouth, "History of the Kings of Britain"

First elaborate account of Arthur's court

1342 Boccaccio, Ameto

First pastoral romance

1400 The Pride of Life (fragmentary)

Earliest extant morality play

1405 Castle of Perseverance

First complete morality play

1450 Gutenberg's Press

Beginning of modern printing

1450

Beginning of lowland Scots as northern literary dialect

1456

Gutenberg Produces the First Printed Bible

1474 Caston prints Recuyell of the Histories of Troy

First book printed in English

1477 Caxton's press set up at Westminster

First printing press in England

1519 Rastell, The Four Elements

First published interlude. Advocates adequacy of English for literary purposes

1525 Tyndale, New Testament

First printed English translation of any part of the Bible

1535 Coverdale Bible

First complete English Bible

1552 Udall, Ralph Roister Doister

First "regular" English comedy

1562 Sackville and Norton, Gorboduc

first English tragedy

1575 Gascoigne, The Posies

Poems with first English treatise on versification appended

1576 The Theatre built

First London playhouse

1580 Montaigne, Essays

Beginning of modern "personal" essay

1639

First printing press in America set up at Cambridge

1640 Bay Psalm Book

First book printed in America

1645

Founding of Philosophical Society in England

1662

The Royal Society founded as reorganization of the Philosophical Society in England

1668 Sprat, Life of Cowley

Starts tradition of "discreet" biography

1702 The Daily Courant

First daily newspaper in England

1704 Boston News Letter

First American newspaper

1710 Almahide

First complete performance of Italian opera in England

1719 Boston Gazette and the American Weekly Mercury (Philadelphia)

Establishment of newspapers in America

1720

James Franklin, the New England Currant is established in America

1725

New York Gazette is established in America

1728

First newspaper in Maryland established

1735 Zenger found not guilty in libel suit over Journal

First important "freedom of the press" suit

1736

First newspaper in Virginia

1738

Whitefield's first preaching tour in America

1767 Godfrey, Prince of Parthia

First American play to be acted

1773

First theater in Charleston, South Carolina

1787 Tyler, The Contrast

The first American comedy acted by professionals

1789 William Hill Brown, The Power of Sympathy

First American Novel

1809

The Quarterly Review's first Issue (English)

1823 Cooper, Pioneers

First of Leatherstocking series (America)

1850

Harper's Magazine is established in America

1891 Independent Theatre opens

start of "Little Theatre" movement in England

1477 Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers

First dated book printed in England

Scholasticism

Established in the 9th and 10th centuries, it was a complicated system that relied on logic to reconcile Christianity with reason

Regionalism

Fidelity to a particular geographical area; the representation of its habits, speech, manners, history, folklore, or beliefs.

Sentimentalism

Has two meanings: (1) an overindulgence in emotion, especially the conscious effort to induce emotion in order to enjoy it; (2) an optimistic overemphasis of the goodness of humanity (sensibility), representing in part a reaction against Calvinism, which regarded human nature as depraved.

Sentimentality

The effort to induce an emotional response disproportionate to the situation, and thus to substitute heightened and generally unthinking feeling for normal ethical and intellectual judgment

Sensibility

Reliance on feelings as guides to truth and not on reason and law

Impressionism

A highly personal manner of writing in which the author presents materials as they appear to an individual temperament at a precise moment and from a particular vantage point rather than as they are presumed to be in actuality

Expressionism

Went beyond impressionism in its efforts to "objectify inner experience," using external objects not as representational but as transmitters of the internal impressions and moods

Construcivism

Russian theater movement around 1920 that used mechanical constructions as a means of expression of the "symbols or emblems of the world without us"

Surrealism

Emphasizes the expression of the imagination as realized in dreams and presented without conscious control

Structuralism

(1945-1970) utilizes the methods of structural linguistics and structural anthropology to study the underlying system of language rather than concrete speech events

Poststructuralism

called into question the objective reliability of the supposed text, along with the acts of writing and reading per se.

Neoformalism

concerns the production of verse with recognizable rythems, meters, rhymes, stanza patterns, structures, and rhetorical strategies

Historicism

A set of concepts about works of literature & their relationships to the social & cultural contexts in which they were produced.