CHAPTER 1

Literary Terms
Absurd, Literature (Theatre)

The philosophy of Existentialism tends to depict man as isolated in a purposeless universe of space and time.
The term is applied to a number of works in drama and prose fiction which have in common the sense that
the human condition is adequately absurd. Lacking any essential motive or guiding principles or any inherent
sense of truth or meaning, man's existence is characterized by anguished anxiety and absurdity. The plays
project the irrationalism, helplessness, and absurdity of life.
Major Practicioners

1. Alfred Jarry : Ubo roi

2. Franz Kafka : The Teail, Metamorphosis
3. J. P. Sartre :
4. A. Camus : The Myth of Sisyphus
5. E. lonesci : The Chairs, (1952), Rhinoceros (1960)
6. S, Becket (1906-89) : Waiting for Godot (1955), Malone Dies (1958),The Unnamable (1960)
7. E. Albee : Who is Afraid of Virgina Woolf
8. J. Heller : Catch - 22 (1961)
Aestheticism

A European movement in arts, including literature, flourishing in the second half of 19th century which
stressed the paramount value and self-sufficiency of art. In opposition to the dominance of scientific thinking
and in defiance of widespread indifference or hostility of the society of their time to any art
that was not useful or did not teach moral values, French writers developed the view that a work of art is the
supreme value among human products,because it is self sufficient. The end of a work is simply to exist in its
formal perfection. Art for Art Sake is the catch phrase of Aesthetism. The views of
French Aesthetism were introduced into Victorian England by W. Pater. Aesthetieism in poetry is closely
identified with Pre-Raphaelite and show a tendency to withdrawal or aversion.
Major Praticioners:

1. Immanuel Kant
2. Th. Gautier
3. E.A.Poe : Poetic Principle (1850)
4. Flaubert
5. Mallarme
6. T.S.Eliot
7. O.Wilde
8. Aubrey
9. Beardsley
Affective Fallacy

The title of an essay by the contemporary American critics W.U.Wimsatt and M.C. Beardsley, printed in
Wimsatt's, The Verbal Icon (1954). They argue that judging a poem by its effect or emotional impact on the
readers is a fallacious method of criticism resulting only in impressionistic criticism.
Alienation Effect

Brecht the German playwright noted that in dramatic performances where actors identified with parts the
spectators were liable to swept away by the illusion of reality created, allowing their sympathies for the
characters to be manipulated in a way that led only to vague emotional satisfaction, excitement or confusion
rather than critical judgment of play's subject matter. His view was that both audience and actors should
preserve a stale of detachment from the play and its presentation in performance.
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Allegory

The term derives from Greek allegorial "speeking otherwise". As a rule an allegory is a story in verse or
prose with a double meaning. It is closely related to the fable and parable. An allegory is a narrative fiction in
which the agents and actions and sometimes the setting as well one contrived to make a coherent sense on the
literal or primary level of signification and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of agents,
concepts and events.
Major Works

1. Pilgrim's Progress (1678) by J. Bunyan (The best known allegory)

2. Timaeus, Phaedrus, and Symposium, by Plato.
3. De Republica by Cicero
4. The Golden Ass by Apuleius
5. About Gods and the World by Sallustius
6. Divine Comedy by Dante
7. House of Fame by Chaucer
8. Everyman
9. Prometheus Unbound by Shelly
10. The Dynasts by T.Hardy
11. Absalom and Achitophel by J. Dryden
12. MacFlecknoe by J. Dryden
13. Tale of a Tub by Swift
14. Animal Farm by G. Orwell
Allusion

An implicit reference perhaps to another work of literature or art, to a person or an event. It is a passing
reference in a work of literature or something outside itself. A writer may allude to legends, historical facts or
personages to other works of literature. Most allusions serve to illustrate or clarify or enhance a subject while
some are used to undercut it ironically by the discrepancy between the subject and the illusion.
Ambiguity

The capacity of words and sentences to have double, multiple or uncertain meanings. In ordinary usage it is
applied to a fault in style ever since. W. Empson published Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930). A special
typical of multiple meaning is conveyed by the portmanteau word. The term was introduced in to literary
criticism by Humpty Dumpty, the expert on semantics in lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1879).
Amplification

A rhetorical term used to describe passage in prose or verse in which statement is extended as to add to its
effect:
Ch. Dickens: Bleak House / Our Mutual Friend.
Antithesis

It is a contrast or opposition in the meanings of contiguous phrases or clauses that is emphasized by

parallelism, that is, a similar order and structure in the syntax.
"Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasure".
Apocalypse

A vague British literary movement of 1940s in opposition to the political commitment of 1930s writers. The
Apocalyptical poets valued myth and were Surrealistic in technique and subject matter.
Major Writers:

1. G. D. Fraser; 2. H. Treece; 3. D. Thomas

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Apology

Autobiographical, confessional, critical or philosophical literature in which the author argues a case for his
beliefs, opinion or actions.
Major Works:

1. J. H. Newmans Apologia Pro Vito Sua

2. Plato Apology
3. Sir Philip Sidney Apology for Poetrie
Aptronym

In Literature a character's name that explain or gives a clue to one's personality, morality and, purpose in the
story.
Example:

1. Allworthy in H. Fielding's Tome Jones (1749)

2. Mr. Knightley in Jane Austen's Emma (1816)
Archaism

The deliberate retention of imitation of obsolete words or syntax which may have been the characteristic
usage of an earlier period.
Archetype

A surprisingly old word which having been taken up as a technical or jargon term in anthropology,
psychology and literary criticism, has passed into everyday usage; used in its weakest from "archetypal"
means not much more than "typical". The recurrent themes, images, patterns and characters which occur in
all literatures as well as in myths and perhaps even dreams may be called archetype. C. G. Jung says
archetypes are our "collective unconsciousness".
Avant - Garde

A military expression: the vanguard or foremost part of army. Avant gard is now commonly used to describe
modern artists whose works are deliberately and self consciously experimental, who set out discover new
forms, techniques and subject matter in the arts.
Baroque

Chiefly an architectural term, meaning irregular, odd and whimsical with specific application to the florid,
ornamental style of late Renaissance architecture. It often used in the late Middle Ages to describe any form
of grotesque pedantry. It is a term more commonly used of the visual arts.
Major Work and Writers:

1. Sir T. Browne Urn Burial (1658)

2. Crashaw
3. Cleveland
Beat Generations

A group of American writers of 1950s. Beat living signifies the rejection of American middle class society,
embracing poverty and searching for truth through drugs, sexuality, Zen Buddhism and mysticism. Beat
poetry is loose in structure, sensational and autobiographical, full of hyperbole and surrealism.
Major Works and Writers

1. Allen Ginsberg Howl and Other Poems (1956)

2. J. Kerouac On the Road (1957), Big Sur (1962)
3. H. Corso
4. L. Ferlinghetti
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Burlesque

Burlesque has been defined as an incongruous imitation; that is, it imitates the manner or else the matter of a
serious literary work or of a literary genre, but makes the imitation amusing by a ridiculous disparity between
the manner and the subject matter. Burlesque, parody and travesty are sometimes applied interchangeably.
Varieties of High Burlesque:

1. Mock epic or mock heroic poem imitates the elaborate form and ceremonious style of epic genre, but
applies it to a commonplace or trivial matter.
A. Pope - Rape of the Lock (1714)
B. T. Gray - Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat (1748)
2. A parody imitates the serious manner and charactitic features of a particular literary work or the
distinctive style of a particular author or the typical stylistic.
1. J. Philips - The Splendid Shilling (1705) Paradise Lost
2. H. Fielding - Joseph Andrews (1742) Pamela (1740)
3. J. Gay - The Beggar's Opera
Varieties of Low Burlesque:

1. The Hudibrastic poem takes its name from S. Butler's Hudibras (1663)
2. The travesty mocks a particular work by treating its lofty subject in a jocular and grotesquely undignified
manner and style.
Celtic Revival

Also known as the Irish Literary Renassance, identifies the very creative period in Irish literature from about
1885 to the death of W.B. Years in 1939. The aim of Yeats was to create a distinctively national literature.
W. B. Yeats
AE (George Russell)
Lady Gregory
J. M. Synge
S. O'Casey
Chicago Critics

A group of critics associated with the University of Chicago whose ideas one represented in the collection of
essays "Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern (1952) edited their leader R.S. Crane. Developing
concepts about form based on Aristotle's Poetics.
Chivalric Romance (Medieval Romance)

It is a narrative form which developed in 12th century France spread to the literatures of other countries and
displaced the various epic and heroic forms of narrative. Romances were at first written in verse but later in
prose as well. The romance is distinguished from the epic in that it represents not a heroic age of tribal wars
but something courtly and chivalric.
Comedy

In the most common literary application, a comedy is a work in which the materials are selected and
managed primarily interest, involve and amuse us.
1. Romantic Comedy

It was developed by Shakespeare on model of contemporary prose romances such as T. Lodge's Rosalynde
(1590), the source of shakespeare's As You Like It (1599)
.
2. Satire Comedy (Corrective comedy)
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It ridicules political policies or philosophical doctrines or else attacks deviations from the social order by
making ridiculous the social order by making ridiculous the violators of its standards of moral or manners.
Ben Jonson - Volpone
The Alchemist
3. Comedy of Manners (Restoration Comedy and Sentimental Comedy)

The English comedy of manners was early exemplified by Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost and Much
Ado About Nothing. The Restoration form owes much to the brilliant dramas of the French writer Moliere
(1622-73).
1. W. Congreve The way of the World
2. W. Wycherley The Country Wife
3. O. Goldsmith She Stoopes to Conquer
4. O. Wild The Importance of Being Earnest
5. R. B. Sheridon The Rivals
A School for Scandal
4. Farce

It is a type of comedy designed to provoke the audience to simple, hearty laughter, belly laughy
Noah
The Second Shepherd's Play
Taming of the shrew -.Shakespeare
Charley's Aunt Brandon Thomas
5. Comedy of Humours

A type of comedy developed by B. Johnson the Elizabethan playwright, based on the ancient physiological
theory of four humours.
Every Man in His Humour
Decadence

In the latter 19th century in France some proponents of the doctrine of Aestheticism especially Charles
Baudelaire espoused view and values which developed into a movement called the Decadence. This term was
based on qualities attributed to the literature of Hellenistic Greece in the last three centuries B. C. These
literatures were said to possess the high refinements and subtle beauties of culture and art which have passed
their vigorous prime.
1. Baudelaire Flowers of Evil
2. J. K. Huysmans Against the Grain (1884)
3. A. Ch. Swinburne
4. O. Wild The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
Salome (1893)
5. Ernest Dowson
6. Arthur Symons
7. Lionel Johnson
8. Aubery Beardsley
Didactic Literature

It is applied to works of literature which are desiged to expound a branch of theoretical or practical
knowledge.
1. A. Pope - Essay on Criticism
- Essay on Man
2. Dante Divine Comedy
3. Milton Paradise Lost
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4. H. B. Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

5. C. Odets Waiting for Lefty (1953)
Dissociation of Sensibility

It is a phrase introduced by T. S. Eliot in his essay "The Metaphysical Poets" (1921). Eliot's was that the
Metaphysical poets of the earlier 17 century, like the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists possessed a
mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience.
th

Distance and Involvement

In recent literary criticism the term aesthetic distance or simply distance is often used not only to define the
nature of literary and aesthetic experience in general, but also to analyze the many devices by which authors
control the degree of a reader's distance or detachment in inverse relationship to the degree of a reader's
involvement or concern with the action.
Disinterestedenss:
It is an partant term in M. Arnold's essay "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time." He spoke of the
need to see the object as in itself it really is. This is depended on the attitude of the critic. A kind of involved
detachment.
Epiphany

A manifestation of God's presence in the world was called an epiphany by Christians. J. Joyce (1882-1941)
uses the word to describe moments of sudden meaning or insight.
Euphemism

An inoffensive expression used in place of a blunt one that is felt to be disagreeable or embrassing.
Die pass away
Toilet comfort station
To have intercourse with to sleep with
Euphony and Cacophony

Euphony is a term applied to language which strikes the ear as smooth, pleasant and musical:
Keat's The Eve of St. Agnes (1820)
Cacophony or dissonance, language which seem harsh, rough and unmusical.
M. Arnod's Dover Beach (1867) and R. Browing's Pied Piper (1842)
Fancy and Imagination

The distinction between fancy and imagination was a key element in S. T. Coleridge's theory of poetry. In his
Biographia Literia (1817), he attributes this recording function of the sensory images to the lower faculty he
calls fancy: Fancy has no other counters to play with fixities and definites. The Imagination that produces a
higher order of poetry however: "dissolves, diffuse, dissipates in order to recreate. It is essentially vital, even
as all objects are essentially fixed and dead". Coleridge's imagination is able to create rather than merely
mechanical.
Grotesque

The term came to be applied to painting which depicted the intermingling of human, animal, and vegetable
themes and forms.
Grub Street

The name of a London street which during the 18th century was populated by poor authors prepared to write
anything for money.
Hagiography
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Pious literature concerning the lives of Christian saints and martyrs. A common form of literature in the
Middle Ages.
Heresy of Paraphrase

A term introduced and examined by Cleanth Brooks in "The Well Wrought Urn" (1947). His thesis is that if
paraphrase means to say the same thing in other words, then it is not possible to paraphrase a poem, because
a poem means more than merely what it says.
Hyperbole

A figure of speech: emphasis by exaggeration. Common in everyday speech. In Shakespeare's Macbeth

(1605), Macbeth expresses in hyperbole his guilt at murdering Duncan (II.2.59-62) or Iago says gloatingly of
Othello (III. Iii, 330) and Hotspur's rant in Henry IV Pt.I. (I.iii.201)
Imagery

Image/ imagery is a word picture, a description of some visible scene or object. More commonly, imagery
refers to the figurative language in a piece of literature; or all the words which refer to objects and qualities
which appeal to the senses and feelings, Types of Imagory:
1. Visual pertaining to the eye
2. Olfactory smell
3. Tactile touch
4. Auditory hearing
5. Gustatory taste
6. Abstract intellect
7. Kinesthetic movement
Intentional Fallacy

The term signifies what is claimed to be the error of interpreting and evaluating a literary work by reference
to evidence outside the text itself for the intention the design and purpose- of the author. An author's
intended aims and meanings in writing a literary work are irrelevant to the literary critic, because the
meaning, structure and value of a text are inherent within the finished, freestanding and public work of
literature itself. The American New Critics W.K. Wimsatt and M.C. Beardsley introduced this term for
what they regard as the mistaken critical method of judging a literary work according to the author's
intentions.
Irony

A manner of speaking or writing that is dispersed through all kinds of literature; irony consists of saying one
thing while it means another. In most of the modern critical, uses of the term irony there remains the root
sense of dissembling or hiding what is actually the case; not, however, in order to deceive, but to achieve
special rhetorical or artistic effects.
Sacrasm: is an ironical statement intended to hurt or insult. It is a common form of mockery in ordinary day
to day speech.
Dramatic Irony: occurs when the audience of a play knows more than the characters and can therefore
foresee the tragic or comic circumstances which will befall.
Cosmic Irony: is used of works in which God or Destiny is shown manipulating events so to frustrate the
lives of the characters. T. Hardy's novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) are often demonstrations of
this view of life.
Verbal Irony: is a statement in which the meaning that a speaker implies differs sharply from the meaning
that is ostensibly expressed.
Romantic Irony: An 18th and 19th.C. German term for the kind of narrative in which author constantly breaks
the illusion he is creating in order to comment on his characters.
Litotes
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A figure of speech akin to understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by its contrary denied by a
negative. The common everyday use of "not bad" to mean "good" is an example. Not uncommon in poetry
or prose.
Negative Capability The poet J. Keats (1795-1821) introduced the term to define a literary quality "which
Shakespeare possessed so enormously, I mean negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in
uncertainties mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason".
Objective Correlative
The term comes from an essay on "Hamlet and His Problems" written in 1919 by T. S. Eliot: The only way
of expressing in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative; in other words, a set of objects a
situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion such that when the external
facts which must terminate in sensory experience are given the emotion is immediately evoked. Eliot went on
to say that Hamlet's feelings were in excess of the facts provided and this unbalances the play.
Oxford Movement

Also called the Tractarian Movement after Tracts for the Times (1833-41) through which the ideas of J.
Keble. Newman and E. B. Pusey were spread. The purpose of these men was to revitalize the role of the
Church of England. So called High Church views of Sacrament led some members of the movement in to the
Roman Catholic Church, notably Newman, Whose famous Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) was a reply to an
attack on his character by Ch. Kingsley.
Pre-Raphaelites (The Fleshy School)

A mid 19th C. self styled brotherhood of London artists, all young who united to resist current artistic
conventions and create or re-create, art forms in use before the period of Raphael (1483-1520). Their aim
was a return to the truthfulness and simplicity of medival art (Raphael was a Renaisance artist).
Pseudo Statement

A term invented by I. A. Richards (1839-1979) to denote the kind of truth expressed by poetry which is
neither logical nor accurate, unlike statement of scientific truth. It represents an ordering of feeling, ideas and
are thus to be valued.
Satanic School

The poet Southey coined this description of second generation of Romantic poets, especially Byron, but also
probably Shelley.
Satire

Literature which exhibits or examines vice and folly and makes them appear ridiculous or contemptible. It is
directed against person or a type and censorious. It uses laughter to attack its objects, rather than for
more evocation of mirth or pleasure. Its greatest age was during the late 17th. And early 18th.C. Three kind of
satire are to be distinguished. Horation Satire is urban, witty informal and tends to enjoy rather than loathe
human follies. Juvenalian Satire adopts dignified public stance. It is self consciously and seriously and
seriously moral. The Menppean or Varronian Satire goes back to the derivation of word and is not satirical in
the usual sense. It is a rag bag of prose and verse loosely relating to some topic.
1. Dryden Absalom and Achitophel (1681) Mac Flecknoe (1682)
2. A. Pope Epistle (1729-35) (Formal Horatian satire)
3. B. Jonson Valpone (1606)
4. Byron Don Juan (1824) Vision of Judgement (1729)
5. Swift A Modest Proposal Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Self- Consciousness
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Self- Conscious narrators refer continually to the fact that they are creating a work of art for the purpose of
explaining the convention of narrative, like J. Fowels in the French Lieutenant's Woman (1977) or to moke
them, like Byron in Don Juan (1824). W. Wordswarth's Prelude (1805) explores the nature of the self, and is
a study of intense self-consciousness.
Stream of Consciousness

A common narrative technique in the modern novel: the attempt to convey all the contents of a character's
mind, memory, sense perceptions feelings, thoughts in relaion to the stream of experience as it passes by
often at random. Much of J. Joyce's Ulysses (1922) is narrated through the stream of consciousness of its
hero Bloom. The term was coined by W. James.
1. Coleridge Forst at Midnight (1798)
2. D. Richardson Pilgrimage (1915-38)
3. Proust A La recherch du temps perdu (1913-27)
4. V. Woolf To the Lighthouse (1913-28)
5. Sterne Tristram Shandy (1760-7)
6. J. Joyce A Portrait of the Aritst as a Young Man (1916)
7. W. Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1913)
Synecdoche

Figure of speech in which a part is used to describe the whole of something or vice versa. Common in
everyday speech as in the use of the word "hand" in the phrase "all hands on the deck" to refer to sailors.
Unities

Aristotle in his Poetic made certain observation about Greek tragedies: they concentrated on one complete
action or events which took place within a single day and night and in a single place. These descriptive
comments became know as the dramatic unities of action, time and from late 16th. C. onwards scholars came
to regard them as rules for the proper construction of tragedies.
Utopia

Sir T. More's Utopia (1515-6) is a description of an imaginary and perfect commonwealth. The name now
refers to all fictional, philosophical or political works depicting imaginary worlds better than our own.
1. Plato Republic
2. St. Augustin City of God
3. Swift Gulliver's Travels (Book Four) (1726)
4. W. Morris News from Nowhere (1891)
5. H. G. Wells A Modern Utopia (1905)
Versimilitude

Having the appearance of truth or reality. A difficult quality to explain or prove, but non the less an essential
element in many different kinds of literature.
Zeugma A figure of speech in which words or phrases with widely different meanings are "yoked together"
with comic effect by being made syntactically dependent on the same word often a verb as in the
following example from Dickens's The Pickwick Papers (1836-7) Miss Blolo rose from the table and went
straight home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair.