5.The theme of a literary work, spatial and temporal setting: Theme is the unifying and universal idea explored in a literary work. It may reappear in other
literary works, e.g. tragic love, loneliness, death, etc. It may be explicit (directly stated) or implicit
(indirectly stated, implied). Sometimes theme may be confused with motif. A theme in John Keats’
Setting is a particular place where and when something happens or is done. We distinguish two types of
setting in works of literature: (a) spatial setting which refers to place and (b) temporal setting which refers
to time.
6.Plot, minor plot, major plot, plot structure (climactic, episodic structure), physical plot, psychological plot: T he structure of the action is called plot. Plot is the blueprint of every work of fiction. It usually
includes an introduction, conflict, tension or rising action, climax or turning point, and falling action or resolution. A well-designed traditional plot contains incidents which are carefully selected and arranged in a cause-and-effect relationship.
Plots may be unitary or episodic, i.e. they tell one story or many stories in a novel. Similarly, plots may be single or multiple, i.e. one action or many actions are recounted at the same time. It is important to make a distinction between the main plot (major plot) and subplots (minor
plots). Novels may have any kind of plot: tragic, comic, satiric, or romantic.
7. The high and low style in traditional literary theory.
1. the high style,
2. the low style
The high or grand style was devoted to dignified themes in epic and lyric poetry as well as tragedy, and
the low style was characteristic of comedy and satire. The difference between the high and low style is
mainly in the use of language. The high style uses words and expressions rarely found in ordinary speech
whereas the low style imitates colloquial speech with its characteristic coarseness. Contrary to many
contemporary writers, William Shakespeare deliberately mixed features of the high style and the low style
in his dramas.
The individual style of a writer can be distinguished by its uniqueness and originality. It can be recognised by a peculiar use of lexical, syntactical, and stylistic devices. Thus, style can be viewed as a “technique of expression”. It is synonymous with an ability to write effectively.
8. Satire. Satire (from Latin satura - a medley) - a form of writing whose main aim is to expose human follies and vices, ridicule and scorn people, institutions or events and customs. Satire may be an independent literary form or it may appear in other forms of literature, both in verse and prose. Direct satire openly ridicules its object whereas indirect satire, often found in poetry and prose, has to be deduced by the reader.
9. Alliteration and onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating some natural sounds,
e.g. hiss, splash, buzz, cuckoo, mew, bow-wow, bang, roar, murmur, etc. However, many words are merely thought to be onomatopoeic although they are not clearly imitative of the thing they denote, e.g.
horror, terror, thriller. Onomatopoeia is often effectively used in poetry, as - for example - in Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Bells”: “Silver bells... how they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle”, or in “The Raven”: “And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.”
Alliteration is a phonetic stylistic device which consists in the repetition of similar consonant sounds in close succession. It is used to create melody, establish mood, call attention to important words, and point out similarities and contrasts, e.g. ‘west wind’; ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’; ‘Sense and Sensibility’;‘Pride and Prejudice’
10. Simile and metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche. Simile is a comparison between two things of unlike nature that have something in common. It is
recognisable by the use of the word “like” or “as”. Similes frequently appear in verse and prose as well as
in ordinary speech, e.g. “He fell like a stone”. “She looked like a doll”. Similes are also used in colloquial
phrases, e.g. sly as a fox, busy as a bee, to work like a horse, stubborn as a mule, etc.
Metaphor is the most frequent figure of speech. It compares two unlike objects having something
in common. The metaphor may deal with a person, object, process, or situation. It allows expression of an individual outlook.
In Elizabethan love lyrics a number of standard metaphors appear, e.g. cheeks are “roses”;
eyes are “rising suns” or “stars”; hair is “gold wires”; lips are “cherries”;
Metonymy: the association of one object with another, e.g. “crown” may mean kingdom; bottle means wine; “I’ve drunk a cup” (i.e. a cup of tea). all hands on deck; The White House supports the bill, Lend me your ear.
synecdoche is a trope similar to metonymy in which part is used to signify the whole, e.g. a farm hand means a farm labourer; sail means ship. Poland won the football match.
11. The characteristic features of epic and lyric poetry A lyric is a non-narrative poem in which the poet expresses his feelings, makes a statement about life or creates an image.The lyrical poet is an interpreter of the inward world.
Epic: An extended narrative poem, usually simple in construction, but grand in scope, exalted in style, and heroic in theme, often giving expression to the ideals of a nation or race.
12. Ballad, ode, sonnet, pastoral poetry. Ballad- One of the oldest forms of poetry is a special kind of narrative poem known as the ballad. These anonymous stories in songs were concerned with sharp conflicts and deep human emotion. Ballads differ from ordinary narrative poems in these ways: They usually involve common, everyday people (although there are ballads about nobles, too).They ordinarily deal with physical courage and/or tragic love. They contain little characterisation or description; the action moves forward mainly through dialogue. Much of the story is told indirectly. Examples: Robin Hood, the Monk, the Three Ravens.
Ode-An ode is a poem praising and glorifing a person, place or thing. There are two types of odes based on the classical poets Pindar and Horace, respectively called the Pindaric and Horatian ode. Percy Byshe Shelley,”Ode to the West Wind”,John Keats ”Ode on a Grecian Urn”.
Sonnet-Before Shakespeare’s day, the word “sonnet” meant simply “little song,” i.e., a short lyric poem. In Renaissance Italy & Elizabethan England, the sonnet became a fixed poetic form, consisting of 14 lines, usually iambic pentameter in English.
Pastoral poetry: Pastoral poetry celebrates idealised rural life and love between shepherds and shepherdesses. The first
pastorals were written by the Greek poet Theocritus (c. 316 - c. 260 BC). The Roman poet Virgil imitated
Theocritus in his Eclogues. The most memorable examples of Elizabethan pastoral poetry include
Edmund Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar
13. Iambic pentametre. Iambic pentameter is one of the most commonly used measures in English poetry. A line of iambic pentameter comprises five consecutive iambs. Iambic -An unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one, e.g. ”To be or not to be …” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet) „Come live with me and be my love”. (Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd”)
14. Rhythm and rhyme. Internal rhyme, assonance: Rhythm is a flow of speech characterised by regular recurrence of certain phonetic elements such as beat
or accent. It is based on the opposition of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm may be regular or varied. There are three kinds of rhymes: single or masculine rhymes between words ending in stressed syllable: day/say, awake/forsake; double or feminine rhymes between words in which the first syllable is stressed and the last is unstressed, e.g. daily/gaily; triple rhymes between words in which the first syllable is stressed and the last two are unstressed, e.g. tenderly/slenderly. Rhymes can be full or complete, e.g. deep/sleep or incomplete, e.g.
flesh/fresh. Rhymes are arranged within a stanza. We may distinguish between end-of-line rhymes and
internal rhymes. End-of-line rhymes appear at the terminal words or syllables in a line. Internal rhymes occur inside a verse. For example: “Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary...”(E.A. Poe); “The rhyme scheme is the pattern of end-of-line rhymes in a stanza, e.g. abba.
15. Blank verse and free verse. Poetry written without rhymes, but which retains a set metrical pattern, usually iambic pentameter (five iambic feet per line) in English verse. In lyric poetry, blank verse is adaptable to lengthy descriptive and meditative poems. Free verse is a typical form of modern poetry. It usually has no regular stanza and metric pattern.
16. Types of irony Irony
• verbal irony,
• irony of situation,
• cosmic irony or irony of fate,
• dramatic irony,
• Socratic irony.
Verbal irony-In verbal irony we have a discrepancy between the meaning of what the speaker says and what the situation indicates the speaker means by it. It rains cats and dogs] ”Oh, what a lovely day for a stroll."
Dramatic irony- in dramatic irony we have a discrepancy between a speaker's understanding of the full situation and the situation as some audience understands it.
Situational irony. In Noel Coward's movie Cavalcade, extremely happy honeymooners wonder how long their joy will last. The camera pulls back to reveal a life preserver stenciled “RMS Titanic.”
Socratic irony takes place when someone (classically a teacher) pretends to be foolish or ignorant, to expose the ignorance of another (and the teaching-audience, but not the student-victim, realizes the teacher's plot).
17. Classical literary genres and some new literary genres: Genres
Genre denotes a category, class, type or structural form of literary works. The classical literary genres, established by Aristotle in his Poetics and reinforced by Horace, included epic, lyric, comedy, tragedy and satire.
• A precise assessment of the genre of certain literary texts may be very difficult and confusing.
• In some literary texts, particularly in prose fiction, diverse genres may coexist.
• There are many types, or genres, of literature. We often think of poetry, prose, and drama, and each of these genres, can be broken down into more specific forms, such as comedy, tragedy, epic, science fiction, romance, mystery and satire.
18. Monologue, dialogue, soliloquy, aside (in a drama).
Aside Sometimes a character makes a comment, known as an aside, which other characters are not supposed to hear. In Shakespeare's Othello, Iago voices his inner thoughts a number of times as "asides" for the play's audience.
Dialogue is essential in a drama because it (1) advances the plot, (2) reveals characters, their moods, relationships to each other, (3) foreshadows events, etc.
A monologue is when a character speaks alone. A special kind of monologue in a traditional drama is soliloquy when a character steps to the side of the stage to think aloud. The most famous soliloquy is perhaps Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.”
19. The origins of drama. The medieval dramatic genres. The term ‘drama’ comes from Greek. It means action. Drama is thus imitated human action on a stage. It seems that drama developed from ritual, first in Greece and then in its revived form in the Middle Ages. The first works of dramatic literature date back to the 6th century BC. The origins of ancient Greek drama
can be found in:
1. folk celebrations,
2. myths, 3. seasonal festivals with appropriate symbolic actions
20. The main elements of a dramatic play. Action and characters (protagonists) are the two main elements of the drama.
21. Explain the difference between the climactic and episodic structure of a dramatic play. Climactic structure Its plot begins quite late in the story and there are a limited number of characters and scenes. The events have usually a cause-and-effect-structure. Examples of plays with a climactic plot structure include Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Macbeth.
Episodic * Plot begins relatively early in the story and moves through a series of episodes
*Covers a longer period of time: weeks, months, and sometimes years
* Many short, fragmented scenes; sometimes an alternation of short and long scene
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