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Literary
Terms and Definitions: P
This page is under perpetual
construction! It was last updated
April 14,
2008.
This list is meant to assist,
not intimidate. Use it as a touchstone for important concepts
and vocabulary that we will cover during the term.
Vocabulary terms are listed
alphabetically.
[A]
[B] [C]
[D] [E]
[F] [G]
[H] [I]
[J] [K]
[L] [M]
[N]
[O] [P]
[Q] [R]
[S] [T]
[U] [V]
[W] [X]
[Y] [Z]
P
TEXT, THE (Also called the P Document):
In biblical scholarship, the common editorial abbreviation for the Priestly
Text (see below,
or click here for more detailed
discussion.).
PAEAN:
Among the earliest Greeks, the word paean signifies
"a dance and hymn
with a specific rhythm which is endued with an absolving in
healing power" (Burkett 44). In later usage, any song
of praise to a deity is called a paean.
PALATAL:
In linguistics, any sound involving the hard palate--especially
the tongue touching or moving toward the hard palate.
PALATAL
DIPTHONGIZATION: A sound change in which
either the ash
or the /e/ sound in Old English
words became a diphthong when preceded by palatal consonants.
For instance, Modern English cheese
comes from Old English ciese,
wich is a cognate of Latin caseus.
Scholars can tell the word in Old English must have been adopted
after the time of palatal diphthongization--otherwise it would
have a simple /e/ sound rather
than the diphthong. Thus, palatal dipthongization is useful
for philologists who wish to date a borrowed word in Old English.
PALATALIZATION:
In linguistics, the process of making a sound more palatal--i.e.,
moving the blade of the tongue closer to the hard palate.
PALATOVELAR:
In linguistics, a sound that is either palatal
or velar.
PALINDROME:
A word, sentence, or verse that reads the same way backward
or foreward. Certain words in English naturally function as
palindromes: for instance, civic, rotor, race
car, radar, level and so on. However, when individuals
seek to combine several words at once, the result becomes
a sort of perverse art. Here are some longer English examples
culled from J. A. Cuddon's Dictionary of Literary
Terms and Literary Theory:
- Madame,
I'm Adam.
- Sir,
I'm Iris.
- Able
was I ere I saw Elba. (attributed
apocryphally to Napoleon, who was exiled on Elba, though
in historical fact he apparently spoke no English!)
- A
man, a plan, a canal: Panama!
- Sex
at noon taxes.
- "Lewd
did I live & evil I did dwel."
(anonymous 18th-century gravestone)
- Straw?
No, too stupid a fad; I put soot on warts!
- "Deliver
desserts," demanded Nemesis--emended, named, stressed,
reviled.
- T.
Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I'd
assign it a name: "Gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet."
(W. H. Auden)
- Stop
Syrian! I start at rats in airy spots!
The tradition goes back
a long ways. Cuddon notes several, including a Greek palindrome
inscribed on a vial of holy water in Saint Sophia's church
in Constantinople that translates as "Wash
not only my face, but also my sins."
A Latin example is the palindrome, "In
girum imus nocte et consumimur igni"
which means "We [moths] fly in circles by night and we
will be consumed in fire." Probably the most excessive
use of palindromes is the 1802 collection by Ambrose Pamperis,
in which Pamperis writes 416 palindromic verses celebrating
Catherine the Great's military campaigns (See Cuddon 673-74).
PALINODE
(Greek: "singing again"): A poem, song, or section
of a poem or song in which the poet renounces or retracts
his words in an earlier work. Usually this is meant to apologize
or counterbalance earlier material.
The first recorded use
of the palinode is a lyric written by the Greek author Stesichorus
(7th century BCE), in which he retracts his earlier statement
claiming that the Trojan War was entirely Helen's fault. Ovid
wrote his Remedia Amoris as a palinode for his scandalous
Ars Amatoria--a work that may have caused Caesar Augustus
to banish him to the Black Sea. As a theme, the palinode is
especially common in religious poetry and love poetry. The
use of the palinode became conventional in patristic and medieval
writings--as evidenced in Augustine, Bede, Giraldus Cambrensis,
Jean de Meun, Sir Lewis Clifford, and others.
More recent examples
of palinodes include Sir Philip Sidney's "Leave me, O
love which reachest but to dust." Here, his palinode
renounces the poetry of sexual love for that of divine grace.
Likewise, Chaucer's Legend of Good Women includes a
palinode in which the author "takes back" what he
said about unfaithful women like Criseyde in Troilus and
Criseyde. At the end of the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
goes so far as to write a retraction for all his secular literature.
See also retraction.
PANGLOSSIAN (Grk.
pan "everything" + Lat. glossare "to
explain or comment upon"): The word is an eponym based
on the fictional Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire's satire, Candide.
Dr. Pangloss is a naively
optimistic pedant who upholds the doctrine that "all
is for the best," and that "we live in the best
of all possible worlds," claiming that a benevolent
deity creates all things for positive purposes, and if
we could only decipher cause/effect
accurately, we would see this. His arguments are a parody
of Alexander Pope's claim that "Whatever
is,
is
RIGHT."
Voltaire
uses
Pangloss
as
a straw-man in Candide,
and Voltaire tries to show through the more inane Panglossian
arguments that, in fact, the world is a highly flawed place
and it does not live up to its ideal possibilities.
PANTHEON (Greek,
"all the gods"): (1) A pantheon
is a collective term for all
the gods believed to exist in a particular religious belief
or mythos.
Thus, we can talk of the Hittite pantheon, the Greek pantheon,
etc. (2) The Pantheon is a great
temple in Rome dedicated to all the Olympian gods, not
to be confused with the Parthenon,
the great temple dedicatd to the virgin goddess Athena,
which is situated on top of the Acropolis in Athens.
PAPAL
INDULGENCE: See discussion under pardoner.
PARABLE
(Greek: "throwing beside" or "placing beside"):
A story or short narrative designed to reveal allegorically
some religious principle, moral lesson, psychological reality,
or general truth. Rather than using abstract discussion,
a
parable always teaches by comparison with real or literal
occurrences--especially "homey" everyday occurrences a wide
number of people can relate to. Well-known examples of
parables
include those found in the synoptic Gospels, such as "The
Prodigal Son" and "The Good Samaritan." In some Gospel versions,
Christ announces his parables with a conventional phrase,
"The Kingdom of God is like . . . ." Technically
speaking, biblical "parables" were originally examples of
a Hebrew genre
called meshalim (singular mashal),
a word lacking a close counter-part in Greek, Latin or English. Meshalim
in Hebrew refer to "mysterious speech," i.e., spiritual riddles
or enigmas the speaker couches in story-form. Thus, in Matthew
13:11 and Mark 4:11-12, Christ states that he speaks in parables
so that outsiders will not be able to understand
his teachings. It is only late in the Greek New Testament
that
these meshalim are conflated with parables or allegorical
readings designed for ease of understanding.
Non-religious works can
be parables as well. For example, Melville's Billy Budd
demonstrates that absolute good--such as the impressionable,
naive young sailor--may not co-exist with absolute evil--the
villain Claggart. Cf. fable,
allegory,
and symbolism,
or click here for a PDF
handout discussing the differences between these terms.
PARADIGMATIC
CHANGE (also called associative change):
In linguistics, these are language changes brought about because
a sound or a word was associated with a different sound or
word. Algeo provides the following example:
.
. . The side of a ship on which it was laden (that is
loaded)
was called the ladeboard, but its opposite, starboard,
influenced a change in pronunication to larboard.
Then, because larboard was likely to be confused
with starboard because of their similarity of
sound, it was generally replaced by port. (11)
PARADOX
(also called oxymoron): Using contradiction in a manner that
oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Common paradoxes
seem to reveal a deeper
truth through their contradictions, such as noting that "without
laws, we can have no freedom." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
also makes use of a famous paradox: "Cowards die many times
before their deaths" (2.2.32). Richard
Rolle uses an almost continuous string of paradoxes
in his Middle English work, "Love is Love That Lasts
For Aye." Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" notes
"And all men kill the thing they love." The
taoist master Lao-Tzu makes extraordinary use of paradox
in the Tao-te
Ching in his discussion of "the Way."
- PARAGRAM:
A sub-type of pun. See discussion under pun.
PARALANGUAGE:
The non-verbal features that accompany speech and help convey
meaning. For example, facial expression, gesticulation, body
stance, and tone can help convey additional meaning to the
spoken word; these are all examples of communication through
paralanguage.
- PARALLELISM:
When the writer establishes similar
patterns of grammatical structure and length. For instance,
"King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise,
and equitable." The previous sentence has parallel
structure in use of adjectives. However, the following sentence
does not use parallelism: "King Alfred tried
to make clear laws that had precision and were equitable."
If the writer uses
two parallel structures, the result is isocolon parallelism:
"The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
If there are three
structures, it is tricolon parallelism: "That government
of the people, by the people, and for the people shall
not perish from the earth." Or, as one student wrote,
"Her purpose was to impress the ignorant, to perplex the
dubious, and to startle the complacent." Shakespeare used
this device to good effect in Richard II when King
Richard laments his unfortunate position:
- I'll
give my jewels for a set of beads,
- My
gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
- My
gay apparel for an almsman's gown,
- My
figured goblets for a dish of wood . . . . (3.3.170-73)
PARANOMASIA:
The technical Greek term for what English-speakers commonly
refer to as a "pun." See extended discussion under
pun, below.
-
PARAPHRASE:
A brief restatement in one's own words of all or part of
a literary or critical work, as opposed to quotation, in
which one reproduces all or part of a literary or critical
work word-for-word, exactly.
-
- PARARHYME:
Wilfred Owen's term for a slant
rhyme. An example appears in his poem, "Strange
Meeting," in which Owen rhymes words like years
/ yours and tigress / progress.
PARATAXIS:
Rhetorically juxtaposing two clauses without any connecting
conjunction;
i.e. a loose association of clauses as opposed to hypotaxis.
A common form of parataxis is asyndeton,
in which expected conjunctions fail to appear for artistic
reasons. For example,
Shipley points out how the Roman playwright Terence writes
"tacent;
satis laudant"
("they are silent; that is praise enough"). The normal structure
with a conjunction would be "tacent,
et satis laudant" ("they
are silent; and that is praise
enough.") See Shipley 422-23 for this discussion and a comparison
among Greek and Latin and English writers. Paratactic style
is typically short and simple--like Hemingway's writing.
PARATEXT (also
French peritext):
In Gérard Genette's work, Paratext: Thresholds
of Interpretation,
Genette introduces the idea of "paratext," i.e., anything
external to the text itself that influences the way
we read a text. These "paratexts" can be almost infinite
in number, but they might include a list of other works
the author has published listed on
the front
cover, the gender of the author as indicated by his or
her name, reviews written about the book, and editorial
commentary about the work. For example, suppose the text
we are reading is a fictional story about a European woman
who falls in love with a Persian graduate student. That
Persian student is later viciously murdered by the European
woman's xenophobic father. If we see the author's name
is "Susan Jones" we might interpret the
text
differently than if we saw the author's name was "Achmed
bin Jaffah,"
for instance. If the same author wrote a number of murder
mysteries, we might be especially prone to read this new
text as influenced by that early genre work, or even expect
the current text to be (rightly or wrongly) yet another
murder mystery. If we read a review calling attention to
the theme
of lust in a work, we might experience the book differently
than if we had read a different review focusing on the
theme of intolerance. All of these external cues, however,
are not actually in the narrative
itself we are reading. Thus, they are paratextual. A New
Critic from the 1930s would probably argue that all paratexts
are irrelevant to determining the meaning of literary art,
and the paratextual should be ignored accordingly. Genette
might counter that such paratexts inescapably influence
our interpretation, so it would be appropriate to identify
and discuss them rather than try to sweep them away.
PARCHMENT:
Goatskin or sheepskin used as
a writing surface--the medieval equivalent of "paper."
A technical distinction is usually made between parchment
and vellum,
which is made from the hide of young calves. As Michelle P. Brown
notes in Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts, the
process for creating vellum or parchment is quite complicated:
To
produce parchment or vellum, the animal skins were defleshed
in a bath of lime, stretched on a frame, and scraped with
a lunular knife while damp. they could then be treated with
pumice, whitened with a substance such as chalk, and cut to
size. Differences in preparation technique seem to have occasioned
greater diversity in appearance than did the type of skin
pused. Parchment supplanted papyrus as the most popular writing
support material in the fourth century, although it was known
earlier. Parchment was itself largely replaced by paper in
the sixteenth century (with the rise of printing) but remained
in use for certain high-grade books. (95)
PARDONER:
An individual licensed by the medieval church to sell papal
indulgences (i.e., "pardons"), official documents
excusing the recipient from certain acts of penitence and
alleviating the sinner's punishment while in purgatory.
The Catholic Encyclopedia
defines an indulgence as "the extra-sacramental remission
of the temporal punishment due" to a sinner. Protestant
students might wish to peruse the Catholic Encyclopedia's
discussion
of indulgences to avoid common misconceptions and distortions.
The practice of selling these pardons as a means of fund-raising
for the church or as a means of rewarding those who offered
the church some service rose in prominence after the council
of Clermont in 1095. There, Pope Urban II announced sweeping
indulgences would be given to any individuals willing to go
on Crusade. By the fourteenth century, the practice had developed
extensively, and pardoners were lay officials authorized
by the pope to sell indulgences in exchange for financial
donations. Ecclesiastical abuses become commonplace problems.
These abuses included unauthorized sales, the sale of forged
pardons, extortion, and deliberate misrepresentation of the
scope of an indulgence (i.e., treating the indulgence as a
"get-out-of-hell-free" card). Chaucer's Pardoner
in The Canterbury Tales represents the worst excesses
of pardoners during this period.
PARDONS:
Another term for papal indulgences. See discussion under pardoner.
PARODOS:
In Greek tragedy, the ceremonial entrance of the chorus. Usually
the chorus at this time chants a lyric relating to the main
theme of the play.
PARODY
(Greek: "beside, subsidiary, or mock song"): A parody
imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of
a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same
features. The humorist achieves parody by exaggerating certain
traits common to the work, much as a caricaturist creates
a humorous depiction of a person by magnifying and calling
attention to the person's most noticeable features. The term
parody is often used synonymously with the more general
term spoof,
which makes fun of the general traits of a genre rather
than one particular work or author. Often the subject-matter
of a parody is comically inappropriate, such as using the
elaborate, formal diction of an epic to describe something
trivial like washing socks or cleaning a dusty attic.
Aristotle attributes the
first Greek parody to Hegemon of Thasos in The Poetics,
though other writings credit the playwright Hipponax with
the first creation of theatrical parody. Aristophanes makes
use of parody in The Frogs (in which he mocks the style
of Euripides and Aeschylus). Plato also caricatures the style
of various writers in the Symposium. In the Middle
Ages, the first well-known English parody is Chaucer's "Sir
Thopas," and Chaucer is himself the basis of parodies
written by Alexander Pope and W. W. Skeat. Cervantes creates
a parody of medieval romance in Don Quixote. Rabelais
creates parodies of similar material in Gargantua and
Pantagruel. Erasmus parodies medieval scholastic writings
in Moriae Encomium. In Shamela (1741), Henry
Fielding makes a parody of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela
by turning the virtuous serving girl into a spirited and sexually
ambitious character who merely uses coyness and false chasteness
as a tool for snagging a husband. In Joseph Andews
(1742), Henry Fielding again parodies Samuel Richardson's
novel Pamela, this time by replacing Richardson's sexually
beleaguered heroine, Pamela, with a hearty male hero who must
defend his virtue from the sexually voracious Lady Booby.
In the Romantic period, Southey, Wordsworth, Browning, and
Swinburne were the victims of far too many parodies in far
too many works to list here. See also mock
epic, satire,
and spoof.
PAROLE (French,
"speech"): In Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of semiology,
parole is the use of language--i.e., manifestations
of actual speech and writing. Parole contrasts with langue,
the invisible underlying
system of language that makes parole possible.
PART
(Latin partum, "a piece"): An actor's role
in a play, the character the actor portrays or pretends to
be. The term comes from Renaissance drama. Since it was too
expensive in Shakespeare's day to print playbooks for every
single actor involved in a play, penny-pinching acting companies
would only give each actor a roll of paper called a "part";
the part would list the dialogue for one character and all
the cues belonging to that character (Greenblatt 1140). The
term role, synonymous with "part," is similarly
derived from such rolls of paper (ibidem).
PARTIBLE
SUCCESSION: The opposite of primogeniture,
partible succession is the practice in which all the children
share equally in an inheritance. Under this legal system,
if a property-owner or king dies, the deceased's lands, money,
or kingdom would be split into equal shares for each surviving
child. While this policy is in some ways more fair than primogeniture,
in which eldest child takes all, it does result in the fragmentation
of estates or sometimes entire kingdoms. In the late medieval
period, primogeniture was the common practice in much of Europe
and Britain, but in the early "dark ages," partible
succession was notoriously common among some Celtic tribes
in England and the Merovingian and Frankish tribes of France
and Germany. This practice is behind King Lear's sycophantic
games in the first act of King Lear, as the play
is set in ancient Celtic times, though the subplot about Edgar
involves the much later later practice of primogeniture.
PASSUS
(Latin, "step"): William Langland uses the term
passus to refer to each numbered subdivision of his
poem, The Vision of Piers Plowman. The idea is each
section is a "step" toward salvation or spiritual
truth. Cf. canto
and fit.
PASTORAL
(Latin pastor, "shepherd"): An artistic
composition dealing with the life of shepherds or with a simple,
rural existence. It usually idealized shepherds' lives in
order to create an image of peaceful and uncorrupted existence.
More generally, pastoral describes the simplicity, charm,
and serenity attributed to country life, or any literary convention
that places kindly, rural people in nature-centered activities.
The Greek Theocritus (316-260 BCE) first used the convention
in his Idylls, though pastoral compositions also appear
in Roman literature, in Shakespeare's plays, and in the writings
of the Romantic poets. Typically, pastoral liturgy depicts
beautiful scenery, carefree shepherds, seductive nymphs, and
rural songs and dances. Conventional names for the shepherds
and nymphs come from bastardized Latin nicknames such as Mopsy,
Flopsy, and Dorcas (from Mopsius, Doricas,
etc.). See also pastoral elegy under elegy.
PASTORAL
ELEGY: See discussion under pastoral
and elegy.
PATHOS
(Greek, "emotion"): In its rhetorical sense,
pathos is a writer or speaker's attempt to inspire
an emotional reaction in an audience--usually a deep feeling
of suffering, but sometimes joy, pride, anger, humor, patriotism,
or any of a dozen other emotions. You can read more about
rhetorical uses for pathos
here. In its critical sense, pathos signifies a scene
or passage designed to evoke the feeling of pity or sympathetic
sorrow in a reader or viewer.
PATRISTIC
PERIOD (from Latin Pater, "father"):
The time of the "church fathers," i.e., the time
of the early Church and the Church's first theologians, running
through the last days of the apostles through the time of
Saint Augustine's conversion and Saint Jerome's compilation
of the Bible in the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ.
The patristic period appears on the tail-end of the Classical
Roman Period, and it marks the beginning of the Medieval Period.
Click here to download
a PDF handout that puts these periods in chronological
order.
PATROLOGIA GRAECA:
See discussion under Patrologia Latina, below.
PATROLOGIA
LATINA: A famous (or perhaps infamous) scholarly
collection of 228+ fat volumes of biblical and theological
commentary that has been both a boon and bane to twentieth-century
medieval scholarship. The Patrologia Graeca
reproduces a series of Greek writings from the patristic and
medieval Christian writers, while the Patrologia Latina
covers the same sort of material in Latin sources. These works
are often not available in print in any other texts. This
collection, known familiarly as the PL or "the Migne"
(after one of its French editors), includes vast quantities
of theological interpretations, Biblical exegesis, typological
and anti-typological discussion, medieval treatises on hagiography,
medieval medicine, lapidary lore, and oodles of relevant materials
necessary for students seeking to understand the medieval
world and medieval literature. Unfortunately, the material
is all in Latin, with facing French translations, which makes
it less useful for English-speakers hindered by linguistic
inabilities. Additionally, a series of editors compiled the
volumes of the PL and they did not follow the same system
of cataloging and organization as their predecessors. The
result is a confusing mishmash that requires four volumes
of indices and an additional index to the indices. Four generations
of scholars have blessed the PL as an astonishing and ambitious
collection of medieval lore, while simultaneously cursing
it as a devilish, misorganized amalgam riddled with errors,
typos, and blunders in pagination. The PL is being displaced
from its throne by the Corpus Christianorum, an electronic
collection superseding the older half-edited material. However,
major research libraries at this time are more likely to have
an old, dusty set of shelves devoted to the PL than to have
an expensive, computerized copy of the Corpus Christianorum.
For a student of medieval literature who can speak Latin,
the best starting spot is the index to the indices, and from
there work one's way backward. If any readers find a library
that is about to throw away or sell its copies of the PL,
please contact me at kip@hwaet.org.
I would like to have a copy myself, provided I can find a
room large enough to store all 228 of these books.
PATRON:
See discussion under patronage,
below.
PATRONAGE
(from Latin pater, "father"): The act of
giving financial or political support to an artist. A person
who provides financial support for an artist is known as a
patron regardless of his or her gender. Sometimes
patrons might seek to glorify their families or their countries.
For instance, the Emperor Augustus was a patron for Virgil.
Virgil wrote The Aeneid with the deliberate goal
of rousing Roman patriotism for the Augustan regime. Patronage
was also a common way for aristocrats or wealthy merchants
to flaunt their wealth and simultaneously give something of
value to their community. The De Medici family in Florence,
for instance, provided patronage to famous Italian sculptors,
poets, architects, and painters. In England, John of Gaunt
and Richard II both served as patrons for Chaucer at various
points in his career. Many literary works are dedicated to
a patron. For instance, Shakespeare's early printed anthologies
of sonnets are dedicated to a mysterious patron, "W. H."
In Renaissance drama, acting companies were required to have
an important noble or royal family member as a patron, for
actors not in the service of such illustrious individuals
were punishable as vagabonds and tramps. Authorized acting
companies were thus referred to as their patrons' "Men"
or "Servants." For most of Shakespeare's dramatic
career, his acting company was first known as the Lord Chamberlain's
Men. After Queen Elizabeth died, the name was changed to the
King's Men in 1603, when King James I ascended the throne
and took up patronage of the company.
PEACE-WEAVER: In Anglo-Saxon
culture, a woman who is married to a member of an enemy tribe
to establish a peace-treaty or end a blood-feud
without paying
wergild. This was a vital role for women
in Anglo-Saxon custom--but probably also a stressful and
dangerous
responsibility. Hildeburh and Freawaru in Beowulf
and the speaker of "The Wife's Lament" are probably
examples of characters in Old English literature who are
peace-weavers.
PEASANTS'
REVOLT: Also known as Wat Tyler's Rebellion,
this uprising occurred in 1387 when lower-class Londoners
and workers
from the surrounding areas, fed up with repressive government
measures such as the Labor Statutes of 1351, marched
on London
and incinerated the Savoy palace belonging to John of Gaunt
and damaged property belonging to other noblemen, appealing
directly to the young king, Richard II, for his intervention.
The rebels burned unfavorable contracts and records
of debt.
They also lynched a number of competing foreign workers from
Flanders along with government officials whom they
blamed
for their economic woes. According to legend, they chanted,
"When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"
(i.e., when Adam and Eve first existed, who was an aristocrat?)
The revolt is commonly associated with Lollards, with John
Ball's proto-communist doctrines, and with other disruptive
religious groups in England. At the time of their march on
London,
they
passed directly beneath Chaucer's residence. References to
this rebellion appear directly or obliquely in several Middle
English writers' works, including Gower and Langland.
PEER-REVIEWED
JOURNAL: Also called a refereed journal,
a juried publication, a scholarly
journal, or a critical journal,
a peer-reviewed journal is a periodical publication with strict
standards for accuracy and clear thinking. Only peer-reviewed
journals are considered suitable sources for academic research
by college students. Most are published two to four times
a year. These publications are held in such high esteem because,
when an article is submitted for publication, it is passed
on to two or three other experts in the field; they in turn
critique the author's thinking and check the article's claims
and facts to make sure it is as accurate as possible and (theoretically)
free from distorting political, religious, ideological bias;
citation errors; logical fallacies; and misattributions. This
contrasts with a book, in which only a copy-editor or two
will check for typos, but nobody challenges the author's ideas,
and it contrasts even more starkly with a web page like this
one, in which no official structure is consistently available
to ensure scholarly accuracy let alone find all the typos.
Good college students learn to use peer-reviewed journals;
they do not rely on Google and web-browsing for their primary
information. Some of the most important peer-reviewed journals
for medieval literature students in English include The
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Medievalia
et Humanistica, Medium Aevum, Arthuriana,
Medieval Studies, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen,
the PMLA, Philological Quarterly, Reading
Medieval Studies, Speculum, Chaucer Review,
and Studies in the Age of Chaucer. The tell-tale
signs of a scholarly journal are its typically copious footnotes,
the absence of advertisements or glossy photographs, often
its plain, unadorned cover, its guidelines in the back or
front for scholarly submissions, and its pages, which are
typically on expensive acid-free paper to ensure archival
survival. Often libraries do have these journals available
in electronic databases (such as JSTOR) that can be searched
as easily and as efficiently as webpages, so students have
no excuse for not using them. If you need help, contact your
teacher or a reference librarian. Bribe this helper with chocolate.
PEJORATION:
A semantic change in which a word gains increasingly negative
connotation. For instance, the word lewd originally
referred to laymen as opposed to priests. It underwent pejoration
to mean "ignorant," then "base" and finally
"obscene," which is the only surviving meaning in
Modern English usage. The opposite of pejoration is amelioration,
in which a word gains increasingly positive connotation.
PEN
NAME: Another term for nom
de plume.
The word indicates a fictitious name that a writer employs
to conceal his or her identity. For example, Samuel Clemens
used the pen name "Mark Twain." William Sydney Porter
wrote his short stories under the pen name "O. Henry."
Mary Ann Cross used the pen name "George Eliot"
to hide that she was a female writer, just as science-fiction
writer Alice Bradley Sheldon used the pen name "James
Tiptree, Junior." Ben Franklin used a variety of pen
names such as "Silence Do-good," Jonathan Swift
once used the name Lemuel Gulliver, and so on. Writers might
choose to use a pen name as a way to keep a certain name associated
with certain types of work, so that a writer might use one
name for westerns and another name for science fiction novels.
Other authors might seek to hide their identity to avoid negative
repercussions (such as hate-mail, imprisonment, lynch-mobs,
or even execution--all of these misfortunes can and do occur
to authors, especially those writing in totalitarian regimes).
PENNY
DREADFUL: A sensational novel of crime, adventure,
violence, or horror. The term is an English archaism
referring to cheaply printed books bound in paper at only
a few pennies' cost. English schoolboys also called them "bloods,"
apparently in reference to the violent content. The equivalent
term in American slang is "dime-novel," again referring
to the cheap price, or "pulp fiction," referring
to the cheap wood-pulp pressed to make the paper. My personal
favorite penny dreadful from pre-1800 writing is Varney
the Vampire: Or, The Feast of Blood! The title gives
some indication of the content.
PENTAMETER:
When poetry consists of five feet in each line, it is written
in pentameter. Each foot
has a set number of syllables. Iambs, spondees, and trochees
are feet consisting of two syllables. Thus, iambic pentameter,
spondaic pentameter, and trochaic pentameter lines would have
a total of ten syllables. Anapests and dactyls are feet consisting
of three syllables. Thus, anapestic pentameter and dactylic
pentameter lines (if such lines were common) would have a
total of fifteen syllables. See foot
and meter.
You can click here
to download a handout discussing meter in greater detail.
PENTATEUCH: The first
five books of the Hebrew Bible--i.e., Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
PERFECT
RHYME: Another term for exact rhyme or true rhyme. See
exact rhyme.
PERFORMATIVE
LANGUAGE:
See discussion under speech act theory.
PERICOPE (Grk,
"section"; the last syllable rhymes with "dopey"):
(1) In biblical studies, a story, brief passage, or selection
from gospel narrative or passage found embedded inside
another story, narrative, or passage. (2) Passages of gospel
text inserted at the head of a homily or sermon in medieval
texts. See frame
narrative.
PERIOD:
See discussion under periodization
and periods
of English literature.
PERIODIC
ESSAY: The forefather of modern periodicals like
magazines and literary journals, these publications contained
essays appearing at regular intervals (monthly, quarterly,
and so on). The subject-matter varied from current events,
literary criticism, social commentary, fashion, geographic
and architectural features of London, childhood memories,
and whatever other reverie entered the author's head. The
essays often began with a Latin epigraph as a rhetorical flourish
illustrating the good taste and education of the "gentleman
author," a practice that has fallen out of favor in more
fiercely democratic and egalitarian times. The first literary
periodicals were French. They included Journals des Scavans
(1665). Italian ones followed such as Giornale de Letterati
(1668). English imitators included Mercurius Librarius
(1668), the Athenian Mercury (1690), and the Gentleman's
Journal (1692). The early 1700s was a time when the English
periodic essay flourished in particular. This time was especially
important in the development of the modern periodical and
in the growing acceptance of the essay as a valid genre.
Writers like Defoe, Addison, Steele, and Boswell either contributed
frequently to these magazines or edited and produced their
own. The Tatler (1709), the Spectator (1711),
and the Guardian (1731), all established by Addison
and Steele, became profoundly influential in shaping the writing
habits and publication customs of the modern world. Most of
these publications ran for only two or three years before
vanishing, but some lasted for decades. The Gentleman's
Magazine first came out in 1731 and the last issue appeared
in 1907, for instance, and the Quarterly Review (1809)
was still being published as of 1991, when I last subscribed.
PERIODIC
SENTENCE: A long sentence
that is not grammatically complete (and hence not intelligible
to the reader) until the reader reaches the final portion
of the sentence. An example is this sentence by Bret Harte:
And
pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet
in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow
lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of
the outcasts of Poker Flat.
The most common type of
periodic sentence involves a long phrase in which the verb
falls at the very end of the sentence after the direct object,
indirect object and other grammatical necessities. For example,
"For the queen, the lover, pleading
always at the heart's door, patiently waits."
In a non-periodic sentence, we would normally
write, "Always pleading at the
heart's door, the lover waits patiently for the
queen." The non-periodic sentence is clearer in
English. It tends to follow the subject-verb-object
pattern we are accustomed to. The periodic sentence is more
exotic and arguably more poetic, but initially confusing.
Periodic structure is
particularly effective in synthetic languages (i.e. languages
in which meaning does not depend on the order of words). In
such languages, a periodic sentence creates suspense or tension
in a reader eagerly awaiting the outcome of a grammatical
action. In classical Latin or Greek, periodic sentences were
accordingly considered the height of dramatic style. In English,
however, the result can become confusing or comic if the writer
loses control, as evidenced in the work of Victorian novelist
George Bulwer-Lytton, which has been much mocked by modern
readers. Milton's employs a periodic style in Paradise
Lost because he seeks boldly to imitate the features
of a classical epic--including
the very grammatical structure of the original Latin and Greek
works he loves and emulates. Compare to anastrophe.
PERIODIC
STYLE: A style of writing in which the sentences
tend to be periodic. See discussion under periodic
sentence, above. Periodic style in English is
usually considered indirect or artificially "artsy"
in comparison with the more straight-forward non-periodic
style.
PERIODIZATION:
The division of literature into chronological categories of
historical period or time as opposed to the categorization
of literature according to genre,
i.e., categories based on conventional features shared between
works of similar type. For instance, if I were organizing
my bookshelf, and I placed all the books from the early 1800s
on one shelf, and all the books written in the Victorian period
on the next shelf, and all the twentieth-century books on
the last shelf, I have organized my literature by periodization.
If, however, I placed all the books containing tragic drama
together on one shelf, ands placed all my Western novels on
another shelf, and put all the poetry collections on the last
shelf, I have organized my books according to genre.
(Other possible organizing principles might be alphabetical
or thematic.) Periodization is not always clear. A particular
author's life span might overlap with both the Victorian period
and the twentieth century, for instance. Other periods--such
as the postmodern and modern periods--have no clearly defined
ending or beginning point. Still, the intellectual exercise
can be useful for thinking about how particular literary artists
fit (or don't fit) into an era and for thinking about the
zeitgeist
or "spirit-of-the-age" in which they live.
PERIODS
OF ENGLISH LITERATURE: The common historical eras
scholars use to divide literature into comprehensible sections
through periodization.
Dividing literature into these sometimes arbitrary periods
allows us to better compare and contrast the writing, poetry,
and drama produced in different ages, to more easily trace
chains of influence from one writer to another, and to appreciate
more readily the connection between historical events and
intellectual trends. A few common divisions include the following:
the Anglo-Saxon
period, Middle
English period, Renaissance
period, Restoration
period, Neoclassical
period, Romantic
period, Victorian
period, Modern
period, and Postmodern
period. No universally accepted scheme exists for the divisions.
For instance, some editors or anthologists might lump both
the Anglo-Saxon and Middle English periods together as the
Medieval period. Another might subdivide the Renaissance into
the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and so on. Click here
for a PDF handout
listing the periods in more detail.
PERIODS OF LITERATURE:
See discussion under periods
of English literature.
PERIPETEA:
Another spelling of peripeteia.
See below.
PERIPETEIA
(Also spelled peripetea, Greek for "sudden change"):
The sudden reversal of fortune in a story, play, or any narrative
in which there is an observable change in direction. In tragedy,
this is often a change from stability and happiness toward
the destruction or downfall of the protagonist.
PERIPETY:
Another term for peripeteia.
See above. The word was particularly common in older English
writing.
PERSONA
(Plural, personae or personas; Latin,"mask"):
An external representation of oneself which might or might
not accurately reflect one's inner self, or an external representation
of oneself that might be largely accurate, but involves exaggerating
certain characteristics and minimizing others. One of the
most famous personae is that of the speaker in Jonathan
Swift's "A Modest Proposal." Here, the Irish author
Swift, outraged over Britain's economic exploitation of Ireland,
creates a speaker who is a well-to-do English intellectual,
getting on in years, who advocates raising and eating Irish
children as a means of economic advancement. Another famous
persona is Geoffrey Chaucer's narrator in The
Canterbury Tales, who presents himself as poetically
inept and somewhat dull. Contrast with alter
ego and poetic
speaker.
PERSONAL
ENDING: In linguistics and grammar, a verb inflection
that shows if the subject is first person, second person,
or third person.
PERSONAL
SYMBOL: Another term for
a private
symbol. See below.
PERSONIFICATION:
A trope in which
abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are given
human character, traits, abilities, or reactions. Personification
is particularly common in poetry, but it appears in nearly
all types of artful writing. Examples include Keat's treatment
of the vase in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," in which
the urn is treated as a "sylvan historian, who canst
thus express / A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme,"
or Sylvia Plath's "The Moon and the Yew Tree," in
which the moon "is a face in its own right, / White as
a knuckle and terribly upset. / It drags the sea after it
like a dark crime." When discussing the ways that animistic
religions personify natural forces with human qualities, scientists
refer to this process as "anthropomorphizing,"
sometimes with derogatory overtones. A special sub-type of
personification is prosopopoeia,
in which an inanimate object is given the ability of human
speech. Apostrophe
(not to be confused with the punctuation mark) is a special
type of personification in which a speaker in a poem or rhetorical
work pauses to address some abstraction that is not physically
present in the room. See prosopopoeia
below and apostrophe
above.
PETRARCHAN
CONCEIT: A conceit
used by the Italian poet Petrarch or similar to those he used.
In the Renaissance, English poets were quite taken with Petrarch's
conceits and recycled them in their own poetry. Examples include
comparing eyes to the stars or sun, hair to golden wires,
lips to cherries, women to goddesses, and so on. His oxymora,
such as freezing fire or burning ice, were also common.
PETRARCHAN
SONNET: See discussion under sonnet.
PETRINE
DOCTRINE: Roman Catholics (and pretty much all medieval
Christians in western Europe) have traditionally believed
the Petrine doctrine. The Petrine doctrine is the belief
that Saint Peter was given special authority by Christ that
has since passed on to each Pope. In the Gospel narratives,
Matthew 16:18-19, Christ states, "You
are Peter [petrus], the Rock [petros], and on
this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will
not prevail against it. To you I will give the keys to the
Kingdom of Heaven. What you bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven, and what you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
(A similar verse is found in John 21:15-17.) Medieval and
modern Catholics believed the Archbishop of Rome (i.e., the
Pope) was in direct apostolic lineage back to Saint Peter.
That means the Archbishop who anointed the Pope had been annointed
by others all the way back to Saint Peter. Thus, the Pope
inherited the same special authority Saint Peter had.
The Orthodox Greek church
did not share this belief. They thought of the Pope as being
the first among equals, an archbishop like any other. He did
not have authority to command the whole church. The two halves
of the medieval church in the West and the East argued about
this, but that was the sum of the dispute for several centuries.
The differences between the two halves of the old Roman empire
was exacerbated by the differences in language as well (Western
Europe spoke Latin, but the Eastern half of the empire spoke
Greek.) See also schism.
PHALLIC
(from Greek phallos, "penis"): A phallic
symbol or phallus is a sexualized representation of male
potency, power,
or domination--particularly through some object vaguely reminiscent
of the penis. Common phallic symbols include sticks, staves,
swords, clubs, towers, trees, missiles, and rockets. Contrast
with a yonic
symbol. See also herm.
PHALLUS:
See discussion under phallic.
PHATIC
COMMUNICATION: Exchanges or conversation designed
primarily not to transmit information, but rather to reinforce
social bonds, signal the beginning or end of a conversation,
or engage in ritual activities. For instance, if we pass a
stranger in the hallway and say, "Hi, howya doing?"
and pass on after a nod, the linguistic exchange was not an
actual request for data, but merely a politeness acknowledging
the other's presence. Similarly, "thanks for stopping
by" or "you're welcome, come again" are all
social lubricants to ease the transition to and from ritual
activity rather than attempts at factual communication. Phatic
communication is the term for this phenomenon.
PHILOSOPHY
(Greek, "Love of wisdom"): The methodical and systematic
exploration of what we know, how we know it, and why it is
important that we know it. Too frequently, students use the
term somewhat nebulously. They often mistakenly state, "My
philosophy about X is . . ." when they
really mean, "My opinion about X is . . ." or "My
attitude toward X is . . ." Traditional
areas of Western philosophic inquiry include the following
areas.
-
logic:
the use of critical thinking, particularly binary yes/no
thinking and inductive/deductive reasoning, as a means
of testing ideas and debate--logos.
-
epistemology:
the study of how we know things with any certainty and what
limitations there may be to our ability to think, perceive,
and understand
-
ontology:
the study of being and what constitutes objective and subjective
existence, and what it means to exist
-
ethical forensics:
the study of what is right and wrong, and why it is right
or wrong, and whether a common basis for of absolute morality
can be found outside the individual mind in the laws of
nature or the community
-
aesthetic
theory: the study
of what makes some things seem beautiful that have no practical
benefit and whether these things are necessary in some way
-
empirical
thought: the practice of controlling observable
phenomena to test hypotheses with repeatable experiments
(an idea that has become profoundly important for scientific
proof, though it is not, as many people mistakenly
argue,
the only basis for scientific proof)
-
metaphysics:
speculative thought about matters outside the perceivable
physical world
PHONEME:
The smallest sound or part of a word that actually has
meaning. For instance, in the word rerun,
the phonemes are re- and run.
However, the ru- or the r- by itself is not a meaningful
sound.
PHONETICS:
The study of phonemes.
PHONETIC
TRANSCRIPTION: Written symbols that linguists use
to represent speech sounds. One common transcription system
is the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). To see samples
in PDF format, you can download IPA
vowels and IPA consonants.
PHONOGRAM:
A written symbol that indicates a spoken sound. Students should
not confuse this term with a gramophone (an antique
record-player).
PHONOLOGY:
According to Algeo, "The units of sound (phonemes) of
a language with their possible arrangements and varieties
of vocal expression" (329). More generally, the study
of sounds and sound-systems in a language.
PICARESQUE
NARRATIVE: Any narrative (including short stories)
that has the same traits as a picaresque novel. See discussion
under picaresque
novel.
PICARESQUE
NOVEL (from Spanish
picaro, a rogue or thief; also called the picaresque
narrative and the Räuberroman
in German): A humorous novel in which the plot consists of
a young knave's misadventures and escapades narrated in comic
or satiric scenes. This roguish protagonist--called a picaro--makes
his (or sometimes her) way through cunning and trickery rather
than through virtue or industry. The picaro frequently
travels from place to place engaging in a variety of jobs
for several masters and getting into mischief. The picaresque
novel is usually episodic
in nature and realistic in its presentation of the seamier
aspects of society.
The genre
first emerged in 1553 in the anonymous Spanish work Lazarillo
de Tormes, and later Spanish authors like Mateo Aleman
and Fracisco Quevedo produced other similar works. The first
English specimen was Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller
(1594). Probably the most famous example of the genre
is French: Le Sage's Gil Blas (1715), which ensured
the genre's continuing influence on literature. Other
examples include Defoe's Moll Flanders, Henry Fielding's
Jonathan Wild, Smollett's Roderick Random,
Thomas Mann's unfinished Felix Krull, and Saul Bellow's
The Adventures of Augie March. The genre
has also heavily influenced episodic humorous novels as diverse
as Cervantes' Don Quixote and Mark Twain's The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn.
PICARO
(Spanish "thief," also called picaroon):
A knave or rascal who is the protagonist
in picaresque novels. See discussion under picaresque
novel, above.
PICTOGRAPH: See discussion
under ideograph.
PIDGIN:
A simplified, limited language combining features from
many
languages and used among persons who share no common language
amongst themselves. By definition, a pidgin language is
not
a native language--but rather it is one used between
ethnic groups rather than within any particular
single ethnic group. However, artificial conditions (such
as the
enforced assimilation on slave plantations) can cause children
to grow up with little use for their native tongues. This
can
cause the pidgin language to develop into a much richer creole.
PIECE-BIEN-FAIT:
The French term for the dramatic genre
called the "well-made play." See discussion under
well-made play.
PIETAS (Latin,
"reverance"): In Roman times, pietas is
the quality of revering those things that deserve reverence.
The word is the source for our
modern English word piety and piousness (reverence
toward the divine), but the Latin term is far more all-embracing--indicating
not only devotion to the gods, but also devotion to one's
gens (family) and patria (homeland or
country). Thus, it also means patriotism and familial responsibility.
In Virgil's Aeneid, one epithet frequently applied
to Aeneas is pius Aeneas, implying that
Aeneas particularly embodies this quality so valued by
the Romans.
PILGRIMAGE:
An act of spiritual devotion or penance in which an individual
travels without material comforts to a distant holy place.
The journey often has spiritual overtones--it may symbolize
a journey to the celestial city of heaven or repeat the journey
of a saint or biblical hero. Pilgrimage has become a prominent
symbol in both Western Christian writings and Middle-Eastern
Islamic writings. John Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress
and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are two literary examples
using the pilgrimage motif.
P'ING
HUA: A Chinese
yarn or
tall tale. The genre typically involves a strong narrative
presence and colloquial or idiomatic Chinese.
The tone is realistic, but the content is typically fantastic
or hyperbolic. Contrast with the Russian skaz.
PIT:
In indoor theaters during the Renaissance, the most expensive
and prestigious bench seating was the pit--an area directly
in front of the stage. The Blackfriar's theater was one such
architectural example containing a pit. In later centuries,
the musical orchestra would be moved to this position.
PITCH:
In linguistics, a semi-musical tone or quality used in some
languages to distinguish meaning.
PLACE
OF ARTICULATION: The point in the oral cavity where
the position of speech organs (lips, teeth, tongue, etc.)
is most important for a particular sound.
PLAGIARISM:
Accidental or intentional intellectual theft in which a writer,
poet, artist, scholar, or student steals an original idea,
phrase, or section of writing from someone else and presents
this material as his or her own work without indicating the
source via appropriate explanation or citation. Click
here for more information.
PLATONIC:
In common usage, people often use the word "platonic"
to mean "intellectual rather than physical." Thus,
a Platonic love-affair is one in which the couple is attracted
to each other for mental or psychological qualities rather
than bodily attributes. More specifically, however, Platonic
philosophy is Plato's idea that behind (or above or outside)
the imperfect physical world, another intangible world of
abstract ideas has its own existence. These abstract-but-perfect
ideas (called Platonic forms) appear only
as dim outlines (or shadows) in the physical world. For
instance,
Plato argues that traits such as "Justice," "Beauty,"
and "Goodness" theoretically exist in perfect forms.
Material creatures, who cannot see or enjoy the abstract
quality of Beauty itself, can only enjoy specific manifestations
of
Beauty--such
as sunsets or starlight or silvery snow. What the unenlightened
do not realize is that it is not these specific
objects they should admire, but the quality of beauty behind
them--the
form of absolute Beauty that is eternal and unchanging even
as specific sunsets fade and yearly snowfalls melt away.
Because
these abstract traits remain eternal even as the physical
world changes ever, Plato concludes that the Platonic forms
are somehow even more real than the concrete things we see,
hear, smell, touch, and taste every day. His breathtaking,
nearly mystical conclusion is that the physical world is
the illusion or dream, and the world of the mind is closer
to
the "real" world of the eternal forms.
Platonic thinking profoundly
influences Plotinus, Boethius, Saint Augustine, Castiglione's
The Book of the Courtier, Spenser's "Hymn in
Honor of Beauty," Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual
Beauty," and Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood.
PLATONIC FORM:
The ideas, images, or patterns of which physical reality is
but an imperfect or transitory symbol or expression. See discussion
under Platonic.
PLATONISM:
See discussion under Platonic.
PLAY:
A specific piece of drama, usually enacted on a stage by diverse
actors who often wear makeup or costumes to make them resemble
the character they portray. See drama.
PLEONASM:
A habit of speech or writing in which an idea repeats itself
in a single sentence, i.e., a redundancy. For example,
"tiny little town" is a pleonasm, as opposed to "tiny town"
or "little town." Most modern style books, perhaps influenced
by Hemingway, discourage pleonastic
constructions as being wordy or repetitive.
I also steer students away from them. However, pleonasms
have been fashionable in other centuries. Geoffrey of Vinsauf
favored them in his twelfth-century style manual, the Poetria
Nova. The New Testament book of
Mark happily used them, as David Smith points out (8).
Consider Mark 13:33, "Blepete, agrupneite!" ("Watch out!
Be aware!") in which the author emphasizes alertness by
using a pleonasm.
PLOSIVE:
In linguistics, another term for a stop.
PLOT:
The structure and relationship of actions and events in a
work of fiction. In order for a plot to begin, some sort of
catalyst is necessary. While the temporal order of events
in the work constitutes the "story," we are speaking of plot
rather than story as soon as we look at how these events relate
to one another and how they are rendered and organized so
as to achieve their particular effects. Note that, while it
is most common for events to unfold chronologically or ab
ovo (in which the first event happens first,
the second event happens second, and so on), many stories
structure the plot in such a way that the reader encounters
happenings out of order. A common technique along this line
is to "begin" the story in the middle of the action, a technique
called beginning in
medias res (Latin for "in the middle[s]
of things"). Some narratives involve several short episodic
plots occurring one after the other (like chivalric romances),
or they may involve multiple subplots taking place simultaneously
with the main plot (as in many of Shakespeare's plays).
PLUCK
BUFFET: Anthropologists suggest that pre-adolescent
male children in a variety of cultures share the game of "pluck
buffet." In this game, one child trades blows on the
arm or chest with another to see who is "bravest"
or "toughest." Alternatively, pluck buffet also
refers to any game in which two individuals challenge each
other to some contest (often archery) and the loser must receive
a strike from the winner. For instance, the poem "Garland"
depicts Richard the Lion-Hearted and Robin Hood having an
archery contest, and the loser must "Beare a buffet on
his hede." This becomes an important theme in ballads
like Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne. Pluck buffet
may also lie at the heart of a Celtic motif
known as the "trade of blows" in which one warrior
agrees to trade strikes with another; in the case of Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, pluck buffet takes a potentially
lethal turn when Gawain and the green elf-knight play the
game using giant axes.
POETIC
DICTION: Distinctive language used by poets, i.e.,
language that would not be common in their everyday speech.
The most common signs of poetic diction include involve archaisms,
neologisms,
rhyme,
and unusual figures of speech. Teachers often point to Spenser's
use of words like gentil and tobraken, or
Shakespeare's use of abysm and climature,
or Emily Dickinson's use of thee and thine.
When they ask students, "why did this poet write in such
a way?" students often mistakenly reply, "Because
that's the way people talked back then." On the contrary,
in the 1500s, Spenser is resurrecting language that was common
in Chaucer's day in the 1300s--not the language of his own
time. The words abysm and climature are
made-up words Shakespeare invented from abyss/chasm
and climate/temperature, not words he would hear
in everyday use on the London streets. Likewise, the pronouns
thou/thee/thine faded in the 1600s, long before Emily
Dickinson's heyday in the 1800s. These poets chose such language
precisely because it is unusual for their time--because it
is different from humdrum ordinary speech. (That's what makes
it striking poetry, after all.)
The concept of literary
decorum (and
its requirement for certain genres
and characters to use lofty, elevated language) also generated
thick poetic diction. As M. H. Abrams notes in volume I
of
The Norton Anthology, the results were phrases such
as "the finny tribe" for "fish" and
the
"the bleating kind" for "sheep" (2958).
To modern poets, such phrasing might seem overblown. The
point,
however, is that poetic diction is vastly different from
daily speech.
POETIC
LICENSE: The freedom of a poet or other literary
writer to depart from the norms of common discourse, literal
reality, or historical truth in order to create a special
effect in or for the reader. When applied to prose writers,
the term is often called "artistic license." Contrast
with verisimilitude.
POETIC
JUSTICE: The phrase and the idea was coined by Thomas
Rymer in the late 1600s. He claimed that a narrative or drama
should distribute rewards and punishments proportionately
to the virtues and villainies of each character in the story.
Thus, when a particularly vicious character meets a despicable
end appropriate for his crimes, we say it is "poetic
justice." This formula for resolving plots has fallen
into disfavor in later centuries, and no widely influential
critics today advocate such a formula without qualifications.
POETIC
SPEAKER: The narrative or elegiac voice in a poem (such
as a sonnet, ode, or lyric) that speaks of his or her situation
or feelings. It is a convention in poetry that the speaker
is not the same individual as the historical author
of the poem. For instance, consider the poet Lord Byron's
mock epic
Don Juan. Lord Byron wrote the poem as a young man
in his late twenties. However, the speaker of the poem depicts
himself as being an elderly man looking back cynically on
the days of youth. Clearly, the "voice" talking
and narrating the story is not identical with the author.
In the same way, the speaker of the poem "My Last Duchess"
characterizes himself through his words as a Renaissance nobleman
in Italy who is cold-blooded--quite capable of murdering a
wife who displeases him--but the author of the poem was actually
Robert Browning, a mild-mannered English poet writing in the
early nineteenth-century. Many students (and literary critics)
attempt to decipher clues about the author's own attitudes,
beliefs, feelings, or biographical details through the words
in a poem. However, such an activity must always be done with
caution. Shakespeare may write a sonnet in which the poetic
speaker pours out his passion for a woman with bad breath
and wiry black hair (Sonnet 130), but it does not necessarily
mean that Shakespeare himself was attracted to halitosis,
or that his wife had black hair, or that he had a fling with
such a woman. In fact, it is a convention in some genres,
such as the medieval visio or dream vision, that the
poetic speaker is a dull, imperceptive caricature of the author.
See also authorial
voice and dream
vision, above.
POETRY:
A variable literary genre
characterized by rhythmical patterns of language. These patterns
typically consist of patterns of meter
(regular patterns of high and low stress), syllabification
(the number of syllables in each line of text), rhyme,
alliteration,
or combinations of these elements. The poem typically involves
figurative language such as schemes
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