|
This page is under perpetual construction! It was last updated April 8, 2013. 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] Q-TEXT: The term for a hypothetical ur-text or source manuscript that served as the source for the synoptic gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke), but which did not influence John. The abbreviation "Q" comes from German Quelle (source). QUADRIVIUM: The study of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music, which formed the basis of a master's degree in medieval education, as opposed to the trivium, the study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, which in medieval education formed the basis of a bachelor's degree. QUALITATIVE CHANGE: In linguistics, an alteration in the perceived quality of a sound or the basic nature of a sound. Contrast with quantitative change, below. QUALITATIVE METER: Meter that relies on patterns of heavily stress syllables and lightly stressed meters. In English, most poems are qualitative in nature. This contrasts with quantitative meter (below), which was common in Greek and Latin. See meter. QUANTITATIVE CHANGE: In linguistics, an alteration in the length of a sound--particularly vowel sounds. Contrast with qualitative change. QUANTITATIVE METER: Meter that relies not on the alternation of heavily stressed or lightly stressed syllables, but rather on the alternation of "long syllables" and "short syllables" (i.e., syllables categorized accordingly to the time interval it takes for the human mouth to pronounce the syllable). For instance, under this scheme, in English, the word hour and at are both one-syllable words of similar stress. However, the word hour takes slightly longer to shape in the mouth than the more terse word at. We might thus call the word hour a "long syllable" and the word at a "short syllable." This label contrasts with the most common use of the terms in regular meter, which relies upon how heavy the stress is in each syllable. Quantitative meter has never worked well in Germanic languages like English, but it was common in Latin, Greek, Sanskirt, and Arabic poetry. Contrast with qualitative meter. QUATRAIN: Also sometimes used interchangeably with "stave," a quatrain is a stanza of four lines, often rhyming in an ABAB pattern. Three quatrains form the main body of a Shakespearean or English sonnet along with a final couplet. See sonnet and rubaiyat. QUARTO: A term from early bookmaking. When a single, large sheet is folded once to create two leaves (four pages counting the front and back), and then bound together, the resulting text is called a folio. If the folio is folded in half once more, the resulting size of page is called a quarto. Thus, a quarto is a sheet of material folded twice, to create four leaves, or eight pages, which results in a medium-sized book. On a single sheet, the page visible on the right-hand side of an open book or the "top" side of such a page is called the recto side (Latin for "right"), and the reverse or "bottom" side of such a page (the page visible on the left-hand side of an open book) is called the verso side. Compare quarto with bad quarto and folio and octavo (below). QUEM QUAERITIS (Latin, "Whom do you seek?"): This Latin expression comes from the Vulgate New Testament when the angel addresses the women coming to visit Christ's empty tomb. The angel guarding the sepulchre asks, "Whom do you seek?" When told that Christ was resurrected, the women departed joyfully. In the medieval church, this phrase was part of the Roman Catholic liturgy as part of the Easter Introit and read aloud in church each year. The earliest known text of this sort was an Easter trope from the Swiss monastery of St. Gall, probably dating to about 875-900 AD. One theory is that the quem quaeritis trope grew into an entire branch of medieval drama. Mary Marshall and other early scholars like E. K. Chambers (author of The Medieval Stage, 1903) suggested that the part of the angel and the women visiting the tomb was taken up by layfolk and performed inside the church on Easter. The enactment was later enlarged and moved to the area outside the church and watched by the congregation. Eventually, the plays expanded in scope to include other Bible stories and were performed in the vernacular languages rather than Latin. These performances eventually may have evolved into mystery plays run by guilds, falling outside the church's control altogether. More recent scholars such as V. A. Kolve question this theory, however, so students should take the argument with a grain of salt. QUIRE: A collection of individual leaves sewn together, usually containing between four and twelve leaves per quire. This "gathering" or "booklet" of individual pages would then be sewn into the larger collection of pages to make the entire book. In manuscripts written after 1400, the quires are often systematically labeled in order to help the bookbinder place them in the correct order. They provide important evidence for the history of specific manuscripts. Missing pages cut out of a quire show modern scholars evidence of ancient censorship, and the markings of the quire can show that books have been rebound or taken apart and "recycled" into new books. [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] I consulted the following works
while preparing this list. I have tried to give credit to specific sources when
feasible, but in many cases multiple reference works use the same examples or
provide the same dates for common information. Students should examine these
resources for more information than these humble webpages provide:
Works Cited:
Go to Literature
Resources
|
