Literary
Terms and Definitions: S
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]
SAGA:
The word comes from the Old Norse term for a "saw" or a "saying."
Sagas are Scandinavian and Icelandic prose narratives about
famous historical heroes, notable families, or the exploits
of kings and warriors. Until the 12th century, most sagas were
folklore,
and they passed from person to person by oral transmission.
Thereafter, scribes wrote them down. The Icelandic sagas take
place when Iceland was first settled by Vikings (930-1030 AD).
Examples include Grettir's Saga, Njál's Saga,
Egil's Saga, and the Saga of Eric the Red. The
saga is marked by literary and social conventions including
warriors who stop in the midst of combat to recite extemporaneous
poetry, individuals wearing dark blue cloaks when they are about
to kill someone, elaborate genealogies and "back-story"
before the main plot, casual violence, and recitations of the
names and features of magical swords and weapons. Later sagas
show signs of being influenced by continental literature--particularly
French tales of chivalry and knighthood. For modern readers,
the appearance of these traits often seems to sit uneasily with
the surrounding material. In common usage, the term saga
has been erroneously applied to any exciting, long narrative.
See cycle and
epic.
SAINT:
See discussion under vita.
SAINT'S
LIFE: Another term for the medieval genre called
a vita.
See discussion under vita.
SALIC
LAW: French law stating that
the right of a king's son to inherit the French throne passes
only patrilineally rather than matrilineally. In England, however,
the English Queen Consort (a queen married to a ruling husband)
can become the Queen Regnant (a queen ruling in her own right)
if her husband dies and there are no other male relatives in
line to inherit the throne. Likewise, in French Salic Law, if
the queen remarries after the king dies, any children she has
from the new husband cannot claim the throne. Likewise, if a
male king dies without heirs, only his brothers and their male
offspring can claim the throne. This right does not pass to
male children of the queen that she might have later. However,
under English law, a male descended from the English Queen can
ascend to the throne. The differences between Salic and English
Law regarding inheritance play a key part in Shakespeare's Henry V,
in which King Henry must determine whether he can justly claim
the throne of France.
SAMOYEDIC:
A non-Indo-European branch of Uralic languages spoken in northern
Siberia.
SAPPHIC
METER:Typically, this meter is found in quatrains in
which the first three lines consist of eleven syllables and
the fourth line contains five. The metrical pattern is as follows
in the first three lines: (foot #1)
/ u (foot #2) /
x (foot #3) /
u u (foot #4) /
u (and foot #5) /
x. The "x"
in each case indicates a syllaba
anceps--a syllable that may be either heavily or
lightly stressed. In the last line, the pattern is (foot #1)
/ u u and (foot #2)
/ /.

The pattern is notoriously
difficult in English, but more common in Greek. The term Sapphic
comes from the name of the female Greek poet Sappho.
SAPPHIC
ODE: Virtually identical with a Horatian ode, a Sapphic
ode consists of quatrains in which the first three lines consist
of eleven syllables and the fourth line contains five. The metrical
pattern is described under Sapphic
meter.
SAPPHICS:
Verses written in Sapphic
meter.
SAPPHIC
VERSE: Verse written in Sapphic
meter.
SARCASM:
Another term for verbal irony--the act of ostensibly
saying one thing but meaning another. See further discussion
under irony.
SATEM
LANGUAGE: One of the two main branches of Indo-European
languages. These languages are generally associated with eastern
Indo-European languages and they often have a sibilant sound
rather than the palatal /k/ found
in equivalent centum
words. Click here for more information.
SATIRE:
An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form
of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as
dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards.
Satire became an especially popular technique used during the
Enlightenment, in which it was believed that an artist could
correct folly by using art as a mirror to reflect society. When
people viewed the satire and saw their faults magnified in a
distorted reflection, they could see how ridiculous their behavior
was and then correct that tendency in themselves. The tradition
of satire continues today. Popular cartoons such as The
Simpsons and televised comedies like The Daily Show
make use of it in modern media. Conventionally, formal
satire involves a direct, first-person-address, either
to the audience or to a listener mentioned within the work.
An example of formal satire is Alexander Pope's Moral Essays.
Indirect satire conventionally employs the
form of a fictional narrative--such as Byron's Don Juan
or Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration,
and similar tools are almost always used in satire. Horatian
satire tends to focus lightly on laughter and ridicule,
but it maintain a playful tone. Generally, the tone is sympathetic
and good humored, somewhat tolerant of imperfection and folly
even while expressing amusement at it. The name comes from the
Roman poet Horace (65-8 BCE), who preferred to ridicule human
folly in general rather than condemn specific persons. In contrast,
Juvenalian satire also uses withering invective,
insults, and a slashing attack. The name comes from the Roman
poet Juvenal (60-140 CE), who frequently employed the device,
but the label is applied to British writers such as Swift and
Pope as well. Compare with medieval
estates satire and spoof.
SATIRIC
COMEDY: Any drama or comic poem involving humor as a means
of satire.
SATYR
PLAY: A burlesque play submitted by Athenian playwrights
along with their tragic trilogies. On each day of the Dionysia,
one tragedy was performed, followed by one satyr play.
SCANSION:
The act of "scanning" a poem to determine its meter.
To perform scansion, the student breaks down each line into
individual metrical feet and determines which syllables have
heavy stress and which have lighter stress. According to the
early conventions of English poetry, each foot should have at
least one stressed syllable, though feet with all unstressed
syllables are found occasionally in Greek and other poetic traditions.
SCATOLOGY:
Not to be confused with eschatology,
scatology refers to so-called "potty-humor"--jokes
or stories dealing with feces designed to elicit either laughter
or disgust. Anthropologists have noted that scatological humor
occurs in nearly every human culture. In some cultures and time
periods, scatology is treated as vulgar or low-brow (for instance,
the Victorian period in England). At other times, scatological
elements appear in stories that are not necessarily meant to
be low-brow. For instance, many serious medieval legends of
demons link them to excrement, and the audience of French fabliaux
appear to be noblemen and aristocrats rather than bourgeois
rabble. Scatology also appears in medieval plays such as Mankind
and in works associated various French fabliaux (singular
fabliau). Chaucer relies heavily on scatological humor
in "The Summoner's Tale." See fabliau.
SCHEMA
ATTICUM:
This popular grammatical construction appears in ancient
Attic Greek (and it is later mimicked in New Testament
Greek). It is a specific type of enallage in
which a neuter plural subject takes a singular verb (Smith
9). Normally, this construction would be considered a grammatical
error in Greek, but if poets, playwrights, or prophets do
it intentionally, it becomes high art. The device leads
to some interesting translation decisions in modern English
editions
of the Bible or Greek literature. Should the translator
"normalize" the grammar so it doesn't look odd to English
students? Or
should the translator bravely insert his own English grammatical
"error"
to match
the intentional "error" in the original Greek text? See schema
pindarikon, below.
SCHEMA
PINDARIKON:
This popular grammatical construction appears in the ancient
Attic Greek of Pindar and later in New Testament
Greek. It is a type of enallage in
which any compound subject takes a singular verb (Smith 9).
Normally, that would be considered a grammatical error, but
if the poet
Pindar
does it, it is high art. This general term contrasts with the
more specific schema
atticum, above.
SCENE:
A dramatic sequence that takes place within a single locale
(or setting)
on stage. Often scenes serve as the subdivision of an act within
a play. Note that when we use the word scene generically
or in the text of a paper (for example, "there are three
scenes in the play"), we do not capitalize the word. See
The MLA Handbook, 6th edition, section 3.6.5 for further
information involving capitalization of scenes.
SCEOP (also
spelled scop): An Anglo-Saxon
singer or musician who would perform in a mead hall. Cf.
bard.
SCENERY:
The visual environment created onstage using a backdrop and
props. The purpose of scenery is either to suggest vaguely a
specific setting or produce the illusion of actually watching
events in that specific setting.
SCHISM:
A schism is a split or division in the church concerning religious
belief or organizational structure--one in which a single church
splits into two or more separate denominations--often hostile
to each other. Click here for more information.
SCHOLASTICISM:
In medieval universities, scholasticism was the philosophy
in which all
branches of educaton iwere developed and ordered by theological
principles or schemata.
SCHOOL:
While common parlance uses the word school to refer
to a specific institute of learning, literary scholars use this
term to refer to groups of writers or poets who share similar
styles, literary techniques, or social concerns regardless of
their educational backgrounds. In some rare cases, the group's
members recognize that they share these concerns while they
are alive, and they purposely name themselves or their movement
to reflect their characteristics. For instance, the American
Beat poets, the French Imagists, and the English Pre-Raphaelites
recognized and named themselves as being part of their respective
movements. It is far more common, however, for later generations
of scholars and critics to look back and lump groups of artists
or thinkers into specific schools. For instance, the Romantic
poets, the Spenserians, the Cavalier poets, the Metaphysical
poets, and the Gothic novelists are specific schools of literature,
but these labels did not appear for the particular groups until
years after the writers lived. Art historians make similar distinctions
about the Bauhaus school, the Expressionist movement, the Fauves,
the Cubists, and so on. Shared intellectual or philosophical
tendencies mark schools of philosophy as well--such as the Epicureans,
the Stoics, the Skeptics, the Sophists, the Platonists, and
the Neo-platonists--and these terms are often applied in a general
way to writers who existed in later centuries. Accordingly,
we might speak of both Marcus Aurelius and Hemingway as part
of the Stoic school, even though the two lived two thousand
years apart from each other on different continents, and one
was a meditative Roman Emperor who outlawed gladiatorial
combat and the other an American ambulance driver obsessed with
machisimo and bull-fighting. Keep in mind, divisions
into such artificial schools of thought are often arbitrary,
contradictory, and murky. They work best at pointing out general
similarities rather than creating sharp, clear categorical labels.
SCHWA:
The mid-central vowel or the phonetic symbol for it. This
phonetic
symbol is typically an upside down e.
The schwa vowel appears in words like putt
and sofa
and duh.
The same sound appears blended with an /r/
in words like pert, shirt,
and motor. See also
intrusive schwa.
SCIENCE
FICTION (originally "scientifiction," a neologism
coined by editor Hugo Gernsback in his pulp magazine Amazing
Stories): Literature in which speculative technology,
time travel, alien races,
intelligent
robots,
gene-engineering,
space travel, experimental medicine, psionic abilities, dimensional
portals, or altered scientific principles contribute
to the
plot or background. Many purists make a distinction between
"hard" science fiction (in which
the story attempts to follow accepted scientific realism and
extrapolates the outcomes
or consequences of scientific discovery in a hard-headed manner)
and "soft" science fiction (which
often involves looser adherence to scientific knowledge and
more fantasy-elements).
The basic premise is usually built on a "what if"
scenario--i.e., it explores what might occur if a certain technology
or event occurred. Examples include Arthur C. Clarke's 2001:
A Space Odyssey, Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a
Strange Land, Isaac Asimov's Foundation, Octavia
Butler's
Dawn, H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man,
Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Lois McMaster
Bujold's Ethan of Athos, Aldous Huxley's Brave
New World, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles,
Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and William Gibson's
Neuromancer. See also space
opera, speculative
fiction,
and Cthulhu mythos.
SCOP (pronounced
like "shop"): See sceop.
SCRIBAL
CORRUPTION: A general term referring to errors in a text
made by later scribes rather than the original authors. In many
cases, these mistakes are obviously the result of human error
while copying, such as accidentally repeating or leaving out
a word or line(s) from the original manuscript. "Eye skips,"
for instance, are errors that result when a scribe's eye drops
from the original word or line he was copying to a different
word or line that begins with the same letter or word, causing
him to leave out the intermediary material. Other scribal errors
come about when a scribe attempts to "correct" or
"simplify" a text he doesn't understand well. One
of the more amusing examples of scribal corruption comes from
the Anglo-Saxon monks of medieval Britain. There, a monk was
copying a text that referred to heaven as the "Isle of
Joy." The word joy in Anglo-Saxon was gliw.
(It's the word that gives us the modern word glee.) Unfortunately,
an Anglo-Saxon monk misread the final letter. This final letter
was wynn--an Anglo-Saxon letter that looks sort of like
the modern letter p, but
which represents a /w/ sound.
You can see samples of the letters by clicking
here. The scribe mistakenly thought he was viewing the letter
thorn, which represents a -th
sound. Thus, he miswrote the word as Glith in an Anglo-Saxon
educational poem called "Adrian and Ritheus." The
error had its consequences. Hundreds of this scribe's newly
Christianized and newly literate students therefore diligently
learned that heaven was located on "The Isle of Glith."
This no doubt caused some confusion initially among the early
Christian converts. The problem of scribal corruption was still
prevalent five hundred years later in Chaucer's day. Chaucer
complains about the "negligence and rape" done to
his poetry at the hands of his own scribe, Adam, in his short
poem, "Chaucer's Wordes Unto Adam, His Owne Scrivyen."
SCRIBAL
-E: When a scribe adds an unpronounced -e
to words for reasons of manuscript spacing, this is called a
scribal -e. This practice was common
in the days before English orthography became standardized.
Note that this practice should not be confused with the Middle
English final -e, which
often is pronounced as an unstressed syllable at the end of
words in Chaucer and writings of the fourteenth century.
SCRIBE:
A literate individual who reproduces the works of other authors
by copying them from older texts or from a dictating author.
In many parts of the ancient world, such as Classical Rome and
Classical Greece, a large number of scribes were slaves who
belonged to wealthy government officials and to poets or authors.
In other cultures such as Egypt or Tibet, scribes have been
seen as priestly or semi-magical individuals. In the medieval
period, many monks were given the task of copying classics from
the earlier period along with Bibles and patristic writings.
Their efforts preserved much of Greco-Roman philosophy and history
that might otherwise have been lost. See also auctor,
scrivener
and scriptorium.
SCRIM:
In drama, a flimsy curtain that becomes transparent when backlit,
permitting action to take place under varying lighting.
SCRIPTORIUM:
An area set aside in a monastery for monks to work as scribes
and copy books.
SCRIVENER:
Another term for a scribe.
The term scrivener became especially common during the 1700s
and 1800s for legal copyists, as evidenced in works such as
Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." See scribe
above.
SECONDARY
SOURCE:
Literary scholars distinguish between primary
sources, secondary sources, and educational
resources. Students should also. To understand
the difference, click
here.
SECONDARY
STRESS: A stress less prominent than the primary stress--often
indicated by a grave accent mark. See chart of common
diacritical markings for more information.
SECOND LANGUAGE:
In addition to a first language (i.e., a native language), a
second language is any language used frequently for communication,
trade, diplomacy, scholarship, or other important purposes.
SECOND-PERSON POINT OF
VIEW: See discussion under point
of view.
SECOND SOUND SHIFT:
Another term for the High
German Shift.
SELF-REFLEXIVITY:
Writing has self-reflexivity if it somehow refers to itself.
(Critics also call this being self-referential.) For instance,
the following sentence has self-reflexive traits:
This
is not a sentence.
Here, the demonstrative
pronoun this refers to the larger sentence that
contains it--the sentence's subject-matter is its own structure
as a
sentence. Postmodern writing has become especially fond of
this artistic technique, employing metafiction and metapoetry.
Self-reflexivity
calls attention to its own artifice, violates verisimilitude,
or breaks the boundaries between sign, signifier
and signified.
See
metaliterature.
SEMANTIC
CHANGE: A change in what a word or phrase means.
SEMANTIC
CONTAMINATION: Change of meaning that occurs when two
words sound alike. Because the words are so similar, often the
meaning of one becomes attached to the other. This is especially
likely with foreign loan words. For example, the Old English
word dream originally meant "joy." However,
the Scandinavian loan word draumr meant "vision
while asleep." Through semantic contamination via
the Viking invasions, the English word dream gained
its current meaning, as Algeo points out (277).
SEMANTIC
MARKING: When the meaning
of a word is limited semantically, that word is said to possess
a semantic marking. See marked
word and unmarked word.
SEMANTICS:
The study of actual meaning in languages--especially the meanings
of individual words and word combinations in phrases and sentences--as
opposed to other linguistic aspects like grammar, morphology,
etymology, and syntax.
SEMIOLOGY: Another term
for semiotics.
SEMIOTICS:
The study of both verbal and nonverbal signs. In Charles Sanders
Peirce's thinking, a sign may fall into several possible categories:
-
iconic
signs
bear some natural resemblance to what they signify. For
instance, a map of Tennessee is an iconic representation
of a "real world" geography.
-
indexical
signs show some causal connection with what they
signify. For instance, a stylized image of smoke as a sign
indicating "fire" would be an indexical sign.
-
symbolic
signs
have an arbitrary or conventional relationship with what
they signify. Note that in linguistics, almost all verbal
sounds and written letters fall in the category of symbolic
signs. Using the sounds /c/
and /a/ and /t/
to represent a furred quadroped that hunts mice, or the
graphemes <c>, <a>,
and <t> as a visual representation
of those sounds, is purely arbitrary.
SEMITIC:
A non-Indo-European family of languages including Arabic and
Hebrew.
SEMIVOWEL:
A sound articulated in the same way as a vowel sound, but which
functions like a consonant typically. Examples include [w]
and [y]. In some languages such
as Welsh, these can function as graphemes for pure vowels.
SENEX
AMANS (from Latin "ancient lover";
also spelled
senex amanz in Old French): A stock
character in medieval fabliaux, courtly
romances, and classical comedies, the senex amans is
an old, ugly, jealous man who is married to a younger, attractive
but unhappy woman. He is often a poor lover (or even impotent)
with bad breath, wrinkled skin, and grey hair. He is frequently
cuckolded by a younger, handsome, virile man who secretly
seduces
his wife. We find examples of the senex amans in Chaucer's
"Miller's Tale" and "The Merchant's Tale,"
and in various other fabliaux.
Likewise, the motif
also appears in the medieval French lais
such as Marie de France's "Guigemar" and similar
works such as Tristan and Iseult. The motif of the senex
amans often becomes useful for fast characterization,
since it often can quickly cast a predatory light on an elderly
male
antagonist. An example of such use would be the old king of
Ghana pursuing the young Imoinda in Aphra Behn's Oronooko,
or any of the aging aristocrats sadistically pursuing young
virtuous peasant girls in gothic novels.
SENRYU:
The senryu is a satirical form of the haiku.
The form originates in Edo with the poet Karai Senryu (1718-1790).
While the haiku attempt to avoid excessive "cleverness,"
vulgarity, humor, or explicit moralizing on the poet's part,
the senryu embraces these elements. The genre
allows a greater liberty of diction. Its tone is less lofty
than the Zen-like tone found in many haiku, and it often
focuses on the distortions and failings of human nature rather
than the beauty of nature. Conventional topics include mothers-in-law,
shrewish wives, women of disrepute, the antics of bachelors,
and misbehavior among the clergy. Here is an example of a senryu:
When
she wails
At the top of her voice,
The husband gives in.
As Joan Giroux suggests
in The Haiku Form, the humor and implicit lesson in
such senryu are very appealing to European and American
writers. It is a genre
much more accessible to the Western poet, accustomed as we
are to logic rather than Zen. She writes:
Would-be
writers of English haiku are often dismayed to have their
Japanese friends remark, "Your poem is more like senryu.
It is too philosophical." It is not surprising, therefore,
that senryu appeals strongly to Western readers. The
Western tradition of logic rather than intuition makes senryu
in some respects easier [for Western poets] to
write than haiku.
(22-23)
Contrast senryu
with haiku.
See also kigo,
tanka,
haikai,
and hokku.
SENSIBILITY, LITERATURE
OF: Eighteenth-century literature that values emotionalism
over rationalism. This literature tends to perceive feelings
as more reliable guides to morality and truth than abstract
principles, and thus it tends to view human beings as essentially
benevolent--a sharp contrast with the idea of Original Sin and
total depravity in Calvinist writings.
SENTIMENTAL
NOVEL: An eighteenth-century or early nineteenth-century
novel emphasizing pathos
rather than reason and focusing on an optimistic view of the
essential goodness of human nature. Examples include Laurence
Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, Oliver Goldsmith's
The Vicar of Wakefield, and Henry Mackenzie's The
Man of Feeling.
SEPTENARY:
Another term for heptameter--a line consisting of seven
metrical feet.
SEPTUAGINT
(Latin, septuaginta, "seventy"): A Greek
translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) produced in
the third century BCE. According to an apocryphal legend found
in the "Letter of Aristeas," seventy-two Jewish scribes
were asked to translate the Torah into Greek for inclusion in
the Ptolemaic library. The legend states that they all finished
at exactly the same time (seventy-two days) and produced exactly
identical translations with no transcription errors or corrections.
Although most Biblical scholars dismiss this legend today as
implausible and see the story as originating much later than
the actual translation, the Septuagint provides an important
manuscript comparison with the Masoretic
texts. The Septuagint is still used in the Eastern Orthodox
Church as the basis of its liturgy. In
medieval writing, the Septuagint is often referred to only as
the Roman numerals LXX (i.e., "seventy").
SEQUEL
(from Latin sequi, to follow): A literary work complete
in itself, but continuing the narrative of an earlier work.
It is a new story that extends or develops characters and situations
found in an earlier work. Two sequels following an original
work (together) are called a trilogy.
Three sequels following an original work together are called
a tetralogy.Often
sequels have a reputation for inferior artistry compared to
the original publication since they are often hastily written
from the desire to capitalize on earlier financial success.
Examples include Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer Abroad, which
is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Alexandra
Ripley's Scarlett, which is a sequel to Mitchell's
Gone With the Wind. In the late twentieth century,
it became common retroactively to write "prequels,"
a later book with the same geographic setting or characters,
but which takes place in an earlier time.
SERF:
A medieval peasant tied to a specific plot of land in the feudal
system of government. He was allowed to work this land in exchange
for services to his lord. In the early medieval period, probably
90% of the European population was a part of this group of agricultural
laborers. In the late medieval period, increasing numbers of
these peasants became freemen who owned their own land or worked
as craftsmen in city guilds.
See discussion under feudalism.
SERIES:
A number of novels related to each other by plot, setting, character,
or some combination of these traits. Examples include The
Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper, C. S. Lewis's
Chronicles of Narnia, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter
books, and cheap pulp fiction collections like The Executioner
or the Longarm westerns are all examples of series.
Contrast with prequel,
sequel,
trilogy
and tetralogy.
SERMON:
See discussion under homily.
SERMON
JOLI: Another term for a sermon joyeaux.
See discussion under mock
sermon.
SERMON
JOYEUX (also sermon joli): See discussion
under mock
sermon.
SESTET:
(1) The last part of an Italian or Petrarchan
sonnet, it consists of six lines that rhyme with a varying pattern.
Common rhyme patterns include CDECDE
or CDCCDC. See sonnet,
below. (2) Any six-line stanza or a six-line
unit of poetry.
SETS:
The physical objects and props necessary as scenery in a play
(if they are left on-stage rather than in a character's possession).
SETTING:
The general locale, historical time, and social circumstances
in which the action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs;
the setting of an episode or scene within a work is the particular
physical location in which it takes place. For example, the
general setting of Joyce's "The Dead," is a quay named Usher's
Island, west of central Dublin in the early 1900s, and the initial
setting is the second floor apartment of the Misses Morkan.
Setting can be a central or peripheral factor in the meaning
of a work. The setting is usually established through description--but
sometimes narration or dialogue also reveals the location and
time.
SHAKESPEAREAN
SONNET: See discussion under sonnet.
SHAMANISM:
A religious practice first identified by anthropologists
studying hunter-gatherer
tribes in Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada in which a
shaman would serve as a mediator between his tribal community
and the spirit world. The shaman would bridge this gap through
spiritual exercises (such as chanting to induce trances)
or through symbolic journeys (like descending into a cave
or climbing a mountain) or through magical transformations
(such as donning an elk skin or a mask to become one with
the Spirit of
All Elk). In these shamanistic religions, the shaman was
thought either to
project his
soul magically out of
his
body
to
reach the spirit world or else to physically enter it through
his journey. Once in the spirit world, he would communicate
with the spirits to ensure a good hunt or good weather, to
seek spiritual advice, or to ask for assistance with curing
a disease. The spirits were typically animistic or
totemic in nature rather than anthropomorphic.
In its
strictest original sense, shamanism applies only to the
practices of a half-dozen or so tribes in the far north around
the Arctic Circle,
but some scholars in comparative religion have popularized
the
term and applied it to similar beliefs among South American,
African, Australian, and Polynesian ethnic groups. Some
go so far as to argue that hunter-gatherer societies naturally
tend to form shamanistic religions, or that shamanism is
humanity's "original" or "default" religious belief before
the rise of agriculture caused vegetationsdämons to
complicate the pantheon. In classical mythology
and sacrificial rites, many features of individual
myths
appear to originate in shamanistic hunting rituals, as scholars
like Walter Burkert have argued.
SHAPED
POETRY: See concrete
poetry.
SHARERS:
In the Renaissance, these were senior actors holding business
shares in the stock of a theatrical company. In such a joint-stock
arrangement, the shareholders would pool their funds to buy
supplies, make costumes and props, hire works, and write new
plays. They would share profits (and losses!) equally. Greenblatt
notes that, "Shakespeare
was not only a longtime 'sharer' of the Lord Chamberlain's Men
but, from 1599, a 'housekeeper,' the holder of a one-eighth
share in the Globe playhouse" (1141).
SHIBBOLETH:
Among linguists, the term refers to any language use that distinguishes
between one "in"-group and another "out"-group.
The term comes from the biblical account of how Israelites would
ask suspicious foreigners to say the word "shibboleth";
if the speaker pronounced it "sibboleth,"
marking the talker as an enemy, he or she would be seized and
killed. The term often appears in the phrase, "to speak
the shibboleth."
SHIFTING:
A general term in linguistics for any slight alteration in a
word's meaning, or the creation of an entirely new word by changing
the use of an expression.
SHIH
POETRY: Shih is Chinese for "songs." There
is no general word for "poetry" specifically in Chinese,
but there are exact words for different genres
of poetry. Shih is the basic or common Chinese verse.
The term encompassed folksongs, hymns, and libretti.
The earliest extant shih in five-word lines may date
back to 100 BCE. Contrast with fu
poetry.
SHORTENING:
In linguistics, the word has two meanings: (1)
creating a new word by omitting part of a longer expression,
and (2) changing a long vowel to a short one.
SHORT
STORY: "A brief prose tale," as Edgar Allan Poe
labeled it. This work of narrative fiction may contain description,
dialogue and commentary, but usually plot functions as the engine
driving the art. The best short stories, according to Poe, seek
to achieve a single, major, unified impact. See single
effect theory, below.
SHORT
SYLLABLE: In linguistics,
any syllable containing a short vowel, but followed by only
one consonant or no consonant at all. Do not confuse this term
with a short vowel
(see below).
SHORT
VOWEL: As Algeo defines it, "A
vowel of lesser duration than a corresponding long vowel"
(329).
SIBILANT:
In linguistics, any hissing sound made with a groove down the
center of the tongue.
SIGN: In linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure bases
his theory of signification (semiology) upon the sign, an
arbitrary mark, sound, or gesture that becomes imbued with
meaning because it is
part
of a larger, more complex system of other marks or sounds with
their own meaning. The linguistic sign is the union of the signifier (a
collection of sounds that distinguishes this sign from others)
and the signified
(a concept or meaning arbitrarily and conventionally assigned
to this collection of sounds). Note that the signified exists
only in the head of a language user. The referent
in linguistics is the "real world" equivalent, the
extralinguistic object the signified points to in the physical
universe. Saussure, however, deliberately ignores the referent
as something existing outside the realm of linguistics proper,
prefering to treat language as a system of arbitrary distinctions
without any positive terms.

See also parole and langue.
SIMILE:
An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as
like or as,
in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison
by stating outright that one thing is another thing. This figure
of speech is of great antiquity. It is common in both prose
and verse works.
A poetic example comes from
John Milton's Paradise Lost:
Anon
out of the earth a Fabrick huge
Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound
Of
Dulcet Symphony and voices sweet.
(I. 710-12)
Even more famously, Robert
Burns states:
O,
my luve is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June:
O, my luve is like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune
A simile is an example of
a trope. Contrast
with epic simile
and metaphor,
above.
"SINGLE
EFFECT" THEORY: Edgar Allan Poe's theory about what
constituted a good short story. According to Poe, a good short
story achieved its unity by achieving a single emotional effect
on the reader. He writes of it in his review of Hawthorne's
Twice-Told Tales and describes it as "a certain
unique single effect to be wrought out" (Quoted in Thomas
Woodson, ed., Twentieth-Century Interpretations of "The
Fall of the House of Usher" from Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice Hall, 1969.)
SINO-TIBETAN:
A group of languages spoken in China, Tibet, and Burma, including
Mandarin.
SITUATIONAL
IRONY: Another term for universal irony.
See discussion under irony.
SKALD:
The Old Norse or Scandinavian equivalent of a bard
or court singer. Most of the surviving skaldic poetry deals
with contemporary Viking chieftains and kings--usually making
extensive use of kennings.
Medieval skalds included Bragi Boddason (c. 825), Eyvindr
Finnson (c. 950), Egill Skallagrimsson (c. 850), and Gunnlaugr
Ormstunga Illugason (c. 990-1020?). The skalds faded
in importance after 1000 CE.
SKAZ (plural skazka,
from the Russian verb skazat, "to tell"): A Russian
yarn or
tall tale in which the author dons the voice or persona of
a fictitious narrator (typically an uneducated peasant).
The genre
thus allows the author to characterize the speaker through
speech peculiarities (dialect pronunciation, malapropisms,
non-standard grammar, slang,
and regional neologisms). See Harkins 360 for more information.
SKENE
(Greek "tent"): In classical Greek theaters, the skene
was a building in the front of the orchestra
that contained front and side doors from which actors could
quickly enter and exit. The skene probably also served as an
area for storing costumes and props.
SLANG:
Informal diction or the use of vocabulary considered inconsistent
with the preferred formal wording common among the educated
or elite in a culture. For instance, formal wording might require
a message such as this one: "Greetings. How are my people
doing?" The slang version might be as follows: "Yo.
Whassup with my peeps?"
SLANT
RHYME (also called inexact rhyme): Rhymes created out of
words with similar but not identical sounds. In most of these
instances, either the vowel segments are different while the
consonants are identical, or vice versa. This type of rhyme
is also called approximate rhyme, inexact rhyme,
near rhyme, half rhyme, off rhyme, analyzed
rhyme, or suspended rhyme. The example below comes
from William Butler Yeats:
Heart-smitten
with emotion I sink down
My heart recovering with covered eyes;
Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
My permanent or impermanent images.
Slant rhyme has also
been used for splendid intentional effect in poems such as
Philip Larkins' "Toads" and "Toads Revisited,"
and has been increasingly popular with postmodern British
poets after World War II. Contrast with eye-rhyme
and exact
rhyme.
SLAPSTICK
COMEDY: Low comedy in which humor depends almost entirely
on physical actions and sight gags. The antics of the three
stooges and the modern fourth stooge, Adam Sandler, often fall
into this category.
SLAVE
NARRATIVE: A narrative, often autobiographical in origin,
about a slave's life, perhaps including his original capture,
his punishments and daily labor, and his eventual escape to
freedom. Examples include Olaudah Equiano's Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Aphra Behn's
Oroonoko, and Frederick Douglass's abolitionist
writings and speeches. Contrast with captivity
narratives.
SLAVIC:
An eastern European sub-branch of Indo-European.
SMOOTHING:
In linguistics, the monophthongization
of several Old English diphthongs.
SOCCUS:
A soft shoe worn by actors in Latin comedies, in contrast with
the buskins
or kothorni worn in tragedies. Our modern English word
sock comes from this term. Often, the word sock
is used a metonym
for comedy in contrast with buskin as a metonym for
tragedy. Hence, Harry Shaw explains John Milton's reference
in L'Allegro to "the buskin'd stage" and
to Ben Jonson's "learned sock"--i.e., tragedy and
comedy (43).
SOCIAL
DIALECT: In linguistics, a dialect used by a special
social group rather than through an entire ethnicity or region.
SOCIAL
REALISM: In literature, a branch of realism, especially
significant in Russian writing, that focuses on the lives of
middle and lower class characters (see realism).
At its worst, the movement becomes mere propaganda
to highlight bourgeois evils, proletariat virtues,
and glorifies the Soviet Union under the Stalinist regime. At
its best, this movement exposes ideological mystification and
presents accurate depictions of incipient class conflict.
SOCIAL
SATIRE: Satire aimed specifically at the general foibles
of society rather than an attack on an individual. See discussion
under satire.
SOCRATIC
DIALOGUE: An attempt to explore a philosophical problem
by presenting a series of speakers who argue about an issue
and ask each other questions. These various individuals hash
out their ideas, accepting some and dismissing others, to arrive
at a conclusion (or sometimes merely arrive nearer a conclusion).
This model is opposed to the "lecture" model of teaching
in which single authoritative experts present their conclusions
before students who accept and memorize the experts' judgment,
or the "treatise" model in which an author summarizes
his or her thinking in an essay for the reader. In the case
of Greek writings of Plato, Plato often presents the material
as a recorded debate between Socrates and his pupils, or between
Socrates and intellectuals of differing opinions, such as Gorgias
or Diogenes. Examples of Socratic dialogue can be found in The
Symposium, in which a number of dinner guests define the
nature of love, and in The Republic, in which a group
of thinkers speculate about what constitutes ideal government.
See also socratic
irony.
SOCRATIC
IRONY: Adapting a form of ironic false modesty in which
a speaker claims ignorance regarding a question or philosophical
problem. The speaker then turns to another "authority"
and raises the question humbly, asking for the expert's answer.
When the "authority," presents an answer, the "modest"
original speaker continues to ask pointed questions, eventually
revealing the limitations or inadequacies of the supposed expert--all
the while protesting his or her own inferior knowledge. The
irony comes from the speaker's continuing presentation of himself
as stupid even as he demolishes inferior ideas others present
to him. This is the method Socrates supposedly took regarding
philosophical inquiry, and it is named socratic irony in his
honor. See also irony
and socratic
dialogue, above.
SOFT SCIENCE FICTION: See
discussion under science fiction.
SOLAR
MYTH:
Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Max Müller were philologists who attempted
to explain the origin of a number of myths and religious
practices by linking them to the animistic worship
of various celestial phenomena including meteorological events
(weather
gods), sky gods (e.g. Ouranos), and astronomical bodies (stars,
planets, moon, and most especially the sun). The name
"Solar Deity" refers to such a god generally, and "Solar
Myth" is thus the term most often linked with this school
of thought.
Scholars
in
the
"Solar
Myth"
school
tend
to trace multiple deities or heroes (even in a single narrative)
back to primitive sun worship and identify analogues in various
legends of sun gods. Some medievalists like Roger S. Loomis
have gone so far as to trace various Arthurian characters
back to Celtic Solar Deities. The theory fell into
disfavor in late twentieth-century scholarship partly because
of its reductive "one-size-fits-all" approach to mythology,
and partly because some of the claims of Kuhn and Müller
have
been demonstrably
proven false. For instance,
while Solar Myth theorists first argued that various
tribal deities and heros in Homer and in Hindu mythology
were later incarnations of early sun deities, later archeological
or philological evidence showed some of these local gods
were real historical figures who were later elevated to
godhood in the belief of future generations. An example of
this was Alfred Lyall's demonstration that the names of certain
Rajasthan deities could be linked to historical Rajput clan
leaders who lived only a century or two before their "apotheosis"
into mythology.
SOLECISM (from
the Greek city Soloi): The area around the city
of Soloi in ancient Cilicia had a population who spoke a
nonstandard form of Attic Greek. Accordingly, the dominant
Athenians
tended to make fun of them, parody them in plays, beat them
up for
lunch money, etc. The term soloikos thus came to
connote grammatical mistakes, blunders in declension, errors
in diction,
and
whatnot. This gives rise to our equivalent modern English
term, solecism. David Smith notes solecisms can
be helpful. In the original koine Greek,
the New Testament book of Revelation has a
large number of solecisms, a fact quite annoying to Saint
Augustine, but which has been very useful to modern biblical
scholars seeking
to
distinguish
John of Patmos (the author
of Revelation) from earlier church fathers like the disciple
John (who lived too early and spoke a different dialect).
SOLILOQUY:
A monologue
spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character
believes himself to be alone. The technique frequently reveals
a character's innermost thoughts, including his feelings, state
of mind, motives or intentions. The soliloquy often provides
necessary but otherwise inaccessible information to the audience.
The dramatic convention is that whatever a character says in
a soliloquy to the audience must be true, or at least true in
the eyes of the character speaking (i.e., the character may
tell lies to mislead other characters in the play, but whatever
he states in a soliloquy is a true reflection of what the speaker
believes or feels). The soliloquy was rare in Classical drama,
but Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights used it extensively,
especially for their villains. Well-known examples include speeches
by the title characters of Macbeth, Richard III,
and Hamlet and also Iago in Othello. (Contrast
with an aside.)
Unlike the aside, a soliloquy is not usually indicated by specific
stage
directions.
SONG:
A lyric poem with a number of repeating stanzas (called refrains),
written to be set to music in either vocal performance or with
accompaniment of musical instruments. See dawn
song and lyric,
above and stanza,
below.
SONNET:
A lyric poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter,
with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns.
It usually expresses a single, complete idea or thought with
a reversal, twist, or change of direction in the concluding
lines. There are three common forms:
(1) Italian
or Petrarchan
(2) English
or Shakespearean
(3) Miltonic
The Petrarchan sonnet
has an eight line stanza (called an octave) followed by a
six line stanza (called a sestet). The octave has two quatrains
rhyming abba, abba,
the first of which presents the theme, the second further
develops it. In the sestet, the first three lines reflect
on or exemplify the theme, while the last three bring the
poem to a unified end. The sestet may be arranged cdecde,
cdcdcd, or cdedce.
The Shakespearean sonnet
uses three quatrains; each rhymed differently, with a final,
independently rhymed couplet that makes an effective, unifying
climax to the whole. Its rhyme scheme is abab,
cdcd, efef,
gg. Typically, the final
two lines follow a "turn" or a "volta," (sometimes spelled
volte, like volte-face) because they reverse,
undercut, or turn from the original line of thought to take
the idea in a new direction.
The Miltonic sonnet
is similar to the Petrarchan sonnet, but it does not divide
its thought between the octave and the sestet--the sense or
line of thinking runs straight from the eighth to ninth line.
Also, Milton expands the sonnet's repertoire to deal not only
with love as the earlier sonnets did, but also to include
politics, religion, and personal matters.
SONNET
CYCLE: Another term for
a sonnet
sequence. See discussion below.
SONNET
SEQUENCE: Also called
a sonnet cycle, this term refers to a gathering or arrangement
of sonnets by a single author so that the sonnets in that group
or arrangement deal with a single theme, situation, a particular
lady, or alternatively deal with what appears to be a sequential
story. Petrarch, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare all engaged
in this practice, or at least the early editors of their works
did. The first major sonnet cycle in English was Sir Philip
Sidney's Astrophil and Stella (written
in the early 1580s, published in 1591). Others include Daniel's
Delia, Lodge's Phillis, Drayton's Idea's
Mirror, Constable's Diana, and Spenser's Amoretti.
Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, however, are best known of any sonnet
sequences today.
SONS
OF BEN: A school
of literature consisting mostly of cavalier
poets who were admirers/imitators of Ben Jonson. The Sons of
Ben focused on "lyrics of love and gallant compliment,"
as M. H. Abrams phrases it (213). The Sons of Ben include Sir
John Suckling, Thomas Carew, Robert Herrick, and Richard Lovelace.
SOUBRETTE:
A maidservant of independent and saucy temperament in the Italian
commedia dell'arte. This stock character helps two or
more young lovers overcome the blocking
agent that prevents their happy union.
SOURCE:
(1) An earlier work of literature or folklore
used as the basis of a later work. Scholars use the term source
only when it is clear that one of the manuscripts or one piece
of oral transmission influenced a specific later work. If that
relationship is not clear, two works sharing similar material
or subject-matter are said to be analogues
if it is uncertain which one influenced the other or if both
might originate from some third, lost source. See also stemma
and Ur-text.
(2) When students write a research paper, their
sources are the original places where they found facts, ideas,
and quotations. Primary sources are the main
work of literature the students are citing and analyzing (such
as Shakespeare's Macbeth or Hemingway's The Sun
Also Rises). A secondary source comes
from all other materials--especially those later writings scholars
produce about Macbeth or Hemingway (or whatever the
topic is). Secondary sources might include articles in peer-reviewed
journals, biographies of the author, books analyzing or discussing
a particular work of literature, and so on. All literary analyses
should use quotations or references to the primary text as the
main componant of an argument--especially in the case of a close-reading.
Longer literary assignments such as research papers should also
make use of appropriate secondary research. See also peer-reviewed
journal.
SPACE
OPERA: A subgenre of "soft" science
fiction especially popular between 1930-1960,
often used in a derogatory sense. These space
operas are
novels or short stories set in the distant future
after humanity has spent centuries or millenia colonizing
the
entire galaxy--or sometimes multiple galaxies. The narratives
typically feature some form of easy space travel via
imaginary
technologies such as "hyperspace drives" or "warp
nacelles." This easy method of travel and colonization
allows the formation of huge space fleets to fight
each other using laser cannons and nuclear missiles. Behind
these
aramadas, vast interstellar empires compete with each other
(or with rebel forces, or with alien species) for territorial
control or political power. The governments imagined in these
books are often feudal in nature or else they are based
loosely
on empires from Earth's past history--i.e., the Roman Empire,
the British Empire of the 19th century, the Caliphates of
the
Middle East, the Samauri Shogunates of 16th century Japan,
and so on. In other cases, seeking models for future history,
the authors frequently rely upon parallels with the American
West or the exploration of Africa, and they create parallels
between sailing ships and spaceships, even going so far as
adding
space
pirates. They frequently present readers with stark contrasts
in social and geographic
terrain--i.e.,
contrasting
ice-worlds with desert worlds, or technologically wealthy
space-merchants with impoverished barbarians, and so on.
The stories often focus on characterization,
drama,
and (most especially)
action
rather
theme, symbolism
or other
literary
devices.
The first example is probably
Edison's Conquest of Mars (published 1898). The
editor Brian Aldiss later amassed a two-volume collection
of space
operas
prior
to 1979 in
Galactic Empires. Other famous space operas include
E.E. Smith's Lensman series, and the genre's
literary grandchildren include Frank Herbert's Dune series,
Lois McMaster Bujold's
"Miles Vorkosigan" saga, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series,
and pop culture films and television series like Star
Wars and Star
Trek,
both of which have spawned literally hundreds of spinoffs
and pulp
fiction novels in
their own rights.
SPEAKER,
POETIC: See poetic
speaker.
SPECIALIZATION:
A semantic change restricting the referents of a word--i.e.,
a linguistic movement from a more general to a more specific
meaning for a word. For instance, the Old English word wif (Modern
English wife) once meant merely "woman." However,
through linguistic specialization it has come to mean "married
woman" more specifically. In Middle English, a single
French loanword might be adopted twice over different centuries--once
from early Anglo-Norman French, and afterward from Central
French. They would have slight differences from each other
in spelling and pronunciation--so English speakers would give
each one a slightly specialized meaning--even though the two
originally meant the same thing in French. Examples include chief (leader
of a war band) and chef (leader of a kitchen). Both
were once the same word more or less meaning "leader" generally.
SPECULATIVE
FICTION:
Also called "alternative history," speculative
fiction is science fiction that explores
how the "real world" we live in today might be
different if historic events had unfolded with slight changes.
For instance, Robert Harris' novel Fatherland asks,
what would Germany look like three decades later if
Nazi Germany had won World War II? Margaret Atwood's The
Handmaid's Tale asks, what the U.S. would look like
if a reproductive crisis (widespread sterility) allowed a
fundamentalist
regime to come to power and control women's reproduction?
SPEECH
ACT THEORY: An idea set forth by J. L. Austin's How
to Do Things with Words, which argues that language is often
a mode of action rather than a means of communication or conveying
information. Language-use that conveys information is called
constative, and constative sentences by their very nature are
either true or false in the sense that they are accurate or
inaccurate. Language-use that serves as a mode of action is
called performative. Performative language causes something
to happen merely by making assertion. Examples include the "I
do" statement in a wedding ceremony. Here, the act of making
the assertion is the same as the action itself. Other examples
include the following ones:
-
betting
("I bet ten dollars that he drops the ball.")
-
composing
a will ("To my beloved daughter, I leave my house and
my second-best bed.")
-
umpiring
("Strike three! You are out!")
-
passing
sentence ("This court finds you guilty of negligent
homicide.")
-
christening
("You are christened John.")
-
knighting
("I dub thee Sir Lancelot.")
-
blessing
("In nomine patri, filii, et spiritu sancti, benedicite")
-
firing
("You're fired.")
-
bidding
("I bid ten dollars.")
-
baptizing
("I baptize you in the name of the father and the son
and the holy ghost.")
In
these examples above, the act of making the assertion
is the same as performing the act. Thus, these are examples
of performative language.
SPEECH
PREFIX: Often abbreviated "s.p.," this term
in drama refers to a character's name or an abbreviated version
of a character's name which indicates what actor is speaking
subsequent words in the text of a play. Conventionally, in modern
drama a colon or period separates the speech prefix from the
lines to be read. Here is an example with the prefixes indicated
in bold:
CASS:
Dost thou hear, my honest friend?
CLOWN: No, I hear not your honest friend,
I hear you.
(Othello 3.1.20-21)
Here, the first speech prefix
(Cass:) indicates Cassio is speaking the subsequent lines. Cassio's
words end when the next speech prefix indicates the Clown is
responding to his question.
SPELLING
PRONUNCIATION: An unhistorical way of pronouncing a
word based on the spelling of a word.
SPELLING
REFORM: Any effort to make spelling closer to actual
pronunciation.
SPENSERIAN
STANZA: A nine-line stanza rhyming in an ababbcbcc
pattern in which the first eight lines are pentameter and the
last line is an alexandrine.
The name spenserian comes from the form's most famous
user, Spenser, who used it in The Fairie Queene. Other
examples include Keat's "Eve of Saint Agnes" and Shelley's
"Adonais." The Spenserian stanza is probably the longest
and most intricate stanza generally employed in narrative poetry.
SPIRANT:
Another term in linguistics for a fricative.
SPIRIT
GUIDE: A conventional figure in mythology,
in the medieval visio
and in shamanistic myths that serves as (1)
a guide to a lost or wandering soul or to (2)
a guide to the dreaming psyche of another character. The Greeks,
for instance, referred to Hermes Mercury as a psychopompos,
a soul-carrier to direct the deceased through the caverns of
Avernus to the edge of the River Styx, where Charon would ferry
the souls of the dead across the water into Hades. The figure
of Anubis guided Egyptian spirits to the afterlife, and so on.
In the medieval tradition of the visio,
the spirit guide would serve as a commentator for the confused
soul of a sleeping individual. Thus, we have a grandfather figure
guiding our narrator in the Somnium Scipionis, or Virgil
and Beatrice steering Dante through the Inferno and
upwards toward Paradiso, or the ghost of Pearl explaining
to her grieving father the nature of heaven. Chaucer gleefully
throws this medieval convention on its head in The Book
of the Duchess by making the narrator slip out of bed naked
to follow his spirit-guide (a puppy) for a short while during
a hunt--only to get lost and bumble on without it until he finds
the grieving Knight in Black. Non-medieval examples of the spirit
guide include the ghost of Marley who chastizes Ebeneezer Scrooge
in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the totemic spirits
prominent in the visionquests of Amerindian tribes, or even
the ebon bird guiding the rock-n-roll revenant seeking revenge
in Brandon Lee's film, The Crow.
SPIRITUAL
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
An autobiography (usually Christian) that focuses on an individual's
spiritual growth. The plot is typically chronological in
structure, and it usually focuses on inner struggles within
the narrator, moving from pre-religious life, to a psychological
crisis followed
by a conversion narrative, to labor within the church or
within evangelical missions. The work often concludes with
an implied (or explicit) call to readers to convert. Examples
include
Saint
Patrick's Confession and Saint Augustine's Confessions.
SPONDAIC:
The adjective spondaic describes a line of poetry in
which the feet are composed of successive spondees. See spondee,
below.
SPONDEE:
In scansion,
a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two successive strong
beats. The spondee typically is "slower" and "heavier"
to read than an iamb
or a dactyl.
Some words and phrases in English naturally form spondees when
they alone constitute a poetic foot.
Examples of such spondees include football,
Mayday, shortcake, plop-plop, fizz-fizz, dumbbell, drop-dead,
goof-off, race track, bathrobe, breakdown, dead man,
black hole, and love
song. See meter
for extended discussion, or click
here to download a PDF handout that contrasts spondees with
other types of poetic feet.
SPOOF:
A comic piece of film or literature that ostensibly presents
itself as a "genre"
piece, but actually pokes fun at the clichés
or conventions
of the genre through imitative satire.
Examples from the twentieth century include the novel Bloodsucking
Fiends: A Love Story, which is a postmodern spoof of those
literary conventions found in Gothic horror novels about vampires
and modern Harlequin romances about boy-meets-girl narratives.
Examples from medieval literature include Chaucer's "Sir
Thopas," which mocks the popular meter and conventions
of medieval romance. Late twentieth-century films have proven
especially prone to being spoofed in the last three decades,
as witnessed by Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The Naked
Gun 33 and 1/3, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein,
which spoof popular genres such as film noire,
police dramas, the western film, and 1930s black and white classic
horror movies, respectively.
SPOONERISM:
The comic (and usually unintentional) transposition of two initial
consonants or other sounds. For example, saying "the queer
old dean" when one means to say, "the dear old queen,"
or speaking of "beery wenches" when one means "weary
benches" would be spoonerisms. The word comes from the
flustered English clergyman and Oxford don, Reverend W. A.