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]
TABOO (also
spelled tabu): (1) In anthropology,
a taboo is a socially prohibited activity. For instance,
in classical Greek culture, it was forbidden for a murderer
or menstruating woman to enter the sacred space of a temple
or the central agora of a city beyond a temenos boundary
lest
that
action spread contagious miasma. (2) A
linguistic taboo is a social prohibition that forbids mentioning
a word or subject. Commonly, various cultures might have
taboos against mentioning bodily fluids, defecation, certain
sexual
activities, or certain religious terms. These terms often
suffer linguistic pejoration
and become "curse-words." For instance, in Britain,
the adjective bloody is considered taboo or impolite
to speak aloud as a curse word because of its older religious
connotations as a medieval curse about the blood of Christ's
wounds. In American English, words describing specific
sexual
activities or bodily functions usually are taboo for polite
conversation, and so on.
TABULA
RASA (Latin, "erased tablet"): The term used in Enlightenment
philosophy for the idea that humanity is born completely innocent, without
any initial
predispositions, attitudes, or beliefs. Accordingly, no natural state
of humanity exists, but instead, humanity is infinitely malleable. The newborn
child is thus a "blank slate" on which experiences and education will write
his or her future personality and beliefs. The idea is influential in the
philosophical writings of Locke, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft, but it also
influences literary
fiction such as Frankenstein, in which the monster's account of
his experiences after his initial creation characterize him as an innocent
tabula rasa.
TACTILE
IMAGERY: Verbal description that evokes the sense of touch.
See imagery.
TAIL-RHYME
(translated from French rime couée, or Latin
rhythmus caudatus, also called caudate rhyme):
A unit of verse in which a short line, followed by a longer
line or section of longer lines, rhymes with a preceding
short line. The number of possible variants following this
scheme
are too many to list here. Famous examples can be found in
Chaucer's "Sir Thopas" and Drayton's "Ballad
of Agincourt." The following example of tail-rhyme
comes from P. B. Shelley's "To Night":
Swiftly
walk o'er the western wave,
Spirit
of Night!
Out of
the misty eastern cave,
Where,
all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,--
Swift
be thy flight!
TANKA:
A genre of Japanese poetry similar to the haiku. A
tanka consists of thirty-one syllables arranged in five lines.
The lines contain five / seven / five / seven / seven syllables.
Also known as the waka
or uta,
it originated in the 600s CE, and it is regarded as the classic,
ancient Japanese poetic form. It has had little influence
on Western poetry, though Amy Lowell and Adelaide Crapsey
have imitated it. Contrast it with the much more influential
haiku.
TELEMACHIA:
The first four books of The Odyssey are together
called the Telemachia because they focus on the problems
Telemachus faces while waiting for his father Odysseus to
return home.
TELESTICH:
A poem in which the last letters of successive lines form
a word, phrase, or consecutive letters of the alphabet. Compare
with abecedarian
poem and acrostic.
TEL
QUEL SCHOOL:
A school of
French intellectuals associated with Philippe Seller's
review Tel Quel. Sample members include Julia
Kristeva, Jean-Joseph Goux, and Jacques Derrida.
TEMENOS (from
Greek "to cut"): In Classical Greek culture, the temenos is
a sacred area marked off as holy ground. On this special
plot of land, we might find temples dedicated to a particular
god, sanctuaries, holy groves,
the race-course for Pythian or Olympic games, the agora in
the center of each city, and the Acropolis. Stones called
temenos markers would indicate the boundary,
and it would be taboo for any ritually unclean person to
cross
this line lest they risk creating or spreading miasma.
TEMPO:
The pace or speed of speech and also the degree to which individual
sounds are fully articulated or blurred together. The faster
the tempo, the more likely sounds will blur or elide.
TEMPORAL:
In grammatical and linguistic discussion, something relating
to the element of time.
See further discussion under clause.
TEMPTATION
MOTIF: A motif in which
one of the protagonist's primary struggles is the conflict
between
his or her sense of (1) personal honor and
ethics and (2) his or her personal desires,
ambitions, or wickedness. Biblical examples include the
fall
of mankind in Genesis, David and Bathsheba, and Satan's three
temptations of Christ. This motif is central to a variety
of patristic, medieval and Renaissance works, including the
Confessions, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
Paradise Lost, and The Tragical History of Doctor
Faustus. Stories that involve a temptation motif frequently
focus on internal conflict
or psychological drama in addition to any external plot lines.
In medieval theology, the temptation motif was often divided
into three categories: concupiscentia carnis
(physical temptations of the flesh such as gluttony, drunkenness,
and illicit sexuality), concupiscentia oculora
("temptation of the eyes" i.e., mental temptations
for imagined material possessions, power or wealth) and superbia
vitae (pride concerning life--the desire
humans have to be more than what God created humans to
be.) Perhaps the most dramatic example is the Faustian
bargain, a temptation motif in which an individual
sells his or her soul to the devil.
TENDENTIAL:
In grammar,
tendential refers to action that
has been attempted but remains incomplete--especially interrupted
action. This situation is only of minor concern in English
grammar, but it is important in Greek and other languages.
TENOR:
In common usage, tenor refers to the course of thought,
meaning or emotion in anything written or spoken. Among rhetoricians,
however, the word tenor more specifically refers
to the subject of a metaphor. For instance, if a writer claimed,
"Mrs. Higgins is a witch," the tenor of the metaphor
witch is Mrs.
Higgins. When Shakespeare claims that "all
the world's a stage," the entire world is the tenor for
the metaphor of a stage.
See metaphor.
TENSE
VOWEL: Any vowel made with the tongue muscles relatively
more tense than in a lax vowel. These tense vowels tend to
be less central and pronounced higher in the oral cavity than
lax vowels. Examples include the vowels [i],
[e], [u],
and [o].
TENSION:
(1) In common usage, tension refers
to a sense of heightened involvement, uncertainty, and interest
an audience experiences as the climax of the action approaches.
(2) In the school of literary theory called
"New Criticism" in the
1930s and later, the word tension refers more specifically
to the quality of balanced opposites that can provide form
and unity to a literary work of diverse components. This sort
of tension exists between the literal and metaphorical meanings
of a work, between what is written and what the text implies,
between the serious and the ironic, between contradictions
in the text that the reader must resolve without authorial
discussion, or any equilibrium resulting from the harmony
of opposite tendencies.
TESTAMENT:
An agreement or covenant, especially in the sense of a will
being a "last will and testament" or in the sense
of the two major portions of the Bible being a covenant between
God and humanity. In literature, the term is often used in
the sense of "affirmation," such as Robert Bridges'
The Testament of Beauty, which affirms the wisdom
of the artistic spirit.
TERCET:
A three-line unit or stanza of poetry. It typically rhymes
in an AAA or ABA
pattern. If the tercet forms a stanza by itself, it is often
called a triplet.
TERMINISTIC
SCREEN: Kenneth Burke's term for the way a word or
label alters the way we categorize, analyze, and perceive
the object about which we talk. Compare with Whorf's
Hypothesis.
TERRIBLE
SONNETS:
In spite of the label, this phrase does not refer
to
poorly written sonnets. Gerard Manley Hopkins used the
term "terrible sonnets" to designate several of his later
religious poems, in which he feels isolated from God.
In this poems,
his sense of individuality
leads Hopkins to confront his solipsism--and react with
despair ("the dark night of the soul," as described by
St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order).
The terrible sonnets contrast starkly with Hopkins' earlier
religious poetry, which focus on the ecstatic joy of being
in God's presence or God's creation. Sample terrible
sonnets
include
Hopkins' "Carrion Comfort," "No Worst, There Is None,"
"I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day," and "Thou
Art
Indeed
Just,
Lord."
TERZA
RIMA (Italian, "third rhyme"): A three-line
stanza form with interlocking rhymes that move from one stanza
to the next. The typical pattern is ABA,
BCB, CDC,
DED, and so on. Dante
chose terza rima's tripartite structure as the basic
poetic unit of his trilogy, The Divine Comedy. An English
example is found in Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind."
Here are two sample stanzas:
TETRAGRAMMATON:
The four Hebrew consonant letters corresponding to yhwh (or
in German transliteration,
jhvh). The oldest Hebrew writers referred to God
in a variety of ways: El (God), Elohim (God,
but in a plural form as was common in other Ugaritic and
Semitic traditions), or by a personal name containing the
letters yhwh, usually rendered as Yahweh in
modern transcription. Over time, given certain Kabbalistic
and mystical leanings,
Hebrew scribes began to add extra semantic weight to this
combination of written letters. It is as if the holiness
of God spilled over into the inky strokes
signifying
the Divine on parchment. Scribes and priests treated
the tetragrammaton as spiritually charged by
its
use in prayers,
curses,
and
blessings. Divine
help, after
all, is triggered by invocation or calling
upon the name of a deity. The tetragrammaton often became
personified--almost like a separate entity from its referent.
Thus, the Deuteronomic
writers customarily referred to the Temple in Jerusalem
as the place where Yahweh's "name" dwelled rather than
(or in addition to) being the residence of Yahweh himself
(Gabel and Wheeler 269).
The original Hebrew writing
system did not have letters indicating vowel sounds. The
scribes only wrote down
consonant letters and relied upon memory and context to supply
the appropriate vowels. However, the tetragrammaton Yahweh was
different from other Hebrew terms because it underwent a
linguistic taboo.
It could be written down, but it became forbidden to say
the name aloud. (Gabon and Wheeler note there is "no real
evidence that this originally had been the case," with only
anachronistic additions to the Leviticus text in Leviticus
24:10-16 being used to justify the taboo a posteriori.)
Shortly after the Babylonian Exile, however, the divine name
was considered too sacred to pronounce and strict rules prevented
its use, even though before this time the ordinary believer
used God's name as a matter of course. The convention then
became that, when reading the scriptures aloud, the reader
would substitute a neutral title, adonai ("my Lord")
wherever the tetragrammaton yhwh appeared. After
the custom of using diacritical markings to indicate
vowels appeared in Hebrew scribal practice, the scribe would
continue to use the consonant letters, but would instead
place the diacritical vowel markings for adonai above
the consonants, reminding the reader to substitute adonai for
the tetragrammaton. (This substitution sounds a bit confusing
in English, but the markings are distinctive and quickly
discernable
in Hebrew). The Greek kurios and
Latin dominus appear
as translated equivalents to adonai, but many modern
English Bibles indicate the tetragrammaton by writing LORD in
all capital letters but with slightly smaller typefont, which
imitates the special status of the yhwh in the original
Hebrew. This distinction,
however,
only applies to the Hebrew Bible, not the New Testament.
Note that Jehovah is an incorrect rendering of yhwh first
popularized in the Renaissance by King James translators
unfamiliar with this unique Hebrew convention.
TETRALOGY:
(1) In a general sense, a collection of four
narratives that are contiguous and continuous in chronology.
Just as three books that tell a continuous story constitute
a trilogy,
four books that tell a continuous narrative are a tetralogy.
(2) A set of four plays that constitute
a long historical cycle, written in approximately the same
half
of Shakespeare's career. Scholars refer to Shakespeare
as writing a "First Tetralogy" (containing Richard III
and Henry VI, part 1, part 2, and part
3) and a "Second Tetralogy" (containing Richard II,
Henry IV, part I., Henry IV, part 2, and Henry
V.) In opera, Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs
serves as a tetralogy. Contrast with sequel
and trilogy.
TETRAMETER:
A line consisting of four metrical feet. See discussion under
meter.
TERMINUS
A QUO: The earliest possible date that a literary
work could have been written, a potential starting point for
dating a manuscript or text. Latin for "boundary from
that point."
TERMINUS
AD QUEM: The latest possible date that a literary
work could have been written, a potential ending point for
dating a manuscript or text. Latin for "boundary up to
this point."
TEST
ACT OF 1673: A law requiring all British officials
holding public office to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper in accordance with the rituals of the Established Church
of England (the Anglican Church). This law was designed to
exclude Catholics, Anabaptists, and Scottish Presbyterians
from holding positions of importance. Swift favored the Test
Act, and his political position brought about one of literature's
unique satires. When more tolerant times came to England,
it became politically desirable to reconcile with Scottish
and Irish minorities. At that point, the English government
proposed abolishing the Test Act. Swift responded by
writing his satirical essay, "Abolishing Christianity
in England," in which he equates the removal of the Test
Act with an attempt to remove completely the last vestiges
of Christianity in England.
TEXT:
In literary criticism, formalist critics use the term text to
refer to a single work of literary art (such as a specific
poem, essay, short story). In
formalist thinking, this text is an autonomous verbal object--i.e.,
it is self-enclosed and self-creating, and thus the critic
need not necessarily explicate it using the biography of
the author, or the historical background of its time-period,
or other "extra-textual" details.
TEXTUAL CRITICISM: The
collection, comparison, and collating of all textual
variants in order to reconstruct or recreate a single authoritative
text--especially one that reflects authorial intention.
TEXTUAL
VARIANT: A version of a text that has differences
in wording or structure compared with other texts,
especially one with missing
lines or extra lines
added. In some cases, textual variants reflect the difference
between an author's early version or rough draft of a work
and a later version or polished final product. Variance in
Shakespeare's plays might have come about in the difference
between the foul papers (handwritten rough drafts) and the
fair copy (the largely corrected versions sent to the printers).
Variations in Chaucer's manuscripts of The Canterbury
Tales
might reflect an earlier, alternative scheme for structuring
the work that Chaucer later abandoned in favor of a revised
order for the various tales. Other textual variants in literary
works are the product of error, scribal corruption, intentional
censorship, or errata.
See fair copy, errata, foul
papers, scribal corruption,
and Ur-text.
Finally, the author might
deliberately make changes in later versions of a poem or
story. For instance, Dr. Karen
Karbiener notes significant textual variants appear in
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the first edition
of 1818, the teenage Shelley describes Elizabeth as having
a strong resemblence
to Shelley herself. Many of the novel's subplots had rather
incestuous overtones, and the text focuses more on Victor
Frankenstein's moral free will. Karbiener points out how
Shelley alters or changes these elements in her 1831
edition
from
Colburn and Bentley's Standard Novels Series,
when Shelley is an older and less radical author.
TEXTUALITY:
See écriture.
TEXTURE:
In the thought of John Crowe Ransom and the New Critics,
"texture"
involves poetic details such as the modification of the metrical
pattern, associations attached to words, and the aural
values
of spoken sounds. These elements are separate from the structure
of the poem, and they are significantly of interest in
a technical
sense, but they cannot be captured in a paraphrase or summary
of the poem's argument or even in its literal content.
TEXTUS
RECEPTUS: The
text of the Greek New Testament based on Erasmus' Greek
text. In spite of considerable errors and flaws, for four
hundred years it was accepted as the standard or commonly
received text, hence the name textus receptus. It served
as the primary text used in scholarly translations
(including
the
King
James
translation)
and
in scholarly debate until historical and textual criticism
developed further in the 19th century.
THANATOS
(Greek, "death"): Freud's term for a subconscious
desire for self-destruction--a secret longing to die--a
death wish. See
also wish
fulfillment.
THEATER
IN THE ROUND: A performance taking place on an arena stage.
See arena
stage.
THEATER
OF DIONYSUS: The outdoor theater in Athens where Greek
drama began as a part of religious rituals on the sloped side
of the Acropolis in Athens.
THEGN:
A warrior who has sworn his loyalty to a lord in Anglo-Saxon
society. In return for a gift of weaponry and provisions of
food and drink at the mead-hall, the thegn vows to
fight for his lord and die in his service. He also takes up
the task of avenging his lord's death if that lord (hlaford)
should die. Compare with Modern English thane. See
Anglo-Saxon,
hlaford,
and heriot.
THEMATIC
VOWEL: In linguistics, a vowel attached to the end
of an Indo-European
root word to form a stem.
THEME:
A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire
literary work. The theme can take the form of a brief and
meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life; it may
be a single idea such as "progress" (in many Victorian works),
"order and duty" (in many early Roman works), "seize-the-day"
(in many late Roman works), or "jealousy" (in Shakespeare's
Othello). The theme may also be a more complicated
doctrine, such as Milton's theme in Paradise Lost,
"to justify the ways of God to men," or "Socialism is
the only sane reaction to the labor abuses in Chicago meat-packing
plants" (Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). A theme
is the author's way of communicating and sharing ideas, perceptions,
and feelings with readers, and it may be directly stated in
the book, or it may only be implied. Compare with motif
and leit-motif.
THEODICY (from
Greek theo "God" + dike "right"):
In theological writings, this term refers to a defense
of God's goodness
or justice
in
the
face of
evil being
allowed to exist or innocent creatures being allowed to
suffer--i.e., explanations for why bad things can happen
to good people and to what degree a benevolent and omnipotent
being can be held accountable for such injustice. An early
work exploring this issue is the Hebrew book of Job.
Here, the narrator tells the audience four times either
that "in all this, Job did not sin" (Job 1:22),
or asserts,
"he is blameless and upright" (1:8) even as God
explicitly allows the
Accuser (Hebrew Shaitan or Satan)
to ruin Job's health, destroy his possessions, slaughter
his family, and kill his servants. In the
conclusion, when Job tries to repent for non-existent wrong-doings,
the character of God does not rebuke Job, but instead expresses
anger at Eliphaz, Bildad, Elihu, and Zophar,
who simplistically argue that God only causes suffering
to
the wicked and that he always protects the good. God's
response to Eliphaz is "I am angry with you and your
two friends,
because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my
servant Job has" (Job 42:7). Though
the reader
witnesses the Shaitan's "bet" or "wager" with
God, Job never receives any
explanation for his sufferings because Job
never witnesses the celestial events the reader is privy
to. Since the question remains
open-ended, many later theologians have attempted to create
some theodicy to reconcile a benevolent deity and the
existence of suffering,
ranging from Saint Augustine (The Confessions)
to C. S. Lewis ("The Problem of Pain"). The character
of Doctor Pangloss (Dr. "Explain-it-all") in
Voltaire's Candide concerns
himself frequently with theodicy--though other characters
like Martin often demolish his theories over
the course of the satiric tale. The actual term
theodicy, however, comes from Gottfried Wilhelm
von Leibnitz's Théodicée,
a more serious philosophical exploration of the problem
than Voltaire's satirical tale.
THEOGONY:
In mythology,
an account of the gods' origins and their genealogy. Click
here for an example chart.
THEOMARCHY:
Strife or warfare among the gods, especially in the sense
of this
activity as a subplot (overplot?) in the Homeric poems
such as The Iliad.
THESIS:
(1) In an essay, a thesis is an argument, either overt or
implicit, that a writer develops and supports. (2) In classical
metrical analysis, Greeks referred to the stressed syllable
in a metrical foot as a thesis,
and the unstressed syllable in a metrical foot as an arsis.
Unfortunately, the Roman analysts used the exact opposite
terminology, with the thesis being their unstressed
foot and the arsis being the stressed foot. This
results in much confusion for modern students.
THIASOS:
In ancient Greece, a thiasos was an organized group
of women devoted to the worship of Aphrodite. Early scholars
have suggested that the poet Sappo may have been a member
of a thiasos on the isle of Lesbos (modern day Lesbia).
THING:
While the althing
was the closest organization the Icelandic Vikings had to
America's federal or nationwide government, the thing
was the equivalent of the local or regional government (i.e.,
althings were huge gatherings dealing with matters
affecting all of Iceland, while things were smaller, scattered
gatherings dealing with matters affecting a town or community).
At a thing, representatives from the local area gathered
to vote on policy, hear complaints, settle disputes, and designate
incorrigible individuals as outlaws.
THIRD-PERSON POINT
OF VIEW: See discussion under
point
of view.
THIRD
WALL: Usually referred to as the "fourth wall,"
depending upon how a stagebuilder numbers the sides of the
stage, the third or fourth wall is an imaginary barrier that
separates the events on stage from the audience. The idea
is that the stage background is constructed with a cutaway
view of the house, so that the people sitting on the audience
can look through this invisible "fourth wall" and
look directly into the events inside. Such stages preclude
theater-in-the-round
and they require a modified apron
stage
with an expensive reproduction of an entire house or building,
often complete with stairs, wallpaper, furniture, and other
bits to add verisimilitude.
This type of stage became increasingly common within the last
two centuries, but the money involved in constructing such
stages often precludes their use in drama, leaving arena
stages most popular for the architectural design
of the stage.
THIRTEENER:
A stanza rhyming ABABABABCDDDC.
The 1994 edition of the E.E.T.S. produced a version of the
Wakefield Master's Second Shepherd's Play printed
in thirteeners, as opposed to the more traditional printing
of nine lines in which the first four lines are extended in
length with the first half rhyming with the last half of each
line.
THORN:
A letter representing a th-
sound in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet and in Norse runes. Click
here for more information.
THREE
ESTATES: See feudalism.
Or click here for expanded historical
discussion of feudalism.
THREE FOLD DEATH: See
threefold death.
THREE DRAMATIC UNITIES:
See unities,
the three.
THREE LAWS OF
ROBOTICS:
See Asimov's
Three Laws of Robotics.
THREE UNITIES:
See unities,
the three.
THREEFOLD
DEATH: According to Dan Wiley's entry
in Duffy's Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia,
threefold death is a motif of the early Irish aideda in
which a victim is killed
by three different means in rapid succession, often wounding,
drowning, and burning. Examples of this motif can also be found
in literature of folklore of Wales, France, and Estonia. The
widespread nature of the motif makes some scholars think it
began in a hypothetical Indo-European tri-functional sacrifice
in which human victims were offered to a triad of
divinities. Two of the best examples are found in Aided
Diarnmata meic Cerbaill (The Death of Diarmait mac
Cerbaill)
and Aided
Muirchertaig meic Erca (The Death of Muirchertach
mac Erca). The tales are typically set in the early Christian
period between 500 and
699 CE. The narrative pattern typically is (a) a crime is committed
against the church, (b) it is prophesied the offender will
die a threefold death, (c) such a death does occur. See Duffy
10-11.
THRENODY:
Another term for a dirge.
THRUST
STAGE: Another term for an apron
stage.
TILDE:
A diacritic marking usd in languages like Spanish and Portugeuse.
It looks like this: ~, and the tilde appears
over another letter.
TIRING-HOUSE:
An enclosed area in an Elizabethan theater where the actors
awaited their cue to go on stage, changed their costumes,
and stored stage props. The term is an abbreviation of "attiring
house" or "attiring room." This structure was
located at the back of the stage and opened out onto the stage
from two or more doors in the frons
scenae.
TMESIS:
Intentionally breaking a word into two parts for emphasis.
Goldwyn once wrote, "I have but two words to say to your
request: Im Possible." In the movie True Lies, one
character states, "I have two words to describe that
idea. In Sane." Milton writes, "Which way soever
man refer to it." The poet W. H. Auden makes emotionally
laden use of tmesis in "Two Songs for Hedli Anderson," where
he stretches out the word forever by writing: "I
thought that love would last For Ever. I was wrong." In
English, this rhetorical scheme is fairly rare, since only
the compounds of "ever" readily lend themselves
to it, but it is much more common in Greek and Latin. An
exception to this generalization is the American poet e.
e. cummings (the lack of capitalization in his name is a
rhetorical affectation). Critics note that cummings makes
particularly potent use of tmesis in poems like "she
being Brand / -new", in which words like "brand-new" and "O.
K" are artificially divided across separate lines of
text to create an unusual, broken reading experience. Particularly
clever poets may use a sort of infixation to insert other
words of phrases between the two parts that have been split
apart. For instance, a southerner might say, "I live
in West--by God--Virginia, thank you very much!" Shakespeare,
in Troilus and Cressida, writes the phrase, "how
dearly ever parted" (III.iii), when we would expect
to find the phrase written as "however dearly parted" in
normal grammatical usage. Tmesis is an example of
a rhetorical scheme.
TOCHARIAN:
A branch of the Indo-European family of languages--now extinct.
Unusually, Tocharian was geographically located in central
Asia, far away from most other Indo-European languages.
TOKEN:
Nathaniel Hawthorne's term for a private
symbol. He also refers to private symbols as
emblems. Examples include the blasted trees
and brown-grass in "The Hollow of the Three Hills"
or the walking stick carried by the old man and the pink ribbon
belonging to Faith in "Young Goodman Brown."
TONE:
The means of creating a relationship or
conveying an attitude or mood. By looking carefully at the
choices an author makes (in characters, incidents, setting;
in the work's stylistic choices and diction, etc.), careful
readers often can isolate the tone of a work and sometimes
infer from it the underlying attitudes that control and color
the story or poem as a whole. The tone might be formal or
informal, playful, ironic, optimistic, pessimistic, or sensual.
To illustrate the difference, two different novelists might
write stories about capitalism. Author #1 creates a tale in
which an impoverished but hard-working young lad pulls himself
out of the slums when he applies himself to his education,
and he becomes a wealthy, contented middle-class citizen who
leaves his past behind him, never looking back at that awful
human cesspool from which he rose. Author #2 creates a tale
in which a dirty street-rat skulks his way out of the slums
by abandoning his family and going off to college, and he
greedily hoards his money in a gated community and ignores
the suffering of his former "equals," whom he leaves
behind in his selfish desire to get ahead. Note that both
author #1 and author #2 basically present the same plotline.
While the first author's writing creates a tale of optimism
and hope, the second author shapes the same tale into a story
of bitterness and cynicism. The difference is in their respective
tones--the way they convey their attitudes about particular
characters and subject-matter. Note that in poetry, tone is
often called voice.
TOPONYM:
A place-name, such as "Detroit" or "Transylvania,"
or "Rooster Rock." Toponyms are fascinating on a
linguistic level. Often their etymology reveals an etiological
narrative from local mythology
or folklore
(such as Arthurian
legends for how some regions of Wales were named) or historical
evidence concerning linguistic migrations. For instance, in
the northern parts of England and the East Midlands, towns
with name-endings such as "-by"
or "-thorp"
are all places named by the Danish Vikings, who invaded and
settled in those parts around 800 CE. On the opposite shore,
in southeastern parts of England, towns with name-endings
such as "-chester"
or "-caster"
were once Roman military bases (from Latin castrum,
a fort), and they were built before 410 CE. Toponyms tend
to be linguistically conservative, so the name may not change
even after new invaders or settlers take over the area. Hence,
in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico, aboriginal words and phrases
still survive in place names like Milwaukee, Alaska, Oklahoma,
the Willamette river, Saskatchewan, Ottawa, Acapulco, Tenochtitlan,
Oaxaca, and thousands more.
TORY (from Irish toraidhe, "outlaw,
fugitive"; plural: Tories):
As Marshall tells us, the name Tory was originally
an insulting nickname given to supporters of James, Duke of
York (James II) as heir to the throne in the 1680s. The original
idea was that his supporters were all tax-bandits who did
not fully support popular Protestant movements in England.
Eventually, during the time of Swift, Addison, Steele, and
Johnson in the 1700s, the terms Tory and Whig
became the names of the two major political factions in England.
Tories were associated with the Established Chuch of England
(the Anglican Church) and conservative country gentry, and
the Whigs were associated with religious dissenters (Quakers,
anabaptists, Puritans, etc.) and the rising bourgeois
class of industrialists wanting political change. In modern
British politics, the term Tory remains informally
attached to the Conservative party, but the word Whig
has fallen out of political use for the Liberal Party. See
also Whig
(Marshall 11-12).
TOTAL
DEPRAVITY:
A doctrine associated with John Calvin's doctrine of Infant
Damnation and Saint Augustine's and Saint
Tertullian's doctrine of Original
Sin. Total depravity argues
that, because of Adam's fall
from Grace, every person is born innately evil, and, in
fact, is incapable of truly doing anything moral or good
at all without the merciful, direct intervention of God.
Questions surrounding total depravity form a key part of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," in
which the protagonist, convinced that all humanity is inherently
depraved, falls into despair and suspicion of his society.
Total depravity contrasts with the Transcendental and Romantic notion
that children in nature are born innocent and only later
grow corrupt through exposure to "unnatural"
and artificial surroundings provided by decadent and hypocritical
civilization.
TOTEMISM (from
Ojibwe odoodem):
In its most specific sense, the term applies to the religious
practices of the Native American Ojibiwa tribe, i.e.,
a religious belief in which a family or a clan would
be
watched
over
assisted
by a
totem-spirit. Emile Durkheim popularized the concept as
a focus of anthropological study in the early twentieth
century. Today, anthropologists and scholars of comparative
religion
apply the term generally to
such
beliefs
among Native American tribes and find analogues in Western
and Eastern Europe, Africa, Australia and the Arctic Circle.
Like shamanism,
totemism sees the spirit-world as being filled with
spirits that take the form of natural
phenomena (especially animals, astrological or meteorological
phenomena, or geographic features of the land). These
spirits are personified and
often treated as family members (i.e., "Brother Owl"
or "Grandfather Moon") or as ancient ancestral spirits
who
founded the clan or tribe (for instance, one clan might
claim to be descended from the Great Sea Turtle, another
clan from the First Jaguar, etc.) Often the tribe has
a shaman responsible
for contact with the totem-spirit, and the tribe may
go through elaborate hunting ceremonies to apologize
for hunting their "mascot" or may develope complex
taboos regarding the animal. Some scholars of mythology believe
long-forgotten totemism explains otherwise inexplicable
rituals and myths in classical religion. For
instance, consider
Athena's association with owls or the local Artemis ceremonies
in which
young girls would dress up as bears and dance. These
may point to prehistoric times in which Athena was an owl
totem
or
Artemis
was the spirit of the great she-bear, long before these
goddesses were anthropomophosized. The connotations and
rituals linger even when the original meaning is forgotten.
TRACE:
In literary criticism, Jacques Derrida uses the term trace to describe the remnant
of all non-present meanings, sounds, or written markings
on the page--especially in the sense that features are
identifiable only by the absence of other features.
TRACT
(from Latin, tractare, "to handle, to treat,
to pull"): A brief pamphlet or leaflet dealing with a
political or religious argument.
TRADITION:
The beliefs, attitudes, tendencies, and ways of representing
the world through art: traits widely shared by writers over
a span of time, including common subject-matter, conventions,
and genres.
TRAGEDY:
A serious play in which the chief character, by some peculiarity
of psychology, passes through a series of misfortunes leading
to a final, devastating catastrophe. According to Aristotle,
catharsis
is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragedy. He
writes in his Poetics
(c. 350 BCE): "Tragedy
is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and
of a certain magnitude; . . . through pity [eleos]
and fear [phobos] effecting the proper purgation [catharsis]
of these emotions" (Book 6.2). Traditionally,
a tragedy is divided into five acts. The first act introduces
the characters in a state of happiness, or at the height
of their power, influence, or fame. The second act typically
introduces a problem or dilemma, which reaches a point of
crisis in the third act, but which can still be successfully
averted. In the fourth act, the main characters fail to avert
or avoid the impending crisis or catastrophe,
and this disaster occurs. The fifth act traditionally reveals
the grim consequences of that failure. See also hamartia,
hubris,
anagnorisis,
peripeteia,
and catharsis.
Click the following links to download a handout discussing
medieval tragedy,
some general thoughts
about tragedy, or a comparison
of comedy and tragedy.
TRAGIC
FLAW: Another term for the
tragic hero's hamartia. See discussion under hamartia
and tragedy.
TRAGICOMEDY:
A experimental literary work--either a play or prose piece
of fiction--containing elements common to both comedies and
tragedies. The genre
is marked by characters of both high and low degree, even
though classical drama required upper-class characters for
tragedy and lower-class characters for comedy. Tragicomedies
were of some interest in the Renaissance, but some modern
dramas might be considered examples as well. Typically, the
early stages of the play resembled those of a tragedy, but
an abrupt reversal of circumstance prevent the tragedy.
TRANSCENDENTALISM
(Latin trans + ascendere, "to climb beyond"):
Transcendentalism is an American philosophical, religious,
and literary movement roughly equivalent to the Romantic
movement in England (see Romanticism).
The transcendentalist philosophy is not systematic or sharply
defined, but it generally stresses individual intuition and
conscience, and it holds that nature reveals the whole of
God's moral
law. It suggests that ultimate truth can be discovered by
a human's inmost feelings. It argues for morality guided
by
personal conscience rather than religious dogma or the laws
of a society. Human nature in this philosophy is basically
good if humans are allowed to pursue their normal desires
in a natural and wholesome environment, an idea that contrasts
sharply with Calvinist doctrines like total
depravity. Transcendentalism
also suggests the presence of an "Over-Soul," the
Emersonian sense that humanity collectively has a defining
spirit.
The American transcendental
movement begins around 1836 and continues up until the late
1850s, starting shortly after the Romantic period ends in
England. The Civil War in the 1860s caused such cultural disjuncture
that the event ended the transcendental movement in America.
Much of the movement's ideas grow out of the German Immanuel
Kant's philosophy (1724-1804) and Goethe in Germany, or the
writings of Carlyle and Coleridge in England. Later writers
advanced transcendental thinking further. In New England,
Emerson and Thoreau were the two most famous transcendentalists.
Emerson's Nature and Thoreau's Walden best express
the ideas. These two believed in living close to nature, accepted
the value of manual labor, and favored self-reliance. Other
transcendentalist writers include Bronson Alcott and Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Hawthorne, however, later grew disillusioned with
transcendentalism, and wrote a skeptical work (The Blithedale
Romance of 1852) in which he critiques his experiences
while living at a communal farm operated according to transcendentalist
principles.
Transcendental philosophy
has had a profound effect on the American psyche, including
the idea of independent, do-it-yourself self-reliance, the
rejection of conformity, and a deep love of nature, much
as the Romantic
period
influenced England. Traces of its voice--albeit somewhat
muted--appear in the counter-cultural rhetoric of the
1960s and in ecological
writings of the late twentieth-century. In the Christian
religious tradition, the transcendentalist philosophy
was a powerful
influence on the growth of the modern Unitarian Church. To
see how transcendentalism fits in with other literary
movements
and time-periods, click here
to download
a PDF handout that places the literary periods in chronological
order.
TRANSFER
OF MEANING: A change in meaning--often poetic in
origin--in which a word's referent alters by a figure of speech
such as a synecdoche, a metaphor, or a metonym. For instance,
consider the phrase, "all hands on deck." Here,
the normal referent for "hands" would be a body
part located on the end of the human arm. However, by synecdoche,
the referent for "hands" becomes "sailors"
more generally.
TRANSFORMATIONAL
GRAMMAR: An influential theory of grammar associated
with the linguist Noam Chomsky. This theory, also known as
generative grammar, or transformational-generative
grammar (and abbreviated T-G), tries
to explain the ability of a speaker to create and understand
the sentences in a native language--especially the ability
to recognize and create sentences that the listener or speaker
could never have heard before. It attempts to answer the question
of how an apparently infinite variety in meaning and communication
can be generated from finite vocabulary and finite grammatical
forms.
TRANSITIVE:
This term refers to a verb or a verbal phrase that contains
or can take a direct object, which contrasts with an intransitive
verb, i.e., one that cannot take a direct object. For example,
hit is a transitive verb: Joey
hit the wall. In this
example, hit can
take a direct object like wall or
target or even brother if
Joey hit his brother. Some transitive verbs are so strongly
transitive they do not make sense without a direct object.
For instance,
"Joey repaired the sink."
Here, the verb repaired sounds
strange if we leave out the object and write, "Joey
repaired."
This example contrasts with intransitive verbs, i.e.,
verbs which need not (or in many cases cannot) take an
object. For
example, Joey chuckled.
Here, chuckled needs
no direct object. In English, transitive verbs belong to
active voice verbs, but in some languages
(like Greek) they can belong to any voice--active, passive,
middle, or aorist.
TRANSITUS
MUNDI: The theme
of life's ephemeral or transient nature, especially when that
thematic exploration ends by suggesting humanity should reject
the world or turn its attention away from mundane life and
retreat to spiritual contemplation of the next life. The term
comes from the Latin phrase, Sic transit gloria mundi.
["Thus the glory of the world passes away"]. Note
that if the theme of life's ephemeral or transient nature
leads to a suggestion that one should embrace life more fiercely
and take advantage of its pleasures before death ends the
opportunity, the theme is usually referred to as a carpe
diem theme instead. See also ubi
sunt.
TRANSLATIO
(Latin, derived from the verb translatere,
"to carry across"): The medieval idea of what modern
individuals might mistakenly call "translation."
Translatio is the act of taking an older text in a
different language and creating a new work that embodies the
same ideas in a new language. Unlike modern translation, in
which a translator often tries to convey each sentence, word,
and phrase as literally and accurately as possible, the medieval
idea of translatio was to take the gist of the original
work's ideas and to convey them loosely in a new form. Examples
include King Alfred's early and Chaucer's later "translations"
of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Chaucer's loose
"translations" (i.e., new versions) of the Troy
myth in Troilus and Criseyde, which in turn was adapted
from earlier medieval Italian authors, or his abbreviated
version of the French poem, Roman de la Rose. Medieval
translators felt little compunction about keeping the same
sequence of events, settings, or characters in their translations.
The important element to be conveyed was the feeling and philosophy
behind the original work.
TRANSLATION:
The act of conveying the meaning of words in one language
by attempting to say the same thing in another language, as
opposed to paraphrasing, summarizing, and transliteration.
TRANSLITERATION:
The representation of the symbols appearing in one language's
writing system by those of another language's writing system.
For instance, Anglo-Saxon had a letter called eth
(∂),
which does not exist in Modern English. To transliterate
this
letter, we use the digraph <th>
when we write out Anglo-Saxon words. For instance,
∂aes
might become thaes.
For extended examples of transliteration
in Mandarin Chinese,
click here.
TRAVEL
LITERATURE: Writings that describe either the author's
journey to a distant and alien place, or writings which discuss
the customs, habits, and wildlife of a distant place. The
oldest surviving travel literature is an account from 1300
BCE, an anonymous record of Egyptian naval voyages called
The Journeying of the Master of the Captains of Egypt.
Herodotus' Histories recount his travels in Egypt,
Africa, and elsewhere in the late 400s BCE. In China, we find
accounts of travels to India by a certain Fa-Hian (c. 400
CE) and Shuman Hwui-Li's travels to the farthest Eastern reaches
of the Chinese Empire. Roman travel literature includes writings
by Gaius Solinus (c. 250 CE).
Medieval travel writers
include Marco Polo (c. 1254-1324 CE), who traveled from Italy
to China, and the Arabian traveler, Ibn Battutah (1304-78
CE), who spent twenty-eight years traveling through Spain,
South Russia, India, Africa, Egypt, and other locations. In
roughly the same time period, Friar Jordanus of Sérac
traveled to Armenia and India and recounted the stories he
heard there of the Far East.
European travel writings
reached their peak in the Renaissance, when the discovery
of the Western hemisphere and increasingly accurate maps and
navigational tools led explorers to ever-more-distant discoveries.
Many, like the Spanish explorer Francisco de Alvarez (c. 1465-1541),
set out in search of the fantastic places described in medieval
legend, such as the fabled Kingdom of Prester John in the
east; others searched for the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola
in the west. In these cases, medieval travel writing served
as a spur toward European expansion and colonization. Shakespeare's
The Tempest shows signs of influence from this genre,
as does Othello's description of his adventures abroad in
Othello. Other examples of travel literature are of
historical significance for the U.S.A., such as The Journals
of Lewis and Clark, recounting their early expedition
across America.
TRAVESTY
(Latin trans + vestis, "switched clothing"):
Debasement of a serious subject or serious literary work either
accidentally or through intentional satire--especially through
treating a dignified topic in a silly or inappropriate manner.
For instance, Boileau describes one travesty of Virgil's Aeneid
by stating, "Dido and Aeneas are made to speak like fishwives
and ruffians." In many cases, the author of intentional
travesties uses a mock-serious tone
and is deliberately heavy-handed in his treatment.
TREATY
OF WEDMORE: The agreement signed by King Alfred the
Great and the Viking leader Guthrum in 878. This divided England
into spheres of influence, with Alfred's kingdom of Essex
safe from further Viking attacks, and it established an area
of Viking control (the Danelaw)
north of London and east of Chester. As part of the agreement,
the invading Danes agreed to convert to Christianity.
TRENCH
POETRY: Poetry and songs
written by both common soldiers and professional poets focusing
on the disillusionment, suffering, and ethical dismay these
individuals felt at their involvement in World War I. The
poetry is often bitter in tone.
Often the poetic voice of the speaker mimics the voice, style,
and speech of an ordinary soldier. Sometimes the poet presents
the poem's speaker in the persona
of a soldier, even if the poet himself was not one. Much of
this "trench poetry" was published in trench newsletters.
The well-known trench poets of the period include Sassoon
and Owens. Owens' "Dulce Et Decorum Est" is one
famous example of trench poetry.
TRIAD: A collection of
three ideas, concepts, or deities loosely connected--as
opposed
to a pure trinity in which the three concepts
are much more closely linked or equivalent to each other.
The oldest known triad comes from the Sumerian scholastic
period (circa 2400-2200 BCE). Here, the gods of heaven,
earth,
and water (Anu, Enlil, and Enki) would form a common group
of three linked together in religious poetry and ritual
(Hopper
6), as was the case with the Babylonian triad of air
deities, Sin, Shamash, and Raman who ruled the moon, sun,
and storms (Hopper 20). The former Babylonian triad later
altered to focus on Anu, Baal, and Ea in following centuries--a
formula reminiscent of the three divine brothers Zeus, Hades,
and Poseidon in Greek mythology (Hopper 7). The three
Greek fates (Klotho the spinner, Lachesis the measurer,
and
Atropos the cutter) are a triad matched by the three
Germanic Norns (Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld). Shiva, Vishnu,
and Brahma
are the Hindu triad representing destruction, preservation,
and creation. Often triads revolve around the idea of the
"celestial family"--such as the Egyptian Osiris,
Isis, and Horus or it may consist consist of three brothers--such
as the cyclopean smiths who assist Hephaestus: Brontos, Sterope,
and Argus.
Note that the idea of
a triad is distinct from the idea of a trinity,
in which three divine persons are thought to be in some
way
equivalent or identical to each other--as is the case in
the Christian trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) or
the Egyptian
solar trinity (Horus, Ra, and Atun--the sun gods associated
with the morning, noonday, and setting sun). The first
Christian
missionaries to Ireland were greatly aided by the fact that
Irish mythology already contained an idea of trinity
in the
form of three-headed or three-personed gods, as MacCulloch
notes in The Religion of the Ancient Celts (34,
qtd. in Hopper 203).
In a looser sense, any
grouping of three is a triad--including groupings such as
these: