Elizabethan and Jacobean Terms

Question 1

Anachronism

Answer 1

An element of a story that comes from another time. Often the use of an outdated or old timey element in a text, but anything that is inappropriate for the specific time period.

Question 2

Renaissance Humanism

Answer 2

The development of the Renaissance man stems from a belief in improving the human condition through learning and proper behavior.

Question 3

Sonnets

Answer 3

A poem (or little song) composed of 14 lines which deals with one organizing idea.

Question 4

Petrarchan Sonnet

Answer 4

Also known as the Italian Sonnet. A type of sonnet popularized by Francesco Petrarch consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and of a sestet with one of the several rhyme schemes, as cdecde or ccdcd.

Question 5

Shakespearian Sonnet

Answer 5

Also known as the Elizabethan Sonnet. A sonnet form used by Shakespeare and having the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Question 6

Dark Lady

Answer 6

A term left over from Petrarch. His Dark Lady was Laura, a mysterious beautiful woman who behaves reticently like women in many sonnets. Shakespeare’s Dark Lady poems are ones written to a lover with whom he has consummated his love and their tone differs from poems based more upon seduction.

Question 7

Volta

Answer 7

A turn in the meaning of a sonnet or any poem is referred to as a volta. In Italian sonnets there is often a volta between the octet and the sestet. In English sonnets the volta can occur in the final couplet. It indicates a turn of thought in the sonnet.

Question 8

Couplet

Answer 8

Two rhyming lines of poetry which often complete a Shakespearian sonnet.

Question 9

Quatrain

Answer 9

A stanza of four lines often featuring a unifying rhyme scheme like abab or abba.

Question 10

Beloved Flattery

Answer 10

Much of sonnet writing is the explicit flattery of the beloved–often a young beautiful and often aristocratic woman.

Question 11

Sestet

Answer 11

A six line stanza often found in a sonnet with a unifying rhyme scheme, such as aba bcb often found in Petrarchan sonnets.

Question 12

Oxymorons

Answer 12

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to be contradictory, but which containt a concealed point. Oxymorons appear in a variety of contexts, literary oxymorons crafted to reveal a paradox like burning cold.

Question 13

Octet

Answer 13

An eight line stanza used with Petrarchan sonnets which is held together by a unifying rhyme scheme such as abbaabba

Question 14

Rhyme Schemes

Answer 14

The rhyme scheme is the practice of rhyming words placed at the end of the lines in the prose or poetry. Rhyme scheme refers to the order in which particular words rhyme.

Question 15

Rhythm (Iambic Pentameter)

Answer 15

The concep of “rhythm and rhyme” refers to a pattern of rhymes that is created by using words that produce the same, or similar, sounds. Rhythm and rhyme together refer to the recurrence of similar sounds in prose and poetry. In poetry, meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in a verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a certain set of meters alternating in a particular order.

Question 16

Elizabet Worship

Answer 16

Owing to Elizabeth status as a single female ruler. Many works of literature were dedicated to her in extremely devotional (almost religious ways). These works celebrate her beauty renown and unquestionable virtue.

Question 17

Protestantism vs Catholicism

Answer 17

The period after Henry VIII break from the catholic church saw much religious violence of Anglicans vs Catholics. There was great concern about the religion of the monarch who would next take the throne.

Question 18

Elizabeth’s Marriage Negotiations

Answer 18

Elizabeth’s unmarried status allowed her to offer herself as a possible spouse to Royalty from different countries all as part of balancing possible power relations across Europe. These negotiations continued long after Elizabeth’s Childbearing years and were often considered part of an elaborate persona of the Queen.

Question 19

Country vs Court

Answer 19

One of the overriding distinctions in culture made in numerous ways during the early modern period. The court might be seen as opulent and political and corrupt, where the country might be viewed as simple and innocent and virtuous. But a more standard definition left the court as sophisticated and the country as unruly.

Question 19

Eve’s Curse

Answer 19

One way of discussing the medieval and Renaissance attitude toward women as the inferior sex. As a result of the fall women had supposedly been marked by God through biology and menstruation as culpable for original sin.

Question 20

Metaphysical poetry

Answer 20

An elaborate style of poetry relying on unexpected conceits.

Question 21

Cavalier Poetry

Answer 21

Sensual and controlled style of poetry

Question 22

Conceit

Answer 22

A poetic conceit is an often unconventional, logically complex, or surprising metaphor whose delights are more intellectual than sensual. John Donne and other so-called metaphysical poets used conceits to fuse the sensory and the abstract, trading on the element of surprise and unlikeliness to hold the reader’s attention.

Question 23

Carpe Diem

Answer 23

Latin for “Seize the Day” a tendency in literature to argue for living life to the fullest because of life’s precariousness and relative shortness.

Question 24

Seduction Poems

Answer 24

Any of a variety of poems (most of from the male perspective) which attempts to praise and ingratiate the speaker to the poetic subject for the purposes of furthering a physical relationship. Often the speaker implies he will die of the beloved will not relent and “love” him.