Literary Terms Flashcards
Estates satire
A tradition of medieval literary portraiture
Allegorical
Representatives of various classes and occupations are portrayed with satiric emphasis on vices particular to their station in life
“The dramatic method”
Used by Chaucer
C pretends to merely report what he hears.
The Medieval Period
aka the Middle Ages
5th to 15th Century
begins with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and bleeds into the Renaissance
Old English
Brought to GB by AS mid 5th C
developed from North Sea Germanic dialects (Anglos, Saxons, Jutes)
4 main dialects: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish, West Saxon
West Saxon is literary standard of the later Old English Period
Middle/Modern develop from Mercian
Anglo Saxons
Germanic speakers in Britain eventually develop a common cultural identity 5th C to 7th C, following the end of Roman power in Britain
Alliterative Verse
prosody that uses alliteration as the primary ornament, moves from Old Germanic into Old English, in Beowulf
Kenning
a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun.
usually two words, often hyphenated
e.g. “sail-road” (Beowulf)
comes from kenna “know, recognize” “Kenna vio” to name after
less ambiguous in synthetic languages (e.g. not word-order languages like Middle and Modern English)
Bob and Wheel
used by the Pearl Poet in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
found mainly in ME poetry
“Bob” very short line
“wheel” longer lines with internal rhyme
often used as transition/refrain
Chivalry
Code of conduct for European Christians that sets the rules for Christians killing Christians, ransom, etc
Fabliau
French jongleurs, a comic often anonymous tale
short narrative in verse, maybe 300-400 lines
pop in England in 14th C
may have been brought from the East by crusaders in 12th C
sexual/scatalogical obscenity
Middle English
ME
spoken after Norman Conquest (1066) until late 15th C
roughly follows High to late Middle Ages
inflections and case disappear, Norman French vocab in court, the Great Vowel Shift
Morality Play
Medieval and early Tutor, also known as interludes
allegory in which protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes
grew out of the mystery plays of the Middle Ages
Tragedy
form of drama based on suffering, invokes catharsis or pleasure in audience
most common English forms:
tragedy of circumstance, of miscalculation, the Revenge Play
Classical/Aristotelian Unities
rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle’s Poetics
unity of action
unity of time
unity of place
Elizabethan Period
“The Golden Age”
1558-1603
