test 1 WL2 Flashcards
Irony
a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
Fable
a brief story showing human tendencies through animal characters. Talking animals or animated objects are the characters of fables.
Personification
giving human abilities, traits or reactions to abstractions, inanimate objects, or animals.
Exemplum
We learn by example.
Allegory
a system of interconnected symbols.
Blank verse
unrhymed iambic pentameter (Shakespeare
Heroic couplet
Two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter
Alexandrine
rhyming couplets of twelve syllable lines. Each line usually breaks into two six-syllable phrases.
Commedia Dell’Arte
Humorous Italian theatrical style employed by traveling troupes of actors
Combined music, dance, acrobatics and witty dialogue
Staging was minimal but props were important. Slapstick!
Humor was physical! Improvisational!
Costumes and masks helped the audience quickly identify the roles.Stock characters represented fixed social types.
Helpless young girl in love
Her witty maid
Young man in love
The old miser, a dupe
The crafty servant, a pleasure-seeker
The know-it-all
Deus ex machina
Latin phrase, refers to a device used in Greek theatre, in which an impossible problem is solved suddenly by the intervention of some new event, character, ability or object.
Literally “god from the machine”: Actors playing Greek gods were lowered onto the stage by crane or rose up through a trapdoor to intervene at the last possible moment to rescue the threatened characters.
Why was it called the “Enlightenment?” Who called it that?
Writers of the time believed they were emerging from a period of darkness (ignorance, tyranny, and superstition).
They were continuing a Renaissance tradition of humanism, celebrating human capacity. They proclaimed the rule of reason, science and a respect for humanity.
By the application of reason one can arrive at truth and improve conditions.
Deism
A depersonalized deity: the watchmaker had created a (reasonable) orderly world and left it to work on its own.
God created nature, therefore the study of nature is worship. Mankind’s dominance of nature is emphasized.
Empiricists
knowledge by experience (Locke, Berkeley, Hume)
rationalists:
knowledge by reason alone (Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes)
Historical events specifically referenced in Tartuffe
1664: Presented before the King Louis XIV. Three acts only. Censured by those close to the King. It is forbidden.
1667: Second presentation. Revised to “The Impostor,” religious symbolism in the dress of Tartuffe is absent. The king is not present and the court members/Parliament again forbid its production.
1669: Third presentation is allowed by King, under the original costume and name “Tartuffe” which designates a false devout man in French.
themes in the worksPower relationships (role of authority, abuse of power)
- Power relationships (role of authority, abuse of power)
- Knowledge (how we know truth)
- The struggle of passion v. reason
- The idea of destiny or fate and man’s struggle against it
- Hypocrisy, Flattery and pride
- Trickster characters and how they deceive
- Naive characters and how they are deceived
- Other character faults that may be common to the texts and serve as lessons to readers
types of irony
- dramatic,
- situational,
- verbal
Structure of tragedy
- Inciteing incident-
- complications-
- climax-
- denouncement
Unities of time
the action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours.
Unities of place
a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.
Unities of action
a play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few subplots.