Vocab 10 Flashcards
any fairly short poem expressing the personal mood, feeling or meditation of a single speaker. In ancient Greece, a blank was a song for accompaniment on the lyre, and could be a choral blank sung by a group, such as a dirge or hyme; the modern sense, since the Renaissance, often suggests a song-like quality in the poems to which it refers. Blank poetry is the most extensive category of verse, especially after the decline-since the 19th century in the West- of the other principal kinds: every subject, although the most usual emotions presented are those of love and grief. Among the common are: sonnet, ode, elegy, haiku, and the more personal kinds of hymn. Blankism is the emotional or song-like quality, the blank property of another sense, the lyrics of a popular song or other musical compositions are the words as opposed to the music; these may not always be lyrical in the poetic sense (e.g. in a narrative song like a ballad).
lyric
A confused, comically inaccurate use of a long word or words. The term comes from the character Mrs. Blankism (French for inappropriately) in Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775). Her bungled attempts at learned speech include a reference to another character “the very pine-apple of politeness,” instead of “pinnacle”. This kind of joke, though, is older than the name: Shakespeare’s Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing (1593) makes similar errors.
malapropism
A public self-justification or proclamation of intentions, usually issued by a political authority or party. Literary and artistic groups since the 19th century, especially those of the avant-garde associated with Modernism, borrowed this political genre for their own purposes, usually to declare the obsolescence of some previous artistic movement and the arrival of new era based upon their own new principles. The most famous political model for the genre is Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engle’s Communist Blank(1848), itself a modern rhetorical masterpiece. Notable literary examples include Andre Breton’s Manifeste du Surrealisme (1924) and the many blanks of Futurism. Less celebrated now is the Italians philopher Giovanni Gentile’s Blank degli intellettuali fascist
manifesto
The commonest kind of rhyme, between single stressed syllables (delay/stay) at the end of verse lines. It matches only the final syllable with its equivalent in the paired line.
masculine rhyme
short and memorable statement of a general principle; thus an aphorism or apophthegm, especially one that imparts advice or guidance. The French writer La Rochefoucauld published his aphorisms as Blanks, while Benjamin Franklin included several celebrated examples in his Poor Richard’s Almanack, including the blank “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead”
maxim
Enthusiasm for or imitation of the arts and customs of Europe during the Middle Ages- that is, from about the 8th-15th century. In literature, this may manifest itself in the use of archaisms, in the choice of medieval settings for narrative works, or more broadly in an ideological attachment to values associated with medieval societies (chivalry, religious faith, social hierarchy). Antiquarian interest in ballads and other aspects of medieval art grew in the late 18th century, influencing the Gothic novel and the stongly medievalist nostalgia of Romanticism. It is significant current in the 19th century literature from Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Keat’s “The Eve of St Agnes” to the prose and verse romances of William Morris. Important works of Victorian social criticism, notably Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present and John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, contrasted medieval social conditions favorably with those of the modern industrial city
medievalsim
a popular form of sensational drama that flourished in the 19th century theatre, surviving in different forms of modern cinema and television. The term, meaning “song-drama” in Greek, was originally applied in the European theatre to scenes of mime or spoken dialogue accompanied by music. In the early 19th century London, many theatres were only permitted to produce musical entertainments, and from their simplified plays- some of them adapted from Gothic novels- the modern sense of blank derives: an emotionally exaggerated conflict of pure maidenhood and scheming villainy in a plot full of suspense. Examples are: Douglas Jerrold’s Black-Ey’d Susan, the anonymous Maria Marten, and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street; the Irish playwright Dion Boucicault wrote several, notably The Colleen Bawn. Similar plots and simplified characterization in fiction, as in Dickens can be described as blank
melodrama
a kind of novel that pretends to be a true autobiography or memoir. It was an important form in the emergence of the modern novel during the 18th century, in such works as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Lady of Pleasure; usually known as Fanny Hill. A similar pseudo-autobiographical mode of first-person narrative is found in very many later novels, but the pretense that the real author was only an “editor” of a true account did not outlive the 18th century.
memoir-novel
drama about drama, or any moment of self-consciousness by which a play draws attention to its own fictional status as a theatrical pretense. Normally, direct addresses to the audience in prologues, epilogues, and inductions are blank in that they refer to the play itself and acknowledge the theatrical situation; a similar effect may be achieved in asides. In a more extended sense, the use of a play-within-the-play, as in Hamlet, allows a further blank exploration of the nature of theatre, which is taken still further in plays about plays, such as Luigi Pirandello’s Set personaggi in cerca d’autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author).
metadrama or metatheatre
fiction about fiction; or more especially a kind of fiction that openly comments on its own fictional status. In a weak sense, many modern novels about novelists having problems writing their novels may be called blank in so far as they discuss the nature of fiction; but the term is normally used for works that involve significant degree of self’consciousness about themselves as fictions, in ways that go beyond occasional apologetic addresses to the reader. The most celebrated case is Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, which makes a continuous joke of its own digressive form. Also John Fowle’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman in which Fowles interrupts the narrative to explain his procedures and offers readers alternative endings. And Italo Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno un viaggatore (If on a winter’s night a traveler) which begins “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler
metafiction
any use of language about language, as for instance in glosses, definitions, or arguments about the usage or meaning of words. Linguistics sometimes describes itself as a blank language b/c it’s a “language” about language; and so on the same assumption criticism is a blank about literature. Some theorists of structuralism have spoken of blanks as if they were clearly separate from or standing above the “object-languages” they describe, but this claim is denied by post-structuralism, which points out that linguistics, criticism etc., are still within the same general language, albeit as specialized uses w/ their own terminologies. Thus there is in principle no absolute distinction between criticism and literature. Roman Jakobson in his listing of linguistic functions describe the blank function as that by which speakers check that they understand one another. In a wider sense, literary works often have a blank aspect in which they highlight uses of language: a very clear case of this is Shaw’s Pygmalion. It is also possible to have blank (third level) discourse such as an analysis of linguistics, or a work of metacriticism
metalanguage
The most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action as to suggest some common quality shared by the two. This resemblance is assumed as an imaginary identity rather than directly stated as a comparison: referring to a man as that pig, or saying he is a pig blankly, whereas he is like a pig is a simile. Blanks may also appear as verb or as adjectives, or in longer idiomatic phrases. The use of it is to create new combinations of ideas is a major feature of poetry, although it is quite possible to write poems w/o metaphors. Much of our everyday language is also made up of blank words and phrases that pass unnoticed as “dead” blanks, like the branch of an organization. A mixed blank is one in which the combination of qualities suggested is illogical or ridiculous, usually as a result of trying to apply two blanks to one thing.
metaphor
the name given to a diverse group of the 17th-century English poets whose work is notable for its ingenious use of intellectual and theological concepts in surprising conceits, strange paradoxes, and far-fetched imagery. The leading poet was John Donne, whose colloquial, argumentative abruptness of rhythm and tone distinguishes his style from the conventions of Elizabethan love-lyrics. Other poets include Andrew Marvell, Abraham Cowley, John Cleveland, and religious poets George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and Richard Crashaw. In the 20th century T.S. Eliot and others revived their reputation, stressing their quality of wit, in the sense of intellectual strenuousness and flexibility rather than smart humor. The term usually refers to the works of these poets, but it can sometimes denote any poetry that discusses the topic that is the philosophy of knowledge and existance
metaphysical poets
a figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated w/ it “The bottle” for alcoholic beverage, “the press” for journalism, “skirt” for woman, “Mozart” for Mozart’s music, “the Oval Office” for the US presidency. A well known saying is “The pen is mightier than the sword” (writing is more powerful than warfare). An important kind is synedoche, in which the name of a part is substituted for that of a whole (hand for worker), or vice versa. Modern literary work uses blank in a wider sense, to designate the process of association by which blanks are produced and understood: this involves establishing relationships of contiguity between two things, whereas metaphor establishes relationships of similarity between them
metonymy
the term used by historians of the English language to denote a stage of its development intermediate between Old English and modern English. It is spoken and written between (1100-1500). English is influenced in many aspects of its vocabulary by a new French-speaking ruling class, and by a clergy that wrote mainly in Latin. Its grammar and syntax are clearly those inherited from the Germanic basis of Old English, although now shedding its inflections and distinctions of gender. Strong differentiation appears among dialects, of which the English Midlands variety proved to be the most important basis of modern English. The period is commonly subdivided in Early Blank and Lter Blank. It’s the language of The Owl and Nightingale, while later blank is that of Langland, Chaucer and Malory
Middle English
