Tu Dien Van Chuong Anh

- Q!;!f COM PRE" EN/IVE I)I£TI()~4~'" vvvv~vvvv LITERATURE Chief Editor & Complier: Julien D Bonn ~ ABHISHEK All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, electronically or otherwise, in print, photoprint, micro film or by any other means without written permission from the publisher ISBN Copyright Edition : 978-81-8247-322-5 Publisher 2010 Published by ABHISHEK PUBLICATIONS, S.C.O 57-59; Sector 17-C, CHANDIGARH-I600 17 (India) Ph - 2707562, Fax- 0172-2704668 Email: abhpub@yahoo.com Concept & Design by Xact Ad 'N' Art Studio, Delhi Printed at : Balaji Offset, Naveen Shadra, Delhi-32 Preface English literarure denotes those literary texts originating within England proper and written in the English language or its very close relatives (such as Middle or Old English) The term may also denote any literarure composed primarily in the English language, though in other countries English literarure emerges as a recognisable entity only in the medieval period, when the English language itself becomes distinct from the Norman and Anglo-Saxon dialects which preceded it The first great figure in English literarure is the poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, whose 'Canterbury Tales' was a popular work of the period which is still read today Following the introduction of a printing press into the country by William Caxton in 1476, the Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of the literarure, especially in the field of drama, with William Shakespeare standing out as a poet and playwright, the quality of whose output has yet to be surpassed The English novel did not become a popular form until the 18th century Daniel Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe' (1719) is sometimes claimed erroneously to be the first novel in English The followi11g two centuries continued a huge outpouring of literary production, including novels, poetry and drama, all of which remain strong in the present-day English literary culrure This dictionary is an alphabetical collection of the various temlS and phrases that are related to English literature II abeceda"",n~ I RCCenhuU vene *============5 ~ - academic verse - abecedarian poem a poem that has verses which I poetry that coheres to the begin with the succeeding let- : adopted standards and requirements of some kind of 'schooi' ters of the alphabet I Poetry approved, officially or - abstract unofficially, by a literary estabused as a noun, it means a short I lishment summary or outline of a longer I work as an adjective used for : - acatalectic writing or literary works, ab- ~ a verse having the metrically stract refers to words or phrases ; complete number of syllables in that name things not knowable : the fmal foot I through the five senses Ex- : _ accent amples of abstracts include the I ' 'Cliffs Notes' -ummaries of ma- : the emphasls or stress placed jor literary w~rks Examples of ~ on a particular syllable in poabstract terms or concepts in- I etry Much modern poetry uses clude 'idea', 'guilt' 'honesty', and less formal arrangements that '1 alty' I create a sense of freedom and oy spontaneity The following line - abstract language from William Shakespeare's words that represent ideas, in- I 'Hamlet': 'to be or not to be: tangibles and concepts such as I that is the question', has five 'beauty' and 'truth' accents, on the words 'be,' 'not,' _ abstract poetry 'be', and 'that', and the first sylliable of 'question' poetry that aims to use its sounds, textures, rhythms and I - accentual verse rhymes to convey an emotion, lines in which rhythm arises instead of relying on the mean- from its stressed syllables I rather than from the number of ings of words its syllables, or from the length - absurd theatre of time devoted to their soundsee theatre of the absurd I ing Old English poems such as I 'Beowulf and Caedmon's - absurdism Hymn' are accenmal They fall see theatre of the absurd LitemtJIrt=========== II clearly into two halves, each with two stresses • accentual-syllabic verse the usual system of verse composition in England since the fourteen century, in which the meter depends upon counting both the number of stresses and the total number of syllables in any given line An iambic pentameter for example contains five stressed syllables and a total of ten syllables accentual-syllabic verse I/uUm" II act I a major section of a play It is usually divided into varying numbers of shorter scenes I From ancient times to the I nineteenth century, plays were generally constructed of five I acts, but modern works typi~ cally consist of one, two, or ; three ac~ Examples of five: act plays mclude the works of I So~hocles and Shakespeare, ~ w~t1e the plays of Arthur Mt1ler commonly have a • acephalexis I three-act structure The ends the opening truncation (the of acts are typically indicated dropping of the first, un- by lowering the curtain or stressed syllable at the begin- I turning up the houselights ning of a line of iambic or Playwrights frequently employ acts to accommodate anapaestic verse) I changes in time, setting, char• acephalous (Greek 'headacters onstage, or mood In less') many full-length plays, acts refers to a line of verse without ; are further divided into its expected initial syllable scenes, which often mark a • acrostic point in the action when the a poem in which the first letter ~ location changes or when a of each line spells out a name I new character enters (downwards) A word, phrase ~ • acto or passage spelled out vertically : a one-act Chicano theatre piece by the first letters of a group of ~ developed out of collective imlines in sequence Sir John; provisation Davies' 'Hymns of Astraea' dedicates 26 acrostic poems to I • adonic I a verse consisting of a dactyl Elizabeth I I • I! ======= 0;;;;;;= LitenJtNn II adylllltOt~ IAge oflohnsoo *================ followed by a spondee or tro- ~ known 'aesthetes' of the late ; nineteenth cenrury chee • adynaton ; , affective fallacy a type of hyperbole in which the, : an error in judging d1e advanexaggeration is magnified so ~ tages or faults of a work of litgready that it refers to an im- I erature The 'error' results from possibility, for example, 'I'd I stressing the importance of the walk: a million miles for one of : work's effect upon the reader I it is how a reader is affected your smiles.' • aesthetic movement emotionally, what it does as a literary work - instead of a literary belief that art is its ~ stressing its inner qualities as a own justification and purpose, ; created object, or what it 'is' advocated in England by Walter : The affective 'fallacy is evident Pater and practiced by Edgar ~ in Aristode's precept from his Allan Poe, Algernon Charles ; 'Poetics' that the purpose of Swinburne and others : tragedy is to evoke 'fear and ~ pity' in its spectators Also • aestheticism a literary and artistic movement ~ known as sympathetic fallacy of the nineteenth century Fol- I • aftlatus lowers of the movement beI a creative inspiration, as that of lieved that art should not be a : a poet; a divine imparting of mixture of social, political or ~ knowledge, thus it is often moral teaching The statement ; called divine afflatus 'art for art's sake' is a good summary of aestheticism The ; • Age of Johnson movement had its roots in it refers to the period in English France, but it gained wide- literature between 1750 and spread importance in England I 1798, named after the most in the last half of the riineteenth prominent literary figure of the century, where it helped change age, Samuel Johnson Works the Victorian practice of includ- ~ written during this time are ing moral lessons in literature noted for their emphasis on Oscar Wilde is one of the best- 'sensibility', or emotional qual- Litemturr:======= " ""8==========ao"",,,e:~lity I Albert CRmus (l913-60) II ity These works formed a transition between the ratIOnal works of the Age of Reason, or Neoclassical period and the emphasis on individual feelings and responses of the Romantic period Significant writers during the Age of]ohnson included the novelists Ann Radcliffe and Henry Mackenzie, dramatists Richard Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith and poets William Collins and Thomas Gray Also known as Age of Sensibility , character in fiction, normally an object of ridicule in comedy or : satire, but often the hero of a ~ tragedy In comedy, he most fre; quently takes the form of a pedant • Albert Camus (1913-60) I I Camus, a French writer, was a famous author and thinker of the 20th century When he was I a student at the University of I Algiers, he formed a theatre I group and adapted, directed and acted in plays He actively • age of sensibility I participated in social reforms I and was a member of the Comsee Age of Johnson munist party for a brief period • agrarians of time Shortiy after his essay a group of Southern American I 'Noces' appeared (1939), he writers between the 1930s and went to Paris as a journalist He 1940s who fostered an eCO- ~ joined the French struggle in nomic and cultural program for I World War II and was principal the South based on agriculture, editor of tile underground pain opposition to the industrial I per 'Combat' society of the North The term I can refer to any group that promotes ti1e value of farm life and I agricultural society Members I of the original Agrarians included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert Penn I Warren • alazon a deceiving or self-deceived I He was noted for his vigorous, II ===========LiteNture /I Alcaic verse I allegory ~ It is the standard line in French ; poetry, comparable to the iam: bic pentameter line in English ~ poetry A metrical line of six feet ; or twelve syllables (in English), : originally from French heroic ~ verse Randle Cotgrave, in his I 1611 French-English dictionary, ~ explains: ~exandrine A ~erse : of 12, or 13 syllables.' In his EsI say on Criticism, Alexander • Alcaic verse ; Pope says, 1\ needless Alexan refers to a Greek lyncal meter, dr· ds the / Th t lik ·d b· d b Al : me en song a e Sal to e mvente y caeus, I d d ak dr a woun e sn· e, ags I·ts s1ow a lync poet C from about 600 th ~I 1ength along' (359) ExampIes B Wntten ~n tetr~eter, e: include Michael Drayton's greater Ale.alc consists of a ~ 'Polyolbion', Robert Bridges' sp~ndee or lamb, followed by ; 'Testament of Beauty' and the an lamb plus a long syllable cu:d : last line of each stanza in Thotwo ~actyls The lesser ~lcalC, ~ mas Hardy's 'The Convergence also m tetrameter, COnsiSts of· f th 11 , two dactylic feet followed by I e wam two iambic feet ; • allegory • Alcaics ; a narrative technique in which : characters representing things a four-line classical stanza ~ or abstract ideas are used to named after Alcaeus, a Greek ; convey a message or teach a lespoet, with a predominantly : son Allegory is typically used dactylic meter, imitated by ~ to teach moral, ethical or reliAlfred lord Tennyson's poem, ; gious lessons but is sometimes Milton : used for satiric or political pur• Alexandrine ~ poses Examples of allegorical an iambic line of twelve syl- I works include Edmund lables, or six feet, usually with :I Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene' a caesura after the sixth syllable : and John Bunyan's 'The concise, and lucid style of writing His essay 'Le M ythe de Sisyphe' formulates his theory of the absurd and is the philosophical basis of his novel ':CEtranger' and of his plays 'Le Malentendu' and 'Caligula' Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 He died in a car crash in 1960 Litemtu~ ===== = == = II 174 tmesis I tragedy =========* _ tmesis the division of a compound word into two parts, with one or more words between, as '~hat place soever' for 'whatsoever' I I I I I - tone the means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude 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 colour the story or poem as a whole For instance, two different novelists might write stories about capitalism Author # creates a tale in wbich 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 I I I I I II 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 # and author #2 are basically presenting the same plotline, but the first author's writing creates a tale of optimism and hope, but the second author shapes the same tale into a story Qf bitterness and cynicism The difference is in their respective tones-the way they convey their attitudes about particular characters and subject matter I I I I I I I I I - tragedy a serious play in which the chief figures, by some peculiarity of character, pass 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 BeE) 'Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain II ====================== Literature II tragedy o/blood I tmnscendentalirm magnitude; through pity (pathos) and fear effecting the proper purgation (Catharsis) of these emotions' (Book 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 reac~es 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 • tragedy of blood see revenge tragedy • tragic flaw in a tragedy, the quality within the hero or heroine which leads to his or her downfall Examples of the tragic flaw include Othello's jealousy and Hamlet's indecisiveness, although most great tragedies Literature 175 ~ defy such simple interpreta- tion ; • tragic hero I ~ see hamartia ~ • tragicomedy I I an experimental Renaissance literary work-either a play or prose piece of fiction-containing elements common to both comedies and tragedies ~ • transcendentalism ~ an American philosoph!cal and ; religious movement, based in : New England from around ~ 1835 until the Civil War Tran; scendentalism was a form of American romanticism that had I its roots abroad, in the works I of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Coleridge and Johatm Wolfgang I von Goethe The TranscendenI talists stressed the importance : of intuition and subjective ex~ perience in commlullcation with I God They rejected religious dogma and texts, in favour of mysticism and scientific naturalI ism They pursued truths that lie beyond the 'colourless' realms perceived by reason and I the senses and were active soI cial reformers in public education, '.vomen's rights and the =========== I trtmslatW I tTmch poetry II 176 =================* abolition-of slavery Prominent ~ ch:;ttacters in their translations members of the group include ; The important element to be Ralph Waldo Emerson and conveyed was the feeling and I philosophy behind the original Henry David Thoreau I work • translatio a Latin word, derived from the verb translatere, 'to carry beyond' 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 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 and Chaucer's 'translations' of Boethius' 'Consolation of Philosophy', Chaucer's loose 'translations' (i.e., new versions) of the Troy myth in Troilus and Criseyde adapted from earlier medieval Italian authors, or his abbreviated version of the French poem, Roman de la Rose Medieval translators felt litde compunction about keeping the same sequence of events, settings, or travel literature writings that describe either the author's journey to a distant and alien place, or 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, Mrica and elsewhere in the late 400s BCE In China, we fmd 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 ineludes writings by Gaius Solinus (c 250 CE) I • I : I I I ~ ; : ~ I I I I trench poetry poetry and songs written by both poets and common soldiers that focussed on the disillusionment, suffering and I • I I I II =========Litenltu~ II trUU by combat I tricolon 177 ==~============ ethical dismay these individu- ~ persist through the early 1300s als felt at their involvement in ; The habit of gentlemanly duels, World War I The poetry is : which continued through the often bitter in tone Often the ~ Renaissance, the Enlightenpoetic voice of the speaker; ment and the Early Romantic mimics the voice, style and : period, along with the Western speech of an ordinary soldier ~ American practice of the gunSometimes, the poet presents • fight, are vague remnants of this the poem's speaker in the per- ~ earlier practice among knights sona of a soldier, even if the : Shakespeare reveals examples poet himself was not one ~ of this ritual in the opening Much of this 'trench poetry' ; scenes of 'Richard IT was published in trench news- : • tribrach letters The well-known trench poets of the period in- : metrical toot consisting of three clude Sassoon Owens' 'Dulce ~ short syllables Et Decorum Est' is one fa- ~ • trickster mollS example of trench po- • a character or figure common etry ~ in Native American and Mrican • trial by combat : literature who uses his ingenua means of resolving disputes ~ ity to defeat enemies and escape between knights, in which both ; difficult situations Tricksters agree to meet at an agreed-upon are most often animals, such as time and place, and fight with ~ the spider, hare, or coyote, alagreed-upon weapons The ; though they may take the form th h d: of humans as well Examples of kni - h ght W was ill eng t an ~ trickster tales include Thomas honest in his words would be the one to win the day, since in ; King's 'A Coyote Columbus popular medieval theology, it : Story', Ashley E Bryan's 'The was thought that God would ~ Dancing'-' Granny' and Ishmael favour the just In actual point I Reed's 'The Last Days of Louiof fact, the late medieval church :I siana Red' condemned trial by combat as : • tricolor• barbaric, though records of it • tlle repetition of a parallel gram- Liumtun======= II 178 trilogy I troubluUJtlr I matical construction three times I • trochee or trochaic in a row for rhetorical effect , a metrical foot with a long or accented syllable, followed by a • trilogy short or unaccented syllable, as a group of three literary works I in 'only' or 'total', or the openthat together compose a larger ing line of Poe's 'The Raven' narrative One of the earliest' types of trilogy was the com- • troilus verse mon practice of Athenian play- see rhyme royal wrights, who would submit ' tragedies as groups of three • trope plays for performance in the the intentional use of a word or , expression figuratively, i.e., Dionysia used in a different sense from • trimeter its original significance, in ora line consisting of three met- , der to give vividness or empharical feet This short line is sis to an idea Some important most common in English types of trope are: nursery rhymes, lullabies and , antonomasia, iron)) metaphor, children's songs metonymy and synecdoche • triolet • troubadour a poem or stanza of eight lines a class of lyric poets and poetin which the first line is repeated ' musicians, often of knightly as the fourth and seventh lines I rank, who flourished from the and the second line as the 11th through the 13th centueighth, with a rhyme scheme of ~ ries in Southern France and ABaAabAB I neighbouring areas of Italy and Spain and who wrote of • triple rhyme courtly love a rhyme in which three final syllables of words have the same sound, as in 'glorious' and I 'victorious' • trisyllable a word of three syllables II ===================== Litertltmy: II trouvere I urban 1-ealism 179 ~~~~~~~~ • trouvere a school of poets of northern France who flourished from the 11 th to 14th centuries and who composed mostly narrative works such as 'chansons de geste' and 'fabliaux' • true rhyme see perfect rhyme • ubi sunt poetic theme in which the poet asks 'where are they, where have they gone' The theme began in Medieval Latin, with the formula ubi sunt used to introduce a roll-call of the dead or missing and to suggest how transitory life is • understatement see irony ~ and end tl1at details the caucial ; relationships of action and char: acter; (2) restrict the action to ~ the events of a single day; and I ( 3) limi t the scene to a single : place or city The unities were ~ observed fai"thfully by continenI tal European writers until the ~ Romantic Age, but they were - never regularly observed in ~ English drama Modern dra; matists are typically more con: cerned with a unity of impres~ sion or emotional effect than ; with any of the classical unities : The unities are observed in ~ Pierre Corneille's tragedy I 'Polyeuctes' and Jean-Baptiste : Racine's 'Phedre' Also known .I as three urutles I : • unmetered poetry ~ poetry without a regular recur• unities I ring nun1erical principle in its strict rules of dramatic struc- : rhythmic construction Also ture, formulated by Italiari/,lnd ~ known as 'free verse' French critics of the Renais~ • unstressed syllable sance and based loosely on the ; principles of drama discussed by a syllable that is not Aristotle in his 'Poetics' Fore- : emphasised, like the 'a' in most among these rules were ~ 'aghast' or the 'ish' in 'churlish' the tl1ree unities of action, time ~ • urban realism and place that compelled a dra- I a branch of realist writing that matist to: (1) construct a single I attempts to accurately reflect plot witl1 a beginning, middle the often harsh facts of modern Literature========= I 180 utopiR I v S Naipaul (1932-) II urban existence Some works I by Stephen Crane, Theodore I Dreiser, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Emile ' Zola, Abraham Cahan and I Henry Fuller fearure urban realism Modern examples inelude Claude Brown's, 'Manchild in the Promised : Land' and Ron Milner's 'What ~ , the Wine Sellers Buy' , • utopia a fictional perfect place, such as , 'paradise' or 'heaven' Early literary utopias were included in ' Plato's 'Republic' and Sir Tho- , mas More's 'Utopia', while I more modern utopias can be found in Samuel Butler's I 'Erewhon', Theodor Herzka's I 'A Visit to Freeland', H G Wells' ~ Modern Utopia' and' Charlotte Perkins Gilman's I 'Herlartd' A master of English prose style, he is known for his penetrating analysis of alienation and exile Writing with increasing irony and pessimism, he has often bleakly detailed the dual problems of the Third World Naipaul's works of international analysis include 'The Middle Passage' (1962), about the West Indies and South America, and an Indian trilogy: ~ Area of Darkness' (1964), 'India: A Wounded Civilisation'-(1977), and 'India: A Million Mutinies Now' (1990) His novels include 'The Mystic Masseur' (1957), 'A House for Mr Biswas' (1961), 'In a Free State' (1971; Booker Prize), 'Guerrillas' (1975), 'A Bend in the River' (1979), and 'Half a Life' (2001) He has also written 'The Enigma of Arrival' (1987) and 'A Way in the World' • utopianism (1994), autobiographical works I that combine novel, memoir see utopia I and history Among the 'Believ• v S Naipaul (1932-) ers' (1981) and 'Beyond Belief' Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad , (1998), analysis of modern lsNaipaul, an English author, was I lam; and numerous short stoborn in Chaguanas, Trinidad ries and political essays Naipaul and graduated from University ~ was knighted in 1990 and College, Oxford, 1953 Naipaul ; awarded the Nobel Prize in Lithas lived in England since 1950 erature in 2001 II = = = = = = = = = = L i t e r l J l u r r : II vermmilittule I VictorMArieVicom~HugO(l802-85) - verisimilitude literally, the appearance of truth In literary criticism, the term refers to aspects of a work of literature that seem true to the reader Verisimilitude is · d' th k fH ach leve 10 e wor onore de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert 181 ~ sage said or sung by a leader in ; public worship and followed by : a response from the people l ! _ versification ~ the art of writing verses, espe- cially with regard to meter and rhythm The term versification I can also refer to a particular and Henry James, among other I metrical structure or style or to late nineteenth-century realist I a version in verse of something writers : originally written in prose I - vers libre : - versifier see free verse ~ a writer of verse, often applied _verse I to a writer of light or inferior a line of writing arranged in a ; verse metrical, pattern, i.e., a line of : _ Victor Marie Vicomte poetry Also, a piece of poetry I Hugo (1802-85) or a particular form of poetry ~ Victor Marie, French poet, drasuch as free verse, blank verse, ; matist, and novelist, was born etc., or the art or work of a : in Besans:on His father was a poet ~ general under Napoleon As a ; child, he was taken to Italy and - verse paragraph a line grouping of varying : Spain and at a very early age, length, as distinct from stanzas ~ he had published his first book of equal length Seldom used in ; of poems, 'resolving !o be rhymed verse, it is the usual di- : Chateaubriand or notlung' The preface to his drama Cromwell vision in blank verse I (1827) placed him at the head - verset of the romanticists His princia short verse, especially one I pal poetic works are 'Les from a sacred book ~ Orientales' (1829), 'Les Feuilles ; d'automnc' (1831), 'Les Chants - versicle a little verse; also, a short pas- :I du crepuscule' (1835), 'Les Litem-tun I =*= II 182 Victorian I Vikmm Seth I ~===============* Voix interieures' (1837) and'La I social progress and priggish Legcnde des siecles' (1859) I morality are often considered The production of his poetic Victorian This stereotype is drama 'Hernani' caused a riot I contradicted by such dramatic between the classicists and the I intellectual developments as the romanticists His other impor- theories of Charles Darwin, tant novels include 'Les Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud Travailleurs de la mer' (1866) I (which stirred strong debates in and 'Quatre-vingt-treize' England) and the critical atti(1874) He began his political tudes of serious Victorian writcareer as a supporter of the I ers like Charles Dickens and duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon's George Eliot In literature, the son Later, Hugo espoused the Victorian Period was the great cause of Louis Philippe's son, ~ age of the English novel and the and then for a short time of ; latter part of the era saw the rise Louis Bonaparte Because he of movements such as decaafterwards opposed Napoleon I dence and symbolism Works of III, Hugo was banished In I Victorian literature include the 1870, he returned to Paris in Poetry of Robert Browning and triumph He was elected to the Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the national assembly and the sen- I criticism of Matthew Arnold ate His last years were marked and John Ruskin and the nov~y public veneration and acels of Emily Bronte, William claim, and he was buried in the I Makepeace Thackeray and ThoPantheon mas Hardy Also known as Victorian Age and Victorian Pe• Victorian I riod of or characteristic of the period of the reign of Queen Victoria I • Victorian Age (1837 -1901) showing the I see Victorian middle-class respectability, I • Victorian Period prudery, bigotry, etc generally attributed to Victorian England I see Victorian For example, the qualities of : • Vikram Seth smug narrow-mindedness, ~ Seth, Vikram (1952- ), Indian bourgeois materialism, faith in I II = = = = = = = L i t e m t u n Ii Viltram Seth I Vikram Seth 183 =======~ novelist and poet, much of whose writing is based on his experiences of the very different societies of India, China and America His best-known book is the novel 'A Suitable Boy' (1993) Seth was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Hindu parents He was educated at English schools in India prior to attending Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford, in England He received a B.A degree from Oxford; M.A degrees from Stanford University in California and Oxford; and a graduate study diploma from Nanjing University in Eastern China Seth's early works include the poetry collection 'The HlID1blc Administrator's Garden' ( 1983) and a travel journal of a Litemture ~ hitchhiking trip, 'From Heaven ; Lake: Travels Through : Sinkiang and Tibet' (1983) He ~ wrote the novel 'The Golden ; Gate' (1986) in verse form, as : a series of sonnets It focuses ~ on a group of young California I professionals in the 1980s : Other works include the poetry I : volume 'All You Who Sleep ToI night' (1990) and a children's ~ book of retellings of traditional : poetry and fables, 'Beasdy Tales ~ from Here and There' (1992) ; In 1993, 'A Suitable Boy' was : published to great acclaim ~ The book, which won one of ; Britain's annual literary : prizes, the W H Smith ~ Award, is the story of an InI dian mother's search for a : suitable match for her daughI : ter The tale is set agamst t he ~ panoramic backdrop of life in ; India just after the country : gained independence from ~ Britain in 1947 ; Seth took on a new literary : form with 'The Libretto Arion ~ and the Dolphin' (1994), a reI tclling of the story of Greek : poet Arion being saved from 'The :I drmvning by a dolphm ~ Libretto' was published to co; incidc with the first perfor- = = = = = = = = = - - = II ""18""4~~~~~~~""",,,,'lla,,,,nel~l=eI;rg;nia Woolf(Stephen) (1882-JI9,41) mance of an opera of the same name, with music by English composer Alec Roth, at the English National Opera in London, in 1994 Seth returned to the novel form with %1 Equal Music' (1999), which depicts a love affair between two musicians • villanelle I I I I I I a poem in a fixed form, consisting of five three-line stanzas followed by a quatrain and having only two rhymes In the stanzas following the first, the first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated alternately as refrains They are the final two lines of the concluding quatrain • vire1ay any of various French verse forms, popular in the 14th and 15th centuries, with only two rhymes per stanza and an interlaced rhyme scheme, as abab bcbc cdcd dada • Virginia Woolf (Stephen) (1882-1941) Virginia Woolf, an English novelist and essayist, was the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen She is considered as a success- I I I I I I I I I I II ful innovator in the form of the novel fiction She was educated at home from the resources of her father's huge library In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, a critic and writer on economics, with whom she set up the Hogarth Press in 1917 As a novelist Woolf's emphasis was not on plot or characterisation but on a character's consciousness, his thoughts and feelings She did not limit herself to one consciousness, however, but slipped from mind to mind, particularly in 'The Waves', probably her most experimental novel Woolf's early works, 'The Voyage Out' (1915) and 'Night and Day' (1919), were traditional in method, but she became increasingly innovative in 'Jacob's Room' (1922), 'Mrs Dalloway' (1925), 'To the Lighthouse' (1927), and 'The Waves' (1931) I II ===========L;t~TtJturc II vinuU poetry I Walter BcnjRmin (189;1"",940=~========"",1=85 Virginia Woolf suffered mental ~ Jewish messianism His essays breakdowns in 1895 and 1915; ; on Charles Baudelaire and she drowned herself in 1941 Franz Kafka as well as his because she feared another I the?ry on symbolism, allegory, breakdown from which she I might not recover • visual poetry poetry arranged in such a manner that its visual appearance has an elevated significance of its own, thus achieving in an equivalence (or even more) between the sight and sound of the poem • voice the agent or agency who is speaking throughout a poem • volta the place at which a distinct turn of thought occurs The term is most commonly used for the characteristic transition point in a sonner, as between the octave and sestet of a Petrarchan sonnet • vowel rhyme see assonance • Walter Benjamin (18921940) this German essayist and critic is known for his synthesis of eccentric Marxist theory and ~ ; ~ and the ftmction of art in a me; chanical age have deeply af: -fected contemporary criticism ~ In the collection of his works, I Walter Benjamin" demonstrates ~ complete adherence to the notion of history moving through ~ the necessary epochs set forth ; by Marx; to human material : desire being the prime mover ~ of mankind; to the notions of ; alienation; and to the proletariat being the class with the I ability to move mankind I (through ~evolution) from the current epoch of capitalism, to the next epoch, communism I Benjamin's method is a combiI nation of an artful use of liter: ary tools, empirical observation, ~ and inspirational experience ; Benjamin was influenced by his : close friendship with the histo- 186 wedgeverse I WilliRmMRkepeRCeThaclzemy(1811-63) I I """""======-==="",,* ~ dan of Jewish mystIcism I with a melancholy, pessimisGershom Gerhard Scholem In I tic attitude Weltschmerz was 1933, he moved to France be- expressed in England by cause of the rise of the Nazis I George Gordon, Lord Byron When the Nazis invaded I in his Manfred and Childe France, he fled to Spain, was Harold's Pilgrimage; in France V iscount de denied entry, and committed by suicide I Chateaubriand, Alfred de Vigny and Alfred de Musset, • wedge verse in Russia by Aleksandr see rhopalic I Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov, in Poland by • well-versed Juliusz Slowacki and in a state of familiarity with poetI America by Nathaniel ICS Hawthorne • weltanschauung a German term meaning 'a I • whimsy person's world view or phi- I ~ fanciful or fantastic creation losophy' Examples of: m wntmg or art weltanschauung include Tho- ~ -• William Makepeace mas Ha~dy's view o~ ~e hu-; Thackeray (1811-63) man bcm~ as th~ VICtim of ~ William Makepeace fate, destmy or Impersonal Thackeray, an English novelforces and CIrcumstances and I ist was born in Calcutta Inthe d~sillusioned and laconic I di~ Not only was he a ~reat cymClsm expressed by such novelist bur also a brilliant poets of ~e 1930s a~ W H I satirist In 1830, Thackeray Auden, SIr Stephen Spender left Cambr·dge w·thour a de· W ·II· E l l an d Slr I lam mpson gree and later entered the • weltschmerz Middle Temple to study law a German term that can liter- I In 1833, he became editor of ally be translated as 'world I a periodical, the National pain' It describes a sense of : Standard, bur the following anguish about the nature of ~ year, he settled in Paris to existence, usually associated; study art In 1836, he married II = = = = = = = = L i t e n J l u r < e II William Shakespean: (1564-1616) I Will",", Shakespeare (ISM-16M) * - _.- - 187 Isabella Shawe and returned I ~o E~gland in 1837, support109 hImself and his wife by literary hackwork and by illus- I tr~ting Three years later, his WIfe became hopelessly insane Thackeray sent his two young daughters to live with I his parents in Paris and worked as a clubman in Lon- ~ don Throughout I the 1830s ; • Wiilliam Shakespeare · an.d 40s, 1lIS noves appeared· (1564-1616) senally together with miscel-: laneous writingsjn several I WIlliam Sha~espeare, the celmagazines His 'Yellowplush : ebrated EnglIsh dramatist andCorrespondence', appeared ~ poet, was b~rn in S~atford-on­ (1837-38) in Fraser's In I Avon He IS consIdered the 1848, Thackeray achieved ~ weatest playwright who ever widespread popularity with : lived his humorous 'Book of Snobs' ~ He probably attended the and the same year rose to ; grammar school in Stratford, major rank among English : wher~ he would have been edunovelists with 'Vanity Fair' In ~ cat~d m the classics, particularly 1851, he delivered a series of I Latin grammar and literature lectures, 'English Humorists : In 1582, Shakespeare married of the Eighteenth Century' ~ ~e Hathaway, eight years his In 1852, his novel, 'Henry I seruor and pregnant at the time Esmond', appeared In 1860, ~ of the marriage In 1594, Thackeray became the editor : Shakespeare became an actor of the newly founded Cornhill ~ and playwright for the company Magazine, in which his last; Lord Chamberlain's Men As an novels like 'Lovel the Wid- : actor, he played old men's roles, ower' (1860) and 'The Ad _ ~ such as the ghost in 'Hamlet' ventures of Philip' (1861-62) ; ~d ~ld Adam in 'As You Like appeared : It HIS first plays are believed I Litemtun:======~ II 188 to be the three parts of 'Henry VI' After these come 'The Comedy of Errors', 'Titus Andronicus', 'The Taming of the Shrew', 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona', 'Love's Labours Lost', and 'Romeo and Juliet' Shakespeare also wrote 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'King John', 'The Merchant of Venice', 'Julius Caesar', 'As You Like It' and 'Twelfth Knight' His plays- 'Pericles', 'Cymbeline', 'The Winter's Tale', and 'The Tempest'-are tragicomedies Shakespeare's first published poems were 'Venus and Adonis' (1593) and 'The Rape of Lucrece' (1594) Shakespeare's sonnets are by far his most important non-dramatic poetry wordsmith I uugma " ~ syllable(s) has been purpose; fully changed to make the word : conform to the prevailing met~ rical pattern While it may re; sult from faulty versification, it was conventional in tHe folk ballad and is sometimes used I deliberately for comic effects I I I I • zeitgeist a German term meaning 'spirit I of the time' It refers to the ~ moral and intellectual trends of : a given era I I • wordsmith a person who works with words; a skilful writer • wrenched accent the terms implies when a the normal accent of a word zarzuela a type of Spanish light, amusing opera with spoken dialogue Writers of zarzuelas include Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderon - I • I I I I • zeugma figure of speech in which a single word, usually a verb or adjective, is syntactically related to two or more words, though having a different sense in relation to each (e.g The room was not light, but his fingers were) [...]... Mariner' and John - avant-garde I Keats's 'La Belle Dame sans used in literary criticism to de- ; Merci' are examples of literary scribe new writing that rejects : ballads traditional approaches to litera- I ture in favour of innovations in : - ballade style or content It is a French I frequently represented in term meaning 'vanguard' ; French poetry, a ftxed form conTwentietli-century examples of sisting... classi'chronicle plays' - were based I 11 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Li,.,.,., \I classicism I close r e a d i n g cal include French literature of the seventeenth century; Western novels of the nineteend1 century and American fiction of the mid-nineteenth century such as that written by James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain ~ ; : ~ ; : I : I 31 become tired and trite from overuse, its freshness and... works as well Ex- ~ late seventeenth century, Oliver amples of comedies range from ~ Goldsmith's 'She Stoops to the plays of Aristophanes, ; Conquer' and Richard Brinsley Terrence and Plautus, Dante : Sheridan's 'The School for Alighieri'~ 'The Divine Com- ~ Scandal' in the eighteenth cenedy', Francois Rabelais's; tury, Oscar Wilde's 'The Impor'Pantagruel' and 'Gargantua' : tance of Being Earnest' in the... for a beloved to arise ~ phy' and Henry Adams's 'The ; Education of Henry Adams' • audience refers to the group of people for ~ • ~u.tomatic writing whom a particular piece of lit- : wntmg earned out without a erature is written Authors usu- ~ preconceived plan, in an effort ally write with a certain audi- ; to capture every random ence in mind, for example, chil- ; ~ought, ~tho~ ,who e~age dren? members... alliteration: I scures meaning and can conAnd inguise all of green, the,; fuse readers gear and the man: : • Amerind literature A coat cut close, that clung to the oral or written form of lithis sides I erature of Native Americans An a mantle to match, made I Native American literature was originally passed on by orally with a lining Ofjirrs cut andfitted - thefab- I It consisted largely of stories and... ~ in literature Baroque works that tells a simple story and has ; typically express tension, anxia repeated refrain Ballads were : ety and violent emotion The originally intended -to be sung ~ term 'Baroque Age' designates Early ballads, known as folk I a period in Western European ballads, were passed down : literature beginning in the late through generations, so their ~ sixteenth century and ending... literature, typically • beat generation referring to imaginative and see beat movement artistic rather than scientific or • beat movement I expository writing Current usa term used to refer to a period age sometimes restricts the featuring a group of American ~ meaning to light or humorous poets and novelists of the 1950s ; writing and appreciative essays and 1%Os - including Jack : about literature... of a work and some formalist which means 'novel of develop- ~ critics (such as the New Critment' The bildungsroman is a I ks) disparage the use of the· study of the maturation of a : author's biography as a tool for youthful character, typically ~ textual interpretation, learning brought about through a series I about the life of the author can of social or sexual encounters ~ often enrich a reader's... release of the emotions of pity and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy In his 'Poetics', Aristotle discusses the importance of catharsis The audience faces the misfortunes of the protagonist, which elicit pity and compassion Simultaneously, the audience also confronts the failure of the protagonist, thus -receiving a frightening reminder of human limitations and frailties Ultimately, however,... forrri origi~ nated by the ancient Greek I writer Theophrastus that later : became popular in the seven~ teenth and eighteenth centuries I It is a short essay or sketch of a ~ person who prominently dis: plays a specific attribute or ~ quality, such as miserliness or • character ; ambition Notable characters in the term in a broader spectrum : literature include Oedipus Rex, means a person in a literary ... 'Caligula' Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 He died in a car crash in 1960 Litemtu~ ===== = == = II allitemtuJtl I AmerinIllitemture 10 Pilgrim's Progress' It is a metaphorical... d i n g cal include French literature of the seventeenth century; Western novels of the nineteend1 century and American fiction of the mid-nineteenth century such as that written by James Fenimore... ancient poetry • crime literature in literature, the genre of fiction that focuses on the environment, behaviour and psycholLiteratun: ~ refers to a systematic study and ; evaluation of literary