english literature pgt - osn academy
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ENGLISH LITERATURE
PGT
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LITERARY TERMS
CHRONOLOGY
1. Absurd, Theatre Of The
2. Action
3. Aesthetic Criticism
4. Aestheticism
5. Age of Johnson in English Literature
6. Age of Reason
7. Age of the Romantic Movement In England
8. Age of Sensibility
9. Anagorisis
10. Anticlimax
11. Agnosticism
12. Alexandrine
13. Allegory
14. Anagram
15. Antagonist
16. Antithesis
17. Aphorism
18. Archetype
19. Architectonic
20. Aside
21. Association
22. Attic Style
23. Avant - grade
24. Ballad
25. Bathos
26. Baroque
27. Belles - letters
28. Black Death
29. Blank Verse
30. Bombastic
31. Bourgeois Drama
32. Bucolic
33. Burlesque
34. Byronic Hero
35. Cadence
36. Caesura
37. Canto
38. Caricature
39. Carol
40. Catharsis
41. Catastrophe
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42. Campus Novel
43. Caroline period, The
44. Cavalier Poets
45. Cavalier Drama
46. Chorus
47. Chronicle
48. Chronicle Play
49. Cliché
50. Climax
51. Closet Drama
52. Cockney School of Poetry
53. Comedy of Intrigue
54. Conceit
55. Decadents
56. Decorum
57. Deus ex Machina
58. Denonument
59. Didactic
60. Didacticism
61. Diaries
62. Dirge
63. Dissociation Of Sensibility
64. Dithrayamb
65. Doggerel
66. Dramatic Monologue
67. Dramatic Irony
68. Dramatic Personae
69. Early Tudor Age
70. Eclogue
71. Edwardian
72. Elegy
73. Elizabethan Age
74. Empathy
75. English Literature – Period
76. Epic
77. Epic, Mock or Mock Epic
78. Epic Simile
79. Epicedium
80. Epistle
81. Epistolary Novel
82. Eulogy
83. Epithalamion
84. Fable
85. Fabliau
86. Farce
87. Fancy
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88. Fire of London, The Great
89. Flat and Round Character
90. Georgian Age In English Literature
91. Georgian Poets
92. Globe Theatre
93. Genre
94. Gothic
95. Gothic Novels
96. Graveyard School
97. Grand Style
98. Hamartia
99. Heroic Couplet
100. Heroic Line
101. Heroic poetry
102. Humanism
103. Homily
104. Hymn
105. Idyll
106. Imagery
107. Imagism
108. Irony
109. Ivory Tower
110. Jargon
111. Jacobean Age
112. Kit – Cat Club
113. Lake Poets
114. Lampoon
115. Late Victorian Age
116. Literary Club, The (also Doctor Johnson's circle)
117. Lollards
118. Malapropism
119. Manners, Comedy of
120. Masque
121. Masculine Rhyme
122. Metaphysical Poets
123. Middle English Period
124. Mime
125. Miracle Play
126. Modernist Period in English Literature
127. Monody
128. Monograph
129. Morality Plays
130. Mystery Plays
131. Mysticism
132. Myth
133. Neo classicism
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134. Neologism
135. Negativity Capability
136. New Aristotelian School
137. New Criticism
138. New Platonism
139. Novella
140. Objective Corelative
141. Oedipus Complex
142. Oxford Movement
143. Pamphlet
144. Panegyric
145. Pantheism
146. Parody
147. Pantomime
148. Parable
149. Paston Letters
150. Pathetic Fallacy
151. Picaresque Novel
152. Philistines
153. Plagiarism
154. Poetic Diction
155. Poetic License
156. Pre – Raphaelite Brotherhood
157. Problem Plays (Of Shakespeare)
158. Protagonist
159. Prothalamion
160. Pseudo
161. Psychological Novel
162. Purple Patch
163. Reconciliation Plays of Shakespeare
164. Red Cross Knight, The
165. Renaissance
166. Renaissance of Wonder
167. Reformation
168. Regionalism
169. Romanticism
170. Romantic Revival
171. Saga
172. Satire
173. Scribblers Club
174. Senecan Tragedy
175. Senecan Tradition
176. Sensibility
177. Serenade
178. Sentimentality
179. Seventeenth (17th
) Century Literature
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180. Soliloquy
181. Spasmodics
182. Spenserian Stanza
183. Spoonerism
184. Sprung Rhythm
185. Structuralism
186. Stream of Consciousness Novel
187. Sublime
188. Symbolism
189. Theater Of Cruelty
190. Threnody
191. Three Unities
192. Tract
193. Tragi- Comedy
194. Treatise
195. Transcendentalism
196. Twentieth Century Literature
197. Utopia
198. University Wits
199. Verisimilitude
200. Victorian Compromise
201. Vorticism
202. Willing Suspension of Disbelief
203. Wit
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LITERARY TERMS
ABSURD, THEATRE OF THE A term invented by Martin Esslin who wrote The Theatre of the Absurd [1961].
Conceived in perplexity and spiritual anguish, the theater of the absurd portrays not a series
of connected incidents telling a story but a pattern of images presenting people as be-
wildered creatures in an incomprehensible universe.
The dramatists associated with the theatre of the absurd are- Arthur Adamov, Edward
Albee, Samuel Beckett, Camus, Jean Genet, Ionesco, Alfred Jarry, Harold Pinter and
Boris Vian. The works of The Theater of Absurd give ample expressions often leading the
observer (audience) baffled with meaningless and repetitious dialogues and incomprehensible
behavior.
The first true example of the theatre of the absurd was Eugene Ionesco‘s The Bald Soprano
[1950], but the most acclaimed play is Samuel Beckett‘s Waiting for Godot [1953]. Another
name of ‘Waiting for Godot’ is A Tragic Comedy in Two Acts. Albert Camus‘ The Myth of Sisyphus is one central expression of this philosophy.
ACTION According to Aristotle, is basic in drama. Broadly action relates to story and plot. It is
conceived as a unified course of event having a beginning, middle and an end. The emphasis
on action is a characteristic of the Classical school. The opposite view (predominant in the
Romantics) is to emphasize character and diction.
AESTHETIC CRITICISM It treats literature as an art. It probes the nature of the literary art as such and
formulates its theories accordingly. Traces of it are found in Sidney, Dryden, Addison
Coleridge; I. A. Richards dealt with it elaborately.
AESTHETICISM A term loosely applied to an English literary movement of the second half of the
nineteenth century. Oscar Wilde was the leader of Aestheticism. The aesthetes believed in
―art for art‘s sake‖.
It is a movement of late 19th
Century. As a movement, it was not well defined; it was one of
the reactions against the materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era.
Previously, Arnold had attacked Victorian cultural narrowness. Carlyle had attacked
Victorian spiritual mediocrity; Ruskin had tried to educate Victorians in the moral inspiration
of beauty. There had also been two well defined movements. The Oxford Movement and the
artistic Pre-Raphaelite movement preaching the virtues of medieval culture. All these made
up the background to aestheticism, but its inspiration was Walter Pater and his two most
influential books are Studies in the history of the Renaissance (1873) and Marius the
Epicurean (1885). The outstanding aesthete was Oscar Wilde (1856 – 1900) and the product
was his novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891).
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AGE OF JOHNSON IN ENGLISH LITERATURE The interval between 1750 and 1798 was a markedly transitional age in English
Literature. The Neo- Classicism that dominated the first half of the century was yielding in
many ways to the impulse towards Romanticism, although the period was still predominantly
neo classical.
Little was accomplished in drama, except for the comedy by Sheridan and
Goldsmith. The chief poets were Burns, Gray, Cowper, Johnson and Crabbe a list that
indicates how thoroughly the pendulum was swinging away from Pope and Dryden. Yet it
was Samuel Johnson- poet, lexicographer, essayist, novelist, journalist, and neo- classical
critic who was the major literary figure and his friend Boswell‘s biography of him [1791]
was life of Samuel Jonshon the greatest works of the age, challenged for such honor only by
Gibbon‘s monumental history, The Decline and fall of Roman Empire [1776].
An interest in the past [particularly the middle ages], in the primitive, and in the
literature of the folk was developing and was contributing with increasing strength to the
growing tide of Romanticism.
It is sometimes called the Age of Sensibility, emphasizing the emergence of new attitudes
and the development of sensibility as a major literary expression.
AGE OF REASON A term often applied to the Neo- classical period in English Literature and
sometimes to the Revolutionary and Early National Period In American Literature, because
these periods emphasized self- knowledge, self control, discipline and the rule of law, order
and decorum in public and private life and art.
AGE OF THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND, 1798-1832 Although a major romantic poet, Robert Burns, had died in 1796, William Blake‘s
Song of Innocence had appeared in 1789, and the publication of Lyrical Ballads by
Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 is often regarded as the beginning of a period of more
than three decades in which romanticism triumphed, a period that is often said to have ended
in 1832, with the death of Scott. During these thirty- four years, the careers of Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Mary and P. B. Shelley, and Keats flowered; Scott created the Historical
Novel and made it a force in international literature. Jane Austen wrote her Novel of
Manners; Mary Shelley her Gothic Novel and Science fiction; and Lamb, De Quincy and
Hazlitt raised the personal essay to a high level of accomplishment.
AGE OF SENSIBILITY A name applied by literary historian, such as Harold Bloom, Northrop Frye, to the
last half of the 18th
Century in England, the time earlier called the Age of Johnson. The term
Age of Sensibility results from seeing the interval between 1750 and 1798.
AGNOSTICISM The term was invented by the biologist Thomas Huxley in 1869 to express towards
religious faith the attitude which is neither of belief nor of disbelief (atheism). In his own
words, ‗I neither affirm nor deny the immorality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but
on the other hand I have no means of disproving it.‘ Agnosticism was widespread among
writers between 1850 and 1914; it arose from the scientific thought of the time, especially
that of Huxley himself and that of another biologist Charles Darwin.
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ALEXANDRINE A twelve-syllable line of verse possibly owing its name to French medieval poem
about Alexander the Great. It is common in French poetry but unusual in English, where the
commonest line length is often syllables. Michael Drayton used it in his long poem
Polyolbion (1613-22), but it's most famous use is in the last line of the Spenserian stanza,
invented by Edmund Spenser for his Faerie Queen.
ALLEGORY From Greek Speaking in other terms‘. A way of representing thought and experience
through images, by means of which (1) complex ideas may be simplified, or (2) abstract,
spiritual, or mysterious ideas and experience may be made immediate (but not necessary
simpler) by dramatization in fiction.
ANAGRAM Word or words formed by the rearrangement of the letters of another word and often
in comment upon it, e.g., ‗Wait – a wit‘. Another example is the transformation of Florence
nightingale into ―Flit on cheering angel!‖.
ANTAGONIST The major character in opposition to the hero or protagonist of a narrative or drama.
ANTITHESIS A contrast in which sharply opposing ideas are expressed within a balanced
grammatical structure.
ANTICLIMAX Sinking, often deliberate, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
ANAGNORISIS In drama, the discovery or recognition that leads to the Peripetia or Reversal. The
reversal depends on Recognition of something of great importance by the protagonist was
unknown to him which is known as Discovery in Aristotle's term Anagnorisis.
ARCHITECTONIC
The principle of good design; the process of so ordering the elements of a work of art
as to make them significant only in relation to, and in their exact position, in the completed
whole.
APHORISM A terse sentence, weighted with sense; with more weight of wisdom. ‘Crafty men
condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them…‘ (Francis Bacon:
Of Studies, 1625)
ARCHETYPE This term is used since 1930s. C.G. Jung describe archetypes as ―primordial images
formed by repeated experiences in the lives of our ancestors, inherited in the ‗collective
unconscious‘ of the human race, and often expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and
fantasies, as well as in literature. In literary criticism ‗archetype‘ is applied to a character type
or plot pattern or description which recurs frequently in literature and is thought to evoke
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profound emotional responses in the reader because it resonates with an image already
existing in his unconscious mind. Orestes Oedipus, Hamlet, Faust and Don Juan have the
power to stir generation after generation because they are archetypal figures‖.
ASIDE Theatrical device whereby the audience is directly addressed in words the other are
Not supposed to hear.
ASSOCIATIONISM Is the theory that the contents of consciousness group themselves by process of
association, so that one element easily and spontaneously recall others which are rapidly
experienced in conjunction. The theory of Association was formulated by Hartley in the 18th
century, and influence Wordsworth; and Coleridge before he came under the influence of
German philosophers. Adherents to this theory try to explain why certain objects appear as
beautiful and others do not by asserting that beauty is a subjective experience arouses by
association of the qualities of the object with the qualities that satisfy desires or interests. The
fact of the associative processes of thought has been utilized by the ‗stream of consciousness‘
school of novelist.
ATTIC STYLE ‘Attic’ refers to an ancient Greek dialect spoken in Athens; hence applied to a ‗pure,
simple polished style‘s such as we find in the best Greek writers.
AVANT - GARDE In literature, a term designating new writing that contains innovations in form or
technique. ‘The men of 1914’, as Wyndham Lewis called them, were still an avante –
garde.
BALLAD A traditional song in which some popular stories are narrated in short stanzas,
commonly in quatrains of alternate four. The word derives from Old French, ballad--to
dance; compare modern English, ball -a dance to which guests are invited. Features of the
balled in its traditional form are: the matter is often a highly dramatic narrative; the stories are
often version of themes used in ballads throughout Europe.
BATHOS Sudden, unintentional decent from the exalted to the ridiculous. Usually caused by the
writer trying to be lofty like anti-climax.
BAROQUE It is a term applied to fantastic over – decoration in art the result of excessive attention
to technical perfection in a particular form within a limited scope. In practice it led to the
development of Euphuism. It has been extended to include literary works that re – create in
one culture a form or activity created in another culture distant in time or space.
BELLES – LETTERS Unfashioned terms chiefly applied to lighter writings and essays.
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BILDUNGSROMAN A novel that deals with the development of a young person, usually from adolescence
to maturity; it is frequently autobiographical. Dickens's Great Expectations and Samuel
Butler‘s The Way of All Flesh are standard examples. Doris Lessing‘s five- volume Children
of Violence ranks among the most ambitions and impressive example.
BLACK DEATH An epidemic which struck England in 1348-49 and reduced the population by
between one-third and one-half. The economic consequences were far reaching especially the
shortage of labor. Landowners tended to change from arable to sheep farming, which
required less labor; peasants had better bargaining power and were in a position to commute;
a fierce class struggle resulted from attempts by the landed classes to keep down wages,
culminating in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381.
BLANK VERSE Verse which is unrhymed, and composed of lines which normally, contain 10
syllables and have the stress on every second syllables as in the classical iambic pentameter.
The first user of the iambic pentameter in English was Chaucer who used it in rhyming
couplets, e.g. The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
The first user of blank verse was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517- 47), who
adopted it for a translation of the second and third books of Virgil’s Aeneid. It is also used
by Sackville and Norton in their tragedy Gorboduc. The dramatist Christopher Marlowe
(1564-93) first gave blank verse its great distinction. Blank verse as used by Marlowe was
carried on by Shakespeare, who employed it with steadily increasing flexibility and power.
BOMBAST Language inflated with high sounding, meaningless words.
BOURGEOIS DRAMA A term widely used to describe the modern realistic drama dealing with the problems
of the middle class characters.
BUCOLIC A term is used for pastoral writing that deals with rural life like Shelley‘s Adonais.
BURLESQUE Derived from the Italian burla meaning ridicule or mockery. In its wider sense it is
used for any literary composition or dramatic representation which aims at producing
laughter by the comic treatment of a serious subject or the ridiculous imitation of a serious
work. The notable example of burlesque are Chaucer's Sir Topas, Fielding's Tom Thumb the
Great, George Viller's The Rehearsal and Butler's Hudibras. BURLESQUE
BYRONIC HERO He is a vain, disappointed, melancholy cynical man, who finds no good in life or love
or anything.
CADENCE General modulation of the voice in reading.
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CAESURA A pause in a line of verse dictated not by matrices but by the natural rhythm of the
language.
CANTO Major division of a long poem.
CARICATURE A representation of characters whose prominent features are so exaggerated or
distorted as to render it ridiculous.
CAROL Song of praise of joy, especially a Christmas hymn.
CAROLINE AGE The Age of Charles I (1625 - 49). Caroline is taken from Carolus and in Latin it
means Charles.
CATHARSIS It is a term applied by Aristotle to the purgative of the emotions (pity and terror)
through artistic expression, e.g. in tragedy through pity and terror. The concept has been
variously interpreted. How can ‗pity and terror‘ affect purgation of the emotions? (1) by
familiarizing the mind with scenes of misery and violence and thus making one impervious to
pity and terror. (2) Pity leads the spectator to fear for his own well – being and his
determination to control his passions lead him to purge himself. (3) The homeopathic
conception was enunciated by Milton and suggests that like emotions drive out like. (4)
Tragedy purifies the spectator by bringing out his natural goodness through pity and fear for
the victims of tragedy. (5) The dialectical opposition between pity and terror leads to a tense
condition of emotional equilibrium free from all storm and stress.
CATASROPHE The tragic conclusion of a play or narrative.
CAMPUS NOVEL A novel which has a university campus as its setting. The majority has been written
by those who were or are academicians. Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis; Giles Goat-
boy (1966) by John Barth; Changing Places (1975) by David lodge are all novels written
with its setting in a university.
CAROLINE PERIOD, THE From Carolus (Lat)—Charles; applied to the reign of Charles I especially to denote
the literature of the reign. Caroline poets include so – called ‘Caroline Poets’ such as
Carew, Lovelace and Suckling; Caroline dramatists were the last to write in the Elizabeth
tradition e.g. John Ford and James Shirley. The Caroline writers exhibited the graceful
qualities associated with Charles I‘s court; they had more refinement and elegance than the
poets and dramatists of the previous (Jacobean) reign of James I, such as Donne and Webster.