Current Literary Terms: A Concise Dictionary of their Origin and Use PDF
Preview Current Literary Terms: A Concise Dictionary of their Origin and Use
CURRENT LITERARY TERMS A. F.SCOTT, M.A. CURRENT LITERARY TERMS By the same author * TOPICS AND OPINIONS, FIRST SERIES TOPICS AND OPINIONS, SECOND SERIES TOPICS AND OPINIONS, TlURD SERIES VITAL THEMES TODAY MEANING AND STYLE POETRY AND APPRECIATION THE CRAPT OF PROSE MODERN ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES, 1939-1941 MODERN ESSAYS, SECOND SERIES, 1941-1943 MODERN ESSAYS, TlURD SERIES, 1943-1951 COUNTRY LIFE THE SPOKEN WORD, FIRST SERIES THE SPOKEN WORD, SECOND SERIES SPEAXING OF THE FAMOUS TALES FAR AND NUR DAYS OF ADVENTURE THRILLS AND ACTION (Macmillan) A YEAR'S WORK IN PRBCIS PROM PARAGRAPH TO ESSAY, BOOKS 1-11 ENGUSH COMPOSITION, BOOKS I-IV POEMS FOR PLEASURE, BOOKS I-I1I PLAIN ENGUSH, BOOKS I-V THE POST'S CRAPT THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION (Cambridge University Press) CURRENT LITERARY TERMS A Concise Dictionary of their Origin and U se A. F. SCOTT, M.A. M MACMILLAN e A. F. Scot! 1965 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1965 978-0-333-03566-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be marl(> without wrinen pennission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copicd or transmilled save with wrillen permission or in accordance with the provisions ofthe Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised all in relation 10 this publicalion may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1965 Reprinted with revisions 1967, 1971, 1974. 1979. 1980, 1985 Published bv THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills. Basingstoke. Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and represelllalives throughout the world Printed in Great Britain b\" Amoll\' Rowe Ltd. . Chippenham British Library Cataloguing in PublicatioJl Data Scon. Anhur FinlC\' Current literar\" terms I. Literature -' DictiOllaries I. Tide 803 PN41 ISBN 978-1-349-15222-3 ISBN 978-1-349-15220-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15220-9 PREFACE THIS is a complete reference-book, alphabetically arranged, carefuUy cross-referenced, giving the etymology and concise but comprehensive definition of the principal terms used in all branches of literature. Definitions are illustrated with extensive quotations, some in old forms, but mainly taken from recent texts. The book, which is international, includes descriptions of forms as various as Epic, Dadaism, and Kabuki, and provides scholarly information, with a clear critical line, on the techniques and complexities of expression in words. Words are alive, and like all live things they grow, they change, they meet honour and disaster. Some remain puny, others stretch like giants. Perhaps few people know their story as far back as we can go. The interested reader probably knows the origin of carol and serenade and bucolic, but what of fustian and bombast and babery, doggerel and baroque and farce? What was the original caricature, the original maundy, the original leonine rhyme? If' slithy' means 'lithe and slimy' what does 'ordinailed ungles' mean? How and when was the first clerihew written, and how did the limerick get its name? Did science fiction really begin with Lucian's Vera Historia in the second century? We may know how Walter Mapes became the Jovial Toper, but wonder how Thomas Moore became Anacreon. Is Goliardic really a corruption of Golias? Who was this Mrs. Grundy, whose name is uttered with distaste ? And who (or what) are Dora and Aunt Edna and Andy Capp? Why did Tennyson kick the geese out of the boat, and what man adomed a sermon with kinquering congs? We may guess how the Grand Guignol was con nected with Great Punch, but what was the Satanic School, and who boldly introduced Baby-Cake into a Christmas Masque ? We have heard the Buddhist proverb that the fallen ftower never returns to the branch; but does the broken looking-glass never reftect again ? Many of us know Oscar Wilde said, 'I can resist everything except temptation', and that Robert Frost declared, 'Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down'; but we may not remember who said, speaking of Good Sense, that his son was Wit, who married Mirth, and Humour was their child. Why did a Greek word linger in the mind of lohn Phillips when he wrote: 'Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel' ? v vi CURRENT LlTERARY TERMS Literary and critical terms can be treated in such a way as not only to help the student, but also to interest those readers who look upon literature as copious, vivid, and profound. We know that many of these terms are unfamiliar and abstruse, many of them are Greek names, perhaps at first sight forbidding. To meet this problem in Elizabethan times, Richard Puttenham made a vigorous but unsuccessful attempt in bis Arte 0/ English Poesie to personify the terms themse1ves, or, as L. G. Salingar says, 'to anglicize them with the aid of homely illustrations'. Zeugma Puttenham names 'single supply'. We should not gain very much today by calling Irony 'the Dry mock' or Sarcasm 'the Bitter taunt' or Mieterismus 'the Fleering frump'. But to know the true meaning of such words as nemesis, plagiarism, catharsis, and to realize more of their significance is of real value in literary elucidation. 'Poetry', Dr. Leavis once said, 'can communicate the actual quality of experience with a subtlety and precision unapproachable by any other means.' But we can only share this experience by an appreciation of the words, for it is the words wbich stand for all the poet has feit, for all that has passed through bis imagination. Coleridge had this in mind when, writing of poetry, he stated, 'Be it observed, however, that I include in the meaning of a word not only its correspondent object but likewise all the associations which it recalls'. So the writer, in prose or verse, strong in the use of such associa tions, presenting the width and the profundities of life, makes demands upon the reader beyond the plain meaning of the words themselves - for a word, fuH of purpose, surpasses its mere definition. Tbis book, therefore, grew out of the need for something to meet these demands. It is a dictionary consisting of literary and critical terms used in explaining the unfamiliar forms, the varied techniques and larger aspects of the complex art of writing. In the preparation of this glossary I am greatly indebted to the Ox/ord English Dictionary, H. C. Wyld's Universal Dictionary 0/ the English Language, Emest Weekley's Concise Etymological Dictionary 0/ Modern English, Chambers's Etymological English Dictionary, H. W. Fowler's Dictionary 0/ Modern English Usage, Sir Paul Harvey's Ox/ord Companion to English Literature and Ox/ord Companion to Classical Literature. I owe more personal thanks to Dr. Frederick T. Wood, who read the first draft and made many valuable suggestions, to Mr. Kevin McGarry for his kindly assistance, and to my wife for constant interest and encouragement. Finally I wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. T. M. Farmiloe for his most valued guidance and practical advice. A. F. SCOTT CONTENTS PAGB PREPACE V CuRRENT LlTERARY TERMS 1 BIBUOGRAPHY 315 INDEX OF AumORS QUOTED 318 vii A ABBEY THEATRE. See IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT. ABECEDARIANS. The name, which is derived from the first four letters of the alphabet, of a small sect, followers of Storch, the German Anabaptist, in the sixteenth century. Abecedarians refused to read because they held that knowledge of the Scriptures com municated direct by the Holy Spirit was essential. ABECEDARIUS. A composition in verse in which the initialietters of the words of each line are the same, and in which successive lines are in alphabetical order. Here are the opening lines from one by Alaric Watts: An Austrian army awfully array'd, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders cannonading come Dealing destruction's devastating doom. ABRACADABRA. A cabalistic word of obscure late Latin origin, first appearing in a poem by Q. Severus Sammonicus, in the second century B.C. Written in the form of a tri angle and wom round the neck, it was used to cure agues and drive away evil spirits. In A Lay 01 St. Dunstan, R. H. Barham. makes fun of the word and says: For I'm told that most Cabalists use that identical Word, written thus, in what they call 'a Pentade'. ABRIDGED EDITION. Latin abbreviäre, to shorten. The reduced or condensed form of the original text of a book. ABSOLUTE. Latin absolütus, loosened or freed from. In a general sense, completely independent of anything else, or of something which might be expected to be of influence. An absolute word is one which cannot be qualified, such as unique, or one which is without the part of speech that usually accompanies it, such as a transitive verb without an object, or an adjective without a noun. For example: If wishes could destroy. Fortune favours the brave. Also, a clause out of ordinary syntactic relation to the other parts of the sentence, as in the Ablative Absolute, an uogous to the 2 CURRENT LITERARY TERMS Ablative Absolute in Latin and the Genitive Absolute in Greek: Night having fallen, we decided to go. ABSTRACT. Latin abstrahlre; abs, away from, trahlre, tractum, to draw. To form a general concept from consideration of particular instances. When an organic form is stabilized and repeated as a pattern, and the intention of the artist is no longer related to the inherent dynamism of an inventive art, but seeks to adapt content to predetermined structure, then the resulting form may be described as abstract. Herbert Read, Collected Essays Abstract used of language means existing, or thought of as existing, apart from material objects, and is opposed to concrete; hence it is ideal, not practical. Tbe word abstract applied to art means 'non-representional', dissociated from theme. 'It is good to be honest and true' and 'Honesty is the best policy' are abstract statements. ABSTRACTION. Latin abstrahlre, to drawaway. A process of the mind by which it directs its attention to particular attributes of an object or objects without regard for the other attributes which the object may possess. Thus in the objects sugar, honey, syrup, we see the quality $weetness, and this we may abstract from among the other attributes in the ob;ects and consider it independently. The process by which general terms are used to c1assify a11 ships or a11 trees together is ca11ed abstraction. We make abstraction of certain attributes a noun possesses, leaving out others which would not fit; for instance in 'the roses of her cheeks " we think only of fragrance, pinkness and softness, not of thorns, leaves, ye110wness or dark red. Christine Brooke-Rose, A Grammar of Metaphor ACATALECTIC. From Greek akataliktos, from a- (negating) and kataUgein, to leave off, stop. Of averse it means complete, having the full number of feet or syllabies. If averse is short of one or more unstressed syllables in its final foot, it is called catalectic or truncated. A line which lacks initial syllable or syllables is called headless. This line from Dryden's Alexander's Feast is an example of catalectic : , Y , v 'v , Swcet IS I Plcasure I after I Pain.
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