Literature

Description

An in-depth series of flashcards on a variety of different English works and literature.
Emma Madden
Flashcards by Emma Madden, updated more than 1 year ago
Emma Madden
Created by Emma Madden over 11 years ago
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Resource summary

Question Answer
The Canterbury Tales- Chaucer Pilgrimages to Canterbury were social and not pious The Canterbury Tales were descriptions of universal types of behaviour
Medieval Machinery Medieval machinery was an allegory for dream; a literary technique made popular by France, but abandoned in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Jacobean 1625 Theatres closed Two hostile camps of writers - geniuses with King and free religion and parliament (Milton) Rochester's poetry was impetus for satire Presbytarian - importance of scriptures and God as sovereign Calvinism - anglican reformation of the Church Change of spirit - literature was one of the only forms where rational thought could be expressed
Middle Ages: Influence of French on meter The French introduced a smoother, meter with end-word of lines rhyming
Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation) Ideas of what makes a hero are constantly changing; how to love a country changing 'Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part, eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride' - Hrothgars, Kings
Victorian Literature Three sacramental moments - birth, marriage and death Poems were earthly and economic 1830-1900 Newly risen middle class World dominated by strength alone Female emancipation was a key theme Gothicism reflects the perverse peculiarities of the human personality
Aristotle's Tragedy: Hamartia Fatal/tragic flaw in a hero
Peripateia The complete downfall from a high status such as a king
Modernism Imagist poetry Language would reveal the point itself and nothing else After war it was believed that there was no ruling spirit to guide the rational world Freud altered truth and reality
Abangorisis The recognition of a hero's mistakes
Aristotle's Tragedy The imitation of an action that is serious with magnitude and complete in itself
Lolita on Art The inner insanity can only be cured by art Poetic murder Art's greatest damage - how art makes the immoral amoral Mise-en-abyme - a plot within a plot
Aristotle's Tragedy: Tragic Unities Place, time and action - occur in one location throughout the course of a day
Lolita: Humbert's Self-Reflexivity Humbert's self-reflexivity allows him to create his own norms; 'I love you. I was a pentapod monster but I loved you' Through a homodiegetic discourse, the reader never forgets they are reading novel
The Miller's Tale: Cuckoldry 'And demed himself ben lyk a cokewold' John is scared that Alison will make a cuckold of him, since John is old and believes he cannot be sexually sufficient for his young wife
Rainbows As A Sub-Motif In Lolita Rainbows are a sub-motif for Humbert's lust; Nymphets are personified as garlands of colour in the play
Sassure & Lolita Humbert veils sexually connotative terms in a foreign language - severing the signifier from the signified Humbert and Lolita are actors that simulate love and passion Metatheatre within the play is a trompe-l'oeil as the play is never played
Reversed Sonnet - Ruert Brookes (the button has stoed working) - infer, Emma, god damn Yeezy taught me sorry listening to ma boy Kanye -Love is a social form -'Hand trembling towards hand, the amazing lights of heart and eye. They stood on sureme heights/Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon!'
Waiting For Godot - Beckett Vladimir and Estragon wait for someone they hardly know in order to 'hold the terrible silence at bay' Symbiosis - a game for two people to survive
Nothingness in Waiting For Godot In act one, Estragon struggles to remove a boot and says 'nothing to be done' - nothing is a thing that has to be done! Motif of finding nothing - removal of boot, finding nothing in Vladimir's hat etc There is action but characters believe nothing has been achieved
The Avatar of Chaucer in The Miller's Tale First person pronoun - Chaucer as an avatar of Chaucer This avatar apologises for how he experiences the tale, especially in the prologue; 'Avysethy yew and put me out of blame'
Women in The Changeling - Middleton and Rowley Beatrice-Joanna represents both idealisation and degradation - a fallen Eve Women are usually aesthetic catalysts but Beatrice inverts this Purity is undercut by female's failure to fulfil male expectations To be masculine is to think diplomatically and politically The aristocracy of language - language reflecting class The politics of love
The Regency Period Bathos French Revolution came with the realisation of women's political place Never contained men talking as Austen wrote of what she knew Austen didn't have a political purpose - she wrote 'miniature portraits' on ordinary people
The Flea- John Donne 'A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhood'
(key that isn't working)-olemic argument usually ()-olitical
The Enlightenment Sexual knowingness, but not explicit Heroic couplet popularised by Alexander Pope Women had no power
A()hra Behn - The Fair Jilt 'And without [love], Man is unfinish'd and unha()()y'
The Miller's Tale: Fabliaux Fabliaux was based on physicality rather than spirituality. Love is based on appearances
Rape Of The Lock - Alexander Pope Female castration; Belinda's unwomanly whining after her hair is cut off Blended formal criticism into poetry 'If to same some female error fall look on her face'
()icaresque Novel 17th/18th century satirical novel on roguish hero of low class who lives by his wits units in a corru()t world
Hamlet Heidegger-thing theory - objects with meaning Bovarysme Man's precarious place in the world Not a tragedy of being, but a tragedy of having or not having - 'to be or not to be' Need for possession - properties create identity; 'For loan oft loses both itself and friend' A modern consciousness - how we internally rationalise the world
Restoration Comedy -During English Civil War (1642 - 51) theatres closed by ()uritans -Charles II restored in 1660; ()lays went from tragedies to comedies -()resented su()erficial urban societies
The Miller's Tale: Alison Alison is the wife of John, but has sex with Nick, an astrologer. Her headdress was a sign of beauty, and she was compared to an animal; 'as any wesele hir body gent and smal'
Courtly Love Man worshi()()ing a woman. Man as woman's slave
The Tudors: Thou An informal pronoun; used to show hatred or love - paradoxical pronoun
()astoral Love Man as she()herd, woman as nym()h
The Changeling continued Deconstructivism - blood, murder and conscience become meaningless The parallel between God's creation of man and man's creation of men; 'It must engender with a viper first' Perspicasity - seeing through deceits Levels of artifice - typical of Early Modern theatre Love represented as tragedy rather than comedy - disunion and unusual Act I Scene I, dropping of the second glove - Beatrice to DeFlores - though seeming to reflect love (Early Modern symbol of courtly love) - Beatrice's unconscious sexuality?
Tudors: Reformation The reformation from Catholicism to the Church of England By the time of 1600s, the quest for human perfection gave way to decadence, cynicism and introversion that stunted creativity
Liebestod The Early Modern idea that sex gives away life (sex and death)
To His Coy Mistress - 'seize the day ()oem' Written by cavalier ()oets
Wuthering Heights -Framing narrative -()lato's idea of soulmates - Cathy and Heathcliff -'I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul!'
Ra()e Of The Cock (jk lol) Quotation “Think not, when Woman's transient Breath is fled, That all her Vanities at once are dead."
Northanger Abbey - Book 1 -Bildungsroman novel around Catherine Morland -The Allens, family friends of the Morlands take Catherine to Bath (wealthy ()lace)
Shakespeare in General Usually three unities occur in Shakespeare's comedies by the end Used the fear of the age, e.g. witches in MacBeth Tragedy- an interrogative genre - nothing resolved, but can only be questioned Shakespeare worked through tragedies internally through characters, rather than through external circumstances
Northanger Abbey - Book 1 -Catherine introduced to Henry Tilney, falls for him -Arrival of Catherine's brother James. James falls for Catherine's friend Isabella
Northanger Abbey - Book 2 -Eleanor Tilney invites Catherine to their family home of Northanger Abbey; -Ex()ects something Gothic, but nathin
Northanger Abbey -Omniscient narrator - Austen's 'avatar' -Henry and Catherine marry
Othello- Shakespeare Vince and Cyprus - civilisation and Christianity of Venice contrasted with the barbarism and threat of the Turks (unchristian)
The Changeling - setting Alicante - Reformation Catholicism Venetian settings aren't usually corrupt as the republic is linked to England
Northanger Abbey -Mocks Ann Radcliffe, namely Mystery Of Udol()ho -'No one had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have suosed her to be born a heroine'
Love in Orlando -Orlando and Shel meet in the Victorian era -Shel (a man) demonstrates all the good qualities of a woman, and Orlando (now a woman) all those of a man
Women in Othello Two world views of women: Madonna and The Whore, which are not interchangable, 'She is gone forever' Men's jealousy is unfounded and pathological; whenever a husband is jealous, the wife is innocent Othello begins and ends with an image of female perfection - 'her own motion blushed at itself'; and at the end: 'peace be still'- Othello returns Desdemona to a statue (female perfection) Turning women to statues is fatal and leads to death
Unity In Orlando -The ()resent day is ()resented as Shel returns from the navy -Othello finds that she is not one self, but made u() of many selves -Shel - 'as strange and as subtle as woman'
Othello: Iago as a machiavellian character Coleridge described Iago as the 'motive-hunting of motiveless malignity' Iago is detached from conventional morality and says that, 'men should be what they seem'
Othello As A Hero It is argued whether Othello is a tragic hero, as though he is pre-eminently great, he is also flawed
Unity In Orlando -The unity of ex()eriences creates fact -()erfec()tion: 'A toy boat on the Ser()entine!'
Othello: The handkerchief The handkerchief demonstrates the Shakespearean idea that properties are transferred to fatal effects
The Word 'Wife' in Othello As the world of play comes crashing down, Othello can no longer say the word 'wife' 'Wife' holds public and private lives of Othello together; The play turns into something political to something domestic; Passion turns into sexual jealousy
Ottava Rima A poem of eight eleven-syllable lines (abababcc rhyme scheme) Used for religious verse or dramatic, troubadour songs
Uxoriousness Submissiveness to women, caused Adam's downfall
Othello's Cognition 'O insupportable! O heavy hour!' - Othello loses the way to hold together the world in his head; he expects nature to reflect the disorder in his mind Each character believes they are acting in a sense of totality, but in reality, they are not
Monometer a line of a single foot
Performative Language expresses an action and nothing else
()aratactic Often modern ()oetry/()rose that lacks logical syntactic joints, e.g. e.e. cummins
Foregrounding Emphasising a literary effect to expose literary autonomy
Asyndeton Little use of conjunctions
Othello As An Other Othello is an 'other' character, who blames external causes such as magic and spirituality, but has no self-knowledge of himself
Heterodiegetic no involvement in the flashback
Homodiegetic A character's personal involvement in flashback
Carnivalesque Prose riven with merry language
Molossus Three, bleak repeated words, three stresses
Anapest Ti-ti-tum
Chaucer & Middle Ages: Mariolatry Chivalry+cloister= a veneration for the Virgin Mary
Middle Ages: Strophic Chorus repeated verse
Middle Ages: Fabliaux French for tale
French & Italian Inspired Chaucer Chaucer often wrote in Alexandrines, as he was inspired by the French
Gothicism -Religion as a setting rather than a doctrine -Frankenstein - anti-industrial; what ha()()ens when a woman isn't within creative ()rocess
Cloister Poems were love songs to Christ composed in the warm language of earthly passion
Gothicism -Thera()eutic esca()e away from controls of order and reason -Freud - ()erculiarities of human nature in society, e.g. scal()al used instead of knives
Chaucer As A Man of Society Chaucer was a witness of feudal ; familiar with man and nature
()anegyric Extended ()raise
Stoicism & Seneca - T.S. Eliot on Othello Othello's final speech is an exposure of human weakness; In Othello's totality, he becomes a bovarysme, where he believes he is a hero
Restoration Drama Rakes - predatory, sexually active men Sexually explicit plots with cuckoldry Foppishness/fops-philistines 16th Century
Tudors - Chain Of Being Reason moves people closer to God, but passion does the contrary
Early Modern Ambiguity Pitying and piteously - who does the pitying?
Early Modern Poetry Poetry lingered over analysis of motives and feelings rather than action - Chaucer style
Ana()hora Re()etition of words/()hrases at the beginning of clauses
E()istro()he O()()osite of ana()hora - comes at the end of the clause
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