Table Of ContentCURRENT
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
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First published 1965
Reprinted with revisions 1967, 1971, 1974. 1979. 1980, 1985
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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.
