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Basic Glossary of Literary Terms
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bard: (Welsh, bardd; Irish, bard)
Among the ancient Celts a bard was a sort of official poet whose task it was
to celebrate national events - particularly heroic actions and victories.
The bardic poets of Gaul and Britain were a distinct social class with special
privileges. The 'caste' continued to exist in Ireland and Scotland, but nowadays
are more or less confined to Wales, where the poetry contests and festivals,
known as the Eisteddfodau, were revived in 1822 (after a lapse since Elizabethan
times). In modern Welsh a bardd is a poet who has taken part in an
Eisteddfod. In more common parlance the term may be half seriously applied
to a distinguished poet - especially Shakespeare. bathos: (GK 'depth') In mock critical treatise
called Peri Bathous, or, Of the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728), Pope
assures the reader that he will 'lead them as it were by the hand... the gentle
downhill way to Bathos; the bottom, the end, the central point, the non plus
ultra, of true Modern Poesy!' Bathos is achieved when a writer, striving
at the sublime, overreaches himself and topples into the absurd. It is a sudden descent from the the serious
to the ludicrous. Bathos is usually unintentional, whereas anti-climax
is used deliberately by an author, often for comic effect. bawdy: A term used to describe coarse, low, sexual
humour or dialogue. Bawdy is usually the preserve of lower-class characters,
but this can serve to make it even more startling when it comes from noble
characters. Hamlet is obsessed with corruption, sexuality, and the 'rank sweat'
of copulation. He is frequently bawdy, as when he says to Ophelia 'That's
a fair thought to lie between maid's legs' and makes other suggestive remarks
to her. Sexual jealousy and fascination with sexuality infests almost every
line Iago speaks about Desdemona in Othello, and he announces the marriage
of Desdemona to Othello by telling her father that a black ram is 'tupping'
(having intercorse with) his white ewe. Bawdy, however, comes in more frequently
where one might expect to find it, in the low-life characters. Bosola's speech
in The Duchess of Malfi is bawdy when he speaks with the Old Lady. bearbaiting: Bearbaiting in the 17th century,
alternatively BULLBAITING, the setting of dogs on a bear or a bull chained
to a stake by the neck or leg. Popular from the 12th to the 19th century,
when they were banned as inhumane, these spectacles were usually staged at
theatre-like arenas known as bear gardens. A sport called bull-running also developed in some places, usually
as an annual affair. The townspeople, armed with clubs, chased a bull until
all were exhausted; then the bull was killed.Bearbaiting and bullbaiting and
the variations on these "sports" began to decline in popularity,
although very slowly, from the late 17th century onward. They were banned
in England by the Puritans during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth (1642-60),
and they were permanently outlawed by act of Parliament in 1835. . beat: Metrical emphasis in poetry, sometimes used
as a synonym for stress. blank verse: a form of dramatic writing adopted
almost universally in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and normally consisting
of iambic pentameters. Webster employs it throughout the play, except in the
case of a rare use of prose. Unrhymed iambic pentameter: a line of five iambs.
One of the commonest English metres. It was introduced into England by Henry
Howard, Earl of Surrey, who used it in his translation of Virgil's Aeneid
(1557). Thereafter it became the normal medium for Elizabethan and Jacobean
drama. The popularity of blank verse is due to its flexibility and relative
closeness to spoken English. It allows a pleasant variation of full strong
stresses per line, generally four or five, while conforming to the basic metrical
pattern of five iambs. Unrhymed iambic pentameter, the preeminent dramatic and narrative
verse form in English and also the standard form for dramatic verse in Italian
and German. Its richness and versatility depend on the skill of the poet in
varying the stresses and the position of the caesura (pause) in each line,
in catching the shifting tonal qualities and emotional overtones of the language,
and in arranging lines into thought groups and paragraphs. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, introduced the metre, along with
the sonnet and other Italian humanist verse forms, to England in the early
16th century. Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton used blank verse for the
first English tragic drama, Gorboduc (first performed 1561), and Christopher
Marlowe developed its musical qualities and emotional power in Tamburlaine,
Doctor Faustus, and Edward II. William Shakespeare transformed
the line and the instrument of blank verse into the vehicle for the greatest
English dramatic poetry. In his early plays, he combined it with prose and
a 10-syllable rhymed couplet; he later employed a blank verse dependent on
stress rather than on syllabic length. Shakespeare's poetic expression in
his later plays, such as Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and The
Winter's Tale, is supple, approximating the rhythms of speech, yet capable
of conveying the subtlest human delight, grief, or perplexity. After a period of debasement, blank verse was restored to its
former grandeur by John Milton in Paradise Lost (1667). Milton's verse
is intellectually complex, yet flexible, using inversions, Latinized words,
and all manner of stress, line length, variation of pause, and paragraphing
to gain descriptive and dramatic effect. In the 18th century, James Thomson
used blank verse in his long descriptive poem The Seasons, and Edward
Young's Night Thoughts uses it with power and passion. Later, William
Wordsworth wrote his autobiography of the poetic spirit, The Prelude
(completed 1805; published 1850), in blank verse; Percy Bysshe Shelley used
it in his drama The Cenci (1819), as did John Keats in Hyperion
(1820). The extreme flexibility of blank verse can be seen in its range
from the high tragedy of Shakespeare to the low-keyed, conversational tone
of Robert Frost in A Masque of Reason (1945). Blank verse was established in German drama by Gotthold Lessing's
Nathan der Weise (1779). Examples of its use are found in the writings
of Goethe, Schiller, and Gerhart Hauptmann. It was also used extensively in
Swedish, Russian, and Polish dramatic verse. bombast: Originally the word described the cotton
or horse-hair used in tailoring for padding. The term came to mean inflated
and extravagant language. boys' companies: Companies of boy actors which
flourished during the 16th century. Early records show that the choristers
of the Chapel Royal had performed plays by 1516. Choristers at St Paul's also
performed them c. 1525. In 1576 Richard Farrant, Master of the Children
of the Chapel at Windsor, leased premises in the Blackfriars to present commercial
theatrical performances. The Marprelate controversy in 1588-9 led to the prohibition
of the companies in the 1590s. However, at the beginning of the 17th century
they were revived and a number of well-known dramatists composed plays for
them, including Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Dekker, Ben Jonson, Marston,
Middleton and Webster. By c. 1613 they were again falling into desuetude. burlesque: The term derives from the Italian burlesco,
from burla 'ridicule' or 'joke'. It is a derisive imitation or exaggerated
'sending up' of a literary or musical work, usually stronger and broader in
tone and style than parody. For the most part burlesque is associated with
some form of stage entertainment. Aristophanes used it occasionally in his
plays. The satyr plays were a form of burlesque. Clowning interludes in Elizabethan
plays were also a type. A work of literature that sets out to ridicule
a style or type of writing, by exaggerating the features of the original and
making them appear ridiculous. Parody ridicules a specific book or work by
imitating it badly; burlesque ridicules a whole style or approach that might
be found in several works. :
In England many large groups of bears were kept expressly for the purpose.
Contemporary records reveal, for example, that 13 bears were provided for
an entertainment attended by Queen Elizabeth I in 1575.When a bull was baited,
its nose was often blown full of pepper to further arouse it. Specially trained
dogs were loosed singly, each attempting to seize the tethered animal's nose.
Often, a hole in the ground was provided for the bull to protect its snout.
A successful dog was said to have pinned the bull.Variations on these activities
included whipping a blinded bear and baiting a pony with an ape tied to its
back. Dogfighting and cockfighting were often provided as companion diversions.
Poetry based on a metrical structure (a repeating pattern
of stressed and unstressed syllables) which does not rhyme. Shakaspearian
blank verse usually has five stressed syllables per line, though the structure
can be very loose. As a general rule, the nobles the characters the more likely
they are to speak in blank verse rather than prose. Coarse or low-life characters
never use verse, but noble characters do sometimes use prose for less elevated
or dignified scenes. Blank verse can be used to heighten effects or the mood
of speeches, and to add weight and dignity to what is being said. Its rhythm
can give an air of formality if it is regular, or suggest the breakdown of
order, or of a human mind, if that regularity is suddenly broken. In the hands
of an expert such as Shakespeare or Webster blank verse can become a remarkably
subtle tool, and be used to reflect or evoke a wide range of moods and feelings.
Adapted from unrhymed Greek and Latin heroic verse, blank verse was introduced
in 16th-century Italy along with other classical metres. The Italian humanist
Francesco Maria Molza attempted the writing of consecutive unrhymed verse
in 1514 in his translation of Virgil's Aeneid. Other experiments in
16th-century Italy were the tragedy Sofonisba (written 1514-15) by
Gian Giorgio Trissino, and the didactic poem Le api (1539) by Giovanni
Rucellai. Rucellai was the first to use the term versi sciolti, which became
translated as "blank verse." It soon became the standard metre of
Italian Renaissance drama, used in such major works as the comedies of Ludovico
Ariosto, L'Aminta of Torquato Tasso, and the Il pastor fido of Battista
Guarini.
