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Basic Glossary of Literary Terms
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hamartia : (GK 'error') Primarily, an error of
judgement which may arise from ignorance or some moral shortcoming. Discussing
tragedy and the tragic hero in Poetics, Aristotle points out that the
tragic hero ought to be a man whose misfortune comes to him, not through vice
or depravity, but by some error. For example: Oedipus kills his father from
impulse, and marries his mother out of ignorance. Antigone resists the law
of the state from stubbornness and defiance. Phèdre is consumed by her passion
for Hippolyte. [See tragic flaw] harangue : An exhortatory speech, usually delivered
to a crowd to incite them to some action. The fire-and-brimstone sermon is
a kind of harangue. Henry V's pre-battle speeches in Henry V and Mark
Antony's oration over Caesar's body in Julius Caesar are two well-known
examples of harangue in dramatic literature. hero and heroine : The principal male and female
characters in a work of literature. In criticism the terms carry no connotations
of virtuousness of honour. An evil man or a wicked woman might be the central
characters, like Macbeth and Lady Macbeth hiatus : Either a gap in a sentence so that the
sense is not completed, or a break between two vowels coming together where
there is no intervening consonant. The indefinite article takes an 'n' - as
in 'an answer'. In The Duchess of Malfi in Act I,
Scene ii, when the brothers interrupted her sentence in mid-flow and hear
the Duchess say 'I'll never marry - ' (line 223) hilarody : A form of ancient Greek mime which
burlesqued tragedy. historicism: the practice of placing ideas within
an historical context, much in vogue by those literary critics who look for
textual links with events within a cultural framework. hornbook : A sheet of paper, bearing the alphabet,
combinations of consonants and vowels, the Lord's Prayer and the Roman numerals,
which was mounted on a piece of wood resembling a small paddle horn. It was
used for teaching children to read up until the 18th century, when it was
replaced by the primer. In 1609 Dekker published The Gull's Hornbook,
which was a kind of spoof book of manners, or courtesy book, for the fops
and gallants of the time. [See 'Grobianism'] hubris : (GK 'wanton insolence') This shortcoming
or defect in the Greek tragic hero leads him to ignore the warnings of the
gods and to transgress their laws and commands. Eventually hubris brings about
downfall and nemesis, as in the case of Creon in Sophocles's Antigone
and Clytemnestra in Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy. The pride that allows a tragic hero to ignore
the warnings from the gods, and so bring about his nemesis (downfall) humanism: a system of thought, particularly applicable
to literature, emanating from Classical origins, having its apotheosis in
the Europe of the Renaissance. Humanism's philosophical essence is the reason
and dignity of mankind. The word 'humanist' originally referred to a scholar
of the humanities, especially Classical literature. At the time of the Renaissance
European intellectuals devoted themselves to the rediscovery and intense study
of first Roman and then Greek literature and culture, in particular the works
of Cicero, Aristotle and Plato. Out of this period of intellectual ferment
there emerged a view of man and a philosophy quite different from medieval
scholasticism: in the ninetieth century this trend in Renaissance thought
was labelled 'humanism'. Reason, balance and a proper dignity for man were
the central ideals of humanist thought. The humanists' attitude to the world
is anthropocentric: instead of regarding man as a fallen, corrup and sinful
creature, their idea of truth and excellence is based on human values and
human experience.They strive for moderate, achievable, even worldly aims,
rather than revering asceticism. Humanists of the Renaissance period were
students of literae humaniores; the literature of the Greek and Latin
poets, dramatists, philosophers, historians and rhetoricians. At the Renaissance
there was a great revival of interest in Classical literature and thought
and this revival was, to some extent, at the expense of medieval scholasticism.
The long-term influences of this revival were immense and incalculable, and
they led to an excessive devotion to Classical ideals and rules in the late
17th c. and 18th c. Humanism, a European phenomenon, was a more
worldly and thus more secular philosophy; and it was anthropocentric. It sought
to dignify and ennoble man. humours : The term humour (it derives from Latin
humor 'moisture'; hence humid) was used in the Middle Ages and
during the Renaissance period - in the tradition of Hippocratic pathology
and physiology - to denote the four humours of the body. These depended
on the four fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
The admixture or commingling of these determined a person's disposition, character,
mind, morality and temperament. The humours released spirits or
vapours which affected the brain, and thence a person's behaviour.
According to the predominant humour a man was sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric
or melancholy. Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy,
I, ii, 3 (1621), gives an excellent description of the qualities of the humours. Vestigially, the theory of humours survives
in such expressions as: 'ill-humoured', 'good-humoured', 'black with rage',
'in a black mood', yellow with jealousy', 'green with envy', 'yellow-livered',
'red with remorse', and so forth. And we still use 'sanguine' or 'melancholy'
to describe certain temperaments. The theory of humours had a considerable
influence on writers when it came to the creation of characters. Dramatists
devised characters based on the theory of the imbalances that occurred between
the bodily fluids. Comedy of humours developed characters who were dominated
by a particular mood, inclination or peculiarity. Ben Jonson is the most notable
instance of a dramatist to do this - in Every Man in His Humour; almost
certainly the first play created on the theory of personality and ruling passion.
This he followed with Every Man Out of His Humour (1599). It may be no coincidence that at this period
writers were also addressing themselves to the depiction of 'characters' in
character sketches, and analysing character and temperament. It is not until the 18th c. that we find 'humour'
associated with laughter and being used in contradistinction to wit. The four humours were originally thought
of as four liquids existing in the human body, and the balance of the humours
dictated a person's personality and his health. Much medieval and Jacobean
writing refers to this theory. Earlier references tend to refer to the basic
fluids and the features they were meant to give people. A person with excess
of the humour blood in him was called sanguine, and was pleasure-loving,
amorous, kind, and jovially good-natures; the Franklin in Chaucer's The
Canterbury Tales is such a figure. Someone with an excess of phlegm
in them was described as phlegmatic and was dull, cowardly, unresponsive,
dour, and unexciting. An excess of yellow bile gave rise to a choleric
person: vengeful, obstinate, impatient, intolerant, angry, and quick to lose
his temper. An excess of black bile produced a person who was melancholic:
moody, brooding, sharp-tongued, liable to sudden changes of mood, and often
lost in thought and contemplation. The poet John Donne (?1571-1631) was supposed
to be highly melancholic. By the start of the seventeenth century the 'comedy
of humours' had developed, in which people's behaviour was linked to one humour
of feature. Every Man in His Humour by Ben Johnson (1572-1637) is a
good example of such a play. Humour here is coming to have its wider meaning
of personality, rather than the specific four humours meant in medieval times.
In medieval and Jacobean times the four humours were thought of as
equivalents of the four elements around which the Universe was created. hyperbole : (GK 'overcasting') A figure of speech
which contains an exaggeration for emphasis. A figure of speech which uses
exaggeration. Hyperbole was very common in Tudor and Jacobean drama, and in
heroic drama. It is an essential part of burlesque. hyphaeresis: (Gk 'taking away from beneath')
In general the term denotes the omission of a letter from a word: 'o'er' for
'over'; 'e'en' for 'even'; 'heav'n' for 'heaven'. See Elision. hypocorism: The term derives from a Greek word
meaning 'to play the child'. Commonly used of pet-names, like 'Mike' for Michael,
and the use of familiar terms like these: Will Shakespeare, Jim Boswell, Willie
Yeats, Tom Eliot. Also endearments like: 'money spider', 'cherry blossom',
honey', 'chuck'. hyporchema: (Gk 'song accompanied by dancing')
A choral song accompanied by dancers is believed to have been invented by
Thaletas of Goryn, Crete (7th c. BC). The Cretic measure was used for the
verse. It was used as a hymn in honour of Apollo and was related to the paean
and the dithyramb. hypostatization: A form of personification in
which an abstract quality is spoken of as something human. For example: 'Truth
insists I tell the story'; 'Decency compels me to admit the truth'. Not uncommon
in every usage. hypotaxis: (Gk 'under arrangement') Subordination;
syntactic relationship between dependent and independent constructions, e.g.
'He who knows will tell us' as against 'Who knows? He will tell us'. hypotyposis: A figurative device by which something
is represented as if it were present. For example: John of Gaunt's dying speech
in Richard II (II, i, 31) in which he 'sees' England as a sceptred
isle and creates a general word image of the country.
