Modern English and American literature

Two of Lillian Hellman's plays, The Little Foxes and The Autumn Garden, are particularly interesting.

In this play Hellman deals with human relations in a society, based upon money. The following epigraph precedes the play: “Take from us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.” The title of the play symbolizes the playwright's thesis that greed creates havoc among, humans. The “tender grapes” are the gentle characters, especially young Alexandra. “As is often the ease in Miss Hellman's plays, she applies her thesis on both a personal and general social level. Here she is always saying that capitalistic greed exploits the lower economic sectors of society.”

The summary of the play as given in L. R. Holmin's book is: Ben and Oscar Hubbard and their sister Pegina Giddens are members of an avaricious clan in a small Southern town in 1900. They represent the rise of the industrial South in its most ruthless aspect. Oscar's gentle wife, Birdie, represents the old aristocracy, which the new order is replacing. In the social gathering which opens the play, we see the manner in which this new breed, rising from the poor whites, attempts to ape the cultural graces of the passing order.

A Chicago tycoon paying a visit is willing to-put up 400,000 dollars for the building of a cotton mill in the Southern town, where cheap costs and cheap labour will make high profits possible. Ben, Oscar and Regina are each to put up one-third of the remaining 225,000 dollars required for the financing of the project. For this investment they will receive 51% of the stock in the firm.

A struggle ensues between Regina and her husband, Horace Giddens, who is very ill with a heart ailment, over his unwillingness to put up their third. It is over this contest for money that we see first one, then another of the little foxes achieve the upper hand in their vicious talk among themselves. When Horace finds that Oscar's son Leon has, with Ben and Oscar's blessing, “borrowed” bonds from his safe deposit box for the project, he balks. He tells his wife, who despises him, that his vengeance on her is to pretend he loaned the bonds to the brothers and to write a new will which will cut off her dreams of going to Chicago to live a life of ease in society there. Her viciousness knows no bounds when she allows him to die by refusing to give him his medicine needed to prevent a heart attack, thus adding murder to her bag of tricks. Once again in power, she threatens the Hubbard men with exposure and demands three-fourths of the profit of the enterprise. Brother Ben accepts the arrangement, temporarily we feel, with a humor which has characterized brother and sister in their dog-eat-dog contest. Regina, however, is faced with what seems to the audience a hollow victory, when her daughter Alexandra, finally aroused, announces that she is leaving home to escape from the Hubbard influence.

Arthur Miller's best work, Death of a Salesman, is one of the most successful in fusing the realistic and the imaginative; in all of his other plays, however, Miller is the master of realism. He is a true disciple of Henrik Ibsen, not only in his realistic technique, but in his concern about society's impact on his characters' lives.

Arthur Miller created more directly social plays based on an ambiguity of images, whether defined in a family or broader cultural sense. Death of a Salesman (1949), the account of Willy Loman's tragic struggle with “the law of success”, became another classic. The Crucible (1953), in which the Salem witch-hunts are used as a parable (witchcraft trials of the 17th century in which Puritan settlers were wrongly executed as supposed witches), and A View from the Bridge (1955) enhanced his reputation.

In Miller's plays, the course of the action and the development of character depend not only on the characters' psychological makeup, but also on the social, philosophical, and economic atmosphere of their times.

Miller's most notable character, Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, is a self-deluded man; but he is also a product of the American dream of success and a victim of the American business machine, which disposes of him when he has outlived his usefulness. Loman has worked for Howard Wagner's company for thirty-six years. He has opened new markets for their trademark. Wagner's father promised him a job in New York, but Howard does not need him in town and fires him altogether. Willy realizes the futility of his dreams. He has been squeezed out and when he is unable to bring in a large profit he is dismissed. “I put thirty-six years into this firm. You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit”, he says bitterly. Having lost the sense of personal dignity, Willy decides to make a sacrifice for those he loves - he commits suicide in order that his sons, Biff and Happy, should get the insurance money and start a business.

Miller is a writer of high moral seriousness, whether he is dealing with personal versus social responsibility, as in All My Sons (1947), or with witch hunts past and present, as in The Crucible. Both are political - one contemporary, and the other set in colonial times. The first deals with a manufacturer who knowingly allows defective parts to be shipped to airplane firms during World War II, resulting in the death of his son and others.

Miller writes a plain and muscular prose that under the force of emotion often becomes eloquent, as in Linda Loman's famous speech in Death of a Salesman, where she talks to her two sons about their father: “I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.”

Tennesee Williams (born as Thomas Lanier Williams) (1911-1983) was born in Columbus, Mississippi. He changed his name when he left home for New Orleans. It had been his college nickname because his father was from Tennessee.

Tennessee Williams wrote two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs.Stone (1950) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975), and a novella, The Knightly Quest (1966). He is the author of collection of stories One Arm (1948), Hard Candy (1954), Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (1974), and a collection of poetry In the Winter of Cities (1956).

But he is valued most of all as a playwright. Tennessee Williams showed his mastery of dialogue and movement on the stage in a series of plays. They treat the emotional involvements and frustrations with which Williams chiefly concerned himself. Although Tennessee Williams was Miller's contemporary, his concern was not with social matters, but with personal ones. If Miller is often the playwright of social conscience, then Williams was the playwright of our souls. His earlier works were in production around the world. He dominated the American theatre for twenty years, beginning with Battle of Angels (1940). It was the first play to bring him public attention, and it evolved into Orpheus Descending (1957). He won national acclaim with The Glass Menagerie (1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (.1950), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Roof (1955), Garden District (1958), Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), The Night of the Iguana (1962). All these plays were made into films, and he wrote an original film script for Baby Doll (1956). In the mid-sixties, he started writing the darker plays of his late phase, beginning with Slapstick Tragedy (1965), which includes The Mutilated and Gnadiges Fraulein; The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968); In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969); The Two Character Play (1969), later rewritten and staged as Out City (1973), The Red Devil Battery Sign (1976), A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979), and a play about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald entitled Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980).

In contrast to Miller's spare, plain language, Williams's writing is delicate and sensuous; it is often colored with lush imagery and evocative rhythms. Miller's characters are, by and large, ordinary people with whom we identify because they are caught up in .the social tensions of our times. Williams's characters are often women who are “Lost ladies”, drowning in their own neuroses, but somehow mirroring a part of our own complex psychological selves.

The actual scenes in Williams's plays are usually purely realistic, even though these scenes may deal with colorful and “extreme” characters. But Williams usually theatricalized the realism with “music in the wings” or symbolic props, such as Laura's unicorn in The Glass Menagerie or the looming statue of Eternity in Summer and Smoke (1948). He always conceived his plays in visually arresting, colorful, theatrical environments.

The Glass Menagerie has become an American classic. When it was shown on Broadway in the spring of 1945, Mississippi-born Tennessee Williams was practically unknown; almost over-night, he became an international success.

The Glass Menagerie is a mixture of straightforward, realistic play construction and “poetic”, highly imaginative conception and language. Williams used this combination for most of his works. The structure of his plays is basically conventional; his vision, his “voice”, is imaginative and sensitive.

Because The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, its images are hazy. The characters, too, are poetically conceived and removed from the daily life of the Great Depression of the 1930's. In a few lines in the opening narration, Williams sets the social background of the period; but he is not really interested in the larger society. In all his plays, what interests him most is the psychological makeup of his characters. Laura Wingfield passes her life listening to phonograph records and rearranging her collection of glass animals. Tom wants to be a writer and to escape to the sea. Amanda lives in the past glories of being a Southern belle. In contrast to the Wingfield family, the gentleman caller is not poetic. He is from the real world, and it is the touching confrontation of this real man with the withdrawn Laura that provides the climax of the play.

In play after play, Tennessee Williams probed the psychological complexities of his characters. Though Williams became known principally for his colorful women characters - Amanda and Laura in The Glass Menagerie, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, Alma in Summer and Smoke, and Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - he also created some great male characters, among them Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Marlon Brando's portrayal of Stanley in the original production, and in the movie, established a kind of mumbling, torn-Tee-shirt technique of acting that was to become popular with many of the younger male actors of the next decade.

Comprehension Questions and Tasks

1. Explain the term “slice of life” dramatic technique. Comment on the drama in USA in the XIX-th century. What influenced the modern American drama?

2. What was new in the little theatres that appeared in America in the twenties? How was contemporary America reflected in O'Neill's plays? Comment on the play Beyond the Horizon. Why does Lillian Hellman speak of some of her characters in The Little Foxes as “tender grapes”? Comment on O'Neill's and Hellman's contribution to the world theatre.

3. What is the central idea of the play Death of Salesman written by Arthur Miller? How can we characterize the talent and place of Arthur Miller in the literary trend?

4. What are the chief characteristics of Tennesee Williams' plays? Comment on his women characters. How does Williams combine serious and ridiculous material in his works?



GLOSSARY

Adventure novel - a novel where exciting events are more important than character development and sometimes theme.

Accent - the emphasis, or stress, given a syllable in pronunciation. Accents can also be used to emphasize a particular word in a sentence.

Act - a major division in the action of a play. The ends of acts are typically indicated by lowering the curtain or turning up the houselights. Playwrights frequently employ acts to accommodate changes in time, setting, characters onstage, or mood. In many full-length plays, acts are further divided into scenes, which often mark a point in the action when the location changes or when a new character enters.

Allegory - a figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary, symbolic or metaphorical meaning. Many works contain allegories or are allegorical in part, but not many are entirely allegorical.

Alliteration - the repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable: “descending dew drops”; “luscious lemons”. Alliteration is based on the sounds of letters, rather than the spelling of words; for example, “keen” and “car” alliterate, but “car” and “cite” do not. Used sparingly, alliteration can intensify ideas by emphasizing key words, but when used too self-consciously, it can be distracting, even ridiculous, rather than effective.

Allusion - a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature. Allusions are often indirect or brief references to well-known characters or events.

Anagram - a word or phrase made from the letters of another word or phrase, as “heart” is an anagram of “earth”. Anagrams have often been considered merely an exercise of one's ingenuity, but sometimes writers use anagrams to conceal proper names or veiled messages, or to suggest important connections between words, as in “hated” and “death”.

Anapest - a kind of metrical foot. An anapest (or anapaest) comprises two unstressed syllables and one stressed one (e.g.: “unabridged”, “intercede”, “on the loose”). Because an anapest has three syllables per foot, it's called a triple meter.

Anecdote - a very short tale told by a character in a literary work.

Antagonist - a character in a story or poem who deceives, frustrates, or works again the main character, or protagonist, in some way. The antagonist doesn't necessarily have to be a person. It could be death, the devil, an illness, or any challenge that prevents the main character from living “happily ever after”. In fact, the antagonist could be a character of virtue in a literary work where the protagonist represents evil.

Antihero - a protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero. He or she may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely pathetic. Often what antiheroes leam, if they learn anything at all, is that the world isolates them in an existence devoid of God and absolute values.

Aphorism - a brief statement which expresses an observation on life, usually intended as a wise observation.

Apologue - a moral fable, usually featuring personified animals or inanimate objects which act like people to allow the author to comment on the human condition. Often, the apologue highlights the irrationality of mankind.

Apostroph - an address, either to someone who is absent and therefore cannot hear the speaker or to something nonhuman that cannot comprehend. Apostrophe often provides a speaker the opportunity to think aloud.

Archetype - a term used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and sometimes unconscious responses in a reader. In literature, characters, images, and themes that symbolically embody universal meanings and basic human experiences, regardless of when or where they live, are considered archetypes. Common literary archetypes include stories of quests, initiations, scapegoats, descents to the underworld, and ascents to heaven.

Assonance - the repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end the same, for example, “asleep under a tree”, or “each evening”. Similar endings result in rhyme, as in “asleep in the deep”. Assonance is a strong means of emphasizing important words in a line.

Autobiographical novel - novel based on the author's life experience.

Autobiography - the story of a person's life written by himself or herself.

Ballad - a narrative folk song. The ballad is traced back to the Middle Ages. Ballads were usually created by common people and passed orally due to the illiteracy of the time. Subjects for ballads include killings, feuds, important historical events and rebellion. In addition to being entertaining, ballads can help to understand a given culture by showing us what values or norms that culture deemed important.

Biography - the story of a person's life written by someone other than the subject of the work. A biographical work is supposed to be rigorously factual.

Blank verse - unrhymed iambic pentameter. It is the English verse form closest to the natural rhythms of English speech and therefore is the most common pattern found in traditional English narrative and dramatic poetry from W. Shakespeare to the early 20th century.

Character - a person, or any thing presented as a person (e. g.: a spirit, object, animal, or natural force). In a cartoon scene, firemen may be putting out a fire which a coyote has deliberately started, while a hydrant observes the scene fearfully. The firemen, the coyote and the hydrant would all be considered characters in the story. If a billowy figure complete with eyes, nose, and moutly representing the wind thwarts the efforts of the firemen, the wind, too, qualifies as a character. Animals who figure importantly in movies of live drama are considered characters.

Classicism - a movement or tendency in art, music, and literature to retain the characteristics found in work originating in classical Greece and Rome. It differs from Romanticism in that while Romanticism dwells on the emotional impact of a work, classicism concerns itself with form and discipline.

Climax - the decisive moment in a drama, the climax is the turning point of the play to which the rising action leads. This is the crucial part of the drama, the part which determines the outcome of the conflict.

Comedy - a literary work which is amusing and ends happily. Modern comedies tend to be funny. Comedies may contain lovers, those who interfere with lovers, and entertaining scoundrels. In modern Situation Comedies, characters are thrown into absurd situations and are forced to deal with those situations, all the while reciting clever lines for the amusement of a live or television or movie audience.

Coming-of-age story - a type of novel where the protagonist is initiated into adulthood through knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment. Understanding comes after the dropping of preconceptions, a destruction of a false sense of security, or in some way the loss of innocence. Some of the shifts that take place are these: ignorance to knowledge; innocence to experience; false view of world to correct view; idealism to realism immature responses to mature responses.

Conceit - an elaborate, usually intellectually ingenious poetic comparison or image, such as an analogy or metaphor in which, say a beloved is compared to a ship, planet, etc. The comparison may be brief or extended.

Conflict - the struggle within the plot between opposing forces. The protagonist engages in the conflict with the antagonist, which may take the form of a character, society, nature, or an aspect of the protagonist's personality.

Connotation - associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word, which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the associations people make with it: (e.g.: the word eagle connotes ideas of liberty and freedom that have little to do with the word's literal meaning).

Couplet - a style of poetry defined as a complete thought written in two lines with rhyming ends.

Denotation - the exact meaning of a word, without the feelings or suggestions that the word may imply. It is the opposite of connotation in that it is the “dictionary” meaning of a word, without attached feelings or associations: (e.g.: heart: an organ that circulates blood throughout the body. Here the word “heart” denotes the actual organ, while in another context, the word “heart” may connote feelings of love or heartache). Denotation allows the reader to know the exact meaning of a word so that he/she will better understand the work of literature.

Detective novel - a novel focusing on the solving of a crime, often by a brilliant detective, and usually employing the elements of mystery and suspense: (e.g.: Agatha Christie “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”).

Dialogue - the verbal exchanges between characters. Dialogue makes the characters seem real to the reader or audience by revealing firsthand their thoughts, responses, and emotional states.

Drama - derived from the Greek word dram, meaning “to do” or “to perform”, the term drama may refer to a single play, a group of plays, or to all plays (“world drama”). Drama is designed for performance in a theater; actors take on the roles of characters, perform indicated actions, and speak the dialogue written in the script.

Dramatic monologue - a literary device that is used when a character reveals his/her innermost thoughts and feelings, those that are hidden throughout the course of the story line, through a poem or a speech. This speech, where only one character speaks, is recited while other characters are present onstage. This monologue often comes during a climactic moment in a work and often reveals hidden truths about a character, their history and their relationships. Also it can further develop a character's personality and also be used to create irony.

Elegy - a type of literature defined as a song or poem, written in elegiac couplets, that expresses sorrow or lamentation, usually for one who has died. This type of work stemmed out of a Greek work known as a “elegus”, a song of mourning or lamentation that is accompanied by the flute.

Epic - a long narrative poem, told in a formal, elevated style, that focuses on a serious subject and chronicles heroic deeds and events important to a culture or nation. 38. Epigram - a brief, pointed, and witty poem that usually makes a satiric or humorous point. Epigrams are most often written in couplets, but take no prescribed form.

Euphemism - the substitution of a mild or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one (e.g.: the use of “pass away” instead of “die”). The basic psychology of euphemistic language is the desire to put something bad or embarrassing in a positive (or at least neutral light). Thus many terms referring to death, sex, crime, and excremental functions are euphemisms. Since the euphemism is often chosen to disguise something horrifying, it can be exploited by the satirist through the use of irony and exaggeration.

Exposition - a narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work, which provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances. Exposition explains what has gone on before, the relationships between characters, the development of a theme, and the introduction of a conflict.

Fable - a story that teaches a lesson, with people who have never actually existed or animals who behave like human beings.

Fantasy novel - any novel that is disengaged from reality. Often such novels are set in nonexistent worlds, such as under the earth, in a fairyland, on the moon, etc. The characters are often something other than human or include nonhuman characters.

Fiction - the word fiction comes orignally from Latin fingere, to fashion or to form. Fiction is usually narrative, although it can be either verse or prose.

Figurative language - a type of language that varies from the norms of literal language, in which words mean exactly what they say. Also known as the “ornaments of language”, figurative language does not mean exactly what it says, but instead forces the reader to make an imaginative leap in order to comprehend an author's point. It usually involves a comparison between two things that may not, at first, seem to relate to one another (e.g.: in a simile an author may compare a person to an animal: “He ran like a hare down the street” is the figurative way to describe the man running and “He ran very quickly down the street” is the literal way to describe him). Figurative language facilitates understanding because it relates something unfamiliar to something familiar.

Flashback - device that allows the writer to present events that happened before the time of the current narration or the current events in the fiction. Flashback techniques include memories, dreams, stories of the past told by characters, or even authorial sovereignty.

Foot - is the basis of meter; the regular unit of rthythm which, when repeated, makes up a verse. Although the basis of meter in the classical languages was “quantitative” - i.e., “long” and “short” syllables were based on the actual amount of time it took to speak the syllables - and some English poets made experiments in this direction, virtually all English feet are based on a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Still, the terms are usually imported from Greek and Latin versification, and you may hear “long” and “short” where “stressed” and “unstressed” are meant. Each common foot comprises two or three syllables: either one or two stressed syllables, and zero, one, or two unstressed syllables.

Frame - a narrative structure that provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative in a novel. Often, a narrator will describe where he found the manuscript of the novel or where he heard someone tell the story he is about to relate. The frame helps control the reader's perception of the work, and has been used in the past to help give credibility to the main section of the novel.

Free verse - a verse that has neither regular rhyme nor regular meter. Free verse often uses cadences rather than uniform metrical feet.

Genre - a type of literature. A poem, novel, story, or other literary work belongs to a particular genre if it shares at least a few conventions, or standard characteristics, with other works in that genre (e.g.: works in the Gothic genre often feature supernatural elements, attempts to horrify the reader, and dark, foreboding settings, particularly very old castles or mansions - E.A.Poe “The Fall of the House of Usher”). Other genres include the pastoral poem, epic poem, elegy, tragic drama, and bildungsroman. An understanding of genre is useful because it helps us to see how an author adopts, subverts, or transcends the standard practices that other authors have developed.

Hyperbole - an extravagant exaggeration. From the Greek for «overcasting», hyperbole is a figure of speech that is a grossly exaggerated description or statement. In literature, such exaggeration is used for emphasis or vivid descriptions. In drama, hyperbole is quite common, especially in heroic drama.

Historical novel - a novel where fictional characters take part in actual historical events and interact with real people from the past.

Humanism - the new emphasis in the Renaissance on human culture, education and reason, sparked by a revival of interest in classical Greek and Roman literature, culture, and language. Human nature and the dignity of man were exalted and emphasis was placed on the present life as a worthy event in itself (as opposed to the medieval emphasis on the present life merely as preparation for a future life).

Imagery - a word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work.

Irony - a literary term referring to how a person, situation, statement, or circumstance is not as it would actually seem. Many times it is the exact opposite of what it appears to be. Irony spices up a literary work by adding unexpected twists and allowing the reader to become more involved with the characters and plot. There are many types of irony, the three most common: 1) verbal irony, 2) dramatic irony, 3) cosmic irony. 1) Verbal irony occurs when either the speaker means something totally different than what he is saying or the audience realizes, because of their knowledge of the particular situation to which the speaker is referring, that the opposite of what a character is saying is true. Verbal irony also occurs when a character says something in jest that, in actuality, is true. 2) Dramatic irony occurs when facts are not known to the characters in a work of literature but are known by the audience. 3) Cosmic irony suggests that some unknown force brings about dire and dreadful events.

Lyric - a lyric is a song-like poem written mainly to express the feelings of emotions or thought from a particular person, thus separating it from narrative poems. These poems are generally short, averaging roughly twelve to thirty lines, and rarely go beyond sixty lines. These poems express vivid imagination as well as emotion and all flow fairly concisely. Because of this aspect, as well as their steady rhythm, they were often used in song. In fact, most people still see a “lyric” as anything that is sung along to a musical instrument. It is believed that the lyric began in its earliest stage in Ancient Egypt around 2600 BC in the forms of elegies, odes, or hymns generated out of religious ceremonies. Some of the more note-worthy authors who have used the lyric include W. Blake, W. Wordsworth, J. Keats, and W. Shakespeare - who helped popularize the sonnet, another type of lyric.

Metaphor - a figure of speech wherein a comparison is made between two unlike quantities without the use of the words “like” or “as”.

Meter - the rhythmic pattern produced when words are arranged so that their stressed and unstressed syllables fall into a more or less regular sequence, resulting in repeated patterns of accent (called feet).

Metonymy - a figure of speech in which a word represents something else which it suggests (e.g.: in a herd of fifty cows, the herd might be referred to as fifty head of cattle. The word “head” is the word representing the herd).

Mystery novel - novel whose driving characteristic is the element of suspense or mystery. Strange, unexplained events, vague threats or terrors, unknown forces or antagonists, all may appear in a mystery novel. Gothic novels and detective novels are often also mystery novels.

Narrative - a collection of events that tells a story, which may be true or not, placed in a particular order and recounted through either telling or writing. By understanding the term “narrative”, one begins to understand that most literary works have a simple outline: the story, the plot, and the storyteller. By studying more closely, most novels and short stories are placed into the categories of first-person and third-person narratives, which are based on who is telling the story and from what perspective. Other important terms that relate to the term “narrative”, are “narrative poetry” and “narrative technique”.

Narrator - one who tells a story, the speaker or the “voice” of an oral or written work. Although it can be, the narrator is not usually the same person as the author. The narrator is one of three types of characters in a given work: 1) participant (protagonist or participant in any action that may take place in the story), 2) observer (someone who is indirectly involved in the action of a story), or 3) non participant (one who is not at all involved in any action of the story).

Novel - an extended prose fiction narrative of 50,000 words or more, broadly realistic - concerning the everyday events of ordinary people - and concerned with character. A fictional prose work of substantial length. “People in significant action” is one way of describing it. Another definition might be “an extended, fictional prose narrative about realistic characters and events”. It is a representation of life, experience, and learning. Action, discovery, and description are important elements, but the most important tends to be one or more characters - how they grow, learn, find - or don't grow, learn, or find.

Novella - a prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. There is no standard definition of length, but since rules of thumb are sometimes handy, we might say that the short story ends at about 20.000 words.

Novel of manners - a novel focusing on and describing in detail the social customs and habits of a particular social group. Usually these conventions function as shaping or even stifling controls over the behavior of the characters.

Ode - a poem in praise of something divine or expressing some noble idea.

Persona - the narrator, or the storyteller, of a literary work created by the author.

Plot - the structure of a story. Or the sequence in which the author arranges events in a story. The structure of a five-act play often includes the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution. The plot may have a protagonist who is opposed by antagonist, creating what is called, conflict. A plot may include flashback or it may include a subplot which is a mirror image of the main plot.

Play - is a general term for a work of dramatic literature.

Playwright - is a writer who makes plays.

Prologue - the opening speech or dialogue of a play, especially a classic Greek play, that usually gives the exposition necessary to follow the subsequent action. Today the term also refers to the introduction to any literary work.

Protagonist - a protagonist is considered to be the main character or lead figure in a novel, play, story, or poem. It may also be referred to as the «hero» of a work. Over a period of time the meaning of the term protagonist has changed. The word protagonist originated in ancient Greek drama and referred to the leader of a chorus. Soon the definition was changed to represent the first actor onstage. In some literature today it may be difficult to decide who is playing the role of the protagonist.

Pseudonym - a “false name” or alias used by a writer desiring not to use his or her real name. Sometimes called a nom de plume or «pen name», pseudonyms have been popular for several reasons: 1) political realities might make it dangerous for the real author to admit to a work. Beatings, imprisonment, and even execution are not unheard of for authors of unpopular works; 2) an author might have a certain type of work associated with a certain name, so that different names are used for different kinds of work. One pen name might be used for westerns, while another name would be used for science fiction; 3) an author might choose a literary name that sounds more impressive or that will gamer more respect than the author's real name.

Psychological criticism - an approach to literature that draws upon psychoanalytic theories, especially those of S.Freud or J.Lacan to understand more fully the text, the writer, and the reader. The basis of this approach is the idea of the existence of a human unconscious - those impulses, desires, and feelings about which a person is unaware but which influence emotions and behavior. Critics use psychological approaches to explore the motivations of characters and the symbolic meanings of events, while biographers speculate about a writer's own motivations - conscious or unconscious - in a literary work. Psychological approaches are also used to describe and analyze the reader's personal responses to a text.

Pulp fiction - novels written for the mass market, intended to be “a good read”, - often exciting, titillating, thrilling. Historically they have been very popular but critically sneered at as being of sub-literary quality. The earliest ones were the dime novels of the 19th century, printed on newsprint (hence “pulp” fiction) and sold for ten cents.

Recognition - the moment in a story when previously unknown or withheld information is revealed to the protagonist, resulting in the discovery of the truth of his or her situation and, usually, a decisive change in course for that character.

Resolution - the part of a story or drama which occurs after the climax and which establishes a new norm, a new state of affairs-the way things are going to be from then on.

Rhyme - (also spelled rime) - the similarity between syllable sounds at the end of two or more lines. Some kinds of rhyme include: couplet - a pair of lines rhyming consecutively; eye rhyme - words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (e.g.: slough / tough / cough / bough / though / hiccough; love / move / prove; daughter / laughter); feminine rhyme - two syllable rhyme consisting of stressed syllable followed by unstressed; masculine rhyme - similarity between terminally stressed syllables.

Rhythm - the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse or (less often) prose.

Romance - an extended fictional prose narrative about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people. Knights on a quest for a magic sword and aided by characters like fairies and trolls would be examples of things found in romance fiction. In popular use, the modem romance novel is a formulaic love story (boy meets girl, obstacles interfere, they overcome obstacles, they live happily ever after). Computer software is available for constructing these stock plots and providing stereotyped characters. Consequently, the books usually lack literary merit.

Saga - a story of the exploits of a hero, or the story of a family told through several generations.

Satire - literary mode based on criticism of people and society through ridicule. The satirist aims to reduce the practices attacked by laughing scornfully at them - and being witty enough to allow the reader to laugh, also. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present. The satirist may insert serious statements of value or desired behavior, but most often he relies on an implicit moral code, understood by his audience and paid lip service by them. The satirist's goal is to point out the hypocrisy of his target in the hope that either the target or the audience will return to a real following of the code. Thus, satire is inescapably moral even when no explicit values are promoted in the work, for the satirist works within the framework of a widely spread value system. Many of the techniques of satire are devices of comparison, to show the similarity or contrast between two things.

Sarcasm - a form of sneering criticism in which disapproval is often expressed as ironic praise.

Scene - in drama, a scene is a subdivision of an act. In modem plays, scenes usually consist of units of action in which there are no changes in the setting or breaks in the continuity of time. According to traditional conventions, a scene changes when the location of the action shifts or when a new character enters.

Script - the written text of a play, which includes the dialogue between characters, stage directions, and often other expository information.

Science Action novel - a novel in which futuristic technology or otherwise altered scientific principles contribute in a significant way to the adventures. Often the novel assumes a set of rules or principles or facts and then traces their logical consequences in some form.

Sentimental novel - a type of novel, popular in the 18lh century, that overemphasizes emotion and seeks to create emotional responses in the reader. The type also usually features an overly optimistic view of the goodness of human nature.

Sequel - a novel incorporating the same characters and often the same setting as a previous novel. Sometimes the events and situations involve a continuation of the previous novel and sometimes only the characters are the same and the events are entirely unrelated to the previous novel. Occasionally a sequel is written by an author different from that of the original novel.

Series - several novels related to each other, by plot, setting, character, or all three. Book marketers like to refer to multi-volume novels as sagas.

Setting - the time, place, physical details, and circumstances in which a situation occurs. Settings include the background, atmosphere or environment in which characters live and move, and usually include physical characteristics of the surroundings. Settings enable the reader to better envision how a story unfolds by relating necessary physical details of a piece of literature. A setting may be simple or elaborate, used to create ambiance, lend credibility or realism, emphasize or accentuate, organize, or even distract the reader.

Short story - a short fictional narrative. It is difficult to set forth the point at which a short story becomes a short novel (novelette), or the page number at which a novelette becomes a novel: (e.g.: E.Hemingway “Big Two-Hearted River” - a short story; J.Steinbeck's “Of Mice and Men” - a novelette; Graham Green “Our Man in Havana” - a novel).

Simile - a common figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two things by using words such as like, as, than, appears, and seems. The effectiveness of this simile is created by the differences between the two things compared.

Sociological criticism - an approach to literature that examines social groups, relationships, and values as they are manifested in literature. Sociological approaches emphasize the nature and effect of the social forces that shape power relationships between groups or classes of people. Such readings treat literature as either a document reflecting social conditions or a product of those conditions. The former view brings into focus the social milieu; the latter emphasizes the work. Two important forms of sociological criticism are Marxist and feminist approaches.

Sonnet - a sonnet is a distinctive poetic style that uses system or pattern of metrical structure and verse composition usually consisting of fourteen lines, arranged in a set rhyme scheme or pattern. There are two main styles of sonnet, the Italian sonnet and the English sonnet. Usually written in iambic pentameter, it consists first of an octave, or eight lines, which asks a question or states a problem or proposition; the sestet, or last six lines, offers an answer, or a resolution to the proposed problem.

Stereotype - an author's method of treating a character so that the character is immediately identified with a group. A character may be associated with a group through accent, food choices, style of dress, or any readily identifiable group characteristic.

Style - the manner of expression of a particular writer, produced by choice of words, grammatical structures, use of literary devices, and all the possible parts of language use. Some general styles might include scientific, ornate, plain, emotive. Most writers have their own particular styles.

Subplot - a subordinate or minor collection of events in a novel or drama. Most subplots have some connection with the main plot, acting as foils to, commentary on, complications of, or support to the theme of, the main plot. Sometimes two opening subplots merge into a main plot.

Symbol - a person, object, image, word, or event that evokes a range of additional meaning beyond and usually more abstract than its literal significance. Symbols are educational devices for evoking complex ideas without having to resort to painstaking explanations that would make a story more like an essay than an experience. Conventional symbols have meanings that are widely recognized by a society or culture. Writers use them to reinforce meanings. A literary or contextual symbol can be a setting, character, action, object, name, or anything else in a work that maintains its literal significance while suggesting other meanings. Such symbols go beyond conventional symbols; they gain their symbolic meaning within the context of a specific story.

Theme (theem) - a common thread or repeated idea that is incorporated throughout a literary work. A theme is a thought or idea the author presents to the reader that may be deep, difficult to understand, or even moralistic. Generally, a theme has to be extracted as the reader explores the passages of a work. The author utilizes the characters, plot, and other literary devices to assist the reader in this endeavor.

Tone - the writer's attitude toward his readers and his subject; his mood or moral view. A writer can be formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or pessimistic.

Tragedy - is a type of drama which is pre-eminently the story of one person, the hero. The story depicts the trouble part of the hero's life in which a total reversal of fortune comes upon a person who formerly stood in high degree, apparently secure, sometimes even happy. The suffering and calamity in a tragedy are exceptional, since they befall a conspicuous person. Moreover, the suffering and calamity spread far and wide until the whole scene becomes a scene of woe. The story leads up to and includes the death or moral destruction of the protagonist.

Travesty - a work that treats a serious subject frivolously - ridiculing the dignified. Often the tone is mock serious and heavy handed.

Understatement - a statement which lessens or minimizes the importance of what is meant.

Unreliable narrator - one who gives his or her own understanding of a story, instead of the explanation and interpretation the author wishes the audience to obtain. This type of action tends to alter the audience's opinion of the conclusion.

Verisimilitude - how fully the characters and actions in a work of fiction conform to our sense of reality. To say that a work has a high degree of verisimilitude means that the work is very realistic and believable - it is “true to life”.

Versification - generally, the structural form of a verse, as revealed by scansion. Identification of verse structure includes the name of the metrical type and the name designating number of feet. The most common verse in English poetry is iambic pentameter.



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4. Adventures in English Literature. Classic edition. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973. - 867 p.

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9. A Nineteenth-Century American Reader. Edited by M.Thomas Inge. Washington, Published by United States Information Agency, 1993. - 584 p.

10. Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams. Introduction to Literature. Second edition. New York, McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1995. - 1148 p.

11. An Early American Reader. Edited by J.A.Leo Lemay. Washington, Published by the United States Information Agency, 1992. - 741 p.

12. Highlights of American Literature. Based upon a core manuscript by Dr.Carl Bode, University of Maryland. Washington, Published by the United States Information Agency, 1988. - 288 p.

13. Elements of Literature. Six course. Literature of Britain. Orlando, Florida, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich., 1993. - 1247 p.

14. Gower R. Past Into Present: An Anthology of British and American Literature.

- London: W.W. Norton, 1998. - 733 p.

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16. http://www.literature.org/authors

17. http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit

18. http://www.nobelprizes.com/nobel/literature

20. http://www.poetryloverspage.come/poets

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