Basics of English Studies: An introductory course for students of literary studies in English.

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STEFANIE LETHBRIDGE AND JARMILA MILDORF:

Basics of English Studies: An introductory course for students of literary studies in English. Developed at the English departments of the Universities of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Freiburg

1. Basic Concepts Table of Contents: 1.1. What Are English Literary Studies? .................................................. 2 1.2. What is Literature? ................................................................................ 2 1.2.1.Fictionality ................................................................................................ 3 1.2.2. Specialised Language ............................................................................. 4 1.2.3. Lack of Pragmatic Function ................................................................. 6 1.2.3. Ambiguity ................................................................................................ 7 1.3. A Model for Literary Communication ............................................. 7 1.4. Topic Areas of Literary Studies ...................................................... 10 1.4.1. Literary History ................................................................................... 10 1.4.2. Poetics and Genre ............................................................................... 11 1.4.3. Literary Theory ......................................................................................14 1.5. Theme .................................................................................................... 19 1.6. Language in Literature ...................................................................... 20 1.6.1. Diction .................................................................................................. 21 1.6.2. Syntax .................................................................................................... 22 1.6.2.1. Syntactical Deviations .......................................................................23 1.6.3. Rhetorical Devices ................................................................................23 1.6.3.1. List of Rhetorical Schemes and Tropes ....................................... 24 SO WHAT? ....................................................................................................... 29 1.6.3.2. Analysing a Metaphor .......................................................................33 1.6.3.3. Symbols ...............................................................................................36 SO WHAT? .........................................................................................................36 Bibliography of Secondary Sources: Basic Concepts ....................... 38

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1. Basic Concepts 1.1. What are English Literary Studies? The question “What are English literary studies?” does not look complex at first sight. However, the answer is not as simple as one might imagine. One answer students may obviously give is that English literary studies deal with English literature. Thus, literary studies differ from other branches of the subject, namely linguistics, where the main focus is on the structures and uses of the English language, and cultural studies where students learn how the various cultures in English-speaking countries have been constructed over centuries. And yet, what is English literature? First of all, do we talk about literature written in England or do we take into account other Englishspeaking countries such as Ireland, Canada, USA, Australia, etc.? And how about the diversity of cultures and literatures within the United Kingdom, e.g., Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish? To make matters even more complicated, a great many authors from former colonial countries in Africa, India, etc., write in English, and literature from immigrant writers in the US, e.g., Chicano literature, has increasingly received interest from literary scholars. In other words: It is very difficult to draw a clear line, and perhaps one cannot and should not delimit the subject area at all, given the diversity of texts written in English today.

English-speaking countries around the world. Source: http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_1.htm

Another question that arises is: What is literature? Although most people have some idea of what the term ‘literature’ means, the concept often remains vague and students, when asked about distinct features of literary texts, start to falter. In the following section, the concept of ‘literature’ will be discussed in more detail.

1.2. What is Literature? In the attempt to define the term ‘literature’, one can distinguish between two general directions: a broad and a narrow definition. The broad definition incorporates everything that has been written down in some form or another, i.e., all the written manifestations of a culture (hence, there are terms such as ‘research literature’, ‘the literature on civil rights’, etc.). Needless to say that such a broad definition is problematic as it does not really facilitate communication about the topic. Furthermore, this concept Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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neglects the fact that in many cultures in the past and for a number of indigenous peoples today, literature has not been captured in written media but has been passed down in a long oral tradition of storytelling, myths, ritual speeches, etc. Attempts to come up with a narrow definition have, however, led to such a diversity of approaches that one can hardly talk about ‘the’ narrow definition. Nevertheless, it is possible to sift out some of the criteria scholars have applied in order to demarcate ‘literary texts’ from ‘non-literary texts’. These criteria include: • • • •

fictionality specialised language lack of pragmatic function ambiguity

1.2.1. Fictionality One characteristic feature of literary texts arguably is their fictionality. People usually agree that literary texts, even if they attempt to represent reality in some form or another, are ultimately products of a writer’s imagination and that at least the characters and their conversations are fictitious. Thus, some of the characters in Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels, for example, are pure inventions although they are situated in authentic historical contexts, and they have fictitious conversations with historical figures who actually existed. On the other hand, texts that are normally read as non-fiction, like a reportage, often display features that remind one of literature. Consider the following example: Sesca Rompas climbed on to a plastic stool and peered through a dirty window at her brother, Aldo Kansil, lying motionless in a bed below. He was a pitiful sight: two drips attached, arms swathed in bandages, his face an angry mosaic of burns. Taken out of its context, it is difficult to decide what type of text this is. If one looks at the way this passage is written, one can easily imagine this to be the beginning of a novel. First, it is a descriptive passage (see ch. 2.6.3.) which introduces a certain setting: (see chs. 2.3 and 3.4) the window is dirty and so high up that the woman needs a plastic stool to be able to peep through it. The brother’s desolate state is captured in epithets describing his motionless, afflicted body. Secondly, characters (see chs 2.4 and 3.6) are introduced and a mini plot (see chs. 2.2 and 3.3.1) is elaborated: A woman called Sesca Rompas visits her brother, Aldo Kansil, who is in hospital. Just like the beginnings of novels, this text passage is written in such a way as to urge the reader to read on and to find out more, e.g., who are these people, why is the brother in hospital, what happened? Moreover, the language used is reminiscent of literary texts. We can identify rhetorical devices (see ch. 1.6.3.) such as alliteration (“bed below”), metaphor (“angry mosaic of burns”), asyndeton and ellipsis (“two drips attached, arms swathed in bandages…”). In other words: The text uses embellishments to present a specific ‘story-world’ and to attract the reader’s attention. And yet, these are in fact the opening lines of a newspaper article (The Independent, 16 October 2002) which deals with the victims of a Balinese bomb attack. With this Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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information in mind, we suddenly stop regarding this text as fiction: We take it for granted that the people described here are real and that the events related in the text are also real. What does this example tell us? First of all, we can say that the boundaries between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ are often blurred and by no means always identifiable. More importantly, whether a text is fictional or not, is perhaps less the consequence of some inherent quality of the text but of a reader’s attitude towards it. If I know the text above is from a newspaper I automatically assume that the ‘story’ must be real. By contrast, if this had been the beginning of a novel, I would undoubtedly have classified these characters and the setting as fictitious. In other words: We as readers are conditioned through education and cultural norms to approach texts in certain ways. In this view, fictionality is no longer an inherent feature of literary texts but part of our expectations of what a literary text should be. Likewise, literary language is partly determined by the fact that we want to read it as ‘literary’. This will be explored in the following section.

1.2.2. Specialised Language It is often said that literary language is ‘special’ and that it differs considerably from normal everyday language. The linguist Roman Jakobson spoke of the poetic function of literary texts in his essay “Linguistics and Poetics: Closing Statement” (1960), i.e., the fact that literary texts draw attention to the language they employ. As the Russian Formalists maintained in the early twentieth century, literary texts make use of language in such a way that it becomes strange and unfamiliar in a given context. They called this process defamiliarisation. The following example from Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House illustrates this process: Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. (Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 1) The way the bad November weather in London is described here has hardly anything to do with the way people would normally talk about the weather. One thing is particularly conspicuous: the blending of a description of natural phenomena (“mud”, bad weather) with the jargon of the world of finance (“deposits”, “accumulating”, “compound interest”). By combining these two areas, the words are taken out of their usual context and put into another one, which thus becomes ‘new’ and ‘unfamiliar’ to the reader. We are attracted by this ‘strange’ linguistic description and we start to wonder why such language is used here. One explanation might be that London as one of the financial centres in the mid-nineteenth century has become so immersed in its business that even nature participates in it and is no longer ‘natural’. One area where the ‘literariness’ of language seems to be particularly obvious is poetry. Poetry is often marked by a conspicuous shape (lines, Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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Key terms: • poetic function • defamiliarisation

stanzas, etc.), a dense structure (thematically and linguistically), specific prosodic features (see chs. 4.3 and 4.4) and rhetorical devices (see ch. 1.6.3.). Now, as the example above from The Independent shows, even nonliterary texts frequently use rhetorical devices and certain patterns to arouse the readers’ interest. Still, we do not necessarily classify them as literature. We do not, for example, consider a telephone directory a literary text although it is indeed extremely structured and ordered in a special way. Nor do we regard the above-mentioned newspaper article as a poem, for example. And yet, is this really because the language in this article does not qualify for poetry or because we are simply not used to looking at newspaper articles in such a way? Consider the following sentence from the same article: Just around the corner, an anxious-looking couple were standing close together, clutching plastic bags. At first sight, this looks like a ‘normal’ sentence. There is nothing conspicuous about the words or the sentence structure. What happens if one pays attention to the rhythm of this sentence and displays it accordingly? Just around the corner, An anxious-looking couple Were standing close together, Clutching plastic bags. All of a sudden, one realises that the sentence actually follows a regular metrical pattern, namely a trimeter with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. Does that make the sentence poetic? Again, one can see that the line between literary and non-literary language is a very fine one and that the decision whether a text is literary or not largely depends on the way we look at the text and perceive its language. A lot of contemporary poetry plays with our alleged ‘knowledge’ of the literariness of texts. Have a look at the following “Found Poem” by Ronald Gross: All too often, humans who sit and stand Pay the price of vertical posture. Sitting And standing combine with the force of gravity, Exerting extra pressure on veins and tissues In and around the rectal area. Painful, burning hemorrhoids result. The first thought of many sufferers Is to relieve their pain and their discomfort. Products, however, often used for this Contain no anesthetic drug at all, or one Too weak to give the needed pain relief, Or only lubricate. But now, at last There is a formulation which provides Pain-killing power, prolonged relief, on contact. (Gross/Quasha 1973: 475)

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Although this text must originally have been an advert for anti-hemorrhoids medication, we can now read its language as literary language and thus perceive the text as a piece of literature simply because it has been transformed by means of formalisation and re-arrangement. Trained readers of literature may even identify this text as a sonnet because it follows the structural convention of 14 lines with an octave and a sestet (here presented as two tercets). What this example also shows is that the way we read texts depends very much on the context in which we read them. If we had read this text on an information leaflet we would never have dreamed of looking at it as poetry and paying closer attention to its language. As soon as it appears in the guise of a sonnet, however, our reading practice also changes and we can start treating it as ‘literary’, e.g., by attempting an interpretation. This leads us to the next criterion often mentioned in discussions of literary texts, namely their lack of a pragmatic function.

1.2.3. Lack of Pragmatic Function Undoubtedly, texts derive their meaning partly from their context. I read a novel as a novel because it is presented in a certain way (bound, with a title on the front page, sometimes the word ‘novel’ in the subtitle, and a plot summary as well as commentary on the back cover). Moreover, I use the novel as a novel and not as a cookery book, a newspaper or an encyclopaedia of garden plants, for example. Why is that? One might argue that these texts, in contrast to literary texts, have a definite pragmatic function, i.e., they are written and used for a specific purpose, e.g., to assist with the cooking or gardening or, generally, to inform the reader. A piece of literary writing, on the other hand, need not have been intended by the author for any specific purpose. It sometimes seems as though literature was just written into time and space, to nobody in particular and without any function. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to take that as a basic rule. Even literary texts do have a purpose, e.g., to criticise, to educate or even just to entertain. The fact that authors like Salman Rushdie, for example, are persecuted by political and religious groups shows that something must be attributed to their writings which other people consider dangerous or at least influential in some way or another. While non-literary texts may have a more clearly defined and generally agreed-upon function, literary texts can have a range of purposes which again depend on the reader. Thus, I can read a book simply to have a good laugh or, for that matter, a good cry, or I draw analogies with my own life and try to gain consolation or advice from the text. The text as such may not necessarily tell me how I have to use it but the reading practices I have been taught in school, at university, etc. will certainly influence my approach to texts. In other words: Even if we claim that a literary text has no immediate pragmatic function, we usually start to ascribe one to it in our usage or treatment of that text. While non-literary texts seem to have an inherent pragmatic function, i.e., they were ‘born’ to be a telephone book, a time-table, a women’s magazine, etc., literary texts gain their more specific and possibly individual pragmatic function in the reading process.

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Key terms: • pragmatic function

1.2.4. Ambiguity People generally accept the view that literary texts are far more ambiguous and thus often more complicated than non-literary texts. If one reads a recipe, for example, or a time-table or an instruction manual, the meaning expressed in these texts is presumed to be more or less fixed and not open to interpretation. In fact, these texts must not be open to interpretation because then they just would not ‘work’. A time-table has to be precise in order for people to be able to rely on it, and ten people using the same recipe for carrot cake should reach approximately the same result by following the step-by-step instructions. • This is certainly not the case if these ten people read a novel, for example. As classroom discussions show, different students can come up with rather different interpretations of what a specific literary text ‘means’ or what it tries to convey. This is also reflected in the vast amount of divergent critical interpretations of literary texts published over the years. So what is it that makes literary texts so ambiguous? For one thing, there is obviously the ‘human factor’: When we read a text we usually bring to bear on it certain expectations and interests, and inevitably we start looking for exactly those things that seem relevant to us. Thus, for example, Christina Rossetti’s long poem “Goblin Market” can be interpreted as a simple fairytale, as a hymn in praise of sisterly devotion, as a poem restating the biblical concepts of sin and redemption, as the indirect expression of repressed sexual fantasies, or indeed as a combination of all of these facets at the same time. No matter which interpretation one favours, one can find evidence for all of them in the text if one only searches through it thoroughly. This example illustrates that literary texts must indeed have some quality which makes them more ‘open’ than non-literary texts. One can say that literary texts always express meaning on different levels or in different layers. In other words: They express something beyond their literal ‘meaning’, and these other layers of meaning can be explored by attentive reading and analysis. It is a bit like archaeology: the deeper one digs the more interesting one’s findings are likely to be. At the same time, one needs suitable equipment for ‘digging out’ hidden meanings. That is where literary studies become important and where the fun begins once one has mastered the tools at hand.

1.3. A Model for Literary Communication In analogy to the communication model applied in linguistics to face-to-face interaction (sender – message – receiver), literary scholars have come up with a model for literary communication. In a very schematised way, one can visualise the model like this:

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Key terms: • communication model • text (message) • code • reference

Context (historical/present reality)

Medium/Channel Author

Literary text (Message)

Reader

Code Aesthetically mediated reference to reality

According to this model, literary production and reception obviously require at least two participants: someone who writes a literary text and someone who reads it. The literary text itself functions as message between author and reader. Of course, the term ‘message’ must not be taken literally. It would be absurd to imagine that an author two hundred years ago, for example, sent a message to me, the present-day reader. However, literary texts are usually created for an audience, and by the same token literary texts only come to life when they are actually received by a readership. That author and reader are spatially and temporally deferred from one another in most cases must of course be kept in mind. The message is conveyed in a specific material shape, e.g., as a book, a stage script, a screenplay, an audio tape, video or nowadays on the internet or CD-Rom. In other words: The channel or medium through which the literary text is presented can vary significantly. Nevertheless, literary texts depend on certain conventions of both producing and receiving literature. I always apply certain strategies when reading a novel, for example, such as accepting its fictionality (see ch. 1.2.1) or perhaps special uses of language, while I also bring to bear predefined expectations on literary texts. For example, we usually set our ‘autopilot’ on poetry-reading mode if we see a text which presents itself in the shape of a poem. Likewise, authors follow literary conventions when they create a piece of literature or they deliberately defy these conventions to create something new and innovative. At any rate, there is always some reference to what we might call the code of literary production and reception, i.e., rules for writing and reading texts. A banal and yet extremely important aspect is the fact that author and reader must share a language for communication to work at all. Another part of the literary code would be the way we classify literary texts in terms of genre (see ch. 1.4.2.). Needless to say that literary codes can change over time (as languages and cultures generally do) and that different periods have used different classificatory systems. This is also one of the reasons why literary texts themselves change: They accommodate in some way or

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another to the existing literary code, even if they ostensibly move away from it. The context of literary production and reception thus becomes very important. Both readers and authors are situated in a specific place, historical time and cultural context, which of course influence the way they read and write. At the same time, the literary text also refers to the external world either by imitating what can be found there or by creating an alternative world. Reference is a term used in linguistics to denote the relationship between a sign and the object it signifies. While this narrow concept is problematic for literary studies because objects and persons in a story-world, for example, do not strictly speaking refer to ‘real’ objects or people, the concept is useful if one allows for relationships between signs and mental models, concepts, ideas, etc. The reference of a literary text to the world is thus never direct but is always aesthetically mediated, i.e., it is embedded in certain literary conventions and makes use of special linguistic codes. Michael Ondaatje’s bestseller, The English Patient, for example, undoubtedly depicts circumstances and events related to World War II but it does it in such a way as to leave enough room for poetic renditions of the characters’ emotions and experiences. Literary studies investigate various aspects of the processes shown in the communication model. Thus, one can look at the relationship between author and text or reader and text, one can focus on the text itself or on how it is embedded in its socio-historical and cultural contexts. Scholars have also considered the literary code and what it entails. In sum, one can say that literary studies offer a wide range of topic areas for research activities, and this introductory course can only provide a very first glimpse of what is actually out there. The next section gives a preliminary overview of some of the study areas within literary studies.

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1.4. Topic Areas of Literary Studies Some of the major concepts which students of English literature should be familiar with are the following: • • •

Literary History Poetics and Genre Literary Theory

1.4.1. Literary History Names of literary epochs or periods have mostly been ‘invented’ in retrospect. The underlying assumptions are based on certain common features, this time not merely of texts but of socio-cultural developments and phases in the history of literary production. In English literature, historians for convenience often use the name of the sovereign in power at a certain time. Thus, they speak about the Elizabethan Age or the Victorian Period. Sometimes, approximately the same period of time can have various names, depending on the perspective adapted by the historian. The Elizabethan Age, for example, is also referred to as the Early Modern Period or the Renaissance. While the term ‘Early Modern’ focuses on the historical process of modernisation, ‘Renaissance’ is a term borrowed from art history and captures the idea of the ‘re-birth’ of antiquity in various art forms of the sixteenth century. Labels can also vary across nationalities. While in English, for example, ‘Victorian Period’ is a widely-used general label for the time between 1832 and the late nineteenth century, scholars of German literature have focused more on people’s attitudes, political developments and modes of writing in their classifications and therefore use different labels to denote shorter time spans of roughly the same period, e.g., Biedermeier, Vormärz, Realismus, Naturalismus. This example shows that labelling a literary period is often at the discretion of the literary historian and largely depends on which aspects a scholar considers important. Nonetheless, even though exact numbers, names and dates vary in books of literary history, one can come up with a general list of periods which underlies common practice (Abrams 1999: 210): 450-1066

Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period

1066-1500

Middle English Period

1500-1660 The Renaissance (or Early Modern Period) 1558-1603 Elizabethan Age 1603-1625 Jacobean Age 1625-1649 Caroline Age 1649-1660 Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum) 1660-1785 The Neoclassical Period 1660-1700 The Restoration 1700-1745 The Augustan Age (or Age of Pope) 1745-1785 The Age of Sensibility (or Age of Johnson) Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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Key terms: • Old English Period • Middle English Period • Renaissance (Early Modern Period) • Neoclassical Period • Romantic Period • Victorian Period • Edwardian Period • Georgian Period • Modern Period • Postmodernism

1785-1830

The Romantic Period

1832-1901 The Victorian Period 1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites 1880-1901 Aestheticism and Decadence 1901-1914

The Edwardian Period

1910-1936

The Georgian Period

19141945-

The Modern Period Postmodernism

One must not forget that periods are categories which do not necessarily encompass clearly demarcated time spans. Since literary developments evolve gradually and are often based on the co-existence of diverse movements, periods inevitably also overlap. As their names suggest, periods derive their labels from divergent sources. Frequently, they are analogous to philosophical movements such as the Age of Sensibility. Sometimes periods are named after artistic avantgarde movements, which also express the predominant mood of the time, e.g., Aestheticism and Decadence. The Romantic Period derives its name from a genre, the Medieval romance or chivalric romance, which was popular at the time and set an example with its fantastic and exaggerated subject matters. Postmodernism is given its name because it succeeds and goes beyond Modernism in terms of literary conventions, philosophical assumptions, etc. No matter which names literary periods are given, they are selected according to shared criteria and features which are considered characteristic of the time. A division into literary periods is useful for our understanding and discussion of connections between literary and socio-historical developments. They help us compare texts within one period and also across periods. Nevertheless, they should not become coathangers for simplistic assumptions or even clichés. Therefore, good books on literary history set out very clearly right from the beginning what their motivating force is and why they arrived at a certain form of periodisation. One study area which is influenced by historical developments is the area of poetics and genres since the conventions for writing literary texts and for setting up individual genre categories and genre systems depend on their socio-cultural context and thus change over time.

1.4.2. Poetics and Genre Ever since Aristotle’s Poetics, if not before, scholars have been concerned with classifying literary texts according to predefined categories. The groups or classes of texts have been labelled by means of group-specific names. Thus, Aristotle already divided ancient plays into tragedies and comedies (see ch. 3.9) and attributed certain features to each type of drama. The labels we attach to groups of texts with similar or correlated features can be summarised under the heading genre. The three major generic groups are prose fiction, drama and poetry. One must of course bear in mind that

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Key terms: • genre • sub-genre • literary competence

genres and genre systems are subject to historical changes and by no means closed categories. Genres are defined by certain conventions, common recurring features which texts display. These features can be formal or structural or they can relate to themes and topics or forms of presentation. Thus, prose fiction is generally defined by the fact that it is not written in verse like poetry, for example, and that it is narrative while drama normally includes the direct presentation of a scene on stage. If one starts collecting features for each genre, one will soon find exceptions and it becomes clear that the boundaries of genres are blurred. In certain periods, people were not very strict about the limitations of different genres, as can be seen in the following quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where Polonius introduces the actors who have just arrived at the Danish court: The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited.” (Hamlet, II, 2: 392-396) Although plays in the Early Modern Period seemingly crossed generic boundaries, the basic major categories are still valid and are used as frames of reference. This is one of the main functions of genres: Genres allow us to talk about groups of texts rather than just listing individual examples. They help us communicate about structural and thematic features and enable us to state similarities as well as differences between texts. We can discuss the diachronic development of genres, i.e., throughout history, and see how the individual historical contexts shaped forms of drama, prose fiction and poetry. Put another way, the concept of genre helps us approach literary texts. Authors usually construct their texts within certain genre conventions. By labelling a text a ‘tragedy’ for example, they raise certain expectations in readers or spectators. These expectations can then be met or disappointed. Keeping generic features in mind, one should therefore always also look for deviations from standard patterns because this is often where a literary text is particularly innovative and interesting and where interpretations can yield fascinating results. Over the centuries, analysis has become more and more fine-grained and consequently numerous sub-genres ( see chs. 2.9, 3.9. and 4.2.) have been identified for each main category. Again, historical developments play an important role. Some sub-genres like the romance, for example, have become obsolete while there is always a possibility for new sub-genres to emerge. The following tree diagram shows prose fiction and some of its sub-genres:

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Prose fiction

Romance

Historical novel

Novel

Novel of education

Novella

Social novel

Short Story

Gothic novel

Epistolary novel

The other two main generic groups, poetry and drama, can of course also be subdivided into numerous sub-genres, such as: ballad, sonnet, ode, comedy, tragedy, satire, tragicomedy, epic theatre, etc. What one ought to bear in mind is that, although genres are defined according to common characteristic features, the allocation of texts to certain genres is still ultimately our decision. Sometimes, texts pose difficulties because they cannot be classified definitely as belonging to one category. Where does one place ‘long’ narratives such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, for example: novella, novel or short story? For this reason, one also has to be careful not to oversimplify generic terms. In everyday parlance, people often use words like these in an undifferentiated way: “Oh, that accident was so tragic!” or “They had quite a little romance going on”. Nonetheless, generic terms in literary studies are very useful since genres form part of readers’ and writers’ literary competence at a given time. Literary competence encompasses people’s ability to produce and understand literary texts and their knowledge about literary texts in general. The classification of genres is of course guided by theoretical considerations, and it is not only for this reason that literary theory must hold an important place in an introduction.

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etc.

etc.

1.4.3. Literary Theory An area of literary studies which students are often afraid of is literary theory. Theories in general can be defined as sets of elaborate, ordered and consistent categories which facilitate the systematic exploration and explanation of phenomena in a given study area. Literary theory is infamous for being complicated, boring or simply self-satisfying. However, people who argue along those lines seem to forget that essentially, there is no reading of and no thinking about texts without theory. When we read a poem, for example, we approach the text in a certain way and, whether we are aware of this or not, we make assumptions about the text which, in a broad sense, already constitute a framework for decoding what the poem is, what it tries to express, etc. Since our reading practice and our world view in general is inevitably steeped in some ‘theory’ or another, we may just as well make an effort to become more familiar with this underlying theory. After a while, we may find that our vision has become clearer and that we can discern things in texts which we would not have noticed without a theoretical background. In this sense, theory is a bit like wearing glasses. Glasses can help you sharpen your view, and aspects one did not notice before are suddenly thrown into greater relief. At the same time, however, glasses can be tinted in different colours and thus you may perceive an object one way while someone else sees it differently. The same applies to literary theory. Theory can help us identify small and often minute facets of a text. However, if one always wears the same theoretical lens, one risks missing out on a lot of other features which may be equally fascinating but which simply do not match the categories or concepts of one’s theory. In order to avoid that, students should learn early on in their studies what types of theory are currently available and how to engage with them critically. Literary theories can generally be located at the interface of components of the communication model (see ch. 1.3). Thus, one can find theoretical approaches which look primarily at the relationship between text and author, while others focus on the relationship between text and reader, text and historical reality or text and other texts. Theories are useful because they explain systematically premises, terms and research questions and because they develop clear hypotheses about the effects and functions of texts. Thus, theories also help us analyse texts and communicate our findings to others. It is important to bear in mind that theory and methodology are closely related. On the one hand, theory informs methodology. Thus, the questions we ask about a text will determine which tools we are going to use to analyse it. On the other hand, methodology can yield results which may ultimately change an already existing theory. It is also important to note here that theories depend on the socio-cultural context in which they emerge and therefore undergo changes. Theoretical considerations go as far back as the classical poetics, i.e., works about the art of writing literary texts, such as the poetics by Aristotle or Horace. Early examples of theoretical writings about English literature are: Philip Sidney (The Defence of Poesy, 1595), Alexander Pope (An Essay on Criticism, 1711) and William Wordsworth (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800). Today, one can distinguish among a whole range of different theoretical approaches, of which the following summaries can merely Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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Key terms: • biographical criticism • psychological/psychoanalytical criticism • Elizabethan world picture • Marxist criticism • reader response theory • reception theory • New Criticism • close reading • structuralism • Russian formalism • narratology • signifier • signified • referent • poststructuralism • deconstruction • feminist criticism • gender studies • postcolonialism • new historicism / cultural materialism • literary canon • cultural studies

provide a first overview. The list is by no means complete, and interested students should consult the bibliography for further references. Generally speaking, one can identify the following ‘groups’ of theoretical approaches (for the following see Korte/Müller/Schmied, 1997: 95-105): • • • • • • • • • •

biographical approach psychological or psychoanalytical approaches contextual approaches reader-orientated approaches text-immanent approach and New Criticism structuralist and semiotic approaches poststructuralist approaches feminist approach and gender studies ethnicity and postcolonialism cultural materialism and new historicism

Biographical Approach As early as the nineteenth century, scholars considered literary texts against the background of the author’s biography. The aim was to find references to the author’s life, education and socio-cultural environment in a literary work. Ever since the French critic Roland Barthes announced the “death of the author” in 1968, the biographical approach has lost its appeal for many scholars: Barthes and critics following him have argued that an author’s biography is irrelevant since the meaning of a text only emerges in the reading process and the reader thus becomes the real ‘author’ of the text. One could argue against this radical viewpoint that there are texts where knowledge of an author’s biography can sometimes help us understand the text better because otherwise we would not be able to decipher certain allusions or references. D.H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers (1913), for example, draws heavily on Lawrence’s own family background. Bearing this knowledge in mind, it is then interesting to see where the literary text deviates from references to the author’s real life. Psychological and Psychoanalytical Approaches Following Sigmund Freud’s work on the unconscious and the interpretation of dreams, critics in the 1930s attempted to interpret literary texts with regard to the author’s psychological state or the psychology of the text itself. Thus, one question raised for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for example, was whether Hamlet suffered from the Oedipus complex. The reading process has also been considered from a psychological point of view. Furthermore, psychoanalytical approaches have made an inroad into poststructuralist (Jacques Lacan) and feminist approaches (Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous). Contextual Approaches Contextual approaches go back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries where scholars asked to what extent literary texts were rooted in the historical, political, economical, philosophical, religious, etc. contexts of Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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their production. E.M.W. Tillyard’s (1943) study, for example, investigates instantiations of the Elizabethan world picture in Shakespeare’s works, and Ian Watt (1957) asks to what extent Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is related to Puritanism and the rise of the middle class in the eighteenth century. Another example is Marxist criticism which regards the production of literary texts at the interface of material and socio-economic circumstances (Eagleton and Milne 1996). While after the Second World War contextual approaches, especially the Marxist tradition, were initially regarded as outdated, they have had a major comeback over the last two decades in approaches like new historicism, cultural materialism and cultural studies. Reader-orientated Approaches The most well-known reader-orientated approaches to literary texts are reader response theory for Anglo-American criticism (e.g., Stanley Fish) and reception theory or reception aesthetics, which mainly originated in Germany (Wolfgang Iser, Hans Robert Jauß). The questions reception theorists ask focus mainly on the relationship between text and reader. Thus, one can investigate what exactly happens during the reading process in the reader’s mind, how readers react emotionally to texts and in what ways the reception of literary texts is influenced by socio-demographic factors such as age, gender, social class, education, etc. An important concept in reception theory is that of textual gaps or blanks which readers have to fill while reading a text. In filling the gaps, readers also contribute to the construction of a text’s meaning. Other reader-orientated approaches take into account the historical dimensions of text reception and investigate how readings and interpretations of texts change over time. Thus, one can ask, for example, how Shakespeare’s contemporaries are likely to have perceived his plays in comparison with modern theatre goers. Text-immanent Approach and New Criticism In the first half of the twentieth century, a critical approach emerged which opposed prevailing practices of considering the biographies of authors, social contexts and literary history. This new approach, which came to be known under the name of New Criticism, focused on the literary work itself as an independent entity. Studies by authors such as Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren postulated the method of close reading, i.e., a detailed investigation of the overall composition of texts with regard to their unifying principles. At the centre of this approach was the idea that all the elements of a text ideally formed a coherent whole both on the formal and the content level. Further questions addressed the principles whereby literary texts create rich and varied meanings, which can ultimately lead to ambiguities (see ch. 1.2.3). Structuralist and Semiotic Approaches Other approaches which deal primarily with the code in the literary communication model are the so-called structuralist and semiotic approaches. Structuralism and semiotics were greatly influenced by Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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structuralist linguistics, most notably by Ferdinand de Saussure’s work on linguistic signs and later by Noam Chomsky’s seminal work on transformational grammar. A first group of theorists under the title of Russian Formalism considered literary language as deviant from everyday language and postulated the concept of the poetic function of literary texts, i.e., the fact that literary texts always draw attention to their literariness by using language in unusual or ‘unfamiliar’ ways. This process is called defamiliarisation. Authors to be mentioned in this context are Roman Jakobson and Victor Shklovsky. The structuralist approach also had a great impact on narratology, i.e., a research area which focuses on narrative structures, in France (Tzvetan Todorov, A.J. Greimas, Gérard Genette) as well as in Great Britain and the USA (Robert Scholes, Jonathan Culler, Seymour Chatman). Generally speaking, structuralists assume that literary texts function on the basis of an underlying ‘grammar’ according to which individual parts of a text are structured. Thus, it is possible to sift out universal patterns, e.g., with regard to plot structures or the functions of characters (protagonist, antagonist, etc.). Closely connected with structuralism is semiotics, i.e., the study of signs and sign systems and the process by which signs are assigned meaning. Semiotics goes back to Saussure’s description of the linguistic sign consisting of a signifier, the sound image (TREE or TABLE), and a signified, the concept the sound image denotes (the concept of ‘tree’ or ‘table’). Signifier and signified are inseparable like the two sides of a coin. According to Saussure, the relationship between ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ is arbitrary, and a sign receives its meaning solely from the fact that it differs from other signs and not because it refers to an object in the real world, the referent. The ‘reality’ we perceive is thus only a projection of the meaning inherent in the linguistic system rather than a transcendental meaning beyond language. In a literary text, the semiotics of the story-world as ‘reality’, for example, can be achieved through a number of ‘signifiers’ such as speech, the characters’ body language, spatio-temporal frameworks, etc. Poststructuralist Approaches In reaction to structuralism and semiotics, poststructuralist approaches deny the existence of universal principles which create meaning and coherence. Deconstructive theory, for example, which was first propagated by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, maintains that even within the linguistic system there can be no ultimate ‘meaning’ because signifiers always refer to other signifiers and never to a signified. This can be exemplified by what happens when one tries to look up a word in a dictionary. What one usually finds is a definition or explanation of the word which in turn uses words that can be looked up and so on. Signifiers become traces, and meaning is constantly deferred. Derrida introduced the term différance, a combination of the French word for ‘difference’ (différence) and the gerund of the verb denoting ‘defer/ postpone’ (différant), to capture this process. Since words in a text are always reminiscent of other signifiers, one can never establish a ‘fixed’ or ‘final’ meaning of words and thus of texts. This poses questions for literary studies concerning the validity of interpretations: If there is no finite meaning, can one speak of texts at all? And can there be ‘wrong’ interpretations at all or do we have to allow for endless possibilities of reading a text? Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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While deconstructive theory focuses entirely on written texts, the so-called poetics of culture regards literature as a semiotic subsystem in which culture is reflected. The common underlying assumption is that cultural systems, like signs, do no consist of fixed binary oppositions. Michel Foucault’s work, which applies historical discourse analysis, was very influential in this context. In his analyses of the history of medicine and of sexuality, for example, Foucault considers the social discourses about these areas and demonstrates how these discourses have changed concepts and ideas about medicine and sexuality over time. Discourse in Foucault’s sense consists of collections of statements (both verbal and non-verbal) about a given topic that are culturally defined by institutions and through conventions. Discourse thus also becomes an area where knowledge is created and power is seized and maintained by leading social groups. Feminist Approaches and Gender Studies Feminist approaches emerged along with the women’s rights movement in the late 1960s and were initially a reaction against hitherto maledominated literary studies, which neglected literature produced by women and which had perpetuated clichés and stereotypes about women. The main merit of feminist approaches was that they rediscovered a number of female authors who had been considered ‘minor’ and allocated them a more central place in literary history. At the same time, feminist approaches highlight the differences between ‘male’ and ‘female’ writing in terms of style, topics and structures. More recently, feminist approaches have opened up to more general gender studies where gender roles and gendered perspectives in literary texts come under closer scrutiny. So-called queer theory has started to address issues concerning literature by and about homosexuals. Ethnicity and Postcolonialism Through the processes of colonialism and migration, an increasing amount of literatures by ethnic minorities has emerged in English-speaking cultures all over the world and has become the focal point for postcolonial theories, which investigate, for example, aspects of national identities, hybrid cultures, the significance of indigenous cultures and problems surrounding their ‘own’ history and language (Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak). Concepts of race and ethnicity and the presentation of cultural suppression are also investigated in texts by African Americans, Chicano as well as Asian and Indian minorities. Cultural Materialism and New Historicism The common assumption underlying both cultural materialism and new historicism is that literature does not form a realm of its own that can be viewed against the background of socio-historical developments, for example, but that it is as much part and expression of a culture as other, non-literary, texts (e.g., travelogues, religious tracts, historical documents and ‘texts’ in a much wider sense such as adverts, pop music, TV programmes, film, etc.). Both are influenced by Marxist criticism. They try to relate problems of interpretation to cultural-historical problems and are Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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concerned with the uncovering of power structures (economic, class, culture) as they become manifest in literary texts Both movements are interdisciplinary in that they draw upon insights and methods from a number of disciplines, and they both question the notion of a literary canon, i.e., a set of ‘important’ or ‘major’ literary works agreed upon through convention that are considered to be of a higher quality than other texts. By incorporating non-literary expressions of a culture, cultural materialism and new historicism raise questions concerning the literariness of texts and the function of literature in general and thus, ultimately, the validity of disciplines involved in the study of literature. While some scholars nowadays wish to include literary studies in a broader discipline of cultural studies, others point towards the specifically artistic and aesthetic nature of literary texts, which requires a set of special, i.e., literary, analytical tools. The aim of this introduction is to familiarise you with exactly those special tools and thus to enable you to engage critically with literary texts.

1.5. Theme The first and foremost task of the analysis and interpretation of literature is to find out in some way or other what the text is about, to discover its theme, the abstract concept a text presents or deals with. On the face of it, this may seem silly. It would appear that all one has to do is read the text and then say what it is about. Why go through all this rigmarole of analysis with complicated terminology? On a very general level one can of course simply read a text and then say something like: This text is about a woman who falls in love with the wrong sort of man and who dies in the end. But this sort of response leaves a great many questions unanswered: What then is the difference between Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet and Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott and Dickens' novel Bleak House? All of these texts are in some way about a woman who falls in love with the wrong sort of man and dies. And how are all these texts different from last week's police report about the same problem? How is one to account for the different degree of sympathy and compassion one feels for Shakespeare's Juliet, Tennyson's fairy Lady of Shalott and Dickens' Lady Dedlock? Why do we derive different kinds of aesthetic pleasure from these texts? Why do we derive pleasure at all since they deal with a sad event? Such questions make it necessary to examine how a text creates meaning, since the difference between texts lies not simply in their topic but also in their way of presenting this topic. In fact, it is the modern critical position that the use of formal elements is part of the text’s meaning (see esp. the relation of form and meaning in poetry ch. 4.6). The question that is of interest here is how to analyse a text, how to unravel its formal and linguistic code in interpretation. Much of the meaning and effect of literary texts depend on patterns of repetition or contrast (which is a sort of negative repetition). This is particularly pronounced in poetry, but it is a phenomenon of all literary texts. These patterns can be created on all levels: rhythmic, metrical, phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic. It is these patterns that need to be uncovered and understood. The ability to decode and understand the use of Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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Key terms: • theme • isotopy • motif • topos • structure and development

form enables us to make certain aesthetic judgements, it enables us to explain to a certain extent why some texts have a notable impact on readers and other texts have not. Once these patterns and especially their functions have been analysed separately, it usually becomes apparent that all the separate patterns of repetition taken together form new and larger patterns of thematic coherence. A useful concept for establishing such patterns of thematic coherence is the concept of isotopy, introduced by the French critic A.J. Greimas (Greimas 1966, see also Jahn 2002: P3.6). An isotopy is a sequence of expressions joined by a common 'semantic denominator'. Thus a series of expressions or formal elements in a text might relate to the contrast between life and death, or a development from despair to consolation, or an end and a new beginning and so on. Patterns of rhythm, sound or syntax aid or highlight thematic patterns. This is why it is worth analysing them. (For a practical demonstration of how this might work see ch. 4.6). Literary texts usually develop their theme within a certain structure. Such structures can be created through plot developments (see ch. 2.2. and 3.2.), a change of setting (see ch. 2.3.), a change of narrative voice (see ch. 2.5), or with rhyme patterns or stanzas in poetry (see chs. 4.4. and 4.5.). A sonnet for instance might describe a problem in the octet and a solution in the sestet. Other poems might have a three-part structure cutting across stanzas. This could be, for instance: description of an event – reflection on the event – moral drawn from it. In the analysis of texts it is helpful to first of all decide on the general structure of the development that takes place within the text. Related to theme and structure is the motif. This is a concept which derives from music and it forms a sub-unit of a text’s overall theme; a motif can be the frequent repetition of one significant phrase, description or image within one work or it can be a type of situation or formula that occurs again and again in literature (see Abrams 1999: 169), such as the carpe diem motif or the enchanted prince. An older term, deriving from classical rhetoric, for the repetition of certain formulas in literature is topos (commonplace), such as for instance the ‘modesty-topos’, where the speaker or narrator claims to be incapable of doing his task well but promises to try his or her best (for a discussion of topoi see Curtius 1990).

1.6. Language in Literature The effect a text has on its reader is to a very large extent determined by style. In its broadest definition, style is the way in which language is used (see Leech/Short 1981: 10 for a discussion of various definitions of style). Style is thus not a phenomenon that is restricted to literature; it is necessarily part of any utterance, because for each context one chooses the way one speaks: One uses different vocabulary and probably different syntax when talking to one’s granny than one uses when talking to one’s examiner in the final oral exam; a report in the newspaper is expected to display – and in most cases does – a different style than a love letter. Obviously, most people are limited in the range of styles they have at their command, and sometimes style expectations are deliberately flaunted: A newspaper report written in the style of a love letter will no doubt cause a Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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Key terms: • style • diction • syntax • decorum • poetic diction • deviation • poetic licence • collocation

certain amount of surprise and thus possibly increase its effect. A love letter written in the style of a report will most likely cause trouble or appear simply ridiculous. There are utterances where style is used with more deliberation than in others. Political speeches or manifestos may be counted among such, but also most literary texts. In fact, it is partly the calculated and deliberate use of language, or, the special attention the receiver pays to the use of language, that makes a text literary (see ch. 1.2.). There has long been disagreement whether style, or form, can be separated from content or not. To put the question another way, are we saying the identical thing when we use different means of saying it, or is the meaning of the utterance (partly) produced by the way we say it? When A.E. Housman, for instance, says “Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters, trampled to the floor it spanned, and the tent of night in tatters, straws the skypavilioned land”, would it be the same as saying: “Get up mate, it’s daylight”? Or is there a difference in WHAT he says because of HOW he says it? Most modern criticism would agree that form and content are not in fact clearly separable, that one is intrinsically dependent on the other, and that a paraphrase never expresses exactly the same thing as the original utterance. Form, in other words, produces meaning. It is thus worth examining how it does that. When examining the style of a text, one scrutinises mainly two aspects: diction (the choice and use of words) and syntax (the sentence structure). In other words, one examines which words are used and how these words are put together. Closely related to such questions is the use of rhetorical devices. Particularly in poetry and verse drama one also focuses on the rhythmical patterns and sound effects, though these can also be used effectively in prose. The question at the centre of such examinations is HOW the use of diction, syntax and rhetorical devices produce certain effects and are aimed to evoke certain responses in the reader. Geoffrey Leech and Michael Short (1981) provide a list of categories for analysis on which most of the following is based. They also give several illuminating examples, demonstrating the use that can be made of style analysis in literary studies (see esp. their ch. 3).

1.6.1. Diction The analysis of diction involves answering a series of questions, all relating to the use of vocabulary: its origin, its effect, its grammatical categories. These could be questions such as: Is it simple or complex? Latinate or anglo-saxon? Abstract or concrete? Neutral, evaluative, emotionally charged? Formal or informal? Vulgar or refined? Any particular sociolect? Any jargon (subject-specific or technical language)? Appropriate or inappropriate in the context? Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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Are words used in unusual combinations? Which lexical categories are used frequently and which are used little or not at all: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, auxiliaries, and so on? What rhetorical devices are used on the levels of individual sound or word? Most important of all remains the question: What effect does the use of diction have in this particular text? In classical rhetoric styles were classified into three main levels: the grand style, the middle style and the low (or plain) style. Certain types of diction were thought appropriate for certain stylistic levels. This was called the principle of decorum, which was an influential concept well into the eighteenth century. John Dryden, for example, famously agonised over the appropriateness of the word ‘marjoram’ (the herb) for the middle style (he eventually decided it was too low a word). Poetry, perhaps more than other types of literary texts, tends to use words or phrases that are not current in ordinary conversation, so-called poetic diction.

1.6.2. Syntax Just like the analysis of diction, the analysis of syntax involves answering a series of questions relating to the use of sentence structure. These are questions such as: What kind of sentences are used? Simple or complex? Long or short? Paratactic or hypotactic? Statements, exclamations, questions, or commands? etc. Is there a type of clause that is preferred? Relative clause? Adverbial clause? Interrogative clauses? That-clause? Finite or non-finite clause? etc. How are sentences linked (sentence cohesion)? Are there cross references and what type? Are sentences connected with logical links? Or are they purely associative? Are any particular sentence structures repeated? Are any particular words repeated which create cross references? What rhetorical devices are used on the sentence level Once again, the most important question is: What effect does the use of syntax achieve? There are no fixed answers to this question. The effect of stylistic devices will differ from text to text and within texts, depending on the immediate context. Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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1.6.2.1. Syntactical Deviations In literary texts generally, and especially in poetry, syntax can differ from everyday usage. There is, on the one hand, a certain amount of poetic licence which makes it quite acceptable for a poet to deviate slightly from ordinary syntax to accommodate the sentence to the line form and metre. Such accommodations can be, for instance, inversions, that is a change in word order: “The King's real, or his stamped face / contemplate” (Donne, Canonization) instead of 'Contemplate the King's real or his stamped face'. A deviation from common collocation, the way words are combined with other words, can achieve interesting effects. Geoffrey Leech (1969: 29-31) illustrates this kind of deviation using the title of Dylan Thomas' poem A Grief Ago. Usually, the expression 'ago' is only combined with time measurements: two years ago, an hour ago, a week ago, etc. To combine 'ago' with 'grief' is a deviation from common usage. It is unusual and thus the expression is particularly noticeable, though we still interpret it as a time measurement. The deviation draws the reader's attention to the importance that grief has assumed in the speaker's life; it has become so dominating that it has replaced other time measurements. A rather different effect would be achieved by an expression like 'two wives ago'. This collocation, though one can easily work out its meaning, makes the speaker sound rather frivolous, perhaps a little callous even, since one expects a wife to take a more central part in a man’s life than merely as a time measurement. Also, in our culture it is still unusual to change wives regularly and often enough to make them convenient as time measurements.

1.6.3. Rhetorical Devices Style is part of classical rhetoric and a number of rhetorical devices are worth considering in any analysis of style. For the analysis of literature, a knowledge of rhetorical devices is indispensable since there is often a considerable density of rhetorical figures and tropes which are important generators and qualifiers of meaning and effect. This is particularly the case in poetry. Especially the analysis of the use of imagery is important for any kind of literary text. (For further details see chs. 1.6.3.2 and 1.6.3.3) Figures of speech in classical rhetoric were defined as “a form of speech artfully varied from common usage” (Quintilian, Inst. Orat. IX.i.2). The forms of figurative languages are divided into two main groups: schemes (or figures) and tropes. Rhetorical schemes describe the arrangement of individual sounds (phonological schemes), the arrangement of words (morphological schemes), and sentence structure (syntactical schemes). Rhetorical tropes are devices of figurative language. They represent a deviation from the common or main significance of a word or phrase (semantic figures) or include specific appeals to the audience (pragmatic figures). The following definitions are mainly based on Abrams 1999, Corbett 1971, Homan/Harmon 1992, Preminger 1993, Jahn 2001, Scaif, n.d.

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1. Schemes: Phoneme-level (level of individual sounds) alliteration

the same sound is repeated at the beginning of several words or stressed syllables in words that are in close proximity Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell (T.S. Eliot, Book of Practical Cats) Moping melancholy mad (Housman, Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff) Dombey and Son had often dealt in hides but not in hearts. They left that fancy war to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. (Dickens, Dombey and Son)

assonance

the same or similar vowel sounds are repeated in the stressed syllables of words that are in close proximity while the consonants differ Breathing like one that hath a weary dream (Tennyson, Lotos-Eaters) Gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss and thunder (Pope, Imitations of Horace)

consonance

two or more consonants are repeated, but the adjacent vowels differ Friend/frowned killed/cold, horse/hearse

onomatopoeia

the sound of the word imitates the sound of the thing which that word denotes clatter, bash, bang, rumble, sniff, howl, etc. […] aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver (Tennyson, Lady of Shalott - imitates the sound of the breeze in the leaves) Hear the loud alarum bells – Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! [...] How they clang, and clash and roar! (Poe, The Bells)

2.

Schemes: Word-level

anadiplosis / reduplicatio

(Greek for “doubling back”) the word or phrase that concludes one line or clause is repeated at the beginning of the next A wreathed garland of deserved praise, Of praise deserved, unto thee I give, I give to thee, who knowest all my ways, My crooked winding ways, wherin I live. (Herbert, A Wreath)

anaphora

[...] if you have a lot of things you cannot move about a lot, [...] furniture requires dusting, dusters require servants, servants require insurance stamps [...]. (E.M. Forster, My Wood) a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn. (T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday)

climax / gradatio

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee. (Shakespeare, Sonnet 18) (Greek for “ladder”) arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of ascending power

epistrophe

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night) a word or expression is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or lines There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee; Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee. (Byron, Stanzas Written on the Road between Florence and Pisa) We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another.

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(Nixon, Inaugural Address) epizeuxis / geminatio homonym

We meet tonight and part tonight. (Dickens, Dombey and Son) the repetition of the same words immediately next to each other Peace, peace seems all (Browning, The Bishop Orders His Tomb) words with the same pronunciation and / or spelling but with different meanings their – there ball (toy) – ball (dance event)

polyptoton / metabole

hear – here one word is repeated in different grammatical or syntactical (inflected) forms. A special case of polyptoton is the figura etymologica which repeats two or more words of the same stem There hath he lain for ages, and will lie (Tennyson, The Kraken)

portmanteau words (blend, contaminatio) symploce

synonym

[…] love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. (Shakespeare, Sonnet 116) – figura etymologica words formed by blending two words into one spellotape (spell + sellotape in Harry Potter) brunch (breakfast + lunch) A combination of anaphora and epistrophe, so that one word or phrase is repeated at the beginning and another word or phrase is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or sentences Much is your reading, but not the Word of GOD Much is your building, but not the House of GOD. (T.S. Eliot, The Rock) use of words with the same or similar meanings alter – change, brief – short, assist – help

tautology

I hate inconstancy - I loathe, detest, Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made Of such quicksilvery clay [...] (Byron, Don Juan) one idea is repeatedly expressed through additional words, phrases, or sentences small dwarf With malice toward none, with charity for all. (Lincoln, Second Inaugural)

3. Schemes: Sentence-Level aposiopesis

asyndeton

the speaker fails to complete his sentence, (seemingly) overpowered by his emotions Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point; though he still feels that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is really – really – (Dickens, Bleak House) the omission of conjunctions to coordinate phrases, clauses, or words (opposite of polysyndeton) where normally conjunctions would be used What can the sheepdog make of such simplified terrain? no hills, dales, bogs, walls, tracks (C. Day Lewis, Sheepdog Trials in Hyde Park) I may, I must, I can, I will, I do Leave following that which it is gain to miss (Sidney, Astrophil and Stella)

chiasmus

that government of the people, by the people, for the people (Lincoln, Gettysburgh Address) from the shape of the Greek letter ‘chi’ (X); two corresponding pairs are arranged in inverted, mirror-like order (a-b, b-a) At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely. (W Somerset Maugham) Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave (Pope, Dunciad) Fair is foul and foul is fair. (Shakespeare, Macbeth)

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ellipsis hyperbaton (see also inversion)

hypotaxis

inversion

parallelism

Swans sing before they die – ‘twere no bad thing Did certain persons die before they sing. (S.T. Coleridge, Epigram on a Volunteer Singer) a word or phrase in a sentence is omitted though implied by the context A mighty maze! but not without a plan. (Pope, Essay on Man) (Greek for “stepping over”) a figure of syntactic dislocation where phrase or words that belong together are separated I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away. (James, Turn of the Screw) Were I, who to my cost already am, One of those strange, prodigious creatures, Man. (Rochester, Satire Against Mankind) clauses and sentences are arranged with subordination, usually longer sentence constructions (opposite of parataxis) The house had a name and a history; the old gentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these things: how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a night’s hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell’s wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having been remodeled and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed into the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth) it was offered at a great bargain; bought it with much grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew all its points and would tell you just where to stand to see them in combination and just the hour when the shadows of its various protuberances – which fell so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork – were of the right measure. (James, Portrait of a Lady) the usual word order is rearranged, often for the effect of emphasis or to maintain the metre (a type of hyperbaton) Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed (Shakespeare, Sonnet 18) (instead of: ‘Sometime the eye of heaven shines too hot and his gold complexion is often dimmed’) the repetition of identical or similar syntactic elements (word, phrase, clause) Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals. (Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray) Though the heart be still as loving And the moon be still as bright (Byron, So We'll Go no More A-Roving)

parataxis

polysyndeton

Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Son about eight-and-forty minutes. Dombey was rather bald, rather red, and though a handsome well-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance, to be prepossessing. Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of course) an undeniably fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his general effect, as yet. (Dickens, Dombey and Son) clauses or sentences are arranged in a series without subordination, usually shorter sentence constructions (opposite of hypotaxis) My hot water bottle was red, Manchester United’s colour. Sinbad’s was green. I loved the smell off the bottle. I put hot water in it and emptied it and smelled it. I put my nose to the hole, nearly in it. (Doyle, Paddy Clarke) the unusual repetition of the same conjunction (opposite of asyndeton) It is a land with neither night nor day, Nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain, Nor hills nor valleys. (Ch. Rossetti, Cobwebs)

redditio / kyklos / framing

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. (Tennyson, Ulysses) a syntactic unit or verse line is framed by the same element at the beginning and at the end

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Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure. (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure) zeugma

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! (Browning, The Bishop Orders his Tomb) (Greek for “yoking”) one verb controls two or more objects that have different syntactic and semantic relations to it Harriet had broken all her old ties and half the commandments [...] (Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night) Or stain her honour or her new brocade, Forget her prayers or miss a masquerade, Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball (Pope, Rape of the Lock)

4. Tropes antithesis

opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a parallel construction Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. (Samuel Johnson)

apostrophe euphemism

hyperbole

irony

Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar) addressing an absent person, a god or a personified abstraction Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar) substitution of an agreeable or at least non-offensive expression for one whose plainer meaning might be harsh or unpleasant […] one particular lady, whose lord is more than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction, [...] (Dickens, Bleak House) obvious exaggeration for emphasis or for rhetorical effect […] he couldn’t, however sanguine his disposition, hope to offer a remark that would be a greater outrage on human nature in general […] (Mrs Chick’s response to her husband’s suggestion that the starving baby should be fed with the teapot since there was no nurse. Dickens, Dombey and Son) expression of something which is contrary to the intended meaning; the words say one thing but mean another ‘Well!’ said Mrs Chick, with a sweet smile, ‘after this, I forgive Fanny everything!’ It was a declaration in a Christian spirit, and Mrs Chick felt that it did her good. Not that she had anything particular to forgive in her sister-in-law, not indeed anything at all, except her having married her brother – in itself a species of audacity – and her having, in the course of events, given birth to a girl instead of a boy […]. (Dickens, Dombey and Son)

metaphor

In addition [...] you are liable to get tide-trapped away in the swamps, […] Of course if you really want a truly safe investment in Fame, and really care about Posterity, and Posterity’s Science, you will jump over into the black batter-like, stinking slime cheered by the thought of the terrific sensation you will produce in 20,000 years hence, and the care you will be taken of then by your fellow-creatures, in a museum. (Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa) a figure of similarity, a word or phrase is replaced by an expression denoting an analogous circumstance in a different semantic field. The comparison adds a new dimension of meaning to the original expression. Unlike in simile, the comparison is not made explicit ( ‘like’ or ‘as’ are not used, see the longer discussion in Analysing a Metaphor ch. 1.6.3.2) The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. (Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well)

metonymy

That fence about my soul (MacNeice, London Rain) a figure of contiguity, one word is substituted for another on the basis of some material, causal, or conceptual relation My Head and Heart thus flowing thro’ my Quill (Pope, Imitations of Horace) (i.e. the thoughts produced in my head and the feelings of my heart are expressed in the

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oxymoron

things I write with my quill) (Greek for “sharp-dull”) a self-contradictory combination of words or smaller verbal units; usually noun-noun, adjective-adjective, adjective-noun, adverb-adverb, or adverb-verb – a paradoxical utterance that conjoins two terms that in ordinary usage are contraries bittersweet, pleasing pains, loving hate

paradox

I will complain, yet praise; I will bewail, approve; And all my sour-sweet days I will lament and love. (George Herbert, Bitter-Sweet) a daring statement which unites seemingly contradictory words but which on closer examination proves to have unexpected meaning and truth Snail-paced in a hurry (Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market)

paronomasia / pun

Dark with excessive bright (Milton, Paradise Lost) wordplay, using words that are written or pronounced similarly or identically, but have different meanings […] he Who lied in the chapel Now lies in the Abbey. (Byron, Epitaph for William Pitt) Holland [...] lies so low they're only saved by being dammed. (Thomas Hood, Up the Rhine) Some folk are wise, and some are otherwise. (Smollett, Roderick Random) I always say beauty is only sin deep. (Saki, Reginald's Choir Treat)

pejorative

His death, which happen’d in his berth At forty-odd befell: They went and told the sexton, and The sexton toll’d the bell. (Thomas Hood, Faithless Sally Brown) the use of words with disparaging connotations

periphrasis

[…] the nurse, a simpering piece of faded gentility (Dickens, Dombey and Son) a descriptive word or phrase is used instead of a proper name finny race (for fish), fleecy people (for sheep) On one occasion […] a mighty Silurian […] chose to get his front paws over the stern of my canoe, and endeavoured to improve our acquaintance. I had to retire to the bows, to keep the balance right, and fetch him a clip on the snout with a paddle, when he withdrew […] I should think that crocodile was eight feet long. (Mary Kingsley, Travels to West Africa) […] the Fans round Talagouga wouldn’t go at any price above Njole, because they were certain they would be killed and eaten by the up-river Fans. Internally consigning the entire tribe to regions where they will get a rise in temperature, even in this climate, I went with Mme Forget to M. Gacon […](Mary Kingsley, Travels to West Africa)

personification / prosopoeia

simile

animals, ideas, abstractions or inanimate objects are endowed with human characteristics And moody Madness laughing wild Amid severest woe (Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College) On the brow of Dombey, Time and his brother Care had set some mark. (Dickens, Dombey and Son) two things are openly compared with each other, introduced by ‘like’ or ‘as’ My heart is like a singing bird. (Christina Rossetti, A Birthday)

synaesthesia

Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather. (Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim) the description of one kind of sensation in terms of another (description of sound in terms of colour: blue note; description of colour in terms of sound: loud shirt; etc.) The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath Not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue To conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.

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(Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream) If music be the food of love, play on […] (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night) synecdoche

understatement (meiosis)

A figure of contiguity (form of metonymy), the use of a part for the whole, or the whole for the part: ‘pars pro toto’ or ‘totum pro parte’ I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.” (Kipling, Tommy) (instead of ‘a soldier’, who wears a red coat) an idea is deliberately expressed as less important than it actually is; a special case of understatement is litotes, which denies the opposite of the thing that is being affirmed (sometimes used synonymously with meiosis) Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her appearance for the worse. (Swift, Tale of a Tub) This is not unexciting. (litotes)

SO WHAT? Stylistic devices can obviously serve a great number of purposes: draw one’s attention to or even create connections between certain text elements, make a text easier to comprehend, characterise the speaker and so on. Possibly the most interesting effect of style is that it can elicit certain emotional responses in readers or listeners. This becomes important especially in texts (spoken or written) that aim to convince other people of something they may not have been convinced of before: political speeches, speeches in court and sermons. This SO WHAT section wants to demonstrate how an analysis of stylistic devices can be constructed into a coherent argument, the sort of essay that is expected from students at the end of an introductory seminar on the analysis and interpretation of literature. The introduction presents a thesis (marked bold). The argument which follows the introduction, proceeds in several stages, each paragraph representing one step in the unfolding argument. Note that stylistic devices are used to support an argument. It is not an end in itself to simply identify them! Introduction A famous example in English literature for the emotional impact achieved through stylistic and rhetorical means is Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. Antony begins his speech to an audience that has just been convinced by Brutus of the justice of the murder of Caesar (JC III, 2: 13-47, see Plett 2000: 166-171, for an enlightening analysis of Brutus’s speech). Gradually, Antony’s speech sways the audience’s mood and finally incites them to rebellion against the murderers of Caesar without doing so explicitly. He achieves this effect employing a number of specific stylistic devices: suggestive patterns of repetition, parallel structures, and an increasingly direct appeal to audience emotion. (For a copy of the speech both printed and spoken press the audio button. Please note that this is a fairly large file: 4MB)

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Cautious Beginning of the Speech Antony’s speech has a clear structure, moving from unemotional and factual argument to increasingly charged emotional appeals. In a calm and measured introduction Antony states the supposed purpose of his presence before the people of Rome (“I come to bury Caesar not to praise him”, III, 2: 75) and he praises Brutus and his followers. (“For Brutus is an honourable man; /So are they all, all honourable men”, III, 2: 82f). The praise of Brutus at this point operates as a captatio benevolentiae, it ingratiates Antony with an audience that is on Brutus’ side. He then starts an argument, much as he would in a judiciary speech before a court, carefully laying evidence before his audience with the aim to question the accusation that Brutus has levelled against Caesar: that he was ambitious. Antony moves from small, private matter (“He was my friend[...]”, III, 2: 86), to issues of wider interest (money for the state, Caesar’s compassion for the poor), thus gradually involving the audience’s concerns more directly. The Implied Accusation through Patterns of Repetition Much of the effect of Antony’s speech is derived from patterns of repetition. He uses a few alliterations in the first part of his speech (“faithful friend”, “sterner stuff”, “kingly crown”, “brutish beasts”) and anadiplosis (“it was a grievous fault, / And grievously hath Caesar answered it”, III, 2: 80f), which make his remarks more memorable and easier to follow for the audience. But mainly he uses a parallel sentence structure (“the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept”, 92, “what Brutus spoke [...] what I know”, 101f) and a refrain-like repetition of “But Brutus is an honourable man” or variations thereof. With these repetitions – and without explicitly saying so – he gradually puts Brutus in the wrong. The examples from Caesar’s past life all seem to belie Brutus’ accusation and the refrain-like “But Brutus [...]” becomes increasingly ironic because so patently in opposition to the accumulating evidence. The remark, parallel in syntax but antithetical in implication “What Brutus spoke [...] what I know” almost, but not quite, states openly that Brutus is wrong. But it remains for the audience to draw this conclusion. The Implied Accusation through Syntactical Figures A suggestive arrangement of sentence elements sways the audience’s opinion without actually presenting any arguments. Having suggested that Brutus was in fact wrong to accuse Caesar of ambition, Antony shifts the meaning of the word “wrong” from ‘being wrong’ to ‘doing wrong’ and aligns the audience to his own, and Caesar’s, side. “I will not do them wrong; I rather choose / To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you / Than I will wrong such honourable men” (III, 2: 126-128). With the climax “the dead [...] myself [...] you”, still denying that he will say anything against Brutus, Antony implies that Brutus’s act against Caesar was in fact an act against the audience. The sequence of this climax (the dead, myself, you) is extremely effective. “I will not do them wrong” restates Antony’s own honourable intentions. He will not attack men who claim to have acted for noble reasons. This ingratiates him further with an audience that is only just beginning to question the justness of Brutus’ action. Had Antony chosen a direct attack on Brutus, the audience would most likely have assumed a defensive stance and turned against Antony. “I rather choose to wrong the dead” Antony continues. This is likely to cause concern. It was – and is – Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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generally considered unethical to wrong the dead. In this case the evidence that Antony has presented suggests that Caesar has indeed been wronged already: he was not ambitious. As described by Antony, the situation seems to present a choice between two wrongs, either of Brutus or of Caesar, who has already paid a ‘grievous’ price for his alleged wrong, his ambition. But Antony continues: “to wrong myself”. Antony has established himself as a man of honour who will not wrong others. Now he presents himself as a sort of martyr to his noble principles, a stance likely to evoke sympathy. Antony does not give an explicit reason why he should be wronged, he operates in fact in an imaginary scene (“if I were dispos’d [...]”, 122). Nonetheless, he gives the impression that wrong has been done. Constructing a Link between Caesar and the Audience At this stage, Antony slips in “and you” (127) which gives the likely audience response a decisive turn. Suddenly it is no longer a moving spectacle observed by more or less unconcerned spectators, suddenly it concerns them personally: they have been wronged. As a result of the sequence in which Antony presents his view, the audience does not turn against him but against Brutus. In actual fact, Antony tells the audience that he would wrong them before he would say anything against Caesar’s murderers. Put like this, it is a statement rather startling in its audacity. But of course, Antony was careful to make it very clear that he himself has been wronged also. And thus the audience’s anger is directed against Brutus and his followers; the repetition of “honourable men” has by now assumed the sound of bitter mockery. Direct Appeal to the Audience Antony’s tactics are to place the responsibility of judgment and action entirely with his audience. His speech is full of assertions what he will not do, and in denying that he will do them, Antony says and does those very things, or rather, he allows his audience to make him do it. (“I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke” (101), “this testament, / Which [...] I do not mean to read” (131f), “I must not read it” (141), “You will compel me, then, to read the will?” (157), “Let me not stir you up” (103 and 204), “I come not to steal away your hearts” (209). In a series of conditional clauses he paints the scenario of the possible outcome of the actions he will not undertake to do, or, even more tantalising for his audience, he only hints at possible results (“O, what would come of it?”, 147). In reaction to this, the audience feels the need to assert its independence. Antony constantly appeals to the audience’s knowledge and he claims not to tell them anything new (“as you know me all” (211), “I tell you that which you yourselves do know”, 217). In the illusion that they make Antony do what they want, the audience does what Antony wants them to do: They turn against Brutus in the belief that this decision is the result of their own knowledge and judgment. As his speech continues, Antony increases the emotional appeal through his choice of diction. Describing the reaction of the poor to Caesar’s murder, he aligns Caesar with holiness, especially for Shakespeare’s Christian audience (“sacred blood”, 134, beg a hair like a relic, 135, kiss Caesar’s dead wounds, 133). In contrast, the beasts that have lost their judgment are “brutish” (105) beasts, the pun on Brutus’ name obviously suggesting a similar fault in his judgment. As before, Antony approaches the Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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audience gradually. First he displays his own emotion, then he imagines the emotions of the poor and only then does he appeal to the audience directly: He asks them to judge for themselves as he shows them the cuts in Caesar’s mantle. So far, he has used adjectives and images very sparingly. But now evaluative adjectives begin to accumulate (“envious”, “well-beloved”, “cursed”, “unkindly”, “unkindest”, “noble”, 172-182). A simile (“Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it, / As rushing out of doors, [...]”, 176f) increases the pathos of his description of the murder scene. The passage is dominated by imperatives (”Look”, ”Mark”, ”See”, ”Judge”, 172-180), all in initial positions and stressed against the iambic metre, and repeated deixis (this, that), which heightens the directness of the appeal to the audience. Though the last imperative, “Judge”, is an appeal to the gods to judge how much Caesar had loved Brutus, the delay that is achieved by the apostrophe “O you gods” (180), make it first appear – following on “Look”, “See”, “Mark” as it does – an appeal to the audience to judge the murderer. But again, Antony withdraws from explicit incitement to condemn Brutus. The Effects of Rhythm Antony’s speech is in blankverse and the overall regularity of the metrical pattern and the length of lines offer further opportunities for special effect when the pattern is broken. “The noble Brutus” (78), coming at the end of the line, though in fact a run-on-line, invites to a slight pause, it invites to linger, just for a moment, on this phrase. Thus the phrase assumes an emphasis, not justifiable from its informational value, which may be taken as a first hint of irony right at the beginning of Antony’s speech. The marked caesura in line 184 gives full force to the second half of the line “then burst his mighty heart” and since in performance the “then” is likely to be stressed (compare the speaker in the audio file) even though it is metrically speaking an unstressed syllable, the parallel between Caesar’s murder and the fate of Rome “When the noble Caesar saw him stab [...] then burst his mighty heart [...] then I, and you, and all of us fell down.” (184-187) The link between Caesar and the Roman audience is further strengthened at this point. Precarious Morals Antony’s speech is moving even though it rests on somewhat precarious morals. Divested of its emotional appeals, his argument runs thus: Brutus is honourable and I will not wrong him – But here is evidence that Brutus is wrong – Brutus (who does wrong things) would incite you to rebellion if he were me – I do not do this because I am not Brutus (i.e. I do not do things that would be wrong). All this time he does exactly, and intentionally (see JC III, 1: 292-294 “[...] there shall I try / In my oration, how the people take / The cruel issue of these bloody men”) what he says he will not do and what he claims to be wrong: He incites his audience to rebellion. Conclusion Brutus had defended the assassination of Caesar as an act of freedom against tyranny. Antony contrives to give his Roman audience the illusion that they are making a free and independent judgment. Without directly accusing Brutus, Antony gradually aligns the audience emotionally on the side of Caesar and places Brutus in the wrong. He achieves this effect through constant direct and emotionally charged appeals to the audience’s Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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judgment and a pattern of repetition and parallel sentence structure which suggest connections without making them explicit.

1.6.3.2. Analysing a Metaphor Similes and metaphors are rhetorical tropes, i.e. figurative language, which combine two semantic fields in order to enrich the meaning of one. Similes and metaphors are both figures of comparison, but there is a difference in execution and complexity. To start with the less complex one: A simile is an overt comparison, i.e. it makes the comparison explicit with the use of a particle of comparison (‘like’, ‘as’). Take for instance your assessment of the culinary delights provided in mensa: This Tofu-steak is like paper-maché. In a simile one compares one thing to another in order to make a point about the first thing. So in the end there are three elements to a comparison: First, the item you are interested in at the moment (the steak). In rhetoric this is called the primum comparandum. Second, the item you are comparing the first item to (paper-maché). This is called the secundum comparatum. Then there is a third element which is the element of similarity, the common ground, between the first item (the steak) and the second item (paper-maché). This is called the tertium comparationis (or ground). In the example with the mensa dish this would be something like: tasteless, of gluelike consistency. A metaphor, in very simplified terms, is a covert comparison; a word or phrase from one semantic field is substituted with a word or phrase from another. There has to be at least one common characteristic between the two parts for the metaphor to work (common ground or tertium comparationis). No particle of comparison is used. A terminology, introduced by the critic I.A. Richards, distinguishes between tenor – the purport or meaning of the image – and vehicle – the image which conveys the meaning. Other terminologies distinguish between idea and image or target and source. Note that these concepts make slightly different distinctions than the terms from classical rhetoric. Consider an example: Here is how you introduce your brother’s new girlfriend Brunhilda when she cannot hear you: Here comes the bulldozer. Even though only one element is explicitly mentioned (the bulldozer), there are also three elements to this metaphor. Graphically, the relation between the three elements could be expressed thus:

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Key terms: • primum comparandum • secondum comparatum • tertium comparationis • common ground • vehicle • tenor • catachresis

primum comparandum (Brunhilda)

secundum comparatum (bulldozer)

tertium comparationis: (large built, flattens everything around her)

In I.A. Richard’s terms, the vehicle of this metaphor is the bulldozer, the tenor, the purport of the image, in this case would be ‘Brunhilda is ungraceful, merciless, tactless, has no sense or feeling’, or something along those lines. As becomes obvious from this very simple example, it is often impossible to determine the exact and only tenor of a metaphor. This is what makes metaphors complex and interesting as a tool in literary expression. Metaphors do not merely replace one meaning-generating expression with another one of the same meaning. Instead, the combination of the two semantic fields generates additional meaning which opens a range of possibilities for interpretation. It forces us to consider the world in new terms and it expands the meaning potential of language (for an accessible exploration of the complexities of metaphor see Bode 2001: ch. 4, for an example of interpretation see below and the SO WHAT section). It introduces ambiguity and thus a typically literary quality to a text (see ch. 1.2.3). When one tries to interpret a metaphor or a simile, the focus of attention is at first the tertium comparationis, the common ground between the two items, because this provides additional information about the primum comparandum (Brunhilda). The secundum comparatum (the bulldozer) is not really important in itself, it only ‘delivers’ the message about the girlfriend (and that is why it is also called ‘vehicle’). Obviously, the bulldozer has characteristics which are not likely to be relevant in this particular case: Maybe it has tracks instead of wheels, it runs on petrol and so on. Important for the immediate impact of the metaphor are those characteristics which Brunhilda and the bulldozer are likely to have in common (i.e. the common ground): forcefulness, unstoppability, size and mass. In addition, it may be significant to our impression of Brunhilda that the secundum comparatum is from the semantic field of technology. In most cases one identifies the common ground without thinking about it. It is, however, useful to be aware of the exact steps of the decoding process, especially when one wishes to explore the effects of an image in some detail. Take the following statement made by Richard of Gloucester in his opening speech in Shakespeare’s Richard III. In the late medieval war now referred to as the War of the Roses, Richard’s noble

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family, the House of York, have just defeated the House of Lancaster, and Richard’s elder brother Edward is now king: Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York (Richard III I, 1:1-2) The tenor of this metaphor (three metaphors actually: winter, summer, sun) is something like this: Now the time of our unhappiness is past, it has been replaced by a time of well-being owing to the new king who is of the York family. As vehicles (i.e. as the actual images or secunda comparata) operate the words “winter”, “summer” and “sun”. A common association with ‘winter’ is darkness, dreariness, even death and these aspects offer themselves as likely common ground (or tertium comparationis) for ‘time of discontent’. ‘Summer’ is easily associated with warmth, bloom, or ease. A comparison between ‘sun’ and ‘king’ is fairly common and the additional (homonymic) pun on sun/son makes this point quite clear, since the present King Edward is of the York family, i.e. a son of York. Two things are worthy of remark at this point. First, the paraphrase is rather an impoverished rendering of the original expression and does not seem to exhaust the full potential of the image. It seems somehow more expressive to say “Made glorious summer” than to say “made a pleasant time”. Critics are thus of the opinion that an image always expresses something beyond its paraphrase. The second point to be made is that Shakespeare uses three metaphors here (winter, summer, sun) and all three are taken from the same semantic field: the seasons. It also happens, however, that semantic fields are mixed incongruously, as in the following image: A burning sense of injury flooded through her and was not to be rooted out. In this example three semantic fields are mixed: fire (“burning”), water (“flooded”) and gardening (“rooted out”). In effect mixed metaphors are rather confusing because they become difficult to visualise. This happens when Lady Macbeth says to her husband: […] Was the hope drunk, Wherein you dress’d yourself? (Macbeth I, 7:35) First, she personifies hope and describes him or her as drunk, i.e. not based on sober facts, but then she moves to the semantic field of clothes and the personified hope is turned into an item of clothing. This is confusing because in one’s imagination one ends up with a drunken piece of clothing. Of course one can still work out the tenor of the metaphor which would be something like: ‘Was the hope you expressed just a delusion?’ In such cases one talks of mixed metaphor or catachresis. It has long been considered bad style to use mixed metaphors. The above example from Macbeth for instance, so shocked editors of Shakespeare that some editions changed it to “Was the hope drunk, / Wherein you bless’d yourself” or “Was the hope drunk, / Wherein you ’dressed [=addressed] yourself” (see Muir in Shakespeare, Macbeth ad loc.). Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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1.6.3.3. Symbol A symbol is an object or an event which represents an abstract idea. In this sense all letters of an alphabet for instance are symbolic, they are arranged into words which represent certain concepts that we link with objects in reality. In text analysis one looks for symbols in a more restricted sense of the word: for those objects and events that are symbolic for a concept immediately relevant to the development of plot or character. Some symbols are known to everyone within a certain cultural community, they are public symbols. The cross for instance, which represents the Christian religion, is such a public symbol. The colour white, representing purity and innocence, can also be considered a public symbol. In literature one often finds private symbols, symbols that are not generally known and that can only be decoded from their usage in a specific text. In Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House for instance, Mr John Jarndyce uses the expression ‘There is an east wind’ to indicate that he is distressed about tensions or unhappiness among people around him. The expression, which is normally merely about the weather, is thus used as a private symbol. In the following poem by Carl Sandburg, ‘grass’ functions as a private symbol for the world’s forgetfulness of the horrors of war and destruction: Grass Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work – I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.

SO WHAT? In the analysis of figurative speech, especially simile and metaphor which link two separate semantic fields, it is often useful to examine the sort of semantic fields that are put into relation. For instance, are inanimate objects compared to animate (“the dirty room gave a sigh of relief when Imelda started her cleaning operations”), are people compared to animals or plants (“Her cheeks red roses such as seld have been”, Bartholomew Griffin), are concrete objects compared to abstract notions (“Streets that follow like a tedious argument”, T.S. Eliot)? and so on. (For a comprehensive list of the types of transfer and a sample analysis see Plett 2000: 183-203.) The Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Basic Concepts

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question that is worth asking is what effect does the link between these particular semantic fields achieve. More specifically, what additional connotations does the semantic field of the vehicle introduce, perhaps beyond the common ground (tertium comparationis). Here is Charles Dickens’ description of the industrial town Coketown in his novel Hard Times: It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. (Dickens, Hard Times, ch. 5) This description evokes a fairly definite visual idea of Coketown, dominated by the symbolic colours red (“red brick”, “unnatural red”, “river that ran purple” – purple can be a mixture of blue and red but it can also denote the colours crimson or scarlet) and black (“unnatural […] black”, “brick that would have been red if the smoke had allowed it” “black canal”). The connotation of the colours red and black, especially in association with the noun smoke, which implies fire, can easily evoke the association of hell. Though hell is not explicitly mentioned, the passage clearly indicates that Coketown is a hellish place. There are three images in this passage: two similes (“like the painted face of a savage”, “like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness”) and one metaphor (“interminable serpents of smoke”). All three of these images derive from the semantic field ‘jungle’. The effect is twofold: it creates a link between dead material (buildings, smoke, machinery) and living creattures. These creatures are part of an uncivilised – and taking some common nineteenth-century assumptions into account – rather negative (“unnatural”) world. The accoutrements of progress and industrialisation seem to take on a life of their own which dominates and even crushes the lives of the people in the town. At the same time, Dickens’ choice of imagery suggests that all this industrial progress is in fact a retrograde step for civilisation, a decline into savagery. Thus the description of Coketown encapsulates the theme of the novel, and Dickens calls this chapter “The Key-note”: the inhumane and soul-destroying aspects of progress.

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Bibliography of Secondary Sources: Basic Concepts Abrams, M.H. 1999. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Seventh Edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace. Ahrens, Rüdiger et al., eds. 1995. Handbuch Englisch als Fremdsprache. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Barthes, Roland 1988 [1968]. “The Death of the Author.” Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London/New York: Longman. 167-172. Bassnett, Susan 1997. Studying British Cultures. London: Routledge. Bromley, Rogers; Jessica Munns and Gita Rajan, eds. 1995. A Cultural Studies Reader: History, Theory, Practice. London/New York: Longman. Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren 1976. Understanding Poetry. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Corbett, Edward P.J. 1971. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. New York: Oxford University Press. Culler, Jonathan 1997. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Derrida, Jacques 1978. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Writing and Difference. Boston/London: Routledge. 278-293. Drabble, Margaret, ed. 2000. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Duff, David, ed. 2000. Modern Genre Theory. Harlow: Longman. Eagleton, Terry. 1996. Literary Theory. An Introduction. Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Eagleton, Terry and Drew Milne, eds. 1996. Marxist Literary Theory. A Reader. Oxford/Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. Foucault, Michel 1981 [1970]. “The Order of Discourse.” Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. Ed. Robert Young. Boston/London: Routledge. 48-78. Fowler, Alastair 2000 [1982]. “Transformations of Genre.” Modern Genre Theory. Ed. David Duff. Harlow: Longman. 232-249. Fowler, Roger. 1981. Literature as Social Discourse. The Practice of Linguistic Criticism. London: Batsford Academic and Educational. Gross, Ronald. 1973. [Found Poem]. Open Poetry: Four Anthologies of Expanded Poems. Ed. Ronald Gross and George Quasha New York: Simon and Schuster. Holman, Clarence Hunt and William Harmon. 1992. A Handbook to Literature: Based on the Original Edition by William Flint Thrall and Addison Hibbard. 6th ed. New York: Macmillan. Jahn, Manfred. Minima rhetorica: http://www.uni-koeln.de/philfak/englisch/minrhet.html Jakobson, Roman 1960. Linguistics and Poetics: Closing Statement..” Style in Language. Ed. Thomas Sebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kamuf, Peggy, ed. 1991. A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. New York/London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Klarer, Mario 1995. Einführung in die anglistisch-amerikanistische Literaturwissenschaft. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Korte, Barbara; Klaus Peter Müller und Josef Schmied 1997. Einführung in die Anglistik. Stuttgart: Metzler.

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Lodge, David, ed. 1988. Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader. London/New York: Longman. Moore-Gilbert, Bart. 1997. Postcolonial Theory. Contexts, Practices, Politics. London/New York: Verso. Nünning, Ansgar, ed. 2001. Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie. Stuttgart: Metzler. Nünning, Ansgar und Andreas H. Jucker. 1999. Orientierung Anglistik/Amerikanistik. Was sie kann, was sie will. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Nünning, Vera und Ansgar Nünning 2001. Grundkurs anglistischamerikanistische Literaturwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Klett. Osinski, Jutta 1998. Einführung in die feministische Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Pordzik, Ralph 2002. “After the Linguistic Turn. Neo-Pragmatist Theories of Reading and the Interpretation of Modern Literature.” AAA 27.1: 3-13. Preminger, Alex et al. 1993. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Richards, I.A. 1964. Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment. London: Routledge. Robbins, Ruth 2000. Literary Feminisms. London: St. Martin’s Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de 1959). Course in General Linguistics. New York: MacGraw-Hill. Scaif, Ross. A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples: http://www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/rhetoric.html Schweikle, Günther und Irmgard Schweikle, eds. 1990. Metzler Literaturlexikon. Begriffe und Definitionen. Stuttgart: Metzler. Seeber, Hans Ulrich, ed. 1999. Englische Literaturgeschichte. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler. Tillyard, E.M.W. 1944. The Elizabethan World Picture. London: Macmillan. Todorov, Tzvetan 2000 [1976]. “The Origin of Genres.” Modern Genre Theory. Ed. David Duff. Harlow: Longman: 193-208. Warning, Rainer, ed. 1975. Rezeptionsästhetik. München: Fink. Watt, Ian. 1957. The Rise of the Novel. Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. London: Chatto and Windus. Young, Robert J.C. 2000. Postcolonialism. An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Zapf, Hubert. 1991. Kurze Geschichte der anglo-amerikanischen Literaturtheorie. München: Fink.

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STEFANIE LETHBRIDGE AND JARMILA MILDORF:

Basics of English Studies: An introductory course for students of literary studies in English. Developed at the English departments of the Universities of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Freiburg

2. Prose Table of Contents: 2.1. Story and Discourse ............................................................................ 42 2.1.1. Story ...................................................................................................... 42 2.1.2. Discourse .............................................................................................. 43 2.2. Story and Plot ....................................................................................... 43 SO WHAT? ........................................................................................................ 46 2.3. Space ....................................................................................................... 47 2.3.1. Space in Discourse and Story ............................................................ 47 2.3.2. Fictional Space and Real Space .......................................................... 47 2.3.3. Space and Meaning .............................................................................. 47 2.4. Character ............................................................................................... 49 2.4.1. Techniques of Characterisation ......................................................... 49 2.4.1.1. Explicit and Implicit Characterisation ........................................... 49 2.4.1.2. Characterisation by Narrator or Character .................................... 49 2.4.1.3. Block Characterisation ..................................................................... 50 2.4.1.4. Reliability ............................................................................................ 51 2.4.1.5. Inner Life of Characters ................................................................... 51 2.4.1.6. Contrasts and Correspondences ..................................................... 52 2.4.1.7. Summary: Characterisation Techniques (Table) ........................... 52 2.4.2. Character Functions ............................................................................. 52 2.4.3. Character Complexity and Development ......................................... 53 SO WHAT? ........................................................................................................ 54 2.5. Narrators and Narrative Situation .................................................. 55 2.5.1. Narrative Voices ................................................................................... 55 2.5.2. Focalisation ........................................................................................... 58 2.5.3. Unreliable Narrators ............................................................................ 61 SO WHAT? ........................................................................................................ 61

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2.6. Narrative Modes .................................................................................. 63 2.6.1. Speech .................................................................................................... 63 2.6.2. Report .................................................................................................... 65 2.6.3. Description ............................................................................................ 65 2.6.4. Comment ............................................................................................... 65 2.6.5. Mixed Narrative Modes ...................................................................... 66 2.6.6. Historical Change in Narrative Modes .............................................. 67 SO WHAT? ........................................................................................................ 67 2.7. Representation of Consciousness ................................................... 68 2.7.1. Interior Monologue ............................................................................. 69 2.7.2. Psychonarration .................................................................................... 70 2.7.3. Narrated Monologue ........................................................................... 71 2.7.4. Summary Representation of Consciousness (Table) ...................... 73 SO WHAT? ........................................................................................................ 73 2.8. Time ......................................................................................................... 75 2.8.1. Tense in Narrative ................................................................................ 76 SO WHAT? ........................................................................................................ 76 2.8.2. Time Analysis ....................................................................................... 77 2.8.2.1. Duration ............................................................................................. 77 2.8.2.2. Order ................................................................................................... 78 2.8.2.3. Beginnings and Endings .................................................................. 79 SO WHAT? ........................................................................................................ 81 2.8.2.4. Frequency ........................................................................................... 81 SO WHAT? ........................................................................................................ 81 2.9. Types of Prose Fiction ....................................................................... 82 Bibliography: Prose ..................................................................................... 85

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2. Prose Probably most literature that is read today is written in prose, that is in nonmetrical, ‘ordinary’ language. This has not always been the case. It is only with the growing popularity of the novel and a corresponding expansion of the market for literature throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that prose gained this prominent position as a suitable language for literature. In this section the focus will be on narrative prose, that is, prose literature which tells a story.

2.1. Story and Discourse Theorists of narrative have long been in agreement that there are at least two levels in a narrative text: Something happens and this something is related in a certain way. There is, in other words, a WHAT (What is told?) to be considered and a HOW (How is it told?). These two levels have been given different names by different critics (for an overview of various terminologies see Korte 1985). The distinction made by a theory of criticism called structuralism (see ch. 1.4.3.) has proved one of the most influential ones in recent years. In structuralist terminology the WHAT of the narrative is called story, the HOW is called discourse (see Chatman 1978: 19, who follows structuralists like Roland Barthes, Gérard Genette and Tzvetan Todorov). story (What is told?) narrative discourse (How is it told?) For analysis, these two levels need to be further subdivided.

2.1.1. Story The story consists of events (things that happen) and so-called existents, the characters that make things happen or have things happen to them and the setting, meaning the place where things happen. Events can be either brought about actively, in which case they are called actions (one character kills another one) or they just happen (someone dies of a heart-attack). actions events happenings story characters existents space/setting narrative discourse Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • story • discourse • events • existents

Each of these elements can be approached with different tools of analysis.

2.1.2. Discourse Discourse is the category that comprises various elements of transmission. Strictly speaking, it is only discourse that is directly accessible to us, since we only learn about the story via discourse. Elements of discourse thus determine our perception of the story (what ‘actually’ happened). In the analysis of discourse one tries to determine how certain effects are achieved. The focus of analysis are questions such as: What is the narrative situation? Whose point of view is presented? Which narrative modes are employed? How are the thoughts of characters transmitted? How is the chronology of events dealt with? How is style used? These elements are always used to certain effects. For instance, how it is that the reader tends to identify with one character and not with another? The analysis of elements of discourse reveals how the reader is ‘manipulated’ into forming certain views about the story. story narrative plot narrative voices (who speaks?) focalisation (who sees?) narrative modes discourse representation of consciousness time language in literature Each of these elements will be explained in detail under their respective headings.

2.2. Story and Plot Apart from the distinction between the two levels story and discourse, which is part of structuralist terminology, there is an older tradition which differentiates between story and plot. These two terms overlap only partly with the terms story and discourse. Since the terms story and plot are still used frequently in English Studies, one needs to be aware of their meaning. The basic difference between story and plot was pointed out by Aristotle, who distinguishes between actions in the real world and units that are selected from these and arranged in what he calls mythos (Aristotle 1953: 6.1450a). The Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • story • plot • mythos • plot-line • single plot • multiple plot • tight plot • closed structure • poetic justice • loose/epicsodic plot • open-ended plot

terms story and plot as used in English Studies were introduced and defined by the novelist and critic E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel (1927). Forster defines story as the chronological sequence of events and plot as the causal and logical structure which connects events (see Forster 1927: 93f). These definitions need some further clarification: A story is only a story if at least one event takes place, that is something changes from state A to state B. Consider the following minimal stories: The crocodile eats breakfast. Fred jumped out of bed. The king died. Compare to this: The house has blue shutters. This last example is a description (see ch. 2.6.3.) rather than a story precisely because no event takes place. Notice also that events in a story involve an animate creature of some sort, i.e. characters (the crocodile, Fred, the king). Most stories involve a sequence of events rather than just one event. Manfred Jahn thus gives the following definition of story: A sequence of events and actions involving characters. ‘Events’ generally include natural and nonnatural happenings like floods or car accidents; ‘action’ more specifically refers to wilful acts by characters (Jahn 2002: N1, for further references see Pfister 1988). Forster’s examples to illustrate the difference between story and plot are: The king died and then the queen died (story). The king died and then the queen died of grief (plot). Plot can be considered as part of discourse, since it is part of HOW the story is presented Consider the following basic sequence of events (i.e. the story): girl marries young – husband treats her badly – husband dies – girl marries man who has loved her for a long time There are no doubt countless novels, plays and romances which develop this basic story. Just two examples would be George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Despite the similarities of the basic story, the causal and logical connections between events, i.e. the plots of those two novels, are quite different. In Middlemarch Dorothea Brooke marries the ugly, elderly and dry scholar Casaubon because she hopes to share in his intellectual pursuits. Dorothea is unhappy because Casaubon neither shares his scholarly interests with her nor does he treat her with any affection. Casaubon dies of a weak heart and out of a sense of intellectual failure. Dorothea, despite protests from her friends, marries the pennyless Will Ladislaw because he responds to her emotional and intellectual needs. In contrast, Helen in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, marries Arthur Huntingdon because she is attracted by his charm and good looks. Helen is unhappy because her husband turns out to be a vulgar Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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drunkard who ill-treats her. She leaves him in order to protect their son from his influence and only returns to him in his final illness. Huntingdon dies of his excesses. Helen marries the farmer Markham with the approval of her friends because she feels she can rely on his virtue and good sense. Forster’s terms have often been criticised. It has been argued that in a story like ‘the king died and then the queen died’ we automatically assume that the two events are connected simply because they are told one after the other (see Chatman 1978: 45f). Some critics even claim that the distinction between plot and story is artificial and of no practical use in the analysis of literature (Wenzel 1998: 175). There is no question that the distinction is artificial. In fact, the story itself, the mere sequence of events, is an abstract entity, a construct that exists only in our heads after we have read the narrative as presented in the text (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 6). Nonetheless, the distinction between story and plot is still widely (though not always consistently) used to differentiate degrees of connectivity between events in a narrative. And indeed, the story ‘the king died and then the queen died’ allows for a number of plots apart from ‘the king died and then the queen died of grief’. It could also be: ‘The king died and then the queen died because she ate of the same poisoned cake’ or ‘the king died and then the queen died of sheer irritation because he hadn’t left her any money in his will’. A narrative can have one or more plot-lines (see also space and meaning ch. 2.3.3.), that is, events can centre around one or more groups of characters. In Dickens’ Bleak House for instance, there is the plot-line which centers around Lady Dedlock and the discovery of her guilty past and there is the plot-line which centres around Esther Summerson and her growth to maturity. At certain points these two plot lines merge, as it is discovered that Esther is Lady Dedlock’s illegitimate daughter (see also plot-lines in drama ch. 3.3.1.). Single plot novels are comparatively rare, most novels develop multiple plots. These multiple plot lines are not necessarily all of the same importance, there can be a main plot-line and one or more subplot-lines. Such sub-plots can serve as a contrast to the main plot when, for instance, there is the same constellation of events in a higher and a lower social sphere (see also contrasts and correspondences in characterisation chs. 2.4.1.6. and 3.6.4.; for a detailed discussion of single and multiple plot-lines see Nischik 1981). Some narratives are very tightly plotted, everything happens for a reason or a purpose and one event is the consequence of another. Queststories or fairy tales are usually tightly plotted (see the example in Jahn 2002: D7.2). When each plot-line is brought to a satisfactory ending one also talks of a closed structure (for example the death or marriage of the protagonist or the final defeat of an evil force). This is often the case in Victorian novels where there is frequently an entire chapter at the end, tying up all the loose ends of the plot and giving a short glimpse of the characters’ future (see for example George Eliot, Middlemarch or Charles Dickens, Hard Times). In a closed plot structure earthly rewards and punishments are often distributed in proportion to the virtue or vice of the various characters at the end. This is called poetic justice. A tight plot generally contributes to an increase in suspense. Conversely, lack of suspense or tension in a narrative can in part be explained by the absence of a tight plot. There is very little tension, for instance, in Virginia Woolf’s short story Kew Gardens, mostly because practically nothing happens: A person sits down on a park bench, watches people go by, gets up Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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again. There is a similar lack of events in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (see the discussion in Drama 3.3.4.). Many modern and postmodern writers deliberately try to eschew event-dominated stories and tight plots because they feel it is not an accurate rendering of reality and they claim to be more interested in character than in plot. Plot and character depend on each other of course. No plot or story can develop without characters and characters are frequently, though not always, developed through plots. As the novelist Henry James remarked in a much quoted phrase: “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?” (James 1948: 13). Some narratives place less emphasis on the causal connection between events, though there are still plenty of events and action. Instead, episodes might be linked by a common character, such as Moll Flanders in Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders or Sam Pickwick in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, or a common theme. Such narratives are described as loosely plotted or episodic. Plots that are not brought to a final or preliminary conclusion are called open-ended plots or just open plots (see also plot in drama ch.3.3.1. and Beginnings and Endings ch. 2.8.2.3.). J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for instance is much more open-ended than the previous Harry Potter volumes. While volumes one to three end with a fairly definite preliminary defeat of the evil force, in The Goblet of Fire Voldemort has clearly returned to power and a massive attack on the good powers is imminent at the end of the volume. SO WHAT? The concept of plot is particularly useful to distinguish between tightly and loosely plotted narratives. In many cases a carefully constructed plot is more satisfying or more convincing than a plot that has to rely on coincidences, i.e. where things do not happen for a reason but by entirely fantastic accidents. Romance plots, for example, often rely heavily on coincidence: the hero, who has just escaped a band of soldiers, happens to meet, as he is walking along a lonely highland path in the middle of the night whistling a cheerful tune, both his long-lost lady-love and, a little later, the hunted highland-outlaw who, also just escaped from the soldiers, is going home for his supper on the same lonely highland path. (This happens in Walter Scott’s Rob Roy). It is, however, important to note that certain types of plots are characteristic for certain genres (see Poetics and Genre ch. 1.4.2.). Romances, such as Scott’s Rob Roy, are not normally interested in realistic plotting. Instead they focus on fantastic events and their effects on various characters. To criticise such plots as unrealistic is to misunderstand the genre conventions; it is rather like criticising tomato sauce for not being cheese sauce. But compare the loose plotting of Rob Roy for example to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Though basically the Harry Potter narratives are rather more fantastic than Scott’s romance of the noble highlander, in Rowling things usually happen for a perfectly plausible reason: Ron’s wand backfires at the crucial moment and causes Gilderoy Lockhart to lose his memory because it has been faulty ever since Ron broke it in the car crash and he had to fix it with spellotape because he cannot afford a new wand. Paradoxically, it is thus easier to find Rowling’s plot convincing than Scott’s even though magic wands and wizard children are outside most Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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people’s everyday experience. But once we have accepted the basic system of the magic world, events in Rowling’s plot are convincingly motivated.

2.3. Space 2.3.1. Space in Discourse and Story On the level of discourse the category of space comprises the spatial dimensions of the medium: the length of the book, the size of the pages, amount of empty space on a page and so on. These aspects are very rarely considered in traditional literary analysis though recent criticism has argued that the spatial and material conditions of a text influences the way this text is read (see for example McGann 1991). On the level of story the category of space or setting forms an important component in the creation and communication of meaning.

2.3.2. Fictional Space and Real Space In narrative, unlike in drama, film or picture stories, space has to be presented verbally. It thus exists, ultimately, only in the reader’s imagination. On the other hand, the description of space in narrative tends to be more detailed than it is possible in a drama’s primary text. Readers create their notions of fictional space from their own experience in the real world (see Fielitz 2001: 115). That is to say, a person’s ideas of how houses, gardens, parks, streets, etc. look, is dependent on that person’s actual experience of houses, gardens, parks and streets. In turn, convincing descriptions of spatial dimensions in a narrative serve to increase the narrative’s authenticity, it provides a link to the reader’s reality. Readers tend to imagine the characters moving through ‘real’ space, as they do themselves.

2.3.3. Space and Meaning Space and setting in narrative is not merely a space for characters to move in – since they have to be somewhere –, it usually contributes additional meaning to a narrative by providing either correspondences or contrasts to the plot or the characters. Three aspects in particular should be noted: • • • •

atmosphere space and character space and plot symbolic space

Setting can provide a certain atmosphere. Darkness and narrow spaces, for instance, are commonly associated with threatening or restrictive atmospheres. Wide open or sunlit spaces create an atmosphere of freedom. Such atmospheres can then be used to provide a characteristic background for a character. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • space • setting • atmosphere • space and character • milieu • space and plot • symbolic space

The environment in which a character moves can function as a means of characterisation as it does in the following example: Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from attention, able to afford it. Heavy broad-backed old-fashioned mahogany and horsehair chairs, not easily lifted, obsolete tables with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers, presentation prints of the holders of great titles in the last generation, or the last but one, environ him. A thick and dingy Turkeycarpet muffles the floor where he sits, attended by two candles in oldfashioned silver candlesticks, that give a very insufficient light to his large room. The titles on the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. (Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 10). This excerpt describes Mr Tulkinghorn’s room. Like his room (the narrator points this out), Mr Tulkinghorn is extremely secretive (dark, muffled, retired, locked), nobody knows how much he knows, he is closely associated with members of the nobility (“holders of great titles”) and he knows their secrets past and present. Tulkinghorn does not arouse much sympathy in the reader mainly because he is not accessible to any emotional appeal. His room also expresses this immovability: It is out-of date, “rusty” and “dusty”, “not easily lifted”, all epithets which suggest that there has not been any movement for some time. Theories of sociology in the last 150 or so years have suggested that character is determined by social background, by milieu. Novel writers since the later nineteenth century have taken up this concept and have presented characters whose personality is completely formed by their milieu. Apart from character, setting can also help to define plot-lines. Especially in narratives with several subplots, a characteristic setting for each subplot can serve as a means of orientation for the reader. In Bleak House, the Dedlock-plot develops at the country house Chesney Wold and in the Dedlock’s town house in London, the plot of the street-sweep Joe is set mainly in the poorer streets of London. These two plot-lines merge when Lady Dedlock asks Joe to show her the grave of her former lover. It is the first indication the reader gets that Lady Dedlock will eventually lose her status (she literally loses her ‘place’); she dies, having fled from her town house, at Joe’s crossing where her lover is buried. In this sense space can also serve as a symbol. In our example the poor streets of London are a symbolic space indicating a lower social status. The symbolic quality of space is to a large extent culturally determined. In our culture, for instance, a stereotypical association with cities is fashion, a fast and exciting life, but also depravity. In contrast, we often associate country spaces with backwardness, calm life but also with innocence (for a more detailed exploration and list of symbolic spaces see Lotman 1972: 313).

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2.4. Character The people in a narrative are called characters rather than persons to emphasise the fact that they are only representations of people, constructed by an author to fulfil a certain function in a certain context. We form a mental construct of characters from the information we are given but also add some ideas from our own experience and imagination (for a discussion of these processes of mental construction see Schneider 2001). Thus, even though we judge characters in literature according to our experience of ‘real’ people, unlike ‘real’ people they do not exist independently of their narrative context and little or no benefit is to be gained from speculating on the psychological make-up of a character for which we are not given any indication in the text (see Pfister 1988: 221). The main questions for an analysis of character are 1) Techniques of characterisation: HOW does the text inform us about characters and 2) Character functions: WHAT FUNCTION do characters have in the narrative.

2.4.1. Techniques of Characterisation Techniques of characterisation are used in texts to enable readers to form a mental construct of a character. There are six main aspects to be considered (see Jahn 2002: N7 and further references there): How is the character described, by whom is the character described, how is the characterisation distributed throughout the text, how reliable is the source of information, what do we learn about a character’s inner life and in which arrangements of contrasts and correspondences is the character depicted. (Most of the following is based on Pfister 1988). 2.4.1.1. Explicit and Implicit Characterisation The most obvious technique of characterisation is when someone (in the following excerpt: the narrator) tells us explicitly what a character is like: Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. (Austen, Emma, ch.1) A character is sometimes also characterised explicitly through a telling name, as for instance Squire Allworthy, who is a worthy gentleman in all respects, in Fielding’s Tom Jones. But we also deduce character-traits that are given implicitly through the character’s actions, other characters’ attitudes to him or her, etc. 2.4.1.2. Characterisation by Narrator or Character Characters can be described, implicitly as well as explicitly, either by the narrator (sometimes, somewhat misleadingly, called authorial characterisation) Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • character • explicit characterisation • implicit characterisation • telling names • characterisation by the narrator / authorial characterisation • characterisation by another character / figural characterisation • self-characterisation • block characterisation • mind style • unreliable narration • penetration of inner life • contrasts and correspondences • major character • minor character • protagonist • antagonist • witness • foil • confidant • mono-dimensional character • static character • type • flat character • multi-dimensional character • dynamic character • round character

or by another character in the narrative (also called figural characterisation) or even by the characters themselves (self-characterisation). The following gives an example for a characterisation by narrator combined with the narrator’s representation of other characters’ views (see also section 2.6.4. on narrator comment for evaluative language). Explicitly, Mr Snagsby is characterised as a shy, retiring man. It is also implied that his wife is neither shy nor retiring and that he is rather tyrannised by Mrs Snagsby: Mr and Mrs Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh but, to the neighbours’ thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed from Mrs Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook’s Court very often. Mr Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man, with a shining head, and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He tends to meekness and obesity. [...] He is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. (Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 10). A further example: Miss Clack, the poor, religious cousin in The Moonstone introduces herself (self-characterisation) to the reader in the following terms: I am indebted to my dear parents (both now in heaven) for having had habits of order and regularity instilled into me at a very early age. In that happy bygone time, I was taught to keep my hair tidy at all hours of the day and night, and to fold up every article of my clothing carefully, in the same order, on the same chair, in the same place at the foot of the bed, before retiring to rest. An entry of the day’s events in my little diary invariably preceeded the folding up. The ‘Evening Hymn’ (repeated in bed) invariably followed the folding up. And the sweet sleep of childhood invariably followed the ‘Evening Hymn’. (Collins, Moonstone, Second Period, First narrative, ch. 1) A little further, Miss Clack characterises herself as: [...] one long accustomed to arouse, convince, prepare, enlighten, and fortify others [...]. (ibid., ch. 8) With these self-descriptions Miss Clack characterises herself explicitly as a dutiful, orderly and religious person. Implicitly, she is depicted as rather obnoxious, one who always knows how other people should reform their lives and who is willing to say so. It is thus not surprising when Mr Ablewhite calls Miss Clack “this impudent fanatic” (ibid.). 2.4.1.3. Block Characterisation We can be given crucial information all at once about a character in a block characterisation: Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of fact and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir – peremptorily Thomas – Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. (Dickens, Hard Times, ch. 2) Again, this characterisation, provided by the narrator, imparts information about Thomas Gradgrind both in explicit description and implicitly, reproducing Thomas Gradgrind’s mind style, the way he thinks about the world in his own mind (for the term mind style see for example Nischik 1991). Block characterisations are usually given when a character is first introduced. Alternatively, the reader receives information piecemeal throughout the narrative. This is usually the case for complex and dynamic characters. 2.4.1.4. Reliability One needs to take the reliability of the source of the characterisation into consideration when assessing the information one receives about a character. A characterisation given by a character whose reliability the reader has cause to question, will not be accepted at face value, it becomes an unreliable narration. When for instance the fanatically religious and officious Miss Clack (see her self-characterisation above) characterises Rachel, the lively and beautiful heroine of The Moonstone as “insignificant-looking” and with “an absence of all lady-like restraint in her language and manner” (Collins, Moonstone, Second period, first narrative, ch.1), one is inclined to interpret this in Rachel’s favour rather than to her disadvantage. As in this case, a character’s explicit characterisation of other characters functions as implicit selfcharacterisation, since it expresses a character’s attitudes and often reveals a character’s weaknesses. In this case, Miss Clack’s harsh judgment of Rachel and her conduct is no doubt influenced by the difference in looks and social standing between her and Rachel. To make matters worse, Rachel has attracted the amorous attentions of Godfrey Ablewhite, for whom Miss Clack herself harbours an unlimited adoration. Generally, a reader will treat self-characterisation with care, since a character’s self-proclaimed opinion of him- or herself can be distorted or given for purposes other than honest self-characterisation. When Uriah Heep in Dickens’ David Copperfield assures everyone repeatedly that he is so very “humble”, the reader’s distrust is awakened even before Uriah is disclosed as a hypocritical villain. In contrast to self-characterisations and characterisation by other characters, those character descriptions given by the narrator, unless there are indications to the contrary, are usually assumed to be reliable and the reader tends to believe the narrator’s characterisations more readily than others. 2.4.1.5. Inner Life of Character Depending on what sort of information is given about a character, readers will fell to a larger or smaller degree acquainted with a character. To a large extent this depends on the penetration of inner life (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 42). The more one knows about a character’s thoughts and emotional responses (see Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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also Representation of Consciousness ch. 2.7), the more complex the character will appear and the more ready the reader is to empathise with the character. 2.4.1.6. Contrasts and Correspondences Characters are also defined in comparison to other characters. It might be, for instance, that two characters are confronted with the same difficulty and react differently. Such contrasts and correspondences give the reader additional information about the character. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for instance, a number of characters can be assessed according to their reaction to the influence of the ring: While some characters succumb immediately to the ring’s evil power (like Gollum), others imagine they can use the ring’s power to good purpose (like Boromir), yet others are hardly affected by the pressure the ring exerts (like Sam or Bilbo Baggins). Through contrasts and correspondences characters act as foil (see character functions ch. 2.4.2.) to each other. 2.4.1.7. Summary: Characterisation Techniques

by the narrator

by a character

explicit: character description or comment implicit: report of character’s actions and/or thought, description of outward appearance and circumstances, contrasts and correspondences explicit: description or comment; simultaneously implicit selfby another character characterisation implicit: as implied by choice of expression and description of appearance and circumstances explicit: description or comment self-characterisation implicit: use of language or gesture, expression, attitudes unconsciously expressed, characteristic props

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Plot- or character-oriented narratives usually have one or more major (also main) characters and any number of minor characters. The main character, especially when there is only one, is also called protagonist. The term protagonist has the advantage that it implies no value-judgement and can include heroes or heroines (i.e. positive main characters) as well as anti-heroes and anti-heroines (i.e. negative main characters). The protagonist is the character who dominates the narrative. Moll Flanders is the protagonist of Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Stephen Daedalus is the protagonist in Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In some narratives the protagonist has an influential opponent, the antagonist, such as Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels, Sauron in The Lord of the Rings or Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes. Minor characters can serve as witnesses, i.e. someone reporting on the events though not directly involved thus achieving something of an objective report. This would be the case for Nick in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, where the protagonists are Gatsby and Daisy, but Nick observes the developments and acts as I-as-witness narrator. An important function of minor characters is to serve as foilcharacters. A foil is a piece of shiny metal put under gemstones to increase their brightness. A foil-character thus provides a contrast to highlight the features of the main character. Maybe the most famous example of a foil character is Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories, whose ordinary perceptiveness serves to highlight Holmes’ genius. Another example would be the sensible and restrained Elinor and her emotional sister Marianne in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. The sisters serve as a foils for each other. Another function of a minor character can be that of confidant, i.e. a close friend of the protagonist to whom he or she can confide in and thus disclose his or her innermost thoughts. The housekeeper in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw for instance functions as confidant for the governess. This way the reader is always confronted with the contrast between the governess’ perceptions and visions and the housekeeper’s slightly helpless and unimaginative common sense.

2.4.3. Character Complexity and Development Minor characters, not surprisingly, often remain mono-dimensional and/or static. This means that the narrative text presents only few or even just one characteristic of such characters (mono-dimensional) and that there is little or no development throughout the narrative (static). Such mono-dimensional characters can often be reduced to types, representatives of a single and stereotyped character category: the wicked step-mother, faithful servant, miserly old man, profligate youth, etc. Allegorical characters might be classed in this category as well (i.e. Hopeful in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or Despair in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene) since the function of such characters is precisely to represent this one characteristic. E.M. Forster’s term flat comprises both the aspect of mono-dimensional and static. In consequence the term has been criticised as too reductive (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 40f) since it is quite possible for a character to be multi-dimensional yet entirely static, as for example Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, who remains obsessed by his love for Cathy and his hatred for everyone else from early childhood to his death. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Major characters are more frequently multi-dimensional and dynamic, though not as a rule. One might argue, for instance, that Oliver in Oliver Twist is decidedly mono-dimensional (i.e. ‘good’) as well as static. A multi-dimensional (or round, as Forster calls it) character, as the word suggests, has a number of defining characteristics, sometimes conflicting ones and such characters often undergo a development throughout the narrative (dynamic). Louisa Gradgrind in Dickens’ Hard Times, for example, is both multi-dimensional and dynamic. The cold, ungraceful daughter of the factloving Thomas Gradgrind arouses the reader’s compassion despite these unattractive features because she evidently struggles to suppress her more affectionate and imaginative qualities. Luckily for her, her struggles prove unsuccessful and the reader witnesses her breakdown under the fact-system and her eventual breakthrough to a more balanced emotional life. The development of characters is particularly pronounced in the bildungsroman tradition (see ch. 2.9.). Classic examples are Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre or Dickens’ David Copperfield. SO WHAT? Take, for example, the character James Steerforth in Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield. The name Steerforth is not quite a telling name but it suggests a positive, forthright leader figure, someone who likes to ‘steer’. David Copperfield is told by a homodiegetic-autodiegetic narrator and largely internal focaliser (see ch. 2.5.), David Copperfield himself, as he experiences events at the time of their taking place. We thus hear about Steerforth from the point of view of the schoolboy and young adult Copperfield (experiencing I) who idolises and adores the older, richer and more experienced friend. The older Copperfield who narrates the story (narrating I) praises Steerforth eloquently in a number of block characterisations, as for instance the following: There was an ease in his manner – a gay and light manner it was, but not swaggering – which I still believe to have been borne a kind of enchantment with it. I still believe him, in virtue of his carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for aught I know, of some inborn power of attraction besides […] to have carried a spell with him […].(Dickens, David Copperfield, ch. 7) It seems at first as if Steerforth deserved this praise. Steerforth takes the little Copperfield under his wing and helps him especially in the first, very difficult weeks at Salem House, he makes sure Copperfield gets a nicer room in the hotel, he makes friends with the fishermen and boatpeople at Yarmouth without regarding the difference in social status between them and himself, he is a dutiful son whose mother dotes on him and he takes care of Copperfield when he gets roaring drunk at his first bachelor’s revel. The narrator’s explicit characterisation of Steerforth is enthusiastically positive and he contrives to put almost every one of Steerforth’s actions in the rosiest light. Despite all this, the reader is led very early to question the reliability of the youthful Copperfield’s perceptions and to entertain some doubts about the purity of Steerforth’s intentions and character. A definite tension exists between the explicit narrator-characterisation on the one hand and figural characterisation, implicit characterisation, even self-characterisation and Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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occasional prolepses of the narrator. The reader is thus less surprised than Copperfield himself, when Steerforth destroys the happiness of the Peggotty family and his own because he seduces little Emily. Let us consider each aspect of characterisation in turn. Steerforth’s actions characterise him implicitly and, despite Copperfield’s positive assessment of them, often reveal a proud, selfish and, though charming when he feels so inclined, cruel character. He disfigures his play-mate Rosa in a fit of temper. He causes Mr Mell to be dismissed from his teaching post. He introduces Copperfield to heavy drinking. When the boy Traddles is beaten because Steerforth laughs in church, Steerforth does not step forward to help him. Traddles is, in fact, far less taken in by Steerforth’s charms than Copperfield is. He recognises and condemns Steerforth’s haughty pride in his behaviour to Mr Mell and accordingly, Steerforth hardly acknowledges him as a former school fellow. Agnes, also, is not deceived by Steerforth’s glamour and warns Copperfield of his influence. Both implicit characterisation and explicit characterisation through other characters encourage the reader to form an opinion of Steerforth which is different from that of the narrator’s explicit praise. This is supported by occasional prolepses, when the narrator uses his knowledge of later events to indicate that what the young Copperfield (as experiencing I) takes as genuine virtue is in fact only a passing entertainment for Steerforth, a game to test the powers of his charm and to see innocence gaining experience. Steerforth himself recognises the flaws in his character when he momentarily laments the lack of a strong father’s guidance in a very brief and almost accidental self-characterisation. To a large extent, Copperfield’s view of Steerforth thus serves less to characterise Steerforth but to implicitly characterise Copperfield himself in his youthful misapprehensions. But it would be a mistake to reduce Steerforth to this function. His is the story of superior talent and resources which are not utilized to any beneficial purpose and which are eventually turned to ill usage. Though the seduction of Emily is condemned by everyone, even Copperfield, his character remains ambivalent; the tension that was created by the different modes of characterisation does not simply dissolve when Copperfield recognises the base aspects of Steerforth’s nature. The contradictory responses his character inspires are epitomised in Rosa Dartle’s passionate love-hate of him and his mother. And eventually his almost heroic death in the storm, he is waving his cap to the helpless onlookers before the ship goes down, and the boylike posture of his drowned body, “lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school” (ch. 55), recall Steerforth’s charms: fearless, dare-devil, trusting in the benevolence of others. He elicits grand responses in others, nowhere more so than when Ham, Emily’s wronged fiancé, risks his life in the desperate attempt to save Steerforth from the foundering boat and goes to death with him.

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2.5. Narrators and Narrative Situation While other categories of analysis, such as characterisation, plot or space are useful both for the analysis of narrative and drama, the category of narrator is unique to the more diegetic genres (narrative prose and narrative poetry). Two aspects are considered: narrative voice (who speaks?) and focalisation (who sees?). These two aspects together are also called narrative situation. Some critics also talk about narrative perspective or point of view in this context, though these terms do not always distinguish clearly between narrative voice and focalisation.

2.5.1. Narrative Voices Narrative situation is an aspect of discourse, which means that it is part of the analysis that examines HOW a narrative is told. It is characteristic of narrative prose (and narrative poetry) that it is always told by someone, i.e. it is always mediated in some way through a ‘voice’. This is not the case in drama or film, where the characters generally speak directly. When one examines narrative voice, one basically wants to know who speaks, or more precisely, who tells the story. The question ‘who speaks’ is asked of the narrative as a whole. This narrator can, of course, report on other characters’ conversation. This does not change the narrative situation; it is still the narrator who speaks. The first distinction that is made, following Genette (1980), is between a narrator who is also a character in the story – a homodiegetic narrator, and a narrator who is NOT a character in the story but in a way hovers above it and knows everything about it – a heterodiegetic narrator. If the homodiegetic narrator is also the protagonist of the narrative, it is an autodiegetic narrator. Franz Stanzel’s distinction between first-person narrative situation and authorial narrative situation roughly corresponds with Genette’s terms homodiegetic/heterodiegetic (see Stanzel 1984; Stanzel introduces a third type of narrative situation about which see below: figural narrative situation). Note by the way that the narrator is NOT the same as the author. Narrators can have opinions that are not the author’s. This is especially obvious in the case of homodiegetic narrators; a male author can create a female narrator without necessarily putting his own gender up for question and one author can create different narrators in different books without having to be suspected of a split personality. The necessary separation between author and narrator also holds for heterodiegetic narrators, of course. Even in autobiographical texts the distinction between author and narrator is useful, since the narrating I is always partly a construction and thus not identical with the author. The communication situation in prose texts thus comprises three levels: A character addresses another character in the narrative; this is narrated by a narrator who sometimes addresses and imaginary or actual “dear reader” or listener in the narrative, the narratee; the text has been composed by a real author and is read by an actual reader. Authors and readers are frequently embedded in different historical and cultural contexts.

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Key terms: • homodiegetic narrator • heterodiegetic narrator • autodiegetic narrator • I-as-witness • first person narrative situation • authorial narrative situation • narratee • communication situation in prose narrative • overt narrator • covert narrator

NARRATIVE TEXT

STORY-WORLD author

narrator

character who speaks

character who listens

actual reader

narratee

Code/Message

Compare the types of narrators in the following two examples: […] my Mother was convicted of Felony […] and being found quick with Child, she was respited for about seven Months, in which time having brought me into the World, […] she […] obtain’d the Favour of being Transported to the Plantations, and left me about Half a Year old; and in bad Hands you may be sure. This is too near the first Hours of my Life for me to relate any thing of myself, but by hear say; ‘tis enough to mention, that as I was born in such an unhappy Place [Newgate prison], I had no Parish to have Recourse to for my Nourishment in my Infancy, nor can I give the least Account how I was kept alive, other, than that as I have been told, some Relation of my Mothers took me away for a while as a Nurse, but at whose Expence or by whose Direction I know nothing at all of it. (Defoe, Moll Flanders) In the Second Year of his Retirement, the Marchioness brought him a Daughter, and died in Three Days after her Delivery. The Marquis […] was extremely afflicted at her Death; but Time having produced its usual Effects, his great fondness for the little Arabella intirely engrossed his Attention and made up all the Happiness of his Life. […] Nature had indeed given her a most charming Face, a Shape easy and delicate, a sweet and insinuating Voice, and an Air so full of Dignity and Grace, as drew the Admiration of all that saw her. […] From her earliest Youth she had discovered a Fondness for Reading, which extremely delighted the Marquis; he permitted her therefore the Use of his Library, in which, unfortunately for her, were great Stores of Romances; […]. (Lennox, Female Quixote, Bk. I, ch. 1)

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In both cases we are told about the birth and childhood of a little girl and in both cases indications are given that there are certain defects in the girl’s upbringing. Nonetheless, the scope of the information we receive is quite different. Moll Flanders is a homodiegetic-autodiegetic narrator. She is herself the main character in the story she tells and there is a lot she does not know about herself as a very small child or can only relate from hearsay. In contrast, a well-informed heterodiegetic narrator is able to give us information of considerable detail about Arabella. On the other hand, we gain a personal impression of Moll’s character because we hear her own voice. In comparison, the report about Arabella is much more distanced. One makes a further distinction between an overt and a covert narrator. In an overt narrator seems to have a distinct personality, someone who makes his or her opinions known, who makes explicit judgments or implicit evaluations for instance when the narrator comment is ironic. In the quotation from The Female Quixote we notice for example that the narrator does not approve of romances as reading material (“unfortunately for her”, for evaluative use of language see narrative modes: narrator comment). A covert narrator, on the other hand, is hardly noticeable. Compare the following extract from Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro ‘The marvellous thing is that it’s painless,’ he said. ‘That’s how you know when it starts.’ ‘Is it really?’ ‘Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odour though. That must bother you.’ ‘Don’t! Please don’t.’ Look at them,’ he said. ‘Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?’ There is quite obviously a (heterodiegetic) narrator here, someone who tells us who is speaking (“he said”). But we learn nothing about the narrator’s own position, we do not get an impression of him as a person: It is a covert narrator who concentrates on showing rather than telling.

2.5.2. Focalisation The narrator is the agency that transmits the events and existents of the narrative verbally. The narrator can recount events from a position outside the story, adopting the omniscient point of view of someone who, for some reason, knows everything about the story. However, it is also possible for the narrator to adopt the limited point of view of one character in the story and in consequence to remain ignorant of what happens outside this character’s range of perception. This choice of perspective is independent of the question whether or not the narrator is a character in the story (as will become clear below). To express the distinction between narrative voice (who speaks?) and perspective (who sees or perceives?), Genette has introduced the term focalisation (Genette 1980: 189-194) in order to avoid confusion with earlier usages of the terms ‘point of view’ or ‘perspective’ which is often used to denote narrative voice as well. Genette’s terms have been modified by Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan whose definitions are presented here.

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Key terms: • focalisation • external focaliser • narrator focaliser • internal focaliser • character-focaliser • figural narrative situation • narrating I • experiencing I • unreliable narrator

An external focaliser is a focaliser who is external to the story (Rimmon-Kennan 1983: 74) and who is thus often called narrator-focaliser because the focus of perception seems to be that of the narrator. An internal focaliser is a, usually limited, focus of perception of a character in the story, and thus also called character-focaliser. The distinction is best illustrated by comparing it to the change in camera perspective in the following pictures from the BBC film version of Oliver Twist (1982).

At first the camera presents an overall perspective, a point of view that hovers above the scene and the audience is able to see the entire scene all at once. Then the perspective changes and the camera reproduces Oliver’s perceptions, the quick passing of surroundings as he is running, even the loss of consciousness when he is knocked out and the screen momentarily goes black. As the camera changes perspective the audience adopts Oliver’s point of view and sees and experiences events as he sees and experiences them; Oliver becomes the focaliser. The camera leaves Oliver’s point of view (and adopts the point of view of one of the by-standers) in the last picture. A similar effect can be achieved in a verbal narrative. Consider this extract: […] what a variety of smells interwoven in subtlest combination thrilled his nostrils; strong smells of earth, sweet smells of flowers; nameless smells of leaf and bramble; sour smells as they crossed the road; pungent smells as they entered bean-fields. But suddenly down the wind came tearing a smell sharper, stronger, more lacerating than any – a smell that ripped across his brain stirring a thousand instincts, releasing a million memories – the smell of hare, the smell of fox. Off he flashed like a fish drawn in a rush through water further and further. […] And once at least the call was even more imperious; the hunting horn roused deeper instincts, summoned wilder and stronger emotions that transcended memory and obliterated grass, trees, hare, rabbit, fox in one wild shout of ecstasy. Love blazed her torch in his eyes; he heard the hunting horn of Venus. Before he was well out of his puppyhood, Flush was a father. This excerpt is from Virginia Woolf’s novel Flush (ch. 1). The paragraph begins with someone smelling different smells and it seems these smells are perceived of as attractive. In the last sentence it becomes clear that this someone is in fact a young dog; he is the focus of perception, the focaliser. We hear about the smells, the attractions of fox and hare, the flash of passion from the dog’s point of view, as one might imagine a dog to experience these things. Obviously, it is not the dog who speaks here. It is a heterodiegetic narrator who tries to reproduce the dog’s impressions in an internal focalisation. In the terminology introduced by Stanzel, this combination is called figural narrative

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situation. Careful: It is not possible to have a ‘figural narrator’ because in this narrative situation a narrator who is not the character continues to speak! Focalisation does not have to stay the same throughout a narrative. A change in focaliser often introduces another point of view and thus variety into a narrative. Woolf’s narrative of Flush’s first amorous adventure for instance continues thus: Such conduct in a man even, in the year 1842, would have called for some excuse from a biographer; in a woman no excuse could have availed; […] But the moral code of dogs, whether better or worse, is certainly different from ours, and there was nothing in Flush’s conduct in this respect that requires a veil now, or unfitted him for the society of the purest and the chastest in the land then. This is a narrator comment (see ch. 2.6.4.) and the narrator is obviously not a dog but a human being (“the moral code of dogs […] is […] different from ours”). This represents a combination of heterodiegetic narrator and external focalisation. Internal focalisation can be more obvious still when the language abilities and mind style of the focaliser are realistically reproduced. This is a little difficult in the case of a dog but it becomes quite possible for instance in the case of children as focalisers. A famous example is the beginning of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. . . . His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass; he had a hairy face. […] When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell. His mother had a nicer smell than his father. (ch. 1.) It is quite possible to imagine that this is the perception of a little boy as he might express it to himself: The syntax is very simple, he does not seem to know the word ‘glasses’ so the expression “through a glass” is used. It is certainly from the little boy’s point of view that we hear about the various smells, the story, the bed-wetting. Notice however, that even though the language of a child is here reproduced, the little boy himself is not the narrator (‘who speaks?’). It is again a heterodiegetic narrator and an internal focaliser. The difference to an external focaliser becomes very clear when one compares Anthony Burgess’s rewriting of the passage at the beginning of Joyce’s Portrait as a piece with a homodiegetic narrator and external focaliser; the older protagonist looks back as narrating I, the consciousness and knowledge of the first person speaker at the time of narration. The narrating I in this case has achieved a noticeable distance to the immature consciousness of the experiencing I, the baby: My earliest recollections are of my father and my mother bending over my cot and of the difference in personal odour that subsisted between my two parents. My father, certainly, did not have so pleasant an odour as my mother. I remember I would be told infantile stories, altogether Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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appropriate to my infantile station. One of them, I seem to recall, was concerned with a cow coming down the lane – which lane was never specified – and meeting a child who was called (I am embarrassed, inevitably, to recollect this in maturity) some such name as Baby Tuckoo. I myself, apparently, was to be thought of as Baby Tuckoo. Or was it Cuckoo? It is, of course, so long ago [...] (Burgess 1973: 15) Even though there is now a homodiegetic narrator, as a result of the external focalisation Burgess’s version is noticeably removed from the child’s perceptions at the time, and so of course is his linguistic ability.

2.5.3. Unreliable Narrators Not all narrators are equally reliable, that is to say the reader is sometimes led to distrust what a narrator says (see Nünning 1998, also Reliability in Characterisation). There are various reasons for such distrust. Some narrators tell deliberate lies or omit crucial information. In Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for instance, the homodiegetic narrator simply omits to mention how he himself commits the murder until the end of the book. Of course in this case, the reader does not realise that this narrator is unreliable until the very end. In other cases the narrator simply does not know enough to give an accurate account of what actually happened. A classic example is Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier which is full of uncertainties and contradictions, simply because the narrator never fully understands what is happening. He tries to piece together various bits of information he receives and indulges in a number of speculations, but he is never quite certain. This makes the information the reader receives (seem) unreliable. SO WHAT? There is no limited set of functions that can be assigned to each Type of narrator or focaliser, but an examination of narrative voice and focalisation helps to explain how a certain atmosphere is created and how reader sympathy is directed, since the information given by the narrator is the reader’s (only) access to the fictional world that is presented. Especially internal focalisation helps the readers to empathise with the character-focaliser. Consider the following example: Saki’s short story Sredni Vashtar is told with Conradin, a ten-year-old boy with a rampant imagination, as focaliser. Conradin lives with an older relative whom he hates. In a tool-shed in the garden Conradin secretly keeps a large polecat-ferret. Over time he elevates this polecat into a god, Sredni Vashtar, who has to be served with complicated rites involving flowers, berries and stolen nutmeg powder. Conradin’s constant prayer is ‘Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar’, though the reader is never explicitly told what that is. One day his relative decides to investigate the garden shed because she suspects Conradin of keeping illegal pleasures in there. Conradin watches her from the dining-room window: Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, […]. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on the swinging door. […] And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. […] And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of who those bore a heavy burden into the house. The reader never leaves Conradin’s viewpoint. We are not told what actually happens in the garden-shed. With Conradin, we draw certain conclusions and we share first Conradin’s despair and later his satisfaction at an event that causes shock and grief to other members of the household. This is achieved because Conradin remains the focaliser throughout; the focalisation aligns reader sympathy with Conradin. If the story had been told with the relative as focaliser, it would have been the story of a woman who tends a sick, difficult child and who meets a tragic end being attacked by a vicious pole-cat. The story, as focalised by her, would have to end, of course, with the moment of her death. Our emotional response to the story would almost certainly have been different than it is when we empathise with Conradin. An entirely different effect is achieved in William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair when Amelia’s farewell from her friends at school is described: For three days […] little Laura Martin, the orphan, followed her about, like a little dog. She had to make and receive at least fourteen presents – to make fourteen solemn promises of writing every week: […] Laura Martin […] took her friend’s hand and said, looking up in her face wistfully, ”Amelia, when I write to you I shall call you Mamma.” All which details, I have no doubt, Jones, who reads this book at his Club, will pronounce to be excessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultrasentimental. (Thackeray, Vanity Fair, ch. 1) The sentimental potential of this scene of tearful leave-taking is deliberately floated by the narrator’s comments. The narrator interrupts the scene itself and remarks on the possible criticism it might incur from one type of reader. With this he forces the (actual) reader to consider the leave-taking scene from a distance, what is more, from the distance of slightly ironic criticism. Thus any empathy with Amelia is undermined through the heterodiegetic narrator and an external focalisation.

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2.6. Narrative Modes Closely related to questions of narrative voice and focalisation is the issue of narrative modes. Narrative modes are the kinds of utterance through which a narrative is conveyed (see Bonheim 1982). Clearly, these are questions relating to aspects of discourse. The distinction between narrative modes is as old as literary theory itself; Plato distinguishes between two main types: mimesis (the direct presentation of speech and action) and diegesis (the verbal representation of events). The distinction was taken up by Aristotle and can – much later – still be found in Henry James’ distinction between showing and telling. mimesis

showing

diegesis

telling

direct presentation mediated presentation

The most mimetic literary genre is drama (and film), which consists mainly of direct presentation of speech and action, i.e. the audience actually watches people speak and act. In narrative prose (and poetry) one is necessarily limited to verbal representation. Nonetheless, even in narrative prose and poetry degrees of mimesis and diegesis can be differentiated into four main narrative modes (following Bonheim 1982): speech report (of action) description comment

mimetic diegetic

Apart from these four narrative modes, there are possibly non-narrative elements in any given narrative which are not strictly speaking part of the narrative itself: such as for instance an interpolated song, poem (for instance in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or in A.S. Byatt’s Possession), essay (discussions of the techniques of writing a novel for instance in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones), or chapter mottoes (as in George Eliot’s Middlemarch). Sometimes these elements give a clue to the narrative’s meaning, but sometimes they are simply decorations or digressions and not an integral part of the story itself.

2.6.1. Speech Direct speech is the most mimetic narrative mode, since it gives an almost complete illusion of direct, i.e. unmediated, representation. ‘Have the police done anything Godfrey?’ ‘Nothing whatever.’ ‘It is certain, I suppose, that the three men who laid the trap for you were the same three men who afterwards laid the trap for Mr. Luker?’ ‘Humanly speaking, my dear Rachel, there can be no doubt of it.’ ‘And not a trace of them has been discovered? Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • narrative modes • mimesis • diegesis • showing • telling • direct speech • indirect (reported) speech • report • description of place • description of time • description of character • comment

‘Not a trace.’ (Collins, Moonstone, Second Period, First Narrative, ch. 2) In this excerpt only the quotation marks and the fact that the speakers address each other by name indicate that different people are speaking. Sometimes direct speech is introduced by a reporting phrase, so-called inquit formulas (‘She said’, ‘The hoarse voice answered’, etc.). Direct speech itself is nowadays usually indicated by quotation marks or other forms of punctuation (sometimes by a dash, sometimes merely by the beginning of a new paragraph). Direct speech tends to use present tense as its main tense and uses the first person when the speaker refers to him- or herself, the second person when other participants of the conversation are addressed. The use of sociolect or dialect also serves to indicate spoken language (see also Representation of Consciousness: thought as silent speech, ch. 2.7.). The element of mediation is more noticeable when speech or thought is rendered indirectly in indirect (or reported) speech. Original utterance: She said: “I am tired, I am going to bed.” Indirect speech: She said she was tired and was going to bed. Indirect speech also uses inquit formulas but no quotation marks. The tense of the original utterance is changed from present into past, from past into past perfect and references to the first person are rendered in the third person. All this can be looked up in any ordinary grammar book. The effect of indirect speech can easily be perceived as somewhat monotonous and certainly it creates a distance between the utterance and the reader’s perception of it; it is less immediate than direct speech. In the following example we focus less on the young son’s speech than on Moll’s, i.e. the homodiegetic narrator’s, rendering of it. After some time, the young Gentleman took an Opportunity to tell me that the Kindness he had for me, had got vent in the Family; he did not Charge me with it, he said, for he knew well enough which way it came out; he told me his plain way of Talking had been the Occasion of it, for that he did not make his respect for me so much a Secret as he might have done, and the Reason was that he was at a Point; that if I would consent to have him, he would tell them all openly that he lov’d me, and that he intended to Marry me. (Defoe, Moll Flanders) But indirect speech does not inevitably create monotony. In the following excerpt Charles Dickens uses indirect speech to vary and enliven the narrator’s (heterodiegetic) report when he reproduces Jo the streetsweeps’s (ungrammatical) way of speaking when Jo is asked to give evidence at an inquest: Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don’t know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don’t know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for him. He don’t find fault with it. Spell it? No. He can’t spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to school. What’s home? Knows a broom’s a broom, and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie. Don’t recollect who told him about the broom, or about the lie, but knows both. Can’t exactly say Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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what’ll be done to him arter he’s dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it’ll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right – and so he’ll tell the truth. (Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 9) This passage displays many of the characteristics of direct speech, except the use of the first person pronoun. Thus it technically remains the narrator’s voice who speaks about Jo even though he adopts Jo’s syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation.

2.6.2. Report Report is the mode that informs the reader about events and actions in the story. Dick Boulton came from the Indian camp to cut up logs for Nick’s father. He brought his son Eddy and another Indian named Billy Tabeshaw with him. They came in through the back gate out of the woods, Eddy carrying the long cross-cut saw. (Hemingway, The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife) Report can be identified mainly through its use of action verbs (come, bring, carry in the example above). In practice it is often difficult to clearly separate between report and description. Also, it is very rare that a narrative presents an absolutely neutral report. Reports are frequently mingled with narrator comment.

2.6.3. Description Description is a narrative mode that represents objects in space, that is to say existents of the story, things that can be seen, heard or felt in some way. Traditional rhetoric distinguishes between 1. the description of place, 2. the description of time, 3. the description of character. Examples: Description of place: On one side of this broad curve in the straight seaboard of the Republic of Costaguana, the last spur of the coast range forms an insignificant cape whose name is Punta Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point of the land itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of a steep hill at the back can be made out faintly like a shadow on the sky. (Conrad, Nostromo, ch. 1), Description of time: Five o’clock had hardly struck on the morning of the nineteenth of January [...]. (Brontë, Jane Eyre, ch. 5)

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Description of character: One of these boxes was occupied [...] by a stern-eyed man of about five-and-forty, who had a bald and glossy forehead, with a good deal of black hair at the sides and back of his head, and large black whiskers. He was buttoned up to the chin in a brown coat; and had a large sealskin travelling cap, and a great-coat and cloak lying on the seat beside him. (Dickens, Pickwick Papers, ch. 35) Obviously, these elements are normally combined: I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude [...] have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism. It was in some such spirit, with an added touch of selfconsciousness, that, at seven o’clock in the evening of 23rd September in a recent year [description of time], I was making my evening toilet in my chambers in Pall Mall [description of place]. I thought the date and the place justified the parallel, [...] I – well, a young man of condition and fashion, who knows the right people, belongs to the right clubs, has a safe, possibly brilliant future in the Foreign Office – may be excused for a sense of complacent martyrdom, when, with his keen appreciation of the social calendar, he is doomed to the outer solitude of London in September [description of person]. (Childers, The Riddle in the Sands, ch. 1)

2.6.4. Comment In the narrative mode of comment one notices the mediator (i.e. the narrator) most. In this mode we find evaluations of the story’s events and characters, general observations or judgements. Such evaluations can be quite explicit: In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public opinion in Frick was against them; for the human mind in that grassy corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it. (Eliot, Middlemarch, ch. 56) But evaluations can also be made less explicitly. The choice of pejorative diction, a hint of irony or the use of modifiers (such as ‘unfortunately’) also work as comment. In the following example the narrator of a Dickens novel manages to present Sir Leicester Dedlock as a rather ridiculous man, mainly through irony when describing Sir Leicester’s estimate of his own value, which is completely out of proportion, and the mixture of negative and positive characteristics which the narrator gives without any attempt at reconciliation: Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on without hills, but would be done up without Dedlocks. [...] He is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness, and ready, on the Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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shortest notice, to die any death you may please to mention rather than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man. (Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 2)

2.6.5. Mixed Narrative Modes In practice, narrative modes are mixed: Cedric crossed the threshold into the room [report of action]. It was a very large and splendid room, with massive carven furniture in it, and shelves upon shelves of books [description]; [...] On the floor, by the armchair, lay a dog, a huge tawny mastiff with body and limbs almost as big as a lion’s [description]; and this great creature rose majestically and slowly, and marched towards the little fellow, with a heavy step [report with comment, ‘majestically’, ‘little fellow’]. Then the person in the chair spoke [report and inquit formula]. ‘Dougal,’ he called, ‘come back, sir.’ [direct speech and inquit formula]. But there was no more fear in little Lord Fauntleroy’s heart than there was unkindness – he had been a brave little fellow all his life [report with comment]. (Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy, ch. 5)

2.6.6. Historical Change in Narrative Modes Preferences for certain narrative modes change over time. Twentieth-century narratives for instance tend to use less comment, especially moral judgements that claim general validity of the kind so frequently found in earlier narratives. Modern narratives also favour the use of direct speech or direct representation of consciousness . Generally, the tendency since the late nineteenth century, especially since Henry James’ emphatic advocacy of the ‘showing’ mode, has been towards those modes that create the illusion of mimesis and disguise the voice of the narrator. This does not mean that one type of mode is better and that another is worse. It does indicate that readers have, at different times, different tastes and possibly different expectations and reading habits. A comparison of narrative modes can thus be fruitful when comparing narratives which were written at different times. It is also advisable to bear in mind the changing preferences for different modes when examining narratives from times other than our own. SO WHAT? Another use of narrative modes (and consequently one possibly profitable aspect for analysis) is the different effect which the employment of various modes can have on the reader. By way of example consider the following excerpts from The Moonstone. In different modes and from changing perspectives the reader is both told and shown something about the characters: I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as Robinson Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years – generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco – and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad – Robinson Crusoe. When I want advice – Robinson Crusoe. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much – Robinson Crusoe. (Collins, The Moonstone, First Period, ch. 1) In this excerpt Gabriel Betteredge, as homodiegetic narrator, gives a description of his relation to the book Robinson Crusoe and he reports his past and present habit of turning to that book for comfort and advice in times of trouble. While he comments explicitly on the excellence of the novel, the reader is shown a character who may be described as slightly simple in his unlimited trust in Robinson Crusoe – not generally recognised as source of advice and consolation in all kinds of difficulties – but also as rather charming in his eccentricity. The narrator’s direct address to the reader (”You are not to take it […]”) establishes a sort of confidential intimacy between the reader and Betteredge which is flattering. Readers of course feel themselves slightly superior because they have a wider scope of advice books, but Betteredge’s confidences make him appear rather endearing. Later in the story Betteredge recommends the powers of Robinson Crusoe to the doctor’s assistant, Ezra Jennings. Jennings reports the occasion and his own reactions: To my great surprise Betteredge laid his hand confidentially on my arm, and put this extraordinary question to me: ‘Mr. Jennings, do you happen to be acquainted with Robinson Crusoe?’ I answered that I had read Robinson Crusoe when I was a child. ‘Not since then?’ inquired Betteredge. ‘Not since then.’ He fell back a few steps, and looked at me with an expression of compassionate curiosity, tempered by superstitious awe. [...] ‘Sir,’ he said gravely, ‘there are great allowances to be made for a man who has not read Robinson Crusoe since he was a child. I wish you good morning.’ (Collins, The Moonstone, Second Period, Fourth Narrative) In this excerpt we see a demonstration of Betteredge’s reliance on Robinson Crusoe, this time given in mostly direct speech intermingled with some reported speech and narrator comment (the homodiegetic narrator is now Ezra Jennings). The narrator comment clearly directs the reader to consider Betteredge’s reliance on Robinson Crusoe not as an endearing eccentricity but as very peculiar indeed and not in line with a sensible approach to life (”extraordinary question”, ”superstitious awe”). Depending on how thoroughly readers empathised with Betteredge in the first section of the book, they will resent Jennings’ arrogance and despise him as an unimaginative fellow or they will agree with Jennings’ assessment and distance themselves from Betteredge.

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2.7. Representation of Consciousness Rather more intricate than representations of speech in direct or indirect mode are representations of thought, which can be conceptualised as a kind of silent speech or inner speech (see Bonheim 1982: 53). Obviously, it is possible simply to represent thought, just like speech, using direct or indirect discourse: “What horrible weather they have here,” he thought. (direct discourse) He thought that the weather in these parts was really horrible. (indirect discourse) But there are other ways of representing thought or consciousness. The advantage that narrative prose has over drama, for instance, is that it can tell the reader about a character’s mental processes and emotions without having that character burst into speech (as in a soliloquy in drama for instance). The reader is allowed to look into a character’s head, though of course in the narrative the character continues to act like most people do and keeps his thoughts to himself. It is worth noting that with the representation of a character’s consciousness in narrative prose a realistic effect is achieved – the reader feels he receives firsthand and inside knowledge of the character – through really rather unrealistic means which has nonetheless become a convention. In reality, of course, we cannot look into other people’s heads; the only thought processes we will ever get to know intimately are our own (Käte Hamburger, 1973, points this out, see also Cohn 1978: 7f). Three major methods of thought representation have been identified, depending on the level of noticeable narrator interference (taking up Cohn’s distinctions): • • •

interior monologue psychonarration narrated monologue or free indirect discourse

2.7.1. Interior Monologue Interior monologue is the direct presentation of thought as in direct speech. One does not speak of a monologue unless the utterance has a certain length. Interior monologue is thus a longish passage of uninterrupted thought. Consider an excerpt from Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The situation is as follows: The spaceship is being attacked by two missiles. Only at the last moment does Arthur turn on the Improbability Drive and the two missiles are turned into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias. The passage describes the thoughts of the sperm whale who has suddenly come into existence in free space and is trying to come to terms with his identity: Er, excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of ... yawning, tingling sensation in my ... my ... well I Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • interior monologue • stream of consciousness • psychonarration • narrated monologue / free indirect discourse

suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway [...] so let’s call it my stomach. And hey, what about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do [...] Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet? No. Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, [...] Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ... ow ... ound ... round ... ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me? And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence. (ch. 18) Apart from the last sentence, which is clearly a remark by a heterodiegetic narrator, this passage attempts to recreate what passes through the whale’s consciousness apparently without any interference from an agency that tries to put it into well-turned English. The thoughts are presented in the first person, several thoughts run into each other as perceptions of different things crowd into the whale’s consciousness, syntax and punctuation are not those of conventional written language, but try to imitate spoken (or thought) language. This technique of presentation is now most commonly called interior monologue and it is intended to present a character’s thoughts directly, imitating as much as possible the way this character might ‘actually’ have thought his thoughts. One of the most famous examples for interior monologue, cited again and again, is James Joyce’s last chapter in Ulysses (1922). Page after page this section presents Molly Bloom’s consciousness to the reader entirely in interior monologue: [...] if his nose bleeds youd thing it was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying on account of her to never see thy face again though he looked more like a man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father was the same besides I hate bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor paring his corns afraid hed get blood poisoning [...]. (Joyce, Ulysses, ‘Penelope’) Here, in contrast to the sperm whale’s last thoughts, there is no punctuation and the current of thought is depicted as associative rather than strictly logical and coherent. The notion that one’s thoughts are not in fact orderly and wellformulated but more of a jumbled-up sequence of associations gained currency with a concept developed in psychology, called stream of consciousness. This term was coined by William James, the brother of the novelist Henry James (see James 1892). It is important to note, however, that for William James the stream of consciousness was not necessarily verbal but also included other sensual perceptions, especially visual representations. Interior monologue is one narrative technique – necessarily limited to verbal representation – that Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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tries to reproduce non-orderly and associative patterns of thought. It is also possible to reproduce the stream of consciousness in narrated monologue (see further down). The term stream of consciousness thus refers to the way cognitive processes take place, it is not itself a narrative technique. Unfortunately, many critics use the term to denote a narrative technique, which confuses the issue.

2.7.2. Psychonarration Obviously, interior monologue is a technique that puts a certain amount of strain on the reader. Thus, it is more common (outside avant-garde fiction) to learn about a character’s consciousness from the narrator, who takes it upon him- or herself to report the character’s thoughts to the reader. In the following passage our previous example of the whale has been rewritten as psychonarration: The little sperm whale, suddenly finding himself in existence and in a place that did not seem entirely congenial to his faculties, was trying very hard to determine his place in life and in the universe, as others under more favourable circumstances had done before him. With increasing urgency he faced questions of his own identity and his relation to his surroundings. Despite his mounting confusion he also felt a growing excitement welling up inside him and irrepressible joy when he thought about the things to come. All this was cut tragically short when he hit the ground with a wet thud and ceased to think or feel at all. In psychonarration the heterodiegetic narrator remains in the foreground throughout, even adds some general observations not originating in the character (“as others [...] had done before him”). While we certainly learn about the whale’s thoughts and feelings, we hear it entirely in the narrator’s voice, syntax and vocabulary. We do not hear the voice of the whale as in the rendering above in interior monologue (Compare the previous quotation). The difference in effect is quite marked, the reader remains much more distant from the character’s consciousness and the level of mediation continues to be noticeable in the foreground.

2.7.3. Narrated Monologue A third technique for the representation of consciousness is called narrated monologue or free indirect discourse. This represents, in a way, a mixture between psychonarration and interior monologue. In a narrated monologue the narrator often sets the scene but the character’s thoughts are reproduced ‘directly’ and in a way that one would imagine the character to think, though the narrator continues to talk of the character in the third person. The syntax becomes less formal (incomplete sentences, exclamations etc.) and the character’s mind style is reproduced more closely. We hear a ‘dual voice’ (see Pascal 1977), the voices of the narrator and the characters are momentarily merged. This can create an impression of immediacy but it can also be used to introduce an element of irony, when the reader realises that a character is Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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misguided without actually being told so by the narrator (see the examples in SO WHAT). For our example this technique might look something like this (only the first two sentences and the last sentence are direct quotations from Douglas Adams, the rest has been rewritten as narrated monologue): Against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet. And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale anymore. Why was he here? What was his purpose in life? The important thing now was to calm down ... oh! that was an interesting sensation, what was it? It was a sort of ... yawning, tingling sensation in his ... his ... well he supposed he’d better start finding names for things if he wanted to make any headway. Hey! What was that thing suddenly coming towards him so very very fast? Would it be friends with him? And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence. While the narrator resurfaces at the beginning and the end of this version, the voice of the whale becomes more dominant in the middle section which is given in narrated monologue (the relevant section is marked bold), though the narrator is still apparent in the use of the third person and past tense. A classic example for the frequent use of narrated monologue or free indirect discourse is Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. The following passage reproduces Clarissa Dalloway’s thoughts and perceptions, reproducing the associative connections of her stream of consciousness, as she is choosing flowers for her party: And as she began to go with Miss Pym from jar to jar, choosing, nonsense, nonsense, she said to herself, more and more gently, as if this beauty, this scent, this colour, and Miss Pym liking her, trusting her, were a wave which she let flow over her and surmount that hatred, that monster, surmount it all; and it lifted her up and up when – oh! A pistol shot in the street outside! (Woolf, Mrs Dalloway)

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2.7.4. Summary: Representation of Consciousness This table summarises various possibilities for the representation of thought or consciousness (adapted from Nünning 1996: 223) Term direct discourse / direct thought interior monologue, (direct thought in longer passages)

indirect discourse

German Term direkte Gedankenwiedergabe (analog zu direkter Rede) innerer Monolog

Formal Criteria quotation marks, inquit formulas (optional, dominating tense is present tense refers to the character in first person, uses narrative present, syntactical conventions and punctuation partly or completely dispensed with indirekte grammatical structures Gedankenwiedergabe of reported speech (analog zu indirekter Rede)

narrated erlebte Rede, freie narrator refers to the monologue / free indirekte character in third indirect discourse Gedankenwiedergabe person and narrative past, syntax less formal: uses exclamations, ellipses, etc.

psychonarration, Bewußtseinsbericht, narrative report of Gedankenbericht thought

narrator reports and refers to the character in third person, usually uses narrative past, syntax mostly complete and ordered, one hears the narrator’s voice

Effect mimetic reproduction of actual thought event high degree of immediacy, can reproduce character’s stream of consciousness

can create a feeling of distance, but need not, consciousness of character who gives the report interposed narrator reports character’s thoughts but using the character’s mind style: ‘dual voice’, can create immediacy but can also be used to create ironic distance, can reproduce character’s stream of consciousness usually summarises thought processes using the narrator’s and not the character’s syntax and diction; can create distance.

SO WHAT? In fact, it seems to make a fairly marked difference to our perception of a character whether we are told about their thought in psychonarration or, say, in narrated monologue. Consider an example from a nineteenth-century novel, George Eliot’s Middlemarch: One of Dorothea’s pet schemes is planning cottages for the improvement of the living conditions of the poor. To her great Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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disappointment, Mr Casaubon, the man she will marry, is not particularly interested in cottages. On one – only one – of her favourite themes she was disappointed. Mr Casaubon apparently did not care about building cottages, and diverted the talk to the extremely narrow accommodation which was to be had in the dwellings of the ancient Egyptians, as if to check a too high standard. After he was gone, Dorothea dwelt with some agitation on this indifference of his; and her mind was much exercised with arguments drawn from the varying conditions of climate which modify human needs, and from the admitted wickedness of pagan despots. Should she not urge these arguments on Mr Casaubon when he came again? But further reflection told her that she was presumptuous in demanding his attention to such a subject; […]. (Eliot, Middlemarch, ch. 3) We receive information about Dorothea’s mental agitation both in psychonarration and in narrated monologue. The effect of the different techniques is noteworthy. The reaction to Mr Casaubon is given entirely in the narrator’s voice and even though Dorothea is agitated, little attempt is made to transfer this agitation to the reader who, more than likely, is a little puzzled trying to reconstruct the somewhat complicated argument relating to climate and pagan despots. This distance between Dorothea’s feelings and the reader’s is decreased as the passage switches to narrated monologue. While the psychonarration summarises Dorothea’s agitation, the reader is now given an idea of Dorothea’s thoughts as they may have occurred in her mind (“Should she not urge these arguments on Mr Casaubon when he came again?”). But this glimpse of her thoughts is only momentary; the narrator returns to summary (“But further reflection ...”). With this change of technique the passage presents to the reader a movement which results in a little climax when Dorothea’s agitation is most immediately communicated in her excited question. But then, and parallel to Dorothea’s withdrawal into herself as she shrinks from an open discussion with Mr Casaubon, the narrator’s voice is dominant again and withdraws the reader from the closer intimacy with Dorothea’s consciousness. In this way, the reader is put through an emotional experience that in fact mirrors Dorothea’s relation to Mr Casaubon: a slight distance, at first encumbered by academic complications and the feeling that one does not quite understand what these arguments about climate and despots might be, then a brief moment of closeness as Dorothea’s excitement is communicated in the dual voice of character/narrator, which is immediately followed by renewed distance. Dorothea herself is drawn towards Mr Casaubon by an awe for his scholarly interests though she finds it slightly difficult to follow them. She goes through a brief period of fervent hope that she might share Casaubon’s scholarly elevation, only to find those hopes shattered immediately after her marriage when it becomes clear to her that she will be unable to traverse the emotional distance between herself and her husband. A rather different effect is achieved when the reader is given Dorothea’s reaction to Sir James, who is very much interested in cottages and also in marrying Dorothea, though she despises him a little and thinks of him only as a suitable husband for her sister.

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[Sir James] came much oftener than Mr Casaubon and Dorothea ceased to find him disagreeable […] Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good feminine direction, if they were fortunate in choosing their sisters-in-law! It is difficult to say whether there was or was not a little wilfulness in her continuing blind to the possibility that another sort of choice was in question in relation to her. (ibid.) Again there is a switch of technique, this time from narrated monologue (“Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas [...]”) to psychonarration (“It is difficult to say […]”), giving a more immediate idea of Dorothea’s actual thoughts. The excerpt concludes with a return to pure narrator comment (not psychonarration). The brief passage written as narrated monologue provides the reader with an insight into Dorothea’s character, her impulsive and sometimes rather obstinate disposition. From the reader’s point of view Dorothea imputes clearly too much influence to a sister-in-law and besides, sisters-in law are not normally chosen, they come as part of the package when the wife is chosen. Dorothea’s obstinate determination to see in Sir James’ attention none but those of a future brother puts an ironic distance between her and the reader, who knows that she is wrong and even obstinate before the narrator comment drives this point home.

2.8. Time There are two aspects of time that deserve particular attention in the analysis of narrative prose: the use of tense and the arrangement and presentation of time sequences in a narrative.

2.8.1. Tense in Narrative To start with tense: Probably most narratives are told in the past tense, the socalled narrative past as in this example: Sir Walter Elliot [...] was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one [...]. (Austen, Persuasion, ch. 1) The tense of a narrative is determined by the tense of the full verbs (in this example: took, found). Some narratives are written in the narrative present: The magazine is open on Barbara’s knee, but she does not look at it. She sits with her mouth open, her fur coat kept on, her face staring through the window. The train slides slowly down the platform at Watermouth. When it stops, she picks up her luggage and gets out. (Bradbury, History Man, ch. 12) The verbs that determine narrative tense here are: look, sit, slide, stop, pick up, get out. Very often, the use of the narrative present gives the reader an Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • narrative past • narrative present • tense switch • gnomic present

impression of immediacy, whereas the use of the narrative past has a more distancing effect. This becomes especially noticeable when there is a tense switch from narrative past to narrative present or back. (See the example under SO WHAT?). A tense switch can indicate a change in perspective or time level, as in the following example: She came out of the arbour almost as if to throw herself in my arms. I hasten to add that I escaped this ordeal and that she didn’t even shake hands with me. (James, Aspern Papers, ch. 5). Here the narrative of events in the narrative past is interrupted by a remark made by the narrator at the time of narration in the narrative present: (“I hasten to add […]”). Even though most narratives are told in the narrative past, they can also be interspersed by statements of general application in the present tense. This use of the present tense is called gnomic present. This gnomic present is grammatically speaking no different from the narrative present, but it does not represent a tense switch in the same sense. In narrative present the action of the narrative is given. By contrast, in gnomic present, generic statements are made that claim general validity (Chatman 1978: 82; Stanzel 1984: 108). In both cases it is the narrator who speaks. When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort. This may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth; and if such parties succeed, how should a Captain Wentworth and an Anne Elliot, with the advantage of maturity of mind, consciousness of right and one independent fortune between them, fail of bearing down every opposition? [...] Sir Walter made no objection, and Elizabeth did nothing worse than look cold and unconcerned. (Austen, Persuasion, ch. 24) Notice the change of tense from the general observation (“When any two young people take it into their heads [...]”) to narrative past in the specific case of the story (“Sir Walter made no objection [...]”). SO WHAT? Of the various possibilities for the use of tense, the effects of tense switch are maybe the most interesting. Consider the following excerpt from Peter Ackroyd, First Light. “Where’s Jude?” he asked, putting down New Archaeology with a sigh. Jude was the name of their small wirehaired terrier. “He’s asleep in your study. But what do you think?” Kathleen took the article from him, and eagerly looked at it. “What do you think of the theory?” She seemed to lose herself in these vistas of the remote past, as if somehow they could mitigate the life through which she moved every day. [...]

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Another Time. In another time. She is a child, a crippled child. She is standing on the shore near Lyme, looking out to sea. Her parents are sitting in a beach-hut behind her, eating their sandwiches, and she turns around to make sure that they are still there. That they have not abandoned her. And then she looks back out to sea, the light from the waves playing upon her face. It is impossible to know what she is thinking. In fact she is thinking of nothing. Kathleen has merged with the sea. (end of ch. 7 and beginning of ch. 8) Here we are confronted first with a section of narrative action told in the narrative past, giving a glimpse of Kathleen and her husband Mark starting a discussion on an archaeological theory. Kathleen, so the narrator tells us, has a tendency to lose herself in the past. A little further on we come upon Kathleen’s memory of her own past, now told in free indirect discourse and in the narrative present. This tense switch gives the reader a perfect demonstration of Kathleen’s inclination to feel the past as more real than the present. Memories of things gone are more immediate, more present to Kathleen – and by means of the tense switch also to the reader – than her present life with her husband, which is told in the narrative past.

2.8.2. Time Analysis The analysis of the use of time in a narrative centres around three aspects: order, duration and frequency (Genette 1980: chs 1-3, good summary in Jahn 2002: N5.2). One analyses the relation of story-time to discourse-time from these three angles. To recall, a narrative can be divided into elements of story, relating to questions of WHAT happens, and elements of discourse, relating to questions of HOW it is told (see ch. 2.1.). Story-time is the sequence of events and the length of time that passes in the story. Discourse-time, on the other hand, covers the length of time that is taken up by the telling (or reading) of the story and the sequence of events as they are presented in discourse. 2.8.2.1. Duration No narrative retells absolutely everything that presumably ‘happened’ in a story; those events that are considered most important will normally be told in some detail, others will be left out or summarised. This discrepancy between the events of the (assumed) story and the events as rendered by the narrative’s discourse is the focus of attention when one considers the aspect of duration. In the case of a story about a man and his life which lasts 80 years, the duration of story-time would be 80 years. Story-time could also be just one hour, if the story happens to be about a woman who is waiting for a train for an hour and who makes an important discovery in this hour which changes her life. The duration of discourse-time in the case of the man’s 80 years of life is likely (or so one hopes) to be shorter than the 80 years of story-time. In the case of the woman waiting for a train it might easily be longer than one hour, if say, the woman remembers a lot about her past life which takes longer than an hour to narrate. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • story-time • discourse-time

Key terms: • duration • scene • summary / speed-up • stretch • ellipsis • pause

There are five possible relations between story-time and discourse-time: scene, summary, stretch, ellipsis and pause. All these influence the reader’s perception of the speed of a narrative. Notably, many stretches and pauses slow things down considerably, scene and ellipsis give the impression of things happening quickly. Term scene/real-time

Definition story time and discourse time are equal (this is usually the case in dialogue)

summary/speed-up

story-time is longer So they lived contentedly the next 20 years. than discourse time discourse time exceeds She suddenly realised how very much alone story time she was with her favourable opinion of the young visitor and how much opposition she would have to content with later from her querulous aunt. All this took no more than a split second and there was no hesitation in her movement as she came forward to welcome him.

stretch/slow-down

Example -When did you last see her? -On the bridge. -Alone? -No, with a man.

ellipsis

discourse-time skips to a later part in story time

Ten years later we meet the little girl again, now grown into a handsome woman.

pause

story-time comes to a standstill while discourse time continues

This usually involves a description or narrator comment: Cecilia entered the library with a heavy heart. But before we follow her and enter upon the events which were to follow, let us consider her position in life. Cecilia had grown up an orphan under the care of a retiring uncle very much preoccupied with his studies. As soon as she was able to deal with them, the cares of the household had fallen to her and had curtailed the freedoms of her childhood. This information imparted to the interested reader, let us return to Cecilia on the threshold of the library.

2.8.2.2. Order Events in an assumed story take place in a certain order, for instance a child is born, grows up, marries, leads a contented life, dies. This order of events might be abbreviated as ABCDE. A narrative can tell about these events chronologically in the order in which they occurred: ABCDE. But it could just as well start with the character’s death, then recall the birth, childhood, marriage, married life. The order of discourse would then look like this: EABCD. Discourse could deviate Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • order • chronological • anachronological • flashforward / prolepsis • flashback / analepsis

from chronology more radically and present events in orders such as CABED or ACDEB and so on. In such cases events are not told in chronological order, they are anachronological. When the chronological order of events is changed in discourse, certain techniques are employed to reveal the whole story nonetheless. The most common of these techniques are flashforward (prolepsis) and flashback (analepsis). In a discourse order of BCDAE the section ‘A’ (the birth in our example) would represent a flashback; in the order AEBCD, the section ‘E’ (death in our example) would represent a flashforward. A prolepsis is often merely a short remark as in this example: Ada called to me to let her in; but I said, ‘Not now, my dearest. Go away. There’s nothing the matter; I will come to you presently.’ Ah! It was a long, long time, before my darling girl and I were companions again. (Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 31) 2.8.2.3. Beginnings and Endings In the category of order one also considers the question of the beginning and ending of discourse. Strictly speaking, these categories go beyond the concept of order, since they also deal with the information flow in a narrative (see the section on information flow in drama ch. 3.1.1). The place in the story at which a narrative’s discourse begins is the point of attack. A narrative that has its point of attack at the beginning of the story is said to begin ab ovo. In such cases the narrative usually starts by giving all the necessary background information about character, place and the very first beginning of those events which are later to develop into the plot of the narrative. This preliminary information is usually given by a narrator before any action has properly started; it functions as an exposition. Charles Dickens, for example, often uses ab ovo beginnings: My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. I gave Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister – Mrs Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. [...] Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. (Dickens, Great Expectations, ch. 1) Note that an ab ovo beginning does not necessarily imply a beginning with the birth of the protagonist. It always depends on what the story is about. Say, a story is about the protagonist’s difficult married life, then the ab ovo beginning would very likely be the wedding, or maybe the moment he fell in love with his future wife. A story about a strange meeting in the forest would have its beginning as the protagonist sets out for the forest and so on. The ab ovo beginning of John Buchan’s story about the successful restoration of the monarchy in Evallonia lies in McCunn’s rheumatism, contracted when he slips into the river while fishing: Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • point of attack • ab ovo • in medias res • in ultimas res • suspense • open ending • closed ending

Great events, says the philosophic historian, spring only from great causes, though the immediate occasion may be small; but I think his law must have exceptions. Of the not inconsiderable events which I am about to chronicle, the occasion was trivial, and I find it hard to detect the majestic agency behind them. What world force, for example, ordained that Mr. Dickson McCunn should slip into the Tod’s hole in his little salmon river on a bleak night in April; and, without changing his clothes, should thereafter make a tour of inspection of his young lambs? His action was the proximate cause of this tale, but I can see no profounder explanation of it than the inherent perversity of man. (Buchan, The House of the Four Winds, ch. 1) It is often considered a more interesting beginning to start in medias res, that is to say, have the point of attack when developments are already well under way, plunge the reader right into the middle of things, and give necessary information about earlier developments in various flashbacks or as part of the events in the story as in the following example: “I wonder when in the world you’re going to do anything, Rudolf?” said my brother’s wife. “My dear Rose,” I answered, laying down my egg-spoon, “why in the world should I do anything? My position is a comfortable one. I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one’s income is ever quite sufficient, you know), I enjoy an enviable social position: I am brother to Lord Burlesdon, and brother-in-law to that charming lady, his countess. Behold, it is enough!” “You are nine-and twenty,” she observed, ”and you’ve done nothing but – ” (Hope, Prisoner of Zenda, ch.1) Other narratives take their point of attack right to the end of the story, they start in ultimas res and then most of the story is gradually revealed in a series of flashbacks, explaining how things had come about. Such different techniques in the arrangement of order on the discourse level obviously produce different types of suspense, one type of suspense created by an interest in how things happened, another type created by an interest in what will happen next (the distinction is discussed usefully in Pfister 1988: ch. 3.7.4.). Endings fall into two major categories: open and closed. In closed endings all plot difficulties are resolved into some (preliminary) order: death, marriage, or simply restored peace after disagreements as in the following example: Ever since that day there has been the old friendly sociability in Cranford society; which I am thankful for, because my dear Miss Matty’s love of peace and kindliness. We all love Miss Matty, and I somehow think we are all of us better when she is near us. (Gaskell, Cranford, end of ch. 16) In open endings no definite resolutions are offered. It even happens, as in John Fowles’ novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman and other postmodern fiction, that several different endings are offered for the reader to choose. Though each Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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one of these may be a closed ending, the effect is that of an open ending, because there does not seem to be one definite conclusion to the events of the story. SO WHAT? Detective stories present an interesting combination of beginnings; at the same time ab ovo and in ultimas res, depending on which story one regards as the central one. The story of the crime begins in ultimas res, with the discovery of the crime, for instance the body of the victim, and is gradually revealed; the story of the detective and his unravelling of the crime on the other hand begins ab ovo and takes its course of investigation until the details of the crime and the criminal have been discovered. While the story of the detective is usually told chronologically, the story of the crime is pieced together gradually, and its chronology is only revealed gradually, in fact, the discovery of the criminal very often hinges on the unravelling of the correct chronology of the crime-story, especially in cases of faked alibis. 2.8.2.4. Frequency The third element of time analysis relates to the frequency of references which are made at discourse level to any given event on the story level. There are three possibilities: singulative an event takes place once and is referred to once (‘They married in June 1865 on a beautiful sunny day’). repetitive an event takes place once but is referred to repeatedly (This is the case for instance when a character is obsessed by an event and keeps coming back to it or when the same event is told from different narrator perspectives, as for instance in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. An extreme example is the movie Groundhog Day where the protagonist has to relive the same day over and over again). iterative an event takes place several times but is referred to only once (‘Every day when Frida sat down to her sewing, she asked herself what she had done to deserve this’.) SO WHAT? An inventive use of time in a narrative can create startling effects. Let us consider by way of example the novel by Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This novel tells the story of an unconventional teacher, Miss Brodie, who, with the help of a group of particularly devoted pupils, defies the efforts of the school to get rid of her. Eventually, however, Miss Brodie is betrayed by one of her own girls and loses her post. The point of attack is when Miss Brodie’s devoted pupils, are in their last year at school. In a series of flashbacks the reader learns, more or less chronologically, about Miss Brodie and her pupils from the girls’ first year at school through to Miss Brodie’s loss of her post and her death. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Key terms: • frequency • singulative telling • repetitive telling • iterative telling

It is not the frequent flashbacks that are unusual in this narrative but the constant and iterative flashforwards referring the reader again and again to what would happen later, undermining conventional expectations about suspense. There is, for instance, Mary MacGregor, who is the most stupid member of the Brodie set and who is always blamed for anything that goes wrong. Very early on (in chapter two) the reader is told how Mary will die in a hotel fire at the age of 22. Later references to Mary and her life during her school days are frequently coupled with references to Mary’s death in the fire (iterative telling) and thus put Mary’s misery as the stupid member of the Brodie set in constant relation to her early and horrible death as well as the other girls’ guilt after her death for not having been nicer to her. The reader is thus constantly forced to judge each event in relation to future developments. This is unusual in the sense that it is not a perspective that is available to us in reality – we do not know the future. On the other hand, a constant reminder that judgments and behaviour will look different with hindsight is a kind of moral narrator comment, created entirely through the use of discourse time, which might suggest to readers a different view on their own reality.

2.9. Types of Prose Fiction The following definitions are based on Barnet/Berman/Burto 1964, Cuddon 1998, Hawthorn 1986, Fowler 1987. The novel can be defined as an extended work of prose fiction. It derives from the Italian novella (“little new thing”), which was a short piece of prose. The novel has become an increasingly popular form of fiction since the early eighteenth century, though prose narratives were written long before then. The term denotes a prose narrative about characters and their actions in what is recognisably everyday life. This differentiates it from its immediate predecessor, the romance, which describes unrealistic adventures of supernatural heroes. The novel has developed various sub-genres: In the epistolary novel the narrative is conveyed entirely by an exchange of letters. (e.g. Samuel Richardson, Pamela.) A picaresque novel is an early form of the novel, some call it a precursor of the novel. It presents the adventures of a lighthearted rascal (pícaro=rogue). It is usually episodic in structure, the episodes often arranged as a journey. The narrative focuses on one character who has to deal with tyrannical masters and unlucky fates but who usually manages to escape these miserable situations by using her/his wit. The form of the picaresque narrative emerged in sixteenthcentury Spain. Examples are: Cervantes, Don Quixote; and in the English tradition: Thomas Nash, The Unfortunate Traveler; Mark Twain, The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn, Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders. The historical novel takes its setting and some of the (chief) characters and events from history. It develops these elements with attention to the known facts and makes the historical events and issues important to the central narrative. (e.g. Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

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Key terms: • novel • epistolary novel • picaresque novel • historical novel • gothic novel • social novel • bildungsroman • metafiction • romance • short story • science fiction

The bildungsroman (novel of education) is a type of novel originating in Germany which presents the development of a character mostly from childhood to maturity. This process typically contains conflicts and struggles, which are ideally overcome in the end so that the protagonist can become a valid and valuable member of society. Examples are J.W. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister; Henry Fielding, Tom Jones; Charles Dickens, David Copperfield; James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The gothic novel became very popular from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards. With the aim to evoke chilling terror by exploiting mystery and a variety of horrors, the gothic novel is usually set in desolate landscapes, ruined abbeys, or medieval castles with dungeons, winding staircases and sliding panels. Heroes and heroines find themselves in gloomy atmospheres where they are confronted with supernatural forces, demonic powers and wicked tyrants. Examples are Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto; Ann Radcliffe, Mysteries of Udolpho; William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom! The social novel, also called industrial novel or Condition of England novel, became particularly popular between 1830 and 1850 and is associated with the development of nineteenth-century realism. As its name indicates, the social novel gives a portrait of society, especially of lower parts of society, dealing with and criticising the living conditions created by industrial development or by a particular legal situation (the poor laws for instance). Well-known examples are: Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton; Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil and Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke. Science fiction is a type of prose narrative of varying length, from short-story to novel. Its topics include quests for other worlds, the influence of alien beings on Earth or alternate realities; they can be utopian, dystopian or set in the past. Common to all types of science fiction is the interest in scientific change and development and concern for social, climatic, geological or ecological change (e.g. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; H.G. Wells, The Time Machine; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; George Orwell, 1984; Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange). Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. It concentrates on the phenomenological characteristics of fiction, and investigates into the quintessential nature of literary art by reflecting the process of narrating. (e.g. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinons of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman; Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook) A romance is a fictional narrative in prose or verse that represents a chivalric theme or relates improbable adventures of idealised characters in some remote or enchanted setting. It typically deploys monodimensional or static characters who are sharply discriminated as heroes or villains, masters or victims. The protagonist is often solitary and isolated from a social context, the plot emphasises adventure, and is often cast in the form of a quest for an ideal or the pursuit of an enemy. Examples: Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia; Percy B. Shelley, Queen Mab; Nathaniel Hawthorn, The House of the Seven Gables. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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A short-story is a piece of prose fiction marked by relative shortness and density, organised into a plot and with some kind of dénouement at the end. The plot may be comic, tragic, romantic, or satiric. It may be written in the mode of fantasy, realism or naturalism.

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Bibliography: Prose Primary Sources: Ackroyd, Peter. 1993 [1989]. First Light. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Adams, Douglas. 1979. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. London: Pan Books. Austen, Jane. 1994 [1811]. Sense and Sensibility. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Austen, Jane. 1994 [1813]. Pride and Prejudice. Harmondworth: Penguin. Bradbury, Malcolm. 1989 [1975]. The History Man: A Classic Satire of University Life. London: Arena. Brontë, Anne. 1993 [1848]. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Ed. Herbert Rosengarten. Oxford, New York: OUP. Brontë, Charlotte. 1966 [1847]. Jane Eyre. Ed. Q.D. Leavis. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Buchan, John. 1937 [1935] The House of the Four Winds. London: Thomas Nelson. Bunyan, John. 1998 [1678]. Pilgrim’s Progress. London: Penguin. Burnett, Frances Hodgson. Little Lord Fauntleroy. 1993 [1886]. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Childers, Erskine. 1995 [1903]. The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Christie, Agatha. 1993 [1926]. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. London: HarperCollins. Collins, William Wilkie. 1982 [1868]. The Moonstone. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Conrad, Joseph. 1973 [1902]. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Paul O’Prey. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Conrad, Joseph. 1984 [1904]. Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Defoe, Daniel. 1989 [1722]. Moll Flanders. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dickens, Charles. 1981 [1848]. Dombey and Son. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dickens, Charles. 1986 [1859]. A Tale of Two Cities. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dickens, Charles. 1993 [1837]. Pickwick Papers. Ware: Wordsworth. Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1994 [1852-3]. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. 1985 [1849-50]. Ed. Trevor Blount. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dickens, Charles. 1969 [1854]. Hard Times: For these Times. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Eliot, George. Middlemarch. 1990 [1872]. Ed. David Carroll. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Faulkner, William. 1985 [1929]. The Sound and the Fury. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Fielding, Henry. 1985 [1749]. Tom Jones. London: Penguin. Ford, Ford Maddox. 1946 [1915]. The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Forster, E.M. A Room with a View. 1990 [1908]. Ed. Oliver Strallybras. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gaskell, Elizabeth. 1994 [1853]. Cranford. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. 1985 [1896]. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hemingway, Ernest. “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.” In: The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. 1977. London: TriadGrafton. 43-47. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Hemingway, Ernest. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” In: The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. 1977. London: TriadGrafton. 7-30. Hope, Anthony. 1994. [1894]. The Prisoner of Zenda. Harmondsworth: Penguin. James, Henry. 1993 [1898]. The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers. Ware: Wordsworth. Joyce, James. 2000 [1922]. Ulysses. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1988 [1916]. London: Paladin. Lennox, Charlotte. 1989 [1752]. The Female Quixote. Oxford, New York: OUP. Munro, Hector Hugh. “Sredni Vashtar.” In: The Complete Stories of Saki. 1993. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. 99-102. Orwell, George. Animal Farm. 1989 [1945]. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Rowling, J.K. 2000. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury. Rowling, J.K. 1998. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. London: Bloomsbury. Scott, Walter. 1995 [1817]. Rob Roy.London: Penguin. Spark, Muriel. 1961. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. London: Macmillan. Sterne, Laurence. 1992 [1759-67]. The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman. Ed. Ian Campbell Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swift, Jonathan. 1941. Gulliver’s Travels, The Tale of a Tub, Battle of the Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thackeray, William. 1992 [1848]. Vanity Fair. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. Tolkien, J.R.R. 1991 [1954]. The Lord of the Rings.London: HarperCollins Wilde, Oscar. 1986 [1891]. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Woolf, Virginia. 1992 [1925]. Mrs Dalloway. Ed. Claire Tomalin. Oxford: OUP. Woolf, Virginia. 1983 [1933]. Flush: A Biography. London: Hogarth. Secondary sources:

Aristotle. 1953. Poetics; Longinus On the Sublime; Demetrius On Style. Trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe. London: Heinemann. Barnet, Sylvan, Morton Berman and William Burto. 1964. A Dictionary of Literary Terms. London: Constable. Bonheim, Helmut. 1982. The Narrative Modes: Techniques of the Short-Story. Cambridge: Brewer. Bonheim, Helmut. 1990. Literary Systematics. Cambridge: Brewer. 1990. Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren. 1943. Understanding Fiction. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Burgess, Anthony. 1973. Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce. London: Deutsch. Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca : Cornell University Press. Cohn, Dorrit. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cuddon, J. A. 1998. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Fabian, Bernhard, (ed.). 1998. Ein anglistischer Grundkurs: Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Fielitz, Sonja. 2001. Roman: Text & Kontext. Berlin: Cornelsen. Forster, E.M. 1927. Aspects of the Novel. London: Edward Arnold. Fowler, Roger, ed. 1987. A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms: Revised and Enlarged Editon. 2nd rev. ed. London: Routledge. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Prose

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Fricke, Harald and Rüdiger Zymner. 1996. Einübung in die Literaturwissenschaft. Paderborn: Schöningh. Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell. Hamburger, Käte. 1973. The Logic of Literature. Trans. Marilynn J. Rose. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hawthorn, Jeremy. 1986. Studying the Novel: An Introduction. Rep. London: Edward Arnold. Jahn, Manfred. 2002. Poems, Plays, and Prose: A Guide to the Theory of Literary Genres. http://www.uni-koeln.de/~ame02/ppp.htm James, Henry. 1948. The Art of Fiction and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press. James, William. 1892. Psychology. London: Macmillan. Korte, Barbara. 1985.“Tiefen- und Oberflächenstrukturen in der Narrativik.” Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 18 (1985): 331-352. Lotman, Jurij M. 1972. Die Struktur literarischer Texte. München: Fink. McGann, Jerome.1991. The Textual Condition. Princeton: University Press. Nischik, Reingard M. 1981. Einsträngigkeit und Mehrsträngigkeit der Handlungsführung in literarischen Texten: Dargestellt insbesondere an englischen, amerikanischen und kanadischen Romanen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: Narr. Nischik, Reingard M. 1991. Mentalstilistik: Ein Beitrag zur Stiltheorie und Narrativik: Dargestellt am Erzählwerk Margret Atwoods. Tübingen: Narr. Nünning, Ansgar, et al. (eds). Unreliable Narration: Studien zur Theorie und Praxis unglaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen Erzählliteratur. Trier: WVT. Pascal, Roy. 1977. The Dual Voice: Free Indirect Speech and its Functioning in the Nineteenth-century European Novel. Manchester: MUP. Pfister, Manfred. 1988. Das Drama: Theorie und Analyse. München: Fink. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. 1983. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Schneider, Ralf. 2000. Grundriß zur kognitiven Theorie der Figurenrezeption am Beispiel des viktorianischen Romans. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Stanzel, Franz K. 1984. A Theory of Narrative. Trans. Charlotte Goedsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenzel, Peter. 1998. “Der Text und seine Analyse.” In Fabian (ed.). Ein anglistischer Grundkurs. 149-203.

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STEFANIE LETHBRIDGE AND JARMILA MILDORF:

Basics of English Studies: An introductory course for students of literary studies in English. Developed at the English departments of the Universities of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Freiburg

3. Drama Table of Contents: 3.1. Text and Theatre ...................................................................................90 3.2. Information Flow ..............................................................................91 3.2.1 Amount and Detail of Information ....................................................91 3.2.2. Transmission of Information ..............................................................93 3.2.3. Perspective .............................................................................................94 3.2.3.1. Dramatic Irony ...................................................................................95 SO WHAT? .........................................................................................................96 3.3. Structure ..................................................................................................98 3.3.1. Story and Plot ........................................................................................98 3.3.2. Three Unities .........................................................................................98 3.3.3. Freytag’s Pyramid ..................................................................................99 3.3.4. Open and Closed Drama .................................................................. 101 3.4. Space ..................................................................................................... 102 3.4.1. Word Scenery ..................................................................................... 103 3.4.2. Setting and Characterisation ............................................................. 104 3.4.3. Symbolic Space ................................................................................... 104 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 104 3.5. Time ...................................................................................................... 106 3.5.1. Succession and Simultaneity ............................................................. 107 3.5.2. Presentation of Temporal Frames ................................................... 107 3.5.3. Story-Time and Discourse-Time ..................................................... 108 3.5.3.1. Duration ........................................................................................... 108 3.5.3.2. Order ................................................................................................ 111 3.5.3.3. Frequency ........................................................................................ 112 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 113 3.6. Characters ............................................................................................ 113 3.6.1. Major and Minor Characters ............................................................ 113 3.6.2. Character Complexity ........................................................................ 114 3.6.3. Character and Genre Conventions .................................................. 114 3.6.4. Contrasts and Correspondences ...................................................... 115 3.6.5. Character Constellations ................................................................... 116 3.6.6. Character Configurations .................................................................. 116 3.6.7. Techniques of Characterisation ....................................................... 117 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 120

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3.7. Types of Utterance in Drama ......................................................... 122 3.7.1. Monologue, Dialogue, Soliloquy ...................................................... 122 3.7.2. Asides ................................................................................................... 123 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 123 3.7.3. Turn Allocation, Stichomythia, Repartee ...................................... 125 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 126 3.7.4. The Significance of Wordplay in Drama ........................................ 129 3.8. Types of Stage .................................................................................... 130 3.8.1. Greek Classicism ................................................................................ 131 3.8.2. The Middle Ages ................................................................................ 131 3.8.3. Renaissance England ......................................................................... 132 3.8.4. Restoration Period ............................................................................. 132 3.8.5. Modern Times .................................................................................... 133 3.9. Dramatic Sub-Genres ....................................................................... 133 3.9.1. Types of Comedy ............................................................................... 133 3.9.2. Types of Tragedy ............................................................................... 134 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 135 Bibliography: Drama ................................................................................ 138

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3. Drama 3.1. Text and Theatre When one deals with dramatic texts one has to bear in mind that drama differs considerably from poetry or narrative in that it is usually written for the purpose of being performed on stage. Although plays exist which were mainly written for a reading audience, dramatic texts are generally meant to be transformed into another mode of presentation or medium: the theatre. For this reason, dramatic texts even look different compared to poetic or narrative texts. One distinguishes between the primary text, i.e., the main body of the play spoken by the characters, and secondary texts, i.e., all the texts ‘surrounding’ or accompanying the main text: title, dramatis personae, scene descriptions, stage directions for acting and speaking, etc. Depending on whether one reads a play or watches it on stage, one has different kinds of access to dramatic texts. As a reader, one receives first-hand written information (if it is mentioned in the secondary text) on what the characters look like, how they act and react in certain situations, how they speak, what sort of setting forms the background to a scene, etc. However, one also has to make a cognitive effort to imagine all these features and interpret them for oneself. Stage performances, on the other hand, are more or less ready-made instantiations of all these details. In other words: at the theatre one is presented with a version of the play which has already been interpreted by the director, actors, costume designers, make-up artists and all the other members of theatre staff, who bring the play to life. The difference, then, lies in divergent forms of perception. While we can actually see and hear actors play certain characters on stage, we first decipher a text about them when reading a play script and then at best ‘see’ them in our mind’s eye and ‘hear’ their imaginary voices. Put another way, stage performances offer a multi-sensory access to plays and they can make use of multimedia elements such as music, sound effects, lighting, stage props, etc., while reading is limited to the visual perception and thus draws upon one primary medium: the play as text. This needs to be kept in mind in discussions of dramatic texts, and the following introduction to the analysis of drama is largely based on the idea that plays are first and foremost written for the stage. The main features one can look at when analysing drama are the following: • • • • • • • •

information flow overall structure space time characters types of utterance in drama types of stage dramatic sub-genres

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Key terms: • primary text • secondary text • dramatis personae • multimedia elements

3.2. Information Flow Since in drama there is usually no narrator who tells us what is going on in the story-world (except for narrator figures in the epic theatre and other mediators, the audience has to gain information directly from what can be seen and heard on stage. As far as the communication model for literary texts is concerned (see Basic Concepts ch. 1.3.), it can be adapted for communication in drama as follows:

Key terms: • communication model drama • epic theatre • alienation effect (estrangement effect) • chorus • perspective • dramatic irony

PLAY

STORY-WORLD

Real author

author of sec. text

Character

Character

reader of secondary text

Code/Message

In comparison with narrative texts, the plane of narrator/narratee is left out, except for plays which deliberately employ narrative elements. Information can be conveyed both linguistically in the characters’ speech, for example, or non-linguistically as in stage props, costumes, the stage set, etc. Questions that arise in this context are: How much information is given, how is it conveyed and whose perspective is adopted?

3.2.1. Amount and Detail of Information The question concerning the amount or detail of information given in a play is particularly important at the beginning of plays where the audience expects to learn something about the problem or conflict of the story, the main characters and also the time and place of the scene. In other words, the audience is informed about the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ of the story at the beginning of plays. This is called the exposition. Consider the first act of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The audience learns about where the play takes place (Athens and a nearby forest) and it is introduced to all the characters in the play. Moreover, we realise what the main conflicts are that will propel the plot (love triangle and unrequited love for Helena, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius). Different variations of love immediately become obvious as the prominent topic in this play. Thus, we are confronted with Theseus’ and Hippolyta’s mature Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Real spectator

relationship, young love in Lysander and Hermia, and love sickness and jealousy in Helena. The audience learns about Theseus’ and Hippolyta’s approaching wedding and the workmen’s plan to rehearse a play for this occasion, about Lysander’s and Hermia’s plan to elope and Helena’s attempt to thwart their plan. Generally speaking, the audience is wellprepared for what is to follow after watching the first act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The audience is given answers to most of the wh-questions and all that remains for viewers to wonder about is how the plot is going to develop and what the results will be. Sometimes, the information we get is not as detailed as that and leaves us with a lot of questions. Consider the following excerpt from the first scene of Edward Bond’s Saved: LEN. This ain’ the bedroom. PAM. Bed ain’ made. LEN. Oo’s bothered? PAM. It’s awful. ‘Ere’s nice. LEN. Suit yourself. Yer don’t mind if I take me shoes off? (He kicks them off.) No one ‘ome? PAM. No. LEN. Live on yer tod? PAM. No. LEN. O. Pause. He sits back on the couch. Yer all right? Come over ‘ere. PAM. In a minit. LEN. Wass yer name? PAM. Yer ain’ arf nosey. (Bond, Saved, 1) The characters’ conversation strikes one as being rather brief and uninformative. We are confronted with two characters who hardly seem to know each other but apparently have agreed on a one-night stand. We can conjecture that the scene takes place at Pam’s house and later in that scene we are given a hint that she must be living with her parents but apart from that, there is not much in the way of information. We do not really get to know the characters, e.g., what they do, what they think, and even their names are only abbreviations, which makes them more anonymous. Although we can draw inferences about Len’s and Pam’s social background from their speech style and vocabulary, their conversation as such is marked by a lack of real communication. After watching the first scene, the audience is left with a feeling of confusion: Who are these people? What do they want? What is the story going to be about? One is left with the impression that this is a very anonymous, unloving environment and that the characters’ impoverished communication skills somehow reflect a general emotional, educational and social poverty. This is reinforced by the barrenness of the living-room presented in the stage directions as follows: The living-room. The front and the two side walls make a triangle that slopes to a door back centre. Furniture: table down right, sofa left, TV set left front, armchair up right centre, two chairs close to the table. Empty. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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If one bears in mind that the empty stage is the first thing the audience sees, it becomes clear that information is conveyed visually first before the characters appear and start talking. This is obviously done on purpose to set the spectators’ minds going.

3.2.2. Transmission of Information Although in drama information is usually conveyed directly to the audience, there are instances where a mediator comparable to the narrator (see ch. 2.5.) of a narrative text appears on stage. A theatrical movement where this technique was newly adopted and widely used was the so-called epic theatre, which goes back to the German playwright Bertolt Brecht and developed as a reaction against the realistic theatrical tradition (Kesting 1989; Russo 1998). At the centre of Brecht’s poetics is the idea of alienating the audience from the action presented on stage in order to impede people’s emotional involvement in and identification with the characters and conflicts of the story (alienation effect or estrangement effect). Instead, spectators are expected to gain a critical distance and thus to be able to judge rationally what is presented to them. Some of the ‘narrative’ elements in this type of theatre are songs, banners and, most importantly, a narrator who comments on the action. One must not forget that some of these elements existed before. Thus, ancient Greek drama traditionally made use of a chorus, i.e., a group of people situated on stage who throughout the play commented on events and the characters’ actions. The chorus was also used in later periods, notably the Renaissance period. A famous example is the beginning of Shakespeare’s Henry V, where the chorus bids the spectators to use their imagination to help create the play. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet also starts with a prologue spoken by a chorus (in the Elizabethan theatre the chorus could be represented by only one actor): Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. (Romeo and Juliet, Prologue) As far as information is concerned, the main function of this chorus is to introduce the audience to the subsequent play. We learn something about the setting, about the characters involved (although we are not given any names yet) and about the tragic conflict. In actual fact we are already told what the outcome of the story will be, so the focus right from the start is Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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not on the question ‘What is going to happen?’ but on ‘How is it going to happen?’. However, the chorus does more than simply provide information. The fact that the prologue is actually in sonnet form underlines the main topic of this tragedy, love, and a tragic atmosphere is created by semantic fields related to death, fate and fighting (“fatal loins”, “foes”, “starcross’d”, “death-mark’d”, “rage”, etc., see isotopy ch. 1.5.). At the same time, the audience is invited to feel sympathetic towards the protagonists (“piteous”, “fearful”), and they are reminded of the fact that what is following is only a play (“two hours’ traffic of our stage”, “our toil”). One can say that information is conveyed here in a rather condensed form and the way this is done already anticipates features of the epic theatre, notably the explicit emphasis on acting and performance.

3.2.3. Perspective Introductory information and narrative-like commentary need not necessarily be provided by a figure outside the actual play. In another of Shakespeare’s plays, Richard III, for example, the main protagonist frequently comments on the events and reveals his plans in speeches spoken away from other characters (so-called asides, see ch. 3.7.2.). At the very beginning of this history play, Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, informs the audience about the current political situation and what he has done to change it: Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York; And all the clouds that lour’d upon our House In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums change’d to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visag’d War hath smooth’d his wrinkled front: And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber, To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. […] Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the King In deadly hate, the one against the other: And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false, and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’ Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall beDive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes. (Richard III, I, 1: 1-41)

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Richard tells the audience about his dissatisfaction with the current sovereign and he takes the audience into confidence as far as his plot against his brother Clarence is concerned. Throughout the play, Richard always comments on what happened or what his next plan is, which also means that most of the play is presented from Richard’s perspective. This is another important aspect to bear in mind when discussing the mediation of information: Whose perspective is adopted? Are there characters in the play whose views are expressed more clearly and more frequently than others’? And finally, what function does this have? These questions are reminiscent of the discussion of focalisation in narrative texts (ch. 2.5.2.). In Richard III, for example, the undeniably vicious character of Richard is slightly modified by the fact that we get to know this figure so well. We learn that Richard is also tormented by his ugliness and we may thus be inclined to take that as an excuse for his viciousness. At the same time, we indirectly also become ‘partners-in-crime’, since we always know what will happen next, while other characters are left in the dark. Thus, whether we want it or not, we are taking sides with Richard to some extent, and the fact that he is such a brilliant orator might even give us a gloating pleasure in his cunning deeds and plots. 3.2.3.1. Dramatic Irony The way information is conveyed to the audience and also how much information is given can have a number of effects on the viewers and they are thus important questions to ask in drama analysis. The discrepancy between the audience’s and characters’ knowledge of certain information can, for example, lead to dramatic irony. Thus, duplicities or puns can be understood by the audience because they possess the necessary background knowledge of events while the characters are ignorant and therefore lack sufficient insight. Narrators in narrative texts often use irony in their comments on characters, for example, and they can do that because they, like the audience of a play, are outside the story-world and thus possess knowledge which characters may not have. In the play The Revenger’s Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur, one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, irony is created because the audience knows about Vindice’s plans of revenge against the Duke, who poisoned Vindice’s fiancée after she resisted his lecherous advances. Vindice dresses up the skull of his dead lady and puts poison on it in order to kill the Duke, who in turn expects to meet a young maiden for a secret rendezvous. Vindice’s introduction of the putative young lady is highly ironic for the viewers since they know what is hidden beneath the disguise: A country lady, a little bashful at first, As most of them are; but after the first kiss My lord, the worst is past with them; your Grace Knows now what you have to do; Sh’as somewhat a grave look with her, but – (The Revenger’s Tragedy, III, 3: 133-137) The pun on ‘grave’ (referring both to the excavation to receive a corpse and to the quality of being or looking serious) is very funny indeed, especially Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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since the Duke himself does not have the least suspicion that anything is wrong here. The irony is pushed even further by the appearance of the Duke’s wife and Spurio, his bastard son, who are secret lovers and who made an appointment at the same place. They appear on stage while the Duke is still in the process of dying and thus fully aware of their presence, and they discuss possible ways of killing the Duke, albeit in a playful manner, not knowing that the duke is dying at that very moment. The irony becomes particularly poignant for the audience when Spurio and the Duchess talk about poisoning and stabbing the Duke, which is exactly what happened to the Duke just a minute before they appeared on stage. Thus, the audience’s surplus of knowledge makes the scene incredibly ironic and potentially funny. In contrast to this, lack of vital information can lead to confusion but it also contributes to a sense of suspense. As long as the audience is not fully informed about characters, their motives, previous actions, etc., the questions ‘How did all this happen?’, ‘What is going on here?’ and ‘What’s going to happen next or in the end?’ become crucial. SO WHAT? Many plays employ the strategy of leaving the audience in the dark and it is easy to understand why they do it: they try to keep people interested in the play as long as possible. Detective plays typically use this device but other examples of analytic drama can also be found. Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, for instance, only reveals in a piecemeal fashion all the events that led up to Alan’s blinding of the horses. The play tells the story of the teenager Alan, who blinds six horses and subsequently undergoes psychotherapy. While the viewers know right from the start ‘what’ happened, they do not have a clue as to ‘how’ or ‘why’ it happened. This information is, like in a puzzle, gradually pieced together through conversations between Alan and the psychiatrist Dysart, Alan’s memories and his acting out of these memories during his therapy. Thus, the audience is invited to speculate on possible motives and reasons, and the play becomes highly psychological not only on the level of the story-world but also on the level of the audience’s reception of the play. Lack of necessary information can also lead to surprises for the audience, and this is often used in comedies to resolve confusions and mixed-up identities. In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, for example, the final scene reveals John (Jack) Worthing’s true identity. The revelation, however, is further delayed by the fact that Jack mistakenly assumes that Miss Prism must be his mother: JACK [Rushing over to Miss Prism.] Is this the handbag, Miss Prism? Examine it carefully before you speak. The happiness of more than one life depends on your answer. MISS PRISM [Calmly] It seems to be mine. […] I am delighted to have it so unexpectedly restored to me. It has been a great inconvenience being without it all these years. JACK [In a pathetic voice.] Miss Prism, more is restored to you than this handbag. I was the baby you placed in it. MISS PRISM [Amazed] You? Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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JACK[Embracing her] Yes…mother! MISS PRISM [Recoiling in indignant astonishment] Mr Worthing! I am unmarried! JACK Unmarried! I do not deny that is a serious blow. But after all, who has the right to cast a stone against who has suffered? […] Mother, I forgive you. [Tries to embrace her again.] MISS PRISM [Still more indignant] Mr Worthing, there is some error. [Pointing to Lady Bracknell.] There is the lady who can tell you who you really are. […] (The Importance of Being Earnest, III) The audience’s knowledge of all the circumstances equals that of Jack. From earlier conversations in the play the spectators know that he was raised as an orphan by a rich gentleman after he had been found in a handbag in a cloakroom of Victoria Station. Thus, as soon as Miss Prism relates how she lost her handbag and, with it, a baby, the audience infers just like Jack that this baby must have been him. Since no further hint is given that Miss Prism is not Jack’s mother, Jack’s somewhat hasty conclusion that she must be seems plausible. What makes this scene particularly funny is the way the characters act and react on their ignorance or knowledge. Jack, wrongly assuming he finally found his mother, becomes very affectionate and tries to embrace Miss Prism. She, by contrast, reacts in a manner surprising to the audience and to Jack: She is indignant and recoils from him. Her explanation that she is unmarried increases suspense as this still does not reveal the final truth about Jack’s origin but brings in another aspect highly topical at the time: morality, which Jack comments on accordingly. Finally, the puzzle is solved when Miss Prism points towards Lady Bracknell, who then tells Jack that he is in fact the son of her sister and thus his friend’s, Algernon’s, elder brother. All this comes as a surprise for both Jack and the audience, and it is really funny since Jack had all along pretended to have an imaginary brother. The comedy is driven even further when Jack finds out that his real name is Ernest. Coincidentally, this is also the name he had used as an alias when he spent time in London, and his fiancée had declared categorically that she could only marry someone with the name of Ernest. Thus, everything falls into place for Jack and his problem of not being able to marry Gwendolen is resolved. The fact that the truth about Jack’s real identity is hidden both from Jack and the audience for so long creates confusions right until the end and therefore contributes to numerous misconceptions and comical encounters. Information flow thus becomes an important device for propelling and complicating the plot, and it creates suspense and surprise in the viewer.

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3.2. Structure 3.2.1. Story and Plot As with the study of narrative texts, one can distinguish between story and plot in drama. Story addresses an assumed chronological sequence of events, while plot refers to the way events are causally and logically connected (see Story and Plot in Prose ch. 2.2.). Furthermore, plots can have various plot-lines, i.e., different elaborations of parts of the story which are combined to form the entire plot. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, is about the feud between two families, the love between the two families’ children and their tragic death. This is roughly the story of the play, which is related in the prologue. The plot, by contrast, encompasses the causally linked sequence of scenes presented on stage to tell the story: Thus we are presented with a fighting scene between members of the two families whereby the underlying conflict is shown. This is followed by Romeo’s expression of his lovesickness and Benvolio’s idea to distract his friend by taking him to a party in the house of the Capulets. Subsequently, the audience is introduced to the Capulets, more specifically to Juliet and her mother, who wants to marry her daughter off to some nobleman, etc. All these scenes, although they seem to be unrelated at first glance, can be identified in retrospect as the foundation for the emerging conflict. The story is developed in a minutely choreographed plot, where the individual scenes combine and are logically built up towards the crisis. Thus, plot refers to the actual logical arrangement of events and actions used to explain ‘why’ something happened, while ‘story’ simply designates the gist of ‘what’ happened in a chronological order. One might consider the distinction between story and plot futile at times because for most people’s intuition a chronologically ordered presentation of events also implies a causal link among the presented events (see the discussion in 2.2.). Chronology would thus coincide with (logical) linearity. Whichever way one wants to look at it, plots can always be either linear or non-linear. Non-linear plots are more likely to confuse the audience and they appear more frequently in modern and contemporary drama, which often question ideas of logic and causality. Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, for example, the story of Alan’s psychiatric therapy. It starts at the end of the story and then presents events in reverse order (analytic form, see also the category of order ch. 3.5.3.2.). Although the audience is in a way invited to make connections among events in order to explain Alan’s behaviour, the very process of establishing causality is questioned by the rather loosely plotted structure of scenes.

Key terms: • story • plot • plot-line • linear / non-linear plots • analytic drama

3.3.2. Three Unities Older plays traditionally aimed at conveying a sense of cohesiveness and unity, and one of the classical poetic ‘laws’ to achieve this goal was the idea of the three unities: unity of plot, unity of place, and unity of time. Although only the unity of plot is explicitly addressed in Aristotle’s Poetics (1449b and 1451a), the other two unities are also often attributed to him while, in reality, these concepts were postulated a lot later by the Italian Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • unity of plot • unity of place • unity of time • mimesis • subplot

scholar Castelvetro in his commentary on Aristotle (1576). The unities mean that a play should have only one single plot line, which ought to take place in a single locale and within one day (one revolution of the sun). The idea behind this is to make a plot more plausible, more true-to-life, and thus to follow Aristotle’s concept of mimesis, i.e., the attempt to imitate or reflect life as authentically as possible. If the audience watches a play whose plot hardly has a longer time span than the actual viewing of the play, and if the focus is on one problem only that is presented within one place, then it is presumably easier for the viewers to succumb to the illusion of the play as ‘reality’ or at least something that could occur ‘like this’ in real life. Many authors, however, disrespected the unities or adhered to only some of them. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, for example, ostensibly follows the rule of the unity of time (although it is entirely incredible that all the actions presented there could possibly take place within three hours as is stated in the text), and it adheres to some extent to the unity of place since everything takes place on Prospero’s island (yet even there the characters are dispersed all over the island to different places so that no real unity is achieved). As far as the unity of plot is concerned, however, it becomes clear that there are a number of minor plots which combine to form the story of what happened to the King of Naples and his men after they were ship-wrecked on the island. While the overarching plot that holds everything together is Prospero’s ‘revenge’ on his brother, undertaken with the help of the spirit, Ariel, other subplots emerge. Thus, there is the love story between Ferdinand and Miranda, Antonio’s and Sebastian’s plan to kill the king, and Caliban’s plan to become master of the island. The alternation of scenes among the various subplots and places on the island contribute to a sense of fast movement and speedy action, which, in turn, makes the play more interesting to watch.

3.3.3. Freytag’s Pyramid Another model frequently used to describe the overall structure of plays is the so-called Freytag’s Pyramid. In his book Die Technik des Dramas (Technique of the Drama 1863), the German journalist and writer, Gustav Freytag, described the classical five-act structure of plays in the shape of a pyramid, and he attributed a particular function to each of the five acts. Freytag’s Pyramid can be schematised like this:

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Key terms: • Freytag’s Pyramid • exposition • complicating action • peripety • falling action • catastrophe • dénouement

Freytag’s Pyramid: Climax, Peripety (“Peripetie”) Complicating Action (“erregendes Moment”)

Falling Action (“retardierendes Moment”)

Catastrophe (“Katastrophe”), Dénouement

Introduction (“Exposition”)

Act I

Act II

Act III

Act IV

Act V

Act I contains all introductory information and thus serves as exposition: The main characters are introduced and, by presenting a conflict, the play prepares the audience for the action in subsequent acts. To illustrate this with an example: In the first act of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, the protagonist Hamlet is introduced and he is confronted with the ghost of his dead father, who informs him that King Claudius was responsible for his death. As a consequence, Hamlet swears vengeance and the scene is thus set for the following play. The second act usually propels the plot by introducing further circumstances or problems related to the main issue. The main conflict starts to develop and characters are presented in greater detail. Thus, Hamlet wavers between taking action and his doubts concerning the apparition. The audience gets to know him as an introverted and melancholic character. In addition, Hamlet puts on “an antic disposition” (Hamlet, I, 5: 180), i.e., he pretends to be mad, in order to hide his plans from the king. In act III, the plot reaches its climax. A crisis occurs where the deed is committed that will lead to the catastrophe, and this brings about a turn (peripety) in the plot. Hamlet, by organising a play performed at court, assures himself of the king’s guilt. In a state of frenzy, he accidentally kills Polonius. The king realises the danger of the situation and decides to send Hamlet to England and to have him killed on his way there. The fourth act creates new tension in that it delays the final catastrophe by further events. In Hamlet, the dramatic effect of the plot is reinforced by a number of incidents: Polonius’ daughter, Ophelia, commits suicide and her brother, Laertes, swears vengeance against Hamlet. He and the king conspire to arrange a duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Having escaped his murderers, Hamlet returns to court. The fifth act finally offers a solution to the conflict presented in the play. While tragedies end in a catastrophe, usually the death of the Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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protagonist, comedies are simply ‘resolved’ (traditionally in a wedding or another type of festivity). A term that is applicable to both types of ending is the French dénouement, which literally means the ‘unknotting’ of the plot. In the final duel, Hamlet is killed by Laertes but before that he stabs Laertes and wounds and poisons the king. The queen is poisoned by mistake when she drinks from a cup intended for Hamlet.

3.3.4. Open and Closed Drama While traditional plays usually, albeit not exclusively, adhere to the five-act structure, modern plays have deliberately moved away from this rigid format, partly because it is considered too artificial and restrictive and partly because many contemporary playwrights generally do not believe in structure and order anymore (see poststructuralism, discussed in ch. 1.4.3.). Another way to look at this is that traditional plays typically employ a closed structure while most contemporary plays are open. The terms ‘open’ and ‘closed’ drama go back to the German literary critic, Volker Klotz (1978), who distinguished between plays where the individual acts are tightly connected and logically built on one another, finally leading to a clear resolution of the plot (closed form), and plays where scenes only loosely hang together and are even exchangeable at times and where the ending does not really bring about any conclusive solution or result (compare also open endings and closed endings in narrative texts ch. 2.8.2.3.). Open plays typically also neglect the concept of the unities and are thus rather free as far as their overall arrangement is concerned. An example is Samuel Beckett’s famous play Waiting for Godot. Belonging to what is classified as the theatre of the absurd, this play is premised on the assumption that life is ultimately incomprehensible for mankind and that consequently all our actions are somewhat futile. The two main characters, the tramps Estragon and Vladimir, wait seemingly endlessly for the appearance of a person named Godot and meanwhile dispute the place and time of their appointment. While Estragon and Vladimir pass the time talking in an almost random manner, employing funny repartees and wordplay, nothing really happens throughout the two acts of the play. Significantly, each of the acts ends with the announcement of Godot’s imminent appearance and the two characters’ decision to leave, and yet even then nothing happens as is indicated in the stage directions: “They do not move”. The audience is left in a puzzled state because what is presented on stage does not really seem to make sense. There is no real plot in the sense of a sequence of causally motivated actions, and there is hardly any coherence. The play does not provide any information on preceding events that could be relevant, e.g., with regard to that mysterious Godot (Who is he? Why did Vladimir and Estragon make an appointment to see him?), and it does not offer a conclusive ending since the audience does not know what is going to happen (if anything) and what the actual point of this action is. Hence, there is no linear structure or logical sequence which leads to a closed ending but the play remains open and opaque on every imaginable level: plot, characters, their language, etc. The fact that some authors adhere to certain dramatic conventions (see Poetics and Genre 1.4.2.), i.e. follow certain known practices and Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key-terms: • closed structure • open structure • theatre of the absurd • dramatic conventions • poetic justice

traditions, and others do not, is obviously an interesting factor to consider in drama analysis since this may give us a clue to certain ideological or philosophical concepts or beliefs expressed in a play. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, for example, enacts the absurdity of human existence. Just as the plot does not seem to move anywhere and the characters’ actions or rather, inactivity, do not make sense, life comes across as purposeless and futile, and the audience’s bewilderment in a way reflects mankind’s bewilderment in view of an incomprehensible world. Plays with a closed structure, by contrast, present life as comprehensible and events as causally connected. Moreover, they suggest that problems are solvable and that there is a certain order in the world which needs to be re-established if lost. The fact that in many plays all the ‘baddies’, for example, are punished in the end follows the principle of poetic justice, i.e., every character who committed a crime or who has become guilty in some way or another by breaking social or moral rules, has to suffer for this so that order can be reinstalled. Needless to say that life is not necessarily like this and yet, people often prefer closed endings since they give a feeling of satisfaction (just consider the way most mainstream movies are structured even today). If plays move away from the closed form, one then has to ask why they do it and one should also consider the possible effect of certain structures on the audience. Sometimes, for example, open forms with loosely linked scenes rather than a tightly plotted five-act structure are used to break up the illusion of the stage as life-world. Viewers are constantly made aware of the play being a performance and they are thus expected to have a more critical and distant look at what is presented to them. This can be found in Bertolt Brecht and other authors such as Edward Bond, John Arden and Howard Brenton.

3.4. Space Space is an important element in drama since the stage itself also represents a space where action is presented. One must of course not forget that types of stage have changed in the history of the theatre and that this has also influenced the way plays were performed (see Types of Stage ch. 3.8.). The analysis of places and settings in plays can help one get a better feel for characters and their behaviour but also for the overall atmosphere. Plays can differ significantly with regard to how space is presented and how much information about space is offered. While in George Bernard Shaw’s plays the secondary text provides detailed spatio-temporal descriptions, one finds hardly anything in the way of secondary text in Shakespeare (see Gurr and Ichikawa 2000). The stage set quite literally ‘sets the scene’ for a play in that it already conveys a certain tone, e.g., one of desolation and poverty or mystery and secrecy. The fact that the description of the stage sets in the secondary text is sometimes very detailed and sometimes hardly worth mentioning is another crucial starting point for further analysis since that can tell us something about more general functions of settings. Actual productions frequently invent their own set, independent of the information provided in a text. Thus, a very detailed set with lots of stage props may simply be used to show off theatrical equipment. In Victorian melodrama (see ch. 3.9.2.), for example, even horses were Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • realism • naturalism • stage props • word scenery • symbolic space

brought on stage in order to make the ‘show’ more appealing but also to demonstrate a theatre’s wealth and ability to provide expensive costumes, background paintings, etc. A more detailed stage set also aims at creating an illusion of realism, i.e., the scene presented on stage is meant to be as trueto-life as possible and the audience is expected to succumb to that illusion. At the same time, a detailed set draws attention to problems of an individual’s milieu, for example, or background in general. This was particularly important in naturalist writing, which was premised on the idea that a person’s character and behaviour are largely determined by his or her social context. By contrast, if detail is missing in the presentation of the setting, whether in the text or in production, that obviously also has a reason. Sometimes, plays do not employ detailed settings because they do not aim at presenting an individualised, personal background but a general scenario that could be placed anywhere and affect anyone. The stage set in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, for example, is really bare: “A country road. A tree”. One can argue that this minimal set highlights the characters’ uprootedness and underlines the play’s focus on human existence in general.

3.4.1. Word Scenery Since drama is multimedial, the visual aspect inevitably plays an important role. The layout/overall appearance of the set is usually described in stage directions or descriptions at the beginning of acts or scenes. Thus, all the necessary stage props (i.e., properties used on stage such as furniture, accessories, etc.) and possibly stage painting can be presented verbally in secondary texts, which is then translated into an actual visualisation on stage. One must not forget that directors are of course free to interpret secondary texts in different ways and thus to create innovative renditions of plays. An example is Richard Loncraine’s 1996 film version of Shakespeare’s Richard III, where the play is set in the 1930s. The set or, more precisely, what it is supposed to represent, can also be conveyed in the characters’ speech. In Elizabethan times, for example, where the set was rather bare with little stage props and no background scenery, the spatio-temporal framework of a scene had to be provided by characters’ references to it. The jester Trinculo in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, for example, gives the following description of the island and the weather: Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it sing i’ the wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before I know not where to hide my head, yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. (The Tempest, II, 2: 19-23) While Elizabethan theatre goers could not actually ‘see’ a cloud on stage, they were invited to imagine it in their mind’s eye. The setting was thus created rhetorically as word scenery rather than by means of painted canvas, stage props and artificial lighting (which was not common practice until the Restoration period).

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3.4.2. Setting and Characterisation The setting can be used as a means of indirect characterisation. Thus, the anonymity and unloving atmosphere among the characters in Edward Bond’s play Saved is anticipated by and mirrored in the barrenness of the stage set where only the most necessary pieces of furniture are presented but nothing that would give Pam’s parents’ flat a more personal touch. The characters in William Congreve’s The Way of the World, by comparison, are implicitly characterised as high society because they meet in coffee-houses, St. James’ Park and posh private salons. A close look at the setting can thus contribute to a better understanding of the characters and their behaviour.

3.4.3. Symbolic Space Another important factor to consider in this context is the interrelatedness of setting and plot. Obviously, the plot of a play is never presented in a vacuum but always against the background of a specific scenery and often the setting corresponds with what is going on in the storyworld. Thus, the storm at the beginning of Shakespeare’s The Tempest not only starts off the play and functions as an effective background to the action but it also reflects the ‘disorder’ in which the characters find themselves at the beginning: Antonio unlawfully holds the position of his brother, Prospero; Sebastian is willing to get rid of his brother, King Alonso, in order to take his place; and the savage and deformed slave Caliban broods on revenge against his self-appointed master, Prospero. The lack of peace and order in the social world is thus analogous to chaos and destruction in the natural world. Likewise, in Shakespeare’s King Lear, a storm signifies disorder when King Lear’s daughters Goneril and Regan turn their father out of doors although they had vowed their affection for him and had received their share of the kingdom in return. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the secretive and highly sexual atmosphere is underlined by the dark forest at midnight, in which fog and darkness partly support but also thwart the characters’ secret plans and actions. One can say that rather than only functioning as a background or creating a certain atmosphere, these spaces become symbolic spaces as they point towards other levels of meaning in the text. The setting can thus support the expression of the world view current at a certain time or general philosophical, ethical or moral questions. SO WHAT? Nowadays, theatres are equipped with all sorts of sets, props and technical machinery which allow for a wide range of audiovisual effects. When analysing plays, it is therefore worthwhile asking to what extent the plays actually make use of these devices and for what purpose. One important question one can ask, for example, is whether space is presented in detail or only in general terms. Consider the following introductory commentary from Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock: The living-room of a two-room tenancy occupied by the Boyle family in a tenement house in Dublin. Left, a door leading to another part of the house; left of door a Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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window looking into the street; at back a dresser; farther to right at back, a window looking into the back of the house. Between the window and the dresser is a picture of the Virgin; below the picture, on a bracket, is a crimson bowl in which a floating votive light is burning. Farther to the right is a small bed partly concealed by cretonne hangings strung on a twine. To the right is the fireplace; near the fireplace is a door leading to the other room. Beside the fireplace is a box containing coal. On the mantelshelf is an alarm clock lying on its face. In a corner near the window looking into the back is a galvanized bath. A table and some chairs. On the table are breakfast things for one. A teapot is on the hob and a frying-pan stands inside the fender. There are a few books on the dresser and one on the table. Leaning against the dresser is a long-handled shovel – the kind invariably used by labourers when turning concrete or mixing mortar. […] What strikes one immediately is the minute precision with which the set is organised. Not only do we get a great number of even small stage props (picture, books, coal box, breakfast things, etc.) but their relative position to one another is also exactly described. If one considers that this is the very first scene the viewers see, it is almost as if they looked at a very detailed and realistic picture of a working-class home. The shovel indicates the social background of the people who live in the flat, and the fact that it is only a two-room flat points towards their relative poverty. The setting tells us even more about the family. Thus, we can conclude from the picture of the Virgin Mary and the floating votive light that this must be a religious family or at least a family which lives according to the Irish Catholic tradition. Furthermore, we identify a potential discrepancy when we look at the books. While the small number of books suggests on the one hand that the people who live there are not highly educated, the fact that there are books at all also indicates that at least someone in the family must be interested in reading. The text itself continues by explaining who that person is, Mary, and another member of the family, Johnny Boyle, is also introduced. We are even given information on Mary’s inner conflict caused by her background on the one hand and her knowledge of literature on the other hand. Just as the first appearance of two of the characters blends in with a pictorial presentation of the setting, Mary and Johnny also seem to ‘belong’ to or be marked by that background. In other words: The naturalistic setting is used as indirect characterisation and defines the characters’ conflicts or struggles. Sometimes a bare stage indicates the play’s focus on the characters’ inner lives and consciousness, and technical devices and stage props are mainly used to emphasise or underline them. Consider the setting in Peter Shaffer’s play Equus: A square of wood set on a circle of wood. The square resembles a railed boxing ring. The rail, also of wood, encloses three sides. It is perforated on each side by an opening. Under the rail are a few vertical slats, as if in a fence. On the downstage side there is no rail. The whole square is set on ball bearings, so that by slight pressure from actors standing round it on the circle, it can be made to turn round smoothly by hand. On the square are set three little plain benches, also of wood. They are placed parallel with the rail, against the slats, but can be moved out by the actors to stand at right angles to them.

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Set into the floor of the square, and flush with it, is a thin metal pole, about a yard high. This can be raised out of the floor, to stand upright. It acts as a support for the actor playing Nugget, when he is ridden. In the area outside the circle stand benches. Two downstage left and right are curved to accord with the circle. The left one is used by Dysart as a listening and observing post when he is out of the square, and also by Alan as his hospital bed. The right one is used by Alan’s parents, who sit side by side on it. (Viewpoint is from the main body of the audience.) Further benches stand upstage, and accommodate the other actors. All the cast of Equus sits on stage the entire evening. They get up to perform their scenes, and return when they are done to their places around the set. They are witnesses, assistants – and especially a Chorus. Upstage, forming a backdrop to the whole, are tiers of seats in the fashion of a dissecting theatre, formed into two railed-off blocks, pierced by a central tunnel. In these blocks sit members of the audience. During the play, Dysart addresses them directly from time to time, as he addresses the main body of the theatre. No other actor ever refers to them. To left and right, downstage, stand two ladders on which are suspended horse masks. The colour of all benches is olive green. What strikes one immediately when looking at this stage set is that it does not even try to be realistic. Whether scenes take place in Dysart’s practice, in Alan’s home or in the stables, there is no furniture or other stage props to indicate this. The horses are played by actors who simply put on horse masks but this is done on stage so that the audience is reminded of the fact that it is watching a play. The alternation of scenes is marked by the usage of different parts of the stage (upstairs, downstairs) and time shifts become noticeable through changing lights. The stage seems to be arranged like this intentionally and one can ask why. First and foremost, the set lacks detail so that attention can be drawn to the performance of the actors. Secondly, what the actors perform is thus also moved to the centre, namely Alan’s psychological development, his consciousness and memories. Put another way, the focus is on mental processes rather than on social factors (although they of course influence Alan’s development and are thus also brought on stage, albeit symbolically and rhetorically rather than realistically). Whatever explanation one comes up with, the first step is to note that the stage and the represented setting usually have a purpose and one then has to ask how they correlate with what is presented in the actual text, to what extent they express concepts and ideas, etc.

3.5. Time Time in drama can be considered from a variety of angles. One can, for example, look at time as part of the play: How are references to time made in the characters’ speech, the setting, stage directions, etc.? What is the overall time span of the story? On the other hand, time is also a crucial factor in the performance of a play: How long does the performance actually take? Needless to say that the audiences’ perception of time can also vary. Another question one can ask in this context is: Which general concepts of time are expressed in and by a play?

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3.5.1. Succession and Simultaneity One of the first distinctions one can make is the one between succession and simultaneity. Events and actions can take place in one of two ways: either one after another (successively) or all at the same time (simultaneously). When these events are performed on stage, their presentation in scenes will inevitably be successive while they may well be simultaneous according to the internal time frame of the play. Consider, for example, the plot of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Given the fact that the plot is supposed to last only three hours, one must presume that the various subplots presenting the different groups of people dispersed over the island must take place roughly at the same time: e.g., Caliban’s encounter with Trinculo and Stephano in Act II, scene 1 and continued in III, 2 is likely to take place at the same time as Miranda’s and Ferdinand’s conversation in III, 1, etc. A sense of simultaneity is created here exactly because different plot-lines alternate in strings of immediately successive scenes. On the other hand, if no other indication of divergent time frames is given in the text, viewers normally automatically assume that the events and actions presented in subsequent scenes are also successive in their temporal order.

Key terms: • succession • simultaneity

3.5.2. Presentation of Temporal Frames There are a number of possibilities to create a temporal frame in drama. Allusions to time can be made in the characters’ conversations; the exact time of a scene can be provided in the stage directions; or certain stage props like clocks and calendars or auditory devices such as church bells ringing in the background can give the audience a clue about what time it is. At the beginning of Hamlet, for example, when the guards see the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the time is given in the guard’s account of the same apparition during the previous night: Last night of all, When yond same star that’s westward from the pole, Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one – (Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, 1: 38-42) While in this instance, the exact time is expressed verbally by one of the characters, the crowing of a cock offstage indicates the approaching daylight later in that scene and causes the apparition to disappear. In scene 4 of the same act, Hamlet himself is on guard in order to meet the ghost, and the scene begins with the following short exchange between Hamlet and Horatio: Ham. The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold. Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air. Ham. What hour now? Hor. I think it lacks of twelve. (Hamlet, I, 4: 1-4) Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • temporal frames • word painting

This short dialogue not only conveys to the audience the time of night but it also uses word painting to describe the weather conditions and the overall atmosphere (“air bites”, “very cold”, “nipping”). Word painting means that actors describe the scenery vividly and thus create or ‘paint’ a picture in the viewers’ minds. The third possibility of presenting time in the stage directions is used in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, for example. The introductory author commentary to each of the three acts in the secondary text gives very short instructions concerning the time of the subsequent scenes: “Early evening. April” (I, 1), “Two weeks later. Evening” (II,1), “The following evening” (II, 2), “Several months later. A Sunday evening” (III, 1), “It is a few minutes later” (III, 2). While a reading audience is thus fully informed about the timing of the scenes, theatre goers have to infer it from the context created through the characters’ interactions. The temporal gap between acts two and three, for example, has to be inferred from the fact that things have changed in Jimmy’s and Alison’s flat after Alison left, most noticeably that Helena has taken up Alison’s place and is now the woman in the house.

3.5.3. Story Time and Discourse Time 3.5.3.1. Duration Another important distinction one needs to be made when analysing time in drama, namely between fictive story time or played time and real playing time (see also story time and discourse time for narrative ch. 2.8.2.). While the played time or the time of the story in Osborne’s Look Back in Anger encompasses several months, the play’s actual playing time (time it takes to stage the play) is approximately two hours. The playing time of a piece of drama of course always depends on the speed at which actors perform individual scenes and can thus vary significantly from one performance to another. The fact that story time elapses from one scene to the next and from act to act is indicated by the fall of the curtain in Osborne’s play. Thus, quick curtains are used between scenes, while longer curtain pauses occur between acts. Significantly, the length of curtain time is correlated with the length of time that has been left out in the story: A quick curtain suggests a short time span while normal breaks cover longer time spans of the played time. A gaps in the played time of a piece of drama is called ellipsis, i.e., one leaves out bits of the story and thus speeds up the plot. Considering that scenes usually present actions directly, one can assume that played time and playing time usually coincide in drama. In other words: If characters are presented talking to one another for, say, twenty minutes, then it will normally take about twenty minutes for actors to perform this ‘conversation’. Discrepancies between the duration of played time and playing time mostly concur with scenic breaks because it is difficult to present them convincingly in the middle of an interaction. However, an example of a speed-up or summary, i.e., a situation where the actual playing time is shorter than the time span presented in the played Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • played time • playing time • duration • ellipsis • speed-up / summary • slow-down / stretch • pause

interaction, can be found for instance in Thomas Middleton’s and William Rowley’s The Changeling. Beatrice, who fears that her lack of sexual innocence could be discovered by her husband during their wedding night, has arranged for her maid to take her place in the wedding bed and anxiously awaits the maid’s return: Enter Beatrice. A clock strikes one. BEATRICE: One struck, and yet she lies by’t – oh my fears! This strumpet serves her own ends, ‘tis apparent now, Devours the pleasure with a greedy appetite And never minds my honour or my peace, Makes havoc of my right; but she pays dearly for’t: No trusting of her life with such a secret, That cannot rule her blood to keep her promise. Beside, I have some suspicion of her faith to me Because I was suspected of my lord, And it must come from her. – Hark by my horrors! Another clock strikes two. [Strikes two.] (The Changeling, V, 1: 1-12) A few lines further down, after a brief dialogue with De Flores, Beatrice mentions the clock again: “List, oh my terrors! / Three struck by Saint Sebastian’s!” (ibid, 66f). Although the time it takes for Beatrice to appear on stage and to wait for her maid can hardly be longer than ten minutes in actual performance, the time that elapses in the story is two hours. The lapse of time is indicated in Beatrice’s speech as well as by the sound of a clock offstage but this seems very artificial because Beatrice appears before the audience for a much shorter time. The discrepancy between played time and playing time is particularly conspicuous at the very beginning of this scene, where Beatrice announces the striking of the next hour after only a couple of minutes on stage. This scene clearly does not put an emphasis on a realistic rendition of time but the focus is on Beatrice’s reaction to the maid’s late arrival and her anxiousness lest her trick should be discovered. Since drama employs other media than narrative texts and is performed in real time, not all usages of time in narrative are possible in plays (compare ch. 2.8.). Nevertheless, postmodernist plays in particular sometimes experiment with different presentations of time. Techniques which can only be adopted in modified form in drama are slow-down or stretch, where the playing time is longer than the played time, and pause, where the play continues while the story stops. One might argue that soliloquies where characters discuss and reveal their inner psychological state or emotions are similar to pauses since no real ‘action’ is observable and the development of the story is put on hold, so to speak. However, if one considers that the character’s talking to the audience or perhaps to himself is in a way also a form of action that can be relevant for further actions, this argument does not really hold. Consider the following example from Peter Shaffer’s Equus. The psychologist Dysart in a way steps out of the story-world of the play and addresses the audience: Now he’s gone off to rest, leaving me alone with Equus. I can hear the creature’s voice. It’s calling me out of the black cave of the Psyche. I Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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shove in my dim little torch, and there he stands – waiting for me. He raises his matted head. He opens his great square teeth, and says – [Mocking.] ‘Why? ... Why Me? … Why – ultimately – Me? … Do you really imagine you can account for Me? … Poor Doctor Dysart!’ [He enters the square.] Of course I’ve stared at such images before. Or been stared at by them, whichever way you look at it. And weirdly often now with me the feeling is that they are staring at us – that in some quite palpable way they precede us. Meaningless but unsettling … In either case, this one is alarming yet. It asks questions I’ve avoided all my professional life. [Pause.] A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave. It sniffs – it sucks – it strokes its eyes over the whole uncomfortable range. Suddenly one strikes. Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles. Why? I can trace them. I can even, with time, pull them apart again. But why at the start they were ever magnetized at all – just those particular moments of experience and no others – I don’t know. And nor does anyone else. Yet if I don’t know – if I can never know that – then what am I doing here? I don’t mean clinically doing or socially doing – I mean fundamentally! These questions, these Whys, are fundamental – yet they have no place in a consulting room. So then, do I? …This is the feeling more and more with me – No Place. Displacement … ‘Account for me,’ says staring Equus. ‘First account for Me! …’ I fancy this is more than menopause. (Equus, II, 22) One could argue that, while Dysart reflects on his feelings about his work, the story as such stops. However, if one considers Dysart’s inner development as a psychiatrist, another vital part of the plot, and treats this address to the audience as an integral element of the play’s communication system, then the playing time of Dysart’s speech still coincides with its played time. In other words: even where narrative elements are used in plays and thus potentially facilitate narrative techniques of time presentation, the overall scenic structure almost always counters that. A stretch or slow-down could be realised if characters were to act in slow-motion, e.g., in a pantomime or dumb show, similar to slow-motion techniques in films. This, however, is not feasible for an entire play. Manfred Pfister mentions in his book Das Drama (1997: 363) J.B. Priestley’s play Time and the Conways, where the entire second act is used to present Kay’s daydream, which, according to time references in the play, only lasts for a few minutes. This slow-down is of course only recognisable through overt hints in the surrounding plot, whereas the time of the actions presented within the daydream perfectly corresponds with the time it takes to perform them on stage. So, again, a real slow-down cannot actually be achieved through the way the performance is acted out since actors cannot really ‘slow down’ their acting (unless they play in slow motion) but it can be suggested by means of linguistic cues or stage props indicating time (clocks, etc.).

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3.5.3.2. Order Another aspect to look at when analysing time in drama (as well as narrative) is the concept of order (see also Prose ch. 2.8.2.2.). How are events ordered temporally? Does the temporal sequence of scenes correspond with the temporal order of events and actions in the presented story? Like narrative, drama can make use of flashback (analepsis) and flashforward (prolepsis). In flashbacks, events from the past are mingled with the presentation of current events, while in flashforwards, future events are anticipated. While flashforwards are not as common since they potentially threaten the build-up of the audience’s suspense (if we already know what is going to happen, we can at best wonder how this ending is brought about), flashbacks are frequently used in order to illustrate a character’s memories or to explain the outcome of certain actions. An example for a flashforward is the prologue in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where the audience is already told the gist of the subsequent play. Examples of flashbacks can be found in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, where the unemployed and desolate salesman Willy Loman remembers his happy family life in the past. Flashbacks also occur frequently in Peter Shaffer’s Equus, where they represent Alan’s recollections of the events that led up to his blinding of the horses. Equus is interesting in that a linear presentation of Alan’s therapy is juxtaposed with a non-linear presentation of the story of his outrageous deed. Thus, the play’s play with order and chronology invites the audience to view more critically conventional notions of cause and effect, which is one of the crucial themes of the play, e.g., when Dysart doubts his ability ever to get to the heart of a strange obsession like Alan’s. Three terms which are often used in the context of discussions of chronology and order are the three basic types of beginnings: ab ovo, in medias res and in ultimas res. These terms refer to the point of time of a story at which a play sets in and they are thus closely related to the amount of information viewers are offered at the beginning of a play: • • •

ab ovo: the play starts at the beginning of the story and provides all the necessary background information concerning the characters, their circumstances, conflicts, etc. (exposition) in medias res: the story starts somewhere in the middle and leaves the viewer puzzled at first in ultimas res: the story begins with its actual outcome or ending and then relates events in reverse order, thus drawing the audience’s attention on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of the story. Plays which use this method are called analytic plays.

While in narrative analysis, the terms ab ovo and in medias res are also used to distinguish between beginnings where the reader is introduced to the plot by means of preliminary information mostly conveyed by the narrator (ab ovo) and beginnings where the reader is simply thrust into the action of the narrative (in medias res, see also Prose ch. 2.8.2.3.), plays by definition always already present the viewer with some action unless there is a narrative-like mediator (chorus, commentator, etc.). Since in that sense plays are usually always in medias res because they present viewers directly with an interaction among characters, it might be more appropriate to use the Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • order • flashback (analepsis) • flashforward (prolepsis) • ab ovo beginning • inmedias res beginning • in ultimas res beginning

more narrow definition given above for drama, which is limited to the timing of beginnings and does not focus so much on the mode of presentation. 3.5.3.3. Frequency Another facet of time worth analysing is the concept of frequency, i.e., how often an event is presented. Although the categories proposed by Genette for narrative texts are not directly applicable to drama, one can nevertheless identify similar structures. According to Genette, there are three possible types of reference to an event (see Genette 1980): • • •

singulative: an event takes place once and is referred to once repetitive: an event takes place once but is referred to or presented repeatedly iterative: an event takes place several times but is referred to in the text only once

The singulative representation of events can be found whenever scenes in a play contain single actions and these actions are represented once. This mode is mostly found in linear plots where the main aim is to delineate the development of a conflict. Traditional plays usually adopt this mode. Thus, Cyril Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, for example, presents its plot in fastmoving actions where no scene replicates previous scenes. Iterative telling occurs when characters refer to the same or similar events that have already happened. The guards in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for example, discuss during their night shift what had happened during the previous night and thus the apparition of the ghost is presented as repetitive action. An repetitive representation of events is more difficult to imagine in drama since, strictly speaking, it would involve the same scene to be played several times in exactly the same way. While a complete overlap of scenes is not feasible as it would probably cause boredom, especially modern plays frequently make use of the repetition of similar events/interactions or parts of dialogues. A good example is Beckett’s Waiting for Godot where Vladimir and Estragon repeat actions and verbal exchanges throughout the play and where, most significantly, the two acts are structured in parallel, culminating in the announcement of the imminent appearance of Godot (who never shows up) and Vladimir’s and Estragon’s inaction. John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger employs a similar strategy by presenting the first and the third act in a similar fashion, the only difference being that Alison has been replaced by Helena. This repetition of events (Helena standing there in Jim’s shirt, ironing clothes, and Jim and Cliff sitting in their arm-chairs) is obviously used to suggest that there is no real change or development in Jim’s own life despite the fact that he constantly rages against the establishment and against other people’s passivity.

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Key terms: • frequency • singulative • repetitive • iterative

SO WHAT? As with the presentation of space, aspects of time are rarely presented for their own sake but often imply further levels of meaning that might help one interpret a text. Thus, time can also be symbolic and stand for larger concepts. For example, Waiting for Godot’s modified version of iterative action creates a sense of stagnation and lack of movement, which corresponds with the more philosophical notion of people’s helplessness and the purposelessness of life in general. Look Back in Anger, in a similar vein, illustrates a cyclical notion of time and history whereby events recur again and again. This ultimately also generates a sense of stagnation and, in this particular case, underlines the protagonist’s lack of action. By contrast, plays where the overall order is chronological and where the plot moves through singulative representation of actions to a final conclusion suggest progress and development and thus perhaps also a more positive and optimistic image of mankind and history. Different uses of time are of course also important for the creation of certain effects on the audience. While non-chronological plots, for example, can be confusing, they may also create suspense or challenge the viewer’s ability to make connections between events. Furthermore, plays which present a story in its chronological order draw attention to the final outcome and thus are based on the question: ‘What happens next?’, whereas plays with a non-chronological order, which might even anticipate the ending, focus on the question: ‘How does everything happen?’ Detailed time presentations or, by contrast, a lack of detail may point towards the importance or insignificance of time for a specific storyline. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, the timing of the scenes that take place in the forest during the night remains rather fuzzy, thus underlining the characters’ changed sense of time and also the timelessness of the fairy-world presented there.

3.6. Characters 3.6.1. Major and Minor Characters Since drama presents us directly with scenes which are based on people’s actions and interactions, characters play a dominant role in this genre and therefore deserve close attention. The characters in plays can generally be divided into major characters and minor characters, depending on how important they are for the plot. A good indicator as to whether a character is major or minor is the amount of time and speech as well as presence on stage he or she is allocated. As a rule of thumb, major characters usually have a lot to say and appear frequently throughout the play, while minor characters have less presence or appear only marginally. Thus, for example, Hamlet is clearly the main character or protagonist of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy as we can infer from the fact that he appears in most scenes and is allocated a great number of speeches and, what is more, since even his name appears in the title (he is the eponymous hero). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, by contrast, are only minor characters because they are not as vitally important for the plot and therefore appear only for a short period of time. However, Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • major characters • minor characters • eponymous hero

they become major characters in Tom Stoppard’s comical re-make of the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966), where the two attendants are presented as bewildered witnesses and predestined victims. Occasionally even virtually non-existent characters may be important but this scenario is rather exceptional. An example can be found in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, where the action centres around the arrival of the mysterious Godot, whose name even appears in the title of the play although he never actually materialises on stage.

3.6.2. Character Complexity Major characters are frequently, albeit not exclusively, multi-dimensional and dynamic (round character) while minor characters often remain mono-dimensional and static (flat character, see Character Dimensions in narrative prose). Multi-dimensional characters display several (even conflicting) character traits and are thus reasonably complex. They also tend to develop throughout the plot (hence, dynamic), though this is not necessarily the case. Hamlet, for example, is marked by great intellectual and rhetorical power but he is also flawed to the extent that he is indecisive and passive. The audience learns a lot about his inner moral conflict, his wavering between whether to take revenge or not, and we see him in different roles displaying different qualities: as prince and statesman, as son, as Ophelia’s admirer, etc. Mono-dimensional characters, on the other hand, can usually be summarised by a single phrase or statement, i.e., they have only few character traits and are generally merely types (see also ch. 2.4.3.). Frequently, mono-dimensional characters are also static, i.e., they do not develop or change during the play. Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, for example, is not as complex as Hamlet. He can be described as a passionate, rash youth who does not hesitate to take revenge when he hears about his father’s and sister’s deaths. As a character, he corresponds to the conventional revenger type, and part of the reason why he does not come across as a complex figure is that we hardly get to know him. In the play, Laertes functions as a foil for Hamlet since Hamlet’s indecisiveness and thoughtfulness appear as more marked through the contrast between the two young men.

Key terms: • multi-dimensional character • dynamic character • round character • mono-dimensional character • static character • flat character • types • revenger type • foil

3.6.3. Character and Genre Conventions Sometimes the quality of characters can also depend on the subgenre to which a play belongs because genres traditionally follow certain conventions even as far as the dramatis personae, i.e., the dramatic personnel, are concerned. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, characters in tragedies have to be of a high social rank so that their downfall in the end can be more tragic (the higher they are, the lower they fall), while comedies typically employ ‘lower’ characters who need not be taken so seriously and can thus be made fun of. Since tragedies deal with difficult conflicts and subject matters, tragic heroes are usually complex. According to Aristotle, they are supposed to be neither too good nor too bad but somewhere ‘in the middle’ (Aristotle, 1953: 1453a), which allows them to have some tragic ‘flaw’ (hamartia) that Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • hamartia • catharsis

ultimately causes their downfall. Since tragic heroes have almost ‘average’ characteristics and inner conflicts, the audience can identify more easily with them, which is an important prerequisite for what Aristotle calls the effect of catharsis (literally, a ‘cleansing’ of one’s feelings), i.e., the fact that one can suffer with the hero, feel pity and fear, and through this strong emotional involvement clarify one’s own state of mind and potentially become a better human being (Aristotle 1953: 1450a, see Zapf 1991: 30-40 for a more detailed exploration of Aristotle’s concept). Comedies, by contrast, deal with problems in a lighter manner and therefore do not necessarily require complex figures. Furthermore, types are more appropriate in comedies as their single qualities can be easily exaggerated and thus subverted into laughable behaviour and actions. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, the weaver Bottom, who foolishly thinks he can be a great actor, is literally turned into an ass and thus becomes the laughingstock of the play.

3.6.4. Contrast and Correspondences Characters in plays can often be classified by way of contrast or correspondences. In Middleton’s and Rowley’s The Changeling, for example, the characters in the main plot and the ones of the subplot are exposed to similar conflicts and problems and thus correspond with one another on certain levels, while their reactions are very different and thus show the contrasts between corresponding figures. Beatrice, the protagonist of the main plot, and Isabella, Alibius’ wife in the subplot, are both restricted by their social positions as wives and daughters. However, while Beatrice oversteps the boundaries by having her suitor, Alonzo, killed in order to be able to marry Alsemero, Isabella fulfils her role as faithful wife and does not break the rules even when two suitors make advances to her. The themes of sexuality and adultery play an important role in both plots, yet they are pursued in different ways. While Beatrice commits adultery, albeit somewhat involuntarily at first, Isabella resists the temptation and remains virtuous. Sexuality is discussed with subterfuge and only implicitly in the main plot and yet sexual encounters take place, whereas the same topic is discussed in an open and bawdy manner in the subplot where ultimately nothing happens. The husbands in the two plot-lines can also be described in terms of contrasts and correspondences. While Alsemero trusts his wife and does not see what is really going on between her and De Flores (it is only through hints by his friend that he starts to feel suspicious), Alibius is highly suspicious of Isabella and for this reason does not allow her to receive any visitors during his absence. Ironically, as the plot-lines unfold we learn that Alibius’ suspicions are groundless since Isabella remains firm and faithful, whereas Beatrice in a sense cheats on her husband even before they are married. By presenting corresponding characters in such a contrastive manner, their individual characteristics are thrown into sharper relief and certain qualities are highlighted with regard to the overall plot. We can say that the characters in the subplot of The Changeling function as foils to the characters in the main plot because they bring out more effectively the main

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characters’ features (a foil is a piece of shiny metal put under gemstones to increase their brightness).

3.6.5. Character Constellations Characters can also be classified according to their membership to certain groups of characters both across the entire play as well as in individual scenes. In other words, questions like ‘Who belongs to whom?’ and ‘Which characters are friends or foes?’ are also essential in drama analysis. If one considers the overall structure of the play and groups of characters therein, one deals with the constellation of the dramatic personnel. Constellations can be based on sympathies and antipathies among characters, on how they act and react to one another, etc. Usually, one can make the distinction between heroes and their enemies or protagonists and antagonists, and one can find characters who collaborate and support one another, while others fight or plot against each other. Obviously, character constellation is a dynamic concept since sympathies/antipathies can change and groups of people can also change. On stage, groups can be presented symbolically by certain distinctive stage props or costumes and also through their gestures and relative spatial position to one another. In the following picture from a lay performance of Sharman MacDonald’s After Juliet, the opposing members of the Houses of Capulet and Montague can be identified by the fact that they appear in differently coloured spotlights (green and red respectively), and by their final positioning in the play, which already marks their newly aroused antagonism: They have picked up their swords and face one another, ready for a new fight.

Key terms: • character constellation • hero • protagonist • antagonist

3.6.6. Character Configurations In contrast to character constellation, the term configuration denotes the sequential presentation of different characters together on stage. Configurations thus change whenever characters exit or enter the stage. In the first scene of Shakespeare’s Richard III, for example, Richard appears on stage alone first, followed by the entrance of his brother Clarence and Brakenbury with a guard of men, after whose exit Richard is on his own again before Lord Hastings joins him. Before the first scene closes, Lord Hastings exits and Richard remains once again alone on stage. Configurations typically underlie the overall structure of scenes but, as the example of Richard III shows, configurations can even change within scenes. Configurations are important to the extent that they show up groups Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • character configurations

and developments among groups of characters, which, in turn, is essential for the development of the plot. In Richard III, Richard’s frequent appearances alone on stage already reveal him as a loner and an outsider but also as a cunning schemer, whose interactions with other characters are thus unravelled to be false and underhanded.

3.6.7. Techniques of Characterisation Characters in drama are characterised using various techniques of characterisation. Generally speaking, one can distinguish between characterisations made by the author in the play’s secondary text (authorial) or by characters in the play (figural), and whether these characterisations are made directly (explicitly) or indirectly (implicitly). Another distinction can be made between self-characterisation and characterisation through others (see also characterisation techniques in narrative prose ch. 2.4.1.). The way these different forms of characterisation can be accomplished in plays can be schematised as follows:

explicit

implicit

authorial descriptions of characters in author commentary or stage directions; telling names correspondences and contrasts; indirectly characterising names

figural characters’ descriptions of and comments on other characters; also self-characterisation physical appearance, gesture and facial expressions (body language); masks and costumes; stage props, setting; behaviour; voice; language (style, register, dialect, etc.); topics one discusses

Of course, the characterisation of figures usually works on several levels and combines a number of these techniques. An example of an explicit authorial characterisation can be found in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, where the author provides a detailed description of Jimmy in the introductory secondary text: •

JIMMY is a tall, thin young man about twenty-five, wearing a very worn tweed jacket and flannels. Clouds of smoke fill the room from the pipe he is smoking. He is a disconcerting mixture of sincerity and cheerful malice, of tenderness and freebooting cruelty; restless, importunate, full of pride, a combination which alienates the sensitive and insensitive alike. Blistering honesty, or apparent honesty, like his, makes few friends. To many he may seem sensitive to the point of vulgarity. To others, he is simply a loud-mouth. To be as vehement as he is is to be almost non-committal. (Osborne, Look Back in Anger)

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Key terms: • authorial characterisation • figural characterisation • self-characterisation • dialect • sociolect • telling name

Since this explicit authorial characterisation is obviously not available for viewers in a theatre, Jimmy has to be characterised implicitly through the audio-visual channel, i.e., in his interactions with the other characters, the things he talks about, the way he talks, etc. One means of indirect characterisation is already provided in Jimmy’s physical appearance. The fact that he contrasts sharply with Cliff (tall and slender versus short and big boned) suggests to the audience that he might be different in terms of personality as well. The two men’s divergent characters are most visible in the way they interact, however, and in their respective behaviour towards Jimmy’s wife, Alison: JIMMY CLIFF JIMMY CLIFF JIMMY ALISON JIMMY after all? ALISON JIMMY CLIFF JIMMY ALISON JIMMY CLIFF JIMMY CLIFF JIMMY CLIFF JIMMY CLIFF

Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week’s. Different books – same reviews. Have you finished that one yet? Not yet. I’ve just read three whole columns on the English Novel. Half of it’s in French. Do the Sunday papers make you feel ignorant? Not ‘arf. Well, you are ignorant. You’re just a peasant. [To Alison.] What about you? You’re not a peasant are you? [absently.] What’s that? I said do the papers make you feel you’re not so brilliant Oh – I haven’t read them yet. I didn’t ask you that. I said – Leave the poor girlie alone. She’s busy. Well, she can talk, can’t she? You can talk, can’t you? You can express an opinion. Or does the White Woman’s Burden make it impossible to think? I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening properly. You bet you weren’t listening. Old Porter talks, and everyone turns over and goes to sleep. And Mrs. Porter gets ‘em all going with the first yawn. Leave her alone I said. [shouting]. All right, dear. Go back to sleep. It was only me talking. You know? Talking? Remember? I’m sorry. Stop yelling. I’m trying to read. Why do you bother? You can’t understand a word of it. Uh huh. You’re too ignorant. Yes, and uneducated. Now shut up, will you? (ibid.)

In this introductory scene the audience already forms an impression of Jimmy as an almost unbearable, angry, young man because he insults his friend and tries to provoke his wife by making derogatory comments about her parents. The fact that he even starts shouting at Alison shows his illtemper and that he generally seems to be badly-behaved. By contrast, Cliff tries to ignore Jimmy’s attacks as far as possible in order to avoid further conflicts, and he protects Alison. While Jimmy criticises and humiliates his wife, Cliff shows through his words and gestures that he cares for her. Thus, he asks her to stop ironing and to relax from her household chores: Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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CLIFF ALISON CLIFF ALISON CLIFF

[…] [Puts out his hand to Alison.] How are you, dullin’? All right thank you, dear. [grasping her hand]. Why don’t you leave all that, and sit down for a bit? You look tired. [smiling]. I haven’t much more to do. [kisses her hand, and puts her fingers in his mouth]. She’s a beautiful girl, isn’t she?

His gestures and body language show Cliff as an openly affectionate character. This character trait, which is conveyed in an implicit figural technique of characterisation here, again contrasts with Jimmy’s behaviour and thus brings Jimmy’s lack of loving kindness into sharper relief. The outward appearance of characters is often used as an implicit means of characterisation. Melodramatic plays, for example, generally present the ‘goodies’ as fair and good-looking, while ‘baddies’ are of dark complexion, wearing moustaches, etc. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this device is also used for the characterisation of Caliban. Caliban is an extremely ugly creature, which already signifies the evil traits in his character. Furthermore, Caliban’s language reveals him as ambiguous. While he speaks verse and is generally a capable rhetorician, his speech is also marked by frequent swearing, insults, vulgar and ungrammatical expressions. Thus he says to Prospero: “All the charms/ Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!” (The Tempest, I, 2: 398f) and later: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/ Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you/ For learning me your language!” (ibid: 424-426). Caliban’s evil character traits are also implicitly revealed to the audience when Prospero relates how Caliban tried to rape his daughter, Miranda, and when Caliban tries to inveigle Stephano and Trinculo into usurping the island. This example shows that dramatic figures can be characterised in a number of ways and that the audience is usually given several signals or cues concerning the personality of characters: gesture, behaviour, looks, etc. Dramatic language is another important means of indirect characterisation in plays. Characters are presented to the audience through what they say and how they say it, their verbal interactions with others and the discrepancies between their talk and their actions. In an actual performance, an actor’s voice and tone thus also play a major role for how the audience perceives the played character. This can also be seen in plays where dialect or specific sociolects are used. Dialect indicates what region or geographical area one comes from, while sociolect refers to linguistic features which give away one’s social status and membership in a social group. An example is Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock where the characters speak with a broad Irish accent and use a lot of local colloquialisms (even the title already employs accent: ‘paycock’ instead of ‘peacock’). Their language immediately categorises the characters as members of a lower social class and it also underlines one of the major themes of the play: patriotism. Sometimes, character traits can already be anticipated by a character’s name. So-called telling names, for example, explicitly state the quality of a character (e.g., figures like Vice, Good-Deeds, Everyman, Knowledge, Beauty, etc. in the Medieval morality plays), or they refer to Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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characters’ typical behaviour. Thus, some of the characters in Congreve’s The Way of the World are identified as specific types through their names: Fainall = ‘feigns all’, Mirabell = ‘admirable’ and also ‘admirer of female beauty’, Witwoud = ‘would be witty’, and Millamant = ‘has a thousand lovers’. SO WHAT? Characters represent one of the most important analytical categories in drama since they carry the plot. In other words: there cannot be a play without characters. Characters’ interactions trigger and move the plot, and their various relationships to one another form the basis for conflicts and dynamic processes. A lot of the terms used for techniques of characterisation in narrative are also applicable in drama but one needs to be aware of fundamental differences related to the different medium. When we read a novel, for example, the narrator often describes characters which we then have to imagine and bring to life in our mind’s eye. While this exists in drama to the extent that we often find stage directions or introductory comments in the secondary text, characters in actual performances are always already interpretations of stage directors and actors who bring characters to life for us. Our view of characters in staged plays is thus inevitably influenced by the way an actor looks, how he speaks, how he acts out his role, etc. Other influential factors can be costumes and makeup, the overall setting in which a character is presented, etc. Consider in what ways the different realisations of Hamlet in the following pictures can potentially change the viewers’ attitudes towards the character:

[Photo1: Laurence Olivier as Hamlet after he killed Polonius]

The first photo shows Hamlet played by Laurence Olivier in the 1948 film version of the play (photo from Dent (1948) found on http://www.murphsplace.com/olivier/hamlet2.html) [Dent, Alan (1948). Hamlet – The Film and the Play. London: World Film Publications.]. The costume and the set in general try to render the scene as authentically as possible, i.e., this production aims at a realistic presentation of the play. Hamlet is dressed in traditional costume, a courtly outfit which displays his social rank and dignity. He wears a highly ornate doublet, jewellery and stockings as would befit a mighty prince. His posture is upright, only his head stoops slightly towards Polonius who lies dead at Hamlet’s feet. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Hamlet’s facial expression is serious and his eyes are fixed on the dead body. This expression suits the tragic circumstances of Polonius’ death, but it also underlines Hamlet’s shock when he discovers that it was not the king he killed but Polonius. Hamlet’s face does not display sadness, however. It is as though Hamlet was wearing a mask behind which he hides his emotions. He seems to perceive Polonius’ death as an unfortunate, but inevitable, event imposed on him by fate. At the same time, Hamlet’s facial expression reveals his serious and melancholic character. Generally speaking, one can say that Hamlet’s character appears as dignified through the princely costume and Olivier’s body language.

[Photo 2: Pyjama Hamlet with Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern]

The second photo shows a modern version of Hamlet (“Shakespeare in Performance”, photo by Joe Cocks Studio, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1989, found on http://www.geocities.com/markaround/html/stagepics.htm). In the scene depicted here, Hamlet talks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. While the two attendants are dressed in formal contemporary suits, Hamlet is wearing pyjamas. Hamlet’s outfit, which is not normally acceptable in public because it belongs to people’s private and even intimate spheres, already signals to the audience that something must be wrong with him. In a way, Hamlet’s madness is epitomised by his inappropriate and somewhat slovenly dress. This interpretation takes into account and even surpasses the original text where Ophelia also comments on Hamlet’s changed appearance: “with his doublet all unbrac’d,/ No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d,/ Ungarter’d and down-gyved to his ankle” (Hamlet, II, 1: 78-80). In addition to the ‘costume’, Hamlet’s facial expression represents ‘madness’, yet in a different way from the first photo. Hamlet grins while he is shaking both Rosencrantz’ and Guildenstern’s hands, thereby expressing mockery and foolish madness rather than melancholy or serious derangement. Of course this suits the occasion, as Hamlet pokes fun at the two attendants who were sent by the King to find out what is wrong with the prince. At the same time, however, Hamlet is generally portrayed as less dignified than in the first photo, and the stage set also trivialises the conflict by placing it in a present-day and indeed, everyday, context. One has the impression that tragic heroes in the traditional sense are simply no longer possible in our modern day and age. This example shows that the audience’s perception of a play’s character largely depends on the way the character is interpreted by the actor, director, make-up artists, costume designers, etc. Costumes as well as Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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facial expressions and gestures but also the stage set already convey or emphasise certain character traits and create an atmosphere. For this reason, different productions of a play can lead to divergent results.

3.7. Types of Utterance in Drama Dramatic language is modelled on real-life conversations among people, and yet, when one watches a play, one also has to consider the differences between real talk and drama talk. Dramatic language is ultimately always constructed or ‘made up’ and it often serves several purposes. On the level of the story-world of a play, language can of course assume all the pragmatic functions that can be found in real-life conversations, too: e.g., to ensure mutual understanding and to convey information, to persuade or influence someone, to relate one’s experiences or signal emotions, etc. However, dramatic language is often rhetorical and poetic, i.e., it uses language in ways which differ from standard usage in order to draw attention to its artistic nature (see Language in Literature ch. 1.6.). When analysing dramatic texts, one ought to have a closer look at the various forms of utterance available for drama.

3.7.1. Monologue, Dialogue, Soliloquy In drama, in contrast to narrative, characters typically talk to one another and the entire plot is carried by and conveyed through their verbal interactions. Language in drama can generally be presented either as monologue or dialogue. Monologue means that only one character speaks while dialogue always requires two or more participants. A special form of monologue, where no other person is present on stage beside the speaker, is called soliloquy. Soliloquies occur frequently in Richard III for example, where Richard often remains alone on stage and talks about his secret plans. Soliloquies are mainly used to present a character in more detail and also on a more personal level. In other words: Characters are able to ‘speak their mind’ in soliloquies. That characters explain their feelings, motives, etc. on stage appears unnatural from a real-life standpoint but this is necessary in plays because it would otherwise be very difficult to convey thoughts, for example. In narrative texts, by contrast, thoughts can be presented directly through techniques such as interior monologue or free indirect discourse (see ch. 2.7.). Consider the famous soliloquy from Hamlet: To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die – to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Key terms: • pragmatic function of language • poetic function of language • monologue • dialogue • soliloquy • aside • ad spectatores • turn allocation • stichomythia • repartee • wit • wordplay

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause – there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life. […] Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action. Soft you now, The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember’d. (Hamlet, III, 1: 56-88) As soon as Ophelia enters the stage (“Soft you now,/ The fair Ophelia”, line 86f), Hamlet’s speech is technically no longer a soliloquy. Critics often refer to it simply as monologue, as this is the more general term. In case of a monologue, other characters can be present on stage, either overhearing the speech of the person talking or even being directly addressed by him or her. The main point is that one person holds the floor for a lengthy period of time. Hamlet’s soliloquy reveals his inner conflict to the audience. We learn that he wavers between taking action and remaining passive. The fact that he contemplates the miseries of life, death and the possibility of suicide shows him as a melancholic, almost depressed character. At the same time, his speech is profound and philosophical, and thus Hamlet comes across as thoughtful and intellectual. This example illustrates one of the main functions of language in drama, namely the indirect characterisation of figures.

3.7.2. Asides Another special form of speech in drama is the so-called aside. Asides are spoken away from other characters, and a character either speaks aside to himself, secretively to (an)other character(s) or to the audience (ad spectatores). It is conspicuous that plays of the Elizabethan Age make significantly more use of asides than modern plays, for example. One of the reasons certainly has to do with the shape of the stage. The apron stage, which was surrounded by the audience on three sides, makes asides more effective since the actor who speaks, inevitably faces part of the audience, while our modern proscenium stage does not really lend itself to asides as the vicinity between actors and audience is missing. Asides are an important device because they channel extra information past other characters directly to the audience. Thus, spectators are in a way taken into confidence and they often become ‘partners-in-crime’, so to speak, because they ultimately know more than some of the figures on stage (see Information Flow ch. 3.2.). SO WHAT? Dramatic language is multi-faceted and fulfils a number of functions within a play. As a consequence it can have various effects on the audience. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Consider, for example, the way asides are employed in Cyril Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy. After the discovery of the Duke’s dead body, the various characters react differently and express this in asides: LUSSURIOSO: Behold, behold, my lords! The Duke my father’s murdered by a vassal That owes this habit and here left disguised. [Enter DUCHESS and SPURIO.] DUCHESS My lord and husband! [FIRST NOBLE] Reverend Majesty. [SECOND NOBLE] I have seen these clothes often attending on him. VINDICE [aside] That nobleman has been i’th’country, for he does not lie. SUPERVACUO [aside] Learn of our mother, let’s dissemble too. I am glad he’s vanished; so I hope are you. AMBITIOSO [aside] Ay, you may take my word for’t. SPURIO [aside] Old dad dead? I, one of his cast sins, will send the fates Most hearty commendations by his own son; I’ll tug in the new stream till strength be done. […] HIPPOLITO [aside] Brother, how happy is our vengeance! VINDICE [aside] Why, it hits Past the apprehension of indifferent wits. LUSSURIOSO My lord, let post-horse be sent Into all places to entrap the villain. VINDICE [aside] Post-horse! Ha, ha! NOBLE My lord, we’re something bold to know our duty: Your father’s accidentally departed; The titles that were due to him meet you. LUSSURIOSO Meet me? I’m not at leisure my good lord, I’ve many griefs to dispatch out o’the’way. [Aside] Welcome, sweet titles. – Talk to me, my lords, Of sepulchres and mighty emperors’ bones; That’s thought for me. VINDICE [aside] So, one may see by this How foreign markets go: Courtiers have feet o’th’nines, and tongues o’th’twelves, They flatter dukes and dukes flatter themselves. (The Revenger’s Tragedy, V, 1: 105-148) Asides are used to such an extent here that they make the entire plot with the characters’ secrets and hidden thoughts almost farcical. The asides in this excerpt are spoken both to other characters as when Ambitioso and Supervacuo talk to one another aside from the others (lines 111-113), and to oneself, e.g., when Lussurioso expresses his secret joy about the Duke’s death because that means he will accede to the throne (line 143). The asides provide further information, e.g., concerning Spurio’s plan to kill the new Duke (lines 114-117), but mostly they are used here to reveal the different characters’ double standards and hidden agendas. None of the Duke’s sons is really sad about his death, which is finally commented on by Vindice in another aside (lines 145-148). Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Furthermore, the asides also clarify groups of characters who share their respective secrets: Supervacuo and Ambitioso and Vindice and Hippolito. Vindice’s and Hippolito’s asides are often ironic because they actually committed the crime and now revel in their success. This example shows that a linguistic device such as an aside can serve various purposes and needs to be analysed in context. When asides are used in an extraordinarily extensive way, as is the case in the Revenger’s Tragedy, one may also ask why this is done. Although the aside was a common technique in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, its application is undoubtedly exaggerated in Tourneur’s tragedy. Occasionally, one forms the impression that the characters speak nearly as much aside as they speak openly to other characters. As a result, the aside as an artificial theatrical device is highlighted and brought to the viewer’s attention, which in turn potentially ridicules contemporary conventions. The audience not only becomes aware of the characters’ secret thoughts but it is also fully conscious of the fact that what it watches is simply a play that has been ‘constructed’ following traditional conventions. In a sense, the play thus pokes fun at itself and adds an unexpected layer of humour to a genre which originally was not meant to be humorous at all (revenge tragedy)

3.7.3. Turn Allocation, Stichomythia, Repartee In comparison to monologues and asides, dialogue is by far the most frequently used type of speech in drama. In analysing dialogue, one can look at turn-taking and the allocation of turns to different speakers, e.g., how many lines is each character’s turn? Do some characters have longer turns than others and, if so, why? One can also analyse how often a character gets the chance to speak through the entire play and whether he or she is interrupted by others or not. For an example consider the excerpt from John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger in the So What section below. A special type of turn allocation occurs when speaker’s alternating turns are of one line each. This is called stichomythia and is often, albeit not exclusively, used in contexts where characters compete or disagree with one another. In the following excerpt from Richard III, Richard tries to persuade Elizabeth to woo her daughter on his behalf: KING RICHARD Infer fair England’s peace by this alliance. ELIZABETH Which she shall purchase with still-lasting war. KING RICHARD Tell her the King, that may command, entreats. ELIZABETH That, at her hands, which the King’s King forbids. KING RICHARD Say she shall be a high and mighty queen. ELIZABETH To vail the title, as her mother doth. KING RICHARD Say I will love her everlastingly. ELIZABETH But how long shall that title ‘ever’ last? KING RICHARD Sweetly in force, until her fair life’s end. ELZABETH But how long fairly shall her sweet life last? KING RICHARD As long as heaven and nature lengthens it. ELIZABETH As long as hell and Richard likes of it. KING RICHARD Say I, her sovereign, am her subject low. ELIZABETH But she, your subject, loathes such sovereignty. KING RICHARD Be eloquent in my behalf to her. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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ELIZABETH An honest tale speeds best being plainly told. KING RICHARD Then plainly to her tell my loving tale. ELIZABETH Plain and not honest is too harsh a style. KING RICHARD Your reasons are too shallow and too quick. […] (Richard III, IV, 4: 343-361) This dialogue is marked by repartees, i.e., quick responses given in order to top remarks of another speaker or to use them to one’s own advantage. The repartees in this example express Elizabeth’s doubts and counterarguments. The fact that stichomythia is used here underlines the argumentative character of this conversation. In a sense, Richard and Elizabeth compete rhetorically: Richard in order to persuade Elizabeth and Elizabeth in order to resist Richard’s persuasive devices. Through the quick turn-taking mechanism, the dialogue also appears livelier and in itself represents fast action. This is reinforced by a number of word plays and rhetorical figures which use the repetition of words and sounds and thus demonstrate how tightly connected the individual turns are and that each turn immediately responds to the previous one: “everlastingly” – “ever last” (349f); figura etymologica: “sweetly” – “sweet” (351f), “fair” – “fairly” (351f), “sovereign” – “sovereignty” (356f); parallelism: “As long as…/ As long as…” (353f); assonance: “low”, “loathes” (356f); chiasmus: “An honest tale speeds best being plainly told. / Then plainly to her tell my loving tale” (358f). SO WHAT? The distribution and amount of turns speakers are allocated in plays is an important feature to investigate in drama. Let us have a look at the following excerpt from John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, where Jimmy starts to rage after Alison has told him she wants to go to church with her friend, Helena: JIMMY: You’re doing what? Silence. Have you gone out of your mind or something? (To Helena.) You’re determined to win her, aren’t you? So it’s come to this now! How feeble can you get? (His rage mounting within.) When I think of what I did, what I endured, to get you out – ALISON: (recognising an onslaught on the way, starts to panic). Oh yes, we all know what you did for me! You rescued me from the wicked clutches of my family, and all my friends! I’d still be rotting away at home, if you hadn’t ridden up on your charger, and carried me off! The wild note in her voice has re-assured him. His anger cools and hardens. His voice is quite calm when he speaks. JIMMY: The funny thing is, you know, I really did have to ride up on a white charger – off white, really. Mummy locked her up in their eight bedroomed castle, didn’t she? There is no limit to what the middle-aged mummy will do in the holy crusade against ruffians like Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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me. Mummy and I took one quick look at each other, and, from then on, the age of chivalry was dead. I knew that, to protect her innocent young, she wouldn’t hesitate to cheat, lie, bully, and blackmail. Threatened with me, a young man without money, background or even looks, she’d bellow like a rhinoceros in labour – enough to make every male rhino for miles turn white, and pledge himself to celibacy. But even I under-estimated her strength. Mummy may look over-fed and a bit flabby on the outside, but don’t let that well-bred guzzler fool you. Underneath all that, she’s armour plated – […] All so that I shan’t carry off her daughter on that poor old charger of mine, all tricked out and caparisoned in discredited passions and ideals! The old grey mare that actually once led the charge against the old order – well, she certainly ain’t what she used to be. It was all she could do to carry me, but your weight (to Alison) was too much for her. She just dropped dead on the way. CLIFF: (quietly). Don’t let’s brawl, boyo. It won’t do any good.[…] (Look Back in Anger, II, 1) Alison, anticipating Jimmy’s criticism, at first interrupts him. This is typical of arguments, especially when people are emotional in that situation. Then, however, Jimmy takes over again and his turn is significantly longer than anyone else’s in this scene (although it is even abbreviated here!). On the one hand, this indicates Jimmy’s open and unrestrained rage, and on the other hand it signals to the audience that he is the dominant character in this scene. In fact, Jimmy is allocated most turns in the play and his turns are the longest on average, which demonstrates even on a linguistic level that he domineers not only over his wife but also his friends. At the same time, one can recognise a discrepancy between Jimmy’s talk and his actions. While he shouts all the time and criticises everyone, he does not really manage to change anything in his own life. Verbally more than active, he remains disappointingly passive as far as his personal circumstances are concerned and thus involuntarily conveys a sense of failure to the audience. The imagery Jimmy uses in his speech underlines this discrepancy. With a touch of self-irony, Jimmy draws upon the semantic field of chivalry and romance, thereby implicitly claiming for himself the role of a hero who had to ‘rescue’ Alison from her overpowering mother: “carry off her daughter”. The motorbike is affectionately likened to an “old grey mare”, which had “led the charge against the old order”. Jimmy’s ‘fight’ against the establishment is evoked in this image, and Alison is indirectly blamed for the fact that all this ‘heroism’ is over now: “but your weight […] was too much for her”. Alison’s mother is downgraded by a rhetorically adept comparison with the animal world and derogatory references to her physical appearance: “to protect her innocent young”, “she’d bellow like a rhinoceros in labour”, “over-fed”, “flabby”, “well-bred guzzler”. Jimmy’s rage finds an outlet in lengthy speeches whose main purpose is to insult and provoke people. While his seemingly confident way of speaking conveys an illusion of being in the right, the audience soon realises that all this anger probably covers a feeling of vulnerability in Jimmy and a sense of dissatisfaction with himself. From an objective, outside point

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of view, Jimmy’s life can be considered a failure. He has not achieved any of his lofty aims. Occasionally, even the lack of language can be significant. Silence, which can sometimes hardly be borne in real-life conversations, appears as particularly marked in plays, especially when it lasts for a lengthy time. In the final scene of Edward Bond’s Saved, the characters move and act but do not say a word: The living-room. PAM sits on the couch. She reads the Radio Times. MARY takes things from the table and goes out. Pause. She comes back. She goes to the table. She collects the plates. She goes out. Pause. The door opens. HARRY comes in. He goes to the table and opens the drawer. He searches in it. PAM turns a page. MARY comes in. She goes to the table and picks up the last things on it. She goes out. HARRY’S jacket is draped on the back of the chair by the table. He searches in the pockets. PAM turns a page: There is a loud bang (off). Silence. HARRY turns to the table and searches in the drawer. MARY comes in. She wipes the table top with a damp cloth. There is a loud bang (off). MARY goes out. […] (Saved, 13) The scene continues like this right until the end without the characters talking to one another. This final scene is the culmination point of a play in which lack of communication and educational as well as emotional poverty constitute central themes. In a way, the silence is indicative of the characters’ lack of a real relationship, and ultimately of the senselessness of their lives. This is best brought home to the audience by means of a lasting silence, which seems oppressive and yet inevitable. At the same time, life is shown to continue, no matter what happens. Even the outrageous and incredibly violent murder of Pam’s baby by means of stoning has not really had a significant impact on either Pam’s or her family’s life. The message one gets is that nothing can be done or changed. Language or better, the lack of language, thus becomes symbolic and has wider implications for our understanding of a society where cultural and emotional deprivation engenders violence. In Edward Bond’s own words, the ending can even be considered optimistic since at least one person, Len, does seem to care: “The play ends in a silent social stalemate, but if the spectator thinks this is pessimistic that is because he has not learned to clutch at straws. […] The gesture of turning the other cheek is often the gesture of refusing to look facts in the face – but this is not true of Len. He lives with people at their worst and most hopeless (that is the point of the final scene) and does not turn away from them. I cannot imagine an optimism more tenacious, disciplined or honest than his” (Saved, Author’s Note). In fact, it is Len who continuously breaks Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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the silence of the final scene by banging on the chair in order to fix it and, significantly enough, he is given the only line in the entire scene when he instructs Pam to fetch his hammer. The attempt to fix the chair can be interpreted as a final attempt at ‘fixing’ these people’s family life.

3.7.4. The Significance of Wordplay in Drama The play with language entertains spectators and at the same time attracts and sustains their attention. Consider the way Polonius introduces to the King and Queen his explanation for Hamlet’s ‘madness’: Madam, I swear I use no art at all. That he is mad ‘tis true; ‘tis true ‘tis pity; And pity ‘tis ‘tis true. A foolish figureBut farewell it, for I will use no art. Mad let us grant him then. And now remains That we find out the cause of this effect, Or rather say the cause of this defect, For this effect defective comes by cause. Thus it remains; and the remainder thus: […] (Hamlet, II, 2: 96-104) By constantly juxtaposing and repeating words, Polonius attempts to display his ‘cleverness’ because he believes to have found out the cause for Hamlet’s madness, namely Hamlet’s interest in Ophelia, Polonius’ daughter. This play with sound patterns and words catches the audience’s attention because it deviates from normal uses of language. At the same time, it is entertaining, especially since the audience knows that Polonius’ assumption is wrong and Ophelia is not the reason for Hamlet’s madness. Thus, rather than appearing as clever, Polonius comes across as a fool who even uses a fool’s language (although real fools were traditionally considered wise men who indirectly told the truth and held up a mirror to society through their playful language). A special type of wordplay is the so-called pun, where words are used which are the same or at least similar in sound and spelling (homonyms) but differ in meaning. Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, for example, centres on the pun on the name Ernest and the adjective ‘earnest’, which denotes the character trait of being sincere and serious. Puns were also very common in Elizabethan plays and they were used both for comical and serious effects. Consider, for example, Hamlet’s advice to Polonius concerning his daughter Ophelia: Let her not walk i’th’sun. Conception is a blessing, But as your daughter may conceive – friend, look To’t. [...] (Hamlet, II, 2: 184-186) When Hamlet warns Polonius not to let his daughter “walk in the sun”, this can mean quite literally that she should not walk outside, e.g., in public places, but if one considers that the sun in Elizabethan times was also used Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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as a royal emblem, the sentence can be read as an indirect warning not to let Ophelia come near Hamlet himself. Another pun is used with the words “conception” and “conceive”, which on the one hand refer to the formation of ideas and hence are positive (“blessing”) but on the other hand also mean that a woman becomes pregnant, which was not desirable for an unmarried woman. Thus, Hamlet implicitly advises Polonius to take care of his daughter lest she should lose her innocence and consequently her good reputation. The puns, albeit funny at first glance, convey a serious message. Another concept to be mentioned in the context of play with language is wit. The idea of wit, which combines humour and intellect, plays a significant role in the so-called comedy of manners. Wit is expressed in brief verbal expressions which are intentionally contrived to create a comic surprise. It was particularly popular in plays of the Restoration Period, and the most well-known examples are William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) and William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700). Another author famous for his witty plays is the late nineteenth-century writer Oscar Wilde. Consider the following brief excerpt from his play The Importance of Being Earnest: LADY BRACKNELL Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. ALGERNON I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. LADY BRACKNELL That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together. [Sees Jack and bows to him with icy coldness.] ALGERNON [To Gwendolen] Dear me, you are smart! GWENDOLEN I am always smart! Aren’t I, Mr Worthing? JACK You’re quite perfect, Miss Fairfax. GWENDOLEN Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions. (The Importance of Being Earnest, I) This short verbal exchange where four of the characters greet one another abounds in witty remarks and comments, which are meant to display the speakers’ cleverness. Lady Bracknell, for example, signals with her reply to Algernon that she is a knowledgeable woman, who has had some experience of the world. Gwendolen’s reply to Jack’s compliment shows her coquetry. She is fully aware of her effect on Jack and plays with her attractiveness. While language here portrays society and its behavioural codes at large, it also gives an indirect characterisation of individual characters.

3.8. Types of Stage Drama, just like the other genres, has undergone significant changes in its historical development. This is partly attributable to the fact that stage types have also changed and have thus required different forms of acting. Let us have a look at the various stage forms throughout history (based on Pfister 1997: 41-45):

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Key terms: • amphitheatre • mystery play • morality play • apron stage • proscenium stage / picture frame stage

3.8.1. Greek Classicism Plays in ancient Greece were staged in amphitheatres, which were marked by a round stage about three quarters surrounded by the audience. Since amphitheatres were very large and could hold great masses of people (up to 25,000), the actors could hardly be seen from far back, and for this reason, acting included speaking in a loud, declamatory voice, wearing masks and symbolical costumes and acting with large gestures. The chorus was a vital part of ancient drama. It had the function of commenting on the play as well as giving warning and advice to characters. The stage scenery was neutral and was accompanied by the real landscape surrounding the amphitheatre. Plays were performed in broad daylight, which also made it impossible to create an illusion of ‘real life’ on stage, at least for night scenes. That was not intended anyway. Ancient Greek drama was originally performed on special occasions like religious ceremonies, and it thus had a more ritual, symbolic and also didactic purpose. Another interesting fact to know is that the audience in ancient Greece consisted only of free men, i.e., slaves and women were excluded.

3.8.2. The Middle Ages: Medieval plays were primarily performed during religious festivities (mystery plays, morality plays). They were staged on wagons, which stopped somewhere in the market place and were entirely surrounded by the audience. The close vicinity between actors and audience has to account for a way of acting which combined serious renditions of the topic in question with stand-up comedy and funny or bawdy scenes, depending on the taste of the audience. Actors took into account the everyday experiences of their viewers and there was much more interaction between audience and actors than nowadays. The lack of clear boundaries between stage and audience again impeded the creation of a realistic illusion, which was also not intended.

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3.8.3. Renaissance England: The Elizabethan stage was typically found in public theatres, i.e., plays were no longer performed outside. However, the Elizabethan theatre was still an open-air theatre as the lack of artificial lighting made daylight necessary for performances. An exception was the Blackfriars theatre, which was indoors and lit by candlelight. Theatre groups were now professional and sponsored by wealthy aristocrats. Groups which were not under anybody’s patronage were considered disreputable vagabonds. The stage was surrounded by the audience on three sides and there was still a close vicinity between audience and actors. The most common stage form in Renaissance England was the apron stage which was surrounded by the audience on three sides. This meant that actors could not possibly ignore their viewers, and theatrical devices such as asides and monologues ad spectatores were an integral part of the communication system. The stage set was reasonably barren while costumes could be very elaborate. Since performances took place in broad daylight, the audience had to imagine scenes set at night, for example, and respective information had to be conveyed rhetorically in the characters’ speeches (word scenery). As there was barely any scenery, scenes could change very quickly with people entering and exiting. The three unities were thus frequently not strictly adhered to in Elizabethan drama. The Elizabethan theatre could hold up to 2,000 people, and the audience was rather heterogeneous, consisting of people from different social backgrounds. Plays of that period thus typically combine various subject matters and modes (e.g., tragic and comical) because they attempted to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

3.8.4. Restoration Period: Theatres of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were considerably smaller than the Elizabethan theatre (they held around 500 people), and performances took place in closed rooms with artificial lighting. In contrast to modern theatres where the audience sits in the dark, the audience in the Restoration period was seated in a fully illuminated room. One must bear in mind that people of the higher social class were also interested in presenting themselves in public, and attending a play offered just such an opportunity. Because of the lighting arrangement, the division between audience and actors was thus not as clear-cut as today. Plays had the status of a cultural event, and the audience was more homogeneous than in earlier periods, belonging primarily to higher social classes. While the stage was closed in by a decorative frame and the distance between audience and actors was thus enlarged, there was still room for interaction by means of a minor stage jutting out into the auditorium. Furthermore, there was no curtain so that changes of scene had to take place on stage in front of the audience. Restoration plays thus still did not aim at creating a sense of realism but they presented an idealised, highly stylised image of scenery, characters, language and subject matter.

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3.8.5. Modern Times: The stage of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is called proscenium stage or picture frame stage because it is shaped in such a way that the audience watches the play as it would regard a picture: The ramp clearly separates actors and audience, and the curtain underlines this division. Furthermore, while the stage is illuminated during the performance, the auditorium remains dark, which also turns the audience into an anonymous mass. Since the audience is thus not disturbed from watching the play and can fully concentrate on the action on stage, it becomes easier to create an illusion of real life in plays. Furthermore, the scenery is now often elaborate and as true-to-life as possible thanks to new technologies and more detailed stage props. While many modern plays aim at creating the illusion of a storyworld ‘as it could be in real life’ and acting conventions follow this dictum accordingly, there have also been a great number of theatrical movements which counter exactly this realism. However, the modern stage form has not been able to fully accommodate to the needs of more experimental plays (e.g., the epic theatre), nor to older plays such as those of ancient Greece or the Elizabethan Age simply because the overall stage conventions diverge too much. For this reason, we find nowadays a wide range of different types of stage alongside the proscenium stage of conventional theatres.

3.9. Dramatic Sub-genres Ever since Aristotle’s Poetics, one distinguishes at least between two subgenres of drama: comedy and tragedy (see also Genre ch.1.4.2.). While comedy typically aims at entertaining the audience and making it laugh by reassuring them that no disaster will occur and that the outcome of possible conflicts will be positive for the characters involved, tragedy tries to raise the audience’s concern, to confront viewers with serious action and conflicts, which typically end in a catastrophe (usually involving the death of the protagonist and possibly others). Both comedy and tragedy have, in the course of literary history, developed further sub-genres of which the following list provides only an initial overview.

3.9.1. Types of Comedy Sometimes, scholars distinguish between high comedy, which appeals to the intellect (comedy of ideas) and has a serious purpose (for example, to criticise), and low comedy, where greater emphasis is placed on situation comedy, slapstick and farce. There are further sub-genres of comedy: Romantic Comedy: A pair of lovers and their struggle to come together is usually at the centre of romantic comedy. Romantic comedies also involve some extraordinary circumstances, e.g., magic, dreams, the fairy-world, etc. Examples are Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It.

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Key terms: • high comedy • low comedy • romantic comedy • satiric comedy • comedy of manners • farce • commedia dell’arte • comedy of humours • melodrama • Senecan tragedy • revenge tragedy • dumb show • play-within-the-play • domestic tragedy (bourgeois tragedy) • anti-hero • tragicomedy

Satiric Comedy: Satiric comedy has a critical purpose. It usually attacks philosophical notions or political practices as well as general deviations from social norms by ridiculing characters. In other words: the aim is not to make people ‘laugh with’ the characters but ‘laugh at’ them. An early writer of satirical comedies was Aristophanes (450-385 BC), later examples include Ben Jonson’s Volpone and The Alchemists. Comedy of Manners: The comedy of manners is also satirical in its outlook and it takes the artificial and sophisticated behaviour of the higher social classes under closer scrutiny. The plot usually revolves around love or some sort of amorous intrigue and the language is marked by witty repartees and cynicism. Ancient representatives of this form of comedy are Terence and Plautus, and the form reached its peak with the Restoration comedies of William Wycherley and William Congreve. Farce: The farce typically provokes viewers to hearty laughter. It presents highly exaggerated and caricatured types of characters and often has an unlikely plot. Farces employ sexual mix-ups, verbal humour and physical comedy, and they formed a central part of the Italian commedia dell’arte. In English plays, farce usually appears as episodes in larger comical pieces, e.g., in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Comedy of Humours: Ben Jonson developed the comedy of humours, which is based on the assumption that a person’s character or temperament is determined by the predominance of one of four humours (i.e., body liquids): blood (= sanguine), phlegm (= phlegmatic), yellow bile (= choleric), black bile (= melancholic). In the comedy of humours, characters are marked by one of these predispositions which cause their eccentricity or distorted personality. An example is Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour. Melodrama: Melodrama is a type of stage play which became popular in the 19th century. It mixes romantic or sensational plots with musical elements. Later, the musical elements were no longer considered essential. Melodrama aims at a violent appeal to audience emotions and usually has a happy ending.

3.9.2. Types of Tragedy Senecan Tragedy: A precursor of tragic drama were the tragedies by the Roman poet Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD). His tragedies were recited rather than staged but they became a model for English playwrights entailing the five-act structure, a complex plot and an elevated style of dialogue. Revenge Tragedy / Tragedy of Blood: This type of tragedy represented a popular genre in the Elizabethan Age and made extensive use of certain elements of the Senecan tragedy such as Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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murder, revenge, mutilations and ghosts. Typical examples of this sub-genre are Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. These plays were written in verse and, following Aristotelian poetics, the main characters were of a high social rank (the higher they are, the lower they fall). Apart from dealing with violent subject matters, these plays conventionally made use of dumb shows or play-within-the-play, that is a play performed as part of the plot of the play as for example ‘The Mousetrap’ which is performed in Hamlet, and feigned or real madness in some of the characters. Domestic / Bourgeois Tragedy: In line with a changing social system where the middle class gained increasing importance and power, tragedies from the 18th century onward shifted their focus to protagonists from the middle or lower classes and were written in prose. The protagonist typically suffers a domestic disaster which is intended to arouse empathy rather than pity and fear in the audience. An example is George Lillo’s The London Merchant: or, The History of George Barnwell (1731). Modern tragedies such as Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman (1949) follow largely the new conventions set forth by the domestic tragedy (common conflict, common characters, prose) and a number of contemporary plays have exchanged the tragic hero for an anti-hero, who does not display the dignity and courage of a traditional hero but is passive, petty and ineffectual. Other dramas resuscitate elements of ancient tragedies such as the chorus and verse, e.g., T.S. Eliot’s The Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Tragicomedy: The boundaries of genres are often blurred in drama and occasionally they lead to the emergence of new sub-genres, e.g., the tragicomedy. Tragicomedies, as the name suggests, intermingle conventions concerning plot, character and subject matter derived from both tragedy and comedy. Thus, characters of both high and low social rank can be mixed as in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1600), or a serious conflict, which is likely to end in disaster, suddenly reaches a happy ending because of some unforeseen circumstances as in John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess (c.1609). Plays with multiple plots which combine tragedy in one plot and comedy in the other are also occasionally referred to as tragicomedies (e.g., Thomas Middleton’s and William Rowley’s The Changeling, 1622). SO WHAT? Let us consider Cyril Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (c.1607). The title as such already allocates the play to a specific genre, the so-called revenge tragedy, but when one reads the play one is often struck by the mixture of tragedy and comedy. Act III, Scene 5 offers a particularly poignant example. In this scene, Vindice carefully prepares and eventually executes his revenge on the lecherous Duke who killed Vindice’s fiancée because she resisted his advances. In a rhetorically powerful speech, Vindice philosophises about the transience of life and hence the pointlessness of giving up morality for pleasure: Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Does the silk-worm expend her yellow labours For thee? For thee does she undo herself? Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships For the poor benefit of a bewitching minute? […] Does every proud and self-affecting dame Camphor her face for this, and grieve her Maker In sinful baths of milk, – when many an infant starves For her superfluous outside, – all for this? (The Revenger’s Tragedy, III, 5: 71-86) The topic and rhetoric is reminiscent of Hamlet’s philosophical contemplations but this serious tone is not maintained throughout the scene. When Vindice disguises the skull of his dead fiancée, for example, he addresses ‘her’ as follows: Madam, his grace will not be absent long. Secret? Ne’er doubt us madam; ‘twill be worth Three velvet gowns to your ladyship. Known? Few ladies respect that disgrace, a poor thin shell! ‘Tis the best grace you have to do it well; I’ll save your hand that labour, I’ll unmask you. (The Revenger’s Tragedy, III, 5: 43-48) Vindice appears to be almost mad. He seems to be carried away by the idea that his time of revenge is finally approaching. At the same time, he takes pleasure in ‘staging’ the Duke’s death and he makes a number of comments during the scene which create irony for the spectators who, unlike the Duke, know exactly what is going on (dramatic irony, see ch. 3.2.3.1.). Thus, he puns on the “grave look” (II, 5: 137) of the “bashful” lady (III, 5:133), which is absolutely hilarious for the audience. Playing with words is a typical feature of the language style in comedies as it offers a lightness of tone which contrasts with the heroic and serious style of tragic speeches (wordplay can also be used in serious contexts, however, see ch. 3.7.4.). Vindice’s brother, Hippolito, also uses a playful tone when he says: Yet ‘tis no wonder, now I think again, To have a lady stoop to a duke, that stoops unto his men. ‘Tis common to be common through the world, And there’s more private common shadowing vices Than those who are known both by their names and prices. (The Revenger’s Tragedy, III, 5: 36-40) The repetition of “stoop” and “common” reminds one of the language of comedies where witty remarks are often clad in puns. Scene 5 reaches its climax when the Duke kisses the skull and is thus poisoned. The Duke’s first reaction is surprise: “Oh, what’s this? Oh!” (III, 5: 160). Depending on how this line is spoken, it can be very amusing. The same applies to the way the Duke dies. First of all, it takes an unusually long time and, apart from a few short phrases, the Duke is only able to utter “oh” every once in a while. There is no moving speech, and the Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Duke’s death lacks the dignity of other tragic deaths. Quite on the contrary, Vindice and Hippolito even further downgrade the Duke by stamping on him sadistically and by making jokes on the Duke’s lament: “My teeth are eaten out” (III, 5: 160), meaning ‘I am dying’. “Hadst any left?” (ibid.), Vindice asks back, and Hippolito remarks: “I think but few” (III, 5: 161). Finally, Vindice becomes impatient because the Duke is still alive and he says: “What! Is not thy tongue eaten out yet?” (III, 5: 190). This kind of wordplay deflates a fundamentally tragic event and presents it in an almost humorous manner. Scenes like this thus appear, especially to a modern audience, more like a farce or parody than tragedy. Of course this very much depends on how a director chooses to stage this play. The Revenger’s Tragedy can easily be performed in a comical manner because there is great comical potential in the way the subject matter is rendered linguistically and plot-wise. Tourneur’s play is not exceptional for its time. A number of plays in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period somehow waver between being comedies or tragedies, and difficulties in classifying plays as ‘either/or’ already induced contemporary authors to speak about their plays as tragicomedies (e.g., John Fletcher in the preface to his play The Faithful Shepherdess). This shows that generic terms are somewhat arbitrary and dependent on culturally defined conventions, which one needs to know in order to be able to discuss plays appropriately in their context.

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Bibliography: Drama Primary Texts: Shakespeare, William. 1994. Complete Works. Ed. Peter Alexander. Glasgow: HarperCollins. Beckett, Samuel. 1965. Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. London/Boston: Faber. Bond, Edward. 1965. Saved. London: Methuen. Congreve, William. 1971 [1700]. The Way of the World. Ed. Brian Gibbons. London: Ernest Benn. Shakespeare, William. 1981. King Richard III. Ed. Anthony Hammond. Arden Edition. London/New York: Routledge. Wilde, Oscar. 1994. Complete Works. Ed. Merlin Holland. Glasgow: HarperCollins. Shakespeare, William. 1982. Hamlet. Ed. Harold Jenkins. Arden Edition. London: Methuen. O’Casey, Sean. 1994. Three Plays: Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman, The Plough and the Stars. London: Macmillan Papermac. Osborne, John. 1957. Look Back in Anger. A Play in Three Acts. London/Boston: Faber. Salgado, Gamini, ed. 1965. Three Jacobean Tragedies. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Shaffer, Peter. 1974. Equus. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Secondary Sources: Asmuth, Bernard. 1997. Einführung in die Dramenanalyse. Stuttgart: Metzler. Banham, Martin, ed. 1995. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bevington, David. 1996. “‘But We Are Spirits of Another Sort’: The Dark Side of Love and Magic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” New Casebooks. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ed. Richard Dutton. Basingstoke/London: Macmillan: 24-35. Berry, Ralph. 1985. Shakespeare and the Awareness of the Audience. London: Macmillan. Bradbrook, Muriel C. 1963. The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bradbrook, Muriel C. 1980. Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brooke, Nicholas. 1979. Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy. London: Open Books. Brown, John Russell, ed. 1995. The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Corrigan, Robert W. 1992. The World of Theatre. Madison: Brown and Benchmark. Erzgräber, Willi 1994. “Shakespeares Hamlet als Rachetragödie.” Freiburger Universitätsblätter 125.3: 7-20. Esslin, Martin. 1974. The Theatre of the Absurd. London: Methuen. Esslin, Martin. 1977. An Anatomy of Drama. New York: Hill and Wang. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Drama

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Fielitz, Sonja. 1995. “Grundfragen der Dramenanalyse.” Handbuch Englisch als Fremdsprache. Ed. Rüdiger Ahrens. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. 309313. Fielitz, Sonja. 1999. Drama: Text und Theater. Berlin: Cornelsen. Gianakaris, Constantine John. 1977. “Theatre of the Mind in Miller, Osborne and Shaffer.” Renascence 30.1: 33-41. Goetsch, Paul. 1992. Bauformen des modernen englischen und amerikanischen Dramas. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Goetsch, Paul. 1996. “Die Grenzen der Macht: Prosperos dialogisches Verhalten in The Tempest.” Dialogische Strukturen. Dialogic Structures. Festschrift für Willi Erzgräber zum 70. Geburtstag. Ed. Thomas Kühn und Ursula Schaefer. Tübingen: Gunter Narr: 69-88. Goldstone, Herbert. 1982. Coping with Vulnerability: The Achievement of John Osborne. New York: University of America Press. Gurr, Andrew. 1996. The Shakespearian Playing Companies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gurr, Andrew and Mariko Ichikawa. 2000. Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hartnoll, Phyllis and Peter Found, eds. 1996. The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hirst, David L., ed. 1985. Edward Bond. New York: Grove Press. Kaufmann, Ralph James, ed. 1961. Elizabethan Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kesting, Marianne. 1989. Das epische Theater: Zur Struktur des modernen Dramas. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Klotz, Volker. 1999. Geschlossene und offene Form im Drama. München: Carl Hanser. Krieger, Elliot. 1996. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” New Casebooks. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ed. Richard Dutton. Basingstoke/London: Macmillan: 38-60. Krieger, Gottfried. 1998. “Dramentheorie und Methoden der Dramenanalyse.” Literaturwissenschaftliche Theorien, Modelle und Methoden. Eine Einführung. Ed. Ansgar Nünning. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 69-92. McAlindon, Thomas. 1986. English Renaissance Tragedy. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Müller, Klaus-Peter. 1993. Englische Theater der Gegenwart. Geschichte(n) und Strukturen. Tübingen: Narr. Pfister, Manfred. 2001. Das Drama. Theorie und Analyse. München: Fink. Platz-Waury, Elke. 1999. Drama und Theater: Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Plett, Heinrich F. 1982. Englisches Drama von Beckett bis Bond. München: Fink. Richmond, Hugh M. 1989. King Richard III. Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press. Rose, Mark 1993. “Hamlet and the Shape of Revenge.” Shakespeare’s Middle Tragedies. A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. David Young. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall: 7-17. Russo, Anna. 1998. Wege des epischen Theaters. Bertold Brecht und Dario Fo. Stuttgart: Metzler. Schabert, Ina, ed. 2000. Shakespeare-Handbuch. Die Zeit. Der Mensch. Das Werk. Die Nachwelt. Stuttgart: Kröner.

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Stamm, Rudolf. 1954. Shakespeare’s Word-Scenery. Zürich: Polygraphischer Verlag. Suerbaum, Ulrich. 1996. Shakespeares Dramen. Tübingen/Basel: Francke Verlag. Tomarken, Edward, ed. 1997. As You Like It from 1600 to the Present: Critical Essays. New York/London: Garland. Trussler, Simon. 1969. John Osborne. Harlow: Longman. Trussler, Simon, ed. 2000. The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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STEFANIE LETHBRIDGE AND JARMILA MILDORF:

Basics of English Studies: An introductory course for students of literary studies in English. Developed at the English departments of the Universities of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Freiburg

4. Poetry Table of Contents: 4.1. What Is Poetry? ................................................................................... 142 4.1.1. Outward Indications .......................................................................... 142 4.2. Types of Poetry ................................................................................... 144 4.2.1. Lyric Poetry ......................................................................................... 144 4.2.2. Narrative Poetry ................................................................................. 145 4.2.3. Descriptive and Didactic Poetry ...................................................... 146 4.3. Prosodic Features: Metre and Rhythm ........................................ 146 4.3.1. Metre .................................................................................................... 146 4.3.1.1. Accentual Metre .............................................................................. 147 4.3.1.2. Syllabic Metre .................................................................................. 148 4.3.1.3. Accentual-Syllabic Metre ................................................................ 149 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 151 4.3.1.4. Free Verse ........................................................................................ 152 4.3.1.5. Maximisation Principle and Metrical Grid .................................. 152 4.3.1.6. Metrical Deviation .......................................................................... 153 4.3.1.7. Substitutions .................................................................................... 153 4.3.1.8. Recitation ......................................................................................... 154 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 154 4.3.2. Rhythm ................................................................................................ 156 4.3.2.1. Pauses at the End of Lines ............................................................ 156 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 158 4.3.2.2. Pauses within Lines ......................................................................... 158 4.3.2.3. Elisions and Expansions ................................................................ 158 4.3.2.4. Vowel Length and Consonant Clusters ....................................... 159 4.3.2.5. Modulation ....................................................................................... 161 4.4. Prosodic Features: Sound Patterns ............................................... 162 4.4.1. Rhyme .................................................................................................. 162 4.4.2. Alliteration, Assonance, Onomatopoeia ......................................... 164 SO WHAT? ...................................................................................................... 164 4.5. Verse Forms and Stanza Forms ..................................................... 165 SO WHAT? ..................................................................................................... 172 4.6. Form and Meaning in Poetry ......................................................... 173 Bibliography: Poetry ................................................................................. 175

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4. Poetry 4.1. What is Poetry? To ask ‘What is poetry?’ is very much like asking ‘What is literature?’ and in fact the answers to both these questions overlap: Poetry is perceived as fictional, it uses specialised language, in many cases it lacks a pragmatic function, it is also ambiguous (see Basic Concepts ch. 1.2).

4.1.1. Outward Indications In addition, there are a number of outward signs that indicate a poem: Most obviously, the individual text lines in poetry do not fill the entire width of the page. Thus, before they have actually started reading, readers of poetry are given an instant indication that what they are going to read is probably a poem. In consequence, a reader’s attention is likely to focus on ‘poetic features’ of the text. Poetry is often associated not only with specialised language but with a very dense use of such specialised language. Poems usually try to express their meaning in much less space than, say, a novel or even a short story. Alexander Pope once explained that he preferred to write poetry even when he wrote about philosophy because it enabled him to express himself more briefly (Pope, Preface to An Essay on Man, 1734). As a result of its relative brevity, poetry tends to make more concentrated use of formal elements, it displays a tendency for structural, phonological, morphological and syntactic overstructuring, a concept which originated in formalist and structuralist criticism. It means that poetry uses elements such as sound patterns, verse and metre, rhetorical devices, style, stanza form or imagery more frequently than other types of text. Obviously, not all poems use all these elements and not all verse is poetry, as John Hollander remarks (Hollander 2001: 1). Especially modern poets deliberately flaunt reader expectations about poetic language (see the ‘found poem’ in ch. 1.2.). Nonetheless, most poetry depends on the aesthetic effects of a formalised use of language. Some people associate poetry with subjectivity and the expression of intense personal experience. While this is true for some poetry, especially lyrical poetry, there are a great number of poems this does not apply to; for example narrative poems like Scott’s Marmion or didactic and philosophical poems like Pope’s Essay on Man or John Philips’ Cyder. Just as it is often misleading to identify the author of a novel with its narrator, one should not assume that the author of a poem is identical with its speaker and thus even lyrical poems cannot be treated as subjective expressions of the author. The two levels of author and speaker should always be kept separate. The communication situation in poetry is very similar to the one in prose, except that poetry very often does not include dialogue, thus the inner box is optional:

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Key terms: • overstructuring • communication model

POEM

author

speaker

(character who speaks)

(character who listens)

addressee (optional)

Code/Message

Searching for a definition of poetry, other readers look for ‘universal truth’ or some other deeper meaning in poetry more than in prose, the famous nineteenth-century critic Matthew Arnold for instance (see Arnold 1880). Again, while some poetry might very well deal with universal truths, this is probably not the case for all. There is no doubt some poetry which is very lovely and very popular but which, at bottom, is really neither very profound nor the expression of a universal truth. Take these lines by Ben Jonson for instance, one of the most popular love songs in the last 400 years: To Celia Drink to me only with thine eyes And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I’ll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise, Doth ask a drink divine: But might I of Jove’s nectar sup, I would not change for thine. [...] In fact, to expect statements of universal truth from poetry can be rather misleading if one deduces from this that what matters in a poem is somehow what lies behind the language and its use (for this problem see the discussion in Warren/Brooks 1960: 6-20), whereas modern criticism insists that form cannot be separated from meaning (See also Theme ch. 1.5.). It is difficult to answer the question ‘What is Poetry?’ conclusively, though most people are more or less able to recognise poetry when they see it. One recent critic has suggested the following criteria in answer to the question ‘What is Poetry?’ (Müller-Zettelmann 2000: 73-156):

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actual reader

Poetic texts have a tendency to • • • • • • • •

relative brevity (with some notable exceptions) dense expression express subjectivity more than other texts display a musical or songlike quality be structurally and phonologically overstructured be syntactically and morphologically overstructured deviate from everyday language aesthetic self-referentiality (which means that they draw attention to themselves as art form both through the form in which they are written and through explicit references to the writing of poetry)

With all the difficulties of defining poetry it is worth remembering that poetry, especially in the form of song, is one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, much older than prose, and that it seems to answer – or to originate in – a human impulse that reaches for expression in joy, grief, doubt, hope, loneliness, and much more.

4.2. Types of Poetry When studying poetry, it is useful first of all to consider the theme and the overall development of the theme in the poem (see ch. 1.5.). Obviously, the sort of development that takes place depends to a considerable extent on the type of poem one is dealing with. It is useful to keep two general distinctions in mind (for more detailed definitions consult Abrams 1999 and Preminger et al 1993): lyric poetry and narrative poetry.

4.2.1. Lyric Poetry A lyric poem is a comparatively short, non-narrative poem in which a single speaker presents a state of mind or an emotional state. Lyric poetry retains some of the elements of song which is said to be its origin: For Greek writers the lyric was a song accompanied by the lyre. Subcategories of the lyric are, for example elegy, ode, sonnet and dramatic monologue and most occasional poetry: In modern usage, elegy is a formal lament for the death of a particular person (for example Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H.). More broadly defined, the term elegy is also used for solemn meditations often on questions of death, such as Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. An ode is a long lyric poem with a serious subject written in an elevated style. Famous examples are Wordsworth’s Hymn to Duty or Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn. The sonnet was originally a love poem which dealt with the lover’s sufferings and hopes. It originated in Italy and became popular in England in the Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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Key terms: • lyric poetry • elegy • ode • sonnet • dramatic monologue • occasional poetry • epithalamion • narrative poetry • epic • mock-epic • ballad • descriptive poetry • dramatic poetry • didactic poetry • prodesse et delectare

Renaissance, when Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey translated and imitated the sonnets written by Petrarch (Petrarchan sonnet). From the seventeenth century onwards the sonnet was also used for other topics than love, for instance for religious experience (by Donne and Milton), reflections on art (by Keats or Shelley) or even the war experience (by Brooke or Owen). The sonnet uses a single stanza of (usually) fourteen lines and an intricate rhyme pattern (see stanza forms ch. 4.5.). Many poets wrote a series of sonnets linked by the same theme, so-called sonnet cycles (for instance Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare, Drayton, Barret-Browning, Meredith) which depict the various stages of a love relationship. In a dramatic monologue a speaker, who is explicitly someone other than the author, makes a speech to a silent auditor in a specific situation and at a critical moment. Without intending to do so, the speaker reveals aspects of his temperament and character. In Browning's My Last Duchess for instance, the Duke shows the picture of his last wife to the emissary from his prospective new wife and reveals his excessive pride in his position and his jealous temperament. Occasional poetry is written for a specific occasion: a wedding (then it is called an epithalamion, for instance Spenser’s Epithalamion), the return of a king from exile (for instance Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis) or a death (for example Milton’s Lycidas), etc.

4.2.2. Narrative Poetry Narrative poetry gives a verbal representation, in verse, of a sequence of connected events, it propels characters through a plot. It is always told by a narrator (see narrator in narrative prose). Narrative poems might tell of a love story (like Tennyson's Maud), the story of a father and son (like Wordsworth's Michael) or the deeds of a hero or heroine (like Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel). Sub-categories of narrative poetry are for example: epic, mock-epic or ballad. Epics usually operate on a large scale, both in length and topic, such as the founding of a nation (Virgil’s Aeneid) or the beginning of world history (Milton's Paradise Lost), they tend to use an elevated style of language and supernatural beings take part in the action. The mock-epic makes use of epic conventions, like the elevated style and the assumption that the topic is of great importance, to deal with completely insignificant occurrences. A famous example is Pope's The Rape of the Lock, which tells the story of a young beauty whose suitor secretly cuts off a lock of her hair. A ballad is a song, originally transmitted orally, which tells a story. It is an important form of folk poetry which was adapted for literary uses from the sixteenth century onwards. The ballad stanza is usually a four-line stanza, alternating tetrameter and trimeter (see also ballad stanza ch. 4.5.).

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4.2.3. Descriptive and Didactic Poetry Both lyric and narrative poetry can contain lengthy and detailed descriptions (descriptive poetry) or scenes in direct speech (dramatic poetry). The purpose of a didactic poem is primarily to teach something. This can take the form of very specific instructions, such as how to catch a fish, as in James Thomson’s The Seasons (Spring 379-442) or how to write good poetry as in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism. But it can also be meant as instructive in a general way. Until the twentieth century all literature was expected to have a didactic purpose in a general sense, that is, to impart moral, theoretical or even practical knowledge; Horace famously demanded that poetry should combine prodesse (learning) and delectare (pleasure). The twentieth century was more reluctant to proclaim literature openly as a teaching tool.

4.3. Prosodic Features: Metre and Rhythm Prosody is the study of speech rhythms and versification. Most poetry is a rhythmical utterance, that is to say, it makes use of rhythmic elements that are natural to language: alternation of stress and non-stress, vowel length, consonant clusters, pauses and so on. Various rhythmical patterns have different effects on those who read or hear poetry. The central question for the analysis of metre and rhythm is to determine the function which these rhythmical elements perform in each poem. Unfortunately, there are no general rules about these functions. Once a specific pattern has been identified, its function needs to be determined for each text and context individually (see also isotopy ch. 1.5.).

4.3.1. Metre Metre is the measured arrangement of accents and syllables in poetry. In any kind of utterance we stress certain syllables and not others. For instance most people would probably stress the phrase ‘And how are you this morning’ something like this: And HOW are YOU this MORNing? Or possibly: And how ARE you this MORNing? Poetry employs the stresses that occur naturally in language utterance to construct regular patterns. There are various possibilities for metrical patterns in poetry. 1. Accentual metre

each line has the same number of stresses, but varies in the total number of syllables

2. Syllabic metre

each line has the same number of syllables but the number of stresses varies

3. Accentual-Syllabic metre

each line has the same number of stressed and non-stressed syllables in a fixed order. This is by far the most common metrical system in English verse

4. Free verse

irregular patterns of stress and syllables

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Key terms: • prosody • metre • accentual metre • accentual-syllabic metre • syllabic metre • free verse • scansion • nursery rhymes • Old English Poetry • sprung rhythm • rap • Haiku • foot • iamb • trochee • dactyl • anapaest • spondee • alexandrine • scansion • metric foot • maximisation principle • metrical grid • interplay

The visual representation of the distribution of stress and non-stress in verse is called scansion. In the following the notation suggested by Helmut Bonheim (1990) will be used: 1 to mark a stressed, o to mark a non-stressed syllable. 4.3.1.1. Accentual Metre In accentual metre each line has the same number of stresses, but varies in the total number of syllables. It is found in nursery rhymes and it was commonly used in Old English poetry. In the late nineteenth century Gerard Manley Hopkins developed the so-called sprung rhythm, in which again only stresses are central. A system of accentual metre very similar to the medieval pattern has recently re-emerged in rap poetry. Nursery rhyme: In this example there are six stresses in each line and a varying number of non-stressed syllables between the stresses. o1o1o1oo1o1o1 o1o1o1oo1o1o1 o1o1o1o1o1o1 oo1oo1ooo1o1o1

There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile He found a crooked sixpence beside a crooked stile He had a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse And they all lived together in a little crooked house (From: Christie, Crooked House) Old English poetry usually has between two and four marked stresses in each line and a marked pause (caesura) in the middle, indicated by the gap in the printed line. Alliterations emphasise the stress pattern (alliterations are underlined): Nu sculon herigean

heofonrices Weard

Now we must praise

heaven-kingdon’s Guardian

Meotodes meahte

and his modgeÞanc

the Measurer’s might

and his mind-plans,

weorc Wuldor-Fæder

swa he wundra gehwæs

ece Drihten

or onstealde

the work of the Glory-Father, eternal Lord,

when he of wonders of every one,

the beginning established

(From: Cædmon’s Hymn, seventh century, text and translation Abrams et al. 1986) The system has been memorably explained in modern English by John Hollander: The oldest English Of four, unfailing Strongly struck Attended to anything Definite downbeats: Unstressed upbeats Mattered not much; With low leaps Handily harping on

accented meter fairly audible stresses seldom other than how many dim in any line motion was measured of alliteration heavy accents

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(Echoing equally all vowels Consonant cousins coming together) (Hollander 2001: 22) Rap music relies on a similar pattern: four heavy beats with a marked pause in the middle of the line. Apart from alliterations, rap tends to rely on rhyme patterns to mark the line and provide a kind of climax on the fourth beat (see Attridge 1995: 90-94). The following example uses internal rhyme (axe / Max / Tracks / Cadillacs / Wax), t-alliteration and m-alliteration, assonances on ‘a’ and the short German ‘i’ sound. The main stresses are underlined: T-T-T-Trick-Texts, Battle-Axe, Gauner 's Max – Wollt Ihr Tracks fett wie Cadillacs oder wollt Ihr Airbag-Raps auf Wax? Trick-Tracks, Battle-Raps – Gauner am Mikrofon. Mick Mac Tizoe Rap – Du steppst in die Battle Zone. Da machst dick Wind, bist blind, mehr Plastik als Synthetik. Trick-Tracks, Battle-Raps, schlachten Dich, Du Rindvieh! (Gauner) Hopkins’ sprung rhythm has a varying number of syllables but an equal number of stresses in each line. In this example each line is supposed to be read with five stresses. Obviously, there is some room for interpretation. The scansion provided is a suggestion: oo1o1o1ooo11 11o1ooo1o1oo o1o1oo1ooo11 oo1oo1ooo111

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwellsThat bird beyond the remembering his free fells; This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age. [...] (From: Hopkins, The Caged Skylark) 4.3.1.2 Syllabic Metre Syllabic metrical systems have a fixed number of syllables in each line, though there may be a varying number of stresses. They are named, quite simply, according to the number of syllables in each line, using Greek numbers. A line with seven syllables is called heptasyllabic and so on. seven syllables eight nine ten eleven twelve

heptasyllabic octosyllabic enneasyllabic decasyllabic hendecasyllabic dodecasyllabic

William Blake, for instance, liked the so-called fourteener, a line with fourteen syllables: ‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green, Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow, Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow. (From: Blake, Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday) This, it may be noted, is also iambic. Pure syllabic verse is comparatively rare in English and what there is, is imported from foreign forms of poetry, such as the Japanese Haiku. The Haiku, in its conservative definition, has three lines, the first and the last line have five syllables, the middle line has seven, as in the following example: Printer not ready Could be a fatal error Have a pen handy? (Error-Message Haiku, http://users.bestweb.net/~bkoser/marnen/email/errorhaiku.html) 4.3.1.3. Accentual-Syllabic Metre By far the largest number of poems in English use accentual-syllabic metre. In this metrical system both the number of stresses and the number of syllables between the stresses are regular. Each single unit of stress and nonstress is called foot. Strictly speaking, the number of syllables should be identical for each line, but it is very often the case that a line leaves one metrical foot incomplete, thus varying the number of syllables as a whole. The system of accentual-syllabic metre derives from metrical patterns of classical (Greek and Roman) poetry, even though it cannot easily be transferred from classical languages into English, since in classical languages metre depends on syllable length, whereas in English it depends on word stress. There are a large number of different types of metrical foot measurements but the most common ones are the following (for a more comprehensive list see Fussell 1967: 26): iamb

o1

da-DUM A man put on his hat And walked along the strand And there he met another man Whose hat was in his hand (Samuel Johnson’s example of bad poetry)

trochee

1o

DUM-da

Hark, the hour of ten is sounding Hearts with anxious fears are bounding Hall of Justice crowds surrounding Breathing hope and fear (Gilbert and Sullivan, from: Trial by Jury)

dactyl

1oo

DUM-da-da

Cannon to right of them Cannon to left of them Cannon in front of them Volley’d and thunder’d (From: Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade)

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anapaest

oo1

da-da-DUM

I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety (Gilbert and Sullivan, from: Iolanthe)

spondee

11

DUM-DUM Bark bark bark bark Bark bark BARK BARK (T.S. Eliot, Book of Practical Cats)

Notice that some feet have two syllables (iamb, trochee and spondee) and others have three (dactyl and anapaest). For obvious reasons, spondee is a metrical pattern which does not occur throughout a whole poem. One simply does not stress every single syllable of an utterance for any length of time. But it sometimes occurs in a single line or within otherwise regular lines of different metrical patterns. In accentual-syllabic verse; lines are named according to the number of accents they contain, again the Greek numbers are used. 1 accent 2 accents 3 4 5 6 7 8

monometer dimeter trimeter tetrameter pentameter hexameter heptameter octameter

To name the metre of a poem one usually combines the terms giving the stress pattern and the number of stresses per line: A line of poetry that is written in iambic metre and has four accents or stresses is called iambic tetrameter: Had we but world enough, and time This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. (From: Marvell, To His Coy Mistress)

o1o1o1o1 o1o1o1o1 o1o1o1o1 o1o1o1o1

A line written in dactyl with two accents is called dactyllic dimeter: Cannon to right of them Cannon to left of them Cannon in front of them Volley’d and thunder’d (From: Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade)

1oo1oo 1oo1oo 1oo1oo 1oo1o

Some combinations of metre and line length have a special name. An iambic hexameter for example is called alexandrine.

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She comes, and straight therewith her shining twins do move Their rays to me, who in her tedious absence lay Benighted in cold woe; but now appears my day, The only light of joy, the only warmth of love. (From: Sidney, Astrophil and Stella) SO WHAT? Metre must be suitable for the theme of the poem. Otherwise it leads to more or less ridiculous contradictions and thematic incoherence (see theme and isotopy ch. 1.5.). Paul Fussell (1967) cites Cowper’s poem on the felling of poplar trees as an example of a particularly unsuitable metrical choice: The poplars are fell’d, farewell to the shade And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade, The winds play no longer, and sing in the leaves, Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives. Twelve years have elaps’d since I last took a view Of my favourite field and the bank where they grew, And now in the grass behold they are laid, And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade. (From: Cowper, The Poplar Field) The melancholy topic is directly contradicted by the tendency of the anapaest to assume a playful, skipping rhythm. (For a longer discussion of the metre in this poem see Warren/Brooks 1960: 170-172) On the other hand, thematic incoherence can of course be used successfully for a specific function. A contradiction between topic and rhythm for instance, can achieve a comic or satirical effect as in the following excerpt: Corinna, Pride of Drury-Lane, For whom no Shepherd sighs in vain; Never did Covent Garden boast So bright a batter’d, strolling Toast; No drunken Rake to pick her up, No Cellar where on Tick to sup; Returning at the Midnight Hour; Four stories climbing to her Bow’r; Then, seated on a three-legg’d Chair, Takes off her artificial Hair: Now picking out a Crystal Eye, She wipes it clean, and lays it by. Her Eye-Brows from a Mouse’s hyde, Stuck on with Art on either Side, Pulls off with Care, and first displays ’em, Then in a Play-Book smoothly lays ’em. Now dextrously her Plumpers draws, That serve to fill her hollow Jaws. Untwists a Wire; and from her Gums A Set of Teeth completely comes. […] (From: Swift, A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed) Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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The smoothness of the metre (iambic tetrameter), rhythm and rhyme smooth over and suppress the squalid circumstances Corinna lives in. The incoherence between prosodic form and the poem’s topic actually develops a coherence on another level: It satirises the merely superficial smooth cover over a (physically) rotten core. 4.3.1.4. Free Verse Free Verse does not use any particular pattern of stress or number of syllables per line. It is a type of verse that has been widely used only since the twentieth century. Although without regular metre, it is not without rhythmic effects and organisation. Free verse can be organised around syntactic units, word or sound repetitions, or the rhythm created by a line break. Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, some learning later ... some in fear, learning love of slaughter; (From: Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley) Pound uses anaphora, rhyme (adventure/censure), word repetitions and the effects of pauses created through line breaks to organise his verse. 4.3.1.5. Maximisation Principle and Metrical Grid It is not always easy to determine a metrical pattern. In fact, quite frequently a series of syllables allows for more than one arrangement of accents. Consider the phrase Nature in her then err’d not but forgot. This could be scanned 1o o 1 o 1 o 1 o1 (NAture in HER then ERR’D not BUT forGOT). But with similar justification it could be scanned 1o o 1 o o 1 o o1 (NAture in HER then err’d NOT but forGOT). In fact, the second possibility seems rather better since it would appear to be regular dactyl. When such an ambiguous line (ambiguous as to metrical pattern) occurs in a poem, the lines around this problem line need to be taken into consideration when deciding on the metre. The basic rule to go by is that unless there are insurmountable arguments against it, any line should be scanned so it fits the pattern of the lines around it. Consider our troublesome line in context: ‘Yet Cloe sure was form’d without a spot -’ Nature in her then err’d not but forgot. ‘With ev’ry pleasing, ev’ry prudent part, Say, what can Cloe want?’ – she wants a Heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought; Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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But never, never, reach’d one gen’rous Thought. Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, Content to dwell in Decencies for ever. (From: Pope, Epistle to a Lady, 157-164) The lines surrounding our problematic line are all very clearly iambic (except maybe the line “Say, what can Cloe want? […]” which seems to be iambic with one spondee at the beginning). Because we have a tendency to continue a particular rhythm once it has been started – change is always unsettling – we almost automatically continue to scan according to the pattern that has already been set. Decisions about the metrical pattern of a poem are thus governed by what Rulon Wells has called the maximisation principle, the dominant metrical pattern is the one that has to make the least exceptions (see Ludwig 1990: 55). In our example above, rather than saying the first line is iambic, the second dactyllic, the third iambic, etc., we say the poem is iambic with two irregularities in initial position (lines 158 and 160). On the basis of the maximisation principle we tend to establish a metrical grid (term from Fowler 1968, see also the discussion in Ludwig 1990: 47) in our heads, that is, we form the expectation of a certain pattern and once it is established, we expect it to continue. The whole poem is read against this metrical grid and it is on this basis that deviations are noted. 4.3.1.6. Metrical Deviations A poem that scanned with absolute regularity would more than likely jingle on in insufferable tedium. This danger is circumvented by little deviations that break the regular pattern of the metrical grid. Metrical deviations are created by substitution and in recitation. Because metrical deviations go against our expectations (they break the metrical grid we have formed in our minds), such places are more noticeable than others. The tension that is created between the abstract metrical grid and the actual linguistic and metrical realisation is called interplay (the term was introduced by Wimsatt and Beardsley 1959, see discussion in Ludwig 1990: 38). Places of interplay deserve special attention in analysis because they usually have a definite function in conveying the meaning of a poem. 4.3.1.7. Substitutions To break the monotony of regular metre poets often substitute one metrical foot from a regular pattern with another. For example in a series of iambic feet one might find a spondee or a trochee as in the following example: What dire Offence from am’rous Causes springs, What mighty Contests rise from trivial things, I sing – this Verse to Caryll, Muse! is due; This ev’n Belinda may vouchsafe to view: Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise, If She inspire, and He approve my Lays. (From: Pope, Rape of the Lock, 1-6)

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These lines are fairly regular iambic pentameter except the beginning of line 5 “Slight is”, which is a trochaic foot. This not only breaks the monotony of the iambic pentameter (broken once before by the caesura in line 3) but it is also rather witty because it puts an unexpected emphasis on “Slight”, which semantically indicates that it deserves little emphasis. 4.3.1.8. Recitation It is important to remember that a person reciting a poem is most likely to deviate from the regular metrical pattern – at least, one would hope so. Most notably, a division into two types of stress (stressed and not stressed) is an extreme simplification of what actually happens. In regular speech and recitation there are not merely stressed and non-stressed syllables but a number of gradations between the two: specially stressed, normally stressed, halfstressed, little stressed, etc. Sometimes the stress placed by the metrical pattern will be ignored for certain effects, pauses are made or not made, etc. Consider the following example: Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing Heavenly Muse […] (From: Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. I) This poem is written in blank verse but it is almost impossible to recite it with a regular iambic pattern. The first line could be more easily read like this: Of MAN’s FIRST (half-stress) disoBEdience (pause) and the FRUIT of that forBIDd’n TREE (pause) whose MORtal TASTE etc. There are obviously other possibilities. A recitation is always an interpretation of the poem and there is no one possible recitation, though metre and rhythm set certain limits within which individual interpretations can operate (see discussion under Modulation and audio example further down). SO WHAT? Places of interplay focus the reader’s or audience’s attention on certain aspects of a poem and can serve as a starting point for interpretation. Consider this poem by Jonathan Swift on the death of the Duke of Marlborough (whom Swift obviously disliked heartily). A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General His Grace! impossible! what dead! Of old age too, and in his bed! And could that mighty warrior fall, And so inglorious, after all? Well, since he’s gone, no matter how, The last loud trump must wake him now; And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger, He’d wish to sleep a little longer. Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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And could he be indeed so old As by the newspapers we’re told? Threescore, I think, is pretty high; ‘Twas time in conscience he should die! This world he cumbered long enough; He burnt his candle to the snuff; And that’s the reason, some folks think, He left behind so great a stink. Behold his funeral appears, Nor widows’ sighs, nor orphans’ tears, Wont at such times each heart to pierce, Attend the progress of his hearse. But what of that? his friends may say, He had those honours in his day. True to his profit and his pride, He made them weep before he died Come hither, all ye empty things! Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings! Who float upon the tide of state; Come hither, and behold your fate! Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing’s a duke; From all his ill-got honours flung, Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung. This poem scans very regularly as iambic tetrameter. The few exceptions that would probably demand a slight irregularity in stress when reading the poem out loud are in line 1 (spondee ”what dead!”), line 19 (”Wont at such times”, 1 o o 1, initial trochee) and line 32 (”Turned to that dirt”, 1 o o 1, initial trochee). There are a few more places that invite, rather than demand, a divergence from the iambic pattern – though these are a matter of interpretation rather than an absolute necessity: “Well” at the beginning of line 5, “The last loud trump” in line 6 (o 1 1 1, one iambic, one spondee), the initial “And, trust me” in line 7 (1 1 1), the frequent third person pronoun in initial position (especially lines 8, 14, 22, 24: “He’d wish ...”, “He burnt”, “He had...”, “He made ...”) and the word “True”, also in intial position, in line 23. Two main effects are produced by this use of interplay: The irregularities of line 1 (“what dead”), line 5 (“Well”) and line 7 (“And, trust me”) effectively help to reproduce the conversational tone of gossip (compare audio file). The emphasis on the initial words “He” (lines 8, 14, 22, 24), “True” (line 23) and “Turned” (line 32), drawn to the audience’s particular notice through the interplay, brings out a particular aspect of the poem’s satire: It creates a link between the dead duke, truth, and “turned”. On one level, the poem expresses a certain amount of triumph that the fortunes of the duke have turned, and the duke himself, despite his high place in the world, will now turn to dust (the poem significantly uses the more negative “dirt” rather than the more neutral ‘dust’) like everyone else. On another level, the repeated inversion to stress the word ‘he’ in the first part of the poem, might be taken to indicate that the duke ‘turned’ values on their heads: he is ‘true’ not to beautiful principles but to selfish “profit” and “pride”, he caused grief in his family not Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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when he died but when he was alive, his supposed “friends” actually say negative things about him, and so on. Thus the formal elements of metre and interplay make the same point (i.e. have a common semantic denominator, see isotopy ch. 1.5.) as the description of the duke’s past and present situation does.

4.3.2. Rhythm All languages make use of rhythm, and poetry exploits these rhythms to create additional meaning. Rhythm generally is “a series of alternations of build-up and release, movement and counter-movement, tending toward regularity but complicated by constant variations and local inflections.” (Attridge 1995: 3). While poetic metre and metrical deviations contribute to the rhythm of a poem, rhythm itself is a more general phenomenon, relating mainly to the variations of speed in which a poem is likely to be read. This speed is influenced particularly by • • • • •

pauses elisions and expansions vowel length consonant clusters modulation

4.3.2.1. Pauses at the End of Lines The fact that poems are presented in lines which do not fill the space on the page, coupled frequently with rhymes at the end of the line, invites the reader – and often also the performer – to pause for a moment at the end of each line. Such pauses are especially pronounced for end-stopped lines, lines where a syntactical unit comes to a close at the end of the line. These pauses at the end of a line cause a poem to have a different rhythm than prose. They also encourage the reader to dwell on individual words and sounds more than he or she would in prose; they promote a perception of the text in question as poetry. Compare the effect of the following text excerpt, once written as continuous prose, once as poetry (best to read it aloud!): The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits; on the French coast the light gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, listen! you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, at their return, up the high strand, begin, and cease, and then again begin, with tremulous cadence slow, and bring the eternal note of sadness in. The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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Key terms: • end-stopped lines • run-on-lines (enjambment) • caesura • elision • expansion

• catenation

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. (From: Arnold, Dover Beach) One tends to pause in mid-sentence at a line break which considerably slows down the speed of reading and thus brings the individual words more to the notice of the reader. When the lines are written as prose, the effect of the rhyme words is almost completely lost (fair/air, to-night/light, stand/land, bay/spray, fling/bring, begin/in) and also the fact that the “grating roar” remains without a rhyme word in this section (it is actually taken up further down in the poem), which creates a situation where “roar” is literally “grating”, because it does not blend in harmoniously with the rhyme scheme. Further, the effect of the framing (redditio) with the word “begin” in line 12, which visually – and through the pauses at the end of each line also audibly – emphasises the return of the new beginning, is also reduced in the prose version. The additional effect achieved through the line break in this example is increased because many of the lines are not end-stopped but run-on-lines (enjambment), that is, the syntactical unit carries over into the next line. On the one hand, run-on-lines tend to diminish the pause one naturally makes at the end of a line. In this sense they speed up the rhythm of the poem. On the other hand, the slight pause that often remains despite the run-on-line – especially when the poem is read silently, since the eyes have to travel from the end of one line to the beginning of the next – introduces a pause one would not normally make. Such pauses can be employed for surprising effects. Consider the following excerpt from a poem where an African, looking for a flat, is talking to a potential landlady on the telephone. He is momentarily confused when the landlady asks him for details about his skin colour: “ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came. “You mean – like plain or milk chocolate?” Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted, I chose. “West African sepia” – and as afterthought, “Down in my passport.” [...] (From: Soyinka, Telephone Conversation) The run-on-line “crushing in its light / Impersonality” puns on several possible meanings of the word “light”, both as noun and as adjective. At first he does not understand what she means by the question “Are you dark?”, then he realises what she is asking (“Revelation came”). He reformulates her question and in the line “Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light”, the word “light” first appears to be a noun, repeating the meaning of “revelation” two lines earlier. It is easy to imagine a glaring and unkind (“crushing”) light in the context of “clinical”, as in the lights of an operating theatre. For a brief Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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moment, the line means that the speaker is crushed because he fully realises the extent of the landlady’s colour-prejudice. As the sentence is completed in the next line, “light” actually becomes the adjective modifying “impersonality”. In this grammatical context it could mean the opposite of ‘heavy’. It could also be taken to refer to her skin colour, which is presumably white. The pun on “light”, mainly effective through the run-on-line, thus contrasts the way she treats a question which affects him on an intensely personal level with the impersonal detachment of someone who has the light skin colour which is here given preference. The simple fact that the words are arranged in lines achieves additional meaning. 4.3.2.1. Pauses within Lines A pause can also occur within lines and then it is called caesura. A caesura can serve simply to break the monotony of the metrical pattern but usually it emphasises particular words or a contrast within the line. Consider another excerpt from Soyinka’s Telephone Conversation: [...] “Madam,” I warned, “I hate a wasted journey – I am African.” Silence. Silenced transmission of Pressurized good-breeding. [...] The caesura after “I hate a wasted journey” creates a moment of suspense, one is waiting to hear what he has to tell her. The caesura after “Silence” in fact acts out the meaning of the word ‘silence’ and thus intensifies its effect. SO WHAT? As with any other formal device, the function of a caesura varies according to the context in which it is used. Consider the following example: Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw – For he’s the master criminal who can defy the law. He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard; the Flying Squad’s despair: For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there! (From: Eliot, Book of Practical Cats) Here the caesura achieves two effects: First, though the lines are iambic heptameter, the caesura in each line breaks them into a first part with four and a second part with three accents. Thus, the poem has the rhythm of the ballad stanza and indeed, there is a tradition of street ballads about the deeds of criminals to which Eliot alludes here. Second, the caesura in the last line operates rather like a fanfare, leading up to the triumphant “Macavity’s not there” which is repeated throughout the poem as a sort of refrain. 4.3.2.2. Elisions and Expansions There are times when unstressed syllables which are normally pronounced are not pronounced in a particular line in order to make the line fit the metre. In such cases one talks of elision. Elisions occur mostly when two non-stressed Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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syllables follow each other in a metrical pattern that demands only one. Sometimes elisions are marked by an apostrophe: The silenc’d Preacher yields to potent strain, And feels that grace his pray’r besought in vain, The blessing thrills thro’ all the lab’ring throng, And Heav’n is won by violence of Song. (From: Pope, Imitations of Horace) At other times readers themselves have to decide whether or not to elide a syllable. In most cases, however, it comes quite naturally, as one tends to continue in the established rhythmical or metrical pattern. Indeed, one tends to elide syllables in every-day utterance to accommodate certain rhythms of speech (for a more complete discussion of elision see especially Attridge 1995: 126-131). Some syllables are always elided in English, for instance most of the past participle ‘-ed’ endings as in ‘turned’, ‘talked’, ‘achieved’, etc. Other elisions used to be common in everyday speech, and thus also in poetry, but are no longer elisions today, for instance words like ‘o’er’ (pronounced like ‘or’) for ‘over’ or ‘‘tis’ instead of ‘it is’. Elisions that occur in verse but do not normally occur in everyday speech create interplay. Often, such places of interplay make an additional point. In the following example the words “chariot” and “hurrying” which have three syllables are squeezed into an iambic tetrameter, the second and third syllables are pronounced as one: But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; (From: Marvell, To His Coy Mistress) These elisions are entirely appropriate in this context, since they speed up the rhythm and thus literally convey the hurry of time which worries the speaker. As can also be seen from this excerpt, syllables that would normally be elided are not always elided in metrical verse (“winged” in this example), partly because that is an older common pronunciation, partly to fit the metre. In such cases one speaks of an expansion. Some editors mark such places with an accent mark, but others simply assume that the reader will accommodate the pronunciation of words to the metre. 4.3.2.4. Vowel Length and Consonant Clusters A change in rhythm and speed can be achieved with a change of metre. Consider the following example: I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots; Her equal would be hard to find, she likes the warm and sunny spots. All day she sits beside the hearth or on the bed or on my hat: She sits and sits and sits and sits – and that’s what makes a Gumbie Cat! But when the day’s hustle and bustle is done, Then the Gumbie Cat’s work is but hardly begun. Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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As she finds that the mice will not ever keep quiet, She is sure it is due to irregular diet; And believing that nothing is done without trying, She sets right to work with her baking and frying. She makes them a mouse-cake of bread and dried peas, And a beautiful fry of lean bacon and cheese. (From: Eliot, Book of Practical Cats) The change from a pleasantly sauntering iamb in the first stanza to a more bouncing and bustling anapaest in the second stanza speeds up the rhythm of the poem and adequately conveys the change from the Gumbie Cat’s sedate day-life to her active night-life. The increase of speed is supported by the easier catenation (the way the words are linked in pronunciation, as in a chain) in the second stanza. Apart from metre there are other elements that influence the speed of a line of verse. Some critics argue that certain metrical arrangement have a tendency to support certain rhythms and thus certain topics better than others. Dactyl and anapaest, for instance, tend to have a fairly light and playful rhythm. But there is no general rule for the connection between metre and rhythm and there are certainly plenty of examples where dactyl or anapaest have anything but a playful effect (in Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade for instance). Especially iamb and trochee can be used for a wide variety of rhythms and speeds. Depending on word choice and the arrangement of vowels and consonant clusters they can support very fast as well as very slow rhythms. Consider the following example which describes the effect of heavy rain in eighteenth-century London. The poem begins quite slowly with Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower: While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o’er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. As the water begins to flood the streets and washes along various, mostly smelly, items, the rhythm is perceptibly increased: Now from all part the swelling kennels flow, And bear their trophies with them as they go: Filth of all hues and odors seem to tell What street they sailed from, by their sight and smell. [...] Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, Dead cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood. (From: Swift, Description of a City Shower) While in the poem by T.S. Eliot above an iamb was used for a fairly slow rhythm, in Swift’s poem, particularly in the last three lines, the iambic is used to convey the speed and chaos with which various items are swirled down the street. The increased speed in the last three lines is achieved through the use of mainly short vowels in: dung, guts, blood, puppies, stinking, sprats, drenched, mud, dead, cats, turnip, tops, etc. (compare the beginning, which still has a number of long vowel sounds and diphthongs as in Careful, foretell, hour, Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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shower, rain, o’er, more, dine, hire, wine). A series of double consonants (swelling, kennels, puppies) and alliteration with plosives and unvoiced fricatives (sailed/sight/smell, turnip/tops/tumbling, stinking sprats, drowned/drenched/dead/down) increase the impression of quick movement. A different combination of vowels and consonants can achieve a marked slow-down of rhythm: For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing lingering look behind. (From: Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard) Also in iambic metre, the very long vowels in this passage and in particular the l-alliteration combined with four repetitions of the consonant combination ‘ng’ (“longing lingering”) draw the sounds out into a pensive slowness, as indeed is suitable to the theme of the poem: a meditation in a churchyard. Notice also how the elision “e’er” in this case actually contributes to slow down the rhythm, since it makes the reader dwell on a long drawn-out vowel sound. 4.3.2.5. Modulation The discussion of rhythm so far should have made clear that simply the metre of a poem does not account for a variety of rhythmical effects. The aspect of modulation also deserves some consideration in this context. Compare the following stanzas: FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ; Or chide my palsy, or my gout ; My five gray hairs, or ruin’d fortune flout ; With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ; Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his Honour, or his Grace ; Or the king’s real, or his stampéd face Contémplate ; what you will, approve, So you will let me love. (From: Donne, The Canonization) Come live with me and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dale and field, And all the craggy mountains yield. There will we sit upon the rocks And see the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. (From: Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, Palgrave ed.)

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Both poems are in iambic metre but they support a very different rhythm. Donne’s lines assume an almost conversational tone. If, on the other hand, one tries to read Marlow’s lines in such a conversational modulation it is quite obviously wrong. Marlowe’s lines seem to demand a reading with a sort of sing-song rhythm which in turn would not suit the Donne stanza (compare audio examples). The concept of metre is obviously insufficient to account for this phenomenon, since both excerpts are in the same metre. Why then is there such a difference? There appear to be two main reasons: The irregular length of Donne’s lines (he alternates between pentameter and tetrameter, the last line is a trimeter) jolts the reader out of any rhythmic pattern he might be tempted to fall into. The frequent caesuras at different positions within the lines further disrupt any regular rhythmical development. The regularity of Marlowe’s song on the other hand encourages the emergence of a regular rhythmical pattern, there is almost a danger that the lines start jingling. The second reason for the difference in modulation is probably the choice of diction. Donne’s poem starts out with an impatient colloquial expression (“For God’s sake!”) which immediately asks for a fairly colloquial modulation. Marlowe’s cheerful invitation to be unrealistic uses more ‘artificial’ or poetic expressions (“pleasures prove”, “melodious birds sing madrigals”) which support a modulation of more amplitude. Obviously, the difference in rhythm makes a considerable difference in the effect of the two poems. Such rhythmical effects must not be ignored in the analysis of poetry since they constitute an important part of the poem’s meaning.

4.4. Prosodic Features: Sound Patterns It has been said above that much of the effects of literary texts depend on various patterns of repetition (see Theme ch. 1.5.). The kind of repetition that most people associate with poetry is the repetition of sounds, in particular in rhyme. Apart from rhyme, there are other sound patterns in poetry which create additional meaning, such as alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia. Such sound effects always have a specific function in a poem. It is the task of analysis to explicate such functions, because they, too, are part of what the poem means, its overall and specific effects.

4.4.1. Rhyme When two words have the same sound (phoneme) from the last stressed vowel onwards, they are considered to rhyme. In a full rhyme, the consonant preceding the last stressed vowel of the two words is different: night/delight, power/flower and so on. There are a number of rhyme forms that deviate from the exact observance of the full rhyme: One talks about a rich rhyme when the consonant before the last stressed vowel is also identical: lap/clap, stick/ecclesiastic. When the two rhyme words are in fact the same, it is an identical rhyme. When two rhyme words look and sound the same but have different meanings this is called a homonym. Both rich rhyme and identical rhyme have at times been considered bad form. Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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Key terms: • full rhyme • rich rhyme • identical rhyme • half-rhyme / pararhyme • end-rhyme • internal rhyme • leonine rhyme • masculine rhyme • feminine rhyme • triple rhyme • rhyme patterns: • continuous rhyme • rhyming couplet • alternate rhyme • embracing rhyme • chain rhyme • tail rhyme • alliteration • assonance • onomatopoeia

Sometimes, only the consonants or only the vowel sounds are identical. In such cases one speaks of half-rhymes, slant rhymes or pararhymes: reader/rider (consonance: same consonants but different stressed vowel sound) poppet/profit, forever/weather (assonance: same vowel sounds, different consonants) opposite/spite, home/come (eye-rhyme: spelling identical but pronunciation different) The most noticeable rhyme is the rhyme at the end of a line, the end-rhyme. But there are also lines within lines, so-called internal rhymes. I’ve a head like a concertina; I’ve a tongue like a button-stick I’ve a mouth like an old potato, and I’m more than a little sick, But I’ve had my fun o’ the Corp’ral’s Guards: I’ve made the cinders fly, And I’m here in the Clink for a thundering drink and blacking the Corporal’s eye. (From: Kipling, Barrack-Room Ballads) When a word in the middle of the line (usually before a caesura) rhymes with the word at the end of the line it is a leonine rhyme. The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat. They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped up in a five-pound note. (From: Lear, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat) Rhymes can be on one syllable or on two or three syllables. Rhymes of one identical syllable are called masculine rhymes: street/meet, man/ban, galaxy/merrily. Rhymes of two identical syllables are called feminine rhymes: straining/complaining, slowly/holy. Very rarely there are rhymes with three identical syllables, so-called triple rhymes: icicles/bicycles. The triple rhyme is often used for a humorous effect: Her favorite science was the mathematical, Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity, Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all, Her serious sayings darkened to sublimity; In short, in all things she was fairly what I call A prodigy – her morning dress was dimity, Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin, And other stuffs, with which I won’t stay puzzling. (From: Byron, Don Juan) Rhyming lines can be arranged according to different patterns. The same rhymes are marked using small letters of the alphabet: continuous rhyme rhyming couplets

aaaa bbbb ... aa bb cc ...

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alternate rhyme embracing rhyme chain rhyme tail rhyme

abab cdcd ... abba cddc ... aba bcb cdc ... aab ccb ...

Sound patterns, especially rhyme, help to divide a poem into sections. These sections can help, for instance, to mark various stages of thematic development in a poem: the movement from despair to hope, from description to moral application and so on. This is notably the case in sonnets, where the octet and the sestet or the quatrains and the final couplet often form a contrast (see ch. 4.5., stanza forms).

4.4.2. Alliteration, Assonance, Onomatopoeia Apart from rhyme, there are other sound patterns that are remarkable in poetry and that are often used to link words which would not otherwise be connected (see also list of rhetorical devices ch. 1.6.3.). These connections create meaning patterns. Three of these sound patterns shall be considered in more detail here: alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia. An alliteration is the repetition of the same sound, usually a consonant, at the beginning of words or stressed syllables in close proximity. But my grandest creation, as history will tell, Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell. (From: Eliot, Book of Practical Cats) An assonance is the repetition of the same vowel sound in the stressed syllables of words in close proximity, while the consonants differ: Rend with tremendous Sound your ears asunder, With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss & Thunder (From: Pope, Imitations of Horace, Ep. II.i) In these lines Pope also achieves an onomatopoetic effect, since the accumulations of the dark and booming u-sound combinations imitate the “tremendous Sound” of gun, drum, etc. It should be noted that onomatopoeia only ever works in conjunction with the meaning of the words used. One cannot recognise onomatopoeia in a language one does not understand. This has been famously demonstrated by John Crowe Ransom who changed Tennyson’s onomatopoetic line ”A murmuring of innumerable bees” into ”A murdering of innumerable beeves”. Even though only two small changes have been made to the sound, the meaning of the sentence is completely changed and no onomatopoetic effect whatsoever remains (cited in Abrams 1999: 199). SO WHAT? Sound patterns can create or emphasise links between words which would otherwise be less noticeable. Consider the following two lines from Pope’s Imitations of Horace. Pope is trying to explain that whatever one does, one needs to practice first before one can safely be let loose onto a trusting world. In Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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these two lines he mentions two examples: A shopkeeper has to serve an apprenticeship first and the famous (or infamous) doctor Ward first tested his medicines before he used them regularly (Ward’s medicines were reputed to have some amazing effects): He serv’d a ‘Prenticeship, who sets up shop; Ward try’d on Puppies, and the Poor, his Drop; The p-alliteration puts the three words ‘Prenticeship’, ‘Puppies’ and ‘Poor’ on one level, they are all things one can practice on, if one is not proficient in any skill. The alarming aspect is of course, and this represents the satirical element of these lines, that puppies and the poor are treated as though they were rather the same thing, literally a thing one can test medicine on. This effect is further strengthened by the parallel syntax. Whatever one might feel about animal testing, to talk about ‘poor-testing’ in a casual aside (a hyperbaton here), indicates a cruel disregard of human dignity which Pope criticises here.

4.5. Verse Forms and Stanza Forms A sequence of lines within a poem are often separated into sub-units, the stanza. Two aspects of stanza form are particularly relevant for the analysis of poetry: First, a stanza form is always used to some purpose, it serves a specific function in each poem. There are no general rules about such functions, the student or critic analysing the poem has to decide in each case afresh which is the function in the particular poem he or she is dealing with. (For an example of function see the SO WHAT section below). Second, well-known stanza forms stand in a certain tradition. The sonnet for instance started its career in English poetry as a love poem. When John Donne starts using the sonnet for religious topics he places himself within a tradition of love poetry. The very choice of the form contributes to the intensely personal explorations of the speaker’s relation to God in Donne’s religious sonnets. It is thus useful to be aware of the origin and history of a stanza form, since this enables one to judge whether a poet makes use of a tradition or writes against it. (See Saintsbury 1923 for a comprehensive and Fussell 1967 for a slightly shorter overview of the historical dimensions of certain stanza forms). There are a great number of different stanza forms available to a poet writing in the English (and that generally means European) tradition. The main ones are given in the following list. Stichic verse is a continuous run of lines of the same length and the same metre. Most narrative verse is written in such continuous lines. Lyric poetry, because it is closer to song, usually uses stanzas. As wreath of snow, on mountain-breast Slides from the rock that gave it rest, Poor Ellen glided from her stay, And at the Monarch’s feet she lay: No word her choking voice commands; She show’d the ring, she clasp’d her hands. O! not a moment could he brook, The generous prince, that suppliant look! Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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Key terms: • stanza • stichic • blank verse • couplet • tercet • terza rima • quatrain • ballad stanza • rhyme royal • ottava rima • Spenserian stanza • sonnet • limerick • villanelle

Gently he raised her; and, the while, Check’d with a glance the circle’s smile; Graceful but grave, her brow he kiss’d, And bade her terrors be dismiss’d: ‘Yes, fair, the wandering poor Fitz-James The fealty of Scotland claims. To him thy woes, thy wishes bring; He will redeem his signet ring. (From: Scott, The Lady of the Lake, Canto VI) Blank verse is a non-rhyming iambic pentameter, usually stichic. Under the influence of Shakespeare it became a widely used verse form for English dramatic verse, but it is also used, under the influence of Milton, for nondramatic verse. [...] And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again; While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope [...] (From: Wordsworth, Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey) Couplet is the name for two rhyming lines of verse following immediately after each other. The heroic couplet, popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries consists of two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter. An octosyllabic couplet is also sometimes called a short couplet. The regular metre and the rhyme pattern of the couplet, usually with end-stopped lines, provides comparatively small units (two lines in fact) in which to make a point. Especially eighteenth-century poets used the form to create satirical contrasts within the couplet. In the following example from Pope’s Imitations of Horace especially the lines “To prove, that Luxury could never hold; / And place, on good security, his Gold” present a blatant contradiction between words and action in a completely harmonious (regular metre, noticeable rhyme) poetic form. In consequence the reader notices the contradiction somewhat belatedly, almost as an afterthought. The effect is that of thinly disguised satire. Time was, a sober Englishman wou’d knock His servants up, and rise by five a clock, Instruct his Family in ev’ry rule, And send his Wife to Church, his Son to school. To worship like his Fathers was his care; To teach their frugal Virtues to his Heir; To prove, that Luxury could never hold; And place, on good Security, his Gold. (From: Pope, Imitations of Horace, Ep. II.i)

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A tercet, sometimes also called a triplet, is a stanza with three lines of the same rhyme (aaa or two rhyming lines embracing a line without rhyme (axa). Released from the noise of the butcher and baker, Who, my old friends be thanked, did seldom forsake her, And from the soft duns of my landlord the Quaker; From chiding the footmen, and watching the lasses, From Nell that burned milk too, and Tom that broke glasses (Sad mischiefs through which a good housekeeper passes!); From some real care, but more fancied vexation, From a life parti-coloured, half reason, half passion, Here lies after all the best wench in the nation. (From: Prior, Jinny the Just) The terza rima is a variant of the tercet famously used by Dante in his Divine Comedy. The terza rima uses a chain rhyme: the second line of each stanza rhymes with the first and the third line of the next stanza (aba bcb cdc etc.) The snow came down last night like moths Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn, Covered the town with simple cloths. Absolute snow lies rumpled on What shellbursts scattered and deranged, Entangled railings, crevassed lawn. As if it did not know they’d changed, Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged (From: Wilbur, First Snow in Alsace) The quatrain is one of the most common and popular stanza forms in English poetry. It is a stanza comprising four lines of verse with various rhyme patterns. When written in iambic pentameter and rhyming abab it is called heroic quatrain: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. (From: Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard) Tennyson used a quatrain rhyming abba for his famous poem In Memoriam A.H.H. and the stanza form has since derived its name from this poem – the Memoriam stanza: O, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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The ballad stanza is a variant of the quatrain. Most commonly, lines of iambic tetrameter alternate with iambic trimeter (also called chevy-chase stanza after one of the oldest poems written in this form). The rhyme scheme is usually abcb, sometimes also abab. Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down, ‘Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. (From: Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) The rhyme royal is a seven-line stanza in iambic pentameter which rhymes ababbcc. It is called rhyme royal because King James I of Scotland used it, though he was not the first to do so; Chaucer employed the stanza in Troilus and Criseyde much earlier. A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighbourhood, Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude, A million eyes, a million boots in line Without expression, waiting for a sign. (From: Auden, The Shield of Achillles) The ottava rima derives from Italian models like the terza rima and the sonnet do; it is a stanza with eight lines rhyming abababcc. The most famous use of the stanza form in English poetry was made by Byron in Don Juan, who skillfully employs the stanza form for comic effect; in the following example the last line renders the slightly pompous lovesickness of the first seven lines quite ridiculous. “And oh! if e’er I should forget, I swear – But that’s impossible, and cannot be – Sooner shall this blue ocean melt to air, Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea, Than I resign thine image, Oh, my fair! Or think of anything, excepting thee; A mind diseased no remedy can physic” – (Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew seasick.)

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The Spenserian stanza, famously used by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene, has nine lines rhyming ababbcbcc, the first eight lines are iambic pentameter, the last line is an alexandrine, which breaks the slight monotony of the pentameters and is often employed to emphasise a point. Here is Spenser’s description of the Redcross Knight; the last line emphasises the knight’s valour (he feared nothing but everyone feared him): But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead as living ever him ador’d: Upon his shield the like was also scor’d, For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had: Right faithfull true he was in deede and word, But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad; Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad. (From: Spenser, The Faerie Queene) The sonnet is a lyric poem of (usually) fourteen lines in iambic pentameter which became popular in England in the sixteenth century (see Types of Poetry ch. 4.2.). Later sonnet writers sometimes varied the number of lines between ten and sixteen lines, but still called the poem a sonnet (George Meredith for instance in his sonnet sequence Modern Love used sixteen lines, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote sonnets that had ten-and-a-half lines). One distinguishes between two main rhyme patterns in the sonnet: The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is divided into an octave or octet (eight lines) rhyming abbaabba and a sestet rhyming cdecde or some variation (for example cdccdc). Very often this type of sonnet develops two sides of a question or a problem and a solution, one in the octave and, after a turn often introduced by ‘but’, ‘yet’ or a similar conjunction that indicates a change of argument, another in the sestet. In the following sonnet the speaker laments his inability to serve God on account of his blindness in the octave, but in the sestet takes courage again from the thought that God will not expect more of him than he can do and that his best servitude is to bear his lot in patience. Milton varies the form slightly by placing the turn (“but”) in the last line of the octave. When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my day, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?” I fondly ask; but patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait.” (Milton, On My Blindness)

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The English or Shakespearean sonnet usually falls into three quatrains and one final couplet. The rhyme pattern is most commonly abab cdcd efef gg. In the English sonnet the turn often occurs in the concluding couplet, which operates rather like a punch line, as in the following example. The first twelve lines lament the all-powerful and destructive influence of time, but the couplet ventures to express some hope that writing poetry might in fact overcome this and preserve the poet’s love forever. Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays? O fearful meditation! where, alack, Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O, none, unless, this miracle have might That in black ink my love may still shine bright. (Shakespeare, Sonnet 65) An important variant of the English sonnet is the Spenserian sonnet which links the quatrains with rhymes: abab bcbc cdcd ee. Unrighteous Lord of love, what law is this, That me thou makest thus tormented be: The whiles she lordeth in licentious blisse Of her freewill, scorning both thee and me. See how the Tyranesse doth joy to see The huge massácres which her eyes do make: And humbled harts brings captives unto thee, That thou of them mayst mightie vengeance take. But her proud hart doe thou a little shake And that high look, with which she doth comptroll All this worlds pride, bow to a baser make, And al her faults in thy black booke enroll. That I may laugh at her in equall sort, As she doth laugh at me and makes my pain her sport. (Spenser, Amoretti, Sonnet 10) The limerick is used mainly for nonsense verse. It consists of five lines, two longer ones (trimeter, one trochaic foot, two anapaests), two shorter ones (anapaestic dimeter) and another trimeter (one trochee, two anapaests). Edward Lear, one of the most famous limerick- and nonsense verse writers, insisted that the first and the fifth line of the limerick should end with the same word, usually a place name. There was an old person of Dutton Whose head was as small as a button. Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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So, to make it look big, He purchased a wig And rapidly rushed about Dutton (Lear, from: Book of Nonsense Verse) The villanelle has a rather intricate verse and rhyme pattern. It originated in France and reproduces the circular patterns of a peasant dance. The villanelle has five tercets rhyming aba and a final quatrain rhyming abaa. The lines of the first tercet provide a kind of refrain, a recurring repetition of one or more lines. Thus the first line of the first tercet is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth tercet, the third line of the first tercet is repeated as the last line of the third and the fifth tercet. (One really needs to look at the example to work this out.) Both lines (first and third line of first tercet) form the last two lines of the concluding quatrain. A famous example is Dylan Thomas’ poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”, where the highly organised and artificial but also playful form of the villanelle at first seems to contrast starkly with the poem’s topic: the sick and dying father. But the form, which has to bend language into this disciplined playfulness, effectively helps to express the speaker’s overwhelming desire to instil a spirit of resistance and a new passion for living in his father. Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

a (line 1) b (line 2) a (line 3)

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

a b a (line 1)

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright a Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, b Rage, rage against the dying of the light. a (line 3) Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

a b a (line 1)

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight a Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, b Rage, rage against the dying of the light. a (line 3) And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

a b a (line 1) a (line 3)

Composite and irregular forms: Quite frequently poets combine various forms or employ no regular formal rhyme pattern, though rhyme and metre are nonetheless used. John Milton’s poem Lycidas for instance is written in an irregular form: The iambic pentameter is at irregular intervals interspersed with a trimeter. John Donne frequently combines various forms into a regular Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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composite form. For instance The Canonization, a poem with five stanzas of nine lines each varies iambic pentameter with iambic tetrameter and a concluding line in iambic trimeter. The speaker is obviously in a temper because people interfere with his love life. The rapid change between pentameter and tetrameter expresses his irritation and the irregular flow of speech is conveyed as he switches between the slightly slower pentamenter and the slightly quicker tetrameter. The final trimeter brings the stanza to an emphatic (because notably shorter) conclusion. For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love, (pentameter) Or chide my palsy, or my gout, (tetrameter) My five grey hairs, or ruined fortune, flout, (pentameter) With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, (pentameter) Take you a course, get you a place, (tetrameter) Observe his Honor or His Grace, (tetrameter) Or the King’s real, or his stampèd face (pentameter) Contémplate; what you will, approve, (pentameter) So you will let me love. (trimeter)

SO WHAT? The question for interpretation is not primarily what is this stanza form called but what does this stanza form do, how does it contribute to the meaning of the poem. Christoph Bode (2001: 85) has pointed out the appropriateness of the five-line stanza in Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken since the poem is about two roads, only one of which is taken, the other one is left behind or left over as it where, like the fifth line of the stanza. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then too the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same. (From: Frost, The Road Not Taken) Compare this to a poem by A.E. Housman: White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. The world is round, so travellers tell, And straight though reach the track, Trudge on, trudge on, ‘twill all be well, The way will guide one back. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it remove: White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. (Housman, from: The Shropshire Lad) Like Frost’s poem, this poem is about a traveller on a road. There is only one road in this poem and the speaker focuses on the length of this particular road and on the distance it puts between himself and his love. But the point is also that even the longest road will one day lead back to where it started. The quatrains which are used here present a closed system: On the one hand they lead forward, on the other hand there is always a link to what has come before. The alternating rhyme picks up a previous line (after the distance of another rhyme in between has been put behind), the last stanza repeats the rhyme and even two entire lines of the very first stanza of the poem, it reaches back to its beginning leaving the distance of the poem in between.

4.6. Form and Meaning in Poetry The central question for analysis and interpretation is: How does poetic form create or influence meaning? Consider the following example, a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney: Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain, Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain. I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe; Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain. But words came halting forth, wanting Inventions’ stay; Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows, And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way. Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, ‘Fool!’ said my muse to me, ‘Look in thy heart and write!’ (Sidney, from: Astrophil and Stella) It is immediately noticeable that this sonnet uses a large number of technical and rhetorical devices; it is in this sense highly artificial (see animation for an illustration of rhetorical devices): The sonnet cleverly combines the Italian and the English form: The rhyme pattern separates the poem into an octet, a Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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quartet and a couplet rhyming abababab cdcd ee indicating an English sonnet, but the syntax actually unites the last line of the quatrain to the couplet, thus syntactically constructing an octet and two tercets. Grammatically the dominance of non-finite constructions until the very last line, which breaks this pattern with a decisive imperative, effectively convey the stasis the writer has fallen into. Elaborate patterns of repetition like polyptoton, reduplicatio, climax, alliteration and parallel, hypotactical sentence structure as well as rhetorical devices such as metaphor and personification demonstrate that the writer of this poem can command the technical aspects of poetic composition. Now in the face of all these technicalities it is rather curious that the poem appears to argue that such clever technicalities are precisely what hinders the poet from writing a good poem. From this, one might draw the conclusion that the poem is trying to discredit itself as a good poem, though on the whole, that is not very likely. A more convincing solution of this contradiction takes two aspects of the poem’s historical background into account: First, the teachings of rhetoric to which this poem alludes, in particular the meaning of the word invention. Second, the fact that a call for heartfelt and genuine expression rather than formalised convention was so common that it had itself turned into a topos and thus a convention. (For very useful longer interpretations of this poem see Hühn 1995 and Meller 1985: 56-74). Classical rhetoric, which would have been well known to Sidney and his contemporary readers, recommends a series of steps for text composition. These steps are: Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria, Actio. The last two are specifically related to the memorisation and delivery of speeches. The first three however relate to any kind of discourse. Inventio, the Latin term for ‘invention’ or ‘discovery’, suggested a series of techniques to find the right topic. Dispositio provided techniques for organising this topic into a coherent discourse. The third step, Elocutio, was concerned with style and expression (see Plett, 1991). Thus, when Sidney’s speaker deplores his lack of invention (“wanting Invention’s stay”, i.e. ‘help’) and calls invention “Nature’s child” he does not actually wish for completely artless ideas and expression, but he alludes to an art form (rhetoric is primarily the art of oratory) which in its first step has to rely on the fertility of the artist’s mind, but which nonetheless regulates his ‘natural’ ideas. This poem thus seems to argue in favour of a combination of genuine feeling and artful expression. This is supported by the fact that the very call for heartfelt spontaneity was common enough at the time to be considered a commonplace, i.e. not spontaneous. Unregulated spontaneity and ingenuity was not at all considered an ideal until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The isotopy which emerges from this brief examination is the constant combination of artless and artful expression. The theme (or one theme) of the poem thus becomes rather more complex than appeared at first sight. It is a poem about the writing of poetry as much as it is a love poem (the change of focus from the adored woman to the writer himself is clearly indicated by the pronouns). It suggests that in fact the combination of genuine feeling and artful expression is the best way to write a good poem.

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Bibliography: Poetry Primary Sources: References for primary texts have been abbreviated. Most of the poems quoted can be found in standard anthologies such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry or The New Oxford Book of English Verse. In addition, the following have been used: Butler, Samuel. 1761 [1663-64]. Hudibras: In Three Parts: Written in the Time of the Late Wars. London: D. Browne etc. Cowper, William. 1968. Poetry and Prose. Ed. Brian Spiller. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. Eliot, T.S. 1971. The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt Brace & World. Gilbert, W.S. and 1994. The Savoy Operas. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. Housman, A.E. 1898. A Shropshire Lad. London: Richards Press. Lonsdale, Roger, ed. 1987. The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse. Oxford: OUP. Pope, Alexander. 1965. The Poems. Ed. John Butt. London: Methuen. Primary Texts: Quintilian. Institutia Oratorio.1966-69. Trans. H.E. Butler. London: Heinemann. Scott, Walter. 1904. Poetical Works. Ed. J. Logie Robertson. London: Henry Frowde. Spenser, Edmund. 1977 [1596]. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A.C. Hamilton. London: Longman. Secondary Sources: Attridge, Derek. 2000 [1995]. Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction. Cambridge: CUP. Bode, Christoph. 2001. Einführung in die Lyrikanalyse. Trier: WVT. Braak, Ivo. 2001. Poetik in Stichworten: Literaturwissenschaftliche Grundbegriffe: Eine Einführung. Eighth rev. ed. Berlin: Borntraeger. Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren. 1946. Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for College Students. New York: Holt. Brooks, Cleanth. 1966. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Burdorf, Dieter. 1997. Einführung in die Gedichtanalyse. Second rev. ed. Stuttgart: Metzler. Chatman, Seymour. 1965. A Theory of Meter. The Hague: Mouton. Chatman, Seymour. 1968. An Introduction to the Language of Poetry. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Frank, Horst Joachim. 1993. Wie interpretiere ich ein Gedicht?: Eine methodische Anleitung. Second ed. Tübingen: Francke. Fussell, Paul Jr. 1967. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. New York: Random House. Haefner, Gerhard. 1997. Englische Lyrik vom zweiten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegenwart: Konzepte, Themen, Strukturen. Heidelberg: Winter. Haverkamp, Anselm, ed. 1996. Theorie der Metapher. Second ed. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Hawkes, Terence. 1980. Metaphor. Repr. London: Methuen. Hobsbaum, Philip. 1996. Metre, Rhyme and Verse Form. London: Routledge. Basics of English Studies, Version 12/03, Poetry

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Hollander, John. 2000. Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse. New Haven: Yale. Hühn, Peter. 1995. Geschichte der englischen Lyrik. 2 vols. Tübingen: Francke. Jones, Robert T. 1986. Studying Poetry: An Introduction. London: Arnold. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1992. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Leech, Geoffrey. 1969. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London: Longman. Ludwig, Hans-Werner. 1990. Arbeitsbuch Lyrikanalyse. Tübingen: Narr. Meller, Horst. 1985. Zum Verstehen englischer Gedichte. München: Fink. Miller, Ruth and Robert A. Greenberg. 1993. Poetry: An Introduction. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Müller-Zettelmann, Eva. 2000. Lyrik und Metalyrik: Theorie einer Gattung und ihrer Selbstbespiegelung anhand von Beispielen aus der englischen und deutschsprachigen Dichtkunst. Heidelberg: Winter. Plett, Heinrich F. 1991. Einführung in die rhetorische Textanalyse. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Plett, Heinrich F. 2000. Systematische Rhetorik: Konzepte und Analysen. München : Fink. Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan, eds. 1994. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton UP. Richards, I.A. 1929. Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Roberts, Philip Davies. 1988. How Poetry Works. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Schipper, Jakob. 1985. Grundriß der englischen Metrik. Wien: Braumüller. Sorg, Bernhard. 1999. Lyrik interpretieren: Eine Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Stallworthy. Jon. 1996. “Versification.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Eds. Margaret Ferguson et al. Third ed. New York: Norton: lxi – lxxx. Steele, Timothy.1999. All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification. Athens, GA: Ohio University Press. Tynjanov, Jurji N. 1977. Das Problem der Verssprache: Zur Semantik des poetischen Texts. München: Fink.

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STEFANIE LETHBRIDGE AND JARMILA MILDORF:

Basics of English Studies: An introductory course for students of literary studies in English. Developed at the English departments of the Universities of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Freiburg

Glossary ab ovo beginning: the narrative or play starts at the beginning of the story and (usually a narrator) provides all necessary background information before the ‘story proper’ starts. accentual metre: see metre. ad spectatores: ‘to the spectators’: type of utterance in drama where the actor directly addresses the audience. alexandrine: an iambic hexameter. alienation effect / estrangement effect: the audience is distanced from the action presented on stage (by the introduction of narrative elements for instance), the aim is to impede audience involvement in and identification with the characters and conflicts of the story. allegory: a narrative, whether in prose or in verse, in which characters and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived by the author to make coherent sense on the ‘literal’/primary level of significance and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of signification. alliteration: the same sound is repeated at the beginning of several words or stressed syllables in words that are in close proximity. alternate rhyme: rhyme pattern abab. amphiteatres: type of theatre or stage, typical for example for theatre performance in classical antiquity (Greece and Rome), amphitheatres had a round stage almost entirely surrounded by the audience. anachronological: non-chronological presentation of events on discourse level. anadiplosis / reduplicatio: (Greek for ”doubling back”) the word or phrase that concludes one line or clause is repeated at the beginning of the next. analepsis: see flashback. analytic plays: plays which start in ultimas res. anapaest: see metre. anaphora: a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines. antagonist: the (influential) opponent of the protagonist. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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antithesis: opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a parallel sentence construction. aposiopesis: the speaker fails to complete his sentence, (seemingly) overpowered by his emotions. apostrophe: addressing an absent person, a god or a personified abstraction. apron stage: the apron is that part of the stage which projects beyond the proscenium arch; any stage which consists primarily or entirely of an apron and on which the action is not seen as framed within the proscenium; the apron stage was used in the Elizabethan theatre. aside: a type of utterance in drama where the actor speaks away from other characters, either to himself, secretly to other characters or ad spectatores. assonance: the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables of words that are in close proximity while the consonants differ. asyndeton: the omission of conjunctions to coordinate phrases, clauses, or words where normally conjunctions would be used (opposite of polysyndeton). authorial characterisation: characterisation by the narrator in narratives or in the secondary text of a play. authorial narrative situation: part of the terminology introduced by the critic Franz Stanzel to denote a narrative situation where the narrator is not a character in the story but who knows everything about it. autodiegetic narration: part of the terminology introduced by the critic Gérard Genette to denote a narration where the narrator tells his or her own story. ballad stanza / chevy chase stanza: usually a four-line stanza which alternates tetrameter and trimeter and usually rhyme abxb. ballad: a form of folk poetry or derived from folk poetry, a poem or song which tells a story. bildungsroman (novel of education): a type of novel which depicts the development of the protagonist’s mind and character from childhood to maturity and the acceptance of his or her identity and role in society. biographical criticism: a theoretical approach to literature which focuses on the author’s biography to explicate the text. blank verse: non-ryhming iambic pentameter. block characterisation: an explicit characterisation given in a block, usually when a character is introduced. caesura: a pause that occurs within a line of poetry. catachresis: a mixed metaphor. catastrophe: in Gustav Freytag’s terminology the final stage of development in a tragedy usually involving the death of the protagonist. catenation: the way words are linked in pronunciation. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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catharsis: in Aristotle’s terms the cleansing emotional effect achieved by drama as a result of the audience’s emotional involvement in the plot and the feelings of the characters in the play. chain rhyme: rhyme pattern aba bcb cdc... character: the agents in narrative, narrative poetry or drama. chiasmus: from the shape of the Greek letter ‘chi’ (X); sequence of two phrases or clauses which are parallel in syntax but reverse the order of the corresponding words (a-b, b-a). chorus: a group of people situated on stage and commenting throughout the play on events and the characters’ actions. climax / gradatio (Greek for “ladder”): arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of ascending power. close reading: a critical practice which closely investigates the composition of texts with regard to their unifying principles. closed structure/ form: the individual acts of a play are tightly connected and logically built on one another, finally leading to a clear resolution of the plot. comedy: a dramatic work in which the materials are selected and managed primarily in order to amuse the audience and make it laugh; the ending is by convention good and resolves previous problems, sub-categories of comedy are, for instance, the comedy of manners, the comedy of humours, romantic comedy or satiric comedy. comment: a narrative mode where the narrator explicitly or implicitly evaluates events or characters in the story. communication model: a model developed by the linguist and critic Roman Jakobson which describes literary communication as a process involving six elements: sender, message, receiver, channel (or contact), context and code. confidant: a close friend of the protagonist in whom he/she can confide and thus disclose his/her innermost thoughts. configuration: the sequential presentation of different characters together on stage. consonance: two or more consonants are repeated, but the adjacent vowels differ. constellation: overall structure of the groups of characters within a play or a narrative. contaminatio: see portmanteau word. continuous rhyme: sequence of the same rhymes: aaaaaa... couplet: a unit of two lines of verse, usually linked by rhyme. covert narrative situation: a narrative situation where the personality of the narrator is hardly noticeable (oppositie: overt narrative situation). dactyl: see metre. deconstruction: a poststructuralist approach to literature which owes its development to the writings of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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Deconstructive theory claims the basic instability of all meaning and it explores the heterogeneity of meaning in literature. decorum: the diction, theme or action which are thought appropriate in literary texts or theatre performances, concepts of decorum change over time. defamiliarisation: an effect of literary (‘poetic’) texts: ‘deviations’ from ordinary language use (foregrounded properties/artistic devices) disrupt the modes of everyday perception and renew the reader’s capacity for fresh sensation. dénouement: solution at the end of the plot. description: a narrative mode that represents things that can be seen, heard or felt in some way. One distinguishes between the description of place, the description of time and the description of character. dialogue: utterance in drama or narrative which involves two or more characters speaking. diction: the choice and use of words in a text. diegesis: the verbal representation of events. discourse: the level of transmission, HOW a story is told. discourse-time: the time it takes to tell the story. drama: the form of composition designed for performance in the theatre, in which actors take the roles of the characters, perform the indicated action, and speak the written dialogue. dramatic irony: involves a situation in a play or narrative in which the audience or reader shares with the author or narrator knowledge of present or future circumstances of which a character is ignorant. In that situation, the character unknowingly acts in a way we recognise to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or expects the opposite of what we know fate holds in store, or says something that anticipates the actual outcome, but not at all in the way that the character intends. dramatic monologue: a type of poem consisting of the speech of a single character which, often unintentionally, reveals the speaker’s character or thoughts. dramatis personae: the characters in a play. duration: a category in the analysis of the relation between story-time and discourse time. There are five basic sub-categories: summary, scene, pause, ellipsis, stretch. dynamic character: a character that undergoes a development throughout the narrative or play. elegy: a poem which presents a sustained meditation on a solemn theme, usually death. elision: unstressed syllables are not pronounced in a particular line in order to make the line fit the metre.

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ellipsis: a word or phrase in a sentence is omitted though implied by the context. Also a category in the analysis of the relation between story time and discourse time when discourse skips to a later part in story time. embracing rhyme: rhyme pattern abba. end-rhyme: rhyme at the end of a line. end-stopped line: a syntactical unit comes to a close at the end of the line. epanalepsis: see redditio. epic theatre: a theatrical movement originating with Bertolt Brecht which developed in reaction against realistic theatrical traditions and attempts to prevent the audience’s emotional involvement and identification with characters or plot using effects (alienation or estrangement effects) such as a narrator for instance to constantly emphasise the ‘artificial’ (i.e. nonrealistic) nature of the theatre event. epic: a long narrative, usually in verse, which deals with an event of major national or cultural importance written in a sublime style. episodic: see loose plot. epistolary novel: a type of novel where the narrative is conveyed entirely by an exchange of letters. epistrophe: a word or expression is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or lines. epithalamion: a poem celebrating a wedding. epizeuxis: see geminatio. eponymous hero: the name of the protagonist is also the title of the narrative or play. euphemism: substitution of an agreeable or at least non-offensive expression for one whose plainer meaning might be harsh or unpleasant. event: something that happens in the story (with a discernable agent: action, without agent: happening). existent: a character in a story or the setting. expansion: syllables that are usually unpronounced are pronounced in a particular line of poetry in order to make the line fit the metre. experiencing I: in a homodiegetic narrative situation the narrator’s perception of events at the time of their occurence (compare narrating I). explicit characterisation: a characterisation which is made directly either by the narrator or another character. exposition: the beginning of a play, in this part the audience is informed about the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ of the events which are to follow. falling action: the fourth part in Gustav Freytag’s model to describe the overall structure of plays, in this part new tension is created through further events that delay the final catastrophe or dénouement. farce: sub-genre of comedy that presents highly exaggerated and caricatured types of characters and often an unlikely plot. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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feminine rhyme: a two-syllable rhyme. figura etymologica: see polyptoton. figural characterisation: characterisation made by characters in the narrative or play. figural narrative situation: the term introduced by the critic Franz Stanzel to denote the narrative situation of heterodiegetic narrator and internal focalisation. first person narrative situation: the term used by the critic Franz Stanzel to denote a narrative situation where the narrator is also a character in the story and refers to him- or herself using the first person pronoun (equivalent to Genette’s homodiegetic narration). flashback / analepsis: an event is presented later than it would take place in a natural chronology of the story. flashforward / prolepsis): future events of the story are anticipated at the discourse level, an event is made present at discourse level earlier than it would take place in the assumed chronology of the story. flat character: a character who has only few character traits and does not develop or change during the play; term introduced by the writer and critic E.M. Forster. focalisation: an aspect of narratiion which deals with the question ‘who sees’, ‘whose perspective is adopted?’ External focalisation has the centre of perception outside the story and thus this type of focaliser is also called narrator focaliser, in internal focalisation the focus of perception of a character in the story is adopted. This type of focaliser is thus also called character focaliser. foil character: a character who represents a sharp contrast to the protagonist and thus serves to stress and highlight the protagonist’s distinctive temperament. foot: the single unit of stress and non-stress in any given metre. free indirect discourse: see interior monologue. free verse: type of verse using irregular patterns of stress and numbers of syllables. frequency: the aspect of time analysis that relates to the frequency of references which are made at discourse level to any given event on the story level. Freytag’s Pyramid: the model to describe the overall structure of plays developed by Gustav Freytag. full rhyme: a type of rhyme where the sound of the rhyme words is identical from the last stressed syllable onwards. geminatio / epizeuxis: the repetition of the same words immediately next to each other. gender studies: an approach in literary analysis which scrutinises gender roles and gendered perspectives in literary texts.

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genre: types or classes of literature, its members share many resemblances in form, types of characters, theme, structure, etc.. gnomic present: a present tense used for generic statements that claim general validity. gothic novel: sub-genre of the novel which flourished in the late 18th and during the 19th century, usually set in the medieval period, the plots in gothic novels develop an atmosphere of gloom or even terror, they make liberal use of mystery, desolate castles with secret passages, sensational or supernatural occurrences. Haiku: a form of syllabic verse originating in Japan. The traditional Haiku has three lines, the first line has five, the second has seven and the third has five syllables. half-rhyme / pararhyme: a rhyme where only the consonants (consonance) or the vowels (assonance) or the spelling (eye-rhyme) is identical. hamartia: tragic flaw of a character which causes the downfall of this character. heterodiegetic narration: a narration which is told by a narrator who is not a character in the story, terminology introduced by the critic Gérard Genette. high comedy: a type of comedy that appeals to the audience’s intellect and has a serious purpose. historical novel: a sub-genre of the novel which takes its setting and some of the (main) characters and events from history. homodiegetic narration: a narration which is told by a narrator who is also a character in the story, terminology introduced by the critic Gérard Genette. homonym: words with the same pronunciation and / or spelling but with different meanings. hyperbaton (see also inversion) (Greek for ”stepping over”): a figure of syntactic dislocation where phrase or words that belong together are separated. hyperbole: obvious exaggeration for emphasis or for rhetorical effect. hypotaxis: clauses and sentences are arranged with subordination, usually longer sentence constructions (opposite of parataxis). iamb: see metre. I-as-witness: a homodiegetic narrator who witnesses and reports the events that are narrated but who is not the protagonist. identical rhyme: a rhyme which repeats the same words. implicit characterisation: a characterisation which is made indirectly through description of action or appearance of a character or other characters’ attitudes to this character.

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in medias res beginning: the narrative or play begins in the middle of the story, when developments might already be under way without a preceding introduction or exposition to characters and situation. in ultimas res beginning: the discourse of the narrative or play begins at the actual outcome or ending of the story and then proceeds to relate preceding events in non-chronological order. indirect speech: a narrative mode in which direct speech is reported rather than reproduced by another character or the narrator. interior monologue: the character’s consciousness is recreated apparently without any interfering agency (i.e. narrator) who tries to put it into wellturned English. The character’s thoughts are presented directly, imitating as much as possible the character’s mind style. internal focaliser: see focalisation. internal rhyme: words within a line rhyme with each other or with the end of the line. See also leonine rhyme. interplay: the tension between the abstract metrical grid and the actual linguistic and metrical realisation of verse, the term was introduced by the critics W.K. Wimsatt and M.C. Beardsley. inversion: the usual word order is rearranged, often for the effect of emphasis or to maintain the meter (a type of hyperbaton). irony: a discrepancy between the expression of something and the intended meaning; the words say one thing but mean another. isotopy: a concept introduced by the critic A.J. Greimas to denote a sequence of expressions or forms joined by a common ‘semantic denominator’. iterative reference: an aspect of frequency in time analysis: an event takes place several times and is referred to only once. leonine rhyme: an internal rhyme where the middle of the line rhymes with the end of the line. limerick: a stanza form used mainly for nonsense verse, commonly rhyming aabba. literary canon: a set of ‘important’ or ‘major’ literary works agreed by convention to be of a higher quality than other texts. literary competence: the ability to produce and understand literary texts. litotes: see meiosis. loose plot / episodic plot: a plot where there is little emphasis on the causal connections between events in the narrative, episodes might be linked by a common character or a common theme, also called episodic plot (opposite: tight plot). low comedy: emphasis is placed on situation comedy, slapstick and farce. lyric poetry: comparatively short, non-narrative poetry in which a single speaker presents a state of mind or an emotional state. major characters: characters who are central to the plot and who appear frequently in the play or narrative. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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Marxist criticism: an approach to literature under Marxist premises. masculine rhyme: a one-syllable rhyme. maximisation principle: the principle which suggests that among possible interpretations of any given line of verse the one that maximises the regularity of metre for the entire poem should be chosen (i.e. the one that requires the smallest number of irregularities), the term was introduced by the critic Rulon Wells. meiosis (understatement): a rhetorical trope where an idea is deliberately expressed as being less important than it actually is; a special case of understatement is litotes, which denies the opposite of the thing that is being affirmed (sometimes used synonymously with meiosis). metabole: see polyptoton. metafiction: a type of fiction (usually a novel) which takes the writing process as its topic. metaphor: a figure of similarity, a word or phrase is replaced by an expression denoting an analogous circumstance in a different semantic field. The comparison adds a new dimension of meaning to the original expression. Unlike in simile, the comparison is not made explicit ( ‘like’ or ‘as’ are not used). methodology: set of analytical tools used to investigate systematically a certain phenomenon. metonymy: a figure of contiguity, one word is substituted for another on the basis of some material, causal, or conceptual relation. metre: the measured arrangement of accents and syllables in poetry. One distinguishes between accentual metre, which counts the number of accents in each line, syllabic metre, which counts the number of syllables in each line and accentual-syllabic metre, which counts both the number of accents and the number of syllables in each line. In accentual-syllabic metre each single unit of stress and non-stress is called foot. The most important foot measures are: iamb, a metrical measurement of two syllables where the first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed. (da-DUM); trochee, a metrical measurement of two syllables where the first syllable is stressed and the second syllable is unstressed. (DUM-da); dactyl, a metrical measurement of three syllables where the first syllable is stressed and the next two syllables are unstressed. (DUM-da-da); anapaest, a metrical measurement of three syllables where the first two syllables are unstressed and the third syllable is stressed. (da-da-DUM) and spondee, a metrical measurement of two syllables where both syllables are stressed. (DUMDUM). metrical grid: the metrical pattern that is established as an abstract expectation in the head of the reader on the basis of the maximisation principle, i.e. the reader or listener expects the metrical pattern to continue as it started. Middle English Period: literary period 1066-1500. mimesis: the direct presentation or reflection of the world in art. mind style: the way in which one expects the character to use language in his/her own mind. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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minor characters: characters who are not that important for the plot and appear infrequently. mixed metaphor: see catachresis. mock-epic: a type of text (narrative prose or verse) which uses the conventions of epic for insignificant occurrences. Modern Period: literary period from 1914 onwards. mono-dimensional character: a character who is presented with only a few or even just one characteristic, mainly minor characters. monologue: a type of utterance in drama, narrative prose or poetry where one character speaks for a lengthy period of time while other characters are present though they do not speak. morality play: type of medieval drama which presented allegories of man’s life and search for salvation. motif: the frequent repetition of one significant phrase or image within one work or a type of situation or formula that occurs frequently in literature, see also topos. multi-dimensional character: a character with a number of defining characteristics, which are sometimes even conflicting, usually major characters. multiple plots: several plot lines in one narrative or play. mystery play: type of medieval drama based on the Bible; ‘mystery’ is used in the archaic sense of the ‘trade’ conducted by each of the medieval guilds who sponsored these plays. mythos: the term used by Aristotle to denote the material (the story) on which a literary text is based. narrated monologue: a technique for the representation of a characters consciousness: the character’s thoughts are reproduced in a way one would imagine the character to think, though the narrator continues to talk of the character in the third person. The voices of the narrator and the character are momentarily merged, they become a ‘dual voice’, also called free indirect discourse. narratee: the imaginary reader or character who is the recipient of the narrative in the text. narrating I: in a homodiegetic narrative situation the narrator’s person and perception of events at the time of narration (compare experiencing I. narrative modes: the kinds of utterance through which a narrative is conveyed. narrative past: the past tense used to tell a narrative. narrative poetry: poetry that gives a verbal representation of a sequence of connected events. narrative present: the present tense used to tell a narrative. narrator comment: see comment. narrator focaliser: see focalisation. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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narrator: the one who tells us what is going on in the story-world. naturalistic writing: a writing style practised especially from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, following the French writer Émile Zola, it typically aims for scientific objectivity, elaborate documentation; characters who exhibit strong animal drives such as greed and sexual desires, and who are helpless victims both of glandular secretions within and of sociological pressures without; the end of the naturalistic novel is usually ‘tragic’ because the protagonist, a pawn to multiple compulsions, usually disintegrates, or is wiped out. Neoclassical Period: literary period 1660-1785. New criticism: a textimmanent approach to literature. new historicism / cultural materialism: an approach to literature which regards the literary text as part and expression of the culture it is embedded in, influenced by Marxist criticism, analysis of the text focuses on the discovery of power structures. novel: an extended piece of prose fiction. nursery rhymes: traditional little poems for children, often nonsense-verse. occasional poetry: poetry that was composed for a specific occasion. octave: eight lines (usually of a sonnet), marked as separate entity by the rhyme pattern (for example: abba abba). ode: a long lyric poem with a serious subject written in an elevated style. Old English Period: literary period 450-1066. Old English Poetry: Poetry written during the Old English Period typically using accentual metre. onomatopoeia: the sound of the word imitates the sound of the thing which that word denotes. open end: the difficulties of the plot are not resolved into order or a preliminary conclusion. open structure/ form: the scenes of a play or individual parts of the narrative only loosely hang together (and are even exchangeable at times), the ending does not really bring about any conclusive solution or result, see also loose structure. order: an aspect of time analysis referring to the order in which events are presented on discourse level. ottava rima: an eight line stanza rhyming abababcc. overstructuring: a term deriving from formalist and structuralist theories indicating a greater use of phonological, morphological, syntactic or structural patterns in literary texts, especially poetry, than in other types of text. overt narrative situation: a narrative situation where narrator is present as a distinct personality. overt narrator: a narrator with a distinct personality who makes his or her opinion known (opposite: covert narrator). Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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oxymoron (Greek for “sharp-dull”): a paradoxical utterance that conjoins two terms that in ordinary usage are opposites. paradox: a daring statement which unites seemingly contradictory words but which on closer examination proves to have unexpected meaning and truth. parallelism: the repetition of identical or similar syntactic elements (word or word type, phrase, clause). parataxis: clauses or sentences are arranged in a series without subordination, usually shorter sentence constructions (opposite of hypotaxis). paronomasia / pun: wordplay, using words with the same or similar sounds or spelling but different meanings, usually for comic or satirical effect. pause: an aspect of duration in time analysis: story-time comes to a standstill while discourse-time continues. pejorative: the use of words with disparaging connotations. peripety: the turn of fortune at the climax of the plot, usually in the third act, in Gustav Freytag’s structural model of a play. periphrasis: a descriptive word or phrase is used instead of a proper name; or, conversely, the use of a proper name as a shorthand to stand for qualities associated with it. personification / prosopopoeia: animals, ideas, abstractions or inanimate objects are endowed with human characteristics. picaresque novel: an early form of the novel, some critics call it a precursor of the novel, originating in Spain, which tells of the escapades of a lighthearted rogue or rascal, usually episodic in structure. picture frame stage (also proscenium stage): the modern stage form which places the audience in front of the stage (as opposed to around the stage): giving the audience a view of the stage as though it were looking at a picture, the ‘picture’ being revealed by opening a curtain; dramatic conventions associated with this type of stage often involve the illusion of looking into a room through an invisible ‘fourth wall’. played time: see story time. playing time: time it takes to stage a play, see also discourse time. play-within-the-play: a play is staged within a play as part of its story, typical feature of revenge drama. plot lines: different elaborations of parts of the plot which are combined to form the entire plot. plot: the way events are causally and logically connected. poetic function: the element of a text which draws attention to itself as verbal message, term originated with the linguist Roman Jakobson and refers to one of the six functions of literary communication as schematised in the communication model.

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poetic justice: signifies the distribution, at the end of a literary work, of earthly rewards and punishments in proportion to the virtue or vice of the various characters. poetic licence: the licence that is allowed a poet to deviate from common usages of language. point of attack: the place in the story where the narrative’s discourse begins. polyptoton /metabole: one word is repeated in different grammatical or syntactical (inflected) forms. A special case of polyptoton is the figura etymologica which repeats two or more words of the same stem. polysyndeton: the unusual repetition of the same conjunction (opposite of asyndeton) in order to join words, phrases or sentences. portmanteau word (blend, contaminatio): word formed by blending two words into one. postcolonialism: approaches to literary criticism influenced by postcolonial theories which investigates, for example, aspects of national identities, hybrid cultures, the significance of indigenous cultures etc. poststructuralism: approaches to literary criticism influenced by poststructuralist philosophy, one of its chief tenets is the denial of the existence of universal principles which create meaning and coherence. pragmatic function of language: the function of language that refers to the mere transmission of information, the term refers to one of the six functions of literary communication as schematised by the linguist Roman Jakobson. primary text: direct speech/ text spoken by the characters of a play. primum comparandum: one of the three elements of a verbal comparison: the original item that is to be described by the help of an image, in a metaphor the primum comparandum is not necessarily mentioned explicitly. prolepsis: see flashforward. proscenium arch frames: the front of the stage, the structure separating the main acting area from the auditorium; it usually forms a rectangular ‘picture frame’. proscenium stage: see picture frame stage. prosody: the systematic study of versification, i.e. the principles and practice of metre, rhyme and stanza forms, sometimes the term “prosody” is extended to include also the study of sound effects such as alliteration, assonance, or onomatopoeia. prosopopoeia: see personification. protagonist: the central character of a narrative or play. psychological/psychoanalytical criticism: an approach to literary criticism influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud which attempts to interpret literary texts with regard to the author’s psychological state or the psychology of the text itself. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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psychonarration: a type of representation of consciousness: the narrator reports the character’s thoughts in his or her (the narrator’s) language, the level of mediation remains noticeable. pun: see paronomasia. quatrain: a stanza of four lines. reader response theory / reception theory: approaches to the analysis of literature which focus on the relation between reader and text. redditio / epanalepsis (framing): a syntactic unit or verse line is framed by the same element at the beginning and at the end. Renaissance (Early Modern Period): literary period 1500-1660. repartee: quick response given in order to top remarks of another speaker or to use them to one’s own advantage. repetitive reference: an aspect of frequency in time analysis: an event takes place once but is referred to or presented repeatedly. report: a narrative mode where speech, thought or action are rendered indirectly thus creating a distance between the event, the utterance and the reader’s perception of it, in most cases it informs about events in the story. revenge tragedy: type of tragedy which focuses on the revenge for an injustice to the protagonist or his family. revenger type: major character in revenge tragedies who seeks revenge for some injustice done to him or his family (usually the death of a beloved person or a family member). rhetorical device: departure from what speakers of a particular language apprehend to be the standard meaning of words, or the standard order of words used to achieve some special meaning or effect, rhetorical devices can be divided into rhetorical schemes (or figures) and rhetorical tropes. rhetorical schemes: describe the arrangement of individual sounds (phonological schemes), words (morphological schemes) or sentence structure (syntactical schemes). rhetorical trope: a device of figurative language which represents a deviation from the common or main significance of a word or phrase (semantic figures) or include specific appeals to the audience (pragmatic figures). rhyme royal: a seven-line stanza in iambic pentameter rhyming ababbcc used, among others, by James I of Scotland. rhyme: two words that have the same sound (phoneme) from the last stressed vowel onwards (full rhyme). rhythm: a series of alternations of speed and emphasis through linguistic and formal devices tending towards regularity. rich rhyme: two rhyme words with the same sound (phoneme) from the least stressed vowel onwards and the same consonant preceding the last stressed vowel. romance: a fictional narrative (prose, poetry or drama) which represents a chivalric theme or relates improbable adventures of idealised characters in Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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some remote or enchanted setting. Characters are usually sharply discriminated as heroes or villains, masters or victims. The protagonist is often solitary and isolated from a social context, the plot emphasises adventure, and is often cast in the form of a quest for an ideal or the pursuit of an enemy. romantic comedy: type of comedy which usually presents a pair of lovers and their struggle to be united. Romantic Period: literary period 1785-1830. round character: a character who displays several character traits and tends to develop throughout the plot, term introduced by the writer E.M. Forster. run-on-line (enjambment): a syntactical unit carries over into the next verse line. Russian formalism: a theory which considers literary language as deviant from everyday language and postulates the concept of poetic function of literary texts. satiric comedy: a type of comedy that has a critical purpose, usually attacking philosophical notions or political practices as well as general deviations from social norms through ridicule. scansion: the visual representation of the distribution of stress and nonstress in verse. scene: an aspect of duration in time analysis: story-time and discourse-time are equal. science fiction: a form of (prose) fiction which explores the positive or disastrous effects of future scientific discovery. secondary text: those parts of the dramatic text which are not spoken on stage: stage directions, description of setting etc. secundum comparatum: one of the three elements of a verbal comparison: the actual image that is used to describe an object/person; this image part of the comparison is also called vehicle (see also primum comparandum, tertium comparationis). self-characterisation: a character characterises himself/ herself. semantic field: groups of words and phrases that express similar ideas or concepts. Senecan tragedy: a type of tragedy modelled on the tragedies written by the Roman poet Seneca entailing a five-act-structure, a complex plot and an elevated style of dialogue. sestet: a stanza of six lines or the last six lines in a sonnet linked by the rhyme pattern. setting: the general locale, historical time and social circumstances in which the action occurs; the particular physical location in which the story of a narrative or dramatic work is set. short story: a short piece of prose fiction organised into a plot and with a kind of dénouement at the end.

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showing: the direct (mimetic) presentation of speech or action (opposite: telling). signified: the concept which a sound image (signifier) denotes, signified and signifier are inseparable like the two sides of a coin, taken together they are the sign which refers to an object in reality (referent). signifier: the sound image used to refer to a concept (signified), signified and signifier are inseparable like the two sides of a coin, taken together they are the sign which refers to an object in reality (referent). simile: two things are openly compared with each other, using ‘like’ or ‘as’. single plot: narratives or plays with only one plot line. singulative reference: an aspect of frequency in time analysis: an event takes place once and is referred to once on the discourse level. slow-down: see stretch. social novel: also industrial novel or Condition of England novel, associated with the development of nineteenth-century realism gives a portrait of society, especially of lower parts of society, dealing with and criticising the living conditions created by industrial development or by a particular legal situation. sociolect: linguistic style which reveals a speaker’s social background and origin. soliloquy: a form of monologue, where no other person is present on stage beside the speaker, usually reveals the speaker’s thoughts or feelings. sonnet: a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of 14 lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. speech: the most mimetic narrative mode, since it seems to give an almost unmediated representation of ‘actual’ speech events. speed-up: see summary. Spenserian stanza: a nine-line stanza rhyming ababbcbcc, the first eight lines are iambic pentameters, the last line is an alexandrine. spondee: see metre. sprung rhythm: a type of syllabic metre introduced by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins where only the number of stresses in a line are counted the number of syllables between the stresses vary. stage conventions: conventions concerning the actual performance of plays. stage props: properties (i.e. objects) used on stage. stanza: a sub-unit into which the sequence of lines which make up a poem is separated. static character: a character who shows little or no development throughout the narrative or play, mainly minor characters. stichic verse: a continuous run of lines of the same length and the same metre, no subdivision into stanzas.

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stichomythia: a special turn allocation where the speakers’ alternating turns are of one line each. story time: the temporal span of the sequence of events which is described in the narrative or play. story: the chronological sequence of events and actions involving characters. stream of consciousness: a concept developed in psychology by William James which denotes the idea that one’s thoughts are not orderly and wellformulated but more of a jumbled-up sequence of associations, these are not necessarily verbal but also include other sensual perceptions. stretch: an aspect of duration in time analysis discourse-time is longer than story-time. structuralism: an approach to literary analysis influenced by semiotics and structural linguistics, structuralist analysis focuses on the discovery of structures and their functions in literary texts. style: the way in which language is used. Two major aspects have to be regarded when examining the style of a text: diction and syntax. subplot: plot which is less important than and separate from the main plot though usually linked to it. substitution: one metrical foot from a regular pattern is replaced by another one, this does not change the overall metrical pattern. summary: an aspect of duration in time analysis: discourse-time is shorter than story-time. suspense: the tension that the reader or audience experiences when the outcome of events or the cause for certain results in a narrative or play are uncertain. syllabic metre: a metrical pattern in which each line has a prescribed number of syllables but the number of stresses varies. symbol: an object or event representing an abstract concept. symbolic space: spaces which point towards secondary levels of meaning in the text. symploce: a combination of anaphora and epistrophe, so that one word or phrase is repeated at the beginning and another word or phrase is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or sentences. synaesthesia: the description of one kind of sensual perception in terms of another. synecdoche: a figure of contiguity (form of metonymy), the use of a part for the whole, or the whole for the part: ‘pars pro toto’ or ‘totum pro parte’. synonym: use of words with the same or similar meanings. tail rhyme: rhyme pattern aab ccb where b is the tail rhyme. tautology: the same idea or concept is repeatedly expressed through additional words, phrases, or sentences. telling name: explicit characterisation of a character through his/her name. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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telling: a form of presentation where the mediator is very noticeable. temporal frame: deals with the question ‘in what time / when does the action take place?’ tenor: the meaning of an image, term introduced by the critic I.A. Richards who distinguishes between tenor and vehicle (the actual image used). tercet: a three-line stanza. tertium comparationis: the element of similarity in a metaphor or simile, which provides the common ground between the two parts of the image (primum comparandum and secundum comparatum). terza rima: a sequence of three-line stanzas rhyming aba bcb cdc etc. theme: the abstract topic which a literary text represents to the reader or audience. three unities: in the 16th and 17th centuries, critics of the drama in Italy and France added to Aristotle's ‘unity of action’ two other unities, to constitute one of the rules of drama known as ‘the three unities’; on the assumption that the achievement of an illusion of reality in the audience of a stage play (verisimilitude) requires that the action represented by a play approximate the actual conditions of the staging of the play, they imposed the ‘unity of place’ (that the action represented be limited to a single location) and the requirement of the ‘unity of time’ (that the time represented be limited to the two or three hours it takes to act the play, or at most to a single day of either 12 or 24 hours). tight plot: a type of plot where everything happens for a reason or a purpose and one event is the consequence of another (opposite: loose or episodic plot). topos: a commonplace, an older term for motif deriving from classical rhetoric and denoting recurring formulas or types of situation in literary texts. tragedy: dramatic sub-genre marked by representations of serious actions which end in disaster for the protagonist. tragicomedy: a sub-genre of tragedy which intermingles conventions derived from both comedy and tragedy, usually with a tragic ending. triple rhyme: a rhyme on three syllables. trochee: see metre. turn allocation: the number of lines in a character’s speech in a play. type: characters who are representatives of a single and stereotyped character category. understatement: see meiosis. unity of place, unity of plot, unity of time: see three unities. unreliable narration: a narration where there is reason to distrust the truthfulness or penetration of the narrator’s version of events. vehicle: the image which conveys the meaning in a metaphor or simile, terminology introduced by the critic I.A. Richards who distinguishes between tenor (the meaning that is conveyed by the image) and vehicle. Basics of English Studies, Version 03/04, Glossary

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Victorian period: literary period 1832-1901. villanelle: a stanza from originating in France with an intricate verse and rhyme pattern. wit: brief verbal expression which is intentionally contrived to create comic surprise, combining humour and intellect. word scenery: rhetorically created setting in a play. word-painting: the creation of vivid images of scenery and atmosphere in the viewer’s mind by means of rhetorical devices . zeugma (Greek for ”yoking”): one verb controls two or more objects that have different syntactic and semantic relations to it.

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