An Exam guide for

Introduction to English
Literature
(Sketch for lecture BBN-FLI-101)

2012

The whole content of this looooong sketch is based upon the lecture
presentations made by Ms.Friedrich Judit, associate professor, head of DES,
ELTE BTK and Mr. Ferencz Gyz, associate professor, deputy head of DES,
ELTE BTK. There might (and likely to) be mistakes both in grammar and rarely
in the content, as I am NOT a professional. Please read keeping this in mind.

Table of contents
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

Literature and Literary Studies as a Discipline (3)

Figurative language (4)
Poetry (8)
Literary genres (18)
Theatre as a multimedia art form (28)
Theatre in Context (32)
Literary Narrative Fiction (41)
Writing about Literature (49)

I
Literature and Literary Studies as a Discipline (tudomnyg)
I. Making connections between texts: ("only connect"1st used by E.M. Foster in Howards
End) The quotation is used here to illustrate, how to make sense texts only by establishing
connoections between different texts.
1. Connections within the text: The repetition: of a word, a concept, a feature, a
character, a scene, an action, a conflict, a solution etc. can be used to draw attention
on or emphasise something. There are different types of repetition.
a straightforward repetition: It is the repetition of the whole word.
b repetition with a difference: (no comment)
c repetition by offering a contrast: (no comment)
We can use a concordance (szmutat) if available, to search for connections in
the text: an alphabetical index of words in a single text, or IN THE WORKS OF A
MAJOR AUTHOR. It shows the number of times a particular word is used, and
where it may be found.
We can also use a "hypertextual" form of the work to make the process o
searching more easy
2. Connections between or among texts: We can successfully find connections between
other works as well. This category also has subcategories, as the following:
a among works by the same author: Connections can be made between the works
of an author, where we can use the bibliography as an assistance.
b among works by various authors: There may be connections between works of
other authors, but in this case, we need to classify it in order to have something
we can count on. We have several choices to make: we can search within a genre,
within the literature of a period, within English literature, within literature
written in English, within literature available in English (not necessarily limited to
Western culture). We can make our own classification too, to excerpt something
from the text ("daffodil..."), and then look for similar patterns within the works of
others or the author itself. The searcher can find surprising (or not so)
concordances, what can be used as an example in, or a basis of an essay.
3. Connections between texts and their contexts: We can also find connections in the
background of works.
a between (among) literary texts and the sister arts (testvrmvszet?): Artists are
often impulsed by an other work of art, form a different area of their one, so it
might be useful to look for similar paterns no only in literature, in our case.
b between (among) literary texts and other spheres of language and culture:
(including philosophy, history, law, medicine, natural sciences, as well as the daily
life, politics, or popular culture characteristic of a period at any given time/place).
The cultural background can always be a "trace" to follow.
3

For the total understanding, we should know what "motto" means:" A short
sentence or phrase (often in Latin), adopted as representative of a family or a
person. In such cases in may accompany a shield or a coat of arms
(cmer/cmerpajzs), or other heraldic device. Institutions, such as schools often
have mottos, as do for example regiments etc. The term also denotes a passage
prefixed to a book or a chapter, which adumbrates its matter" etc...
Another important phrase: epigraph (felirat, jelmondat)
Four meanings may be distinguished:
an inscription on a statue, stone or building;
the writing (legend) on a coin
a quotation on the title pages of a book;
a motto (q.v.) heading a new section or paragraph
II. Connections in the poetry: We can investigate connections between works of poetry
too, but in most cases, we have to classify them, in order to "isolate" a structure, a
pattern etc., what later can be used to compare the works. There are different "premade" classes (like Topographical poetry , Nature poetry, Meditative poetry) or we
can put the emphasis on the pattern of them ( like Stanza form, Rhyme pattern,
Metrical form), or e can create our own classification as well (a "daffodil"-poem for
example, where all the poems are about this flower, or at least mention it to a
certain extent). If we are looking for similar patterns among the poems, we can
search for motifs, metaphors, rhyme patterns, structural forms, metrical patterns,
similarity of images or stanza form.
1. History of poetry: As poetry has a long (and written) history, the searcher is more
likely to find some relevant information if s/he tries to gather from sources (long)
before his/her time.

II
Figurative language
(The language of literature)
I.

The figurative language: (jelkpes/kpletes)

A work of literature is always a coded text, in parts it may use figurative language (figures
of speech or tropestrpus, szkp), and as a whole it always communicates ideas
different from its literal meaning. Therefore, to learn how to decode this kind of
language is very important, in order to analyse the whole message of a work. This
kind of writing is called "symbolism", where the massage is not written, (that is,
implicit), however, the author would like the reader to guess, what s/he writes about.
(for e: W. B. Yeats in English and Ady Endre in Hungarian).
4

1. Imagery: (that is, a complete or incomplete system of images)

a. definition: Representation through language of sense experience. According to
it, several types of imageries exist:
b. types:
visual imagery: The image is connected to sight (or a mental image)
auditory imagery: The image is connected to hearing (its "signal" is
sound)
olfactory imagery: (smelloudours)
gustatory imagery: (taste)
tactile imagery: (touch)
organic imagery: It is connected to internal sensations like hunger, or
fatigue)
kinesthetic imagery: It is connected to movement or tension of the
muscles)
2. A figure of speech: An expression extending language beyond its literal meaning,
either pictorially through metaphor (metafora), simile (hasonlat), allusion (allzi,
"idzet"), personification (megszemlyests), and the like, or rhetorically through
repetition, balance, antithesis and the like. A figure of speech is also called a trope
3. The tools of figurative language:
a. metaphor: It derives from the greek "to transfer", and it is when we substitute a
word with an other on the basis of (some kind of real or imaginary)similarity. In
spotting the metaphor, both textual and contextual signals might help us. In
poetry this tool is used with an exact purpose always. It consists of a denotation
(jelents) and a connotation (mellkjelents) in the meaning that it unfies these
2 things in one word. Take this as an example:
Every girl is a bunch of flower. Here, the b of f means either girls and itself. We
can connect loads of ideas this way, wheich are similar to each oter to a ceratin
extent. In the example, girls are so called tenor (azonostott), while the flower is
the vehicle (azonost). These consist the real structure itself. There is another,
unwritten content, what is the gorund (vagy grounds, de ebben nem vagyok
biztos.....:D), referreing simply to the similarity of the latter 2. Here, the
comparison is implied, implicit, i.e. the figurative term is substituted for or
identified with the literal term.
types:
dead metaphor (clich): It is one in which the sense of a transferred
image is absent. Example: "to grasp a concept" uses physical action
as a metaphor for understanding. Dead metaphors normally go
unnoticed.
"When they gave you them to shell and you sat on the backdoorstep, opening the small green envelopes with your thumb,
minding the queues of peas, you were sitting at peace. Sit at peace,
sit at peace, all summer." Here, the metaphor is unwritten, as the
sense of "being boring" is emphasised. This phrase is written
several other times after this.
5

 extended metaphor (conceit, concetto):

It establishes a principal subject (comparison) and subsidiary
subjects (comparisons). Used extensively by English metaphysical
poets of the seventeenth century.
example: "Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth.
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee ;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more;
When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore;
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore"
mixed metaphor: is one that leaps from one identification to a
second identification inconsistent with the first. It can be deliberate
or unintentional.
Example: "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? "
b. simile: It is simply when we compare 2 things with each other. Take the same
example with little alternation:
Every girl is like a bunch of flower. The tenor and the vehicle is the same (unlike
in Hungarian, if you know!ezt csak a ppt alapjn gondolom gy, de gy tnik,
gy van), but in H, in this case, they are called hasonlt and hasonltott. The
word "like" has the role of the ground(s?), it is the grammatical indicator of
similarity. Here, the comparison is expressed, explicit (like, as)
c. synaesthesia(szinesztzia/rzettrsts): the mixing of sensations, the
concurrent (egyidej) appeal to more than one sense (e.g. hearing a colour,
seeing a smell).
d. personification (megszemlyests): give the attributes of a human being to an
animal, an object or a concept
e. metonymy (metonmia): the use of something closely related for the thing
actually meant, anyhow it is connected to the subject of metonymy. Here, an
associated idea names the item:
For example: The pen is mightier than the sword. (That is, writing is more
efficient than fighting)
f. synecdoche: It is the use of the part for the whole
For example: The wheels stopped in the nearby (so did the whole car).
g. symbol (szimblum): Something that means more than what it is
h. allegory: It is a narrative or description that has a second meaning, with more
emphasis on the ulterior meaning than on the surface story Unlike metaphors, it

involves a system of related correspondences. Unlike symbols, it puts less

emphasis on the images for their own sake.
Some of these things are easy to confuse! An image means only what it is.
A metaphor means something other than what it is. A symbol means what it is and
something more, too. It functions literally and figurative at the same time.
4. Rhetorical figures:
a. simple repetition: The mere repetiton of words, phrases etc.
b. paralellism: (prhuzam) A matter of grammar and rhetoric: the writer expresses
in parallel grammatical form equivalent elements of content framing words,
sentences, and paragraphs to give parallel weight to parallel thoughts.
For example, the words of Sndor Ptfi: "Elhull a virg, eliramlik az let!"
c. antithesis: (ellentt) It is a direct contrast or opposition; or a rhetorical figure
sharply contrasting ideas in balanced parallel structure.
d. climax: (tetpont) A point of high emotional intensity, a turning point or crisis.
OR The high point of an argument, reached by arranging ideas in the order of
least to most importance OR The point of greatest interest in any piece of
writing OR Repeating the same sound or word.
e. hyperbole: (tlzs) Overstatement, to make a point, either direct or ironical.
f. apostrophe: (klti megszlts) An address to an imaginary or absent person
(or as if the person were absent), a thing or a personified abstraction.
g. irony: Saying smth positive just to emphasise the negaticness. a trope, a nonliteral use of language like metaphor, metonymy, etc, also can be conceived as a
rhetorical figure. It can be a type of tone, a particular way of speaking/writing, a
matter of style. can be widespread in text (unlike metaphors which are usually
discrete parts of text).
For example: (After a serious quarrel) A: ....and I was kind of you! B: Yes, you
were!
mechanisms and techniques of irony:
overemphasis of inverted meaning:
Yes! I'd really like that!
internal inconsistency:
in narrative: narrator is shown not to have seen the truth
in style: unexpected change in register unexpected change
of rhythm unexpected alliteration rhyme fails to appear
effects of irony:
where the intended meaning is difficult to pinpoint
internally inconsistent text
literal meaning is insufficient
no specific, authoritative or unified worldview a final,
implied meaning remains elusive
types of irony:
verbal irony: saying the opposite of what is meant
dramatic irony: discrepancy between what the speaker says
and what the author means
7

 irony of situation: discrepancy between the

actualcircumstances and those that would seem appropriate
or discrepancy between what one anticipates and what
actually comes to pass
h. paradox: (paradoxon) an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless
somehow true (that's why sometimes it is called a "false-opposition").
For example, the words of Ferenc Klcsey: "Nem lel honjt a hazban"
i. allusion: discrepancy between the actual circumstances and those that would
seem appropriate or discrepancy between what one anticipates and what
actually comes to pass.

III

Poetry
(Poetry and Prose, Sound Patterning, Prosody, Rhymes. Stanza Forms )
I. Poetry and Verse (vers):
1 Poetry: one of the subcategories of literature along with drama and fiction (szpprza).
In this sense by poetry lyric poetry is meant.
2 Verse: (metrical poetryidmrtkes) It differs from prose in that the former is
rhythmically organized speech down to the level of syllables, whereas the latter is
either orderless or follows ordering patterns other than syllabic principles.
3 Rhythm:
a) prose rhythm: It may use repetitions (ismtls), parallels of words, syntactical units
mondattani egysg), grammar structures, sentence length, semantic structures
(jelentsbeli struktra). Prose rhythm does not follow any preset pattern.
(These are words like "such a man" "this behaviour" etc.)
b) verse rhythm: Verse is a patterned succession (sorozat) of syllables: some are
strongly emphasized, some are not. Rhythms of poetry, compared with prose
rhythms, are stylized and artificial, they fall into patterns that are more repetitive
and predictable. Rhythm is based on orderly repetition. Poetic rhythm is based on
the regular alternation of certain syllabic features of the text.
c) poetic rhythm: Poetic rhythms call attention to themselves. As literature is a
coded text, we use concentration ("srts") and intensity.
4 Primordial (si, eredeti) functions of poetry: Poetry in its original meaning was used
in naming, possession and even in healing, in a form of incantatory rhythms
(varzsformula), verse spells, healing charms.
5 Syllable: It commonly consists of a vocalic peak, which may be accompanied by a
consonantal onset or coda. In some languages, every syllabic peak is indeed a vowel. But
other sounds can also form the nucleus of a syllable. In English, this generally happens where
a word ends in an unstressed syllable containing a nasal (orrhang) or lateral consonant

(laterlis, vagyis a nyelv oldalnl jn ki a leveg).

CV / CVC / VC /CCV / CCVC / etc.

6 Diphtongs (diftongus, azaz kettshangz), Triphtongs (triftongus, hrmashangz):
These are special vowel sequences in which two or three components can be heard
but which none the less count as a single vowel (like or ).
a) BUT
one syllable: hire, lyre, flour, cowered
two syllables: higher, liar, flower, coward
II. Prosody: In poetry, meter (metre in British English) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse
or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a
certain set of meters alternating in a particular order. The study of meters and forms of
versification is known as prosody (verstan). (Within linguistics, "prosody" is used in a
more general sense that includes not only poetical meter but also the rhythmic aspects
of prose, whether formal or informal, which vary from language to language, and
sometimes between poetic traditions.)
7 Prosodic features of speech:
a) tone: (hangsly, hanglejts)
b) stress / beat /accent: (beat: tem, accent: hangsly) Stress commonly is a
conventional label for the Overall prominence of certain syllables relative to others
within a linguistic system. In this sense, stress does not correlate simply with
loudness, but represents the total effect of factors such as pitch, loudness and
duration.
stress in English: English, sometimes described as a stress timed language,
makes a relatively large difference between stressed and unstressed syllables,
in such a way that stressed syllables are generally much longer than
unstressed.
The term accent is sometimes used loosely to mean stress, referring to
prominence in a general way or more specifically to the emphasis placed on
certain syllables. The term accent is also used to refer to relative prominence
within longer utterances.
stress vs. accent: The terms STRESS and ACCENT in particular are notoriously
ambiguous, and it would be misleading to suggest that there are standard
definitions.
c) intonation: (intonci, hankpzs)
8 Chief phonetic correlates: (viszony)
a) pitch: (lejts) It is widely regarded in English as the most Salient determinant of
prominence. When a syllable or a word is perceived as stressed or emphasized,
it is pitch height or a change of pitch, more than length or loudness, that is likely
to be mainly responsible.
b) duration: The duration of syllables depends on both segment type and the
surrounding phonetic context. Duration is also constrained by biomechanical
9

factors: part of the reason why the vowel in English bat, for example, tends to be
relatively long is that the jaw has to move further than in words like bit or bet.
9 English Versification: (versmrtk)English poetic rhythm is based on the regular
alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. (Duration and pitch are no metre
creating features.) Stresses are that of words stresses and marked in dictionaries by as in
synecdoche /snkdk/. Scansion (versmrtk, temezs) is the act of determining and
graphically representing the metrical character of a line of verse. Stressed syllables are
marked by the symbols / or .Unstressed syllables /slacks (hangslytalan sztag) are
marked by the symbol X.
a) scansion:
When I consider how my light is spent
X / X / X /
X / X /

b) caesura (sormetszet):
Down by the salley gardens

X / X

/ X /

my love and I did meet

||

X / X

|| is a division marker or bar between repeated units of a line broken into sections by a
caesura
c) rhythm: The rhythmic structure of a poem is formed by repeating a basic rhythmical

unit of stressed and unstressed syllables

d) metre: (tem) Metre grows out of the linguistic rhythms of the words, it is the design
formed by the rhythms, it is an abstract pattern. The general metre and the actual
rhythm of a specific line are not always identical.
10 Metrical Systems in English:
a) accentual/stressed metre: Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Alliterative (allitercin alapul)
Versification. The basic metrical feature of the line is four strong stresses:/ / / /. The
spaces before and between the stress can be occupied by zero, one, two or three
syllables, e.g. : X / X X / X X X / /, or X X / X / / X X / X, etc. Each full line is divided into
two half-lines (hemistichsflsor, hemistichon) by a Caesura: X X / X X / || X X / X X /.
The distinctive feature of this metrical form is its alliteration. Alliteration is a figure
speech, meaning the repetition of consonant or vowel sounds at the beginning of words
or stressed syllables. It is a very old device which often help create onomatopoeic
(hangutnz)effects, i.e. effects imitating sounds. Alliteration is a key organizing principle
in Anglo-Saxon verse.
11 Alliteration: Alliteration is the principal binding agent (tnyez) of Old English poetry. Two
syllables alliterate when they begin with the same sound; all vowels alliterate together, but
the consonant clusters (csoport) st-, sp- and sc- are treated as separate sounds (so st- does
not alliterate with s- or sp-).
a) formal requirements:
a long-line is divided into two half-lines. Half-lines are also known as verses (verssor?)
or hemistichs
a heavy pause, or csura, separates the two half-lines.
each half-line has two strongly stressed syllables.
10

the first lift in the second half-line (i.e. the third stress) is always alliterated with
either or both stressed syllables in the first half-line.
the second stress in the second half-line, i.e. the fourth stress does not alliterate.

b) variants: (A marks an alliterating syllable, X marks a non-alliterating syllable)

A A || A X
A X || A X
X A || A X
c) Anglo-Saxon example: Beowulf /b--wulf/
Beowulf is the conventional title of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182
alliterative long lines. Its composition by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet is dated
between the 8th and the early 11th century. The poem appears in what is today called
the Beowulf manuscript or Nowell Codex (British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv), along
with other works.
d) excerpt: (translated by Michael Alexander)
Then spoke Beowulf,
son of Edgeheow
A
X
|| A
X

12 Significance of Sound Patterning:

a) cohesive function: It binds words together enhances memorability. Primordial and bardic
(bard=ancient poet/singer/minstrel in celtic regions) poetry was transmitted orally,
repetitive formal components had a mnemonic (emlkezeterst) function. The metrical
frame (idmrtkes forma) creates a musical body for the poem; it may also contribute
to a level of sound symbolism, onomatopoeia, onomatopoeic words

b) Verse stessing:
Sing a song of sixpence,
/
/
A pocket full of rye;
/
/
Four and twenty blackbirds
/
/
Baked in a pie.
/
/
Sing a song of sixpence,
/
/
/
(p)
A pocket full of rye;
/
/
Four and twenty blackbirds
/
/
/
(p)
Baked in a pie.
/
/

These are two ways of reciting a well-know folk poem (at the second one," p" means
pause).
11

13 Foot-Verse: (foot=verslb) (Syllable-Stress Verse (sztaghangslyos) / AccentualSyllabic Metre)

After the Norman Conquest, from the 12th century on accentual-syllabic versification
(sztagra es hangsly a lnyeg)started to appear. It went hand in hand with
strophic construction (stfaszerkezet) and rhyming line endings (ritmikus sorzrlat?).
Out of stressed and unstressed syllables metrical feet were created after the pattern
of ancient Greek and Latin poetry. In accentual syllabic foot-verse both the number
of stressed and unstressed syllables are fixed, and also their respective positions in
the poetic line. Ancient Greek and Latin prosody is quantitative(mennyisgre pl?),
i.e. the regular alternation of syllables is based on their duration. Quantitative
versification makes distinction between long and short syllables. A syllable is long if
the vowel sound in it is long or if it is short but followed by more two or more
consonants. A syllable is short if the vowel sound in it is short and is followed by
zero or one consonant sound. English accentual-syllabic foot-verse is sometimes
called quantitative. It is, however, is inaccurate. But quantitative versification is
based on the quantity, i.e. the duration of a syllable. Apart from a few technical
experiments, duration of syllables is not a metre constitutive principle (strfaalkot
elv) in English verse. Quantitative versification makes metrical feet using short and long
syllables.
a) metrical feet: It is the basic metrical unit that generates a line of verse in
quantitative versification. The foot is a purely metrical unit; there is no inherent
(velejr, jellemz) relation to a word or phrase as a unit of meaning or syntax. A
foot is composed of syllables, the number of which is limited. The feet are classified
first by the number of syllables in the foot (disyllabic feet have two, trisyllabic
three, and tetrasyllabic four syllables), and by the pattern of vowel lengths.
b) wiki says so.... (on Prosody)
The meter of much poetry of the Western world and elsewhere is based on particular
patterns of syllables of particular types. The familiar type of meter in English
language poetry is called qualitative meter, with stressed syllables coming at
regular intervals (e.g. in iambic pentameter, typically every even-numbered
syllable). Many Romance languages use a scheme that is somewhat similar but
where the position of only one particular stressed syllable (e.g. the last) needs to
be fixed. The meter of the old Germanic poetry of languages such as Old Norse
and Old English was radically different, but still was based on stress patterns.
Many classical languages, however, use a different scheme known as quantitative
metre, where patterns are based on syllable weight rather than stress. In dactylic
hexameter of Classical Latin and Classical Greek, for example, each of the six feet
making up the line was either a dactyl (long-short-short) or spondee (long-long),
where a long syllable was literally one that took longer to pronounce than a short
syllable: specifically, a syllable consisting of a long vowel or diphthong or followed
by two consonants. The stress pattern of the words made no difference to the
12

meter. A number of other ancient languages also used quantitative meter, such
as Sanskrit and Classical Arabic (but not Biblical Hebrew).
c) most common metrical feet: (symbols: = long syllable, = short syllable)

iamb or iambic foot: (jambus)

trochee or trochaic foot: (trocheus)
anapaest or anapaestic foot: (anapestus)
dactyl of dactylic foot: (dactilus)
spondee or spondaic foot: (spondeus)
pyrrhic or pyrrhic foot: (pirrchiusz, (vagyis phrroszi))
tribrach: (tribrachus ?)
molossus: (molossus ?)
minor ionic: (kisebb jn ?)
choriamb: (khoriambus ?)

English prosody is based on the regular alternation of stressed and unstressed

syllables. Consequently classical Greek and Latin quantitative metrical feet are
translated into syllable stresses: 'long' becomes 'stressed' (or 'accented'), and
'short' becomes 'unstressed (or 'unaccented'). For example, an iamb, which is
short-long in classical meter, becomes unstressed-stressed, as in the English
word today; a trochee is constituted of a stressed and unstressed syllable,
as in never; a dactyl is constituted of a stressed syllable followed by two
unstressed ones, as in yesterday; while an anapaest is constituted of two
unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one, as in interrupt. A spondee
is made of two successive stressed syllables, as in heartbreak; a pyrrhic is
made of two successive unstressed syllables and the phrase of the. So in
English literature, these feet are sign with letter "x" (unstressed) and symbol
"/" (unstressed) (spondee= / /; dactyl= / x x). For the scansion of an English
poem, therefore, the standard symbols are used (the symbol | marks foot
boundary)
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet

X /| X /| X /| X|| X /| X /| X /
d) classification of metrical feet: Metrical feet add up to poetic lines, which consequently
are defined in terms of the number and type of poetic feet they contain:
Monometer: one foot
Dimeter: two feet
Trimeter: three feet
Tetrameter: four feet
13

 Pentameter: five feet

Hexameter: six feet
thus we can talk about for example Iambic monometers (i.e. one-stress iambic
lines):
Thus I|Pass by|And die|As one|Unknown|An gone (A poem by Robert
Herrick, with the title of : "Upon His Departure Hence"). Here, all lines have
only 1 stressed sound.
e) special cases: There is a so called Iambic pentameter (where iambs constitutes 5
stressed sounds), but it has a special role in the history of English literature.
If unrhymed, it is called blank verse (e.g. Shakespeares plays).
("Now is the winter of our discontent | Made glorious summer by this sun of York")

If pair-rhymed, it is called heroic couplet (e.g. Alexander Popes Essay on

Criticism)
("Of all the Causes which conspire to blind | Man's erring Judgment, and
misguide the Mind")
f) note :It is important to notice that the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllable in
accentual-syllabic metre is not entirely rigid. In iambic forms, e.g. a poet may use
substitute feet. The two syllabic spondee and pyrrhic are proper substitute feet for
iambs. Sometimes poets add an extra unstressed syllable, thus substituting an
anapaest for an iamb. For example:
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still [...]
X /| X / | X / | /
/|X /
g) levels of metrical lines: A metrical line has three levels
"Oh, to vex me, contraryes (contraries?) meet in one" (Donne) (it is an iambic
pentameter)
abstract metrical pattern: X / | X / | X / | X / | X /
actual rhythm of the particular line: X X | / X | / X | X / | X /
the rhythm of speech: X X / X / X X \ X \ (where \ marks secondary stress)

14 Accentual-syllabic rhyme: English accentual-syllabic poems may rhyme. Rhyme is the

identity of sound between words. Rhyme is not necessarily based on identity of
spelling. Pronunciation is the essence.
a) pronunciation:
great rhymes with mate
whereas
bough does not rhyme with though
great and meat look alike, but pronounced differently, they are called eyesrhymes
b) rough and smooth rhytms: If the three levels fall apart, as in the above excerpt of
Donnes poem, the rhythm is rough. If they tend to coalesce (egyesl), as in this
line by Donnes contemporary, Edmund Spenser, the rhythm is smooth:
"One day I wrote her name upon the strand" (Edmund Spenser: Amoretti,
Sonnet 75)
14

15 Sound Parallelism: Rhyme is only one aspect of sound-parallelism. Based on the

concept of the linguistic formula of a syllable, i.e. a cluster of up to three consonants
followed by a vowel nucleus followed by a cluster of up to four consonants (CV
C), Geoffrey Leech set up the following chart of sound patterns:
a) A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry: (by G.L.)

CVC

great/grow

send/sit

alliteration

CVC

great/fail

send/bell

assonance

CVC

great/meat

send/hand

Consonance
(harmnia,
sszecsengs
)

CVC

great/graze
d

send/sell

reverse
rhyme

CVC

great/groat

send/soun
d

pararhyme

CVC

great/bait

send/end

rhyme

b) adding to rhyme: consonance is often called half-rhyme

"I have net them at close of day | Coming with vivid faces | From counter or desk
among grey |Eighteenth-century houses." (Yeats: Easter 1916)

internal rhymes: By rhymes generally terminal rhymes are meant. However, poets
use internal rhymes within a line, usually followed by a break (caesura):
"And through the drifts the snowy clifts (cliffs?) [...]" (from S. T. Coleridge: The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner)

Poetic schemes and forms

I Poetic forms: The disposition of lines into groups falls into two categories:
1 Stichic poetry: It is the form, in which verse line follows verse line. Stichic poetry is
often segmented into verse paragraphs, i.e. passages of irregular length divided by a
space-line.
2 Strophic poetry: It is the form, in which groups of lines (stanza) are formed.
II Rhyme Schemes and Poetic Forms: Strophic or stanzaic forms are often bound together by
rhymes. Stanza forms are determined by numbers of lines:
15

1 Couplet: two-line stanza

2 Tercet: three line stanza
3 Quatrain: four-line stanza
III Stanza (from Italian "station" or "stopping place"):
A structural unit in verse composition, a sequence of lines arranged in a definite pattern of

meter and rhyme scheme which is repeated throughout the whole work. Stanzas range
from such simple patterns as the couplet or the quatrain to such complex stanza forms
as the Spenserian or those used by Keats in his odes. Stanzas may contain metrically
different or identical lines.
IV Rhyme scheme:
Patterns of rhyme within larger units of poetry marked by letters : A or a indicates the 1st

line and all lines which rhyme with it, while B or b indicates the next one, and every lines
rhyming with it.
1 The couplet: aa bb cc, etc
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 Andrew Marvell: To his Coy Mistress)
2 Alternate rhymes: (Alternating / alternate / cross rhymes: (keresztrm) abab cdcd, etc.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, | The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, | The
ploughman homeward plods his weary way, | And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
(from Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard)
3

Envelope Rhymes: (Envelope / enclosed: abba , etc.)

The world is too much with us; late and soon, | Getting and spending, we lay waste our
powers: | Little we see in nature that is ours; | We have given our hearts away, a sordid
boon!
(William Wordsworth: The world is too much with us; late and soon)
Terza Rima: (Terca rima: aba bcb cdc, etc. (It is a type interlocking rhyme patterns: word
unrhymed in 1st stanza is linked with words rhymed in 2nd stanza.))
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, | Thou, from whose unseen presence the
leaves dead | Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, | Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, | Who
chariotest to their dark wintry bed
(from P. B. Shelley: Ode to the West Wind)
Ottava Rima: (Italian origin)
a) rhyme scheme: ABABABCC
Three alternate rhymes plus a closing couplet consists of iambic lines, usually
pentameters Byrons Don Juan is a well known example

6 Rhyme Royal:
a) rhyme scheme: ABABBCC
b) usually iambic pentameter
7 Spencerian stanza:
a) rhyme scheme: ABABBCBCC
16

The Spenserian stanza was invented by Edmund Spenser and used it for his epic
poem The Faerie Queene. Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic
pentameter followed by an iambic hexameter (alexandrine).
8 The sonnet:
Consists of fourteen lines divided into stanzas. Iambic pentameters (or iambic
hexameters, also called alexandrines, sometimes iambic tetrameters). The rhyme
schemes is fixed. There are three main types.
a) The Petrarchan / Italian Sonnets:
rhyme scheme: a b b a | a b b a | | c d c | d c d OR
abba|cddc||efg|efg/eef|ggf

This rhymescheme can be either in a whole stanza, or diveded into 4 (2

quatrain, 2 tercet)
Here: 4+4+3+3=8+6, where the quatraines contitutes an octane, and the 2
tercets constitutes a sestet, but these bigger elements themselves are
separated by a turn.
In the quatrains: - envelope rhymes repeated turn after line 8 (turn markers: but,
though, yet, etc.) tercets quatrains versus tercets based on opposition, thesis
antithesis, static quality
b) The english Sonnet: (a.k.a. Shakespearean)
rhyme scheme: a b a b | c d c d || e f e f || g g
4+4+4+2=8+4+2=12+2, where after the first 2 quatraines, there is a turn, then
comes the third quatraine, and the closing couplet (summary, conclusion) at
last. These are written in alternate rhyme, it has 2 truns in it, one after the
8th line, and one after the 12th one.
It was designed to express dramatic quality, so it has a tripartite structure
(thesis-antithesis-synthesis)
c) Spenserian Sonnet:
rhyme scheme: a b a b | b c b c || c d c d || e e
A mixture of the two, the overlapping rhymes create a similar acoustic effect
to that of the Italian sonnet, yet displays two turn, thus represents a more
dramatic quality. However, the overlapping rhymes blur the tripartite division.
d) Semi-strict forms, loosely metrical poems:
Poets often use loosely metrical patterns. It either means the employment of
metrical substitutions or variations, as in S. T. Coleridges Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, with subtle irregularities in the ballad measure.
"With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, | We could nor laugh nor wail; |
Through utter drought all dumb we stood! | I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, |
And cried, A sail! a sail!"

17

IV
Literary genres
(poetic genres)
I. Aristotle: Poetics (On the art of poetry)
Our subject being Poetry, I propose to speak not only of the art in general but also of its
species and their respective capacities; of the structure of plot required for a good poem;
of the number and nature of the constituent parts of a poem; and likewise of any other
matters in the same line of inquiry.
Epic poetry and Tragedy, as also Comedy, Dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing
and lyre-playing, are all, viewed as a whole, modes of imitation. But at the same time they
differ from one another in three ways, either by a difference of kind in their means, or by
differences in the objects, or in the manner of their imitations.
1. Tripartite Division: (hrmas feloszts)
Aristotle in the first passages of his work argues that different arts can be separated on
the basis of the kinds of means they employ. However, you wont find the so-called
Aristotelian tripartite classification in his poetics. There is a division between dramatic
poetry (theatre as direct imitation of persons) and epic poetry which is the narrative
portrayal of human actions. There is no clear-cut recognition of lyric poetry. Direct
expression of personal feelings and thoughts was added after a long process by the
16th century.
II. Genre: (based on Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom, Furniss and Sara
Mills: Ways of Reading. 3rd Edition. London and New York: Routledge, 2007)
1. Definition: (from Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory) The major
Classical genres were: epic, tragedy, lyric, comedy and satire, to which would now be
added novel and short story. From the Renaissance and until well on into the 18th
century the genres were carefully distinguished and writers were expected to follow
the rules prescribed for them.
(from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms)
Much of the confusion surrounding the genre arises from the fact that it is used
simultaneously for the most basic modes of literary art (LYRIC, NARRATIVE,
DRAMATIC); for the broadest categories of composition (poetry, prose fiction), and
for more specialized sub-categories, which are defined according to several different
criteria including formal structure (SONNET, PICARESQUE NOVEL), length
(NOVELLA, EPIGRAM), intention (SATIRE), effect (COMEDY), origin
(FOLKTALE), and subject matter (PASTORAL, SCIENCE FICTION).
2. The basics: In its most general sense, genre simply means a sort, or type, of text:
thriller, horror movie, musical, autobiography, tragedy, etc. "There is an obvious
convenience in being able to label texts. We can t any given text into a class that
offers a convenient shorthand in which to describe what it is like: it resembles others
18

that people already know. The notion is useful when applied not only to literary
works but also to non-literary discourse, distinguishing the typical features of, say, a
shopping list from those of food labeling, a menu or a recipe.
3. Difficulties: "For all its convenience, however, the notion of genre presents
difficulties. Is there a xed number of sorts of text? If so, when and how was this
decided, and on what basis? And who will decide for still evolving types, such as
emergent styles in popular music, texting or multimedia? A more theoretical question
also arises: whether genre is a prescriptive category grouping features to be
incorporated into writing or production of a given type or whether it is descriptive,
generalizing on the basis of agreement among language users."
a classication on the basis of formal arrangement: "One basis for classifying texts is
their formal properties" A work of art can be analysed on the basis of its "official"
pattern system, or as a "member" of one of the 3 branches of written art (poetry,
drama, fiction).
b the aspect of the speaker: Aristotle further emphasized one particular,
distinguishing aspect of form: who speaks. Lyrics are uttered in the rst person; in
epic or narrative, the narrator speaks in the rst person, then lets characters speak
for themselves; in drama, the characters do all the talking. However, genre
classication on the basis of formal differences can be difficult to sustain.
c classication on the basis of theme or topic: "Sometimes subject matter is the
basis for genre classication. Texts show thematic afnities by treating the same
or similar topics, often topics or subject matter that may be especially important
for the society in which the texts circulate (e.g. war, love,independence
struggles)." "The pastoral (psztornek), for instance, is concerned with country
life; crime ction is about crime; biography relates events in a life, etc.; but in
principle it is possible to treat any of these topics following formal conventions of
any of the different kinds listed above, or in different moods that will create
different kinds of effect on the reader or viewer."
d classication on the basis of mood or anticipated (elreltott) response: What a
text is about can overlap (tfed) with an attitude or emotion conventionally
adopted towards that subject matter. That is, a text is often understood within the
framework of the society, or the community. A good example of this is the
tragedy: . classical tragedy combines conventions about the protagonist and
conventions about the nature of the plot, tragedy is also dened by its
characteristic mode of audience response
e classication on the basis of occasion: In classification, the occasion in which the
certain work of art is "used". "Its involvement in public life, including in various
kinds of social ritual, meant that many different texts had their origins in
composition for or performance on specic kinds of social occasion." For
example, an epithalamium (nszdal?), is a poem often recited in celebrations,
whereas the elegy (elgia, korban: gyszdal) in sorrowful occasions.
f classication on the basis of mode of address: Works of art can vary in how they
adress their readrs. "Some texts involve direct address to a reader or audience
19

4.

5.

6.

7.

others have a specic addressee named in the text but are written so as to be
overheard (e.g. odes, dialogue in most stage drama). Sometimes within a single
form there is variation between modes of address."
Recognizing or deciding what genre a text is in: "Deciding what genre a text is in
therefore involves weighing up a number of interlocking considerations. This can
make it difficult to judge whether a text ts a category simply by ticking off features
in a list of required attributes."
a genre as an expression of conventional agreement: Genres may be focused in
especially inuential texts that serve as exemplary (elrettent) cases (for example:
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex Oidipus kirly) "This view of genre, where a prototype
is taken to exist and where other texts are judged to be more or less close to the
prototype, enables texts to be assigned to genres even when they do not have all
the apparently necessary features."
Functions of genre:
a genre as a framework for a texts intelligibility: "The main psychological function
of genre is to act as a sort of schema, or structured set of assumptions within our
tacit knowledge, that we draw on to guide reading, rather like a series of signposts
or instructions."
b genre as reecting the nature of human experience: "Some critics have suggested
connections between specic genres and fundamental kinds of human
experience."
c genre as a promotional device: "Genres allow audiences to predict and plan kinds
of experience for themselves. (The problemsolving pleasure of detective ction,
for a story to make you cry, etc.)"
d genre as a way of controlling markets and audiences: They are part of a process of
controlling the production of entertainment and directing culture markets, by
actively repeating the formula of whatever has already been successful.
Literary Kinds or Genres: Although the term seems highly flexible (if not vague) it is
yet to be used for literary analyses. Literay kinds and genres are hierarchical, like a
family tree:
Kind
or
Genre
Genre
Subgenre
Subgenre
Sub-subgenre
According to California Department of Education: (of course w corrected GB spelling)
(fictions)
a drama: Stories composed in verse or prose, usually for theatrical performance,
where conflicts and emotion are expressed through dialogue and action.
b fable: Narration demonstrating a useful truth, especially in which animals speak
as humans; legendary, supernatural tale.
c fairy Tale: Story about fairies or other magical creatures, usually for children.
d fantasy: Fiction with strange or other worldly settings or characters; fiction which
invites suspension of reality.
20

fiction: Narrative literary works whose content is produced by the imagination

and is not necessarily based on fact.
f fiction in Verse: Full-length novels with plot, subplot(s), theme(s), major and
minor characters, in which the narrative is presented in (usually blank) verse
form.
g folklore: The songs, stories, myths, and proverbs of a people or "folk" as handed
down by word of mouth.
h historical fiction: Story with fictional characters and events in a historical setting.
i horror: Fiction in which events evoke a feeling of dread in both the characters
and the reader.
j humour: Fiction full of fun, fancy, and excitement, meant to entertain; but can be
contained in all genres
k legend: Story, sometimes of a national or folk hero, which has a basis in fact but
also includes imaginative material.
l mystery : Fiction dealing with the solution of a crime or the unravelling of secrets.
m mythology: Legend or traditional narrative, often based in part on historical
events, that reveals human behaviour and natural phenomena by its symbolism;
often pertaining to the actions of the gods.
n poetry: Verse and rhythmic writing with imagery that creates emotional
responses.
o realistic Fiction: Story that can actually happen and is true to life.
p science Fiction: Story based on impact of actual, imagined, or potential science,
usually set in the future or on other planets.
q short Story: Fiction of such brevity that it supports no subplots.
r tall Tale: Humorous story with blatant exaggerations, swaggering heroes who do
the impossible with nonchalance.
(nonfiction)
s biography/autobiography: Narrative of a person's life, a true story about a real
person.
t essay: A short literary composition that reflects the author's outlook or point.
u narrative nonfiction: Factual information presented in a format which tells a
story.
v nonfiction: Informational text dealing with an actual, real-life subject.
w speech: Public address or discourse.
Although kinds/genres are hierarchical, this list differentiates between two main
categories (fiction and nonfiction, i.e. works of imagination and factual
information) and, for simplicitys sake, within these categories provides two lists
in alphabetical order, however, it can be debatable (biased (elferdtett)
biography)
III. Narrative Poetry: Narrative Poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems may be short or
long. Narrative poems include: heroic epic (Beowulf), epic poetry (William Wordsworth:
e

21

Prelude), romances (Edmund Spenser: The Faeire Queene), mock heroic (kignyult hsi
kltemny) (Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock), Novels in verse (George Byron: Don
Juan), Ballads (Sir Patrick Spens), Idylls (Tennyson: Idylls of the King)
Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales is a sequences of interrelated short stories
resembling short stories
IV. Dramatic Poetry: Dramatic poetry is any poetry that uses the discourse of the characters
involved to tell a story or portray a situation. In this sense verse drama, such as William
Shakespeares plays, belong to the category of dramatic poetry. Poetic plays, not
necessarily meant for stage production, are also dramatic poetry. These are also termed
as closet dramas (knyvdrma). A good example is P. B. Shelleys Prometheus Unbound.
Dramatic monologues, such as Robert Brownings My Last Duchess, can also be regarded
as dramatic poetry.
V. Lyric Poetry: It is a genre of poetry that, broadly and somewhat vaguely speaking,
expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the prehistoric age lyric poems were sung,
in the antiquity they were sung to the lyre. This tradition, though permanently declining,
survived up the 18thcentury. Now popular songs seem to replace this function, therefore
it is necessary to make distinction between poem and lyrics.
1. Most important Genres of Lyric Poetry: Ode, Song, Elegy, Eclogue, Epistle (Episztola),
Epigram, Epitaph, Rhapsody, Dramatic monologue
Ballads, though by definition classified as narrative genre, are often referred to as
lyric poem. Ballads are in fact generally included in lyric anthologies.
2. Song: In music, a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing. A song may
or may not be accompanied by musical instruments (the latter case is called a
cappella). The text of a song is called lyrics. There are art song (16th and 17th
century English madrigals), folk songs (Over the Hills and Far Away), popular songs
(Hey Jude by Lennon McCartney).
a folk song: The term for folk text is traditional.
b poem and song: In literature many poems, even if not set to music, may be called
songs. (Many poets of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods wrote fine songs as
well as poems that might be set to music. Yet we read them with no regard to the
melody, but refer to them as songs. ) One distingtion between lyrics and poems in
the fact, that while lyrics are not appreciated without the song, the poem (song)
represents value on its own.
c madrigal songs: A madrigal is a secular (vilgi) vocal music composition, usually a
part-song (krusm), of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally,
polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two
to eight, and most frequently from three to six. Madrigal poems are lyrics, usually
displaying lesser poetic complexity.
d air: (ria) The air is a plain song (egyszlam nek), performed by only one artist,
and sometimes accompanied by a musical instrument.

22

3. Ode: It is a lyric poem, usually of some length. The main features are an elaborate
stanza structure, a marked formality and stateliness in tone and style (which make it
ceremonious), and lofty sentiments and thoughts. In short, an ode is rather a grand
poem; a full-dress poem. It has 2 subtypes.
a public: The public is used for ceremonial occasions, like funerals, birthdays, state
events
b private: The private often celebrates rather intense, personal, and subjective
occasions; it is inclined to be meditative, reflective.
The earliest odes were written by the ancient Greek poets Sappho (c. around 6oo BC)
and Alcaeus (c.620 BC-6th century BC). Another ancient Greek poet, Pindar
(Pindarosz)(ca. 522443 BC) wrote his odes for public occasions, especially in
honour of victors in the Greek games. Modelled on the choric songs (krusdal)
of Greek drama, they consisted of strophe (versszak), antistrophe (ellenversszak)
and epode (utnek); a patterned stanza movement intended for choral song
and dance. Horace's (Horciusz) (65 BC8 BC) Latin odes were private and personal.
Sapphic ode: Sapphic odes follow in regular stanzaic form, called Sapphics
(Sapphi strfa), in quatrain stanza with a particular metrical scheme. Since
the metre is quantitative, very few experiments exist in English. One is by Ezra
Pound:
"Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff,
a portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered, caught at the wonder."
Horatian ode: . It does not follow the quantitative versification of Latin poetry.
"The forward youth that would appear Must now forsake his Muses dear, Nor in
the shadows sing His numbers languishing. " (This poem has 3 stanzas)
Pindaric ode or Pseudo-Pindaric ode: Pseudo-Pindaric odes had a revival in the
Romantic period. Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) published his so-called
Pindaric odes or, more properly, pseudo-Pindaric odes dispensing with the
strophic arrangement. His stanzas were free and varied; so are the lines and
meters. This flexibility had much influence on later writers, including John
Dryden. His Song for St Cecilia's Day (1687) is such a pseudo-Pindaric ode.
"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, | The earth, and every
common sight | To me did seem | Apparelled in celestial light, | The glory and
the freshness of a dream. | It is not now as it hath been of yore;-- | Turn
wheresoe'er I may, | By night or day, | The things which I have seen I now can
see no more. [...] " (William Wordsworth Immortality Ode)
"Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff,
a portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered, caught at the wonder."
Horatian ode: . It does not follow the quantitative versification of Latin poetry.
"The forward youth that would appear Must now forsake his Muses dear, Nor in
the shadows sing His numbers languishing. " (This poem has 3 stanzas)

23

The odes of John Keats (all composed in 1819, for e.: Ode on a Grecian Urn)
and by P. B. Shelley are lyric odes in more general sense.
3 Rhapsody: (from Cuddon) Rhapsody means 'stitch song in Greek. In ancient Greece a
rhapsodist was an itinerant minstrel (vndornekes) who recited epic poetry. Part
came from memory: part was improvised. A rhapsodist was thus a poet who
'stitched together various elements. In a more general sense a rhapsody may be an
effusive (radoz) and emotional (perhaps even ecstatic) utterance in verse.
Pseudo-Pindaric odes are hardly distinguishable from rhapsodies. This may one reason
why the genre was taken up be Romantic poets.
" Twelve o'clock. | Along the reaches of the street | Held in a lunar synthesis, |
Whispering lunar incantations | Dissolve the floors of memory | And all its clear
relations, | Its divisions and precisions, | Every street lamp that I pass | Beats like a
fatalistic drum, | And through the spaces of the dark | Midnight shakes the memory
| As a madman shakes a dead geranium. " (T.S. Eliot Rhapsody on a Windy Night)
4 Epithalamion: (from Cuddon)(Greek at the bridal chamber') It is originally a song or a
poem sung outside the bride's room on her wedding night. It celebrates the married
couple. At the Renaissance poets revived it. Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion is the most
admired of its type in the English language. It was written for his wedding to his
young bride, Elizabeth Boyle. The tone of an epithalamion is often kin to the elevated
emotions expressed in an ode.
5 Dramatic monologue: The crucial feature of a dramatic monologue is that the poet
employs a persona so distances himself/herself from the statements in the text,
offering a multiplication of perspective, often ironic, and creates the illusion of
objectivity. (from Cuddon) Dramatic monologue or lyric soliloquy (magnbeszd,
monolg) is a poem in which there is one imaginary speaker addressing an imaginary
audience. In most dramatic monologues some attempt is made to imitate natural
speech. In a successful example of the genre, the persona (a verset mond szemlye, lrai
n?)will not be confused with the poet. Andrew Marvell's (1621-1678) The Nymph
Complaining for the Death of her Faun is a metaphysical version of a womans
complaint. In its most fully developed form, the dramatic monologue is a Victorian
genre, effectively created by Alfred Tennyson (1819-1892) and Robert Browning
(1812-1889) yet the idea of a lyric in the voice of an imagined persona seems to be
very ancient. It is the role of the persona, or the interlocutor (beszl trs), more than
anything else, that gives the Victorian monologue its innovatory distinctiveness. The
outstanding example of this device, as Robert Browning uses it, is My Last Duchess, in
which an Italian Renaissance duke, addressing the envoy of a prospective father-inlaw appears to confess to the murder of the wife he is hoping to replace. Browning
tended to classify his monologues as either dramatic lyrics or dramatic romances. The
distinction is not always very clear but he seems to have meant, by the first, a
rhymed lyric ascribed to an imaginary persona, and by the second, a narrative
dramatically related.
24

"That's my last duchess painted on the wall, | Looking as if she were alive. I call | That
piece a wonder, now: Fr Pandolf's hands | Worked busily a day, and there she
stands. | Will't please you sit and look at her? I said | "Fr Pandolf" by design, for
never read | Strangers like you that pictured countenance, | The depth and passion
of its earnest glance, | But to myself they turned (since none puts by |The curtain I
have drawn for you, but I) | And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, | How
such a glance came there; so, not the first | Are you to turn and ask thus." The
subsequent history of the genre, however, emerges by way of the French Symbolist
poets, many of whom transform the dramatic monologue into what the French writer
Valry Larbaud (1881-1957) was to call the interior monologue. These interior
reveries are the source for many important modernist poems, such as T. S. Eliot's The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Today the dramatic monologue is accepted as one of the
fundamental poetic genres. Most modern dramatic monologues are
indistinguishable from interior monologues. It is also common for poets to create
personae distinct from, and yet connected with, themselves; like Philip Larkin (19221985) in Mr Bleaney and Dockery and Son. A poet especially associated with the
genre is Carol Ann Duffy (1955) who has used the genre for ironically and for genderoriented purposes, lending her voice to historically muted women such as Mrs
Lazarus.
6 Epistle: (episztola, klti levl) (from Cuddon)
Epistle is verse-letter, a poem addressed to a friend or patron. There are approximately
two types:
a) moral and philosophical themes: e.g(John Donnes epistolary poems or verse
letters on religious subject)
b) romantic or sentimental themes: themes (e.g. Alexander Popes Epistle to Miss
Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation).
7 Elegy: (from Cuddon)
In Classical literature an elegy (Greek 'lament') was any poem composed of elegiac
distichs (a hexameterand a pentameter), also known as elegiacs, and the subjects
were various: death, war, love and similar themes. The elegy was also used for
epitaphs and commemorative verses, and very often there was a mourning strain in
them. However, it is only since the 15th c. that an elegy has come to mean a poem
of mourning for an individual, or a lament for some tragic event. John Donnes elegies
follow the Classical convention as they are poems on various subjects, including
amatory (rzelmes, szerelmes) topics, in pentametrical pair lines. English literature is
especially rich in elegiac poetry which combines something of the ubi sunt (Latin where
are they) motif with the qualities of the lyric and which, at times, is closely akin to
the lament and the dirge (gysznek). For instance, the Old English poems The
Wanderer, The Seafarer; Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, Thomas Gray's
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, John Keats's Ode to Melancholy are such
poems. Many elegies have been songs of lament for specific people. Well-known
25

examples are Thomas Carew's An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Pauls, Dr.
John Donne; P. B. Shelleys Adonais (commemorating the death of John Keats), W.H.
Auden's In Memory of W. B. Yeats.
He disappeared in the dead of winter: | The brooks were frozen, the airports almost
deserted, | The snow disfigured the public statues; | The mercury sank in the mouth
of the dying day. | What instruments we have agree | The day of his death was a
dark cold day. (W. H. Auden In Memory of W. B. Yeats, stanza 1st)
8 Pastoral: Pastoral is a mode of literature (irodalmi divat) in which the author employs
imitates rural life, usually the life of shepherds. Very often these shepherd lament
the loss of the Golden Age. Traditionally, pastoral refers to the lives of herdsmen in a
romanticized, exaggerated, highly unrealistic, but representative way. Pastoral as a
mode occurs in all three kinds of literature (poetry, drama, fiction) as well as genres
(most notably the pastoral elegy). Pastoral may refer to any rural subject and aspects of
life in the countryside among shepherds, cowherds or even farm workers that are
often romanticized.
a) Thomas Gray: Thomas Grays Elegy Written in Country Churchyard is a pastoral
completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. It was partly inspired by Grays
thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742. The poem was
completed when Gray was living near the Stoke Poges churchyard. The poem,
however, is not addressed to the memory Richard West, but is a meditation on
the fate of man and good and bad remembrance.
"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." (1st stanza of the poem), the speciality of the poem, that it
ends with an epitaph.
" Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth | A youth to Fortune and to Fame
unknown. | Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, | And Melancholy
mark'd him for her own." (1st stanza of the epitqph).
9 Pastoral elegy: The major elegies belong to a sub-species known as pastoral elegy, the
origins of which are to be found in the pastoral laments of three Sicilian poets:
Theocritus (3rd c. BC), Moschus (2nd c. BC) and Bion (2nd c. BC). Theocritus called
his poems idylls (Greek: eidyllion, little picture). An idyll is a short poem, descriptive
of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus.
a) Eclogue: Later the Roman poet Vergil (Vergilius)(70 BC19 BC) imitated Theocritus in
poems he called eclogues (Latinselection). An eclogue is a pastoral poem in the
form of a dialogue or a soliloquy, Vergil added political content to his poems, so
the shepherds (or the "participants") were not only placed in beautiful
surrounding, but were aware of current political status as well. Edmund Spensers
The Shepherds Calendar or Louis MacNeices (1917-1963) An Eclogue for Christmas
are excellent examples of the eclogue.

26

10

11

12

13

b) pastoral elegies in English: They were the prototypes of such English pastoral elegies
as Milton's Lycidas and Shelleys Adonais. Edmund Spenser was one of the earliest
English poets to use for elegy what are known as the pastoral conventions; in
Astrophil he lamented the death of his fellow poet Sir Philip Sidney
Anti-pastoral: When pastoral setting is used ironically, mockingly, or pastoral setting
is played out against the brutal reality of rural life, we may talk about antipastoralism. For example:
" SWEET Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, | Where health and plenty cheered the
labouring swain, | Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, | And parting summer's
lingering blooms delay'd: | Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, | Seats of my
youth, when every sport could please, | How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, |
Where humble happiness endear'd each scene! " (excerpt from The Deserted Village
by Oliver Goldsmith)
Epitaph: (srfelirat) An epitaph (Greek "writing on a tomb", "inscription on a grave") is a
kind of valediction which may be solemn (komoly, nneplyes), complimentary
(tiszteletteljes), witty (szellemes) or even flippant (komlytalan, flegma)
"Here is laid the Body of | Jonathan Swift, Doctor of | Sacred Theology, Dean of this |
Cathedral Church, where fierce | Indignation can no longer | injure the Heart. Go
forth, | Voyager, and copy, if you can, | this vigorous (to the best of his | ability)
Champion of Liberty. He | died on the 19th Day of the | Month of October, A.D.
1745, in | the 78th Year of his Age." (English translation of Swifts Epitaph from Latin)
Epigram: (epigramma) (from Cuddon)
An epitaph is usually very brief. It has an epigrammatic quality. An epigram (Greek
inscription felirat) is as a rule a short, witty statement in verse or prose which may
be complimentary, satiric or aphoristic. Originally an inscription on a monument or
statue, the epigram developed into a literary genre. The form was much cultivated in
the 17th c. in England by Ben Jonson, John Donne, John Dryden, and in the 18th c. by
Alexander Pope, Matthew Prior, Robert Burns. For example:
"Sir, I admit your general rule, | That every poet is a fool. | But you yourself may serve
to show it, | Every fool is not a poet." (Matthew Prior).
epigrammatic quality: Epigrams are individual poems. As a genre it is rather rare,
however, we can talk about the epigrammatic quality or brevity (rvidsg) or density
of parts of works. Alexander Popes couplets have more than often an epigrammatic
quality, as in these lines:
"Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, | Much fruit of sense beneath
is rarely found." (from Essay on Criticism)

27

V
Theatre as a multimedia art form
(Routine, Conflict, Status Games )
I. Basis of drama: It is based on the human instinct "to play" or "to imitate".
"[The man] is distinguished among the animals by being the most imitative of them, and
he takes the first steps of his education by imitating. " (Aristotle: Poetics)
1. The complexity of drama: The drama is not primilarly a literary art form, that is,
drama cannot and must not stick to the text.
2. The theatre: The most important medium of drama is the theatre. During the plays,
the artist must not only be accustomed to learning the text by heart, they should
acquire different other skills because some genuine aspect of drama.
a immediacy of action: The actions on the stage must look like real, so the skill of
improvisation.
b group effort for a group audience: On the stage, a group of actors are working
together for the sake of the audience.
c multimedia form of presentation: It consists of different form of arts like poetry,
dance etc.
d succession and simultaneity: sequentiality (egymst kvetik a szndarabok?) &
juxtaposition (egyms mell helyezs?)
e multimedia performances: We can see perfomaces. combining different art forms
in operas and circuses.
f Shakespeare in translation: Uniqueness of other languages can produce much
different experience.
g importance of a good production: The audience can enjoy it without knowing
every single word
h Shakespeare in contemporary English: Although Shakespeare wrote his plays in
modern English, the audience might face difficulties with the unique language of
the plays.
i film adaptations: Adaptations try to interpret the original plays to modern
background, while looking for the balance between Shakespearean and English of
today. The aim is to conserve the unique language of Shakespeare and the
general idea as much as it is possible while making it easier to understand. For
example, using new words in a very similar surrounding.
3. Improvisation: (from Keith Johnstone, from The Royal Court Theatre " Impro:
Improvisation and the Theatre "and "Impro for Storytellers ")
In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has
to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very gifted improvisers. Bad improvisers block
action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action. As a very new
28

approach to theatre, he thought, that improvisation can be a useful tool for actors (and
teachers)

II. The terminology of drama:

1. Etymology: The word "theatre" derives from the Greek word "theoro" (behold) viewing,
not doing or acc. to other sources, from the Greek word "theaomai" (behold). It gives
the feeling of belonging to the society (on the stage, we can see people with similar
problems, conventions, belief, behaviour )
2. Role:

presentation of conflicts in extremis (szlssges) & problem solving patterns:

Plays present general and everyday problems often in an exaggerated form
(possibly with the aim of emphasis), and "offer" different kind of solutions for
them. (different kinds of plays have different kinds of solutions comedy
(komdia) and tragedy.
b identification, catharsis: In ancient Greece, going to theatres for the purpose of
watching plays were compulsory to every citizen, since the Greek attributed
special "healing" function to tragedies. After the tragic failure (and often the
death) of the hero, the members of the audience those days felt, and today feel a
kind of "mixture" of pity and sorrow, which the Greek called catharsis
("purgation"), and thought to "clean" the human spirit. This "dramatic surprise" is
repeatable because of the richness of context
3. Levels of awareness in the dramatic figures and the audience:
a "willing suspension (megszakts) of disbelief: (from Coleridge, Biographia
Literaria. Chapter XIV) When the audience starts to accept the play as a kind of
reality.
b familiar stories: (Gk drama, new productions, seeing something again) Dramas
always shared the same source, so seeing a new adaptation or "version" might
make the audience acquire a different point of view while interpreting the same
story, and it can be still interesting.
c "alienation effect": (A-effect, Verfremdungseffekt, Bertolt Brecht)
" which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the
character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be
a consciously critical observer "
d dramatic irony: when the internal and external communication systems interfere
with each other (e.g., superior awareness of audience) That is, when the
communication in the stage and between the stage and the audience interacts
with each other.
4. Aspects of plays:
a the plot: The plot follows the pattern of imitating life and action, but it is mainly
based on probability (valsznsg) and credibility (szavahihetsg).
a

29

most important feature: the stories in dramas in themselves are not tragic, so
presenting a quality play highly depends on the succession of actors. They
should segment it into understandable pieces, and they should use a
composition easy to understand.
chronology: Events should be organized in chronological order, so events and
occurrences (showing the phenomenon of cause and effect) might be easy to
follow.
important structural elements: These are the aspects that a play already
includes. In order to be authentic, the order of scenes for example should
follow the order of venues in the play, or the duration of the play (real time)
should fit to the time-scale in which the play is interpreted (fictional time)
b action: The intentionally chosen transition (tmenet) from one situation to the
next.
c event: The conditions for the story are met (kielgtik a felttelt), but the actors
do not change the situation.
d character: Every individual character is depicted as deeply as they should
comparing to the role they play in the story. Playwrights usually use stereotypes
of characters (especially in comedies).
e dialogue: Spoken elements and language should meet the requirements of the
particular play and the type of the play as well.
5. Astonishment and suspense (izgatott vrakozs): Much of the stories include some
typical elements (routine) like kissing the frog (so as to shift into a prince) or killing a
dragon.
a braking the routine: Turning commonly-known stories "upside down" often
results in interest from the side of the audience.
b keep action onstage: (keep things flowing) The role of the messenger in Greek
dramas is often to show, that the world is mowing "outside" the play, too. This
way, for example, the unity of the plot can be maintained. Time and place in the
stage is also important (French neo-classicist poet and critic Boileau: the play
should include only 1 day and 1 venue, having the well-formed plot shown in a
chronological order traces back to Aristotle's Poetics; note, that English drama
often brakes this rule Shakespeare)
c revolving around conflicts: The main point of plays is the conflict, everything
depends on it and revolves around it (like Hamlet his quest to reveal the truth)
d acc. to Hitchcock: The secret of suspense lays not in what is withheld from an
audience, but in what the audience thought it knew.
6. Conflict: Opposition between a character and some other force. They can be:
a protagonist and antagonist (Othello-Iago)
b - protagonist and society (Moliere's Misanthrope)
c - protagonists and external forces, e.g., Fate in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex
d - opposition of forces within character (inner conflict)
30

e - opposition of ideas, values, ways of life, as objectified in the conflicts

7. Status: The social status the characters have highly determines the characters itself
(behaviour, clothing etc.). Difference in the status you play and you think you play
(e.g., modesty as arrogance)
a see-saw principle (mrleghinta effektus?): Kings and their fools: raising your
status = lowering the other person's status. In some cases, if a character does
something inappropriate to his/her class, the audience might find funny.
b status in comedy and tragedy:
comedy: When a character is losing status, if we do not have sympathy with
him/her.
tragedy: When the hero(ine) loses his(her) status, the audience is likely to
symphathise with him(her), because this character represents values in the
story, but incapable to be true to them.
8. Differences between tragedy and comedy: Ideas about genre often made to conform
with social ideas:
a tragedy: concerned with kings & princes
This kind of drama was seen as fit entertainment for kings & princes (who are capable of
suffering it in life, who have further to fall than other man, which will affect many others)
significant tragic action

comedy: Even the harshest misfortunes of commoners (kzrendek) can be found

funny without pity.
9. Roots of drama: Preservation of pagan rites, prehistoric vegetation rituals
b

(nvnytermesztshez kapcsold ritul)

England: sword dances, mummers' plays(nmajtk?) (Christmas-tide

karcsony hete)
b Greek tragedy: rites associated with death
c comedy: Celebration of fertility
10. Playing tragedy: In English tragedies, special high-status style is required (for
example: no fast movements, no fidgeting (idegesen izeg-mozog), nothing trivial or
repetitive. It is against "normal consciousness" (tensing muscles(megfeszlnek az
izmai), shifting position, scratching, sighing, yawning or see audiences when ''the
spell is broken'')
11. Status games:
a space: Status is territorial, that is, the higher the social status you have, the more
space you are entitled to have (master-servant scenes: place belongs to master).
b play: It displays and reverses the status between the characters. So, the conflict
often comes from status transactions.
a

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VI
Theatre in Context
I. Origin of theatre: myths and rites
1. The middle ages: The theatre participated in people's everyday, mimes (nmajtk,
pantomim) were held and minstrels (vndornekes) were walking from one city to
another, singing and sharing the news.
2. Liturgical drama: (a.k.a.: "religious drama") In churches, the illiterate crowd could
watch Biblical stories (usually not, or not only in Latin). (esp. at Easter and other
church festivals).
3. Mystery plays: Religious theatre for the people, in which a wide range of style was
represented from sacred drama to profane (pro fano = before the temple from church
to marketplace )
II. Late medieval, and later developments:
1. Miracle Plays: Medieval plays treating the lives of saints, or Bible stories (like passionplays)
2. Morality Plays: Allegorical medieval plays, like Everyman, that depict the eternal
struggle between good and evil that transpires in this world, using characters like
Vice, Virtue, Wisdom. In these stories, everyday situations took place and stories
about ordinary people. The Everyman represents humanity.
3. Commedia dell'arte: (that is, comedy of marketplaces, profane comedy).
Italian popular comedy of the 15th to 17th centuries. Featured performances improvised
from scenarios by a set of stock characters, and repeated from play to play and
troupe(szntrsulat) to troupe.

scenario: In general, it is the prose description of a play's story. In the commedia

dell'arte, the written outlines of plot and characters from which the actors
improvised the particular actions of a performance. So, there were diff.
stereotypes, like Il Capitano (the captain),or Il Dottore (the doctor) etc
representing different human flaws like jealousy or envy.
4. Masque: (larcos jtk, szndarab)
Spectacular theatrical form, especially of the Renaissance and the Neoclassical
periods, usually associated with court theatres (szabadtri sznhz?) or special
events. Emphasis was put on costumes and effects, with much music and dancing;
amateur actors frequently performed.
III. The London scene:
1. Bankside: Medieval centre of dissipation (kicsapongs), with brothels(bordly) and
bear baiting (a sport, in which captive bears were tormented and beaten to dead
bloodily) within the estates of the Bishops of Winchester. (in 1546 Henry VIII had
brothels closed, but in the 17th c.: reopened, together with theatres
a

32

2. Famous theatres in London:

a Globe:(1598-99, now Park Street) (famous sign: Hercules holding the Earth in his
shoulders). It was used only in summer, because there was no roof except for
stage & galleries. . In the winter, the Blackfriars Theatre (1578) was used. It was a
private theatre for choir boys to practise. (playhouse of Farrant (famous
choirmaster, composer and playwright) on ground floor and a theatre
upstairs).(Note, that Shakespeare was shareholder and player here.)
b Hope: It was situated in Bear Gardens, a former bear and bull baiting arena. This
theatre was modelled on theatre Swan, and a so called "movable stage" was built
here, too.
c Rose: (1586-87, 1st Bankside playhouse) It was situated in Rose Lane, an
octagonal building of wood and plaster, having thatch (nd) roof in some places.
(It was built by Henslowe; played Marlowe's plays English dramatist, poet and
translator).
d Swan: It was situated in Paris Gardens, the building was made of flint stones
(kovak) and wooden columns. It was used sometimes for fencing matches.
th
IV. 17 century:
1. 1642: Puritans ban theatres - even demolish them - for moral reasons, since in
baroque times, operas were in mode.
2. Time of Restoration: (Stuart Restaurci, see later for more detail)
She-tragedies were played with a woman in the leading role (even Dryden's All for
Love's Anthony: heart torn by feelings which he cannot control or understand an
influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright). Male characters were
rather underrepresented, unambiguous heroism was typical of them, being rather
unconvincing.

3. Heroic drama: John Dryden (1631-1700) exponent of the golden mean (arany kzpt) in
art, politics and morality, Poet Laureate(udvari v. koszors klt) from 1668.
a Heroic couplet: (a closed and balanced pair of rhyming iambic pentameters) against
blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) in much English drama works against
dramatic illusion.
b Italian and French influence:
audience face actors, rather than surround them
criticism presented outside the space of audience
V. The Age of Restoration: The term Restoration period is applied to the decades from 1660
(the year Charles II was re-established as monarch) to the end of the century. Between
1660 and 1700, over 500 plays were written in England, more than half of them
comedies. In 1642, six years before the execution of Charles I in 1649, the Parliament
closed the theatres in England. A few years later Oliver Cromwell was proclaimed Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His government was
fiercely Puritan in religion and in administration So until the Restoration of Charles II to
the throne in 1660, there was very little of theatre in England. However, it was during
33

this time that the influence of French theatre, and through it, Italian notions of theatre
architecture, was experienced by English actors and royalists in exile. Charles II, the king,
had been in France during the greater part of the Protectorate, together with many of the
royalist party, all of whom were familiar with Paris and its fashions. Thus it was natural,
upon the return of the court, that French influence should be felt, particularly in the
theatre.
1. Restoration Drama: After the Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642 did not mean the
absolute disappearance of the English drama. Plays were performed in the private
residences of country gentlemen. Some actors attempted public performances
surreptitiously (alattomban) Another and more effective circumvention of the
authorities consisted of drolls, brief excerpts from dramas that could be quickly
presented at fairs before a raid could be launched.
Yet the theatrical tradition was essentially broken. Most actors of the Caroline stage
(? )were dead or out of practice when the Restoration gave the stage a new birth.
In August, 1660, Charles issued patents (eljog) for two companies of players (Kings
Company, and to the Duke of Yorks Company), and performances immediately
began.
a more focus the mechanics of scenery and spectacle (ltvny): masques plays in
which costume, dance and clever scenery and scene changes were more
emphasized than acting and plot.
b change in theatres: Theatres began to display the proscenium (elsznpad) style
of architecture, although the forestage remained the principal place where the
acting took place, and the area behind the proscenium was reserved for the
display of scenery changes which were slid into view by means of panels on
tracks. That time, theatre started to become a kind of royal entertainment, so
theatres began to be covered with roof.
c women on stage: As a French convention, women started to act on stages
(instead of young male actors, playing women's role) (1st woman playwright:
Aphra Behn)
d state theatres: Although theatres were again licensed and controlled by the state,
with the dawn of the 18th Century approaching, the influence of Republicans and
movements of this kind abroad made the appeal of theatre broaden: 1st, to
property owners and merchants, and ultimately to the masses.
e the language of the restoration drama: The earlier Renaissance drive to enrich
vocabulary was superseded(kiszort) by efforts at refinement (kifinomultsg) and
regulation of language. The language of polite conversation, with its emphasis on
clarity(vilgossg, tisztasg) and precision, was set as a standard. Chief
spokesman for the new spirit was John Dryden (1631-1700). He brushed aside the
grammar and syntax of Shakespeare as no more than one could expect from a
popular writer.

34

the audience: The spectators at the two theatres were exclusively courtiers
(udavronc) and their hangers-on. Two theatres were sufficient for the metropolis
of London. Performances started at three-thirty or four in the afternoon. The
aristocrats looked upon the playhouse as a social assembly where they had an
opportunity to disport themselves.
g the theatre: William Davenant, head of the Duke of Yorks Company, abandoned
the Renaissance English stage in favour of the French one. The theatres were
indoors. The forestage still projected into the audience but was significantly cut.
The curtain was Davenants innovation. He also introduced painted backdrops
(httrfggny). Gallants were seldom permitted on the stage, yet were on
display in boxes set on either side of the forestage (apron).
h the actors: The limited patronage necessitated small professional companies and
plays with relatively few roles. Performers obtained salaries. Boy apprentices
vanished, and while a few males still took womens roles, the first actresses
appeared on stage. The very first was Mrs. Margaret Hughes, playing the role of
Desdemona for the Kings Company in 1660.
2. Restoration Comedy: The aftermath of Puritanism manifested itself in bawdy
(erklcstelen, trgr) comedies, self-conscious indecency (illetlensg) on stage where
bedroom and assignation ("tallka") scenes were blatant (otromba) and adultery
was a commonplace representation.
a comedy of manners (trsadalmi vgjtk): (other name of Rest. Com.) This kind of
drama dominated the Age of Restoration, chiefly concerned with presenting a
society of elegance and stylishness (divatossg). A genre which has for its main
subjects and themes the behaviour and deportment (magatarts) of people living
under specific social codes. It is preoccupied with the codes of the middle and
upper classes and is often marked by elegance, wit and sophistication (kifinomult
zls). Restoration comedies provide outstanding instances (plda). It is often cold
f

caricature, witness to lack of moral standards in society at the time (Comedy of

manners: term not restricted to drama).

c
d
e

characters: Often gallants, ladies and gentlemen of fashion and ranks, fops
(piperkc), rakes (kjenc), social climbers ("trsadalmi trtet") and country
bumpkins (falusi/vidgi bugris).
plot: The plot dealt with the intricacies (bonyolultsg) of sexual and marital
intrigue (intrika), with adultery and cuckoldry (hzassgtrs).
special tone: The tone was witty, urbane (udvarias), licentious (buja).
aim: The main goal of these comedies of manners in the period of Restoration is to
entertain and to mock society. The audience was supposed to laugh at themselves.
However, many critiques of marriage that we see in the play are devastating, and the
game of love is not much more hopeful. Although the endings are happy and the man
invariably gets the woman, we see marriages without love.
usual theme: marriage and the game of love Therefore, the plot would involve a dashing
(nyalka), witty hero trying to have sex with as many women as possible without getting
35

into trouble, with funny consequences. Restoration comedies include bawdy humour,
witty dialogues, recursive cross-dressing (frfiak ni ruhban).
women's role: Women were allowed to perform on stage for the first time, and the
mostly male audiences were attracted by the idea of seeing women acting out seduction
scenes and the possibility of seeing a bit of shapely leg on stage. Clothes were often
several sizes too small so as to emphasize the curves of their bodies.
some important examples:

William Wycherley: The Country Wife (1672 or 1673); The Plain Dealer (1674)
Thomas Shadwell: The Libertine (1676), The Volunteers, or Stockjobbers
(1693)
William Wycherley: The Country Wife (1672 or 1673); The Plain Dealer (1674)
3. Heroic Drama: A form of tragedy which was fashionable at the beginning of the
Restoration period. The chief influence was French classical drama, especially the
works of Pierre Corneille (1616-1684). It was staged in a spectacular and operatic
fashion.
a favourite themes: love and honour
b usual style: grand, rhetorical and declamatory (nagyhangan sznokias) and at its
worst bombastic.
c inportant examples:
John Dryden: The Indian Queen (1664), The Indian Emperor (1665) and All
for Love (based on Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra)
VI. The Age of Neoclassicism:
1. Sentimental Comedy: Also known as the drama of sensibility, it followed on from
Restoration comedy and was a kind of reaction against what was regarded as
immorality and licence in the latter. As Oliver Goldsmith put it, in it the virtues of
private life are exhibited, rather than the vices exposed, and the distresses rather
than the frailty of mankind. He, however mocks sentimental comedy continually,
revealing sensiblity as hypocrisy.
a most important feature: Both good and bad charcters were very simple.
b examples:
Oliver Goldsmith: The Good Natured Man (1768), She Stoops to Conquer and
The Mistakes of a Night (1773)
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan: (), an Irish-born playwright and poet and
long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane)The School for
Scandal (1777) in which he attacks sentimentalism and criticizes frivolous
(felletes, knnyelm, lha) and fraudulent (csalrd) London high society.
VII. Romanticism: It was mainly represented in German theatre
1. need for historical consistency (no precision, though) for imaginative & plausible
presentation (realism)
2. mid-19th c. France: return to the tradition of middle class dramas
3. good acting: move with the natural elegance of gentry
36

4. touring companies disappear

VIII. New Historicism: Interrogate the relationship between history and literature especially
concerning the Renaissance and Romantic period.
IX. Victorian Drama: The Theatre Act of 1843 broke the monopoly of London drama granted to

Covent Garden and Drury Lane by the Act of 1737. The modern theatre was free to
develop. The expansion was devoted to a popular clientele (gyflkr), lower middle class and
some of the working classes. For them Victorian stage provided melodrama. The works were
characterised by different criteria.

1. Suspenseful (vrakozssal teli) plot: The biggest emphasis was put on being exciting,
even characterization was subordinated to it.
2. Pseudo-realism: The most important features were contemporary setting (kortrs
helyzet), persuasive realism and elegant splendour (pompa).
3. Stereotyped figures: Typical human "occurrences" like valiant (derk) seamen,
virtuous shopgirls, cruel mortgage holders, etc.
4. Sentimentalism: Relatively big emphasis on emotions.
5. Naive moral concepts: Like the virtuous are always rewarded.
6. Important invention in stagecraft (sznpadi technika): Electric lighting was first
introduced in the Savoy Theatre in1881.
X. Oscar Wilde: (1856-1900)
In the guise of the well-made play of the period, i.e. neatly (gondosan) and economically
constructed play which works with mechanical efficiency, Wildes dramas restored the sparkling
comedy of manners which disappeared with Sheridan. His theatre is sometimes termed as the
epigrammatic theatre, since the dialogues move forward by rapid exchanges of witty statements.

The Importance of Being Ernest (1895) Wilde termed it A Trivial Comedy for Serious
People
XI. Twentieth-Century Drama: Strongly individualistic as opposed to the epochs (korszak) of
previous drama. Its main emphasis was on social problems.

1. Comedy of Ideas: A term loosely applied to plays which tend to debate, in a witty and
humorous fashion, ideas and theories. George Bernard Shaw is an outstanding
exponent in Man and Superman (1905), The Doctors Dilemma (1906) and other
plays.
2. George Bernard Shaw: (1856-1950)
Staunch (rendthetetlen) vegetarian, pacifist, antivivisectionist, socialist, champion of the
Irish over the English. The chief Shavian (Bernard Shaw nevbl szrmaz mellknv)
quality is the ability to make people think by compelling them to laugh. His key technique
was turning everything topsy-turvy (feje tetejre lltva) and forcing the audience to see
the other half of the truth. Lengthy speeches and prolonged stage conversations describes
his works.

Mrs. Warrens Profession: Written in 1894, produced in 1902, privately. The censor
put ban on the play that was not lifted until 1924. The satiric play is a dramatic
representation of the Marxist contention that virtue is impossible in a capitalistic
society.
37

Vivie Warren, a modern independent girl is distressed when she understands

that her mother had escaped from poverty by prostitution. She insists that her
mother retire from her position as the head of an international chain of brothels,
financed by a respectable gentleman, Sir George Crofts. Mrs. Warren refuses, and
Vivie renounces her mother to live by honest work in London.
3. Verse Drama: Verse drama is a drama written as verse to be spoken; another
possible general term is poetic drama. For a very long period, it was the dominant
form of drama in Europe. During the twentieth century verse drama fell almost
completely out of fashion with dramatists writing in English. However the plays of T. S.
Eliot, most notably Murder in the Cathedral (1935), brought a revival of the form. A
postmodernist example is Serious Money (1987) by Caryl Churchill.
4. Post-War Theatre: Reaction against the realist conventions dominating the stage. The
opening of the curtain seemed to remove the fourth wall of a fully furnished middle-class or
upper middle-class sitting-room. The dialogues had to seem realistic. The English stage was
ruled by the commercial theatre, management fulfilled their task of providing
entertainment which had a proven saleability. There was no place for plays of questionably
commercial values regardless of their artistic merits. By the mid-50s, it seemed inevitable
that English theatre was about to be transformed. It was the English Stage Company at the
Royal Court Theatre that finally created opportunity for fresh talent and experimental
performances. John Osbornes Look Back in Anger was a breakthrough, and the theatre
added to their repertoire plays by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and others.

Kitchen-Sink Drama: Angry Young Man Movement: (from wiki) The "angry young
men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and
novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The phrase was originally coined
by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John Osborne's 1956 play
Look Back in Anger. It is thought to be derived from the autobiography of Leslie
Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose Angry Young Man was published in
1951. Middle and late 1950s trend. Main exponent on stage was John Osborne
(1929-1994). Look Back in Anger (1956) spoke for a generation of discontented young
men often with working-class background, who were opposed to the
establishment and disillusioned by post-second world war social situation.
Jimmy Porter represents the anti-hero in the play.

Kitchen-Sink Comedy: (from Cuddon) A term which became popular in Great Britain
in the middle and late 1950s. Often used derogatorily, it applied to plays which, in
a realistic fashion, showed aspects of working-class life at the time. The
implication was that the play centred, metaphorically (or psychologically) and in
some cases literally, on the kitchen sink (konyhai mosogat konyhahelyisg).
The works of John Osborne, Arnold Wesker were all so described. It is doubtful if
the term derives any way from Wesker's play The Kitchen because this was first
presented in a production without dcor in 1958, and not given a full production
until 1961.

38

Comedy of Menace: A term denoting a kind of lay in which one or more

characters feel that they are threatened by some obscure and frightening force,
power, personality. The fear and menace become a source of comdey, albeit
grim or black. Harold Pinter (19302008) exploited the possibilities of such
situation in his early plays.
Harold Pinter: (Comedy of Menace / Memory Plays)
Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His
early works, such as The Birthday Party (1958), The Dumb Waiter (1959), and
The Caretaker (1959) were described by critics as "comedy of menace". Later
plays such as No Man's Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as
"memory plays".
Memory Plays: (19681982) From the late 1960s through the early 1980s,
Pinter wrote a series of plays and sketches that explore complex ambiguities,
elegiac mysteries, comic vagaries (hbort), and other "quicksand-like"
characteristics of memory.
The Theatre of the Absurd: A term applied to many of the works of a group of
dramatists who were active in the 1950s: Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Eugne
Ionesco, Jean Genet and others. The phrase 'theatre of the absurd' was probably
coined by Martin Esslin, who wrote The Theatre of the Absurd (1961).
origin: (from Cuddon) The origins of this form of drama are obscure, but it
would be reasonable to suppose that its lineage is traceable from Roman
mime plays, through to aspects of comic business and technique in medieval
and Renaissance drama and commedia dell'arte, and thence (amiatt) to the
dramatic works of Alfred Jarry, August Strindberg and Bertolt Brecht. The
work of Jarry is vital and the possibilities of a theatre of the absurd are
already apparent in Ubu Roi (1896). Almost certainly dadaism and surrealism
influenced the development of the theatre of the absurd, and so have
Antonin Artaud's theories on the theatre of cruelty. An awareness of the
essential absurdity of much human behaviour has been inherent in the work
of many writers from Aristophanes to Cervantes to Swift to Dickens.
However, the concept of homo absurdas has acquired a rather more specific
meaning in the last hundred years or so. This is partly, no doubt, owing to the
need to provide an explanation of man's apparently purposeless role and
position in a universe which is popularly imagined to have no discernible
(lthat) reason for existence. Mathematically, a absurd is that which cannot
be expressed in finite terms of ordinary numbers orquantities. Hence
irrational rather than ridiculous. The collection of essays The Myth of
Sisyphus (1942) by Albert Camus and the existentialist philosophies of the
mid-20th century not independent of the two world wars gave an impetus
(lendlet) to the vision of human life as a struggle with the irrationality of
experience.
39

aspects: lack a formal logic and conventional structure (so that both form and
content support the representation of what may be called the absurd
predicament (kategria)), while emphasizing the difficulty of communicating.
5. Samuel Beckett: (1906-1989) (Plays of the Middle Period)
After World War II, Beckett used the French language as a vehicle (kzvett eszkz)
During the 15 years following the second world war years Beckett produced four
major full-length stage plays: En attendant Godot (written 19481949; its English
title is Waiting for Godot), Fin de partie (19551957; Endgame), Krapp's Last Tape
(1958), and Happy Days (1961).
a important aspects of his plays: These deal in a very blackly humorous way with the
subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair, in the face of
an uncomprehending and incomprehensible world.
XII. Late plays: In the 1960s and into the 1970s, Beckett's dramatic works exhibited an
increasing tendency towards compactness. He reduced his plays to the utmost
essentials. These works are often described as minimalist. The extreme example of this
Breath (1969) which lasts for only 35 seconds and has no characters.
1. Postmodernist Drama: The chief exponent of postmodernist drama is beyond question
Tom Stoppard (1937-) British playwright. His theatre has three main features:
a brilliant language: verbal contests, verbal punning (pun = szjtk)
b weird theatrical ideas: e.g. play around the action of another play (Hamlet in
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), double plot in Arcadia, the present researching
the past
c an intellectual frame of reference: He like to refer to famous people or commonly
know ideas in his plays, like Wittgenstein language philosophy, Chaos theory,
Newtons physics, thermodynamics, both intellectually entertaining and with
serious moral considerations
2. Tom Stoppard's more famous works in detail:
a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966):
The reverse of the play within the play scene in William Shakespeares Hamlet,
Stoppards play is a play around a play. Stoppard places two miner characters
from Hamlet into central position. Ros and Guil are no heroes, not even separate
personalities. Taking two characters from a play, and testing their actions against
a plot we all know well, Stoppard explores questions of predictability, i.e.
determinism and free will. Also, explores questions of self-identity and
possibilities of communication via language.
b Arcadia (1993): brings together two time periods, 1809/12 and the present. The
setting is Sidley Park, a Large country house owned by the Coverly family. The
scenes alternate (cserldik) until the very last one where the two time periods
appear simultaneously on a divided stage. The present group of characters is
doing research on the past group of characters and their activities, but their
assumptions turn out to be almost wholly mistaken.
40

Jumpers (1972): Stoppard parodied theatrical conventions in many ways. Here, The
main plot is constituted by a murder story, but the dialogues are occupied by a
series of very entertaining philosophical perception so the murder case is almost
completely ignored.
Travesties (around 1974): It concerns an English consular official, Henry Carr as
he reminisces (az emlkeirl beszl) about Zrich in 1917 during the First World
War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan
Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the Russian Revolution, all
of whom were living in Zrich at that time. Carr's memories are couched in a
Zrich production of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest in
which he had a starring role.
The Real Inspector Hound (1967): Stoppard takes great pleasure in ironically
subverting dramatic conventions thus reacting against stage realism. In the
opening scene of this play he parodies the pseudo-realistic dialogues in effort to
get across basic information concerning the characters in the play.

VII
Literary Narrative Fiction
(History, Genres, Analysis)
I. Advantage of narratives: It has the greatest power to capture certain truths and
experiences in special ways, since it is more easy to understand than any other genres. It
has lot of sub-genres, like: personal, political, historical, legal, medical. It has advantage
over other modes of explanation and analysis such as statistics, descriptions, summaries,
or reasoning via conceptual abstractions (elvont gondolatkifejts?)
II. Describing the narrative:
1. The spectrum of fiction: There are different "archetypes" of fictions. (note, that in
Hung, fiction means "szpprza" and "fikci, kitallt dolog" according to the
context!!!)
a dealing with facts: Science of history (plain facts and no fiction)
b truth: like realism in literature realistic novels of Dickens, deals with facts but
sometimes (or usually) the plot is not entirely based on a fact, rather on a madeup story. It is a matter of perception, how an individual (or the target group)
experiences different kinds of happenings or life situations.
c fiction:
Fantasy: Deals with marvellous happenings based on totally or partly fictional
details (like The Lord of the Rings)
Romance: (like Medieval chivalric novels, such as Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight, Le Mort D'Arthur or the Chanson du Roland) Romances are a matter
of vision, they depict the world in a more symbolic way. They show how the
world should be instead of how it is. But, there are common parts in both
41

Romance and Realism: both is a kind of mixture of reality and fiction, but the
previous one is nearer to fantasy, while the latter one is nearer to reality and
history.
2. Literary narrative fiction:
a the art of language: Artistic use of language
b kinds of literature: poetry, drama and narrative fiction (but this one is rather
debatable)
prose: why not prose is the 3rd? In the English sense, prose is rather a text,
which is not written in poetic pattern (it's an otherwise obscure term) it
comes from the Latin prosa or proversa oratio, meaning straightforward
discourse
3. Literary conventions: what is significant?
It is an agreement between artist and audience as to the significance of features
appearing in a work of art . The knowledge of this conventions is called literary
competence. This competence has certain elements.
a narrative: tells a story of real or imagined events
b fiction: an imagined creation in verse/prose/drama
c story: imagined events and happenings involving a conflict
d

plot: arrangement of actions, usually it creates the structure itself.

novel, short stories, drama, epic

poetry

Literary Narrative Fiction

+ in 'low' domain: jokes, romances ,

thrillers
Literary Narrative Nonfiction
autobiography & history
+
+
acknowledged as lit.: Rousseau's
Confessions
Postmodernist
+
+ Literary Nonnarrative Fiction
antinarrative texts (+ lyric
poetry?)
collection of aphorisms; classics
+
- Literary Nonnarrative Nonfiction
of science/phil. e.g., Freud
rare
advertisements
+
+ Nonliterary Narrative Fiction
(+
lyric; poetry?)
news reports, works of
+
- Nonliterary Narrative Nonfiction
history, narratives of personal
experience
mathematical problems
+ Nonliterary NonnarrativeFiction
short ads, recipes,
- Nonliterary Nonnarrative Nonfiction
interviews
III. The history of fiction: Many people dealt with the history of literary fiction, Ian Watt, in his The
Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe ( Richardson and Fielding (1957)), or Dale Spender, in her
Mothers of the Novel (1988) women novelists, or Margaret Anne Doody, in her The True Story
of the Novel (1996)

42

1. novel: (from Penguin) Derived from Italian novella, 'tale, piece of news', and now applied to a
wide variety of writings whose only common attribute is that they are extended pieces of
prose fiction. But 'extended' begs a number of questions. The length of novels varies greatly
and there has been much debate on how long a novel is or should be - to the reductio ad
absurdum of when is a novel not a novel or a long short-story or a short novel or a novella.
There seem to be fewer and fewer rules, but it would probably be generally agreed that, in
contemporary practice, a novel will be between 60-70.000 words and, say, 200.000.

The actual term 'novel' has had a variety of meanings and implications at different
stages. From roughly the 15th to the 18th c. its meaning tended to derive from the
Italian novella and the Spanish novela (the French term nouvelle, is closely related)
and the term (often used in a plural sense) denoted short stories or tales of the kind
one finds in Boccaccio's Decameron (c. 1349-51).
Nowadays, we would classify all the contents of the above as short stories. Broadly
speaking, the term denoted a prose narrative about characters and their actions in
what was recognizably everyday life and usually in the present, with the emphasis on
things being 'new' or a 'novelty'.
And it was used in contradistinction to 'romance'. In the 19th c. the concept of 'novel'
was enlarged. In Germany the term Novelle was still associated with the Renaissance
novella.
As to the quiddity of the novel there has been as much debate. However, without
performing contortions to be comprehensive we may hazard that it is a form of story
or prose narrative containing characters, action and incident and, perhaps, a plot. In
fact it is very difficult to write a story without there being some sort of plot, however
vague and tenuous. So well developed is the average reader's need for a plot (at its
simplest the desire to known what is going to happen next) that the reader will look
for and find a plot where, perhaps, none is intended. Moreover, as soon as the
reader is sufficiently interested in one or more of the characters (one can hardly
envisage a novel without a character of some kind) to want to know what is going to
happen to them next and to ask why, when and where - then there is a plot.
Apart from dramatic comedy, no other form has been so susceptible to change and
development and the literary taxonomist at once finds himself confronted with a
wide range of sub-species or categories. For example, we have the epistolary novel,
the sentimental novel, the novel of sensation, the condition of England novel, the
campus novel, the Gothic novel and the historical novel; we have the propaganda,
regional, thesis (or sociological), psychological, proletarian, documentary and time
novel; we have the novel of the soil and the saga (or chronicle) novel, the picaresque
novel, the key novel and the anti-novel; not to mention the detective novel, the
thriller, the crime novel, the police procedural, the spy novel, the novel of adventure
and the novelette.
Apart from dramatic comedy, no other form has been so susceptible to change and
development and the literary taxonomist at once finds himself confronted with a
wide range of sub-species or categories.
43

A number of these classifications shade off into each other. For example,
psychological novel is a term which embraces many books; proletarian, propaganda
and thesis novels tend to have much in common; the picaresque narrative is often a
novel of adventure; a saga novel may also be a regional novel. And so on.
The absolute origins of the genre are obscure, but it seems clear that in the time of
the XIIth Dynasty Middle Kingdom (c. 1200 BC) Egyptians were writing fiction of a
kind which one would describe as a novel today. For instance, The Princess of
Bachstaan; The Predestined Prince, and Sinuhe.
A number of these classifications shade off into each other. For example,
psychological novel is a term which embraces many books; proletarian, propaganda
and thesis novels tend to have much in common; the picaresque narrative is often a
novel of adventure; a saga novel may also be a regional novel. And so on.
The absolute origins of the genre are obscure, but it seems clear that in the time of
the XIIth Dynasty Middle Kingdom (c. 1200 BC) Egyptians were writing fiction of a
kind which one would describe as a novel today. For instance, The Princess of
Bachstaan; The Predestined Prince, and Sinuhe.
From Classical times other works of fiction have come down to us: notably, The
Milesian Tales (2nd c. BC), Daphnis and Chloe (2nd c. BC) by Longus, The Golden Ass
(2nd c. AD) by Apuleius, and the Satyricon (1st c. AD) of Petronius Arbiter. Most of
these are concerned with love of one sort and another and contain the rudiments of
novels as we understand them today. This is especially true of the pastoral romance
Daphnis and Chloe.
But it is not until towards the end of the first millennium that we find work more
recognizably like the novels we have become accustomed to in the last 200-odd
years. These works are in Japanese. For example, the Taketoi Monogatari (c. 850920), the Utsubo Monogatari (c. 850-900), a collection of anonymous stories. From
this period, the most famous of all Japanese works is the tale of Genji (c. 1000)
written by a woman under the pseudonym Murasald Shikibu. This long story of court
life relating the adventures of a Japanese Don Juan at the imperial court is an
important work in the history of the genre because of its analysis of character and
its study of psychology in love.
It is likely that round about this time of the 10th c. the collection of stories
subsequently known as the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, or The Thousand and
One Nights, was in embryonic form. However, they were not collected and
established as a group of stories until much later, and then probably by an Egyptian
professional story-teller at some time between the 14th and 16th c. These tales did
not become known in Europe until early in the 18th c., since when they have had a
considerable influence.
In Italy in the 14th c., there was a vogue for collections of novella or short tales, of
which the most famous is Boccaccio's Decameron, which had much influence on
Chaucer and many of which were later translated by William Painter and published
44

under the title Palace of Pleasure (1566, 1567). In the 16th c. Bandello published Le
Novelle (written between 1510 and 1560), and Marguerite of Navarre published the
Heptamron, following the form of Boccaccio.Originally these stories 'of seven days'
were called Contes de la Reine de Navarre.
These were all short stories but are extremely important because they were in prose,
and because in their method of narration and in their creation and development of
character they are forerunners of the modern novel.
These were all short stories but are extremely important because they were in prose,
and because in their method of narration and in their creation and development of
character they are forerunners of the modern novel.
Spain was ahead of the rest of Europe in the development of the novel form. The
greatest of all Spanish novels is Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615),
which satirized chivalry and a number of the earlier novels.
Apart from Don Quixote the only other major work in European literature at this time
which could be called a novel is Rabelais's Gargantua (1534) and Pantagruel (1532).
Both these can be classed as novels of phantasy, or mythopoeic. It is a kind which has
remained popular until the present day. Some notable instances of this 'line' are
Gulliver's Travels (1726), Candide (1579), and scores of works which may be loosely
described as science fiction.
In England, at the end of the 15th c., the novel was in its infancy. From the closing
years of the century there date two important works in the evolution of the extended
prose narrative. They are John Lyly's Euphues (in two parts, 1578 and 1580, and Sir
Philip Sidney's pastoral romance Arcadia (1590).
In 1719 Defoe published his story of adventure Robinson Crusoe, one in a long
tradition of desert island fiction. From then on the novel comes of age and within
another seventy years is a major and matured form. Defoe's other two main
contributions to the novel form were Moll Flanders (1722), a sociological novel, and
A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) a reconstruction and thus a piece of historical
fiction.
2. Sub-genres in more details:
a Integrated short stories: In the book or in the work of art, there are a number of
short stories (with, or without connections). These are like Arabian Nights'
Entertainments, or The Thousand and One Nights, Boccaccio: Decameron, James
Joyce: Dubliners
Romances: Any sort of novel, having love and chivalry in its center
Cervantes: Don Quixote (1605-1615), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th
c.), Thomas Malory: Le Morte DArthur (15th c.)
a. pastoral romance:
Longus: Daphnis and Chloe (2nd c. A.D.)
Philip Sidney: Arcadia (1590)

45

h
i

b. anti-pastoral: Thomas Hardy: Tess of the dUrbevilles (1891), Jude the

Obscure (1895)
picaresque novel: It tells the life of a knave (csirkefog) or a picaroon (csavarg)
who is the servant of several masters. It concentrates on the develepment of
characters and plot. Like:
Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders (1722), Henry Fielding: Jonathan Wild (1743)
novel of adventure / desert island novel:It is related to the picaresque novel and
the romance. Like:
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe (1719), R.L. Stevenson: Treasure Island (1883),
Mark Twain: Tom Sawyer (1876)
gothic novel: It is a type of romance, popular from the 1760s until the 1820s, has
terror and cruelty as main themes, impact on the ghost story and the horror
story. Like:
Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764), Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818),
Dracula, doppelgnger, Stephenie Meyer: Twilight
epistolary novel: It is a novel written in the form of a letter. Popular in the 18th
c.Like:
Tobias Smollett: Humphrey Clinker (1771)
sentimental novel / novel of sentimentality: It describes the distresses of a
virtuous figure. Popular in the 18th c. Like:
Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
sentimentality in fiction: Laurence Sterne: A Sentimental Journey (1768)
historical novel: It is a form of fictional narrative which reconstructs history
imaginatively. Like:
Walter Scott: Waverly (1814), William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair (184748), Robert Graves: I, Claudius (1934)
key novel: Actual, real persons are presented under fictitious names. Like:
Aldous Huxley: Point Counter Point (1928)
thesis / sociological / propaganda novel: It deals with social, political (more often)
and religious problems. Like:
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Toms Cabin (1852)
the condition of England novel /regional novel: It deals with the social problems
of GB. LIke:
Charles Dickens: Hard Times (1854), Charlotte Bront: Shirley (1849)
utopia: A kind of novel, which depicts a usually unreal and impossible world or
style of living. (from Greek: Ou + topos, so "place where all is well") Like:
Thomas More: Utopia (1516), George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949),
Jonathan Swift: Gullivers Travels (1726, 1735), William Golding: Lord of the Flies
(1954)
dystopia: anti-utopia, kind of a sub-type of science fiction or fantasy (or
phantasy)
46

campus novel: It has a university campus as setting. Like:

Mary McCarthy: The Groves of Academe (1952), Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim (1954), David
Lodge: Changing Places (1975)
m the saga / chronicle novel: It is a narrative about the life of a large family. Like:
John Galsworthy: Forsyte Saga (1906-1921)
n time novel: It employs stream of consciousness technique, time is used as a theme here.
LIke: James Joyce: Ulysses (1922), Marcel Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu (19131927) (in Eng: In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past).
o psychological novel: It is concerned with emotional, mental lives of the characters. Like:
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway (1925)
IV. Building blocks of narrative: Narratives follow some kind of a pattern, which manifests in the
existence of numerous things. They usually vision a problem in the beginning, which lacks
restoration; there are different types of settings (like urban or rural).
1. Characters: There are different roles in characterisation
a round characters: They can surprise the reader, they can develop during the plot.
(E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel)
b stereotypes: (flat characters; subsidiary characters serving as "background")characters
based on conscious or unconscious cultural assumptions that sex, age, ethnic or national
identification, occupation, marital status and so on, are predictably accompanied by
certain character traits, actions, even values.
2. Arrangement of events:
a with a particular kind of beginning and ending orientation, closure, coda
b usually told for a purpose
l

typically about change: As

situation turns into B, lack turns into restoration

3. Structure:
a definition: The structure connects elements via (for e.) repetition or parallelism, it
separates elements, gives the right order to happenings and information, leading to a
recognition.
b ending: Typically, the ending of the novel illuminates the beginnings (changes the point
of view of the reader about the starting concept of the story)
c Setting: This is the space where the narrative takes place: rural setting, urban setting,
nature scenes, country houses etc.
settings often echo or emphasize other features: The settings can contribute to the
maning. Like in Emily Bront's Wuthering Heights (1847):
Yorkshire moors
Wuthering Heights

Thrushcross Grange
Earnshaws harsh, rough
Lintons, warm, soft, civilised
4. Space and Time: Often, the exact time and place is important to get a clearer picture of the
plot. Like in James Joyce's Ulyesses: (from 1922) It is set in 16 June 1904, in Dublin.
V. Narrator, narration:
1. Narrator: A ~ is a person, who tells a story within/outside the space and time of story.
Important questions are: Who tells the story?, To whom?, Why?, How? According to these
questions, the person of narrator can change.
2. Narration: point of view can vary, since the narrator is not (always) the author itself (not
the authors persona or mask) Like: Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Clemens
47

3. Connections within the relation of narrator, narration and narrative:

a it is an account of a sequence of connected events, which are told by the narrator:
story (what really happens) vs. narration (how the story is told)
b special role of narration: It can rearrange the order of events, that is flashback: historical
time vs. narrated order; so it can set up relations between events (like cause and effect)
4. Narrative perspective:
a visual: (viewing aspect) focuses on smth It acts like a movie camera, it chooses,
frames, emphasises, distorts
2 important types of narrators:
a. limited narrator: The storyteller does not know everything
b. unlimited/omniscient narrator: The storyteller knows everything about the plot
and the characters.
the narrator often stands back: dramatic focus on different aspects of the plot or
characters
b verbal aspect: voice The narrator tells that a character perceives smth
5. Point of view: Certain things can contribute to the point of view in the novel.
a visual perspective
b ideological framework
c basic types of narration:
based on person:

a. first person: so called "I" - narration

b. third person: so called "they" - narration, it is a kind of "window" on the
text the narration seems objective
based on the narrator's "involvement": internal vs. external
based on knowledge: restricted knowledge vs. unrestricted knowledge (or at
least, it looks like, since in some cases, the reader cannot make sure)
d texts with instability of point of view: watch out for WHO experiences and WHAT
is experienced
6. Focalization:
a external focalization: unidentified narrator
b character focalization: a character experiences
c focaliser: The person whose eyes the reader can "look through".
d focalized: Something that is in the focus of the attention, it is an expression and
construction of types of consciousness and self-consciousness, too.
this focus can remain singular, so we have only 1 narrator; or it can shifts to
another person in the course of the story (like in Emily Bront's Wuthering
Heights (1847)
7. Narratology: It is the study of narrative in literature. Early examples in the 20th century:
a Vladimir Propp (Russian Formalist): Morphology of the Folktale (1928)
b Claude Lvi-Strauss (Structuralist): Anthropologie Structurale (1958) (myths)
c Grard Genette: Narrative discourse (1972)
Grard Genettes system: It is based on the distinction between story and plot
(fabula and syuzhet in Russian formalism)
48

a. rcit: the chronological order of events in a text or narrative

b. histoire: the sequence in which events actually occur
c. narration: the act of narrating
according to Genette:
a. narrative: the result of the interaction of component levels
b. 3 basic kinds of narrator:
i.
narrator is absent from his own narrative (heterodiegetic narrator)
ii.
narrator is inside his narrative (first person) (homodiegetic narrator)
iii.
narrator is inside his narrative and also main character (autodiegetic
narrator)
Roland Barthes (1915-1980): (French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and
semiotician.) France: from structuralism to poststructuralism
He attempted to describe narrative as a formal system, based on the model of a
grammar.
The death of the Author: (essay from 1967), It was against the concept of the
author as a way of forcing a meaning on to a text.
S/Z :(it's a title!) (1970) It's a critical reading of Honor de Balzacs Sarrasine, (the text
of the work of art is open to interpretation)

VIII
Writing about Literature
I. Critical Thinking: It is an intellectually disciplined process, which actively and skillfully
conceptualising (fogalmat alkot), applying, analyzing, conceptualise (sszegez, sszefoglal), and
evaluating information. These informations are gathered from observation, experience,
reflection, reasoning, or communication, based on intellectual values such as clarity, accuracy,
consistency, relevance, depth, fairness.

1. This kind of thinking involves the skills detailed above:

a the intellectual commitment of using those skills to guide behaviour
b fair-mindedness (elfogulatlansg):
to avoid skillful manipulation of ideas
to avoid irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted
social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest (anyagi rdekeltsg)
to avoid thinking simplistically (tlsgosan leegyszerstve) about complicated
issues
to consider appropriately the rights and needs of others
2. In writing, it has different values:
a to learn to articulate ideas properly: To learn, how to give shape to an opinion
b to accumulate data
c to arrange data into an appropriate argumentative line
d to learn how to refute (megcfol) mistaken, incorrect, erroneous (hibs) opinions
e to learn how to draw a relevant conclusion from premises
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II. Style Guides: There are different types or styles you can use in writing an official
scientific paper. These are all meet the requirements of a serious research paper,
however, make sure that you use the one that is expected.
1. Joseph Gibaldi:MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers:
New York: The Modern Language Association of America (7th edition). This is the
official style requirement of the ELTE BTK DES (Department of English Studies)
2. APA:
It is the publication manual of the American Psychological Association, which is the
official requirement of the ELTE BTK DEAL (Department of English Applied Linguistics)
3. Chicago Manuel: It is one of the most widely used styles in the US
III. Writing:
1. Qualities of "good writing":There are several requirements that have to be met in
order to produce a quality text.
a grammar, structure, style
b mechanics, punctuation
c usage
d clarity, coherence, unity
in sentence structures
in developing paragraphs
e exposition, argument, persuasion
f Conclusion
g Abstract, summary
2. Planning, writing and presenting a critical paper: The purpose is to enable the
student to demonstrate different skills.
a she/he knows how to use libraries and other sources effectively to locate relevant
materials
b she/he can prepare and write up a sustained and logically structured academic
argument in clear prose
c she/he can present her/his work well, using appropriate scholarly conventions
3. The process of writing a research paper:
a deciding on a topic: There is a wide range of possible research topics for students,
at BA and MA levels, they are usually assigned
b when the task is assigned, questions should be asked:
what were the key studies in the field?
what kinds of approaches have been taken to the subject?
c turning the topic into an argument: To give a direction and to develop a set of
questions to be answered or problems to be solved in the paper.
information and date should be gathered in order to answer the questions,
solve the problems
a good paper takes the form of an arguments
some ways of turning a topic into an argument:
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a. an argument for or against an existing critic or critical position

b. an argument about the importance of a particular influence on a writer or
an influence exerted by her/him
c. an argument turning upon the nature of the genre of a work
d. an argument about the significance of a little-known or undervalued
author or work
e. an argument about some historical or literary-historical aspect of
literature
d working out the structure:
consider the question of length of the planned paper
internal division of the argument into introduction, elaboration (kidolgozs)
(this section may be divided into smaller units), conclusion
development of the argument
e preparing a research proposal: If you register for a BA thesis, your proposal
should contain:
title
argument: It should be concise (tmr, vels, rvid)
materials: They should be presented more in detail (primary sources,
secondary sources)
conclusion: Should be provisional (tmeneti, ideiglenes)
references: Present the key primary and secondary texts
bibliography: Present all relevant primary and secondary texts
f writing the paper:
taking notes: Pay attention to the different techniques
drafts: You should write not only 1 draft, but more to indentify the possible
errors
format of the text: Giving a text an appropriate format MUST not be missed
setting out references: acknowledge quotations, with the full reference of the
book (author, writer, book, chapter etc. REFERENCING IN DIFFERENT
STYLES!)
IV. Critical genres: There are different genres of papers.
1. Different genres: review, criticism; research paper, scholarly essay, personal essay;
book chapter; collection of essays, critical papers; thesis, dissertation; book,
monography (tanulmny)
2. Examples:
a Writing Well: by Donald Hall and Sven Birkerts (Longman 9th ed.)
b Teaching Students to Write: by Beth S. Neman (Oxford University Press 2nd ed.)
c Critical thinking, thoughtful writing: by Eudene R. Harmond
d The act of writing: (Canadian essays for composition) by Ronald Conrad
e Writing with a purpose: by Trimmer and McCrimmon

51

magazines of literary criticism: The articles and books reviews are exemplary
(pldaszer) in their layout, intellectual precision, competence, and fairmindedness
Times Literary Supplement (founded in 1902)
(http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls
/)
London Review of Books (founded in 1979) (http://www.lrb.co.uk/)
The New York Review of Books (founded in 1963) (http://www.nybooks.com/)
3. Excerpts from research papers: Most of the papers write about Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot, giving a bit different approach to the play.
a Jacques Lemarchand in FIGARO LITTERAIRE (17 January 1953, 10):
I do not quite know how to begin describing this play by Samuel Beckett,
Waiting for Godot (directed by Roger Blin, now playing at the Thtre de
Babylone). I have seen this play and seen it again, I have read and reread it: it
still has the power to move me. I should like to communicate this feeling, to
make it contagious. At the same time I am faced with the difficulty of fulfilling
the primary duty of the critic, which, as everyone knows, is to explain and
narrate a play to People who have neither seen it nor read it. I have experienced
this difficulty several times before; the sensation is infinitely agreeable. One feels
it each time one is called upon to describe a work that is beautiful, but of an
unusual beauty; new, but genuinely new; traditional, but of eminent tradition;
clever, but with a cleverness the most clever professors are unable to teach; and
finally, intelligent, but with that clear Intelligence that is non-negotiable in the
schools. In addition, Waiting for Godot is a resolutely comic play, its comedy
borrowed from the most direct of all forms of humor, the circus.
b Harold Hobson In Sunday Times (7 August 1955, 11):
Strange as the play is, and curious as are its processes of thought, it has a
meaning; and this meaning is untrue. To attempt to put this meaning into a
paragraph is like trying to catch Leviathan in a butterfly net, but nevertheless
the effort must be made. The upshot of Waiting for Godot is that the two
tramps are always waiting for the future, their ruinous consolation being that
there is always tomorrow; they never realise that today is today. In this, says Mr.
Beckett, they are like humanity, which dawdles and drivels away its life,
postponing action, eschewing enjoyment, waiting only for some far-off, divine
event, the millenium, the Day of Judgment. Mr. Beckett has, of course, got it all
wrong. Humanity worries very little over the Day of Judgment. It is far too busy
hire-purchasing television sets, popping into three-star restaurants, planting itself
vineyards, building helicopters. But he has got it wrong in a Tremendous way.
And this is what matters. There is no need at all for a dramatist to philosophise
rightly; he can leave that to the philosophers. But it is essential that if he
philosophises wrongly, he should do so with swagger. Mr. Beckett has any
f

52

amount of swagger. A dusty, coarse, irreverent, pessimistic, violent swagger?

Possibly. But the genuine thing, the real McCoy.
Postlewait, Thomas: Self-Performing Voices: Mind, Memory, and Time in
Beckett's Drama. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1978), pp.
473-491:
Time is the burden in Beckett's drama-both as chronic endurance and as
recurrent theme. His characters suffer time without being able to form it and
consciousness into a satisfying design. It does not become for them, as it has
throughout Western history, a causal principle of existence, the soul and measure
of being: the Greek's Alpha and Omega-Chronos (confused with Kronos),
Heraclitus' river, Zeno's arrow, Plato's moving image of eternity, Pindar's father of
all things, Aristotle's "number of motion in respect of before and after," the
Hebraic "Chronicles," the neo Platonist's Nous or Cosmic Mind, St. Augustine's
three times (present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight;
present of things future, expectation) the medieval wheel of fortune, Petrarch's
devouring time with the hourglass, the Renaissance's Father Time (half devouring
demon, half eternal principle), Spenser's mutability, Shakespeare's Time of many
faces (transience, death, decay, tyranny, sweet remembrance, gloomy prospect
of "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," and historical record of royal and
national needs of purpose), Locke's measurable idea of succession and idea of
duration, Newton's "absolute, true, and mathematical time," Hegel's dialectical
march of the Absolute Idea, Marx's progression of economic history, Bergson's
duration, Proust's memory, Einstein's relativity, and throughout history the
pragmatist's Locks of Opportunity. None of these holds consciousness together
for Beckett's characters. Shakespeare writes that time "nursest all and murder'st
all that are"; however, it does not even do this in Beckett's drama. It simply runs
on and on without cause.
To illustrate this, Beckett divides Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, and Play into
two days or parts that are confusingly the same. And Endgame, while limited to
one day and act, is nevertheless the representation of repetitive actions in a daily
sequence. [] Life is spent in anticipation of direction and meaning, and when
this does not arrive, then life is spent in aimless routine and habit to pass the
time of day. The two main "actions" in Beckett's drama are anticipation without
much memory (Waiting for Godot) and memory with much anticipation
(Endgame). Most of Beckett's short plays dramatize a mind or voice recording in
distant isolation the fragmented pieces of memory that tumble out of
consciousness as words, words, and more disjointed words: Krapp's Last Tape,
Embers, Play, Eh Joe, Cascando, Not I, Footfalls, and That Time. Although the
action in Waiting for Godot appears to be random, especially from the
characters' point of view, the play is organized into a carefully controlled plot. It
unifies around two questions that recur throughout the play: "Do you not
53

remember?" and "What are we waiting for?" That is, memory and anticipation.
The words "remember" and "waiting" are constantly repeated in the play, closely
matched by the words "yesterday and "tomorrow."
Gordon, Lois: Reading Godot. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
2002, p 62):
Beckett mirrors the paradoxes of existentialism the persistent need to act on
precariously (bizonytalan, veszlyes) grounded stages with the repeated
absence of denouement (vgkifejlet) in the enacted scenarios. Since much of act
I, with its series of miniplays, is repeated in the second act, which concludes with
an implicit return to act I, Beckett creates a never-ending series of incomplete
plays within the larger drama, each of which lacks a resolving deus ex machina.
The paradox of purposive action and ultimate meaninglessness pervades (that).
A deceptively simple boot routine is rationalized as purposeful activity.
Graver, Lawrence: Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004, 20-21):
The title, the sense of universal present time, the shape of the plot and of the
characters, the often pointed and tantalizing allusions (szvfjdt) these
obviously invite allegorical interpretation, and for many play - goers and readers
the invitation has proved irresistible. It is also important to remember that when
Waiting for Godot was rst performed in the1950s, arguments about systems of
meaning were often inuenced by a large body of philosophical and ctional
writing generally known as existentialist, which seemed at rst glance to have
marked similarities to Becketts work. Although not a cohesive school, the
existentialist writers were preoccupied with many of the same vital issues, most
notably the problem of discovering belief in the face of radical twentieth-century
perceptions of the meaningless or absurdity of human life. A characteristic
existentialist response was to accept nothingness, absence, and absurdity as
given sand then to explore the way human beings might self - consciously form
their essence in the course of the lives they choose to lead. The origin of the
inclination (hajlandsg) for transcendence was little agreed upon by such
writers as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Karl Aspers; but
as Richard Shepard has described it, a radically negative experience is seen to
contain the embryo of a positive development though the psychological and
philosophical content of that development is extremely diverse (Fowler, p. 82).
The pervasiveness of existentialist thinking in the 1940s and 1950s was so great
that any work about an individuals quest for purpose and order in life, especially
in relation to an absent or a present divinity, was likely to be discussed in the
context of current controversies about existence, essence, personal freedom,
responsibility, and commitment. Many philosophers who were not existentialists
were also absorbed by these same questions. For instance, Simone Weil, who
coincidentally had been a student at lEcole normale superieure (this is some kind
54

of a college) when Beckett lectured there, published a widely-read book, Attente

de Dieu (Waiting for God), just at the time that Beckett and Roger Blin were
trying to stage En attendant Godot (Wating for Godot in French). Yet there seems
to have been no direct connection with or inuence of either writer on the other.
The issues were in the air.
f Worton, Michael: Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theatre as Text. In: Pilling,
John, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994, pp 67-87):
Beckett's first two published plays constitute a crux (bkken), a pivotal
(sarkalatos) moment in the development of modern Western theatre. In refusing
both the psychological realism of Chekhov (Csehov magyarul), Ibsen and
Strindberg and the pure theatricality of the body advocated by Artaud, they stand
as significant transitional works as well as major works in themselves. The central
problem they pose is what language can and cannot do. Language is no longer
presented as a vehicle for direct communication or as a screen through which
one can see darkly the psychic movements of a character. Rather it is used in all
its grammatical, syntactic and especially - intertextual force to make the reader/
spectator aware of how much we depend on language and of how much we need
to be wary of the codifications that language imposes upon us. Explaining why he
turned to theatre, Beckett once wrote: 'When I was working on Watt [2nd novel of
S. Beckett], I felt the need to create for a smaller space, one in which I had some
control of where people stood or moved, above all of a certain light. I wrote
Waiting for Godot. This desire for control is crucial and determines the shape of
Beckett's last theatrical works; the notion that the space created in - and by - the
playscript is smaller than that of the novel, however, needs urgent and
interrogative attention. It is undeniable that, having chosen to write in French in
order to avoid the temptation of lyricism, Beckett was working with and against
the Anglo-Irish theatrical tradition of ironic and comic realism (notably Synge,
Wilde, Shaw, Behan). However, his academic studies had led him to a familiarity
with the French Symbolist theories of theatre all of which contest both French
Classical notions of determinism and the possibilities of the theatre as a
bourgeois art-form. (68-69)
V. Summary of concepts in writing: Here you can see different subcategories of different
elements, which somehow connected to the world of (literary) writing.
1. Forms:
a news media: scandals, celebrations, promotions
b authority issues: censorship, publication rights
c format: journals, magazines, collections, monographs
online
printed
d education: papers, exams, theses, dissertations, presentations
55

e audiences: specialised or lay (laikus) readership

f styles: formal, informal from academic writing to blogs
2. The literary essay: It has a flexible form, it can be formal or informal. In this case,
ideas have to be presented, argued and supported by quotations. (NB: History of the
essay as a literary kind)

3. The academic essay: It tends to be formal, with a set of rules depending on the area of
expertise. Various disciplines can be seen under the following domain in SEAS:
http://seas3.elte.hu/seas/research/publications.html
4. Examples at DES:
a angolPark: It offers several features from sample essays for seminarpapers to
studies on different works of art
http://seas3.elte.hu/angolpark/ (IT IS IN HUNGARIAN!!!)
b

The AnaChronisT: It is a journal of the English and American Studies, but it has
become an international site (so it's in English). Here, you can mostly find
published studies in the area of literature.

http://anachronist.atw.hu/
VI. Guide for essays at the English and American studies:
1. For a seminar paper:
a check requirements of instructor, concerning theme, content, method, form
b select a work or a problem that is of interest to you.
c choose a title that describes a question or problem.
d collect the points that you want to make, and build an argument from them.
e support your points and arguments by quotations from the work(s) in question, using
critical sources as well. Always provide the source of your quotation.
f In the introduction explain what you want to do, such as analyse a book from a certain
point of view; compare the treatment of a problem in two or more works; describe a
feature of an author's style or other strategy in two or more works by the same author;
discuss a more theoretical question of literature using works as examples. Problems to
discuss and features to analyse include narration, characterisation, structure, style,
motifs, use of symbols, treatment of social or moral issues.
g Then go ahead and write an interesting, argumentative paper
h In your conclusion summarise your results. What have you learnt from all your work?
How could you sum up your most important discoveries for someone new to your topic?
2. Papers at exams:
a concentrate on the text
b focus on the question/theme/title specified
c remember helpful ideas from criticism or other works
d try to establish connections between literary texts, between texts and ideas, between
texts and criticism
e present an argumentation

56