troubadour A traveling composer
and singer in the courts of medieval
Europe. The troubadours were usually
artists of noble birth who sang tales
about courtly love, rather than tales of
bloody and heroic deeds.trouvère A composer of epic poems
in northern France, operating roughly
from the 11th to the 14th centuries.unities, the The three rules that
governed the structure of neoclassical
drama, following Aristotle’s notes on
ancient Greek drama. They are unity of
action (a single plot or story line), unity
of time (a single day), and unity of place
(a single location).utopia A theoretical perfect society in
which all people live a harmonious
existence. Taken from the name of the
1516 work by the English humanist and
statesman Sir Thomas More.vernacular The language of a specific
country; ordinary language as it is
actually spoken, as opposed to formal
literary language.Victorian literature British literature
written during the reign of Queen
Victoria (reigned 1837–1901), which
often consisted of long and highly
ambitious novels depicting broad
cross-sections of society and often
containing a moral lesson. Key authors
were Charles Dickens, George Eliot,
and William Makepeace Thackeray.Weimar Classicism A German
literary movement that lasted from
the 1780s to 1805, named after the
German city of Weimar, home of its
principal authors, Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller.
These authors used the structure of
classical Greek drama and poetry
to create works of aesthetic balance
and harmony.world literature Literature that has
developed an audience and had an
influence beyond its original culture
and language.saga A narrative from Iceland or
Norway written in the Middle Ages,
mainly in the Old Norse language, and
principally dealing with the founding
of Iceland (family sagas), the kings of
Norway (kings’ sagas), and legendary
or heroic exploits (sagas of antiquity).
Although written in prose, the saga
shares characteristics with the epic.satire Born out of the comedies of
ancient Greece, this is a literary form
that uses such elements as irony,
sarcasm, ridicule, and wit to expose or
attack human failings or vices, often
with the intent of inspiring reform.science fiction Writing that explores
the possibility of scenarios that are
at the time of writing technologically
impossible, extrapolating from present-
day science; or that deal with some
form of speculative science-based
conceit, such as a society (on Earth or
another planet) that has developed in
wholly different ways from our own.slave narrative A nonfiction
narrative told by a slave who has
escaped captivity or been granted
freedom. Necessarily quite rare
(because education was denied to
slaves), they were used by anti-slavery
campaigners to bring the slaves’ plight
to wider public attention, helping to
end European trading in slaves and the
abolition of slavery in North America.soliloquy A device in a play in
which a character speaks his or her
innermost thoughts aloud, which has
the effect of sharing them directly
with the audience.sonnet A type of poem created in
medieval Italy, having 14 lines of a set
number of syllables, and following a
specific rhyme scheme. The two
most common types are the Petrarchan
(or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or
English) sonnet.speculative fiction First used in 1947
by American science fiction writer
Robert A. Heinlein as a synonym forscience fiction, the term now signifies a
loose genre of work that deals with the
question “What if?” through science
fiction, horror, fantasy, mystery, and
other genres, sometimes all at the
same time.stream of consciousness A key
experimental technique used by
Modernist writers, which tries to
portray a character’s thoughts, feelings,
and perceptions as they actually occur,
often jumbled and unfinished, instead
of in formal, composed sentences. Its
proponents include James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.Sturm und Drang “Storm and urge,”
a German literary movement of the
late 18th century that overturned
Enlightenment conventions, and
reveled in extremes of individuality,
violence, and passionate expression.
The young Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller
were two of its main exponents.terza rima A form of poetry that uses
three-line verses with an interlocking
rhyme scheme, so that the first and
third lines rhyme with each other, and
the middle line rhymes with the first
and third lines of the next verse.
Developed (although not invented) by
the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.tragedy One of two types of play
created in ancient Greece (the other
being comedy), in which events move
toward a catastrophic conclusion, and
which shows characters brought low
and experiencing terrible suffering,
often because of a tragic flaw.tragic flaw In Greek tragedy, the
element of a protagonist’s character
that leads to his or her downfall.transcendentalism A 19th-century
movement in the US whose adherents
saw a divine beauty and goodness
in nature that they tried to express
through literature. Its most famous
writers were Henry David Thoreau
and Ralph Waldo Emerson.GLOSSARY 343
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