Class Notes
Remember that in exchange for forty-four
hours plus of classroom instruction, you will need to reread, study more,
take better notes, and annotate what you read. Read the poems out loud and if at all possible view
the plays after you have read them, or at least read them out loud. The text is
excellent and should have everything that you need except the notes about
the novel which follow. Remember you have a glossary in your text.
Terms for the short story genre are found in
your text. You need to know the following:
exposition
rising
action
conflict
foreshadowing
protagonist
antagonist
climax
resolution
denouement,
or falling action
characterization:
direct and indirect
showing
vs. telling
dynamic
flat
stock
round
setting
atmosphere
points
of view
symbol:
conventional and literary
allegory
theme
style
diction
tone
irony
The
Novel
A novel is a
fictional prose narrative of substantial length. A short novel is also referred
to as a novelette. The novel has roots in the epic poem because it places
fictional characters in fictional settings. It is also influenced by the
history, the memoir, and the biography. It usually presents a world close to
our own. The romance (c. 2nd
c.b.c.) emphasizes observable details of like and realistic characters. In the
18th and 19th centuries, novels were separated from romances based on the
probability of the setting. Novels are expected to be believable.
Novels use the
fiction elements. When one element is developed over another, a particular type
of novel is created. For example, emphasis on character is called a
Kunstlerroman. If the novel
focuses specifically on the civilization of the hero, it is called a Bildungsroman. A rite de passage is a coming of age novel. A psychological novel
also focuses on character and may use stream of consciousness style (google
Ulysses by James Joyce for an example),
or interior monologue.
Historical or
campus novels emphasize setting; detective novels, thrillers, and adventure
novels emphasize plot; problem novels emphasize conflict. Emphasis on structure
may create an epistolary novel, one developed through letters, or a picaresque
novel where the novel is unified through the adventures of the picaro, or rogue hero. A historical novel where the people
are disguised is called a roman a clef, a novel with a key.
Cervante's Don
Quixote published in 1605 is
generally accepted as the first novel. The first English novel is Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe (1719). Charles Dickens is
credited with popularizing the novel and contributing to the standardization
of its conventions. In the 20th century types of novels proliferated along with
experimentation with the conventions. Stream of consciousness style and the
anti-novel (Absurdist) are examples of new directions in the Modernist and
Post-Modernist periods.
Two additional terms
to know in relation to the novel are framing device, which allows the author to present a series of
stories as a unified whole rather than as a collection of independent stories.
In The Canterbury Tales, by
Chaucer, the framing device is
that a group of pilgrims are journeying from London to Canterbury Cathedral
passing the time by taking turns telling stories. Between the stories are
comments and reactions of the characters. Besides this famous poem, two novels
that use framing devices are The Joy Luck Club and An American Quilt. The second term is circular plot. This indicates that a novel begins in a
particular place and time with certain characters and returns to the same
place, time, and characters at the end.
Drama terms are in your text. Be responsible for the
following:
closet
drama
subplot
realism
melodrama
problem
play
naturalism
the
well-made play
Poetry terms are in your text. Be responsible for the
following:
1.
speaker/persona
2.
fiction elements (from short stories)
3.
narrative poem
4.
lyric poem
5.
levels of diction
6.
connotation
7.
allusion
8.
image
9.
figures of speech: simile, metaphor, controlling metaphor, synecdoche,
metonymy, personification, apostrophe, hyperbole, oxymoron, paradox
10.
symbol-three types
11.
irony-three types
12.
alliteration
13.
assonance
14.
rhyme: eye, end, internal, exact, near
15.
scansion
16.
foot
17.
blank verse
18.
end-stopped line and run-on line
19.
stanza
20.
rhyme scheme
21.
couplet
22.
quatrain
23
sonnets and types
24.
free verse or open form