Terms and Definitions: J
This page is under perpetual
construction! It was last updated March 2, 2015.
This list is meant to assist,
not intimidate. Use it as a touchstone for important concepts
and vocabulary that we will cover during the term.
Vocabulary terms are listed
TEXT, THE (Also called the J
Document or the Yahwist Text):
In biblical studies, this abbreviation refers to the
Text in the Hebrew Bible. Click here for more
During the reign of King James I, i.e., between the years
1603-1625. (Jacobus is the Latin form of James,
hence Jacobean). Shakespeare wrote his later works
in the Jacobean period. Because King James is of the House of Stuart, a synonym for the time period is the Stuart Period. This period is often contrasted with
Potentially confusing words and phrases used in an occupation,
trade, or field of study. We might speak of medical jargon,
sports jargon, pedagogic jargon, police jargon, or military
jargon, for instance.
Any collection of jokes or satirical anecdotes, but especially
those jokebooks produced in England, Germany, and elsewhere
in the 1500s and 1600s. The earliest English example is A
Hundred Merry Tales (c. 1526), but The Gests of Skoggan
(ca. 1565) is more famous. The contents are typically ribald
and involve stereotypical depictions of various races and
occupations who are the victims of practical jokes. Compare
(possibly from Old French giguer, "to dance,
to kick, to gambol"): In Renaissance drama, a jig was
a song-and-dance performance by a clown and/or other actors
at the conclusion of a play. The dances were often extremely
bawdy, which lead to the 1612 English banning of "public
jigs" under Puritan influences.
PSYCHOLOGY: The term refers to the theories
of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961).
was a student of Freud, but he rejected Freud's ideas of
infantile sexuality (i.e., the Oedipal
etc.) and he held that Freud's psychoanalytic process
too simple, too concrete, and too focused on the individual
child's development rather than the collective development
of cultures as a whole. Working with the insights from anthropological
studies like J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890-1915),
Jung developed an alternative concept called the collective
unconscious, a shared collection of
transcultural images and symbols known as archetypes
that would resonate powerfully within the human psyche. The
study of how Jungian psychology relates to literature is
criticism. Note that the <J>
is pronounced like a /y/ in
Jung's name. For more information, see archetype.
TYPOGRAPHIC: In printing and typing,
the placement of letters and spacing so that the end or beginning
of each line is perfectly aligned with one or more margins
on that page. A "left-justified margin"
(like on this webpage) has the text on the left-hand side
aligned perfectly with the left margin and a "ragged
right" on the right-hand margin, where a varying amount
of blank space finishes each line. A "right-justified
margin" is the opposite. It has the text on
the right-hand-side aligned perfectly with the right margin
and a "ragged left" on the left-hand-side where
a varying amount of blank space appears before each line.
A "perfectly or fully justified
text" has both the left- and right- hand edges
of the text perfectly aligned with the margins. This arrangement
becomes possible only by slightly altering the spacing betwen
every word and every letter in the line or by making minute
adjustments in the font size from line to line.
A. C. Baugh suggests that
one factor (among many) leading to so much variety in Renaissance
spelling was the nature of the printing press. Because early
printers liked to perfectly align their pages, they would
take advantage of various spellings, double-letters, and optional
letters to adjust each line's length.
Students using MLA format should remember that MLA format
your papers to be written with a left-justified margin--not
a fully justified margin on both sides. You can adjust this
in Microsoft Word's settings. Your teacher will be annoyed
justified text, because this will alter the spacing between
words in every single line and this makes it much harder
determine correct spacing in your typography.
SATIRE: See discussion under satire.
Publishers use the term juvenile
or children's literature to designate books
suitable for children, though Joseph Shipley reminds us these
are "not necessarily childish books" (345). Typically
the main character is either a child or a character with which
a child can identify, the themes are aimed at children (and
often didactic in nature), and the vocabulary or sentence
structure is simple enough for young readers to grasp
readily. Samples include Rudyard Kipling's Kim, Mark
Twain's Tom Sawyer, L. M. Montgomery's Anne
of Green Gables, and R. L. Stevenson's Robinson
(Latin: "things from youth"): Not to be confused
satire or juvenile
literature, above, juvenilia refers to works
a famous author or poet wrote while still a child or teenager.
These works are typically marked by immaturity in thought
and subject-matter as well as a lack of fully developed style,
but they serve as interesting contrasts with the adult writings
of that creator or illustrations of the writer's development.
Examples include Lord Byron's Hours of Idleness (written
at perhaps age eighteen or nineteen), Alexander Pope's Pastorals
(written at age sixteen), and Dryden's "Upon the Death
of Lord Hastings" (written at age eighteen).
JUXTAPOSITION: The arrangement of two or more ideas,
characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side
or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison,
contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development.
See also antithesis,
I consulted the following works
while preparing this list. I have tried to give credit to specific sources when
feasible, but in many cases multiple reference works use the same examples or
provide the same dates for common information. Students should examine these
resources for more information than these humble webpages provide:
Abrams, M. H. A
Glossary of Literary Terms. 6th edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt
Brace College Pub., 1993. [Now superseded by later editions.]
---. "Poetic Forms
and Literary Terminology." The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
7th edition. Volume 1. New York: Norton, 2000. 2944-61. 2 Vols.
Algeo, John and Thomas Pyles.
The Origin and Development of the English Language. 5th edition.
Baugh, A. C. and Thomas
Cable. A History of the English Language. 5th edition. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2002.
Brown, Michelle P. Understanding
Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms. London: The British
Library and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994.
Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion.
[Originally published 1977 as Griechische Religion der archaischen
und klassischen Epoche.] Trans. John Raffan. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
Catholic University of America
Editorial Staff. The New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical
Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.
Cuddon, J. A. The
Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin
Damrosch, David, gen. ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 2nd Compact Edition. Volume A. New York: Pearson, 2004. 3 Vols.
Deutsch, Babette. Poetry
Handbook: A Dictionary of Terms. Fourth Edition. New York: Harper and
Row, 1974. Reprint as Barnes and Noble Edition, 1981.
Drout, Michael D. C. J.R.R. Tolkien
Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Duffy, Seán. Medieval
Ireland: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary
Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
Elkhadem, Saad. The York Dictionary Literary Terms and Their Origin: English, French, German, Spanish. York P, 1976.
Gabel, John B. and Charles B. Wheeler. The
Bible as Literature: An Introduction. New York: Oxford U P, 1986.
Giroux, Joan. The Haiku
Form. New York: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1974. Reprinted New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1999.
Greenblatt, Stephen. "Glossary."
The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies. New York: Norton, 1997. 1139-43.
Guerin, Wilfred L., et
al. "Glossary." A Handbook of Critical Approaches to
Literature. 2nd ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. 317-29.
Harkins, Williams E. Dictionary
of Russian Literature. The New Students Outline Series. Patterson, New
Jersey: Littlefield, Adams, and Co., 1959.
Harvey, Sir Paul and Dorothy
Eagle, eds. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 4th ed.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969.
Holman, C. Hugh. A
Handbook to Literature. 3rd edition. New York: The Odyssey Press,
Hopper, Vincent Foster.
Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources, Meaning, and Influence on Thought
and Expression. 1938. Republished Mineola, NY: Dover Publications,
Horobin, Simon. Chaucer's Language. New
York: Palgrave McMillan, 2007.
Kane, George. The Autobiographical Fallacy in Chaucer and Langland Studies. London: H. K. Lewis, 1965.
Lacy, Norris J. The New Arthurian Encyclopedia.
New York: Garland Publishing, 1996.
Lanham, Richard A. A
Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. 2nd edition. Berkeley: U of California
Marshall, Jeremy and Fred
McDonald. Questions of English. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.
Mawson, C. O. Sylvester
and Charles Berlitz. Dictionary of Foreign Terms. New York: Thomas
Y. Crowell Company, 2nd ed. 1975.
McManus, Damian. Ogam Stones At University
College Cork. Cork: Cork U P, 2004.
Metzger, Bruce M. and Michael D. Coogan,
eds. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York: Oxford U P,
O'Donoghue, Heather. Old Norse-Icelandic
Literature: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA:Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Page, P.K. "Forward." Hologram. Brick Books, London, Ontario: 1994.
Palmer, Donald. Looking
At Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter. 2nd
edition. Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1994.
Peck, Harry Thurston. Harper's Dictionary of Clasical Literature and Antiquities. New York: The American Book Company, 1923. 2 vols.
Perelman, Ch. and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca.
The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Notre Dame, U of Notre
Dame P, 2000.
The Oxford English Dictionary.
2nd ed. 1989.
Quinn, Arthur. Figures
of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase. Davis, California: Hermagoras P,
Rae, Gail. Guide to Literary
Terms. Staten Island, New York: Research and Educational Association,
Roberts, Edgar V. and Henry
E. Jacobs. "Glossary of Literary Terms." Literature: An Introduction
to Reading and Writing. 6th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 2001. 2028-50.
Scott, Kathleen L. Later
Gothic Manuscripts, 1390-1490. A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in
the British Isles 6. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1996. 2 Vols.
Shaw, Harry. Concise
Dictionary of Literary Terms. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
Shipley, Joseph T. Dictionary
of World Literature: Criticism, Forms, Technique. The Philosophical
Library. New York: Philosophical Library, 1943.
Supplement to the Oxford
English Dictionary. 1989.
Smith, David P. "Glossary of Grammar Terms." [Miscellaneous
handouts made available to students in Basic Greek at Carson-Newman College
in the Fall Term of 2006.]
Swain, Dwight V. Creating
Characters. The Elements of Fiction Writing. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest
Williams, Jerri. "Schemes
and Tropes." [Miscellaneous handouts made available to her graduate
students at West Texas A & M University in the Fall Term of 1993.]
Yasuda, Kenneth. The
Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in
English. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Co.,
Zenkovsky, Serge A. Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales. Rev Ed. New York: Meridian Books, 1974.
Zireaux. E-mail Communication. 21 June 2012.