|
Epizeuxis is an example of a rhetorical scheme.
EPONYM: A word that is derived from the proper name of a person or place. For instance, the sandwich gained its name from its inventor, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. The word lynch comes from Captain William Lynch, who led bands of vigilantes to hang hoboes and bums residing near Pittsylvania County. The verb shanghai, meaning to kidnap or press into forced labor, comes from the practices of conscription common in the oriental city of Shanghai. The word stentorian comes from the loud-mouthed Stentor in Greek legend, and herculean comes from the muscle-bound Hercules, and so on.
EQUIVOQUE: See discussion under pun.
EREMITE: A religious hermit. Eremites are stock character in vitae and in chivalric romances. See discussion under eremitic tradition, below.
EREMITIC TRADITION: An eremite is a hermit--one who deliberately lives alone seeking spiritual enlightenment in the desert, forest, or wilderness. The first five centuries of Christianity were marked by a number of eremitic (hermitic) traditions and cenobitical (monastic) traditions in which devout Christians attempted to remove themselves from what they saw as a corrupt, materialistic world in favor of spiritual contemplation either alone in the wilderness or together with like-minded folk within a monastery's walls. They often modeled themselves on Old Testament prophets or on the example of Christ spending forty days and nights in the wilderness facing Satan's temptations. Examples of eremites from The New Catholic Encyclopedia include John the Baptist, Saint Athanasius, Saint Basil, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint Jerome (the translator of the Bible into Latin), Saint Nilus, Saint Isidore of Pelusium, Saint Epiphanius, Saint Mary Magdalene, and countless others.
The eremites became the basis for many early Christian legends. Many saints' lives (vitae) and hagiographical writings focus on the miracles and sufferings of these isolationist mystics. Saint Anthony, for instance, was famed for physically wrestling with demons in the Egyptian desert, as described in his vita by Saint Athanasius. Saint Kevin (Irish Coemghen) was renowned for a series of miracles (and his infamous "nettle-bathes," when he would roll naked in thorn bushes).
Likewise, in medieval Romance, one of the stock characters is the hermit. The knight-errant encounters him in the forest, and the hermit conventionally provides food, shelter, medical care, and spiritual advice for wounded knights in medieval literature. In later protestant works like Spenser's The Fairy Queen, the hermit might be an evil sorcerer (like Archimago) in disguise, however! This change in characterization reflects the difference in protestant attitudes and catholic attitudes towards eremites.
The figure of the hermit (often depicted as mad or magical) has almost become an archetype in literature and film. Witness the Star Wars character of Yoda in the Dagobah swamps, for instance. For extended discussion of hermits, see the entry for hermit in The New Catholic Encyclopedia.
EROTEMA (also called erotesis): Asking a rhetorical question to the reader, i.e., "What should honest citizens do?" Often the question is asked in order to get a definite answer from the reader--usually, "no," as J. A. Cuddon suggests. The erotema often implies an answer, but usually does not provide one explicitly. Examples include Laertes' rant about Ophelia's madness, when he asks, "Do you see this, O God?" (Hamlet 4.5). American politicians still make use of this technique in debate, as evidenced by Senator Edward Kennedy's arguments before the senate concerning the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968:
How can the poor feel they have a stake in a system which says that the rich may have due process but the poor may not? How can the uneducated have faith in a system which says that it will take advantage of them in every possible way? How can people have hope when we tell them that they have no recourse if they run afoul of the state justice system?
EROTOSIS: Another term for erotema. See erotema, above.
ERRATA (singular: erratum): Errors or mistakes in a printed text. See discussion under erratum, below.
ERRATUM (plural: errata): An error in a printed text that comes about from transposed letters, missing lines of text, or simple typesetting errors resulting from a printer or a printer's apprentice's mistake while assembling the text on the press. In Ben Franklin's Autobiography, he refers to the various mistakes in his own life charmingly as "errata," and he refers to his own life as a book written by God or the Deity.
ESCAPE LITERATURE: Not to be confused with escapist literature, escape literature (also called literature of escape) includes books and short stories about desperate protagonists escaping from confinement--especially from prisoner-of-war camps during the First and Second World Wars. These books and stories are usually designed to be suspenseful and focus on the psychological effects of imprisonment. Examples include H. G. Durnford's The Tunnellers of Holzminden and Eric Williams' The Wooden Horse. More generally, any narrative with a significant involvement in escaping from confinement might be called escape literature, including Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, or the first part of Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo.
ESCAPISM: The desire to retreat into imaginative entertainment rather than deal with the stress, tedium, and daily problems of the mundane world. See discussion under escapist literature.
ESCAPIST LITERATURE: Not to be confused with escape literature, escapist literature is designed primarily for imaginative entertainment rather than readings designed for provoking thought or addressing serious social issues. The term is derogatory in connotation, though one might argue such writing serves a psychological purpose by offering a relief from the stresses or tedium of mundane life. Arguably, the vast bulk of popular reading is escapist in nature. Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy famously describes the appeal of such escapist work: "He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-corner." See also wish fulfillment.
ESCHATOLOGICAL NARRATIVE: Eschatalogy in Christian theology is the study of the end of things, including the end of the world, life-after-death, and the Last Judgment. An eschatalogical narrative refers to a story dealing with these matters, a story which explains what the ultimate ending or conclusion of something. The term should not be confused with scatological narratives. Contrast with etiological narrative, below.
ESCHATOLOGY: The branch of religious philosophy or theology focusing on the end of time, the afterlife, and the Last Judgment. See discussion under eschatological narrative.
ESTATES: See discussion under feudalism.
ESTATES SATIRE: A medieval genre common among French poets in which the speaker lists various occupations among the three estates of feudalism (nobles, peasants, and clergy) and depicts them in a manner that shows how short they fall from the ideal of that occupation. In the late medieval period, the genre expanded to discuss the failings of bourgeois individuals as well. The genre was not unknown in England. John Gower's Vox Clamantis and Confessio Amantis have passages similar to those in continental estates satire. Jill Mann suggests in her famous book, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire, that the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales is itself an example of this genre. See also satire and three estates. The genre is also called medieval estates satire.
ETH (also spelled edh): A letter in the Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and modern Icelandic alphabet. As a capital letter, it is written as a capital "D" with a horizontal line across the left edge of the D, often called a "crossed D." As a lower-case letter, it is written as a curving lower-case d with a horizontal line midway across the vertical stroke. Below is a visual example of the capital and lower-case eth:
The letter eth represented the interdental fricative sound found in words like then, and it contrasts with the letter thorn, which represents the sound found in words like thin. In modern English, we use the digraph | to represent both sounds.
ETHNIC DIALECT: A dialect used by a racial or national group, as opposed to a caste dialect or regional dialect.
ETIOLOGICAL NARRATIVE: Etiology is the branch of philosophy dealing with the origins of things or how things came to be. An etiological narrative in folklore, mythology/religion, or literature is a story that explains how a social custom, geographical feature, animal, or plant came into existence. For instance, Ovid's Metamorphosis explains that so many serpents exist in India because Perseus spilled some Gorgon's blood there, and where each drop of blood fell, a serpent arose; Ovid also explains how Mount Olympus came to be so tall--giants and titans piled one mountain on top of another in order to reach the heavens and battle Jupiter. Unusual rock formations in Wales are often explained in etiological narratives. For instance, an unusual rock formation might be explained using a story about King Arthur riding his horse over the rocks, resulting in the geological formation. Some Scandinavian legends about trolls and giants are etiological narratives explaining how a mountain range or a valley came into existence. For instance, an ice-giant damned a river to create a lake, or a troll dug up a valley to create a moutain pass. Often toponyms and onomastic legends contain etiological functions. Contrast with eschatological narrative, above.
ETIOLOGY: See discussion under etiological narrative.
ETYMOLOGICAL RESPELLING: Revising spelling to reflect or match how a word's etymon was spelled, or the actual word so altered. For instance, the words debt and doubt gained their silent letters in the Renaissance when revisionists/reactionaries wanted to "correct" the Middle English spellings (det and dout) to match the Latin roots, debitum and dubitare (Algeo 158).
ETYMOLOGY: (1) The origin of a word. (2) The study of word origins and the history of words--especially how words can be traced back to a root, i.e., an earlier source word. See etymon. Contrast with folk etymology.
ETYMON (plural, etyma): An older word that is a source for a newer one. See etymology.
EUCATASTROPHE (Grk. eu+catastrophe, "happy or fortunate ending"): As Christopher Garbowski describes in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Tolkien coined this term in his Andrew Lang Lecture entitled "On Fairy-stories." It applies to a final resolution in fantasy literature that evokes a sense of beauty, hope, and wonder in readers. Tolkien uses it as an antonym for the catastrophe that traditionally ends a tragedy.
EUPHEMISM: Using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt, embarrassing, or painful one. For instance, saying "Grandfather has gone to a better place" is a euphemism for "Grandfather has died." The idea is to put something bad, disturbing, or embarrassing in an inoffensive or neutral light. Frequently, words referring directly to death, unpopular politics, blasphemy, crime, and sexual or excremental activities are replaced by euphemisms.
Examples from medieval French include the euphemism "a wound in the thigh" to describe a wound to a knight's genitals. Examples from the Elizabethan period include the exclamation zounds! as a euphemism for the curse, "God's wounds!" Similarly, we now use euphemisms such as "Gosh darn!" instead of "God damn!" or "Gee whiz!" instead of "Jesus!" For an extraordinarily thorough list of sexual euphemisms in Shakespeare's plays, see Eric Partridge's Shakespeare's Bawdy (1960). Note that euphemism should not be confused with euphuism, below.
EUPHONY (from Greek "good sound"): Attempting to group words together harmoniously, so that the consonants permit an easy and pleasing flow of sound when spoken, as opposed to cacophony, when the poet intentionally mixes jarring or harsh sounds together in groups that make the phrasing either difficult to speak aloud or grating to the ear. Here is an example of euphony from John Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes (1820):
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one
From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon.
EUPHUISM: Not to be confused with euphemism, above, euphuism is a highly ornate style of writing popularized by John Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578). The style is sententious, relies heavily on balanced syntax, makes frequent use of antithesis, parallelism, rhetorical tropes, and learned allusions. A sample passage illustrating this style appears in Philautus's speech in Lyly's work:
I see now that as the fish Scholopidus in the flood Araris at the waxing of the Moon is as white as the driven snow, and at the waning as black as the burnt coal, so Euphues, which at the first encreasing of our familiarity, was very zealous, is now at the last cast become most faithless.
EUPOLIDIAN (Grk., "well varied"): In classical literature, any varied metrical form such as a tetrameter with mixed choriambic and trochaic feet (Cuddon 314).
EUTREPISMUS: Adding numbers to the various points in an argument or debate so the audience can better follow the rhetor's thinking.
EXACT RHYME: Exact rhyme or perfect rhyme is rhyming two words in which both the consonant sounds and vowel sounds match to create a rhyme. The term "exact" is sometimes used more specifically to refer to two homophones that are spelled dissimilarly but pronounced identically at the end of lines. Since poetry is traditionally spoken aloud, the effect of rhyme depends upon sound rather than spelling, even words that are spelled dissimilarly can rhyme. Examples of this sort of exact rhyme include the words pain/pane, time/thyme, rein/reign, and bough/bow. However, it is equally common to use the term exact rhyme in reference to any close rhyme such as line/mine, dig/pig, and so on. Contrast exact rhyme with eye rhymes, and inexact rhymes or imperfect rhymes. The last two of these three contrasting terms include subtypes such as half rhyme, near rhyme, or slant rhyme. Exact rhyme is also referred to as perfect rhyme, full rhyme, or true rhyme.
|
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham:
|---|
