A posteriori

PATROLOGIA GRAECA: See discussion under Patrologia Latina, below.

PATROLOGIA LATINA: A famous (or perhaps infamous) scholarly collection of 228+ fat volumes of biblical and theological commentary that has been both a boon and bane to twentieth-century medieval scholarship. The Patrologia Graeca reproduces a series of Greek writings from the patristic and medieval Christian writers, while the Patrologia Latina covers the same sort of material in Latin sources. These works are often not available in print in any other texts. This collection, known familiarly as the PL or "the Migne" (after one of its French editors), includes vast quantities of theological interpretations, Biblical exegesis, typological and anti-typological discussion, medieval treatises on hagiography, medieval medicine, lapidary lore, and oodles of relevant materials necessary for students seeking to understand the medieval world and medieval literature. Unfortunately, the material is all in Latin, with facing French translations, which makes it less useful for English-speakers hindered by linguistic inabilities. Additionally, a series of editors compiled the volumes of the PL and they did not follow the same system of cataloging and organization as their predecessors. The result is a confusing mishmash that requires four volumes of indices and an additional index to the indices. Four generations of scholars have blessed the PL as an astonishing and ambitious collection of medieval lore, while simultaneously cursing it as a devilish, misorganized amalgam riddled with errors, typos, and blunders in pagination. The PL is being displaced from its throne by the Corpus Christianorum, an electronic collection superseding the older half-edited material. However, major research libraries at this time are more likely to have an old, dusty set of shelves devoted to the PL than to have an expensive, computerized copy of the Corpus Christianorum. For a student of medieval literature who can speak Latin, the best starting spot is the index to the indices, and from there work one's way backward. If any readers find a library that is about to throw away or sell its copies of the PL, please contact me at [e-mail]. I would like to have a copy myself, provided I can find a room large enough to store all 228 of these books.

PATRON: See discussion under patronage, below.

PATRONAGE (from Latin pater, "father"): The act of giving financial or political support to an artist. A person who provides financial support for an artist is known as a patron regardless of his or her gender. Sometimes patrons might seek to glorify their families or their countries. For instance, the Emperor Augustus was a patron for Virgil. Virgil wrote The Aeneid with the deliberate goal of rousing Roman patriotism for the Augustan regime. Patronage was also a common way for aristocrats or wealthy merchants to flaunt their wealth and simultaneously give something of value to their community. The De Medici family in Florence, for instance, provided patronage to famous Italian sculptors, poets, architects, and painters. In England, John of Gaunt and Richard II both served as patrons for Chaucer at various points in his career. Many literary works are dedicated to a patron. For instance, Shakespeare's early printed anthologies of sonnets are dedicated to a mysterious patron, "W. H." In Renaissance drama, acting companies were required to have an important noble or royal family member as a patron, for actors not in the service of such illustrious individuals were punishable as vagabonds and tramps. Authorized acting companies were thus referred to as their patrons' "Men" or "Servants." For most of Shakespeare's dramatic career, his acting company was first known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men. After Queen Elizabeth died, the name was changed to the King's Men in 1603, when King James I ascended the throne and took up patronage of the company.

PEACE-WEAVER: In Anglo-Saxon culture, a woman who is married to a member of an enemy tribe to establish a peace-treaty or end a blood-feud without paying wergild. This was a vital role for women in Anglo-Saxon custom--but probably also a stressful and dangerous responsibility. Hildeburh and Freawaru in Beowulf and the speaker of "The Wife's Lament" are probably examples of characters in Old English literature who are peace-weavers.

PEASANTS' REVOLT: Also known as Wat Tyler's Rebellion, this uprising occurred in 1387 when lower-class Londoners and workers from the surrounding areas, fed up with repressive government measures such as the Labor Statutes of 1351, marched on London and incinerated the Savoy palace belonging to John of Gaunt and damaged property belonging to other noblemen, appealing directly to the young king, Richard II, for his intervention. The rebels burned unfavorable contracts and records of debt. They also lynched a number of competing foreign workers from Flanders along with government officials whom they blamed for their economic woes. According to legend, they chanted, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" (i.e., when Adam and Eve first existed, who was an aristocrat?) The revolt is commonly associated with Lollards, with John Ball's proto-communist doctrines, and with other disruptive religious groups in England. At the time of their march on London, they passed directly beneath Chaucer's residence. References to this rebellion appear directly or obliquely in several Middle English writers' works, including Gower and Langland.

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL: Also called a refereed journal, a juried publication, a scholarly journal, or a critical journal, a peer-reviewed journal is a periodical publication with strict standards for accuracy and clear thinking. Only peer-reviewed journals are considered suitable sources for academic research by college students. Most are published two to four times a year. These publications are held in such high esteem because, when an article is submitted for publication, it is passed on to two or three other experts in the field; they in turn critique the author's thinking and check the article's claims and facts to make sure it is as accurate as possible and (theoretically) free from distorting political, religious, ideological bias; citation errors; logical fallacies; and misattributions. This contrasts with a book, in which only a copy-editor or two will check for typos, but nobody challenges the author's ideas, and it contrasts even more starkly with a web page like this one, in which no official structure is consistently available to ensure scholarly accuracy let alone find all the typos. Good college students learn to use peer-reviewed journals; they do not rely on Google and web-browsing for their primary information. Some of the most important peer-reviewed journals for medieval literature students in English include The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Medievalia et Humanistica, Medium Aevum, Arthuriana, Medieval Studies, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, the PMLA, Philological Quarterly, Reading Medieval Studies, Speculum, Chaucer Review, and Studies in the Age of Chaucer. The tell-tale signs of a scholarly journal are its typically copious footnotes, the absence of advertisements or glossy photographs, often its plain, unadorned cover, its guidelines in the back or front for scholarly submissions, and its pages, which are typically on expensive acid-free paper to ensure archival survival. Often libraries do have these journals available in electronic databases (such as JSTOR) that can be searched as easily and as efficiently as webpages, so students have no excuse for not using them. If you need help, contact your teacher or a reference librarian. Bribe this helper with chocolate.

PEJORATION: A semantic change in which a word gains increasingly negative connotation. For instance, the word lewd originally referred to laymen as opposed to priests. It underwent pejoration to mean "ignorant," then "base" and finally "obscene," which is the only surviving meaning in Modern English usage. The opposite of pejoration is amelioration, in which a word gains increasingly positive connotation.

PEN NAME: Another term for nom de plume. The word indicates a fictitious name that a writer employs to conceal his or her identity. For example, Samuel Clemens used the pen name "Mark Twain." William Sydney Porter wrote his short stories under the pen name "O. Henry." Mary Ann Cross used the pen name "George Eliot" to hide that she was a female writer, just as science-fiction writer Alice Bradley Sheldon used the pen name "James Tiptree, Junior." Ben Franklin used a variety of pen names such as "Silence Do-good," Jonathan Swift once used the name Lemuel Gulliver, and so on. Writers might choose to use a pen name as a way to keep a certain name associated with certain types of work, so that a writer might use one name for westerns and another name for science fiction novels. Other authors might seek to hide their identity to avoid negative repercussions (such as hate-mail, imprisonment, lynch-mobs, or even execution--all of these misfortunes can and do occur to authors, especially those writing in totalitarian regimes).

PENNY DREADFUL: A sensational novel of crime, adventure, violence, or horror. The term is an English archaism referring to cheaply printed books bound in paper at only a few pennies' cost. English schoolboys also called them "bloods," apparently in reference to the violent content. The equivalent term in American slang is "dime-novel," again referring to the cheap price, or "pulp fiction," referring to the cheap wood-pulp pressed to make the paper. My personal favorite penny dreadful from pre-1800 writing is Varney the Vampire: Or, The Feast of Blood! The title gives some indication of the content.

PENTAMETER: When poetry consists of five feet in each line, it is written in pentameter. Each foot has a set number of syllables. Iambs, spondees, and trochees are feet consisting of two syllables. Thus, iambic pentameter, spondaic pentameter, and trochaic pentameter lines would have a total of ten syllables. Anapests and dactyls are feet consisting of three syllables. Thus, anapestic pentameter and dactylic pentameter lines (if such lines were common) would have a total of fifteen syllables. See foot and meter. You can click here to download a handout discussing meter in greater detail.

PENTATEUCH: The first five books of the Hebrew Bible--i.e., Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

PERFECT RHYME: Another term for exact rhyme or true rhyme. See exact rhyme.

PERFORMATIVE LANGUAGE: See discussion under speech act theory.

PERICOPE (Grk, "section"; the last syllable rhymes with "dopey"): (1) In biblical studies, a story, brief passage, or selection from gospel narrative or passage found embedded inside another story, narrative, or passage. (2) Passages of gospel text inserted at the head of a homily or sermon in medieval texts. See frame narrative.

PERIOD: See discussion under periodization and periods of English literature.

PERIODIC ESSAY: The forefather of modern periodicals like magazines and literary journals, these publications contained essays appearing at regular intervals (monthly, quarterly, and so on). The subject-matter varied from current events, literary criticism, social commentary, fashion, geographic and architectural features of London, childhood memories, and whatever other reverie entered the author's head. The essays often began with a Latin epigraph as a rhetorical flourish illustrating the good taste and education of the "gentleman author," a practice that has fallen out of favor in more fiercely democratic and egalitarian times. The first literary periodicals were French. They included Journals des Scavans (1665). Italian ones followed such as Giornale de Letterati (1668). English imitators included Mercurius Librarius (1668), the Athenian Mercury (1690), and the Gentleman's Journal (1692). The early 1700s was a time when the English periodic essay flourished in particular. This time was especially important in the development of the modern periodical and in the growing acceptance of the essay as a valid genre. Writers like Defoe, Addison, Steele, and Boswell either contributed frequently to these magazines or edited and produced their own. The Tatler (1709), the Spectator (1711), and the Guardian (1731), all established by Addison and Steele, became profoundly influential in shaping the writing habits and publication customs of the modern world. Most of these publications ran for only two or three years before vanishing, but some lasted for decades. The Gentleman's Magazine first came out in 1731 and the last issue appeared in 1907, for instance, and the Quarterly Review (1809) was still being published as of 1991, when I last subscribed.

PERIODIC SENTENCE: A long sentence that is not grammatically complete (and hence not intelligible to the reader) until the reader reaches the final portion of the sentence. An example is this sentence by Bret Harte:

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.

The most common type of periodic sentence involves a long phrase in which the verb falls at the very end of the sentence after the direct object, indirect object and other grammatical necessities. For example, "For the queen, the lover, pleading always at the heart's door, patiently waits." In a non-periodic sentence, we would normally write, "Always pleading at the heart's door, the lover waits patiently for the queen." The non-periodic sentence is clearer in English. It tends to follow the subject-verb-object pattern we are accustomed to. The periodic sentence is more exotic and arguably more poetic, but initially confusing.

Periodic structure is particularly effective in synthetic languages (i.e. languages in which meaning does not depend on the order of words). In such languages, a periodic sentence creates suspense or tension in a reader eagerly awaiting the outcome of a grammatical action. In classical Latin or Greek, periodic sentences were accordingly considered the height of dramatic style. In English, however, the result can become confusing or comic if the writer loses control, as evidenced in the work of Victorian novelist George Bulwer-Lytton, which has been much mocked by modern readers. Milton's employs a periodic style in Paradise Lost because he seeks boldly to imitate the features of a classical epic--including the very grammatical structure of the original Latin and Greek works he loves and emulates. Compare to anastrophe.

PERIODIC STYLE: A style of writing in which the sentences tend to be periodic. See discussion under periodic sentence, above. Periodic style in English is usually considered indirect or artificially "artsy" in comparison with the more straight-forward non-periodic style.

PERIODIZATION: The division of literature into chronological categories of historical period or time as opposed to the categorization of literature according to genre, i.e., categories based on conventional features shared between works of similar type. For instance, if I were organizing my bookshelf, and I placed all the books from the early 1800s on one shelf, and all the books written in the Victorian period on the next shelf, and all the twentieth-century books on the last shelf, I have organized my literature by periodization. If, however, I placed all the books containing tragic drama together on one shelf, ands placed all my Western novels on another shelf, and put all the poetry collections on the last shelf, I have organized my books according to genre. (Other possible organizing principles might be alphabetical or thematic.) Periodization is not always clear. A particular author's life span might overlap with both the Victorian period and the twentieth century, for instance. Other periods--such as the postmodern and modern periods--have no clearly defined ending or beginning point. Still, the intellectual exercise can be useful for thinking about how particular literary artists fit (or don't fit) into an era and for thinking about the zeitgeist or "spirit-of-the-age" in which they live.

PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE: The common historical eras scholars use to divide literature into comprehensible sections through periodization. Dividing literature into these sometimes arbitrary periods allows us to better compare and contrast the writing, poetry, and drama produced in different ages, to more easily trace chains of influence from one writer to another, and to appreciate more readily the connection between historical events and intellectual trends. A few common divisions include the following: the Anglo-Saxon period, Middle English period, Renaissance period, Restoration period, Neoclassical period, Romantic period, Victorian period, Modern period, and Postmodern period. No universally accepted scheme exists for the divisions. For instance, some editors or anthologists might lump both the Anglo-Saxon and Middle English periods together as the Medieval period. Another might subdivide the Renaissance into the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and so on. Click here for a PDF handout listing the periods in more detail.