A posteriori

VINERY (also known as vinework): Another term for filigree work in medieval manuscripts. Scott defines this type of decoration in the following manner: "Delicate, conventional designs, usually in gold, on a flat coloured surface, in overall patterns of curling vines, branches, and sprigs and/or leaves; used as a background to miniatures and initials and on band borders and miniature frames" (Scott 371).

VINEWORK (also known as vinery): Another term for filigree work in medieval manuscripts. Scott describes this common type of decoration in the following manner: "Delicate, conventional designs, usually in gold, on a flat coloured surface, in overall patterns of curling vines, branches, and sprigs and/or leaves; used as a background to miniatures and initials and on band borders and miniature frames" (Scott 371).

VIRELAY: An old French term for a short poem consisting of (A) short lines using two rhymes and (B) two opening lines that recur intermittently. A second form of the virelay consists of stanzas made up of shorter and longer lines, the lines of each kind rhyming within one stanza and with the rhymes of the shorter lines rhyming with the longer ones of the preceding stanza. The form never became popular in English because of the difficulties with the set rhyming of English words and the potential for monotony, but Chaucer apparently wrote many virelays in his youth.

VIRGULE: (1) In poetry, a forward-slash mark ( / ) used in scansion to mark the boundaries of poetic lines (i.e. line breaks) or alternatively, they may be used to indicate the boundaries of poetic feet. See foot, meter, and scansion. (2) In linguistics, the same mark surrounds a phonetic transcription to indicate the enclosed material represents phonemes rather than graphemes.

VISIO: The Latin name for the medieval genre of the dream vision. See dream vision.

VISIONARY: Visionary writing has the qualities of prophecy--perhaps it is apocalyptic in imagery, or it may be predictive in its insights, or it may contain a core of moral truth. Many of the Romantic poets (especially Blake) have been labeled visionary. Note that in its literary sense, visionary writing need not be religious in nature, though it frequently is. Contrast with the terms mystic and dream vision.

VISUAL IMAGERY: Imagery that invokes colors, shapes, or things that can be seen. See discussion under imagery.

VISUAL POETRY: See concrete poetry.

VITA (Latin, "a life," plural and genitive form, vitae): The word vita has two common meanings in English scholarship. First, for medievalists, a vita is a medieval literary genre, one commonly called "a saint's life" or a "hagiography." The saint's life is a narrative focusing on the miraculous occurrences associated with saints (famous holy individuals especially martyrs and apostles). The genre was extraordinarily popular in past centuries. Of the surviving medieval narratives about the lives of medieval men and women, 90% are vitae. The conventions of the genre often include (1) a dramatic conversion to Christianity or to an eremitical/monastic life, (2) a sequence of miracles to confound pagans or evil authority-figures, (3) divine intervention in the plot-line, (4) the threat or actual experience of horrible mutilation, torture, or martyrdom, and (5) a continuation of miracles associated with the saint's relics after the saint's death, often accompanied by the material incorruptability of the dead body and the supernatural gustatory imagery of roses. It is interesting to note that, to my knowledge, the vita is one of the few literary genres in which a deus ex machina ending is not only expected, but actually forms a significant contribution to the common themes of the genre. See deus ex machina, genre, and relic.

In its second, more modern sense, a vita or curriculum vitae is a summary of a scholar's work, publications, teaching, and education--a sort of extended resume. In academic jargon, this sort of document is a "c.v." For an example of my own curriculum vitae, click here.

VOCABULARY: The stock of available words in (1) a given language or (2) a given speaker of that language.

VOCALIZATION: In linguistics, the change from a consonant sound to a vowel sound.

VOCATIVE: In a synthetic or declined language, a grammatical case used to invoke or call to another person.

VOGUE WORD: A word that appears in fashionable use or in pop culture. Often these vogue words and vogue expressions have a short shelf life and fall from English use within a few years' time. For example, the exclamation "snap!" as an interjection of excitement among American teenagers is probably a current vogue word, just as the phrase "big mook" was a vogue word from the late 1920s and early 1930s.

VOICE: See speaker, poetic.

VO LANGUAGE (pronounced "Vee-Oh"): A language that tends to place the verb before the grammatical object in a sentence. Modern English is a VO language. Contrast with an OV language.

VOLITIVE: A verb form that expresses a wish, command, or the speaker's will. In many languages, an identical verb form is used for both the intentive (which expresses intention) and the volitive.In English verbs, the future tense is often used as a volitive future. For example, English uses the same verb form (will) to express both the future tense ("It will rain tomorrow") and a future volitive or intentive ("By heaven, I will finish the assignment tomorrow"). In the first example, the rain itself has no volition, so the sentence merely expresses a future event. In the second example, the speaker is actually expressing his desired course of action, not necessarily making a prediction. This ambiguity can lead to translation problems when English speakers look at writings in other languages. For instance, David P. Smith notes in 1 Corinthians 14:15, the Greek translation is "I will pray" and "I will sing." In Greek, the verbs express or emphasize a desire to do these activities in the future as opposed to an indication of future reality. In English, the distinction is not necessarily clear.

VOLKERWANDERUNG (German: "folk-wandering"): Also called the Germanic migrations, this term refers to the mass migration of Germanic tribes westward across Europe between 375 CE and 750 CE. This demographic movement pushed the Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Goths into the boundaries of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, speeding its dissolution. The same movement also pushed the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes across the channel into Celtic Britain, where they in turn dislocated the native Celtic population by driving them into Cornwall, Wales and Scotland in the western and northern parts of Britain and even into Brittany in northeastern France. These Anglo-Saxon tribes formed the basis of the English people and their tongue became known as Old English. The late stages of the Volkerwanderung involved northern Germanic Viking tribes from Norway, Scandinavia, and Denmark pillaging the British isles and much of Britain.

VOLTA: Also called a turn, a volta is a sudden change in thought, direction, or emotion near the conclusion of a sonnet. This invisible volta is then followed by a couplet or gemel (in English sonnets) or a sestet (in Italian sonnets). Typically, the first section of the sonnet states a premise, asks a question, or suggests a theme. The concluding lines after the volta resolve the problem by suggesting an answer, offering a conclusion, or shifting the thematic concerns in a new direction.

VULGAR LATIN: The uneducated Latin used in everyday speech in the Roman Empire, as opposed to the more refined Classical Latin used in literature and governmental address.

VULGATE, THE: Saint Jerome's Latin anthologized compilation and translation of the Bible, prepared in the fourth century CE and used as the authorized version in Roman Catholic liturgical services up until Vatican II. The term vulgate as an adjective also refers loosely to any commonly recognized or accepted version of a work, so we might half-jokingly call The Riverside Chaucer "the vulgate Chaucer," or whatnot.

WAKA: A Japanese genre of poetry closely related to the tanka, consisting of alternate five- and seven-syllable lines. The primary difference seems to be that the word waka dates back to the sixth century BCE, while the more familiar terms tanka and uta date back to an eighth-century CE poetry anthology, the Manyoshu. See tanka.

WANDERJAHR (German, "Wander-Year"): A period in a character's life during which she is absent from her normal routine, engaged in thought, travel, and a quest for novel experiences or insight.

WAR OF THE ROSES: A civil war in England that lasted from 1455-1487 between the families descended from Edward III and the families descended from Henry IV. The event forms the background of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays and strongly influenced Sir Thomas Malory's depiction of King Arthur in Le Morte Darthur as he wrote in 1469-1470. Click here for more discussion.

WEAK DECLENSION: In linguistics, a Germanic/Teutonic noun or adjective that changes little from one declension to another. The consonant [n] is prominent in this declension.

WEAK ENDING: In poetry, another term for a feminine ending, in which the last syllable of a metrical line is unstressed. See discussion under meter.

WEAK VERB: In linguistics, a Germanic verb whose principle parts require the addition of a dental suffix--i.e., typically a /d/ or a /t/. Contrast with a strong verb, one whose linguistic principal parts were formed by ablaut of the stem vowel, Examples of a strong verb surviving in modern English would be the verb swim, with forms like swim, swam, swum, as opposed to a weak verb like indicate, indicated, or have indicated.

WEDGE: A diacritical mark used in some Eastern European countries. It indicates a sound like the digraph in checkers.

WEIGHT: The quality created in a syllable of verse in which that syllable both (a) has heavy stress and (b) has a long vowel that stretches out the duration of time necessary to pronounce that syllable. For instance, consider this line by Tennyson:

God-gifted organ voice of England.

As Babette Deutsch points out, in this line of nine syllables, we have five syllables with heavy stress, and in each case, the vowel is a "long" vowel (193). See quantitative and qualitative meter.

WELL-MADE PLAY (French, "la piece bien faite"): A form of French theater developed in the 1800s. Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou popularized it. The well-made play involves secrets and timely arrivals of surprise characters and sudden twists in plot introduced by external threats. In modern critical parlance, the term is considered pejorative and it refers to any overly neat and precisely constructed play, especially one that uses artificial authorial interventions to cause problems for the characters. Well-made plays continued to be popular through the 1950s. A recent example is Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap from 1952. Ibsen's A Doll's House also exhibits traits of the well-made play.

WELTANSCHAUUNG (German, "manner of looking at the world"): The philosophy of an individual, an artist, or a group of like-minded individuals, especially the philosophy concerning one's relationship to civilization. Cf. Weltansicht, below.

WELTANSICHT (German, "world-sight"):The general attitude toward life and reality an individual or character demonstrates. Cf. Weltanschauung, above.

WELTSCHMERZ (German "world-woe"): According to Shipley's Dictionary of World Literature (623), Jean Paul (1763-1825) coined this German phrase to refer to the sentimental pessimism one feels--the sorrow, disillusionment, and discontent one accepts as a part of existence--especially when comingled with egotism, arrogant pride, and cynicism. This attitude is especially prevalent in certain post-Napoleonic German and Italian existential writers including Musset, Leopardi, Platen, and Heine--but it also typifies some English poets/poems such as the poetic speaker in Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Shipley 632).

WÊN and WU: The two main classes of traditional Chinese drama: civil (wên) and martial (wu). The "script" of these plays is more like a roughly outlined scenario than an actual dramatic text as westerners understand drama. The plays include dialogue in prose and verse, dancing, mime, operatic singing, and acrobatics. Conventionally, the action takes place on a square stage. The subject-matter deals with traditional legends and historical events. The narrative points to a moral, and their setting seems to be a timeless amalgamation of various Chinese periods blended together.

Various props are conventionally simple and may represent various other objects. For instance, a table may represent a wall, an altar, a hill, a judicial bench, or a bridge. To represent wind, characters on the edge of the stage will flap four black flags vigorously. A cap marked with red cloth represents a decapitated head, and so on. Likewise, there are symbol gestures for actors. For example, holding a sleeve up near one's eyes denotes weeping.

Musical accompaniment is done with instruments similar to a Western fiddle, but the orchestra (which also stands on the stage) uses brass percussion instruments. Both actors and singers use falsetto voices, though comedic actors render their lines in basso tones.

There are four types of character in Chinese drama: shêng (general male characters), tan (general female characters), hua-lien (strong vigorous male characters with faces painted like masks), and ch'ou (comedians). Costumes for each role are lavish, adapted from the styles of T'ang, Sung, Yüan, and Ming dynasties. Conventionally, emperors wear red on stage, government officials wear yellow, and so on. The make-up for various characters denotes their personality: yellow face-paint indicates guile; black indicates integrity and honesty; white indicates treachery and deceit; red shows loyalty and courage, and green indicates a character is a demon, brigand, or outlaw. Blue or red beards indicate a creature is a supernatural being, and the length of a character's beard indicates the character's relative status and prestige.