A posteriori

FAMILY RHYME: In “family rhyme," rhyming is based on phonetic similarities. For the sake of contrast, consider what most people consider "normal" rhymes. In common perception, the rhyming syllables must have the same vowel sounds, and the consonant sounds after the vowel (if any do appear) must also have the same sounds, and the rhyming syllables typically begin differently. However, in family rhyme, the poet tries to replace one phoneme with a member of the same phonetic family. So, a plosive like b, d, g, p, t, and k will “rhyme” with another plosive. A fricative like v, TH, z, zh, j, f, th, s, sh, or ch, will “rhyme” with another fricative. Finally, a nasal like m, n, or ng will “rhyme” with another nasal. Thus, in family rhyme, the following words would be considered rhymes with each other: cut/pluck, rich/fish, fun/rung. Often the term “half-rhyme” is used loosely and interchangeably for family rhyme.

FANCY: Before the 19th Century, the word fancy meant roughly the same thing as imagination as opposed to the mental processes of reason, logic, and memory. The Romantic poets, however, made a pivotal distinction between the two terms that proved integral in their theories of creativity. They used fancy to refer to the mental process in which memories or sensory perceptions are jumbled together to create new chimerical ideas. This process was similar but inferior to the higher mental faculty of imagination, which in its highest form, would create completely new ideas and entirely novel images rather than merely reassemble memories and sensory impressions in a different combination. Coleridge, in chapter thirteen of Biographia Literaria (1817), suggests that "Fancy . . . has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space." The fancy was limited to taking already-assembled ideas, images, and memories, and then reassembling them without altering or improving the components. Imagination, however, produced truly original work. Imagination was seen as (as Coleridge says) "essentially vital," functioning less like the Fancy's mechanical sorting and instead growing in a more organic manner. He claims imagination "generates and produces forms of its own," and it is capable of merging opposites together in a new synthesis. He claims: "imagination . . . reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image" [sic]. Hence, imagination assimilates unlike things to create a new unity. This unity would be constituted of living, interdependent parts that could not function in a literary manner independent from the organic form of the whole, an idea that proved quite important to the New Critics of the early twentieth-century.

Many lesser critics of the late 19th Century misunderstood Coleridge, and they used the word fancy in reference to the process of producing a light-hearted, simple, or fanciful poetry and reserve the term imagination for more serious, passionate, or intense poetry. However, for the original Romantic critics and poets, the distinction in terminology marked two different types of creativity. They valued imaginative creativity more than fanciful creativity regardless of whether the poetry was serious or light-hearted.

FANTASY LITERATURE: Any literature that is removed from reality--especially poems, books, or short narratives set in nonexistent worlds, such as an elvish kingdom, on the moon, in Pellucidar (the hollow center of the earth), or in alternative versions of the historical world--such as a version of London where vampires or sorcerers have seized control of parliament. The characters are often something other than humans, or human characters may interact with nonhuman characters such as trolls, dragons, munchkins, kelpies, etc. Examples include J. R. R. Tolkien's synthetic histories in The Silmarilion, Michael Moorcock's The Dreaming City, or the books in Stephen R. Donaldson's series, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. See also escapist literature. Contrast with magic realism, science fiction and speculative fiction.

FANTASY NOVEL: Any novel that is removed from reality--especially those novels set in nonexistent worlds, such as an elvish kingdom, on the moon, in Pellucidar (the hollow center of the earth), or in alternative versions of the historical world--such as a version of London where vampires or sorcerers have seized control of parliament. The characters are often something other than humans, or human characters may interact with nonhuman characters such as trolls, dragons, munchkins, kelpies, etc. Examples include J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Ursula LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Michael Moorcock's The Dreaming City, or T. H. White's The Once and Future King. See also escapist literature. Contrast with magic realism, science fiction and speculative fiction.

FARCE (from Latin Farsus, "stuffed"): A farce is a form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter through highly exaggerated caricatures of people in improbable or silly situations. Traits of farce include (1) physical bustle such as slapstick, (2) sexual misunderstandings and mix-ups, and (3) broad verbal humor such as puns. Many literary critics (especially in the Victorian period) have tended to view farce as inferior to "high comedy" that involves brilliant dialogue. Many of Shakespeare's early works, such as The Taming of the Shrew, are considered farces. Contrast with comedy of manners.