A posteriori

INORGANIC -E: A spoken -e added to the end of certain Middle English words that, historically, should not be there. Many Middle English words had their final -e's pronounced before the Great Vowel Shift, but others artificially gained the extra unaccented syllable by faulty linguistic analogy. See also scribal -e.

INSULAR HAND: See insular script, below.

INSULAR SCRIPT (From Latin insula, island): Also called insular hand, this term refers to a compact style of handwriting invented by Irish monks. An example appears here. From Ireland, the insular script spread through Britain, where it became the most common script used by the Anglo-Saxon monks.

INTENSIFIER: A word such as very that strengthens or intensifies the word it modifies.

INTERACTIVE NOVEL: A "choose-your-own-adventure" style novel in which the reader has the option to choose what will happen next, creating a different possible series of events or endings for the narrative. Often this means a single reader might read the same book several times, each time experiencing a different plotline. Alternatively, different readers might experience different stories when reading the same book and making different choices. A recent type of interactive novel has been the experimental hypertext novel.

INTERDENTAL: In linguistics, this term refers to any sound made by placing the tongue between the upper and lower teeth

INTERLACE: Not to be confused with interlaced rhyme (below), some Anglo-Saxon scholars use the word interlace as a way to compare the formulaic repetitions of some lines in Beowulf with the repetition of linear patterns found in both Anglo-Saxon artwork and in Celtic knotwork such as The Book of Kells. The idea is that, just as the visual motifs in the artwork repeat and interweave with one another, certain lines in the Anglo-Saxon poem repeat and interweave with the narrative material.

INTERLACED RHYME: In long couplets, especially hexameter lines, sufficient room in the line allows a poet to use rhymes in the middle of the line as well as at the end of each line. Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine" illustrates its use:

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from Thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.

In the excerpt above, the words in red are part of the interlaced rhyme, and the words in green are regular rhyme. Interlaced rhyme is also called crossed rhyme. Contrast with internal rhyme, below.

INTERIOR MONOLOGUE: A type of stream of consciousness in which the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single individual in the same order these thoughts occur inside that character's head. The author does not attempt to provide (or provides minimally) any commentary, description, or guiding discussion to help the reader untangle the complex web of thoughts, nor does the writer clean up the vague surge of thoughts into grammatically correct sentences or a logical order. Indeed, it is as if the authorial voice ceases to exist, and the reader directly "overhears" the thought pouring forth randomly from a character's mind. M. H. Abrams notes that an example of an interior monologue can be found in the "Lestrygonian" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses. Here, Leopold Bloom wanders past a candy shop in Dublin, and his thoughts wander back and forth:

Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugar-sticky girl shoveling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school great. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white.

Contrast with stream of consciousness and dramatic monologue.

INTERNAL AUDIENCE: An imaginary listener(s) or audience to whom a character speaks in a poem or story. For example, the duke speaking in Browning's "My Last Duchess" appears to be addressing the reader as if the reader were an individual walking with him through his estate admiring a piece of art. There are suggestions that this listener, whom the duke addresses, might be an ambassador or diplomat sent to arrange a marriage between the widower duke and a young girl of noble birth. This term is often used interchangeably with implied audience.

INTERNAL RHYME: A poetic device in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end of the same metrical line. Internal rhyme appears in the first and third lines in this excerpt from Shelley's "The Cloud":

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

In the excerpt above, the word laugh is an internal rhyme with cenotaph, and the word womb is an internal rhyme with tomb. Other examples include the Mother Goose rhyme, "Mary, Mary, quite contrary," or Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, ("We were the first that ever burst / Into that silent sea"). Contrast with interlaced rhyme, above.

INTONATION: Patterns of pitch in sentences.

INTRANSITIVE: An intransitive verb is a verb that does not have a direct object (and often one that by its very nature cannot take such an object at all). See discussion under transitive.

INTRA-TEXTUAL MEANING: Meaning that originates not within a work itself, but that originates in a related work in the same collection. For instance, in William Blake's Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, we find a poem called "The Lamb" and a second poem called "The Tiger." Each poem can be read by itself and makes perfect sense in isolation. However, when we encounter them both within the larger collection, they echo ideas found in each other. The simplicity of imagery, innocent repetition, and child-like diction in "The Lamb" serve as a sharp foil to the fear, doubt, and theological unease of "The Tiger." When the poetic speaker in "The Tiger" asks, "Did He who made the Lamb make Thee?" the reference invokes a deeper meaning by harkening outside "The Tiger" itself to the meaning of the earlier poem, "The Lamb," in which the speaker explains to the lamb that God made it. The effect is to make the reader wonder how the kind and benevolent deity of "The Lamb," the sort of God that creates innocent children and puppies, can be the same deity that creates cruel, destructive forces in nature such as the tiger, a beast which seems to thrive on pain and fear.

We see similar signs of intra-textual meaning in The Canterbury Tales, in which the various pilgrims tales seem to "bounce off" each other, echoing the themes, phrasing, concerns, and ideas of previous storytellers. For instance, "The Wife of Bath's Prologue" raises the question of what makes a happy marriage. Later tales, such as the Clerk's, the Franklin's, and the Merchant's tales, will take up the same idea. Each one's final assertion about the nature of marriage is enriched and complicated by the ideas that appear in the earlier tales, even if the later writers make no direct reference to them. The overall meaning originates not in one single pilgrim's pronouncement, but rather between or amongst the various statements made by other pilgrims.

INTRIGUE PLOT: The dramatic representation of how two young lovers, often with the assistance of a maidservant, friend, or soubrette, foil the blocking agent represented by a parent, priest, or guardian.

INTRUSION: In linguistics, the introduction of a sound into a word that, historically, should not have such a sound in that spot. See also intrusive r and intrusive schwa for examples immediately below.

INTRUSIVE R: A type of linguistic intrusion in which the letter [r] appears in an etymologically unexpected location, such as as between two words in which one ends in a vowel and the next word begins in a vowel. For instance, Algeo notes that many dialects insert an [r] in this manner: "Cuba[r] is south of Florida" (321). See intrusion.

INTRUSIVE SCHWA: In linguistics, the addition of a schwa sound where historically it has no etymological basis. For instance Algeo notes that some dialects add a schwa sound between the and in the name Henry, pronouncing it as three syllables. Floridan residents create an intrusive schwa between the and in Smyrna when they refer to New Smyrna Beach. The now archaic word alarum is simply alarm with an intrusive schwa. Some linguists call an intrusive schwa a svarabhakti vowel, after the same phenomenon in certain Sanksrit words. Others refer to it as anaptyxis.

INVECTIVE: Speech or writing that attacks, insults, or denounces a person, topic, or institution, usually involving negative emotional language.

INVENTIO (plural, inventiones from Latin invenire, "to come upon, to discover", cf. Modern English "invention"): in classical rhetoric, inventiones were techniques for brainstorming, for "finding" material to talk about in a speech or to write about in a composition. Click here for more information.

INVERSION: Another term for anastrophe.

INVOCATION OF THE MUSE: A prayer or address made to the one of the nine muses of Greco-Roman mythology, in which the poet asks for the inspiration, skill, knowledge, or appropriate mood to create a poem worthy of his subject-matter. The invocation of the muse traditionally begins Greco-Roman epics and elegies. See also muses.

IRISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE: See discussion under Celtic Revival.

IRONY: Cicero referred to irony as "saying one thing and meaning another." Irony comes in many forms. Verbal irony (also called sarcasm) is a trope in which a speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words ostensibly express. Often this sort of irony is plainly sarcastic in the eyes of the reader, but the characters listening in the story may not realize the speaker's sarcasm as quickly as the readers do. Dramatic irony (the most important type for literature) involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. In that situation, the character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store, or the character anticipates a particular outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way. Probably the most famous example of dramatic irony is the situation facing Oedipus in the play Oedipus Rex. Situational irony (also called cosmic irony) is a trope in which accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the poetic justice of a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked. However, both the victim and the audience are simultaneously aware of the situation in situational irony. Probably the most famous example of situational irony is Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, in which Swift "recommends" that English landlords take up the habit of eating Irish babies as a food staple. See also Socratic irony.

IRREGULAR VERB: A verb that doesn't follow common verb patterns. For instance, think/thought and be/am/was. Most irregular English verbs today are the remains of the old Anglo-Saxon strong verbs.

ISOCOLON: See discussion under parallelism.

ISOGLOSS: When linguists create maps showing where dialects are spoken, the isoglosses would be the boundary lines they draw. These isoglosses chart where a particular linguistic feature appears or does not appear. For instance, the use of the second person plural "y'all" might be mapped in the American south, and the second person plural "youse" might be mapped around the Bronx and New Jersey. These dialect boundaries would be different isoglosses on the map.

ISOLATING LANGUAGE: In now obsolete language studies, linguists used the label "isolating" to refer to a language with words that tend not to vary--i.e., one in which each idea tends to be expressed by a single monosyllabic word and compounding is rare or nonexistent. European scholars in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century often held up Chinese as a sample isolating language and classified it as a "primitive" or "undeveloped language," but further study indicated that Mandarin Chinese was actually quite ancient, and in fact, originally had been much more polysyllabic. This discovery demolished the simplistic model of agglutinative linguistic development current in older centuries.

ITALIAN SONNET: Another term for a Petrarchan sonnet. See discussion under sonnet.

ITALIC: The branch of Indo-European languages giving rise to Latin and Romance languages like Spanish, French, and Italian. Italic is not to be confused with italic font or italics. (See immediately below.)

ITALICS: A style of printing in which the tops of letters and punctuation marks gently slope to the right. Italics are often used by typesetters to indicate greater emphasis for a word or phrase. Other typesetters use italics to differentiate between various types of material. Foreign phrases such as Latin, French, and Spanish expressions are often placed in italic fonts to differentiate them from the rest of the sentence in English. Linguists and grammarians also use italics to indicate that a word or term is being discussed as a word per se. Finally, it is conventional to italicize or underline the titles of various long literary and major artistic works. You can click here for extended discussion of these conventions. Note that in handwritten documents in which italics are not clearly visible, it is preferable to indicate the italics by underlining the word. Many editors and publishers also call for underlining in any document presented for publication, and the typesetters ultimately will convert the underlined words to italics in the final published version. This policy does lead to complications with HTML text, in which an underlined word or phrase normally indicates a hyperlink rather than a title. Aldus Manutius the Elder (1450-1515 CE) invented the italic typeface.

ITALO-CELTIC: Together, the Italic and Celtic branches of Indo-European are called Italo-Celtic; the two groups share many general linguistic traits but are still too different to be considered a single branch.

IVORY TOWER: A derogatory term for a place, situation, or philosophical outlook that ignores or overlooks practical, worldly affairs. A French literary critic named Sainte-Beuve coined the phrase, and the term has become popular in American vernacular as well. Poets, artists, scholars, teachers, and other intellectuals are often accused of "living in an ivory tower"--i.e., hiding from the real world or putting all their effort into impractical ideals. The term presupposes that art and thinking are irrelevant in the real world and that such foci are unhelpful in achieving real happiness, understanding, or social change.

J TEXT, THE (Also called the J Document or the Yahwist Text): In biblical studies, this abbreviation refers to the Yahwist Text in the Hebrew Bible. Click here for more detailed discussion.

JACOBEAN: 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. This period is often contrasted with the Elizabethan period.

JARGON: 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.

JEST-BOOK: 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 with facetiae and fabliau.

JIG (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.

JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY: The term refers to the theories of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Jung was a student of Freud, but he rejected Freud's ideas of infantile sexuality (i.e., the Oedipal Complex, wish fulfillment, thanatos, etc.) and he held that Freud's psychoanalytic process was 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 called archetypal criticism. Note that the is pronounced like a /y/ in Jung's name. For more information, see archetype.