Glossary

1. Allegory: - is a literary work that has an implied meaning.
2. Act: - is the major division of a drama.
3. Antithesis: -is contrast or polarity in meaning.
4. Allusion: -is a reference to an idea, place, person or text existing outside the literary work.
5. Auto-Biography: -is the history of one’s life written by one self.
6. Alliteration:-the repetition of a consonant in two or more words.
7. Ballad: -is a song which tells a story.
8. Biography: -is the history of a person’s life by one else.
9. Blank Verse: -Verses written in iambic pentameter without any rhyme pattern is called blank verse.
10. Comedy:-is a play written to entertain its audience ends happily.
11. Classical:-means any writing that conforms to the rules and modes of old Greek and Latin written.
12. Canto:-is a sub-division of an epic or a narrative poem comparable to a chapter in a novel.
13. Chorus:-is a group of singers who stand alongside the stage in a drama.
14. Catharsis:-is emotional release of pity and fear that the tragic incidences in a tragedy arouse to an audience.
15. Comic relief:-a humorous scene in a tragedy to eliminate the tragic effect from audience.
16. Couplet:-To lines of the same material length usually found in Shakespearean sonnet.
17. Catastrophe:-Catastrophe is the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy.
18. Didactic:-is a literary work which aims at teaching and instructing it readers.
19. Dirge:-is a short functional terms.
20. Diction:-is the selection of words in literary work.
21. Dialect:-is the language of particular district; class or a group of people.
22. Drammatical Monologue:-In a poem when a single person speaks along with or without an audience is called drammatical monologue. Example “My last Duchess”-----Browning.
23. Difference between drama and novel:-A drama is meant to perform whereas a novel is meant to read.
24. Difference between stanza and paragraph:-A stanza contains verses whereas a paragraph contains prosaic lines.
25. Epic:-is a long narrative poem composed on a grand scale and is exalted style. Example “Paradise Last”-------Milton.
26. Epilogue:-is the concluding part of a longer poem or a novel or a drama.
27. Fable:-is a brief story illustrating a moral.
28. Farce:-A form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter.
29. Foot:-A basic unit of meter.
30. Fiction:-A fiction is an imaginative narrative in prose e.g. Lord of the fly—by Golding.
31. Elegy is a poem mourning to the death of an individual or a lament for a tragic event.
32. Genre:-means category or types of literature-epic, ode, ballad etc.
33. Hyperbole:-An overstatement or exaggeration.
34. Image:-is the mental picture connected with metaphor, smile and symbol.
35. Limerick:-is a short poem of a five-line stanza rhyming aaba.
36. Lyric:-A lyric is a short poem expressing a simple mood. It is usually personal and musical e.g. Keats’s odes.
37. Linguistic:-is the scientific and systematic study of language.
38. Melodrama:-A highly sensational drama with happy ending. Example ‘The Spanish Tragedy’ –Kyd.
39. Metaphysical Poetry:-Meta means beyond and physical is related to body . . . . . . . . .
40. Mock-epic:-It is a long satirical poem dealing with a trivial theme. Example: “The rape of the lock”-Alexander Pope.
41. Metaphor:-A metaphor is an implicit comparison between two different things.
42. Metre:-The recurrence of similar stress pattern in some lines of a poem.
43. Novel:-is a long prose narrative fiction with plot characters etc.
44. Novelette:-is longer than a short story and shorter than a novel.
45. Ode:-is a long narrative poem of varying, line length dealing with serious subject matter.
46. Objectivity:-We have objectivity in a literary piece when the author focuses on an object from broadened point of view.
47. Octave:-is the firs part of Italian sonnet.
48. Oxymoron:-is apparently a physical contrast which oddly makes sense on a deeper level.
49. Prologue:-is the beginning part of a novel or a play or a novel.
50. Prose:-Any material that is not written in a regular meter like a poetry.
51. Prosody:-Prosody is the mechanics or grammar of verse.
52. Protagonist:-Protagonist is the main character in a literary work
53. Plot:-The arrangement of incidents is called plot.
54. Pun:-A pun is playing with words.
55. Periods of English literature:-The Anglo-Saxon, Middle English Renaissance, Restoration, Neoclassical Romantic, Victorian, Modern, Post-Modern.
56. Romanticism:-was a literary movement. It stands Opposite to reason and focuses on emotion.
57. Rhetoric:-Rhetoric is the art of persuasive argument through writing.
58. Symbol:-A symbol is anything that stands for something else.
59. Sonnet:-is a lyric poem consisting of fourteen rhymed lines dealing with a lofty theme.
60. Satire:-is ridiculing the vices and follies of an individual or a society with a corrective design. E.g. “The rape of the lock”---Pope.
61. Short-story:-A short story is a prose narrative considerable length. It is shorter than a novel.
62. Stanza:-is a group of verses having a rhyme scheme pattern.
63. Subjectivity:-We find subjectivity in a literary work in which the writer’s personal intrusion takes place.
64. Soliloquy /səˈlɪl.ə.kwi/: -It means speaking alone when in a play a character is found speaking alone on the stage it is called soliloquy.

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is arguably the most famous writer of the English language, known for both his plays and sonnets. Though much about his life remains open to debate due to incomplete evidence, the following biography consolidates the most widely-accepted facts of Shakespeare's life and career.

In the mid-sixteenth century, William Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, moved to the idyllic town of Stratford-upon-Avon. There, he became a successful landowner, moneylender, glove-maker, and dealer of wool and agricultural goods. In 1557, he married Mary Arden.

During John Shakespeare's time, the British middle class was expanding in both size and wealth, allowing its members more freedoms and luxuries, as well as a stronger collective voice in local government. John took advantage of the changing times and became a member of the Stratford Council in 1557, which marked the beginning of his illustrious political career. By 1561, he was elected as one of the town's fourteen burgesses, and subsequently served as Constable, then Chamberlain, and later, Alderman. In all of these positions, the elder Shakespeare administered borough property and revenues. In 1567, he became bailiff - the highest elected office in Stratford and the equivalent of a modern-day mayor.

Town records indicate that William Shakespeare was John and Mary's third child. His birth is unregistered, but legend pins the date as April 23, 1564, possibly because it is known that he died on the same date 52 years later. In any event, William's baptism was registered with the town of Stratford on April 26, 1564. Little is known about his childhood, although it is generally assumed that he attended the local grammar school, the King's New School. The school was staffed by Oxford-educated faculty who taught the students mathematics, natural sciences, logic, Christian ethics, and classical languages and literature.

Shakespeare did not attend university, which was not unusual for the time. University education was reserved for wealthy sons of the elite, and even then, mostly just those who wanted to become clergymen. The numerous classical and literary references in Shakespeare’s plays are a testament, however, to the excellent education he received in grammar school, and speaks to his ability as an autodidact. His early plays in particular draw on the works of Seneca and Plautus. Even more impressive than Shakespeare's formal education is the wealth of general knowledge he exhibits in his work. His vocabulary exceeds that of any other English writer of his time by a wide margin.

In 1582, at the age of eighteen, William Shakespeare married twenty-six-year-old Anne Hathaway. Their first daughter, Susanna, was not baptized until six months after her birth - a fact that has given rise to speculation over the circumstances surrounding the marriage. In 1585, Anne bore twins, baptized Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare. Hamnet died at the age of eleven, by which time William Shakespeare was already a successful playwright. Around 1589, Shakespeare wrote Henry VI, Part 1, which is considered to be his first play. Sometime between his marriage and writing this play, he moved to London, where he pursued a career as a playwright and actor.

Although many records of Shakespeare's life as a citizen of Stratford have survived, including his marriage and birth certificates, very little information exists about his life as a young playwright. Legend characterizes Shakespeare as a roguish young man who was once forced to flee London under suspect circumstances, perhaps related to his love life, but the paltry amount of written information does not necessarily confirm this facet of his personality.

In any case, young Will was not an immediate universal success. The earliest written record of Shakespeare's life in London comes from a statement by his rival playwright Robert Greene. In Groatsworth of Witte (1592), Greene calls Shakespeare an "upstart crow...[who] supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you." While this is hardly high praise, it does suggest that Shakespeare rattled London's theatrical hierarchy from the beginning of his career. In retrospect, it is possible to attribute Greene's complaint to jealousy of Shakespeare's ability, but the scarcity of evidence renders the comment ambiguous.

With Richard III, Henry VI, The Comedy of Errors, and Titus Andronicus under his belt, Shakespeare became a popular playwright by 1590.* The year 1593, however, marked a major leap forward in his career when he secured a prominent patron: The Earl of Southampton. In addition, Venus and Adonis was published; it one of the first of Shakespeare's known works to be printed, and it was a huge success. Next came The Rape of Lucrece. By this time, Shakespeare had also made his mark as a poet, as most scholars agree that he wrote the majority of his sonnets in the 1590s.

In 1594, Shakespeare returned to the theater and became a charter member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men - a group of actors who changed their name to the King's Men when James I ascended the throne. By 1598, Shakespeare had been appointed the "principal comedian" for the troupe; by 1603, he was "principal tragedian." He remained associated with the organization until his death. Although acting and playwriting were not considered noble professions at the time, successful and prosperous actors were relatively well respected. Shakespeare’s success left him with a fair amount of money, which he invested in Stratford real estate. In 1597, he purchased the second largest house in Stratford - the New Place - for his parents. In 1596, Shakespeare applied for a coat of arms for his family, in effect making himself a gentleman. Consequently, his daughters made “good matches,” and married wealthy men.

The same year that he joined the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, and several other plays. In 1600, he wrote two of his greatest tragedies, Hamlet and Julius Caesar. Historians and scholars consider Hamlet to be the first modern play because of its multi-faceted main character and unprecedented depiction of the human psyche.

The first decade of the seventeenth century witnessed the debut performances of several of Shakespeare’s most celebrated works, including many of his so-called history plays: Othello in 1604 or 1605; Antony and Cleopatra in 1606 or 1607; and King Lear in 1608. The last of Shakespeare's plays to be performed during his lifetime was most likely King Henry VIII in either 1612 or 1613.

William Shakespeare died in 1616. His wife Anna died in 1623, at the age of 67. Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of his church at Stratford.