Page 1 of 5. Note - Many of the following terms are applicable to both drama and fiction.

Transcription

1 AP English - Instructional Literary Terms - Drama Page 1 of 5 Note - Many of the following terms are applicable to both drama and fiction. 1. Act - An act is a major division of a play. Based on the Greek and Roman models of five divisions, Western drama adopted a five-act structure until the nineteenth century where three acts became the norm. 2. Antagonist - The character who opposes the protagonist 3. Aside - Brief comments by an actor who addresses the audience but is assumed not to be heard by the other characters on the stage. 4. Catastrophe - The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play. One example is the dueling scene in Act V of Hamlet in which Hamlet dies, along with Laertes, King Claudius, and Queen Gertrude. 5. Catharsis - A purgation of emotions. According to Aristotle, the end of tragedy is the purgation of emotions through pity and terror. 6. Character - Characters are the representations of human personalities in a literary work. Not all characters are representations of humans. Through the use of personification animals, objects, ideas, and natural elements can be given human characteristics and become characters. The dog in London's "To Build a Fire" is an important character, and in the same story, the man is at war with the cold. a. Dynamic - A dynamic character learns and grows through out the course of the story or play. Sammy in Updike's "A&P" may be a dynamic character while his friend Stokesie is not. b. Flat - The minor characters tend to be flat, meaning their personalities are not well developed. This is often a result of the constraints of the short story; however, some flat characters are intriguing partly because we know little about them. c. Round - In a short story only one, two, or three major characters receive a development of their personalities and become round characters. d. Static - A static character does not learn any lesson or grow from the

2 Page 2 of 5 story or action of a play. The characters from Jackson's "The Lottery" are static because they unquestioningly carry out the same ritual every year. e. Stock - Conventional character types whom the audience recognizes iimmediately. Examples: the country bumpkin, the shrewish wife, the braggart soldier 7. Climax - The climax is the portion of the plot where the highest tension exists. The rest of the plot has been building to this point and all the subsequent action can be seen as its result. Sammy's abrupt decision to quit his job in Updike's A&P is an example of a story's climax. The climax is followed by a period of falling action leading to some resolution of the conflict. In classical Greek drama, the climax occurred in the middle of the play. Today, most fiction (especially short stories) place the climax nearer to the end. 8. Comedy - Comedy is a type of drama that traditionally examined the lives of ordinary people in a way that would evoke amusement or laughter. Comedy targets human foibles and follies as it strives to make its audience laugh at many of its own weaknesses. 9. Comic Relief - A humorous scene, incident, or speech in the course of a serious fiction or drama introduced to provide relief from emotional intensity, and, by contrast,to heighten the seriousness of the story. 10. Crisis - The point at which the opposing forces that create the conflict interlock in the decisive action on which a plot will turn. Crisis is applied to the episode or incident wherein the situation of the protagonist is certain either to improve or worsen. Because crisis is essentially a structural element of plot rather than an index of the emotional a response that an event may produce in a reader or spectator, as climax is, the crisis and the climax do not always come together. 11. De`nouement - Literally, unknotting. The final unraveling of a plot; the solution of a mystery; an explanation or outcome. denouement implies an ingenious untying of the knot of an intrigue, involving not only a satisfactory outcome of the main situation, but an explanation of all the secrets and misunderstandings connected with the plot complication. Denouement may be applied to both tragedy and comedy, though the common term for a tragic denouement is catastrophe. 12. Deus Ex Machina - The employment of some unexpected and improbable incident to make things turn out right. In the ancient Greek theater, when gods appeared, they were however form the machine or structure above the stage. Such abrupt but timely appearance of a god, when used to extricate characters

3 Page 3 of 5 from a situation so perplexing that the solution seemed beyond mortal powers, was referred to in Latin as the dues ex machina( god from the machine ) The term now characterizes any device whereby any author solves a difficult situation fy a forced invention. 13. Dramatic Irony - A situation that depends on the audience's knowing something that a character has not realized, or on one character's knowing something other characters do not know 14. Epilogue - A concluding statement. Sometimes used in the sense of peroration but more generally applied to the final remarks of an actor addressed to the audience. An epilogue is opposed to a prologue, which introduces a play. Epilogues were a part of major dramatic efforts in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, disappearing from common use about the middle of the nineteenth. They are now rare. 15. Exposition - The exposition is the portion of a story or play where major characters, complications, and conflict are introduced, and setting is established. It may constitute a world at equilibrium before some force such as an antagonist or natural phenomenon disrupts the peace. 16. Falling Action -. It follows the climax, beginning often with a tragic force, exhibits the failing fortunes of the hero (in tragedy) and the successful efforts of the counter players, and culminates in the catastrophe. During falling action the conflict works towards a solution. 17. Farce - A dramatic piece intended to excite laughter and depending less on plot and character than on improbable situations, the humor arising from gross incongruities, coarse wit, or horseplay. 18. Foil - Any character in a play who through contrast underscores the distinctive characteristics of another, particularly the protagonist. 19. Hamartia - Aristotle's term for the "tragic flaw" in characters that eventually causes their downfall in Greek tragedy. 20. Hero - The central character (masculine or feminine) in a work. the character who is the focus of interest. 21. Hubris - Overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the protagonist of a tragedy. Hubris leads the protagonist to break a moral law, attempt vainly to transcend normal limitations, or ignore a divine warning with calamitous results.

4 Page 4 of Monologue - Extended speech by one character 23. Problem Play - A problem play focuses on the nature of a societal problem. Ibsen's A Doll's House, which examines the oppressive nature of mid-nineteenthcentury sexual roles is a clear example of a problem play 24. Prologue- An introduction most frequently associated with drama and especially common in England in the plays of the Restoration and the eighteenth century. 25. Protagonist - The chief character in a work 26. Reversal of Fortune - The reversal of fortune is equivalent to the protagonist's fall in a tragedy. The protagonist loses power, position, or grace and begins the inevitable fall to the catastrophe. 27. Rising Action - The part of a dramatic plot that has to do with the complication of the action. This is the part in the plot where the action continues to grow, despite the protagonist s attempt to solve the conflict. Rising action is all of the action, after the conflict is introduced, up to climax. 28. Scene - A scene is a division within an act. Scholars differ in their opinions of what constitutes a scene. Some argue that a scene changes when the stage is cleared; other argue the entrance or exit of major characters mark the beginning and end of a scene. A change in place or time of day are logical scene change markers. 29. Soliloquy - A speech in which a character, alone on the stage, addresses himself or herself; it is a dramatic means of letting the audience know the character's thoughts and feelings. 30. Subplot - The subplot is action in a play that runs concurrently, and often parallel to the main action. Often a subplot will involve secondary characters engaged in action that somehow mirrors the action of the main characters. Many subplots serve as commentaries to the main plot. The action involving Gloucester and his sons in Shakespeare's King Lear draws more attention to the conflict between King Lear and his daughters. 31. Tragedy - A type of drama--as opposed to comedy--that depicts the causally related events that lead to the downfall of the protagonist (in classic tragedy this person should be of unusual moral, intellectual, or social stature)

5 Page 5 of Tragic Flaw - The tragic flaw is a character deficiency in the tragic hero. A type of excessive pride called hubris is a flaw often found in classical tragic heroes. It causes the protagonist to question divine authority. Examples of hubris can be found in Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Antigone. An uncontrollable temper, excessive ambition, indecision, and jealousy are other important examples of tragic flaws. 33. Tragic Hero - According to Aristotle, the protagonist or hero of a tragedy must be brought from happiness to misery and should be a person who is better than ordinary people--a king, for example. In "Tragedy and the Common Man," Arthur Miller argues that the ordinary man can also be a tragic hero. 34. Unity of Action - The unity of action is one of the three unities of classic drama theory. According to this theory, the action in a play should be complete with a beginning, middle, and end. The mixture of tragic with comic elements and the use of subplots are to be avoided according to this theory. Both Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Shakespeare's Othello follow the unity of action. 35. Unity of Place - The unity of place is one of the three unities of classic drama theory. According to this theory, all of the action of a play takes place in one location. If the action begins in a courtyard outside a palace, there will be no shifting to other locations during the play. Sophocles' Oedipus The King follows the unity of place whereas Shakespeare's Othello does not. 36. Unity of Time - The unity of time is one of the three unities of classic drama theory. According to this theory, the action of a play should take place in a day's time, while ideally it should be confined to more or less real time; in other words, into the amount of time the performance lasts. The action of the play will not shift to the next day or several years later. Sophocles' Oedipus The King follows the unity of time whereas Shakespeare's Othello does not. 37. Villain - An evil character, potentially or actually guilty of serious crimes.; he or she acts in opposition to the hero. the villain is the chief antagonist in a drama.