Literary Terms (Letter "A") for UGC NET JRF English Literature and other competitive exams

 

Affective Fallacy: Term coined by W. K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley, which identifies the mistaken analysis of a text in terms of its emotional or `affective' results, thereby misunderstanding the difference between what a text is and what it does.

 

Alienation: In Marxist theories, alienation is the experience of being distanced or estranged from the products of one's labour, and by extension from one's own sense of self, because of the effects of capitalism.

 

Alienation Effect: Loose translation of the German verfremdungseffekt, which might somewhat more accurately be translated as `estrangement effect', the term was first employed by German playwright Bertolt Brecht. He sought to distance and estrange his audiences from his plays by means of an ensemble of devices- projection, banners and signs, exaggerated gestures, voices and performances, on the part of the actors, and the abandonment of naturalistic behaviour and stage sets in general- in order to prohibit humanist empathy or identification with characters or situations in the plays. The purpose was to engage the audience critically, intellectually and ideologically, suspending feeling and inviting judgement, and to reveal the historical and material dimensions of human actions.

 

Allegory: A narrative technique in which characters representing things or abstract ideas are used to convey a message or teach a lesson. Allegory is typically used to teach moral, ethical, or religious lessons but is sometimes used for satiric or political purposes. Examples of allegorical works include Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.

 

Angry Young Men: A group of British writers of the 1950s whose work expressed bitterness and disillusionment with society. Common to their work is an anti-hero who rebels against a corrupt social order and strives for personal integrity. The term has been used to describe Kingsley Amis, John Osborne, Colin Wilson, John Wain, and others.

 

Apollonian and Dionysian: The two impulses believed to guide authors of dramatic tragedy. The Apollonian impulse is named after Apollo, the Greek god of light and beauty and the symbol of intellectual order. The Dionysian impulse is named after Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and the symbol of the unrestrained forces of nature. The Apollonian impulse is to create a rational, harmonious world, while the Dionysian is to express the irrational forces of personality. Friedrich Nietzsche uses these terms in The Birth of Tragedy to designate contrasting elements in Greek tragedy.

 

Avant-garde: A French term meaning ‘‘vanguard.’’ It is used in literary criticism to describe new writing that rejects traditional approaches to literature in favour of innovations in style or content. Twentieth-century examples of the literary avant-garde include the Black Mountain School of poets, the Bloomsbury Group, and the Beat Movement.


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