A MODEST PROPOSAL: A satirical work that presents itself as a solution for the

situation in the city of Dublin: “the beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four,
or six children, all in rags”.

A MODEST PROPOSAL: The title of a work by the author of Gulliver’s Travels in which
he argues that landlords ought to eat the children of the poor.

ABSENTEE ENGLISH LANDLORDS: The social group targeted by Jonathan Swift (the
butt), when he uses satire in A Modest Proposal.

AIRS: In John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, musical compositions sung by the
singers/players and used for purposes of characterisation, plot development or satirical
commentary.

ANN RADCLIFFE: Any of the female writers associated with the Gothic (second half
of the 18th century, first half of the 19th century), except Mary Shelley.

ANNA (QUEEN ANNA): the monarch mentioned in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the
Lock, “whom three realms obey”.

APHRA BEHN: A female writer (the author of several plays and a “history”) about whom
Virginia Woolf said: “it was she who earned them [women] the right to speak their
minds”.

APHRA BEHN: England’s first professional female writer. She produced 15 plays
between 1670 and 1687, as well as the famous narrative of a “royal slave”.

AUGUSTAN AGE: A phrase used to refer to the first third of the 18th century in
England, alluding to the early Roman Empire, when the best Latin writers flourished.

BALLAD OPERA: A dramatic genre that combines singing, recitative and spoken speech,
and which parodies melodramatic Italian operas.

BALLAD OPERA: A form of musical theatre, popular in 18th century England, which
parodied the lack of verisimilitude and excessive dramaticism of Italian operas.

BALLAD OPERA: An 18th century theatrical genre that parodies Italian operas, very
popular at the time.

BEGGAR/PLAYER: Either of the two characters who, at the beginning and the end of
John Gay’s famous ballad opera, comment on its structural elements and its development.

BEGGAR: The character in a play by John Gay who, at the end, comments on the moral
he had intended for it.
BILDUNGROMAN: A German term that designates a literary genre that focuses on the
psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood in which
character change is extremely important.

BLANK VERSE: Iambic pentameter that does not rhyme and is not closed in couplets.

BOB BOOTY (ROBERT WALPOLE): The name given to an important politician in John
Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, where his (politician’s) private behaviour is satirised.

CAESURA: A poetic device used to divide the verse into two parts, in order to
distinguish the different implications of each part of the line.

CANTO: The name given to the sections/divisions of Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock.

CAVE OF SPLEEN: A gloomy spatial setting in the poem The Rape of the Lock; Umbriel
descends here, so that Belinda is cursed with feelings of sorrow and anger.

CAVE OF SPLEEN: The imaginary setting where the Gnome Umbriel descends, in Canto
IV of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.

CHARLES II: The name of the king who reopened the theatres, which had been
officially closed since 1642 by the Long Parliament.

CHURCHYARD: The spatial setting of a poem by Thomas Gray that prefigures aspects
of Romanticism and has therefore a great historical relevance.

CLARISSA: The characters who fights alongside Belinda and delivers a speech on good
humour towards the end of the poem The Rape of the Lock.

COFFEE HOUSES AND CHOCOLATE HOUSES: In the 18th century, places where the
expanding public sphere of political, civil and intellectual life was developed in contrast
with the private sphere. They were venues for drinking, but also for reading and
debating information.

COMEDY OF MANNERS: present in Renaissance and Restoration drama, it is a mode

that explodes the comic potential of social relations, of social appearances; the struggle
of some character to appear something they are not socially.

CRIMINAL (AUTO)BIOGRAPHY: A work which recounts the ancestry, upbringing

criminal career and incarceration of the central character, tried before a court and
sentenced, often to death. Typically, the character also confesses and repents his/her
life of crime.

CRIMINAL BIOGRAPHY: A work which is inspired by the confessions of real criminals

that supposedly dictated the story of their life to the priest in charge of the prison.
CROMWELL/HAMPDEN/MILTON: Any of the 17th century English public figures
mentioned in Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, the counterparts
of the humble people of the village.

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS: The archetype in which a young woman is assailed by

patriarchal dangers or threads, such as restrictive authority, forced seclusion or sexual
harassment.

DANIEL DEFOE, SAMUEL RICHARDSON AND HENRY FIELDING: The precursors

of the modern English novel.

DANIEL DEFOE: The name of the author of the novel whose protagonist is trapped on
his island from 1659 to 1687.

DEISM: The doctrine that religion need not depend on mystery or biblical truths and
could rely on reason alone, which reorganized the goodness and wisdom of natural law
and its creator.

DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (SAMUEL JOHNSON’S): A work

published in the middle of 18th century, influenced by the spirit of the Enlightenment
and intended to codify the English language; it contains over 114,000 illustrative
quotations.

DIRECT SPEECH: (Or first-person narratives) A term used to refer to the exact words
spoken by a speaker. The words are given between quotation marks (““) in writing (e.g.
“I think…”). A device used a lot in Pride and Prejudice through letters.

DISSENTING ACADEMIES: The name of the colleges started in the late 1760s and
organized by those who did not subscribe to the Anglican religion, required for
attendance at Oxford and Cambridge.

DRURY LANE/COVENT GARDEN: Either of the two theatres that were authorised to
stage plays under the Stage Licensing Act of 1737.

DUBLIN: Referred to as “this great town” at the beginning of Jonathan Swift’s A

Modest Proposal.

ELEGIAC SONNETS: The first book, by an 18th century female poet and novelist, which
foreshadowed the Romantic revival of the sonnet as a valid poetic form in English
literature. (Charlotte Smith)

ELEGIAC STANZA/HEROIC QUATRAINS: The type of stanza used by Thomas Gray

in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD: The title of an 18th century poem
that moves away from neoclassical ideas and, in doing so, introduces a new emphasis on
feeling and an imagery that could be considered Gothic.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD: A poem that prefigures aspects of

Romanticism and has therefore a great historical relevance.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD: An 18th century poem of great

historical relevance which sings of “the rude forefathers of the hamlet” and of “a youth
to fortune and to fame unknown”.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD: The title of an 18th century poem

whose historical significance resides in introducing a pre-Romantic sensibility, with tone
and themes differing considerably from those dominating the poetry of the previous
century.

ELEGY: A poetic form that conveys the poet’s meditation on loss and death. The most
representative composition by one of the Graveyard poets is an example of this poetic
mode.

ELEGY: A poetic genre that mourns the loss of a beloved person, or of an idealised time
of joy; Thomas Gray’s best-known text is a good example.

ELIZA HAYWOOD: The name of the female novelist and essayist who published a novel
in reaction to the huge success of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.

ENGLAND: According to the “projector” of A Modest Proposal, “a country, which would

be glad to eat up our whole nation”.

ENTAIL(-ED): The word used in Pride and Prejudice to refer to a legal provision
according to which property would be inherited by the next male heir (in the novel, Mr
Collins, i.e. Mr Bennet’s nephew).

EPISTOLARY (NOVEL): A narrative in the form of letters. It was a particularly popular

form in the 18th century.

EPISTOLARY MODE/FORM: The use of letters in fiction to present different

characters’ perspectives or to cause the plot to progress; Jane Austen, for instance,
resorted to this literary technique at crucial points of her novel Pride and Prejudice.

EPISTOLARY NOVEL: A novel retold by the use of letters. Richardson’s Clarissa is a

good instance.
EPISTOLARY: An adjective that refers to the use of letters in fiction, often with the
purpose of presenting a character’s point of view or -as in Pride and Prejudice- causing
the plot to progress.

EXPLAINED SUPERNATURAL (THE): A term that explains the mysteries as figments

of the heroine’s imagination or the product of her misinterpretation.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD: A famous line from a historically relevant, pre-
romantic poem, later used by a Victorian novelist as the title of one of his best-known
works.

FEMALE GOTHIC (THE): A genre in which the protagonist more often conforms or
adapts to the damsel in distress archetype, and which was epitomized by the fictions of
Ann Radcliffe and her contemporary authors.

FEMALE GOTHIC (THE): The female Gothic of Ann Radcliffe and others deals with
the explained supernatural and focuses on the persecution of the powerless heroine by
patriarchal powers ending with marriage and closure.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: initial title for Austen’s work which hints at the story’s concern
for social appearances and the necessity of finding people’s true qualities beneath the
surface.

FIRST PERSON NARRATOR: is a specially-created ‘persona’ who is very close to the

actual novelist; such distance is sometimes so narrow that the narrator may be
identified with the real author, but in general terms we must not identify the narrator
with the author.

FOCALIZER: A character chosen by the narrator who sees the perspective of that given
character.

FRANCES (FANNY) BURNEY: An 18th century female novelist, often underrated, whose
style has been described as honest and satirical, and whose main subject has been
declared to be “embarrassment”.

FREE INDIRECT SPEECH/DISCOURSE: A combination of two points of view of the

first-person narrative and the third person narrator where you are presented with the
consciousness or point of view of a character, but through a third person form.

GALVANISM/ANIMAL ELECTRICITY: the cause for the activation of muscles which,

according to Luigi Galvani, was generated by an electrical fluid carried to the muscles
by the nerves; this scientific theory influenced Mary Shelley and the composition of her
famous novel.
GOTHIC: A literary genre that idealised medieval culture and architecture in opposition
to neoclassical form and design; “terror”, “horror” and “supernatural” are key words to
characterize this genre.

GOTHIC: A literary mode opposed to neo-classical aesthetics, finding inspiration in that

which is barbaric, disordered. Irregular, as well as in medieval settings.

GOTHIC: A mode of long fiction, non-realistic, melodramatic and occasionally

supernatural.

GOTHIC: By the late 18th century, a term that came to symbolize the “medieval” or
“Dark Ages” prior to the Reformation, denoting that which was barbaric, disordered,
irregular.

GRAVEYARD POETRY/SCHOOL: A sub-genre of 18th century poetry that can be

described as “melancholy” and “morbid”; it can be associated with Gothic fiction because
of its imagery and themes.

GRAVEYARD POETS: A group of 18th century poets who, because of their imagery and
themes, can be related to the Gothic genre in fiction.

GRAVEYARD POETS: A group of poets that turned from neoclassical aesthetics and
suggested a new pre-romantic sensibility towards the transitory nature of human life,
decadence and death.

GRUB STREET: the headquarters of writers who contributed to the emergence of

periodicals. According to Johnson’s Dictionary was “originally the name of a street in
Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and
temporary poems”. It was the name given to the lower echelon of the profession.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS: A novel written by the author of A Modest Proposal, and which
can be read as a parodic response to Robinson Crusoe.

HEROIC COUPLET: The versification pattern chosen for the poem The Rape of the
Lock; Alexander Pope used it masterfully, producing exemplary lines, balanced and self-
contained.

HEROIC COUPLETS: Lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs. The term
originated in the 17th century due to the frequent use of this type of verse in epic poems
and plays.

HORATIAN SATIRE: Satire which is relatively mild and good-hearted. A type of satire
that follows Roman writer Horace, gentle, mild, light-hearted criticism or parody,
making fun of human folly, with the objective to teach.
HORROR: A term that according to Ann Radcliffe contracts, freezes, and nearly
annihilates the faculties.

INTRUSIVE NARRATOR: An omniscient narrator who reports and also comments on

characters and events. In assessing characters’ actions, behaviour, motives, the
narrator may in addition express his/her views on life.

IRONY: it is characterized by discrepancy between what is said and what is implied, by

deliberately indirect conveyance of meaning (i.e. surface-depth).

IRONY: The rhetorical device that runs through A Modest Proposal, by means of which
the writer presents his project as serious as feasible, although he means to convey a
very different message.

ITALIAN OPERA: A musical and dramatic genre that combines dialogues with
instrumental interludes, operatic airs and recitative passages; it is often satirical and
parodic in its purposes.

ITALIAN OPERA: The dramatic and musical genre parodied by John Gay is his most
successful play.

ITALIAN OPERA: The musical genre parodied in a play written by John Gay and with
music by Johann Christoph Pepusch.

JOHN LOCKE AND JACQUES ROUSSEAU: The names of the two philosophers whose
notions where combined to forge the term “sensibility”.

JONATHAN SWIFT: An 18th century Irish writer who was a master of irony, satire
and parody.

JONATHAN SWIFT: An 18th century satirist whose favourite butts were Deists, free-
thinkers, Roman Catholics, Nonconformists and Whig politicians.

JOSEPH ADDISON: The name of the author who, in a famous essay in The Spectator,
states that the market redresses inequalities and represents new freedoms, not only
from a commercial but also from a personal point of view.

JUVENALIAN SATIRE: Satire that is full of anger and bitterness and indignation. A
type of satire that follows the Roman writer Juvenal, contemptuous and abrasive, using
scorn, outrage and savage ridicule, with the objective to attack what is seen as wrong
and produce a change.

LICENSING ACT: (1737) pushed by Robert Walpole, it authorized the Lord

Chamberlain to license all plays and reduced the number of London theatres to two
(Covent Garden and Drury Lane).
LOCKIT: A character in a play by John Gay who is a jail keeper and Mr Peachum’s
accomplice/competitor.

MACHINERY: Term used to refer to the supernatural characters/agents of epic action

in Alexander Pope’s the Rape of the Lock.

MACHINERY: The generic name used to refer to the various spirits or creatures
(Sylphs, Gnomes, Demons, Salamanders) who appear in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the
Lock and who have an influence on the development of the events told in the poem.

MALE GOTHIC (THE): The male Gothic utilizes a full-blooded and ironic mode which
views female sexuality as monstrous, and which ends tragically with the death of its
protagonist.

MARRIAGE MARKET: The context in which women were expected to find a husband.

MELANCHOLY: The feeling that dominates poetry towards the middle of the 18th
century; it is associated with introspection and prefigures the Romantic mood.

METHODISM: the evangelical revival which warned that all were sinners and damned,
unless they accepted “amazing grace”, salvation through faith.

MIDDLE STYLE (THE): Introduced by the periodicals, a style which was distant both
from everyday language and also from the very rhetorical language of Augustan poetry.
A language that is inevitably more descriptive than in other literary genres and that is
the language of the novel.

MOCK-EPIC/MOCK-HEROIC: A parody of conventional epic poetry in order to expose

the triviality of an ordinary event by using machinery and devices of the epic.

MOCK-EPIC/MOCK-HEROIC: A poem employing the lofty style and the conventions of

epic poetry to describe a trivial or undignified series of events; a kind of satire that
mocks its subject by treating it in an inappropriately grandiose manner.

MOLL FLANDERS: The character who speaks the following words, at one point of her
narrative: “being forsaken of my virtue and my modesty, I had nothing of value left to
recommend me, either to God’s blessing or man’s assistance”.

MONOLOGUES OR SOLILOQUIES (PUBLIC/PRIVATE): The strategy employed when

certain characters, mainly protagonists, are left alone or isolated and they begin to
speak out their ideas or thoughts.

MOTHER MIDNIGHT: A good influence on Moll and her spiritual mother. She helps
women in trouble.
MR PEACHUM: The character in a famous ballad opera who, in reference to himself,
states: “a lawyer is an honest employment, so is mine”.

MUSICAL AIR: A musical composition to be sung by a single voice in opera or some

forms of musical theatre. In The Beggar’s Opera, for instance, it is effectively used for
characterization purposes.

NARRATIVE TRANSVESTISM: In a work of fiction, the adoption of a female point of

view by a male author (or a male point of view by a female author); Daniel Defoe chose
to do this in his novels Moll Flanders and Roxanna.

NELL GWYNN: The most famous actress of the Restoration. She went from selling
oranges in a theatre to acting on the stage to living publicly as a mistress of Charles II.

NEOCLASSICISM: A movement that has become pervasive and very prescriptive

emphasizing notions like balance, restraint and decorum. It is also associated with
rationalism.

NEWGATE NOVEL/BIOGRAPHY: Narratives of criminal life which typically had an

episodic structure and where the climax was the redemption of the main character.
They are sometimes named after a prison in London.

NEWGATE: The spatial setting of the third act of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera; at
one point in the play, Peachum calls this place Captain Mcheath’s “lodgings”.

NOVEL OF CHARACTER: The narrative focuses on what the protagonist will do next
and how the story will turn out. (e.g. Richardson’s Pamela).

NOVEL OF COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE: Type of novel that were very popular in the
18th century whose heroine was young woman facing their life prospects.

NOVEL OF INCIDENT: A novel in which the main focus is on the course and the
outcome of events in the plot. (e.g. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe).

NOVEL: The most important literary genre which emerged during the Restoration and
the 18th century. Among other topics, it deals with the tension between city and country,
or the differences between poor residents of the provinces and wealthier city
residents.

ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE: The title of a famous ode

written by Thomas Gray which refers to a famous English college.

OLD BAILEY: The main criminal court in London, mentioned in key texts of 18th century
English Literature, such as The Beggar’s Opera or Moll Flanders.
OMNISCIENT NARRATOR: One who moves freely within the narrative and is privy to
everything that is known about characters and events; he/she was also frequently an
intrusive narrator.

OMNISCIENT THIRD PERSON NARRATOR: A narrator who knows everything about

characters and the events, and who occasionally expresses his views, who occasionally
makes judgements about behaviour.

ORIENTAL TALE: A type of fiction that owed its popularity to the vogue of the
“Arabian Nights”. (Rasselas).

OROONOKO (OR THE ROYAL SLAVE): The title of the novel written in 1668 by Aphra
Behn which represents and debates England’s new colonial adventure.

OXYMORON: A condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used
together, as in “sweet sorrow” or “original copy”.

PAMELA (RICHARDSON’S): It is usually credited as being the first novel of character.

PAMELA; OR VIRTUE REWARDED: (by Samuel Richardson/” Clarissa”) The title of

the first novel (published in 1740) by the author who later published one of the longest
novels in English language.

PAPIST/POPISH: The derogatory term used by the author of A Modest Proposal to

refer specifically to Catholics, whose number he proposes to lessen.

PARODY: A literary form/work that mimics and ridicules another, often by exaggerating
or distorting its defining traits; Jonathan Swift used it to target the work of
projectors, and John Gay used it to target Italian operas.

PARODY: A mocking imitation of the style of a literary work, ridiculing the stylistic
habits of an author or school by exaggerated mimicry. It targets literary authors, styles
and genres and most often it resorts to exaggeration.

PATHETIC FALLACY: Literary figure in the Gothic genre, when a writer attributes
human feeling to inanimate objects, e.g. the weather contributes to emphasizing how a
character feel.

PERIODICAL ESSAY: A prose genre that originated in the 18th century and can be
considered both journalistic and literary. The topics of texts belonging to this category
are wide-ranging: social life, literary taste, philosophical debate, domestic economy,
among others.

PERIODICAL ESSAY: One of the most characteristic types of eighteenth-century

literature, developed by Addison and Steele. A short, non-fictional piece of prose
writing popular in the first half of the 18th century, dealing with a wide range of topics,
including social property, economy, entertainment or philosophy.

PERIPHRASIS: A roundabout way of avoiding homely words (e.g. “finny tribes” for fish,
or “household feathery people” for chickens).

PERSONIFICATION: Representing a thing or abstraction in human form.

PICARESQUE NOVEL: A genre in which a rogue (=pícaro, granuja), the protagonist and
narrator, moved by fortune and self-interest, leads a geographically and socially mobile
life that enables the author to offer a comprehensive vision of contemporary society.

PLOT: The succession of events that take place in a literary work.

POINT OF VIEW: The perspective from which the story is presented. The way in which
the story is presented.

POLLY: The title of the sequel that followed John Gray’s The Beggar’s Opera, and which
was banned from the stage by the Prime Minister.

PROJECTORS: Devisers of schemes, often aiming to improve specific social areas; their
work is the butt of Swift’s parody in A Modest Proposal.

PROLEPTIC: A narrative device in which the meaning of events is only fully realised in
the less immediate future; it is only later in the book that the reader will find the sense
of something seemingly insignificant that has happened earlier. As it can be easily
imagined, proleptic events are particularly important in thrillers and mystery stories.

PROMETHEUS: The daring Greek Titan compared by Mary Shelley to Victor

Frankenstein in the full title of her novel.

REALISM: An attempt to give the illusion of ordinary life, in which unexceptional people
undergo everyday experiences.

REGENCY (THE): The period of nine years between 1811, the year when the King George
III is declared unfitted to reign, and 1820, when his son George IV was crown.

ROBERT WALPOLE: The name of the English Prime Minister at the time of John Gay’s
The Beggar’s Opera.

ROBERT WALPOLE: The public personality satirised and referred to as “Bob Booty” in
John Gay’s play The Beggar’s Opera.

ROBINSON CRUSOE (DEFOE’S): It is usually credited as being the first true novel of
incident in the English language.
ROBINSON CRUSOE: An early English novel that is the object of parody in another
novel by the author of A Modest Proposal.

ROBINSON CRUSOE: The work by Defoe that best shows the connection between the
epic and the novel.

ROMANCE PLOT: A plot where the two lovers start out hating each other and they end
the novel in love.

ROMANTIC MOVEMENT: The literary/aesthetic movement that the poem Elegy

Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) is considered to prefigure.

SAMUEL JOHNSON: An 18th century English scholar and writer, a pioneer of

lexicography and literary criticism; he was also the host of a group of men of letters
and actors who met regularly to discuss literary developments and new plays.

SATIRE: A term which designates literary forms which diminish or derogate a subject
by making it ridiculous and by evoking towards its amusement, scorn, or indignation.

SATIRE: One of the rhetorical strategies used by Jonathan Swift to achieve his two
main purposes in A Modest Proposal, i.e. to denounce social injustice and criticise a
literary genre.

SATIRE: Strong criticism or denunciation of the follies, weaknesses and vices indulged
by certain social groups; Alexander Pope uses this literary mode when he portrays the
higher classes in The Rape of the Lock.

SENSIBILITY (SENTIMENTALISM): An 18th century movement that stressed the

importance of the emotions and feelings, of sentiment and sympathy, in human relations.
This current of thought and taste influenced the work of novelists like Samuel
Richardson, Laurence Sterne and Henry Mackenzie.

SENSIBILITY: An 18th century term designating a kind of sensitivity or responsiveness

that is both aesthetic and moral, showing a capacity to feel both for others’ sorrow and
for beauty.

SENTIMENTAL NOVEL: An 18th century fictional sub-genre that stressed the

importance of emotions and feelings in human relationships; examples are Samuel
Richardson’s Clarissa or Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling.

SESSIONS: Trials against criminals, held eight times a year; in The Beggar’s Opera,
Peachum looks forward to these, as the basis of his “business”.

SOCIAL SATIRE: A kind of satire that targeted against a number of attitudes such as
pride, prejudice, dishonesty, foolishness arrogances, pedantry, etc.
SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY: A work which related the acts of God’s grace to the
life of a person moving from sin to redemption.

SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Narratives in which the main characters examined

their lives that have been dominated by sin and vice; after the criminal has been
repented. It often involves psychological portrayal of characters and the access to their
thoughts.

STRAWBERRY HILL: A castle owned by Horace Walpole, an architectural symbol of the

medieval revival that is characteristic of Gothicism.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: A narrative device that attempts to convey not just

what a character is thinking, but the very flow of that thinking expressed through a
stream of fluid, incomplete, often distorted thoughts that blend and blur with each
other; this technique tries to reproduce as closely as possible the way human thoughts
pass through the mind.

SUBLIME (THE): A notion that manifests itself in nature and in art as anything that
exceeds the human capacity to perceive. It has to do with space, dimensions and with
anything that produces intimations of transcendence of the eternal or the timeless.

SUBLIME (THE): The powerful depiction of subjects which are vast, obscure, and
powerful; of greatness that is incomparable or immeasurable. The term is related to the
Romantic portrayal of nature.

SYLPHS: The category of spirits to which Zephyretta, Brillante, Momentilla, Crispissa

and Ariel belong.

TERROR: A term that according to Ann Radcliffe expands the soul and awakens the
faculties to a high degree of life.

TERROR: The feeling that Gothic novelists aspired to produce in their readers.
According to Edmund Burke, this feeling was an expression of “the sublime”.

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA: The title of a play published in 1727 during Walpole’s
administration which narrates a series of musical asides called “airs” in which most
satirical comments are contained.

THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO: The title of a Gothic romance by Horace Walpole set in
medieval (13th century) Italy.

THE GLORIOUS (OR BLOODLESS) REVOLUTION: 1688 the date of the Glorious
Revolution which deposed the absolutist king James II, established a Parliamentary
System and as a result increased freedoms and civil liberties. It came to be seen as the
beginning of a stabilized, unified Great Britain.

THE MINT: A district in Southwark, south London, in the late 17th and early 18th
centuries, the area was known for offering protection against persecution for debtors
due to its legal status as a “liberty”; or a jurisdictional interzone (Moll Flanders).

THE OPPRESION SUFFERED BY THE IRISH PEOPLE: The situation denounced

through irony and satire in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.

THE SCRIBLERUS CLUB: The name of the literary club founded in London by John Gay,
Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot and Thomas Parnell.

THE TATLER/THE SPECTATOR: The title of one of the periodicals founded or boosted
by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele at the beginning of the 18th century.

THOMAS GRAY: The author of a poem that ends with an “epitaph” dedicated to “a youth
to fortune and to fame unknown”.

THOMAS GRAY: The author of an elegiac poem praised by Dr Johnson for its images,
originality and the sentiments conveyed.

TORIES/CONSERVATIVE PARTY/TORY PARTY: The political party supported by

Jonathan Swift, and for which he wrote most of his pamphlets during the first decade
of the 18th century.

TYBURN: The principal place of public execution in London mentioned in Moll Flanders.

UMBRIEL: The “dusky melancholy Spright” who, in Canto IV of Alexander Pope’s The
Rape of the Lock, descends to “the Central Earth”, or the Cave of Spleen.

UMBRIEL: The name of the Gnome -in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock- who
journeys to the “Cave of Spleen”, in a parody of Aeneas’ or Ulysses’ descent to the
Underworld.

WALTER SCOTT: An author who represents a “masculine” orientation of the novel at

the beginning of the 19th century which can be set against the preceding “domestic
fiction” by female writers like Radcliffe or Edgeworth.

WIT (INGENIO, AGUDEZA): Quickness of mind, inventiveness, a knack (=don) for

conceiving images and metaphors and for perceiving resemblances between things
apparently unlike.

ZEUGMA: A device that consists in employing one word to designate two drastically
different actions within the same line.