1.

přednáška

Study of Literature and Film

Culture = is what makes us human
 it compensates for our biological inferiority (poor sight, hearing, smell,...)
 it is studied not only by Cultural studies, but also Anthropology, Sociology,
Psychology, Linguistics,...
 material culture / symbolic culture → culture is based on symbols
 creation of meaning
 Divided into:
o The Art → literature, films, theatre, classical music
 elitist approach in the past
 recently we’ve seen a shift → studies of popular culture
 e.g. rehabilitation of science fiction (escapist literature:
Fahrenheit 451, Nineteen Eighty-Four,... → literature of ideas)

What is text? = Semioticians commonly refer to films, television, and radio

programmes, advertising posters and so on as “texts”, and to “reading television”.
Media such as television and film are regarded by some semioticians as being in
some respects like language → anything made from signs can be analyzed as a
text.
 “A collection of signs whose meaning derives from the intentions of those
who made an environment what it is, and the cultural ideals and ideas that lie
behind those intentions.”

Key concepts for further study

1. Intertextuality = texts are related to each other, they depend on each

other, create meaning
 adaptation
2. Genres = categorizing texts based on certain criteria
 popular genres
3. Narrative = texts that tell a story (e.g. novel)
 in literature, film
 
In Literature - we rely on language
In Film - we rely on language, (moving) image, and sound

Style = the way in which something is said, done, expressed, or performed

 the combination of distinctive features of literary or artistic expression,
execution, or performance characterizing a particular person, group, school, or
era.
 the choice of features offered by a particular medium

1. Intertextuality (texts are related)

 allusion = a reference to another text / person / object
 quotation = taking over the exact words (elements) from another text
 paraphrase = expressing an idea in one’s own words
 plagiarism = unacknowledged quotation or paraphrase
 translation = conversion of text into another language
  calque = loan translation
 adaptation = conversion into another medium or for another audience
 pastiche = an imitation of style (neutral or positive)
 parody = an imitation of style in order to ridicule

2. přednáška

Intermezzo: Theme vs. motif

Theme = a general concept (whether implicit or asserted), which an imaginative work
is designed to involve and make persuasive to the audience
- the general idea that the text tries to convey to the audience
- e.g. Romeo and Juliet – love beyond the grave
- theme must always be stated in general terms
Motif = conspicuous element, such as a type of event, device, reference, or formula,
which occurs frequently in works of art
- e.g. Romeo and Juliet – love, death, sadness, youth, fight
Motive = a reason for doing something (in a psychological sense)
Defamiliarization (“ozvláštnění”) = by disrupting the modes of ordinary linguistic
discourse, literature “makes strange” the world of everyday perception and renews
the reader’s lost capacity for fresh sensation
- whenever an author tries to make something strange, it will bring the
reader’s attention to the fact
- e.g. Bye. / I bid you adieu.

2. Genre
- Serve to organize texts in a meaningful way
- A particular type or style of literature, art, film, or music that you can recognize
because of its special features

TASK 1 (What genre is it? Find out what the features are?) - the texts belong to
the same group – they
Airline safety commercials that are different genre themed
are related to each other
1. New Zealand  Fantasy (Lord of the Rings)
- the videos work in the
2. New Zealand  Sci-fi (Men in Black) + combined with a music video
same genre = flight
3. British  Popular celebrities (British) safety instruction videos
4. French  “chic image”, French fashion - some videos are
5. Russia  oversexualized image of Russian women defamiliarized by
6. Virgin America  Musical
intertextuality, visual
effects
7. Delta  very clean, simple, modern, their own employees

8. Thomson  made by children

9. New Zealand  made 25 years ago, kind of boring

 Forms of organization of texts (John Frow)
- The semiotic medium = speech or writing, colour and line, texture, three-
dimension mass, the tone and pitch of the human voice or other sounds,
recorded and projected light, etc. (basically whether it was written/spoken
text, drama, radio programme, video,…)

- The radical of presentation = e.g. first-person narration, dramatic narration,

song, digital interface (it covers the relationship between the
speaker/author and the audience!)

- Mode = “in the adjectival sense a thematic and tonal qualification or ‘colouring’
of genre”, e.g. the heroic, tragic, comic, lyrical, picaresque, elegiac,
encyclopaedic, satiric, romantic, fantastic, gothic, …

- Genre = a more specific organization of texts with formal, rhetorical, and

thematic dimensions  what the text looks like, how it’s organized on the
page

- Sub-genre = further specification of genre by a particular thematic or formal

content (coronation ode; Petrarchan sonnet  certain features that make it
different from other sonnets)

POPULAR GENRES
- Literary fiction (= it was serious fiction, literature)
- Genre / popular fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, crime fiction, thrillers, novels 
it was considered to be shallow)
o Popular fiction = associated with industry and entertainment
o It is mass produced, it is written in a certain way to appeal
o But e.g. sci-fi is considered an interesting source for ideas
o Between 1930’s and 1970’s there was a shift where scholars moved to
genre fiction, to popular genres
- In contrast to genre writing, the literary remains in a deep way free and
unbound (they can write anything they wish, it is not
limited)

3. přednáška

Narrative
- Studied by a field called “Narratology”
= anything that tells or presents a story be it by oral or written text, picture,
performance or a combination of these ↑
 - Can be found in jokes, novels, plays, films, comic strips, conversations, … ↑
- Narrative communication (three levels!): ↑
- Communication shouldn’t be possible between various levels (characters
cannot directly communicate with the addressee or the reader!)
- The author and the narrator are completely separate entities
o In detective stories the narrator “communicates” with us, not the author
- When authors write about controversial themes it is important to separate the
story from the author (e.g. “why” can a white person narrate a story from a
black person’s perspective)

Structure of narratives
- Always question WHAT is narrated and HOW it is narrated
- Various scholars propose different terminologies
o Story (= made of characters, setting,…) vs. discourse (the second part
is “how it’s narrated”)
o Fabula vs. sujet
o Story vs. plot
- These terms may have a different meaning in the theories of various authors

events = something
that’s happening (all
events take place in a
particular settings); the
dynamic part is
represented by events!
(e.g. happening  “it
started to rain).
In actions we know the agent

- The events are organized in a chronological order

- The structure = An analysis of a story; a list of existents, story, events,…

Discourse (=text of literary work)

- Point of view/narrative situation
- Time
- Narrative modes (= how the events of the story are mediated by the narrator)
- Characterization (= what the characters are like; how do we learn what
they’re like?)
- Representation of consciousness (= it allows us to access the mind of
characters; how the mind of a character is represented in literature)
- Plot
 - As a reader, we go from
the top to the bottom.
Verbalization 
Composition 
Selection.

- We can never get to the

bottom box because the
process of “Selection”
cannot be undone
(meaning once the author
decided the elements, we
cannot change them) 
we have to imagine the
elements (different people
will understand/interpret
the stories in different
ways).

- This model can cover both

fiction and non-fiction.

- Narratives can appear in

other media than
literature, e.g. in film it is
possible to show multiple
events happening at the
same time  linearization
happens differently.

Time
We focus on 4 different aspects: tense, order, frequency, duration
o Tense = a grammatical category (  something is narrated in e.g., past tense,
present tense, …)
o Sometimes we switch between the tenses = narrative tense switch/shift
o We use the present tense for narrating the events of the story, or for
eternal truths (e.g. “The Earth goes around the Sun”)
o Order = chronological vs anachronological/anachronic order (how the events
are presented; the sequence of events)
o Flashforward/prolepsis = jumping into a future event
o Flashback/analepsis = jumping into a past event
o How does the event start?
 ab ovo = the beginning (from the first event)
 in medias res = we start the story “somewhere in the middle”
 in ultimas res = we start with the last event in the story
o Frequency = describes the relationship between the events (and then it’s
reported on the discourse)
o Singulative telling = when an event happens only once and is reported
in the discourse (e.g. when someone was born in the story)
o Repetitive telling = occurs when an event takes place only once but is
mentioned in the discourse repeatedly
o Iterative telling = an event happens repeatedly and is only mentioned
once (the phrase “used to”, e.g.: “He used to read books.”  he read 1
book, then another, then another…  but it is only mentioned once.)
o Duration = how we manage events that e.g. take place in different centuries
(how we “squeeze” them into the story)
o Story time = time from the first event of the story to the last event
o Discourse time = time we spent on the discourse (text)  reading the
book/watching the movie…
1. Scene/real-time = the story and discourse time is the same
2. Summary/speed up = the story time is longer than discourse
3. Stretch/slow down = the discourse is longer than the story time
4. Ellipsis = we move to a later event in the story time, but it’s
different because we skip a certain period of time, we don’t know
what happened
5. Pause = the story time has stopped, but the discourse time
continues (we do not advance to a later event but we stop at a
certain event  then we continue with a description, or comments
are inserted by the narrator)
4. přednáška

Narrator = the teller of the narrative, the person who speaks the narrative text
(Franz Stanzel)
- The concept of narrative situation
- Narrative is mediated by the narrator

Stanzel represents the narrator in “Typological Circle”

- 3 types of narrative situations (binary oppositions):

o First person narrative situation (person = identity or non-identity of
the worlds of the fictional characters and the narrator  if there is an
identity, the narrator is one of the characters; or the non-identity where
the narrator is not a part of the story)
o Authorial narrative situation (perspective = internal/external 
narrator who is outside of the story, there is no privileged character
from whose perspective the story is narrated)
 o Figural narrative situation (mode= transmission by teller-character of
by reflector-character  the narrator is not omniscient, they narrate
the story through only ONE character, not multiple)
Narrative situations = binary opposition 
1. The binary opposition of person = the world of the characters and
narrator is identical / the world of the characters and narrator are
separate
2. The opposition of perspective = external (outside of the
story)/internal (first person or figural situation) perspective
3. The opposition of figural narrative situation = we ask if there is a
distinct reflection between the character and the story / vs if we only
have a narrator  = first person / authorial

- The Typological circle is a model and it focuses on identification of ideal

cases of clearly defined narrative situations
- We place the real literary works in places on the circle
- There is other terminology that it not compatible with the Typological circle:
o Ich form vs. er form, these terms only describe language in the
grammatical categories
o Omniscient narrator  authorial NS
o Limited-omniscient narrator  figural NS
o The NS may change in the text, especially in longer works
o The NS is an extremely important aspect of any literary narrative!

Narrative modes
= tells us how much the narrative is mediated by the narrator
- The ways in which an episode is presented (Jahn)
Mimesis = the imitation of reality as faithfully as possible  showing
Diegesis = narration, the events are mediated by the narrator  telling
- Writers should show (the action) instead of telling (describing)
4 steps from showing to telling:
- Speech (pure mimesis)  what one character says to the other
- Report of action  “John crossed the street.”
- Description  context matters (to recognize the object is difficult)
- Comment/commentary (pure diegesis)  doesn’t have to be related to the
story, the narrator can communicate with the reader

5. Přednáška

CHARACTERS = entities who carry out the plot actions of narratives (they
strongly resemble real people or plausible people in fantastic situations)
 - Readers create fictional characters in their minds, by assembling the textual
details relayed by the narrator into patterns that seem like people

Characterization = process that helps us create human like characters by

learning information
- Narratorial vs. figural (by the narrator or a character)
- Implicit vs. explicit ( what is implied and what is said directly)
- Self-characterization vs. altero-characterization (if we get the information
from the character or other source)
o All these characterizations can be combined
- Block characterization = we get all/or most important information in one
“block”, e.g. in one paragraph („John was born on X, he is a nice, hardworking
person, he is also married but he hasn’t been happy recently…“
- Reliability = how much we can trust a narrator (reliable vs. unreliable
narrator)
o e.g. if a narrator is a small child, we probably cannot trust everything
the child says (or a mentally handicapped character)
We characterize the people in the narrative by collecting valuable information.
- We usually focus/like the characters more than the action in the text
(depends on the genre)

Types of characters:
In terms of their complexity:
- Flat vs. round characters (no information and development vs. interesting
background story and features)
o Mono-dimensional vs. multi-dimensional
o Static vs. dynamic characters (does not develop vs. does develop)

In terms of their role in the narrative:

- Major vs. minor characters
- Protagonist (main CHARACTER in the story, not a hero!) vs. antagonist (the
opponent of the protagonist  the “villain”)
- Foil character = it gives us an opportunity to compare this character with the
protagonist (the contrast between them). It can be a minor character
- Witness = witnesses an action that doesn’t directly happen to them
- Confidant = a character to whom the protagonist confides (they trust them)

Representation of consciousness
- Psychonarration = a technique where the narrator’s voice is clearly set off
from the language that runs through his subject’s head (what the narrator tells
us about the mind of the character in their own words)
 - Quoted monologue /interior monologue/ stream of consciousness = we
see fragments of thoughts, it is exactly what goes through the mind of the
character (typical features are: incomplete sentences, bad grammar… the
goal is to imitate mimesis as close as possible)  quoted monologue is NOT
in quotation marks!
- Narrated monologue/ free indirect discourse = the goal of this technique is
to take what is going on in the character’s head and put it into the correct
tense of the narrative (it is narrated by the narrator, but it incorporates the
character’s thoughts)

PLOT = a sequence of events that is connected into a meaningful

interconnected entity
- We look at the related events (by causal relationships); one event causes
another event
o SUBPLOT = sets of events that happen to e.g. minor characters or
minor events that happen to the main character but are not related to
the main plot
o Plot-line (main plot-line vs. subplot-line)
o Single-plot narrative = a very rare category
o Tightly plotted vs. loosely plotted (each event is a part of the plot vs.
many events that are not related to the main plot-line  episodic
narratives)

Types and genres of prose fiction

- Novel = long fiction narrative in prose
- Short story = shorter than a novel and “less complex”
- Epistolary novel = novel written in a form of letters
- Picaresque novel (picaro) = geographically located in Spain, it is episodic
- Historical novel = set in the past, sometimes it portraits real historical figures
(but it is still prose fiction)
- Gothic novel = took place in castles, the goal was to inspire fear and terror in
readers (in American literature they work on a psychological level)
- Bildungsroman / novel od education = describes coming of age of
characters
- Novel of manners = proper behaviour of character (popular in the 19 th
century)
- Social novel = inspired by the effects of Industrial revolution
- Metafiction = fiction about fiction; about the way we write literature
(postmodernism)
- Historiographic metafiction = type of metafiction that presents alternative
histories (they invent alternative explanations of events in the past)
- Crime fiction = focuses on investigation of a crime
 - Fantasy = set in imaginary places, it incorporates magic that is impossible to
explain by reason
- Science fiction = stories that are supposedly possible to happen in the future
with the advancement of technologies

6. Přednáška

Poetry – distinguished from prose by its formal features (frequently rhymes)

- Lyric poetry – expresses emotion, it does not tell a story (elegy, ode, sonnet)
- Epic (narrative) poetry – tells a story (epic, mock-epic, ballad)
- Didactic poetry – used to teach children (easy to remember)
- Occasional poetry – composed for a purpose (e.g. some kind of celebration)
Features:
- Relatively brief (expresses ideas and feelings)
- Dense expression (every word matters)
- Express subjectivity more than other texts
- Displays a musical or song-like quality
- Structurally and phonologically overstructured (some words/sounds are
repeated, they appear in a pattern)
- Syntactically and morphologically overstructured
- Deviate from everyday language
- Aesthetic self-referentiality

Over structuring
- Rhythm = a certain pattern that is repeated (sounds, stresses, words)
- Meter = a measured arrangement of stresses (accent) and syllables
o Metric systems:
o Accentual (we are interested in the number of stresses – we do
not care about the unstressed syllables: rap music, Old-English
poetry)
o Syllabic (we count the syllables – we do not care if they are
stressed or not: haiku)
You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
The page is not here.
o Accentual-syllabic (a combination – we are interested in the
number of stresses, syllables, and the pattern: modern-English
poetry)
o Free verse (there is no fixed pattern of stresses and syllables)

Accentual-syllabic meter
 - The basic unit = foot (combination of stressed and unstressed syllables)
o Iamb(us) 01 u- a man
o Trochee 10 -u Peter
o Dactyl (3syll.) 100 -uu endlessly
o Anap(a)est (3syll.) 001 uu- through the house
o Spondee 11 -- Cry, cry!

How many feet are there on a line?

1 monometer 5 pentameter
2 dimeter 6 hexameter
3 trimeter 7 heptameter
4 tetrameter 8 octameter

Examples:
U - u - u - u -
Come live with me and be my love
= iambic tetrameter

- u - u - u
From the earth thou springest
- u - u - u
like a cloud of fire
= trochaic trimeter

- u u - u u - u u - u u - u u - u ?
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks
= dactylic hexameter catalectic (there is a missing syllable)

RHYMES
- identify in pronunciation (we do not care about spelling) from the last
stressed vowel till the end of the word
TYPES of rhymes:
o full (fight – night)  the vowel is the same, followed by the consonant
“t”,
o rich (fly – ply)  there is something extra, e.g.: the preceding
consonant
o half-rhymes/pararhymes  we believe they might rhyme, but they
actually don’t meet the definition of rhyme
o consonance (rabies – robbers)  same cons., vowels different
o assonance (shake – hate)  vowels are same, cons. different
 o eye-rhyme (home – come)  appears to rhyme in the written
form
o masculine rhyme (fight – night)  how many syllables rhyme = 1
o feminine rhyme (picky – tricky)  2 syllables that rhyme
o triple rhyme (bicycles – icicles)  3 syllables that rhyme

TYPES in terms of LOCATION

- end of rhyme
Our Teddy Bear is short and fat,
which is not to be wondered at;
- internal rhyme (in the middle)
I see a red boat that has a red flag.
Just like my red coat and my little red pail.
- leonine rhyme (somewhere in the middle and at the end)
They took some honey, and plenty of money.
Seminář – 451 Fahrenheit

451 Fahrenheit
- How did the social changes start?  because the books would “offend”,
and discriminate against people (it didn’t start from the government)
o The people are not bothered to find out the truth
o The government adopted these measures because they thought that’s
what the people wanted
- One of the characters which represents the society well is Mildred (Montag’s
wife)  she’s completely surrounded herself with the technology but still we
can see she is not happy (she overdoses with pills), Mildred’s friend who
started crying when Montag recited the poem
o It is a widespread phenomenon in that society that people overdose
because they’re unhappy
o Captain Beatty – he also used to read books, he sort of sympathised
with Montag, he had a certain role in the establishment and in the end
he could not “break out of that circle”, he is similar to Montag

7. Přednáška

POETRY – RHYMING LINES

- Continuous rhyme aaaa bbbb
- Rhyming couplets aa bb cc
 - Alternate rhyme abab cdcd
- Embracing rhyme abba cddc
- Chain rhyme aba bcb cdc
- Rail rhyme aab ccb
STANZA FORMS
- Stanzas = the division of poems into groups of lines
o Stanza of two lines = couplet – heroic couplet (iambic pentameter of
‘aa’)
o Stanzas of three lines = tercet (triplet)
o Stanzas of four lines = quatrian – heroic quatrian (made of iambic
pentameter – ‘abab’)
- Stichik /stikik/ verse = when the poem is not divided into lines
Blank verse (not a stanza verse) = stichik unrhymed iambic (basic foot is iambus)
pentameter (5 of them)
- Frequently used by Shakespeare
SONNET
- A lyrical poem, has two basic forms: Italian or Petrarchan sonnet
o Made of an octave (8 lines) or octet + sestet (6 lines)
o The rhyming pattern: octave (abbaabba) + sestet (cdecde)
- English or Shakespearean sonnet
o Made of three quatrains + one couplet
o ‘Abab cdcd efef gg’

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
- A conspicuous departure from what competent users of a language
apprehend as the standard meaning of words, in order to achieve some
special meaning or effect
- Divided into two types of figures:
o Figures of thought – tropes (there is a change of meaning)
o Figures of speech – schemes (there is no change of meaning, but a
change in the arrangement of words)
Alliteration = repetition of consonants, Assonance = repetition of identical or
especially at the beginning of words, or similar vowels – especially in stressed
stressed syllables syllables – in a sequence of nearby
words
o Five miles meandering
with a mazy motion o Thou still unravished
o Betty Botter bought some bride or quietness
butter . . . (“brÁjd”, “quÁjetnes”)
o Thou foster child of
silence and slow time . . .
Consonance = the repetition of a
sequence of two or more consonants,
but with a change in the intervening
vowel
o live – love; lean – alone;
pitter – patter
Epistrophe = repetition of a key word
or phrase at the end of successive
lines / sentences / phrases
o Underneath all,
individuals,
o I swear nothing is good to
me now that ignores
individuals,
o The American compact is
altogether with
individuals . . .
Anadiplosis = repetition of the last
word of one clause at the beginning of
the following clause
o Information is not
knowledge, knowledge is
not wisdom, wisdom is
not truth, truth is not
beauty, beauty is not
Epizeuxis = repetition of a word or
phrase immediately
o Reputation, reputation,
reputation! O! I have lost
my reputation.
Anaphora = repetition of a key word or
phrase at the beginning of successive
lines / sentences / phrases
o Yes, we were looking at
each other
Yes, we knew each other
very well
Yes, we had made love
with each other many
times . . .
Symploce = repetition of both
beginnings and endings; a combination
of anaphora and epistrophe
o Are they Hebrews? So
am I. Are they Israelites?
So am I. Are they of the
seed of Abraham? So am
I.
love, love is not music
and music is the best.
Epanalepsis = repetition of the
beginning at the end
o Common sense is not so
common.
Polyptoton = repetition of the same
word or root in different grammatical
functions or forms
o Few men speak humbly
of humility.
The Greeks are strong,
and skilful to their
strength,
Fierce to their skill, and to
their fierceness valiant;
Synonym = a word similar in meaning
to another (usually a matter of
“shades” of meaning)
o insane, mad, demented,
daft, loopy, psychotic,
barpoo, crazy, nutty,
maghnoon, off one’s
coconut
Asyndeton = the omission of a
conjunction
o I came, I saw, I
conquered.
I do not understand; I
pause; I examine.
Ellipsis = Omission
o Everybody’s friend is
nobody’s.
Don't throw stones at
your neighbors’ if your
own windows are glass.
Aposiopesis = breaking off as if unable
or unwilling to continue
o The fire surrounds them
while— I cannot go on.
For if the sun breed
maggots in a dead dog,
being a god kissing
Tautology = repetition of ideas in
different words
o I myself personally; free
gift
Polysyndeton = addition of conjuctions
o The horizon narrowed
and widened, and dipped
and rose.
My sheep hear my voice,
and I know them, and
they follow me: And I give
unto them eternal life;
and they shall never
perish.
Zeugma = expressions in which a
single word stands in the same
grammatical relation to two or more
other words, but with an obvious shift
in its significance. Sometimes the word
is literal in one relation and
metaphorical in the other.
o A woman takes off her
claim to respect along
with her garments.
carrion— Have you a
daughter?
Hyperbaton = any intended deviation
from ordinary word order
o Arms and the man I sing.
 Some rise by sin, and
some by virtue fall.
Metaphor = a word or expression that
in literal usage denotes one kind of
thing is applied to a distinctly different
kind of thing, without asserting an
explicit comparison
o She was our queen, our
rose, our star. . .
Synecdoche = substitution of a part for
a whole
o A hungry stomach has no
ears.
Apostrophe = a direct and explicit
address either to an absent person or
to an abstract or nonhuman entity
o O Judgement! thou art
fled to brutish beasts . . .
Onomatopoeia = a word, or a
combination of words, whose sound
seems to resemble closely the sound it
denotes
o hiss, buzz, rattle, bang
Paradox = an apparently self-
contradictory (even absurd) statement
which, on closer inspection, is found to
contain a truth reconciling the
conflicting opposites
o I must be cruel only to be
kind.
Metonymy = substitution of a word for
a related word, such as cause for
effect, container for contained, raw
material for the finished object, etc.
o The pen is mightier than
the sword.
o Rome has spoken; the
case is concluded.
o I turned to see the voice
that spake with me.
Antithesis = a contrast or opposition in
the meanings of contiguous phrases or
clauses that manifest parallelism in
their syntax
o Willing to wound, and yet
afraid to strike.
Euphemism = an inoffensive
expression used in place of a blunt one
that is felt to be disagreeable or
embarrassing
o pass away [die]; comfort
station [toilet]
Oxymoron = a figure of speech which
combines incongruous and apparently
contradictory words and meanings for
a special effect
o No light, but rather
darkness visible.
o living dead
Parallelism = a similar word-order and
structure
o Women represent the
triumph of matter over
mind, just as men
represent the triumph of
mind over morals.
Periphrasis = a roundabout, elaborate
way of saying something
o the finny tribe [fish]
Personification = a figure in which
either an inanimate object or an
abstract concept is spoken of as
though it were endowed with life or
with human attributes or feelings
o Sky lowered, and
muttering thunder, some
sad drops
Wept at completing of the
mortal sin

Simile = a figure of speech in which As green as emerald.

one thing is likened to another, in such
away as to clarify and enhance an
image. It is an explicit comparison (as
Hyperbole = bold overstatement, or the
opposed to the metaphor where the
extravagant exaggeration of fact or of
comparison is implicit) recognizable by
possibility
the use of the words “like” or “as.”
o I haven’t seen you for
o And ice, mast-high, came
ages.
floating by,
o He’s as old as the hills.

Understatement = a figure which

deliberately represents something as
very much less in magnitude or
importance than it really is, or is
ordinarily considered to be
Litotes = a special form of
o The reports of my death understatement, the assertion of an
are greatly exaggerated. affirmative by negating its contrary
o Last week I saw a
o He’s not the brightest
woman flayed, and you
man in the world.
will hardly believe how
much it altered her
person for the worse.

8. Přednáška

DRAMA
 - It’s a narrative as well, it tells a story
- Typically not mediated by a narrator (its mimetic rather than diegetic – it’s
presented, not told)
- Formal features:
o Dramatis personae (a list of characters in the story)
o Primary text (the dialogue, monologue – what characters say on stage)
o Secondary text (all other texts, supplies practical illustrations –
background information)
The staging of a play – the performance is an act of interpretation (the same
play/fragment of text can change the meaning – e.g. different interpretations of
Hamlet)
- Stage set (how the stage is organized)
o Stage props (the objects that appear on stage)
o Word scenery (describing of the stage with words, there were no
objects)

Theatre (discourse = plot) – relies on conventions!

- We need to squeeze the story with a limited period of time
o Played time = from the first to the last event
o Playing time = the period from the beginning to the end of the
performance
- Succession vs Simultaneity (in prose, we can only present one event at a
time, in theatre it’s possible!)
- Duration: played time vs playing time (some of it requires special techniques:
o Speed-up = couple of days played in couple of seconds by e.g.
switching the light on and off
o Slowdown/stretch = not easy to achieve on stage
- Order: flashbacks, flashforwards,…  the problem is, that the audience must
be able to understand what is the order of events in the story
- Singulative (shown once) vs repetitive presentation (e.g. character appears
repeatedly)
- Catharsis = describes the emotional effect of the tragedy (or comedy and
quite possibly other artistic forms) on the audience (although some have
speculated on characters in the drama as well)  it should be a sort of
“cleansing” for the audience
- Alienation = effect in epic/analytical theatre  involves the use of techniques
designed to distance the audience from emotional involvement in the play
through jolting reminders of the artificiality of the theatrical performance
(chorus)
- Poetic justice = literary device in which ultimately virtue is rewarded and
viciousness is punished

CHARACTERS
 - Protagonist/antagonist
o In drama: heroes (moral, courageous characters) /anti-heroes
- Mutual relationships in drama:
o Constellation = describes the mutual relationship between the
characters in the whole play (fixed)
o Configuration = describes the characters that appear on stage at a
particular time (dynamically changes)
- Major characters/minor characters
o Eponymous hero (character’s name appear in the title – Hamlet)
o Multi-dimensional, dynamic, round characters VS. mono-dimensional,
static, flat characters
- Types (e.g. revenger type)
- Foil = contrast between various characters (the one is the opposite of another,
or used in order to emphasise the qualities of other character)
- Telling names: (“shorty” = someone who is not very tall)
- Techniques of characterization
o Explicit – features are named explicitly by the character himself or
another character
o Implicit = features are shown, we have to figure them out based on
character’s behaviour
o Authorial vs figural

NEW CONCEPTS
Types of utterances:
- Pragmatic (communicative) vs. rhetorical (“poetic” – beauty of the language)
- Turn-taking = when the characters talk to each other on stage
- Monologue (by themselves), dialogue (conversation)
- Types of speech (when they don’t speak to a particular addressee)
o Soliloquy = the character can show his inner emotions, thoughts with
the audience (“To be or not to be?”)
o Aside = based on convention; character turns to the audience and
makes a comment; all the other characters do NOT hear the comment!
(another way of revealing inner thoughts without other characters
knowing)
Three unities:
- Unity of plot = the play has only the main plot with no sub-plots
- Unity of place = all the events should take place only in one location
- Unity of time = all the events should take place within 24 hours

Freytag’s pyramid – shows the development of a typical tragedy

 1. Introduction = The main characters are introduced (we should understand
what is going on, who is who)
2. Complicating/rising action = conflict may appear
3. Climax/peripety = the key moment of the play (hamartia = the tragic mistake
of a character; they do something that changes the development of the action)
4. Falling action = final catastrophe is being delayed
5. Catastrophe (dénouement) = the unravelling; we learn the final outcome of
the story

MAIN SUBGENRES
- Comedy
o High (makes us laugh at the bad qualities of characters)/low comedy
(characters falling, kicking each other)
o Comedy of manners (the manners are used and ridiculed)
o Comedy of humours (laughing at “body fluids” ?)
o Farce (based on exaggeration – people falling, kicking each other)
- Tragedy
o Senecan tragedy (was supposed to be read rather than performed)
o Revenge tragedy/tragedy of blood
o Domestic/bourgeois tragedy (we don’t have a tragic hero, but tragic
accidents happening to “normal” people – antiheroes)
- Tragicomedy (features of both comedy and tragedy)