Literary Terms in Action

Monique and AJAP English 12

Setting

Def.: the time and place in which the events in a work of fiction, drama, or narrative poetry occur.

Examples: 1. The Odyssey is ancient Greece, but various episodes

are set in such places as Odysseus’s native island of Ithaca, Helen and Menelaus’s palace in Sparta, and the home of the gods on Mount Olympus.

2. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, the main setting is Kabul. However, the setting includes a time span of several decades.

Dramatic Monologue

Def.: a poem that is spoken by a fictional narrator who is clearly different from the author in age, situation, or gender. The major purpose of this is for the reader to reveal, often unwittingly, significant aspects of his/her qualities, values, and experiences, which are inferred by the reader.

Examples:1. T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock,” in

which the narrator is a prudish , self-conscious guest at a cocktail party.

2. In the movie “Pulp Fiction”, Samuel Jackson’s character gives a dramatic monologue about Ezekiel 25:17, revealing his past as a gangster.

Epigram

Def.: (from the Greek word for “inscription”). Is a witty saying in either verse or prose, concisely phrased and often satiric.

Examples: 1. In “Epigram” Samuel Taylor Coleridge cleverly

defines the form in a verse that exemplifies it: What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole,

Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

Martial and Epigrams

The Roman poet Martial wrote twelve books of epigrams, over a thousand individual poems.

"I felt a little ill and called Dr. Symmachus.Well, you came, Symmachus, but you brought 100 medical students with

you.One hundred ice-cold hands poked and jabbed me.

I didn't have a fever, Symmachus, when I called you –but now I do.”Book V, No. 9

In Latin,

   dē Symmachō medicō discipulīsque eius centum        languēbam: sed tū comitātus prōtinus ad mē            vēnistī centum, Symmache, discipulīs.        centum mē tetigēre manūs Aquilōne gelātae;           nōn habuī febrem, Symmache: nunc habeō.