Introduction by Drew Shaw
The ‘field’ of English language and literature studies is more like a forest - one full of jargon where it is easy to get lost. We may hear ‘Shakespeare is a master of iambic pentameter’ or ‘Othello’s anagnorisis is an excruciating moment of truth’ or ‘Achebe’s writing is laden with aphorisms’, but what do these terms mean? In poetry what is eye rhyme or falling rhyme, enjambment or a terza rima? In linguistics, what are adjacency pairs, back-channelling, consonant clusters, diphthongs or homonyms? What is Communication Accommodation Theory or a sociolect? In English Studies there is a vast vocabulary of terminology that can seem elusive. Literary and linguistic terms should enhance our understanding and appreciation, but without ready explanations they may seem disorientating, and one risks being lost in a forest of jargon. What we often lack - both teachers and students of English - is a guide to explain it all.
The author of this glossary of literary and linguistic terms - our guide - is John Eppel, who has been a poet, short story writer and novelist since the 1960s. He has so far published twenty-one books and won the Ingrid Jonker Prize (1989), the M-Net Prize (1992), a Zimbabwe Achievers Award (2012), a NAMA (National Arts and Merits Award) (2015), and the Poetry Business Prize (2016). Teaching English Language and Literature in schools for nearly fifty years, ‘Mr Eppel’, as he is known by former students, is appreciated for bringing poems, plays and novels alive. His first teaching post was at Milton High School (his alma mater) in Bulawayo in 1971 and now, in 2020, he is teaching part-time at Girls College, also in Bulawayo, where he worked previously in the 1980s and 1990s. In the interim decades, he has taught at Hamilton High School and Christian Brothers College in Bulawayo, and at various schools in England and South Africa.
A senior ‘man of letters’ and popular teacher, John Eppel is well positioned to lead discussions of English Studies. From Austen to Achebe, Dickens to Dangarembga, Kanengoni to Keats, Marvell to Mungoshi and Chaucer to Shakespeare, he has taught a vast range of literature on school syllabuses over the decades, and former students (commenting on FaceBook literary forums) note his unique ability to explain and inspire simultaneously. His ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level literature study guides (published by Weaver in Harare) also remain popular.
This handbook is intended for students and teachers of English language and literature studies, as well as aspiring writers of poetry, short stories, and novels. What started as a discussion forum on Facebook has ended up as a full-length account of key concepts, a type of go-to resource. Laden with anecdotes and examples, it will also appeal more broadly to any literature enthusiast keen to expand literary and linguistic knowledge, or simply to be entertained by a highly readable collection of commentaries.
Accompanying the glossary is my own ‘Beginners Guide to Using Literary and Cultural Theory’, which expands on critical concepts outlined by John Eppel in the glossary, and which suggests how students of English Literature at ‘A’ level and first-year University can further develop tried and tested critical skills while also familiarising with other critical practices, such as Psychoanalytic, Marxist, Feminist, Poststructuralist or Postcolonial criticism. The introductory guide and reading list may also help those suddenly tasked with addressing ‘theory’ for the first time in the classroom.
In the meantime, the following questions have been collected to challenge even the most literate and knowledgeable, and answers can be located, in alphabetical order, in the glossary. We hope you enjoy the quiz and its exploration of literary and linguistic jargon.
QUIZ ONE
What is bombast?
What is a caricature?
What is the canon?
What is Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT)?
What is the collective unconscious?
What are consonant clusters?
What is the cooperative principle?
What is Courtly Love? Give an example.
What is a dactyl?
What are determiners?
QUIZ TWO
What is didactic literature?
What is a diphthong?
What is a domestic tragedy?
What is a dumb show?
What is an elegy?
What is enjambment?
What is eye rhyme?
What is falling rhythm?
What is farce? Give an example.
What is first-person narration?
QUIZ THREE
What is a foot in poetry?
What is a genderlect?
What does holophrastic mean?
What are homonyms?
What is the difference between hype and hyperbole?
What’s an interior monologue?
What is intertextuality?
Explain irony? Give an example in literature.
What are Janus words?
What is joissance?
QUIZ FOUR
What is a lament?
What is LASS? Explain it.
What is a leitmotif?
What is a lingua franca?
What is logocentrism?
What is magic realism?
What is a malapropism?
What is a maxim?
What is a melodrama?
What is minimalism in literature?
QUIZ FIVE
What is Negritude?
What is New Criticism?
What is a novella?
What is an Ode?
What is an omniscient narrator?
What is an onomatopoeia?
Give and example of Oral tradition?
What is an oxymoron?
What is a parable?
What is a paradigm shift?
QUIZ SIX
What is a paradox?
What is pastoral poetry?
Explain personification, giving a poetic example.
What is a Petrarchan sonnet? Explain its main components.
Explain the main features of a picaresque novel and give an example.
What is a poetics?
What are some features of postmodernism in literature?
What is Poststucturalism?
Who were the Pre-Raphealites?
What is Practical Criticism?
QUIZ SEVEN
What is prosody?
What is a pun?
What is a quatrain?
What is realism?
What is a refrain?
What is a revenge tragedy?
What is a rhapsody?
What is socialist realism?
What is a spondee?
What is stream of consciousness writing? Give and example.
QUIZ EIGHT
What is subtext?
What is surrealism? State some of its characteristics.
What is a synecdoche? Give an example.
Explain the Theatre of the Absurd. Give examples.
What is third person narration?
What is a tragic flaw? Give an example.
What is tragic irony? Give an example.
What is tragicomedy? Give an example from Shakespeare.
Who were the troubadours?
What is verisimilitude?