was
the functional military and government unit of early Anglo-Saxon
society. The term was first coined by the classical historian
Tacitus when he described the Germanic tribes north of Rome.
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E: A genre
of Italian farce from the sixteenth-century characterized by
stock
characters, stock situations, and spontaneous dialogue.
Typically, the plot is an intrigue
plot and it involves a soubrette
who aids two young lovers in foiling the rigid constraints of
their parents. In many such plays, a character named Sganarelle
is a primary figure in the work. Often there is a zani,
or foolish-servant, who provides physical comedy in contrast
to the anguish of the young lovers. In the end, the couple achieves
a happy marriage. Commedia dell'arte may have influenced
Shakespeare's comedies, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor,
and Moliere's plays, such as L'amour Medecin, commonly
translated into English as Love is the Doctor.
COMMON
MEASURE: Also called common meter, common measure
consists of closed poetic quatrains rhyming ABAB
or ABCB, in which
the lines of iambic tetrameter (eight syllables) alternate with
lines of iambic trimeter (six syllables). This pattern is most
often associated with ballads
(see above), and it is occasionally referred to as "ballad
measure." Many of Emily Dickinson's poems are in loose
common measure using slant
rhyme, for instance:
Much
Madness is divinest Sense--
To a discerning Eye--
Much Sense--the starkest Madness--
'Tis the Majority
A fun and simple test to
recognize common measure in poetry is to take a stanza and
try singing it aloud
to a well-known tune written in common meter, such as "Gilligan's
Isle," "Amazing Grace," or "House of the Rising Sun." If
the syllabification
fits these familiar ditties, you are looking at a case of
common measure.
COMMON
METER: Another term for common
measure (see above).
COMMONIZATION:
The linguistic term for an eponym--a common word that is derived
from the proper name of a person or place. For instance, the
sandwich gained its name from its inventor, the fourth
Earl of Sandwich. The word lynch comes from Captain
William Lynch, who led bands of vigilantes to hang hoboes and
bums residing near Pittsylvania County. The verb shanghai,
meaning to kidnap or press into forced labor, comes from the
practices of conscription common in the oriental city of Shanghai.
The word stentorian comes from the loud-mouthed Stentor
in Greek legend, and herculean comes from the muscle-bound
Hercules, and so on.
COMPERT (plural:
comperta): Specifically, birth-tales
in Old Irish literature that detail
the conception and birth
of a hero. Examples include the Compert Con Culainn (Birth
of Cú Chulainn). Usually supernatural or extraordinary
events involve themselves in the conception, such as the Druid
Cathbad's seduction of Nessa after prophesying what the hour
would be lucky for (begetting a king upon a queen!) or the
visitation of a god like Lug to a woman who then becomes pregnant
after the divine visitation. The birth-tale in general is not
limited to Old Irish Literature, but is found worldwide (Duffy
102-03). Examples outside of Irish literature include the birth
of Jesus,
or the Buddha, or Leda and Hercules in Greek myth, Pryderi's conception in the First Branch of The Mabinogion, or King
Arthur's conception in Arthurian legends.
COMPLETENESS:
The second aspect of Aristotle's requirements for a tragedy.
By completeness, Aristotle emphasizes the logic, wholeness,
and closure
necessary to satisfy the audience.
COMPLEX METAPHOR: Another term for a telescoped metaphor.
COMPOSITE
MONSTER (in architecture, often called a chimera
after the Greek monster): The term is one mythologists use to
describe the fantastical creatures in Assyrian, Babylonian,
Greek, and medieval European legends in which the beast is composed
of the body-parts of various animals. For instance, in Greek
mythology, the chimera has the body of a lion, tale of a serpent,
wings of a bat, and a goat-head, a lion-head, and a serpent's
head. Likewise, the sphinx has a lion's body and a woman's head
and breasts; the centaur has a horse's body and human torso
and a human head where the horse-head should be; the minotaur
has a bull's head and a man's body; and the harpy has an avian
body and a woman's head, breasts, and arms. Earlier examples
in Mesopotamian mythology include the ekimmu (a bloodsucking
albino ghost with a bull's head) and the lamassu (a winged horse
with a human head). In the medieval period, composite monsters
include the formecolion, with an ant's body and a lion's head;
the mermaid, with a human top and a fish bottom; and the cockatrice,
which mingles parts of a rooster and a serpent. Contrast with
additive
monster, above.
Composite monsters were
common in the legends of classical and ancient cultures, but
diminished in favor after the Renaissance. Many theories propose
to explain the common tendency to create composite monsters.
Theories include mistranslation in traveler's tales, in which
an animal is describing as having a head like such-and-such
a creature, but the simile is lost in translation; the encounter
of fossil remnants of extinct animals, or bones found jumbled
together and misassembled; and the heraldic practice of dimidiation,
in which a nobleman's son might take two animals found on his
father's and mother's coats of arms combine them into a composite
creature to illustrate his genealogy.
An example in 20th century
films includes The Fly. In this 1950s horror classic,
a fly and a human trade bodies and heads.Cf. therianthropic and
theriomorphic.
COMPOSITOR:
A typesetter in a Renaissance print shop. To speed the printing
process, most of Shakespeare's plays appear to have been set
by multiple compositors. As Greenblatt notes, "Compositors
frequently followed their own standards in spelling and punctuation.
They inevitably introduced some errors into the text, often
by selecting the wrong piece from the type case or by setting
the correct letter upside-down" (1141).
COMPOUNDING:
A term from linguistics used to describe the creation of
a new
word ("neologism")
that comes about by taking two existing words and sticking
them together to create a brand new concept (Horobin 192).
All languages do this
to some extent. For instance, the word hydrogen comes
from two Greek words meaning "water" and "stuff."
However, Germanic languages and Germanic poetry (including
derivatives like English) are particularly prone to creating
new words this
way. Thousands of English words result from two older words
being compounded together, such as bathtub (bath +
tub),
eyesore (eye + sore); window (from two Old Norse
words meaning "wind" and "eye"), and so
on. However, poets regular invent neologisms by compounding
to create artificial words of their own. Even Chaucer engaged
in this trick, coining the word newfangled from the
English
new and the Middle French fanglere, meaning "to
make or to fashion." See neologism,
blending,
and kenning.
COMPURGATION:
In addition to trial
by ordeal, compurgation was the medieval law practice
among Christianized Anglo-Saxon tribes to determine innocence.
A man accused of a crime would publicly swear to his innocence.
The judge then gave the defendant thirty days to to collect
a number of "oath-helpers" who would also swear to
his innocence (or at least his good character). If he was unable
to find the required number, he was either found guilty or he
could appeal to trial by ordeal. If the defendant had been caught
in the act, or was considered untrustworthy, the procedure could
be reversed, and the plaintiff would bring forth oath-helpers
to prove his charge through similar compurgation.
CONCEIT
(also called a metaphysical conceit): An elaborate
or unusual comparison--especially one using unlikely metaphors,
simile, hyperbole, and contradiction. Before the beginning of
the seventeenth century, the term conceit was a synonym
for "thought" and roughly equivalent to "idea" or "concept."
It gradually came to denote a fanciful idea or a particularly
clever remark. In literary terms, the word denotes a fairly
elaborate figure of speech, especially an extended comparison
involving unlikely metaphors,
similes,
imagery,
hyperbole,
and oxymora.
One of the most famous conceits is John Donne's "A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning," a poem in which Donne compares two souls
in love to the points on a geometer's compass. Shakespeare also
uses conceits regularly in his poetry. In Richard II,
Shakespeare compares two kings competing for power to two buckets
in a well, for instance. A conceit is usually classified as
a subtype of metaphor.
Contrast with epic
simile and dyfalu.
CONCORD:
See discussion under agreement.
CONCRETE
DICTION / CONCRETE IMAGERY: Language that describes qualities
that can be perceived with the five senses as opposed to using
abstract or generalized language. For instance, calling a fruit
"pleasant" or "good" is abstract,
while calling a fruit "cool" or "sweet"
is concrete
Copyright Dr. L.
Kip Wheeler 1998-2012. Permission is granted for non-profit,
educational, and student reproduction. Last updated March 30, 2012. Contact: kwheeler@cn.edu Please
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