22 terms
Macaronic language
Macaronic language is the comic mixing of words and forms of different languages within a single text, in which the native language is saturated with distorted foreign words or foreign words are grammatically "domesticated" according to the laws of the native tongue. The name derives from the macaronic poetry of the Renaissance, which jokingly combined Latin with vernacular languages. Macaronic language creates a marked comic, parodic or satirical effect, often mocking the thoughtless aping of the foreign, affectation or linguistic illiteracy. In literature it serves as a means of characterisation — the exposure of a personage who groundlessly flaunts foreign words, becoming detached from their native soil. Macaronic language is closely linked to barbarisms and parody and is studied by stylistics in the aspect of the comic mixing of linguistic codes.
Magic Realism
Magic Realism is a movement in twentieth-century prose that organically combines the realistic depiction of everyday life with elements of the fantastic, mythological, and miraculous, presented as a natural, integral part of reality, without surprise or explanation. In Magic Realism the everyday and the supernatural coexist as equals, and myth and folklore permeate the present. World fame was brought to the movement by Latin American literature — Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude and the prose of Jorge Luis Borges. In Ukrainian literature a kindred phenomenon was the 'chimeric prose' (khymerna proza) of the 1970s and 1980s: the novels of Valerii Shevchuk (The House on the Hill), Volodymyr Drozd, and Vasyl Zemliak's A Flock of Swans, where the real interweaves with the folkloric-mythological, the parabolic, and the fantastic, and the sources of the imagery reach back to the Baroque tradition and the demonological motifs of Mykola Hohol (Gogol).
Manuscript
A manuscript is a text written by hand, as well as a handwritten book or document of the era that preceded printing or existed apart from it. Manuscripts are the principal source of early literature: before the invention of printing, texts were copied by hand on parchment or paper, so each manuscript is unique. Manuscripts are studied by paleography, codicology, and textology. The oldest dated East Slavic manuscripts are the Ostromir Gospel (1056–1057, copied by the deacon Hryhorii) and the Izborniks of Sviatoslav of 1073 and 1076. An outstanding monument of Ukrainian manuscript art is the Peresopnytsia Gospel (1556–1561), one of the first translations of the Gospel into the Ukrainian vernacular of the time, on which the presidents of Ukraine now take the oath. The manuscript heritage of Kyivan Rus' was studied by Ivan Franko, Volodymyr Peretz, and Yaroslav Isaievych. The term 'manuscript' is also used for the authorial original of a new work before its publication.
Marginalia
Marginalia (from the Latin margo — 'edge, margin') are inscriptions, notes, comments, drawings, or glosses in the margins of a manuscript or printed book, made by a copyist, editor, owner, or reader. Marginalia are divided into authorial, editorial, and readerly (ownership) notes. They are an invaluable source for the history of the book, of reading, and of reception: they reveal how a book was perceived, who owned it, and which passages drew attention. Readers' provenance notes help reconstruct the fate of a copy and its circle of readers. Marginal glosses in old manuscripts recorded interpretations of obscure words, out of which the first dictionaries arose. The Ukrainian bookman Ivan Vyshensky left polemical marginalia; numerous ownership and readerly notes on old prints have been studied by bibliologists. In a broader cultural sense, the 'marginal' means the peripheral, 'in the margins' of the dominant discourse — a concept important for postcolonial theory.
Marxist Criticism
Marxist criticism is a movement in literary studies that regards literature in connection with socioeconomic relations, class struggle, and ideology. Drawing on Karl Marx's doctrine of the base (the mode of production) and the superstructure (forms of social consciousness, including art), Marxist criticism investigates the social conditioning of artistic creation. Its most productive versions, however, avoid vulgar 'economic determinism.' György Lukács developed the theory of realism and the 'typical'; Antonio Gramsci, the concept of cultural hegemony; Walter Benjamin, the analysis of the work 'in the age of mechanical reproduction'; Theodor Adorno, the critique of the 'culture industry'; Fredric Jameson, the slogan 'always historicize.' Terry Eagleton popularized Marxist literary theory. This analytical tradition must be distinguished from the dogmatic 'socialist realism' imposed on Soviet writers as an obligatory method.
Masculine rhyme
Masculine rhyme is a rhyme with the stress on the final syllable of the consonant words (for example, "delight — night"). Its clausula consists of only one, stressed syllable, and therefore masculine rhyme sounds springy, clear and energetic, lending the line a marked completeness. Masculine rhymes are often used to create a dynamic, chiselled rhythm, and in alternation with feminine rhymes to diversify the stanza. The type of rhyme is directly linked to the structure of the clausula: in a masculine rhyme there are no unstressed syllables after the final stress. Combined with various metres, masculine rhyme produces diverse rhythmic effects — from march-like chiselling to the aphoristic terseness of endings.
Maxim
A maxim is a variety of aphorism, a terse formulation of a moral principle, a rule of conduct or an ethical norm that has the character of a generalised precept for living. A maxim is distinguished by clarity of thought, logical completeness and a prescriptive orientation: it proclaims a certain ethical law as a guide to action. The genre of the maxim developed especially in the French moralist tradition (La Rochefoucauld), where short, polished judgements about human nature acquired the status of an independent literary genre. Maxims may form part of a literary work or exist as separate miniatures of philosophical-ethical content. The maxim borders on the sententia, the aphorism and moral reflection and is studied as a phenomenon on the border of literature, philosophy and ethics that unites artistic form with didactic content.
Melodrama
Melodrama is a dramatic genre in which a sharp, tense plot with a stark opposition of good and evil, virtue and vice, is accompanied by emphasized emotionality, touching situations, and moralizing pathos. Melodrama appeals above all to the spectator's feelings, tending toward striking stage situations, unexpected turns of fate, and a happy (or emphatically tragic) resolution. The genre took shape in the French theater of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In Ukrainian dramaturgy and theater melodramatic elements were organically joined with folk everyday drama: features of melodrama are present in the popular plays of the Ukrainian 'theater of the luminaries' — Marko Kropyvnytsky and Mykhailo Starytsky (Do Not Go to the Evening Gathering, Hryts) — where a sharp love conflict, songfulness, and emotional tension captivated a broad audience.
Memoir
The memoir (recollections) is a documentary-artistic genre in which the author narrates real events of the past that he witnessed or took part in, and famous people and the era, relying on his own memory. The memoir combines the reliability of historical testimony with the subjectivity of a personal view and artistic exposition; it is an important source for history and literary studies. The world tradition of memoir writing is rich: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, the recollections of many writers and statesmen. In Ukrainian literature outstanding examples of the genre are Oleksandr Dovzhenko's Diary (on the border of memoir and confession), Yurii Smolych's recollections A Tale of Unrest about the literary life of the 1920s, the memoirs of Dokiia Humenna and Ulas Samchuk (On a White Horse), and numerous testimonies about the era of the Executed Renaissance and the repressions.
Metafiction
Metafiction is a type of literary prose that consciously draws attention to its own fictionality and to the process of its own making, breaking the illusion of reality (the 'baring of the device'). Metafiction reflects on the nature of literature, the role of author and reader, and the boundary between invention and reality. The term was introduced by William Gass (1970), and the theory was developed by Patricia Waugh ('Metafiction,' 1984) and Linda Hutcheon ('Narcissistic Narrative'). The devices of metafiction are the author's inset commentary, address to the reader, the 'novel within a novel,' characters aware of their literary nature, the rupture of the plot, and play with genre conventions. Historical precursors are Cervantes's 'Don Quixote' and Laurence Sterne's 'Tristram Shandy.' Metafiction is a characteristic feature of postmodernism. In Ukrainian literature, metafictional strategies were embodied by Yuri Andrukhovych, Yuri Izdryk ('Wozzeck'), and Serhiy Zhadan.
