Romeo & JulietKey Literary Terms

Drama!

• Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.• (DRAMA IS FICTIONAL ACTING)

• The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action"

Being a Kid….

• Children had no rights except those allowed by parents: • Teenagers had to obey parents ever whim until marriage• Marriages were commonly arranged for parents for purposes

other than love and affection. • Daughters married young at ages 14-15• Father’s had an obligation to choose someone to support her

materially and protect her physically. • Wives were expected to obey husbands

Many of these ideas are challenged in Romeo & Juliet

Courtly Love

• Courtly love is a code and philopsohy of love that flourished in France and later in England.

• According to philosophy, falling love was by necessity accompanied by extreme emotional distress- helplessness, confusion, agitation, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and a general agony over the situation.

• The lover engages in interminable reflections on the nature of love and his own part in the state.

Petrarchan Conceit

• Petrarchan conceit was a type of conceit- an overblown, almost ridiculous metaphor comparing two irreconcilably different things.

• Romeo utilizes this in his descriptions of forlorn state to his friends.

Authorship and R & J

• Shakespeare composed Romeo & Juliet between 1594-1596.• As were most of his plays, it is based on older tales, most notable

Arthur Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. • Brooke’s 3,000 line poem has a highly moral tone; disobedience, in

addition to fate, is what brings about the deaths of the two lovers. • Shakespeare altered previous versions of R & J in order to create his

own unique version. • Brooke’s took place over 9 months. His takes place over 5 days. • Decresed Juliet's age from 16 to 13 to emphasize her youth and create

shock value. • Shakespeare increased the roles of minor character like Mercutio and

the nurse for character building. • Mercutio becomes a foil for the peace-loving Benvolio. • The Nurse’s bawdiness emphasizes Juliet's gracious refinement.

Features of Shakespeare's Language

• Lyric, beautiful language is seen in such scenes as the first meeting between Romeo & Juliet at the party- which they converse in sonnet form- and in the balcony scene.

Characterized by Ambiguity

• Shakespeare uses double entendres freely, letting the audience interpret the words in one way while the characters interpret them differently. A key example of this would be the conversation between Juliet and her mother in Act II. Scene V. Juliet expresses her love for Romeo and her desire for his safety while outwardly seeming to hate him and whish him harm. • Juliet:

Would non but I might venge my cousin’s death!

O, how my heart abhors

To hear him named, and cannot come to him.

To wreak the love I bor my cousin

Upon his body that slaughter’d him!

Puns

• Puns are utilized for the sake of witty wordplay and comic relief, such as in the first scene. The jests of the Capulet servants, or Mercutio’s dying jest, “Ask for me to-morrow, /and you shall find me a grave man, “ (Act III, Scene I). The entire opening Scene is a series of puns playing on words.

Characterized by Structured Verse

• Shakespeare uses an essential pattern of blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, throughout the play.

• Usually unimportant or aristocratic characters speak in blank verse, while lesser characters do no.

• When the pattern changes, it is for a reason. • Notice how servants speak in prose while the “higher born”

characters speak in verse.

Characterized by Figurative Language

• Shakespeare’s character often use figurative language to elaborate upon ideas and amplify imagery. • Simile: “So tedious is this day as is the night before some festival

to an impatient child” (Juliet describes her state of suspense)• Metaphor: “I am no pilot; yet were though as far as that vast shore

was’d with the farthest sea I would adventure for such merchandise. (Romeo describing affection for Juliet)

• Personification: “night’s cloak to hide” (Romeo taking about hiding)

• Hyperbole: “every cat and dog and little mouse, every unworthy thing live here in heaven and may look upon her”

• Understatement: “ a scratch, a scratch” (Mercutio describing wound that kills him)

Paradox

• a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.• Wise fool (OXYMORON)• Bittersweet (OXYMORON)• Nobody goes to that restaurant because it is too crowded• You shouldn’t go into the water until you know how to

swim. • If you didn’t get this message, call me.

Paradox in Literature

• In George Orwell's Animal Farm, the words "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" are part of the cardinal rules. Clearly this statement does not make logical sense. However, the point of a paradox is to point out a truth, even if the statements contradict each other.

• In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the title character states "I must be cruel to be kind." On the surface, once again, this statement does not seem to make much sense. Can an individual convey kindness through evil?

Paradox in Romeo & Juliet

• Example: • Was ever a book containing such vile matter so fairly

bound?• O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!• A damned saint, an honorable villain!

Foil Characters

• Foil: a character whose qualities usually serve to emphasize the actions or qualities of the main character, the protagonist, by providing a strong contrast. On occasion, the foil is used as a contrast to a character other than the main one. • Example: Shakespeare uses Benvolio as a foil for both

Mercutio and Tybalt. Benvolio has a steady, peaceable nature, whereas both Mercutio and Tybalt are impulsive, rash, and hot-headed.

Allusions

• Indirect references to a person, place, poem, book, event etc. which is not part of the story, that the author expects the reader will recognize. • Example: Shakespeare alludes to Greek and Roman

mythology and general folklore in Romeo and Juliet. • Auora• Queen Mab• Prince of Cats

• Cookie Monster/Hunger Games

Dynamic & Static Characters

• Romeo is an example of a Dynamic character. He is immature, reckless, fickle and melodramatic. He changes toward the middle of the play when out of love for Juliet he refuses to fight Tybalt even at the expense of his reputation. At the end of the play he seems to have matured as a result of his true love for Juliet, even as he does give into his despair and kills himself.

• Mercutio and Tybalt are both examples of static characters. They are throughout the play temperamental, rash and hotheaded. It is these traits and the character’s inability to control them that ultimately cause their death.

Tragedy and the Tragic Hero

• In a tragedy, the central figures meets with disaster or grave misfortune. In most tragedies, the tragic hero’s downfall is the usually the result of fate’s intervention, or of a character flaw. The tragic figure is usually of noble stature and is basically good. The downfall then seems worse than what the figure actually deserves.

• Aristotle defines a tragic hero by these basic tenets, and states further that the tragic hero should suffer some recognition of his flaw and the reason for his downfall.

R & J’s Deviation from the Tragic Hero

• Even in the Renaissance, the tragic hero was almost exclusively male, but Shakespeare contrives a play that seems to have two tragic heroes, male and female.

• While the characters blame fate for the outcome, the audience can see that the outcome is the direct consequence of the characters own decisions and actions.

• It is not the heroes who experience the recognition of their errors, but the characters around him-the Prince, the Montagues, and the Capulets.

Motif & Imagery

• Shakespeare uses several repeating images, or motifs, to add richness to Romeo & Juliet and to create associations with various characters.

• Light and Darkness• Both lovers associate each other with light. • Romeo compares Juliet to light “the torches burn bright’ • Juliet states that if Romeo dies he should be cut in “little stars”. • “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east , and Juliet is

the sun!”

• Darkness is associated primarily with Romeo & Juliet’s love affair. Daylight works against them; their love can only be nourished with darkness.

Motif & Imagery cont.

• Death:• There are multiples instances of death throughout the play. • The Friar states, “The earth that nature’s mother is her

tom;/What is her burying grave, that is her womb” • In the final scene of the play Romeo looks on Capulets

tomb and states that it is the “womb of death” and envisions death as Juliet’s lover.

Monologue

• An extended uninterrupted speech by a character in a drama.

• Mercutio: Queen Mab Speech

Charlie Brown Monologue

Aside

• A character speaks to the audience.• Zach Morris Aside • Chorus: They address audience on purpose with the

prologue.

Soliloquy

A character re-states his thoughts or feelings without addressing any other characters.

Balcony scene: Romeo explains to himself how beautiful Juliet is.

Hamlet Soliloquy

Speaker

• The voice used by an author to tell/narrate a story or poem.

Stage Directions

• Instructions printed in italics used to describe sets, lighting, sound effects, and the appearance, personalities, and movements of characters preforming a particular play (not meant to be spoken)

• A playwright's written instructions provided in the text of a play about the setting or how the actors are to move and behave in a play.

Stage Directions

Playwright

• a writer of plays

Fact vs. Opinion

• Fact Vs. Opinion United Streaming

Argument Position

• The position or claim that author establishes. Arguments should be supported with valid evidence and reasoning and balanced by the inclusion of counterarguments that illustrate opposing viewpoints.

Defense of a Claim

• Support provided to mark an assertion as reasonable.

Literary Analysis

• In your literary Analysis Paper, you will be defending a claim that you will make regarding Romeo & Juliet. You will be asked to take stance/position on something within the play that you feel strongly about.

• Look over rubric & requirements.