Terms for “Julius Caesar”

Terms for “Julius Caesar” EQ: How can I identify and analyze the characters, themes, and structures of a Shakespearean Tragedy?

Tragedy • A play, novel, or other narrative that depicts serious and important events in which the main character(s) come to an unhappy end.

Anachronism • Event or detail that is inappropriate for the time period. • Example: see notes

Apostrophe • A technique by which a writer addresses an inanimate object, idea, or person who is either dead or absent • See example on notes

Blank verse • Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=F221C0F4-C544-41F1-BB8D-C7FCB7FC6E2A&blnFromSearch=1&productcode=US

Iambic pentameter • Aline of poetry that contains 5 metric feet (iambs) consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. • Metric foot= term for a unit of rhyme and length in a line of verse. • Meter= the basic rhythmic structure • Foot= basic metrical unit (iamb=short followed long, as in the word “delay”) • SO, an iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed. The “DA-DUM” sound, much like the human heart, replicates this sound.

Example A line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row: The tick-TOCK rhythm of iambic pentameter can be heard in the opening line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tells the time

Iambic pentameter Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much, such men are dangerous. (I. ii. 192-195)

Dialogue • Conversations between two or more characters

Aside • A quiet remark to the audience or another character that no one else on stage is supposed to hear. • See example on notes

Soliloquy • A long speech given by a character alone on stage to reveal his or her private thoughts. • See example on notes

Monologue • An extended speech presented by an actor in a drama or narrative. • See example on notes

Shakespearean speech

Rhetorical devices • Used to make speech appeal to a person’s emotions and to make speech more convincing and memorable. (Antony’s funeral speech is full of rhetorical devices and appeals.) • Repetition: the repeated use of words and sounds “Honorable men” • Parallelism: repeated grammatical structures (pharses, clauses, compound parts) (EX: “Veni, vidi, vici “(I came, I saw, I conquered)- a comment reportedly written by the real Julius Caesar. • Rhetorical Questions: questions that need no answer. “Did this in Caesar seam ambitious?”

Irony • Contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality • Verbal- Discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. (EX: “But Brutus is an honorable man/So are they all, all honorable men " (Said with verbal irony since the audience knows only what has been told them, but Antony knows of the conspiracy.) • Situational- Contrast between what would seem appropriate and what really happens, or when there is a contradiction between what we expect to happen and what really takes place. (EX: Caesar is going to stay home on his assassination day but Decius changes Caesar’s mind.) • Dramatic- When the audience or reader knows something that a character in a narrative does not know. ( EX: The audience, knowing that Caesar will be assassinated watches him set out on the Ides of March.)

Extended metaphor • A comparison made over many lines. • See notes for example

Foreshadowing • The use of clues to hint at events that will occur later in a plot. • See notes for examples

pun • Play on the multiple meanings of a word. • See notes for example

Terms for “Julius Caesar”