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. ?guidAssetId=F221C0F4-C544-41F1-BB8D- C7FCB7FC6E2A&blnFromSearch=1&productc ode=US

IAMBIC PENTAMETER  A line 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 daDUMdaDUMdaDUMdaDUMdaDUM 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 )

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