8 terms
Ode
The ode is a solemn lyric poem that glorifies an eminent person, a significant event, a lofty idea, or a phenomenon, distinguished by an elevated, pathos-laden tone, a wealth of rhetorical figures, and a strophic structure. The genre descends from the ancient Greek choral song; its canon was established by Pindar (solemn odes honoring victors of the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games) and by the Roman Horace. In the age of Classicism the ode became one of the leading 'high' genres. In Ukrainian literature the ode underwent a burlesque-travesty reinterpretation: Ivan Kotliarevsky, in his Song for the New Year 1805, parodies odic pathos. Later the solemn odic intonation was used by Pavlo Tychyna and Maksym Rylsky. In the world tradition famous odes include John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn and Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy.
Officialese
Officialese is a word, phrase or grammatical construction characteristic of the official-business style that finds its way into an environment unusual for it — literary, journalistic or colloquial — and is perceived there as stylistically alien: "the aforementioned," "to take place," "in connection with the absence of." In business speech officialese is appropriate as a means of standardisation, but outside it, it makes the text dry, cumbersome, impersonal. In literature officialese is used deliberately — for the satirical characterisation of a bureaucrat, the exposure of formulaic thinking or the creation of a comic effect. The unmotivated penetration of officialese into literary and journalistic speech is considered a stylistic flaw. Officialese is a subject of stylistics and the culture of language in the aspect of the appropriateness of linguistic means in different functional styles.
Old Printed Book
An old printed book (starodruk) is a printed book of the early period of printing; in Ukrainian and Eastern European bibliology, editions up to roughly the end of the 18th century (the year 1800 is often taken as the boundary) are traditionally classed as old prints. Old prints combine the features of the printed and the manuscript book: engraved illustrations, initials, headpieces, cinnabar highlights, and colophon-afterwords. They are valuable monuments of history, language, book art, and printing. The centers of Ukrainian old-print production were the printing houses of the Lviv Brotherhood, of Ostroh, and especially the printing house of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, founded by Archimandrite Yelysei Pletenetsky (its first edition being the 'Chasoslov' of 1616), which issued such masterpieces as the 'Kyiv Caves Paterikon' (1661) and illustrated liturgical books. The description and systematization of Ukrainian old prints was carried out by Ivan Ohiienko in 'The History of Ukrainian Printing' (1925). Old prints are kept in the rare-book departments of national libraries.
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the formation of words by imitating the sounds of the surrounding reality, or the selection of such words and sound-combinations that by their sound reproduce natural noises, the voices of animals, the sounds of phenomena: "rustle," "murmur," "cuckoo," "warble." Onomatopoeia rests on the natural link between the sound of a word and the sound it denotes, and therefore belongs to the most ancient manifestations of word-creation. In literature onomatopoeia reinforces the vividness and sensory concreteness of an image, allowing the reader not only to imagine but to "hear" the depicted. In poetry onomatopoeia is closely combined with alliteration and assonance, forming a sound-writing that imitates phenomena of reality. Onomatopoeia is an important means of phonetic imagery and a subject of study for phonosemantics and stylistics.
Open Ending
The open ending is a type of conclusion of a work in which the plot conflict receives no final, unambiguous resolution, while the further fate of the heroes or the consequences of the events remain undefined, open to the reader's conjecture and interpretation. The open ending renounces the traditional closed denouement, prompting the reader to co-creation, reflection, and independent comprehension of the problems raised. This device is actively used by modern and contemporary literature, which is characterized by a refusal of ready answers and attention to the complexity and incompleteness of being. The open ending may express the idea of the inexhaustibility of life, the continuation of the conflict, or the many-variantness of human fate. Unlike the unambiguous happy or tragic denouement of the classic genres, the open ending leaves room for interpretation, heightens the philosophical polysemy of the work, and activates the reader as a participant in the creation of the meaning of the literary text.
Oral Folk Art
Oral folk art (folklore) is the collective, anonymous, orally transmitted artistic creation of a people, passed from generation to generation and existing in variants. The main features of folklore are: orality, collectivity, variability, traditionality, and syncretism (the unity of word, music, and movement). Folklore is divided into kinds and genres — epic (dumas, bylynas, tales), lyric (ritual and domestic songs), drama (vertep, folk games), and the minor genres (proverbs, riddles, incantations). Ukrainian folkloristics as a science was founded by Mykhailo Maksymovych (the collection Malorossiiskie pesni, 1827), Mykola Kostomarov, Oleksandr Potebnia, Mykhailo Drahomanov, Volodymyr Hnatiuk, and Filaret Kolessa. Folklore is the foundation of national cultural identity and an inexhaustible source of professional art.
Ottava rima
Ottava rima is an eight-line stanza with the rhyme scheme abababcc, in which six lines of alternating rhyme conclude with a final couplet of adjacent rhyme. Ottava rima was first used by Giovanni Boccaccio (14th century), and the Italian Renaissance poets Ariosto and Tasso employed it for large narrative epic; it became the classical stanza of the long poem: the first six lines unfold the action, while the concluding couplet sums up or wittily "closes" the stanza. The fixed structure of the ottava demands masterful command of rhyme and compositional rhythm. In Ukrainian poetry ottava rima was used in translations of Renaissance epic and in original poems oriented toward the European classical tradition of fixed stanzaic forms.
Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a stylistic figure that combines in a single image logically incompatible, mutually contradictory concepts: "a living corpse," "hot snow," "resounding silence," "sweet torment." The Greek name means "wittily foolish." The collision of opposite meanings generates a new, paradoxical sense that vividly conveys the complexity, contradictoriness or extreme tension of an experience. The oxymoron is especially productive in lyric for expressing ambivalent feelings, and in the titles of works, where it immediately creates intellectual tension. Unlike antithesis, which opposes concepts across different members of a sentence, the oxymoron compresses a contradiction into a single phrase. It is a refined means of the paradoxical imagery of poetic speech.
