48 terms
Paeon
The paeon is a four-syllable foot with one stressed and three unstressed syllables; depending on the position of the stress, the first (—UUU), second (U—UU), third (UU—U) and fourth (UUU—) paeon are distinguished. In the practice of syllabo-tonic verse, paeons are usually treated not as independent measures but as a way of describing iambic and trochaic lines with a regular omission of every second metrical stress (a pyrrhic). Such a "paeonic" reading explains the characteristic smooth, slightly slowed rhythm of certain poems. The concept of the paeon is useful for the fine analysis of the rhythmic structure of disyllabic measures, in which stresses in fact fall not on every strong position but on every other one.
Paleography
Paleography (from the Greek 'ancient writing') is an auxiliary historical-philological discipline that studies the history and external features of ancient writing: the forms of letters (graphics), the tools and materials of writing (papyrus, parchment, paper, ink), the decoration of manuscripts, watermarks, abbreviations, and ligatures. The main practical aim of paleography is the reading of ancient texts, as well as their dating and localization by the character of the script. Slavic (Cyrillic) paleography distinguishes historical types of script: ustav (the oldest, solemn, 11th–14th centuries), poluustav (semi-ustav, 14th–17th centuries), and skoropys (cursive, from the 15th century, a business hand). Knowledge of paleography is a necessary condition for the textologist's and medievalist's work with manuscript sources. The foundations of Ukrainian Cyrillic paleography were developed by Ivan Kamanin, Volodymyr Peretz, and Lidiia Dubrovina. A kindred discipline studying documents is diplomatics; watermarks are studied by filigranology.
Palimpsest
A palimpsest (from the Greek 'scraped again') is a parchment manuscript from which the original text has been scraped or washed off in order to write a new text in its place. Because parchment was expensive, old manuscripts in the Middle Ages were often 'overwritten' in this way, destroying earlier texts for the sake of new ones. Yet traces of the original writing often show through; modern methods (ultraviolet and multispectral scanning, special photography) make it possible to read the erased text, so palimpsests have become a valuable source for recovering lost monuments of antiquity and the Middle Ages. A famous example is the Archimedes Palimpsest, beneath whose liturgical text lost works of Archimedes were discovered. In a figurative sense, 'palimpsest' became a metaphor for the layered nature of culture, text, and memory, through which the past 'shows'; in this sense the concept is used by Gérard Genette ('Palimpsests') and theorists of intertextuality.
Palindrome
A palindrome is a word, phrase, line or whole text that reads the same from left to right and from right to left: "eye," "level," "Madam, I'm Adam." The palindrome belongs to the formal-experimental, combinatorial genres of verbal art, in which the artistic effect is achieved through the virtuoso overcoming of a rigid technical constraint — the reversibility of the letter sequence. The composition of palindromes demands exceptional linguistic inventiveness and a feeling for the sound-letter structure of the word. Historically palindromes have been known since antiquity and the Baroque, and in Ukrainian literature they were used by masters of formal experiment, notably Ivan Velychkovsky in the Baroque age. The palindrome demonstrates the playful, combinatorial potential of language and belongs to the domain of "poetry of form," curious and visual-verbal genres.
Pamphlet
The pamphlet is a sharp publicistic-satirical work of an exposing character, directed against a particular social-political system, ideology, social phenomenon, or specific person; it is distinguished by an impassioned, polemical tone, withering irony, and open tendentiousness. Unlike the feuilleton, the pamphlet is larger in scale, more ideologically pointed, and often touches on fundamental questions of social life. The genre has an ancient tradition of political polemic (the pamphlets of the Reformation era, Jonathan Swift). In Ukrainian literature an outstanding pamphleteer was Mykola Khvylovy, whose pamphlets of the 1920s — Quo Vadis?, Thoughts Against the Current — became a manifesto of the nation's cultural self-assertion and its decisive orientation toward Europe. The publicistic sharpness of the pamphlet also marked the early polemical prose of Ivan Franko and Lesia Ukrainka.
Parable
The parable is a short didactic work of allegorical content in which a generalized moral-philosophical or religious truth is hidden behind a concrete life situation. Unlike the fable, the parable does not always have an openly formulated moral and does not necessarily use animal allegory; it appeals to reflection and demands interpretation. Classic parables are found in the Gospels (the prodigal son, the sower) and in ancient Eastern and classical wisdom. In Ukrainian literature the unsurpassed master of the parable was the philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, whose dialogues and Kharkiv Fables are built on a parabolic foundation. Parabolic quality also marks modern prose — the works of Valerii Shevchuk — and in world literature Franz Kafka, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince), and Paulo Coelho.
Paradox
A paradox is a judgement that at first glance contradicts common sense or established opinion, but on deeper consideration reveals an unexpected, often bitter or witty truth: "Make haste slowly," "I know that I know nothing." A paradox rests on the collision of opposites within a single utterance, thereby striking, compelling reflection and the revision of habitual notions. As a stylistic and intellectual device, the paradox is widely used in aphoristics, philosophical prose, drama and intellectual literature; a brilliant master of the paradox was Oscar Wilde. The paradox is closely linked to the oxymoron (the linguistic expression of a contradiction) and to irony. It is a powerful means of sharpening thought, exposing banality and stimulating the reader's critical, unconventional perception of the world.
Parallelism
Parallelism is a stylistic figure consisting in the identical or similar syntactic construction of adjacent segments of speech (lines, sentences, stanzas). Syntactic parallelism creates rhythmic orderedness and the semantic correlation of the juxtaposed parts. A special variety is the psychological parallelism of folklore, in which a picture of nature is placed alongside a human experience, revealing it through analogy ("Oh, in the meadow the red guelder rose has bent low — for some reason our glorious Ukraine has grown sorrowful"). Parallelism is one of the most ancient principles of the organisation of folk-poetic speech and is closely linked to the composition of a work. It may combine with anaphora, antithesis and repetition, forming complex structures of figurative juxtaposition in poetry and prose.
Parnassianism
Parnassianism is a current in French poetry of the second half of the nineteenth century that opposed to romantic subjectivity the cult of objectivity, impassivity, perfect 'chiseled' form, and the principle of 'art for art's sake'. The Parnassians (the name comes from the mythical Mount Parnassus, the abode of the Muses) strove for the plastic precision of the image, refinement of verse, and turned to ancient, exotic, and historical subjects. Their leading figures are Leconte de Lisle, Théophile Gautier, and José-Maria de Heredia. The Parnassian cult of flawless form, clarity, and craftsmanship is consonant with the aesthetics of the Ukrainian Neoclassicists of the 1920s (Mykola Zerov, Maksym Rylsky), who likewise defended the 'culture of the word', the perfection of the sonnet and the alexandrine, and looked to classical European models, opposing the ideological engagement of art.
Parody
Parody is the comic or satirical imitation of the style, subject matter or manner of a certain work, author or genre, in which the recognisable features of the model are exaggerated and reinterpreted for the sake of mockery. Parody rests on the contrast between a high, serious model and its lowered, comic reproduction, laying bare the clichés, weaknesses or pretentiousness of the original. Humorous parody (good-natured teasing) and satirical parody (sharp exposure) are distinguished. Parody is an important genre of comic literature and at the same time a form of literary criticism that reveals the characteristic features of a style through their sharpening. It is closely linked to travesty, burlesque and intertextuality. Historically parody plays a notable role in the renewal of literature, ironically overcoming ossified forms and opening the way to new artistic searches.
