The Literary Criticism Web

Below is a glossary of terms related to literary criticism.   Click on one of the letters below to jump to that section of the glossary.  If a word or phrase is highlighted in bold type,  an explanation or definition of that concept may also be found in the glossary.  A few definitions contain links to other materials related to the term under discussion.

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A

ACHIEVED CONTENT: In Formalism, the meaning determined by the interplay of various components comprising the organic unity of the text. (Contrast intentional fallacy.)

AFFECTIVE FALLACY: the errant assessment of a literary work in terms of the response (especially the emotional response) of the reader. The term was coined by W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. and M. C. Beardsley in their articulation of formalist principles of criticism. (Compare with intentional fallacy.)

ALLEGORY: typically a narrative in prose, verse, or drama that self-consciously presents its meaning through concrete symbols. The significance of a given symbol, however, is determined the conventions of the allegory as a whole. An allegory has at least two levels of meaning: the literal level of the immediate narrative and the political, historical, philosophical or moral commentary the author intends to be recognized. Thus allegories are generally didactic in focus.

ALLUSION: in literature an indirect reference to some historical or cultural person, event, statement, or fact. For sociological or historical critics, allusions provide important clues to the contexts that provide a literary text added meaning and significance. Writers using allusions in a text assume that the reader will recognize the reference and in some fashion apply the extra-textual information in their interpretation of the text.

AMBIGUITY: The existence of several possible meanings, including conflicting attitudes or feelings. For the formalist critic ambiguity may not be a weakness but a virtue of the text as it reflects a richness or complexity of meaning in the literary work. In Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), William Empson defines variant types of ambiguous language that can be identified in literature and used to explore its meaning. (Compare irony.)

AMBIVALENCE (See ambiguity.)

ANAL PHASE: the second phase of child development as defined by Sigmund Freud. In each of these phases, the individual's pursuit of pleasure (driven by the id) is focused on a different erogenous zone. In the anal phase, the focus is on elimination, or more generally on the gratification derived from controlling oneself and one's environment. (Compare oral phase and genital phase.)

ARBITRARY: Defining the relationship in semiotics of the signifier and the signified. The indeterminate meaning of a given sound-image points to critical importance of recognizing the conventions of the sign-system(s) at work in a text.

ARTIFICIAL: A quality of literature as defined by structuralism. Since literature is not a mimetic reflection of reality, structuralism focuses on identifying the conventions implicitly or explicitly shaping the reader's experience of meaning.

AUTHORIAL FALLACY (See intentional fallacy.)

AUTOTELIC: Describes an autonomous work whose meaning is not dependent upon something external to itself, nor intending to assess a contextual reality beyond itself; not didactic. To the extent that Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" dramatizes and assesses the American Puritan experience it is NOT "autotelic." Formalist critics approach literature as an autotelic text. (See affective fallacy and intentional fallacy.)

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B

BASE: according to Marxist theory, the economic structure that is formed by the production forces of a society, along with the social relationships created by those forces. Sometimes termed the infrastructure, the base denotes the fundamental principle(s) determining the functions of different components of a society. (Compare superstructure.)

BINARY OPPOSITION (BO): A concept borrowed by structuralists and post-structuralists identifying a contrasting pair of signs. In structuralist criticism, identifying and evaluating the BO's in a work clarifies the deep structure that carries meaning. Recognizing points of deconstruction within the text where the valuation of the signs within a BO shifts or reverses is a central strategy of much post-structural criticism.

BOURGEOISIE: in Marxist criticism, the property-owning and controlling class in conflict with the proletariat. The ruling class of a society from which ideologies take their shapes.

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C

CONCEPT (See Signified.)

COHERENCE: For E. D. Hirsch's historical criticism, the decisive criterion verifying the probability of an interpretation. An interpretation has coherence if it articulates the meaning of the text in the context of the author's outlook or persona. The meaning of literature coheres with the language, consciousness, and perspective of the speaking subject. (See also legitimacy, correspondence, and generic appropriateness.)

COMMODIFICATION:  A Marxist concept that describes all things in a society (even people) as commodities. All material and social phenomena are products of a society and contribute to the production of other components in that society.  This concept emphasizes the Marxist strategy of evaluating everything in terms of the economic exchange and competition occurring in culture.

CONVENTION: A literary device; especially in semiotics a structural element or sign that carries meaning. Conventions are cultural constructs that make up a literary langue finding expression in the parole of a number of texts. The value and impact of a convention may not be consciously or explicitly recognized by a reader. However, structuralist criticism focuses upon making explicit the web of conventions by which the reader experiences meaning.

CONSTRAINT: on of the basic sets of oppositional standards or forces in culture focused on by New Historical criticism. (See Stephen Greenblatt's "Culture.") These forces work to preserve society in contrast with the countervailing forces of mobility.

CORRESPONDENCE: In E. D. Hirsch's objective (historical) criticism, a basic criterion used to establish a reading as probably accurate. An interpretation exhibits correspondence is it acknowledges and accounts for all linguistic elements in the text. Compare organic unity. (See also legitimacy, generic appropriateness, and coherence.)

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D

DECONSTRUCTION: The tendency of binary oppositions within a text to shift or reverse their valuation. For Jacques Derrida and many other post-structuralists, recognition of these ambivalent cruxes within a literary work is a key for exploring the complexity of meaning. A deconstructionist reading is antithetical to formalism, uncovering not the organic unity of the text but its irrevocable and irreconcilable contradictions.

DETERMINATE:  The quality of the meaning of a text being objectively existant and  independent of the reader or commentatory.  For both socio-historical critics and formalists, a text as one absolute meaning accessible to the informed reader.  For the formalist this objective meaning resides in the form or structure of the text, while for the socio-historical commentator it resides in historical context(s) or in the one meaning that is predetermined by the author.

DIALECTIC: a concept common in Marxist criticism describing the power struggle oppositional class forces in society. Literature offers one expression or reflection of this dialectical conflict.

DIDACTIC: providing instruction. Didactic literature may be quite pointedly or narrowly instructive, intended to instill specific moral or cultural values. But the term can also be applied more generally to focus on the intentionality of the literary text and on reading/writing as a purposive activity.

DISCOURSE: The literary text as generally viewed by Structuralists, Post-Structuralists, and New Historicists, in contrast to the autotelic text defined by formalism. Viewed as discourse, the literary work is rooted in a cultural and rhetorical context in which meaning is a collaborative construction involving author, text, culture, and reader. (See also transaction.)

DRAMATIC CONTEXT: The paraphrasable content of a literary work. In formalist criticism, such content provides the context again which the contribution may be assessed of one particular linguistic component to the holistic meaning and organic unity of the text. This internal context of the literary work determines the thematic cruxes and ironies of the text. (See irony.)

DREAM-WORK: Concept developed by Sigmund Freud to describe the various activities of human psyche by which latent and primarily unconscious conflicts of the individual are dramatized and worked out in the manifest content of dreams. The transforming activities of the dream-work delineated by Freud include condensation, displacement, and visualization. (For more on the activities of the dream-work, see Freud's The Dream-Work.")

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E

ÉCRITURE FÉMININE: The focus in the so-called French school of feminist criticism on the existence of a distinctive "woman's language." (Compare gynocriticism.)

EGO: One of the three components of the human psyche delineated by Sigmund Freud. The ego mediates between the pleasurable desires of the id and the moral imperatives of the superego. The mature ego embodies the reality principle as it works to protect the individual from the oppression of society and to find a means for healthy self-expression in society.

EPISTEME: in New Historicist theory, a concept denoting diverse perspectives that define the collective cultural consciousness of a given historical moment. In exploring a literary text as a cultural discourse, the New Historicist seeks to describe this episteme and to assess its power dynamics.

EXCHANGE: in New Historicist criticism, as defined by Stephen Greenblatt, the negotiation of concepts, ideas, materials, etc., observable in social discourse. This negotiation between different forces struggling for power and influence makes possible the social mobility necessary for cultural change.

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F

FABULATION: having the instructive and symbolic qualities of a fable. (Compare allegory and didactic.)

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G

GENERIC APPROPRIATENESS: One criterion in E. D. Hirsch's objective (historical) criticism for assessing the probable reliability of an interpretation. For Hirsch the interpretation of a text should reflect the specific conventions of its genre. (See also legitimacy, correspondence, and coherence.)

GENITAL PHASE: the third phase of child development as defined by Sigmund Freud. In each of these phases, the individual's pursuit of pleasure (driven by the id) is focused on a different erogenous zone. In the genital phase, the focus is on reproduction, or more generally on the pleasure of creatively affirming one's independence and preserving one's identity. (Compare anal phase and oral phase.)

GYNOCRITICS/GYNOCRITICISM: Term coined by Elaine Showalter for feminist criticism focusing on literary works written by women. Such criticism challenges the traditionally patriarchal literary canon by retrieving and reassessing texts by women, thus tracing a female tradition in literature. Gynocriticism frequently emphases the evolving female consciousness reflected in literature and explores the ways in which women writers have comprised and aided "a world of their own" (Showalter's phrase). (Compare écriture féminine.)

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H

HARMONIA:  the self-conscious, "almost musical ordering" of literary materials in opposition to mimetic qualities.  Bernard Paris discusses these opposing literary elements in his discussion of "The Uses of Psychology."

HEGEMONY: a term used mostly by Marxist critics to delineate the web of dominant ideologies within a society.

HERESY OF PARAPHRASE: The confusion of a paraphrase or summary of a literary work with an articulation or analysis of its meaning. For the formalist, such a condensation of literature offers a "heretical" simplification of meaning and fails to recognize or assess how meaning emerges from the complex interplay of the parts of the work's organic structure. (Defined by Cleanth Brooks in The Well Wrought Urn, 1947.)

HERMENEUTICS: The pursuit of meaning following specified principles of interpretation. Originally hermeneutics referred to the process of interpreting religious writings. However, much literary criticism amounts to a secular hermeneutics. Notably exceptions include most structuralist and post-structuralist criticism. These non-hermeneutic approaches focus not on discovering what a text means but rather on how meaning is deployed or subverted.

HISTORY OF IDEAS: A common focus of historical criticism on tracing in literature key elements of the mindset or Weltanschauung (worldview) of a culture during a given period. Such a critical focus assumes that unit ideas from another arena of culture influence the literature of the period, both in content and form.

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I

ID: one of the three components of the human psyche defined by Sigmund Freud. The id resides in the unconscious and is driven by the pleasure principle. It is the most primitive, passionate, and irrational psychic force. (Compare ego and superego.)

IDEAL READER: in reader-response criticism a hypothetical reader who possesses the competence to understand all parts of the text with absolute clarity.

IDEOLOGEMES: a concept coined by Fredric Jameson in The Political Unconscious to identify the basic ideological unit ideas or themes embedded in a culture's langue. For Jameson ideologemes emerge from the class struggle of culture and provide an articulation of the abstracted class values of ideology, making these accessible and expressible in a variety of narrative forms.

IDEOLOGY: the unifying system of beliefs, attitudes, and values expressed in the superstructure of a culture. The body of thought and ideas that guides a society and perpetuates the status quo of the bourgeoisie.

IDEOLOGY OF FORM: for Fredric Jameson, the cultural themes or messages that may be observed in dialectic of changing sign-systems and modes of production as observed over the wide panorama of history. The ideology of form, for instance, may be observed in the dialectical development in human history, say, as the dominance of Greek culture gives way to Roman culture gives way to Oriental culture gives way to European culture.

IMPLIED READER: as defined by Wolfgang Iser, one who embodies the predispositions and values of the text that are necessary for the text to effect its meaning. (Contrast with resisting reader.)

INFRASTRUCTURE (See Base.)

INTENDED READER: in reader-response criticism the reader consciously or unconsciously envisioned by the author when the text was produced.

INTENTIONAL FALLACY, or INTENTIONALISM: The judging of the meaing or value of a literary work against the external context of the author's stated intentions, deduced purpose, or presumed attitudes. Such a judgment is mistaken from a formalist critical perspective because it mislocates meaning and privileges evidence external to the text. (See Wimsatt and Beardsley's "The Intentional Fallacy.")

INTERJECTIONS: words (such as "ouch" or "whoa") that seem to be spontaneous expressions that intrude on normal conversation/speech.

INTERTEXTUAL RELATIONS: An important focus of New Historicism on the piece of literature as only one of many types of texts that comprise the general discourse of culture. In this discourse, literature is not a privileged category of text. In its intertextual relations with other cultural texts, the literary text illuminates in a society the contest for meaning and power in history. (See Catherine Belsey's "Literature, History, Politics.")

IRONY: A contradiction or incongruity. (Compare ambiguity.) In literature, irony often falls into one of three categories. "Verbal Irony" occurs when words mean in context the opposite of what they say considered by themselves. "Situational Irony" occurs when one event is expected by another oppositional event occurs. "Dramatic Irony" exists when a literary character and the reader (or two characters) view a particular situation from opposing perspectives with one knowing/understanding more than the other. In formalist criticism, recognizing irony can be a key to articulating the oppositional elements contribution to the complex organic unity of the literary work. (See Cleanth Brooks' "Irony as a Principle of Structure.")

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J

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L

LATENT CONTENT: In Sigmund Freud's dream-analysis, the underlying meaning of the dream that the dream-work of the dreamer's psyche both expresses and obscures as it is translated into the manifest content of the dream. (See Freud's The Dream-Work.")

LANGUE: In semiotics, as delineated by Ferdinand de Saussure, a comprehensive linguistic system of conventional signs and structures system; the equivalent of the totality of vocabulary, grammar and syntax available for use by the native speaker of a language. (Contrast parole.)

LEGITIMACY: One of the basic criteria defined by E. D. Hirsch for verifying an objective (historical) interpretation of literature. In an interpretation has legitimacy, the critical reader has been sensitive to the public norms of language applicable to the text. The reading of the text is in accordance to the conventions of language in use when the text was written. (See also correspondence, generic appropriateness, and coherence.)

LIBIDO: In Freudian psychology, the primal sexuality and pursuit of sensual gratification driving human behavior. The libido primarily resides in the unconscious, focusing the impulses of the id.

LINEAR/LINEARITY: In semiotics, the quality of a signifier (and hence of a sign) that results from it being embedded within a string of language. The signification of the signifier is determined by its linearity, by the string of language surrounding it. However, this surrounding language is also shaped by the signifier.

LITERARY COMPETENCE: The reader's ability to understand a text based upon a familiarity with and application of an appropriate sign-system or literary code. (See naturalization.)

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M

MANIFEST CONTENT: In Sigmund Freud's dream-analysis, the apparent surface narrative or content of the dream as articulated by the dreamer in a conscious state. The manifest content represents the product of the dream-work that both expresses and obscures the latent content of the dream. (See Freud's The Dream-Work.")

MIMETIC: Reflective or representative of actuality or reality of human experience (derived from Aristotle's concept of mimesis or imitation).

MOBILITY: one of the basic sets of social forces of interest to New Historicists. In constrast with cultural forces of constraint, the forces of mobility work to foster change and growth in society.

MODE OF PRODUCTION: in Marxist thought, the methodology used in a culture to produce the goods required for society. This methodology includes the type of organization of labor determined by the base and reflected in the superstructure. Classical Marxist theory defines several modes of production reflected in history, including tribalism, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism.

MORALITY PRINCIPLE: The motive force of the superego in Freudian psychology. The morality principle is the sum of the mores and behaviors of society learned by the individual. The ego mediates between the strictures of the superego and the desires of the id.

MOTIF: Any recurring linguistic element of a text--whether an image, symbol, action, or detail of setting or speech. Identifying motifs and assessing the thematic interplay of motifs is often an important analytic strategy, whatever mode of criticism one is using.

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N

NATURALIZATION: For the structuralist, the operations performed by the reader through which the meaning of the signifiers within a text is determined. During these operations, the reader applies a set of conventions deemed appropriate for the text to make sense of encoded language of the text. Most structuralist criticism uses semiotics to describe and assess the naturalizing used by the reader in experiencing meaning.

NEUROSIS: As defined in Freudian psychology, a psychological disorder or dysfunction resulting from an imbalance of the forces of the id, ego, and superego. If this dysfunction becomes so severe that the individual becomes self-destructive or dangerously violent towards others, the psychological disease becomes a psychosis.

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O

OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE: a term coined by T. S. Eliot to identify an image, action, or situation in a literary text in which the reader's response and understanding is suddenly focused. This concept has been of particular interest to Formalist critics, for an objective correlative seems to provide a focal point of the organic unity of the text, dramatizing its irony and tension.

ONOMATOPOEIA: words that sound like their meanings; words that give sound effects, such as "buzz," "hiss," "plop," "pow," etc.

ORAL PHASE: the first phase of child development as defined by Sigmund Freud. In each of these phases, the individual's pursuit of pleasure (driven by the id) is focused on a different erogenous zone. In the oral phase, the focus is on eating, or more generally on the pleasure of sensory consumption. (Compare anal phase and genital phase.)

ORGANIC UNITY, or ORGANIC STRUCTURE: An important critical assumption (especially in Formalism) asserting that all of the various components of the literary text work together to articulate meaning. Since every part contributes to the whole organism of the piece of literature, this concept encourages a close and comprehensive attention to its details.

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P

PAROLE: A specific literary expression or event that draws upon one or more linguistic systems of conventional signs and structures. Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" is an example of parole based upon the standards and conventions of Renaissance sonnets. (Contrast langue.)

PATHOLOGICAL: the quality of being diseased or dysfunctional. Sigmund Freud's psychological theories describe and diagnose the sources of pathological social behavior in individuals.

PATRIARCHAL/PATRIARCHY: A central assumption of feminist criticism that culture is "father-ruled," with its institutions and traditions so structured to promote masculine values and to maintain the male in a privileged position. (Compare phallocentric.)

PERCEPTION:  The reader's insight or comprehension of a text. From different critical perspectives, the reader's perception of meaning can be a passive receipt, an active discovery, or a creative construction.  Thus, formalists argue that a literary work's meaning is not a product of the reader but the achieved content of the text.  Structuralist, reader-response critics, and even socio-historical commentators attribute a more active role for the reader.

PHALLOCENTRIC: centered around the masculine. (See patriarchal.)

PLEASURE PRINCIPLE: The motivation of the id in Sigmund Freud's human psychology.

POETICS OF CULTURE: The focus of New Historicism on illuminating the social discourse or contest for power/influence reflected in the intertextual relations of literature with other cultural texts.

POINT-OF-VIEW: The narrative vantage point of a literary work, commonly either first-person, omniscient (third person), or limited (third person). Recognizing point-of-view and evaluating its contribution to meaning is often an important interpretative task. For readers following formalist principles, point-of-view often is a crucial element of the text's organic unity, particularly as it contributes to the thematic focus and tension of the literature.

PRIVILEGED: The sign within a binary opposition which is given a positive or affirmative valuation. Tracking the complementary privileging of signs within a sign-system provides one means of highlighting the deep structure of a text that focusing meaning. For some post-structuralists, the text deconstructs this apparent privileging of signs, infusing the meaning of the text with a radical irony or ambivalence.

PROLETARIAT: for a Marxist, the working class of society in conflict and competition with the bourgeoisie. This class must sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to produce the goods needed by society.

PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY: an important attribute of literature from a traditional historical perspective. Since the literary text was written with some purpose in mind by the writer, its meaning is necessarily connected to the author's consciousness. The critical reader, thus, must acknowedge and pursue an understanding of the author's purpose. (See intentionalism.)

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R

REAL READER: in reader-response criticism, a composite of contemporary readers and their understanding of the text; used to describe the inclusive meaning and effect of the text.

REALITY PRINCIPLE: The motive force of the healthy ego in the psychology developed by Sigmund Freud.

RECEPTION THEORY:  The reader-response focus, developed especially by Wolfgang Iser, emphasizing a literary text as a site for the production of meaning.  This focus questions the reality of the determinate, objective text posited by formalist critics.  Instead, in their search for meaning readers must examine how they have received the text .

REFLECTION THEORY: the Marxist perception, associated with Gyorgy Lukacs, that literature, consciously or unconsciously, reflects upon social reality, not just in a materialistic realism but in its expression of essential ideology undergirding social circumstance.

RESISTING READER: in reader-response criticism, one who rebels against the perspective the text would seem to impose upon the reader. (Contrast with the implied reader.)

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S

SEMIC CODE: one of the five different codes identified by Roland Barthes in his structuralist analysis of how texts become intelligible through the reader's application of extra-textual conventions. The semic code involves cultural stereotypes concerning dress or behavior as reflections of qualities of persons. The semic code is discussed in Jonathan Culler's "Structuralism and Literature." (Compare symbolic code.)

SEMIOTICS: the study of the sign-systems by which meaningful communication or literary discourse occurs. As understood by semiotics, in a linguistic event a set of conventions (langue) is used to express a particular meaning (parole). The linguistic event in turn has meaning to a receiver able to apply a set of conventions to its signs. The operations by which a reader/receiver interprets signs and makes them meaningful is termed naturalization.

SIGN: as defined by Ferdinand de Saussure and used in semiotics, a linguistic fact comprised by a signifier (or sound-image) and a signified. When understood in the context of a set of linguistic conventions, the signifier has meaning as it points to a particular concept (its signified). Contrast with symbol symbol.

SIGN-SYSTEM: In semiotics the set of linguistic conventions through which the meaning of a linguistic event or literary text is expressed and by which it is understood.

SIGNIFIED: As defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, the concept pointed to be a signifier, combining with it to form a sign understandable in a the context of a sign-system. A central concept of semiotics.

SIGNIFIER: As defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, the linguistic fact (part aural, part visual) that points to a concept of meaning (its signified) when decoded with an appropriate sign-system or linguistic set of conventions.

SOCIOLOGY OF LITERATURE: the study of the social origins, development, organization and function of literature. Criticism focusing on the sociology of literature often focuses on how literature is composed, fashioned, and published. These are also general concerns of Marxist Criticism. However, Marxism focuses more particularly on complex relationship of literature to the evolving economic class struggles of history.

SOUND-IMAGE (See signifier.)

SPEAKING SUBJECT: Term used by E. D. Hirsch to denote the authorial consciousness shaping the text; the voice that is heard in the text; the persona shaped by but also filtering the author's opinions, attitudes, or feelings.

STATUS QUO: The class relationships determined by the base and reflected in the superstructure of a society. The ideologies of a culture work to maintain these relationships.

STRUCTURED ACT: one aspect of the reader's role as defined by Wolfgang Iser in his reader-response criticism. Although the literary text provides multiple vantage points that make possible and structure the reader's response, the meaning of the text does not reside in the text. Rather it is the product of the reader's "ideational acts" in processing the diverse perspectives of the text. (Compare textual structure.)

SUPEREGO: in Freudian psychology, the component of the human psyche that has internalized the values and standards of society. As it embodies the morality principle, the superego is opposed to the id. The inevitable conflicts between the force of the id and the superego are mediated by the ego.

SUPERSTRUCTURE: the institutions of a society emerging its base. The superstructure includes laws, politics, religion, education, art, philosophy, and ethics, etc. The superstructure both expresses, promotes, and determines a culture's ideology. These institutions work to perpetuate the status quo of the bourgeoisie.

SYMBOL: a linguistic element self-consciously chosen to suggest or stand for something else. Usually a symbol is a concrete object that stands for an abstract idea, such as a red rose suggesting love. In semiotics, the self-consciousness of a symbol distinguishes it from the arbitrary nature of the signs composing most language.

SYMBOLIC CODE: one of the five structuralist codes identified by Roland Barthes. According to Jonathan Culler in "Structuralism and Literature," the signs of the symbolic code "are defined by complex relations with a context." A rose can have a number of symbolic significations. A reader's ability to determine which symbolism is most appropriate with a given text show a mastery of the appropriate symbolic code. This mastery Culler associates with the recognition of "a set of semantic oppositions."

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T

TENSION: The energy of oppositional elements or forces that paradoxically make possible the organic unity of a piece of literature. For the formalist, tension gives shape to the central themes of the text. (Compare irony.)

TEXTUAL STRUCTURE: one role of the reader central to the reader-response criticism of Wolfgang Iser. For Iser, the reader is a textual structure as the arrangement of various literary components by the author delineate multiple perspectives that require attention. Collectively these multiple vantage points create a "meeting place" for the reader in which he may experience meaning. (Compare STRUCTURED ACT.)

TRANSACTION, or TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS: The basic focus of reader-response criticism on the negotiation or collaboration between author, text, and reader that determines literary meaning. (See also discourse.)

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U

UNCONSCIOUS: A central psychic zone defined by Freudian psychology. For Sigmund Freud, human behavior are driven by forces of the unconscious. To varying degrees all three components of the human psyche -- the id, the ego, and the superego -- all work in the unconscious.

UNIT IDEAS: The key elements of the mindset or Weltanschauung (worldview) of a culture that are discovered and articulated in literature by the historical critic interesting in tracing a history of ideas. The Great Chain of Being would be such an element for medieval or Renaissance world.

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V

VRAISEMBLANCE: In structuralist semiotics, the quality of a text resulting from its naturalization. Such a text is "sensible" or "meaningful" for a reader -- literally "true-seeming."

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W

WORKING CLASS: The group of people generally identified in Marxist theory as the proletariat.  Although they are in a struggle for power with the bourgeoisie, the members of the working class must, nonetheless, sell their labor to the bourgeoisie to produce the material needs for their society.

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updated 08/02/99