LITERARY TERMINOLOGY #3

ENG200.001 -- Introduction to Literary Study

Prof. Eileen Joy

Spring 2005

Figure 1. Vanya on 42nd Street Movie Poster

MOTIVATION: The mixture of situation and personality that impels a character to behave the way he or she does. When an author fails to establish plausible motivation, the character seems unconvincing and the action or work itself fails the test of plausibility; when the author does lay a reasonable foundation, the action or work makes sense in light of a particular character's situation and personality.

REALISM: (1) Broadly speaking, a term that can be applied to the accurate depiction in any literary work of the everyday life of a place or period. (2) A literary movement that developed in the latter part of the nineteenth century in reaction to the excesses of Romanticism. Realism differed from Romanticism particularly in its emphasis on an objective presentation of details and events rather than a subjective concentration on personal feelings, perceptions, and imaginings of various characters. Realists also rejected the idealized presentations, imaginative, and exotic settings, sentimentalism [see below], and improbable plot twists characteristic of the romance. Realists also stress characterization as a critical (if not the critical) element of a literary work. Realist authors often choose to depict lower- and middle-class subjects and characters more often than the noble ones often associated with classical and Renaissance drama.

SENTIMENTALISM: A term used pejoratively today to refer to works that play excessively and unconvincingly on the audience's emotions, particularly those of pity and sympathy. Authors are open to the charge of sentimentalism when, having failed to establish adequate motivation for the emotions they seek to elicit, they produce those emotions through fast-acting, artificial means (for example, scenes involving drawn-out tearful goodbyes and the use of saccharine romantic music). Examples of sentimentalism in contemporary culture include television shows like Lassie (1954-73), Joan of Arcadia, and 7th Heaven, and films like Steel Magnolias, Field of Dreams, and Titanic. It is important to note that what seems hokey and sentimental to one person may be compelling and moving to another, and therefore, determining what is "sentimental" is often a question of taste, but in the case of a play like Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, the author was clearly aiming for a stripped-down realist version of what I would call "bare, unvarnished life"--the very antithesis to a sentimental viewpoint of life.

The definitions above have been partly pilfered from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms (2nd edition). Other additions are the work of the fevered mind of Prof. Joy.