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A Glossary of Literary Terms


ELEVENTH EDITION

M. H. ABRAMS
Cornell University

GEOFFREY GALT HARPHAM


National Humanities Center

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A Glossary of Literary Terms, © 2015, 2012, 2009 Cengage Learning
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About the Authors

M. H. Abrams, Class of 1916 Professor of English,


Emeritus, at Cornell University, is a distinguished
scholar who has written prize-winning books on eigh-
teenth- and nineteenth-century literature, literary the-
ory and criticism, European Romanticism, and
Courtesy of M. H. Abrams

Western intellectual history. He inaugurated A Glossary


of Literary Terms in 1957 as a series of succinct essays on
the chief terms and concepts used in discussing lit-
erature, literary history and movements, and literary
criticism. Since its initial publication, the Glossary has
become an indispensable handbook for all students of
English and other literatures.

Geoffrey Galt Harpham has been a co-author of


Photo by Ron Jautz, courtesy of National Humanities Center

the Glossary since the eighth edition in 2005. He is


president and director of the National Humanities
Center in North Carolina and has written extensively
in the fields of critical theory and intellectual history.
Among his books are The Character of Criticism,
Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society,
Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Modernity, and
The Humanities and the Dream of America.

iii

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Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.

Contents

PREFACE v ii
ACK NOWL E DG MEN T S xi
HO W TO U SE THI S G LO S SA RY xi i
LIT E RARY TERMS 1
IND E X O F AU T HO R S 421

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Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.

Preface

I n 1957, M. H. Abrams, a forty-three-year-old literary scholar at Cornell


University, already renowned for his magisterial study The Mirror and the Lamp
(1953), agreed to update a modest pamphlet originally published in 1941 by two
people then deceased, Dan S. Norton and J. Peters Rushton, called A Glossary of
Literary Terms. Abrams dedicated a summer to the task and produced a 105-page
volume, stapled in the middle, which included over 100 new terms, including
some that had gained in prominence in literary study in recent years: style, tension,
humanism, ambiguity, and the new criticism.
In the course of his work, Abrams found that it was easier, as well as more
likely to be informative and pleasant for the reader, to compose each entry as an
essay that incorporated in a single exposition not only the primary term but re-
lated terms as well. And, to aid the student interested to know more, he suggested
further readings. But, as he declared in the prefaces to several subsequent editions,
he retained the goal he announced in 1957: “to produce the kind of handbook
the author would have found most valuable when, as an undergraduate, he was
an eager but sometimes bewildered student of literature and literary criticism.”
For more than a half century, Abrams tracked the rapid growth and extension
of literary studies through successive editions of the Glossary. With each edition,
entries were deepened, extended, and refined, and the list of suggested readings
grew. The entry for irony in Abrams’s first edition begins in the mode of a
dictionary: “ ‘rhetorical’ or ‘verbal irony’ is a mode of speech in which …”; and
the suggested readings include three works, the most recent of which was Cleanth
Brooks’s The Well-Wrought Urn (1947). The same entry in the tenth edition begins,
“In Greek comedy the character called the eiron was a dissembler …” and the sug-
gested readings include texts ranging from Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony (1841)
to Claire Colebrook’s Irony (2003).
By that tenth edition, the book ran to 432 pages and covered 1,175 terms.
Some of the entries had become substantial and even definitive essays in them-
selves: Linguistics in Literary Criticism, Deconstruction, Interpretation
vii

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viii PREFACE

and Hermeneutics, Psychological and Psychoanalytic Criticism, Femi-


nist Criticism, Marxist Criticism, and Periods of English Literature—all
expounded with grace, fairness, and precision. Amid all the changes, however,
some passages demonstrated remarkable durability, as, for example, Norton and
Rushton’s ridiculously efficient account of the plot of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the
D’Urbervilles, in which “the heroine, having lost her virtue because of her inno-
cence, then loses her happiness because of her honesty, finds it again only by
murder, and having been briefly happy, is hanged”—on which Hardy, in a spirit
of cosmic irony, comments: “The President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean
phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.”
A service-oriented book with a modest mission, the Glossary reflects the ex-
traordinary gifts of one of the great scholars in the history of the American academy.
As the example just cited suggests, among these gifts is an exuberant sense of
humor—see the entries for bathos, literature, bombast, and limerick. The
book can be read with and even for pleasure. It has often occurred to me that the
Glossary is composed with Sir Philip Sidney’s “Defence of Poesie” in mind: “For
he [the poet] doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect to the
way, as will entice any man to enter into it. […] He beginneth not with obscure
definitions, which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the memory
with doubtfulness, but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion.”
In 2003, Mike asked me to join him as he prepared the eighth edition. Over
the next nine years and three editions, we worked together. For the most part, we
allocated terms and worked separately, but on occasion we pooled our resources, as,
for example, in the entry on rap, a newcomer to the eighth edition. I had taken the
first crack and had sent my effort to Mike. To my dismay, it came back with many
questions: “Is it composed solely to be performed in public, or can it be written?
What musical instruments produce the beat—drums, guitar, piano, plucked bass?
(I’m guessing.) To what extent is it extemporized? Is the rap you describe as
‘misogynist’ also known as ‘gangsta rap’?” I conducted further research and
returned a revised version, which seemed to meet Mike’s approval. But when the
book appeared, I was amazed to see in this entry two passages I hadn’t written. The
first is not to be found in any of the standard accounts of rap: “There is an interesting
parallel between rap and the strong-stress meter and the performance of Old
English poetry; see under meter.” And—most astonishing—Mike had sought to
qualify my suggestion that rap was misogynistic, homophobic, and sociopathic by
quoting a more positive verse from Queen Latifah.
In truth, both Mike and I—total age over 150—were freestyling when it
came to rap. And since there was an element of competition—I claimed that rap
was an acronym for “rhythm and poetry,” and he insisted that “rap” was archaic
slang for “talk”—it would be accurate to say that this entry itself emerged from
competitive freestyling, or more precisely, battle-rapping. We did agree, how-
ever, that rap in general should be considered, along with poetry happenings
and poetry slams, as forms of performance poetry. In the end, we were so
pleased with the collaborative result that we put an image of this page on the
cover of the ninth edition.

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PREFACE ix

After the tenth edition, Mike handed over the Glossary to me. (He did not
stop working, however; in the summer of 2012, he celebrated his 100th birthday
with a weekend of festivities at Cornell, marked with an exclamation point by
the publication of a new book, The Fourth Dimension of a Poem.) In preparing this
edition, I have tried to preserve all the qualities for which the book is justly cel-
ebrated. I have, however, also tried to bring the book into phase with itself and
with the present moment. As readers of the Glossary know, the book often in-
troduces an historical dimension into its definitions. But, having been composed
over the course of more than half a century, it has its own history of evolving
emphases, concerns, and understandings. Sometimes, in earlier editions, the in-
fluence of very different eras in a single essay resulted in a lack of clarity or even
coherence, as when a book published in 1940 was described as “recent.” For this
edition, I have, in addition to hunting down and extirpating most uses of recent,
current, and contemporary, added over twenty new terms, overhauled or edited
countless others, and tried to bring everything, the suggested readings in particu-
lar, up to date. I have extended some essays and cut some others in the interests
both of making the book useful to contemporary readers and preserving its char-
acter as what Mike called a “handbook” as opposed to a “desk book.”
Like its predecessors, this edition of the Glossary aspires to utility. But—and
this has dawned on me slowly, over the years—it also provides, without trying, a
response to the perennial question of what literary study is or ought to be. In the
Glossary, one learns, in addition to the definitions of monometer, morpheme,
and mummer’s play, that there is a discipline devoted to the study of literature;
that this discipline, like others, involves a specialized vocabulary; that the terms it
deploys, like stars in the night sky, anchor a series of conceptual constellations
specific to the field; and that knowledge of this field can be a source of enduring
interest and pleasure. Perhaps Mike’s greatest gift to the profession, and indeed to
the world, is the sturdy confidence, manifest in this and in all his books, that
literature is a thing well worth knowing, and that the effort invested in learning
it is repaid by a lifetime of rewards, no matter how long the lifetime might be.

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Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.

Acknowledgments

T his edition, like preceding ones, has profited greatly from the suggestions of
both teachers and students who proposed changes and additions that would
enhance the usefulness of the Glossary to the broad range of courses in American,
English, and other literatures. The following teachers, at the request of the pub-
lisher, made many useful proposals for improvements:
Carol L. Beran, Saint Mary’s College of California
Kimberly Coates, Bowling Green State University
Jennifer Jordan, Howard University
Dr. Stephen Souris, Texas Woman’s University
As in many earlier editions, Dianne Ferriss has been indispensable in prepar-
ing, correcting, and recording the text of the Glossary. Avery Slater was also a
valuable member of the team. Rebecca Donahue, Content Coordinator, was ex-
ceptionally helpful; and Michael Rosenberg, publisher at Cengage Learning,
continues to be an enthusiastic supporter of each new edition. Thanks must
also go to Prashanth Kamavarapu, our project manager at PreMediaGlobal.

xi

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How to Use This Glossary

All the terms discussed in the Glossary appear in a single alphabetic sequence.
Each term that is not itself the subject of the entry it identifies is followed, in
boldface, by the number of the page in which it is defined and discussed. This
is then followed by the page numbers, in italics, of the occurrences of the term in
other entries, in contexts that serve to clarify its significance and illustrate how it
is used in critical discourse.
Some of the listed terms are supplemented by references to a number of
closely related terms. These references expedite for a student the fuller explora-
tion of a literary topic and make it easier for a teacher to locate entries that serve
the needs of a particular subject of study. For example, such supplementary re-
ferences list entries that identify the various types and movements of literary criti-
cism, the terms most relevant to the analysis of style, the entries that define and
exemplify the various literary genres, and the many entries that deal with the
forms, component features, history, and critical discussions of the drama, lyric,
and novel.
Those terms, mainly of foreign origin, that are most likely to be mispro-
nounced by a student are followed (in parentheses) by a simplified guide to pro-
nunciation. The following markings are used to signify the pronunciation of
vowels as in the sample words:
a fate ı pin
a pat 
o Pope
ä father 
o pot
e meet oo food
e get 
u cut
ı pine
Authors and their works that are discussed in the text of the Glossary are
listed in an “Index of Authors” at the end of the volume. To make it easy to
locate, the outer edges of this “Index” are colored gray.
xii

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A Glossary of Literary Terms

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Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.

Literary Terms

A
abstract (language): 62; 172.

absurd, literature of the: The term is applied to a number of works in drama


and prose fiction which have in common the view that the human condition
is essentially absurd, and that this condition can be adequately represented
only in works of literature that are themselves absurd. Both the mood and
dramaturgy of absurdity were anticipated as early as 1896 in Alfred Jarry’s
French play Ubu roi (Ubu the King). The literature has its roots also in the
movements of expressionism and surrealism, as well as in the fiction, written in
the 1920s, of Franz Kafka (The Trial, Metamorphosis). The current movement,
however, emerged in France after the horrors of World War II (1939–45) as a
rebellion against basic beliefs and values in traditional culture and literature.
This tradition had included the assumptions that human beings are fairly ratio-
nal creatures who live in an at least partially intelligible universe, that they are
part of an ordered social structure, and that they may be capable of heroism
and dignity even in defeat. After the 1940s, however, there was a widespread
tendency, especially prominent in the existential philosophy of men of letters
such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, to view a human being as an iso-
lated existent who is cast into an alien universe; to conceive the human world
as possessing no inherent truth, value, or meaning; and to represent human
life—in its fruitless search for purpose and significance as it moves from the
nothingness whence it came toward the nothingness where it must end—as
an existence which is both anguished and absurd. As Camus said in The Myth
of Sisyphus (1942),
In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man
feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile…. This divorce between
man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling
of absurdity.

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2 ABSURD, LITERATURE OF THE

Or as Eugène Ionesco, French author of The Bald Soprano (1949), The Lesson
(1951), and other plays in the theater of the absurd, has put it: “Cut off
from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his
actions become senseless, absurd, useless.” Ionesco also said, in commenting
on the mixture of moods in the literature of the absurd: “People drowning
in meaninglessness can only be grotesque, their sufferings can only appear
tragic by derision.”
Samuel Beckett (1906–89), the most eminent and influential writer in this
mode, both in drama and in prose fiction, was an Irishman living in Paris who
often wrote in French and then translated his works into English. His plays,
such as Waiting for Godot (1954) and Endgame (1958), project the irrationalism,
helplessness, and absurdity of life in dramatic forms that reject realistic settings,
logical reasoning, or a coherently evolving plot. Waiting for Godot presents two
tramps in a waste place, fruitlessly and all but hopelessly waiting for an
unidentified person, Godot, who may or may not exist and with whom
they sometimes think they remember that they may have an appointment;
as one of them remarks, “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s
awful.” Like most works in this mode, the play is absurd in the double sense
that it is grotesquely comic and also irrational and nonconsequential; it is a
parody not only of the traditional assumptions of Western culture but of the
conventions and generic forms of traditional drama, and even of its own ines-
capable participation in the dramatic medium. The lucid but eddying and
pointless dialogue is often funny, and pratfalls and other modes of slapstick
are used to give a comic cast to the alienation and anguish of human exis-
tence. Beckett’s prose fiction, such as Malone Dies (1958) and The Unnamable
(1960), presents an antihero who plays out the absurd moves of the end game
of civilization in a nonwork which tends to undermine the coherence of its
medium, language itself. But typically Beckett’s characters carry on, even if in
a life without purpose, trying to make sense of the senseless and to communi-
cate the uncommunicable.
Another French playwright of the absurd was Jean Genet (who combined
absurdism and diabolism); some of the early dramatic works of the Englishman
Harold Pinter and the American Edward Albee are written in a similar
mode. The early plays of Tom Stoppard, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead (1966) and Travesties (1974), exploit the devices of absurdist theater
more for comic than philosophical ends. There are also affinities with this
movement in many works that exploit black comedy or black humor:
baleful, naive, or inept characters in a fantastic or nightmarish modern world
play out their roles in what Ionesco called a “tragic farce,” in which the
events are often simultaneously comic, horrifying, and absurd. Examples are
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), Thomas Pynchon’s V (1963), John Irving’s
The World According to Garp (1978), and some of the novels by the German
Günter Grass and the Americans Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and John Barth. Stanley
Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) is an example of black comedy in the cinema.
Some playwrights living in totalitarian regimes used absurdist techniques to
register social and political protest. See, for example, Largo Desolato (1987) by

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ACADEMIC NOVEL, UNIVERSITY NOVEL, OR CAMPUS NOVEL 3

the Czech Václav Havel and The Island (1973), a collaboration by the South
African writers Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona.
See also wit, humor, and the comic, and refer to: Martin Esslin, The Theatre
of the Absurd (rev. 1968); David Grossvogel, The Blasphemers: The Theatre of
Brecht, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet (1965); Arnold P. Hinchliffe, The Absurd (1969);
Max F. Schultz, Black Humor Fiction of the Sixties (1980); Enoch Brater and
Ruby Cohn, eds., Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama
(1990); and Neil Cornwell, The Absurd in Literature (2006).
For references to the literature of the absurd in other entries, see pages 49,
187, 228.

absurd, theater of the: 2; 58, 120.

academic novel, university novel, or campus novel: A novel set primarily


in a college or university community in which the main characters are aca-
demics, often employed by the English department. Like detective stories or
murder mysteries, many of which are set in British country houses, academic
novels frequently exploit the fictional possibilities created by a closed environ-
ment in which a number of highly distinct, often idiosyncratic personalities
are thrown together. In the case of the murder mystery, the insularity of the
setting can produce a sense of heightened tension, but in the academic novel,
the sequestered character of the campus often results in an atmosphere of
comic inconsequentiality. Most academic novels are humorous, and many
explore the implications of the variously attributed maxim that academic
politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low. Even so, academic novels
have on occasion addressed more serious themes, including power, sex, class,
and banishment and exile.
The satirical portrayal of dreamily impractical thinkers is as old as
Aristophanes’ the Clouds, which depicts Socrates riding through the heavens in
a basket. And novels such as George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1874), Thomas Hardy’s
Jude the Obscure (1895), Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House (1925), and Dorothy
L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night (1935) dealt with academic settings or characters. But
the modern academic novel is generally thought to date from the mid-twentieth
century, with the beginning marked by the appearance, in Great Britain, of
C. P. Snow’s The Masters (1951) and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (1954), and,
in the United States, of Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe (1951).
Among the most widely known British academic novels are Malcolm
Bradbury, The History Man (1975), and the trilogy by David Lodge: Changing
Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance
(1984), and Nice Work (1988). Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945) is
considered a varsity novel, a predominantly British genre, generally set at
Oxford or Cambridge, in which the primary characters are undergraduates
rather than faculty.
Noteworthy American instances of the academic novel are Vladimir
Nabokov, Pnin (1957) and Pale Fire (1962); John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy
(1966), in which, through an elaborate allegory, the Universe is refigured as

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4 ACCENT

a University; Alison Lurie, The War Between the Tates (1974); Don DeLillo,
White Noise (1985); Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys (1995); Richard Russo,
Straight Man (1997); and Philip Roth, The Human Stain (2000).
Over the years, the academic novel has registered not only the currents of
the larger culture but also the changing nature of academic life. If many of the
earlier instances of the genre depicted the college or university community as
a pseudo-pastoral enclosure with its own quaint rules and conventions, more
recent novels have treated the same setting as a microcosm, a more tightly
focused or intensified version of the larger world, in which ideas and values
circulating through the broader culture emerge in high relief. The tone of the
academic novel in the first years of the twenty-first century darkened as the
working conditions of many teaching faculty deteriorated and the educational
mission of the university was superseded by the economic priorities of increas-
ingly corporatized institutions. For the adjunct novel, in which the primary
characters are marginalized, underpaid, and untenured faculty whose positions
expose them to uncertainty, deprivation, and anxiety rather than protecting
them from it, see Jeffrey J. Williams, “Unlucky Jim: The Rise of the Adjunct
Novel,” The Chronicle Review, 16 November 2012, B12–14.
See Ian Carter, Ancient Cultures of Conceit: British University Fiction in the
Post War Years (1990); and Elaine Showalter, Faculty Towers: The Academic
Novel and Its Discontents (2005).

accent (in meter): 218.

accentual meter: 218.

accentual-syllabic meter: 218.

accentual verse: 222.

accidie (ak0 side): 363.

act and scene: An act is a major division in the action of a play. In England, this
division was introduced by Elizabethan dramatists who imitated ancient
Roman plays by structuring the action into five acts. Late in the nineteenth
century, a number of writers followed the example of Chekhov and Ibsen by
constructing plays in four acts. In the twentieth century, the most common
form for traditional nonmusical dramas has been three acts.
Acts are often subdivided into scenes, which in modern plays usually
consist of units of action in which there is no change of place or break in
the continuity of time. (Some more recent plays dispense with the division
into acts and are structured as a sequence of scenes, or episodes.) In the con-
ventional theater with a proscenium arch that frames the front of the stage,
the end of a scene is usually indicated by a dropped curtain or a dimming of
the lights, and the end of an act by a dropped curtain and an intermission.

action: 48.

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AESTHETICISM 5

adjunct novel: 4.

adversarius (adversär0 ıus): 353.

aesthetic distance: 94; 235. See also empathy and sympathy.

Aesthetic ideology: “Aesthetic ideology” was a term applied by the deconstructive


theorist Paul de Man, in his later writings, to describe the “seductive” appeal of
aesthetic experience, in which, he claimed, form and meaning, perception and
understanding, and cognition and desire are misleadingly, and sometimes dan-
gerously, conflated. De Man traces the aesthetic ideology to Friedrich Schiller’s
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), which describes a process of
education that would eventually produce an “Aesthetic State,” a concept
that, de Man argued, anticipated Joseph Goebbels’s concept of “the plastic
art of the state.” In de Man’s view, the concept of the aesthetic came to
stand for all organicist approaches not only to art but to politics and culture
as well. The experience of literature, he argued, minimizes the temptation of
aesthetic ideology to confuse sensory experience with understanding, since
literature represents the world in such a way that neither meaning nor sense-
experience is directly perceptible. See de Man, Aesthetic Ideology (1996); and
Marc Redfield, Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the Bildungsroman (1996).
In The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), the Marxist theorist Terry Eagleton
provided both a history and critique of “the aesthetic,” noting the many “ideo-
logical” perversions and distortions in the history of the concept but, in con-
trast to de Man, also identifying an “emancipatory” potential in a concept that
had, Eagleton pointed out, originally been articulated in terms of freedom and
pleasure. (See ideology under Marxist criticism, and for essays on this subject,
refer to George Levine, ed., Aesthetics and Ideology, 1994.)

aesthetic movement: 5.

Aestheticism: In his Latin treatise entitled Aesthetica (1750), the German philos-
opher Alexander Baumgarten applied the term “aesthetica” to the arts, of
which “the aesthetic end is the perfection of sensuous cognition, as such;
this is beauty.” In present usage, aesthetics (from the Greek, “pertaining to
sense perception”) designates the systematic study of all the fine arts, as well as
of the nature of beauty in any object, whether natural or artificial.
Aestheticism, or alternatively the aesthetic movement, was a
European phenomenon during the latter part of the nineteenth century that
had its chief headquarters in France. In opposition to the dominance of sci-
ence, and in defiance of the widespread indifference or hostility of the
middle-class society of their time to any art that was not useful or did not
teach moral values, French writers developed the view that a work of art is
the supreme value among human products precisely because it is self-sufficient
and has no use or moral aim outside its own being. The end of a work of
art is simply to exist in its formal perfection; that is, to be beautiful and to

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6 AESTHETICISM

be contemplated as an end in itself. A rallying cry of Aestheticism became the


phrase “l’art pour l’art”—art for art’s sake.
The historical roots of Aestheticism are in the views proposed by the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment (1790), that the
“pure” aesthetic experience consists of a “disinterested” contemplation of an
object that “pleases for its own sake,” without reference to reality or to the
“external” ends of utility or morality. As a self-conscious movement, how-
ever, French Aestheticism is often said to date from Théophile Gautier’s
witty defense of his assertion that art is useless (preface to Mademoiselle de
Maupin, 1835). Aestheticism was developed by Baudelaire, who was greatly
influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s claim (in “The Poetic Principle,” 1850) that
the supreme work is a “poem per se,” a “poem written solely for the poem’s
sake”; it was later taken up by Flaubert, Mallarmé, and many other writers. In
its extreme form, the aesthetic doctrine of art for art’s sake veered into the
moral and quasi-religious doctrine of life for art’s sake, or of life conducted
as a work of art, with the artist represented as a priest who renounces the
practical concerns of worldly existence in the service of what Flaubert and
others called “the religion of beauty.”
The views of French Aestheticism were introduced into Victorian England
by Walter Pater, with his emphasis on the value in art of high artifice and
stylistic subtlety, his recommendation to crowd one’s life with exquisite sen-
sations, and his advocacy of the supreme value of beauty and of “the love of
art for its own sake.” (See his Conclusion to The Renaissance, 1873.) The
artistic and moral views of Aestheticism were also expressed by Algernon
Charles Swinburne and by English writers of the 1890s such as Oscar Wilde,
Arthur Symons, and Lionel Johnson, as well as by the artists J. M. Whistler
and Aubrey Beardsley. The influence of ideas stressed in Aestheticism—
especially the view of the “autonomy” (self-sufficiency) of a work of art, the
emphasis on the importance of craft and artistry, and the concept of a poem
or novel as an end in itself, or as invested with “intrinsic” values—has been
important in the writings of prominent twentieth-century authors such as
W. B. Yeats, T. E. Hulme, and T. S. Eliot, as well as in the literary theory
of the New Critics.
For related developments, see aesthetic ideology, decadence, fine arts, and ivory
tower. Refer to William Gaunt, The Aesthetic Adventure (1945, reprinted 1975);
Frank Kermode, Romantic Image (1957); Enid Starkie, From Gautier to Eliot
(1960); R. V. Johnson, Aestheticism (1969). For the intellectual and social con-
ditions during the eighteenth century that fostered the theory, derived from
theology, that a work of art is an end in itself, see M. H. Abrams, “Art-
as-Such: The Sociology of Modern Aesthetics,” in Doing Things with Texts:
Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory (1989). An influential treatise on philo-
sophical aesthetics was Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects (2nd ed., 1980).
Useful collections of writings in the Aesthetic Movement are Eric Warner and
Graham Hough, eds., Strangeness and Beauty: An Anthology of Aesthetic Criticism
1848–1910 (2 vols., 1983); Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, eds., The
Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880–1900 (2000). A useful

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AGE OF SENSIBILITY 7

descriptive guide to books on the subject is Linda C. Dowling, Aestheticism


and Decadence: A Selective Annotated Bibliography (1977). The concepts of the
aesthetic and beauty have been revisited, often in a spirit of renewed appre-
ciation, by philosophers and literary critics alike. See George Levine, ed.,
Aesthetics and Ideology (1994); Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (1999);
Arthur C. Danto, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art
(2003); Denis Donoghue, Speaking of Beauty (2003); John Armstrong,
The Secret Power of Beauty (2004); Jonathan Loesberg, A Return to Aesthetics:
Autonomy, Indifference, and Postmodernism (2005); and Susan Stewart, The
Open Studio: Essays on Art and Aesthetics (2005). Berys Gaut and Dominic
McIver Lopes, eds., The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (2nd ed., 2005) is
a useful collection of historical and descriptive essays on the aesthetic. A
comprehensive reference work is Michael Kelly, ed., Encyclopedia of Aesthetics,
4 vols. (1998).

aesthetics: 5.

affective fallacy: In an essay published in 1946, W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C.


Beardsley defined the affective fallacy as the error of evaluating a poem by its
effects—especially its emotional effects—upon the reader. As a result of this
fallacy “the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to
disappear,” so that criticism “ends in impressionism and relativism.” The two
critics wrote in direct reaction to the view of I. A. Richards, in his influential
Principles of Literary Criticism (1923), that the value of a poem can be measured
by the psychological responses it incites in its readers. Beardsley later modified
the earlier claim by the admission that “it does not appear that critical evalua-
tion can be done at all except in relation to certain types of effect that aes-
thetic objects have upon their perceivers.” So altered, the doctrine becomes a
claim for objective criticism, in which the critic, instead of describing the effects
of a work, focuses on the features, devices, and form of the work by which
such effects are achieved. An extreme reaction against the doctrine of the
affective fallacy was manifested during the 1970s in the development of
reader-response criticism.
Refer to Wimsatt and Beardsley, “The Affective Fallacy,” reprinted in
W. K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon (1954); and Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics:
Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (1958), p. 491 and chapter 11. See also
Wimsatt and Beardsley’s related concept of the intentional fallacy.

affective stylistics: 331.

African-American writers: 273. See also Black Arts Movement; Harlem Renais-
sance; performance poetry; slave narratives; spirituals.

Age of Johnson: 283.

Age of Sensibility: 283.

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8 AGE OF TRANSCENDENTALISM

Age of Transcendentalism: 274.

Agrarians: 277.

agroikos (agroi0 k
os): 377.

alazon (al0 az


on): 377; 185.

Alexandrine (alexan0 drın): 220.

alienation effect: In his epic theater of the 1920s and later, the German dramatist
Bertolt Brecht adapted the Russian formalist concept of “defamiliarization” into
what he called the “alienation effect” (Verfremdungseffekt). The German term is
also translated as estrangement effect or distancing effect; the last is closest
to Brecht’s notion, in that it avoids the negative connotations of jadedness,
incapacity to feel, and social apathy that the word “alienation” has acquired
in English. This effect, Brecht said, is used by the dramatist to make familiar
aspects of the present social reality seem strange, so as to prevent the emo-
tional identification or involvement of the audience with the characters and
their actions in a play. His own aim in drama was instead to evoke a critical
distance and attitude in the spectators, in order to arouse them to take action
against, rather than simply to accept, the state of society and behavior repre-
sented on the stage.
On Brecht, refer to Marxist criticism; for a related aesthetic concept, see
distance and involvement.

allegorical imagery: 9.

allegorical interpretation (of the Bible): 183.

allegory: An “allegory” is a narrative, whether in prose or verse, in which the


agents and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived by the
author to make coherent sense on the “literal,” or primary, level of significa-
tion and at the same time to communicate a second, correlated order of
signification.
We can distinguish two main types: (1) Historical and political allegory,
in which the characters and actions that are signified literally in their turn rep-
resent, or “allegorize,” historical personages and events. So in John Dryden’s
Absalom and Achitophel (1681), the biblical King David represents Charles II of
England, Absalom represents his natural son the Duke of Monmouth, and the
biblical story of Absalom’s rebellion against his father (2 Samuel 13–18) alle-
gorizes the rebellion of Monmouth against King Charles. (2) The allegory of
ideas, in which the literal characters represent concepts and the plot allegorizes
an abstract doctrine or thesis. Both types of allegory may either be sustained
throughout a work, as in Absalom and Achitophel and John Bunyan’s The
Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), or else serve merely as an episode in a nonallegorical

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ALLEGORY 9

work. A famed example of episodic allegory is the encounter of Satan with his
daughter Sin, as well as with Death—who is represented allegorically as the
son born of their incestuous relationship—in John Milton’s Paradise Lost,
Book II (1667).
In the second type, the sustained allegory of ideas, the central device is
the personification of abstract entities such as virtues, vices, states of mind,
modes of life, and types of character. In explicit allegories, such reference is
specified by the names given to characters and places. Thus Bunyan’s The
Pilgrim’s Progress allegorizes the Christian doctrine of salvation by telling how
the character named Christian, warned by Evangelist, flees the City of
Destruction and makes his way laboriously to the Celestial City; en route he
encounters characters with names like Faithful, Hopeful, and the Giant
Despair, and passes through places like the Slough of Despond, the Valley of
the Shadow of Death, and Vanity Fair. A passage from this work indicates the
nature of an explicit allegorical narrative:
Now as Christian was walking solitary by himself, he espied one afar off
come crossing over the field to meet him; and their hap was to meet just
as they were crossing the way of each other. The Gentleman’s name
was Mr. Worldly-Wiseman; he dwelt in the Town of Carnal-Policy,
a very great Town, and also hard by from whence Christian came.
Works that are primarily nonallegorical may introduce allegorical imagery
(the personification of abstract entities who perform a brief allegorical action) in
short passages. Familiar instances are the opening lines of Milton’s L’Allegro and Il
Penseroso (1645). This device was exploited especially in the poetic diction of
authors in the mid-eighteenth century. An example—so brief that it presents
an allegoric tableau rather than an action—is the passage in Thomas Gray’s
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751):
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Allegory is a narrative strategy, which may be employed in any literary
form or genre. The early sixteenth-century Everyman is an allegory in the
form of a morality play. The Pilgrim’s Progress is a moral and religious allegory
in a prose narrative; Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590–96) fuses
moral, religious, historical, and political allegory in a verse romance; the third
book of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the voyage to Laputa and Lagado
(1726), is an allegorical satire directed mainly against philosophical and scien-
tific pedantry; and William Collins’ “Ode on the Poetical Character” (1747) is
a lyric poem, which allegorizes a topic in literary criticism—the nature,
sources, and power of the poet’s creative imagination. John Keats makes a
subtle use of allegory throughout his ode “To Autumn” (1820), most explic-
itly in the second stanza, which personifies the autumnal season as a female
figure amid the scenes and activities of the harvest.
Sustained allegory was a favorite form in the Middle Ages, when it pro-
duced masterpieces, especially in the verse-narrative mode of the dream vision,

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10 ALLEGORY

in which the narrator falls asleep and experiences an allegoric dream; this
mode includes, in the fourteenth century, Dante’s Divine Comedy, the French
Roman de la Rose, Chaucer’s House of Fame, and William Langland’s Piers
Plowman. But sustained allegory has been written in all literary periods and is
the form of such major nineteenth-century dramas in verse as Goethe’s Faust,
Part II; Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound; and Thomas Hardy’s The Dynasts. In the
twentieth century, the stories and novels of Franz Kafka can be considered
instances of implicit allegory.
Allegory was on the whole devalued during the twentieth century but
was invested with positive value by some theorists in the last quarter of the
twentieth century. The critic Fredric Jameson uses the term to signify the
relation of a literary text to its historical subtext, its “political unconscious.”
(See Jameson, under Marxist criticism.) And Paul de Man elevates allegory,
because it candidly manifests its artifice, over what he calls the more “mysti-
fied” concept of the symbol, which he claims seems to promise, falsely, a unity
of form and content, thought and expression. (See de Man, under deconstruc-
tion and aesthetic ideology.)
A variety of literary genres may be classified as species of allegory in that
they all narrate one coherent set of circumstances which are intended to sig-
nify a second order of correlated meanings:
A fable (also called an apologue) is a short narrative, in prose or verse,
that exemplifies an abstract moral thesis or principle of human behavior; usu-
ally, at its conclusion, either the narrator or one of the characters states the
moral in the form of an epigram. Most common is the beast fable, in which
animals talk and act like the human types they represent. In the familiar fable
of the fox and the grapes, the fox—after exerting all his wiles to get the grapes
hanging beyond his reach, but in vain—concludes that they are probably sour
anyway: the express moral is that human beings belittle what they cannot get.
(The modern expression “sour grapes” derives from this fable.) The beast fable
is a very ancient form that existed in Egypt, India, and Greece. The fables in
Western cultures derive mainly from the stories that were, probably mistak-
enly, attributed to Aesop, a Greek slave of the sixth century BC. In the sev-
enteenth century a Frenchman, Jean de la Fontaine, wrote a set of witty
fables in verse, which are the classics of this literary kind. Chaucer’s “The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” the story of the cock and the fox, is a beast fable.
The American Joel Chandler Harris wrote many Uncle Remus stories that
are beast fables, told in southern African-American dialect, whose origins
have been traced to folktales in the oral literature of West Africa that feature
a trickster similar to Uncle Remus’ Brer Rabbit. (A trickster is a character in
a story who persistently uses his wiliness and gift of gab to achieve his ends by
outmaneuvering or outwitting other characters.) A counterpart in many
Native American cultures are the beast fables that feature Coyote as the cen-
tral trickster. In 1940, James Thurber produced a set of short fables under the
title Fables for Our Time, and in Animal Farm (1945), George Orwell expanded
the beast fable into a sustained satire on Russian totalitarianism under Stalin in
the mid-twentieth century.

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ALLEGORY 11

A parable is a very short narrative about human beings presented so as to


stress the tacit analogy, or parallel, with a general thesis or lesson that the nar-
rator is trying to bring home to his audience. The parable was one of Jesus’
favorite devices as a teacher; examples are his parables of the good Samaritan
and of the prodigal son. Here is his terse parable of the fig tree, Luke 13:6–9:
He spake also this parable: A certain man had a fig tree planted in his
vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.
Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, “Behold, these three years
I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why
cumbereth it the ground?” And he answering said unto him, “Lord, let
it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it. And if it bears
fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”
Mark Turner, in a greatly extended use, employs “parable” to signify any
“projection of one story onto another,” or onto many others, whether the
projection is intentional or not. He proposes that, in this extended sense, par-
able is not merely a literary or didactic device but “a basic cognitive principle”
that comes into play in interpreting “every level of our experience” and that
“shows up everywhere, from simple actions like telling time to complex liter-
ary creations like Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu.” (Mark Turner, The
Literary Mind, New York, 1996.)
An exemplum is a story told as a particular instance of the general theme
in a religious sermon. The device was popular in the Middle Ages, when
extensive collections of exempla, some historical and some legendary, were
prepared for use by preachers. In Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the Par-
doner, preaching on the theme, “Greed is the root of all evil,” incorporates as
an exemplum the tale of the three drunken revelers who set out to find and
defy Death and find a heap of gold instead, only to find Death after all when
they kill one another in the attempt to gain sole possession of the treasure. By
extension the term “exemplum” is also applied to tales used in a formal,
though nonreligious, exhortation. Thus Chaucer’s Chanticleer, in “The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” borrows the preacher’s technique in the ten exempla
he tells in a vain effort to persuade his skeptical wife, Dame Pertelote the
hen, that bad dreams forebode disaster. See G. R. Owst, Literature and the
Pulpit in Medieval England (2nd ed., 1961), chapter 4.
Proverbs are short, pithy statements of widely accepted truths about
everyday life. Many proverbs are allegorical, in that the explicit statement is
meant to have, by analogy or by extended reference, a general application: “a
stitch in time saves nine”; “people in glass houses should not throw stones.”
Refer to The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, eds. W. G. Smith and
F. P. Wilson (1970).
See didactic, symbol (for the distinction between allegory and symbol), and
(on the fourfold allegorical interpretation of the Bible) interpretation: typological
and allegorical. On allegory in general, consult C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love
(1936), chapter 2; Edwin Honig, Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory (1959);
Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (1964); Rosemund

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12 ALLITERATION

Tuve, Allegorical Imagery (1966); Michael Murrin, The Veil of Allegory (1969);
Maureen Quilligan, The Language of Allegory (1979); Jon Whitman, Allegory
(1987).
For references to allegory in other entries, see pages 90, 97, 225.

alliteration: “Alliteration” is the repetition of a speech sound in a sequence of


nearby words. Usually the term is applied only to consonants, and only when
the recurrent sound is made emphatic because it begins a word or a stressed
syllable within a word. In Old English alliterative meter, alliteration is the
principal organizing device of the verse line: the verse is unrhymed; each line
is divided into two half-lines of two strong stresses by a decisive pause, or
caesura; and at least one, and usually both, of the two stressed syllables in the
first half-line alliterate with the first stressed syllable of the second half-line. (In
this type of versification a vowel was considered to alliterate with any other
vowel.) A number of Middle English poems, such as William Langland’s Piers
Plowman and the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, both written in the
fourteenth century, continued to use and play variations upon the old alliter-
ative meter. (See strong-stress meters.) In the opening line of Piers Plowman, for
example, all four of the stressed syllables alliterate:
In a sómer séson, when sóft was the sónne….
In later English versification, however, alliteration is used only for special stylis-
tic effects, such as to reinforce the meaning, to link related words, or to provide
tone color and enhance the palpability of enunciating the words. An example is
the repetition of the s, th, and w consonants in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste….
Various other repetitions of speech sounds are identified by special terms:
Consonance is the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants,
but with a change in the intervening vowel: live-love, lean-alone, pitter-
patter. W. H. Auden’s poem of the 1930s, “ ‘O where are you going?’ said
reader to rider,” makes prominent use of this device, with successive lines
ending in “rider to reader,” “farer to fearer,” and “hearer to horror.”1
Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar vowels—especially in
stressed syllables—in a sequence of nearby words. Note the recurrent long i in
the opening lines of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820):
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time….

1
Lines from “O Where are you going,” by W.H. Auden, from Collected Poems of W.H. Auden by W.H. Auden.

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ALLUSION 13

The richly assonantal effect at the beginning of William Collins’ “Ode to


Evening” (1747) is achieved by a patterned sequence of changing vowels:
If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy pensive ear….
For a special case of the repetition of vowels and consonants in combina-
tion, see rhyme.

alliterative meter: 13.

allusion: “Allusion” is a passing reference, without explicit identification, to a


literary or historical person, place, or event, or to another literary work or
passage. In the Elizabethan Thomas Nashe’s “Litany in Time of Plague,”
Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye,
the unidentified “Helen” in the last line alludes to Helen of Troy. Most allu-
sions serve to illustrate or expand upon or enhance a subject but some are
used in order to undercut it ironically by the discrepancy between the subject
and the allusion. In the lines from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) describ-
ing a woman at her modern dressing table,
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble,2
the ironic allusion, achieved by echoing Shakespeare’s phrasing, is to the descrip-
tion of Cleopatra’s magnificent barge in Antony and Cleopatra (II. ii. 196ff.):
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water.
For discussion of a poet who makes persistent and complex use of this
device, see Reuben A. Brower, Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion (1959);
see also John Hollander, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and
After (1981); Christopher Ricks, Allusion to the Poets (2002), and True Friend-
ship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and
Pound (2010).
Since allusions are not explicitly identified, they imply a fund of knowl-
edge that is shared by an author and the audience for whom the author
writes. Most literary allusions are intended to be recognized by the generally
educated readers of the author’s time but some are aimed at a special coterie.
For example, in Astrophel and Stella, the Elizabethan sonnet sequence, Sir Philip
Sidney’s punning allusions to Lord Robert Rich, who had married the Stella

2
Lines from “The Waste Land” from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot.

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Title: Mäenpään isäntä


Kyläromaani kapinaviikilta

Author: Veikko Korhonen

Release date: December 4, 2023 [eBook #72308]

Language: Finnish

Original publication: Helsinki: Otava, 1919

Credits: Juhani Kärkkäinen and Tapio Riikonen

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MÄENPÄÄN


ISÄNTÄ ***
MÄENPÄÄN ISÄNTÄ

Kyläromaani kapinaviikoilta

Kirj.

VEIKKO KORHONEN

Helsingissä, Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava, 1919.


I.

Helmikuun alkupäivät olivat ohi vierimässä. Ilmat olivat harvinaisen


leutoja, päivä paistoi kuin maaliskuussa, ja vesi tipahteli räystäiltä.
Illansuussa hanki koveni, ja lapset luulivat jo kevään tulleen. Kelkat
haettiin kätköistä esiin, ja mäkirinteillä helisi hilpeänä lasten ilonpito.

Talojen pelloilla ja metsä vainioilla olivat työt täydessä käynnissä.


Mutta se tapa, jolla nyt töitä suoritettiin, oli omituista ja entisyydestä
poikkeavaa.

Talojen isännät ja pojat liehuivat synkkäkatseisina, aivan kuin


koettaen karkoittaa pahoja ajatuksia. Rengit ja päivätyöläiset
seisoskelivat ryhmissä ja kiihkeästi neuvottelivat. Mitä? Sitä he eivät
vielä tienneet oikein itsekään, talon omat miehet sitä vähemmin.
Jotakin suurta piti tapahtua, ja ehkä jo piankin. Odotettiin kuin
ukkosen ilmaa kesällä helteisenä päivänä, vaikka ei vielä pilviäkään
näy, mutta muuten painostaa.

Ja nytkin painosti.

Mäenpään isäntä oli ollut murahaudalla kuormia luomassa ja


palasi sieltä nyt päivälliselle. Rengit ja verotyöläiset olivat jo menneet
aikaisemmin pihaan hevosineen ja rekineen. Olivat laulaneet kuin
uhitellen mennessään internatsionaleaan ja äänekkäästi
naureksineet. Puheista ei saanut selvää, mutta niissäkin oli
uhitteleva sävy. Äsken työssä ollessaan ja palatessaan tyhjien rekien
kanssa murakuopalle vaihtoivat he keskenään merkitseviä
silmänluonteja ja suupielissä karehti pirullinen hymy.

Mäenpään isäntä, Juho, käveli raskaasti viljelyksien läpi


kiemurtelevaa tietä lapio olallaan. Jalat tuntuivat kovin raskailta.
Tällaista oli jatkunut jo monta päivää. Kukaan ei tiennyt mitä tästä
oikein seuraisi. Tilanne oli koko maassa uhkaava, ja varsinkin
liikeseudut kuohuivat. Mutta täällä sydänmaan loukossa hän oli
omineen luullut saavansa olla rauhassa. Oli koettanut olla aina ja nyt
varsinkin ystävällisissä väleissä työmiestensä kanssa, mutta viime
päivien kokemukset osoittivat, että se ei hyödyttänyt mitään.
Uhkamieli näytti kasvavan, ja työnteko oli melkein kokonaan
mennyttä. Jos siitä huomautti, niin sai vihasta välähtävät silmäykset
ja pistopuheet osakseen. Täytyi viimeiseltä vain tyytyä katsomaan ja
odottamaan mitä seuraisi.

Posti-illat varsinkin olivat Juholle olleet kaikkein tukalimpia. Rengit


ja päivätyöläiset repäisivät lehtikimpusta »Työmiehen» ja »Raatajan
voiman» ja alkoivat äänekkäästi saarnata perheen lukurauhasta
välittämättä. Jos joku perheen jäsenistä pyyteli hiljaa lukemaan, sai
tavallisesti töykeän vastauksen.

— Hyvää se tekee teillekin, kuunnelkaa vain…

Juho tavallisesti hiipi sanomalehtensä kanssa kamariinsa, jossa


emäntäkin näkyi tutkivan omaa lehteään. Mutta väliseinä ja ovi eivät
estäneet kuulemasta, mitä pirtissä puhuttiin ja saarnattiin.
Ja nämä ilta-istunnot olivat viimeisinä posti-iltoina jatkuneet
myöhään yöhön. Työmiesten joukossa oli muutamia sellaisiakin,
jotka eivät ennustaneet hyvää nykyisestä asiain menosta ja
sosialistilehtien kirjoituksista, ja heidän kanssaan syntyi aina kiistaa.
Välistä se paisui suuriääniseksi meluksi.

Ja kun tuli tieto ensimäisistä kapinaliikkeistä, alkoivat salaiset


neuvottelut nurkkajuurissa, työmailla, työväentaloilla ja joka
paikassa. Töistä ei tullut enää mitään. Mieliala näytti vain kiihtyvän
hetki hetkeltä.

Sellainen päivä oli ollut tänäänkin? Oli jo lausuttu Juholle


raakuuksia ja uhkauksiakin. Ne olivat vielä heikosti peitettyjä, mutta
tarkoitus oli selvä. Eikä näyttänyt olevan pelastuksen toivoa mistään
päin. Sillä Juhokin saattoi hyvin arvata, että kapina tulisi yleiseksi.
Kenenkään henki ei voisi olla turvattu, omaisuudesta
puhumattakaan. Siltä varalta oli kyllä joku kuukausi sitten perustettu
tällekin paikkakunnalle salaa suojeluskunta, mutta mitä sekään voisi,
kun ei saatu aseita. Eivät edes omaa henkeään voisi säilyttää.
Paikkakunnan punaiset olivat saaneet jo tietää suojeluskunnan
perustamisesta ja salaa uhkailleet, että kunhan saadaan aseita, niin
näytetään »lahtareille».

Nepä ne saivatkin aseita. Huhuiltiin jo, että oman pitäjän


kirkonkyläänkin olisi tuotu aseita ja kätketty ne työväentalolle. Heillä
kuului olevan käsipommejakin…

Tien käänteessä Juho tapasi Hakamaan isännän. Tervehdykset


vaihdettiin, mutta ei niin reippaasti kuin ennen. Alakuloiselta näytti
Hakamaankin isäntä. Rinnakkain siinä kävelivät hetkisen ääneti.
— Outoihin aikoihin tässä mekin vielä elettiin, virkkoi Hakamaan
Mikko. — Veljessotaan valmistellaan molemmin puolin. Ei näytä
olevan enää mitään muutakaan keinoa jäljellä.

— Eipä näytä… Jos omien punaisten kanssa saisikin vielä


jotenkuten sovinnon aikaan, niin ryssät jäävät. Niitä he eivät suostu
pois laskemaan, vielä vähemmin täältä ajamaan… Ja ne on saatava
maasta pois. Ne saastuttavat muuten kohta kaikki koti nurkat.

— Millä ne ajetaan, kun ei ole aseita, hymähti Mikko. —


Suojeluskuntia on perustettu, mutta ei ole hankittu ajoissa aseita.
Kyllä ryssät sen sijaan aseistavat punaiset kiireestä kantapäähän.
Tässä sitä nyt ollaan, valmiina ryöstettäviksi ja murhattaviksi. On oltu
liian kärkkäitä uskomaan viimeiseen asti, että punaiset eivät kehtaa
omia kansalaisiaan vastaan nousta taistelemaan. Nyt se nähdään,
että kehtaavat.

Tultiin jo Mäenpään pihaan. Isäntä pyysi naapuriaan istumaan,


mutta tämä sanoi vain menevänsä nyt kotiin. Lupasi tulla toiste
juttelemaan.

— Tulisit vaikka tänä iltana, pyyteli Juho. — Nykyiset puhteet ovat


liian pitkiä, eikä tarvitsisi kuunnella aina niiden saarnaamista.

— Kieltäisit saarnaamasta.

— Ei uskalla.

— … olla isäntä omassa talossaan!

— Ei omassaankaan. Kyllä kai heillä on jo nuorat punottu


meidänkin pään varalle. Riistäjiä ollaan ja lahtareita.
— Mh… pr… kyllähän ne nyt räyhäävät, mutta kuinkahan
pitkältä…

— Mikäpä sen tietää. Vieläkö elänee isäin henkeä yhtään


nykypolvessa.

— Saatpahan nähdä, virkkoi Hakamaan isäntä mennessään.

»Sillä on vielä varma usko oikean voittoon tallella, minulta se jo


alkaa loppua», mietti Juho pirttiin astuessaan.

Talonväki oli päivällispöydässä. Ei puhuttu mitään isännän


astuessa pöydän päähän. Mutta heti tämän jälkeen aloitettiin kuin
yhteisestä sopimuksesta.

— Tänään se tulee taas postikin, sanoi yksi.

— Nähdään mitä ne siellä suuressa maailmassa puuhaavat.

— Lakkoja ja verilöylyjä ne kai siellä järjestävät, virkkoi Tuomas,


talon vanhin poika kylmästi.

— Kaipa ne lahtarit jo ruokkivat nälkäisiä lyijyllä, virkkoi eräs


päiväläinen kuohahtaen.

Mieliala päivällispöydässä tuntui kiihtyvän. Kuin vihan vimmassa


purtiin leipää, ja tuopit kolahtelivat pöytään kuin uhitellen.

— Mutta valmistutaan sitä toiseltakin puolelta, virkkoi joku


verotyöläinen ääni vapisten.

— Kyllä se nyt työläisten sorto loppuu.


— Kun sinäkin kehtaat! kuohahti Tuomas. — Kuka sinuakin on
sortanut.
Puutteet eivät sinua ainakaan käske punaisten mukana laulamaan.

— Niin, mutta minun velvollisuuteni on tukea työläistovereita,


joiden luokkaan minä kuulun.

— Ehkäpä lähdet punakaartiinkin, sinkosi talon nuorempi poika,


Lauri.

— Mitäpä se sitten sinua liikuttaa. Lahtariksi en ainakaan rupea.


Sattuisin siinä puuhassa vielä nahkani menettämään.

— Jaa. Se on kohta lahtareilla tiukka paikka, puuttui toinen


leveilemään.

— Sisu se oli jo lähtenyt Saksanniemenkin lahtareilta. Pampulla


olivat pehmitelleet hyvänpäiväisiksi.

— Kyllä ne matruusit pehmittää, on ne semmoisia poikia…

— Joo. Kyllä ne sisun ottaa…

— Kehtaattekin puoltaa ryssiä, jyrähti isäntä nousten pöydän


päästä. —
Häpeäisitte!

— Ihminen se on ryssäkin.

— Ja jos ne työläisten kimppuun kävisivät, niin kyllä sitten


isäntäkin jo kiittäisi.

— Pitäkää vain ryssäin kanssa yhteyttä, kivahti Tuomas. —


Veljeilkää minkä jaksatte ja antakaa naistennekin veljeillä. Pian se
lysti loppuu!

Kiistaa jatkui. Oli muutamia työmiehiä, vankempaa polvea, jotka


asettuivat vastustamaan toisia. Ja nämäpä kinasivatkin vielä
suuriäänisesti keskenään.

Ilta oli jo hämärtynyt ja lamput sytytettiin, ensin pirtissä ja hetkistä


myöhemmin toisissa huoneissa. Posti tuli ja heitti kirjeet ja
sanomalehdet pöydälle.

»Työmies» lennähti veromiesten käsiin. Isäntä tapaili myöskin


lehteään, mutta ei sitä löytänyt. Olisiko joku sen ottanut? Ei näkynyt
kellään. Juhon kasvot värähtivät. Joko se nyt alkaa?

Joku miehistä huomasi isännän hämmästyksen ja purevasti


virkkoi:

— Taisi jäädä porvarilehdet tulematta.

Juho meni kamariinsa. Tuomas ja Lauri olivat heittäytyneet


piippujaan polttelemaan tuvan sänkyyn.

Joku miehistä luki »Työmiehestä» Työväen pääneuvoston


vallankumousjulistusta ja kehoitusta punakaarteille olemaan joka
hetki valmiina. Viipurissa oli jo taistelu alkanut. Senaatin
vangitsemismääräys oli annettu, ja kaikki oli reilassa.

Tuomas puraisi huultaan ja meni sisähuoneisiin. Lauri oli mennyt


isänsä huoneeseen ja virkkoi:

— Nyt se siis alkaa.

— Siltä se näyttää.
Juhon ääni värähteli hieman. Mikä hetki hyvänsä tässä saattoi olla
viimeinen. Tuomas ja Lauri kuuluivat suojeluskuntaan ja olivat tietysti
velvollisia menemään sinne, missä ensiksi tarvittiin. Talo jäi hänen
varaansa. Kukapa takaa, eikö punaiset täälläkin ryhdy ryöstämään ja
polttamaan.

Lauri oli mennyt Tuomaan kamariin. Sinne oli ulko-ovesta


pistäytynyt naapuritalon poika, Hakalan Timo.

— Mitä kuuluu? kysäisi Lauri.

Timo osoitti pöydälle, jossa oli paperilappu. Lauri otti sen


käteensä.

»Tänä yönä kello 1 valmiina ennemmin määrätyssä paikassa.


Kolmen päiväneväs mukaan.»

Timo otti lapun ja kätki poveensa.

— Nyt se siis alkaa.

— Nyt se alkaa, ja meillä on jo aseitakin, kuiskasi Timo.

— Mitä?

— Oman Mikko-sepän tekemiä tikareita. Pojat ovat ommelleet jo


tupetkin niihin. Ehkä saadaan muutamia kiväärejäkin.

— Onko haulikot otettu mukaan? kysyi Tuomas.

— On, virkkoi Timo ja riensi ulos.

— Siellä tavataan.
— Siellä.

Pojat menivät Juhon kamariin. Siellä oli naapurin Mikko


neuvottelemassa, pitäisikö poikia lähteä kyytimään hevosella.

— Kun saisi hevoset valjaisiin niin, etteivät punaiset huomaisi.

— Huomatkoot. Nyt sitä mennään.

— Mutta aamulla saattavat jo lähteä rankaisuretkille, kun tietävät.

— Tietäväthän ne sen kumminkin. Joka talossa on jo


aamiaispöydässä miestä ja kahta vähemmän.

— Voidaan sitä mennä suksillakin.

— Kai se niin on parasta.

— Ja älkää te täällä hätäilkö, varoitteli Tuomas. — Kotinurkkia


varten järjestetään seisova joukko.

— Mukaan minäkin lähtisin, jos en olisi näin vanha, virkkoi Mikko.

— Tarvitaan niitä miehiä täälläkin. Meillä täällä voi olla työtä


parhaiksi kotinurkkia säilytellessä, arveli Juho.

Naapurin isäntä toivotti hyvää yötä ja painui ulos. Pojat jäivät vielä
hetkiseksi isänsä kanssa puhelemaan. Puhuttiin talon yhteisistä
asioista siltä varalta, että matkalle-lähtijöistä sattuisi joku jäämään tai
vanha isä kotinurkilla kaatumaan. Pelko ei tuntunut erikoisesti ketään
vaivaavan. Pojista vain tuntui, niinkuin painostava tunne olisi jo
jotakuinkin lauennut. Pääsihän nyt toimimaan. Toimintaa odotellessa
oli aika tuntunut pitkältä.
Emäntä laitteli evästä reppuihin hiljaa päivitellen sitä, että oli
tällaisiin aikoihin eletty. Sodasta oli tähän asti vain puhuttu, nyt se
syttyi omilla kotinurkilla. Mutta eihän tällaistakaan jaksanut enää
kestää. Parasta kai oli, että miehet lähtivät selvitystä tekemään.
Kunpa vain terveinä palaisivat!

Kello löi pirtissä rämisten kaksitoista. Pojat sitoivat reput


selkäänsä ja hyvästelivät. Äidin kasvoille vierähtivät kirkkaat pisarat.
Muuta ei voinut puhua kuin Jumalan siunausta toivotella ja pyytää
pian takaisin tulemaan.

— Seisokaa miehinä viimeiseen asti maanne ja kotinne puolesta,


virkkoi
Juho kättä lyöden pojilleen.— Lyökää ryssiä niinkuin isät ennen
löivät.
Säästäkää mikäli mahdollista omia kansalaisia, varsinkin niitä, jotka
on pakotettu mukaan lähtemään. Syylliset saakoot armotta
rangaistuksen.

— Pian kai sitä nähdään, virkkoi Lauri helpottaakseen eron


tunnelmaa.

Yö oli leuto ja tähdet tuikkivat tummasta korkeudesta. Sukset


luistivat, ja matkaa joudutti paisuttava innostus yhteisestä asiasta.

Sinä yönä valmistauduttiin lähtöön joka talossa. Samana yönä


peitettiin kirkonkylän työväentalon ikkunat, ettei valoja näkyisi kylään;
harjoitettiin punakaartia ja jaettiin aseita.
II.

Mäenpään veljekset hiihtivät peräkkäin tähtikirkkaassa yössä.


Hiihtäessään naapuritalojen peltoja he arvailivat, joko kaikki toiset
olivat lähteneet taipaleelle. Siinä oli Hakala ja Tienpää. Isännän
kamarin ikkunassa vain näkyi tulta. Uni ei tullut näinä helmikuun
öinä. Aikoihinpa tosiaankin oli eletty! Talontyöt ne nyt jäävät, kun
miesten täytyy sotateille suoriutua. Kotiin vain jää vanhukset ja
lapset. Naisetkin uhkaavat lähteä keittämään ja haavoja sitomaan.

Kaksi hiihtäjää sukelsi esiin metsästä.

— Nuija!

— Tappara!

Ne olivat tunnussanat, jotka vaihdettuaan miehet lähenivät


ystävällisesti ja jatkoivat nyt matkaa rinnakkain hiihtäen.

— Ei sitä ole ennen vielä tällaisia retkiä käyty.

— Eipä ei. Nyt on aika jo lähteä. Veri tässä alkoikin jo sakoa.

— Mitenkä luulet tässä käyvän? kysyi naapurinpoika Tuomaalta.


— Mikäs siinä? Lyödään ryssät liiskaksi ja tehdään punaiset
vaarattomiksi. Silloinhan se on selvää.

— Niin, puhdasta jälkeä sitä nyt tehdään. Ennen ei palata


kotinurkille.

— Saisi nyt vain aseita.

— Kyllä hallitus aseita puuhaa.

— Mikä sen tietää, jos ovat jo vankeina.

— En usko: Kyllä ne varansa pitävät.

Lauri oli toisten huomaamatta jäänyt jäljelle ja hiihtänyt erään


metsätien varteen ladon kupeelle. Punamäen Kaisu oli luvannut tulla
puoli yhden aikoina sanomaan hyvästit Laurille. Viestintuojan
mukana oli Kaisu lappusen lähettänyt Laurille, jonka tiesi mukaan
lähtevän.

Siellähän tyttö jo odottikin ladon kupeella. Painoi kainosti päänsä


alas, kun Lauri hyppäsi suksiltaan.

— Nytkö sinä sitten menet? kysyi tyttö hiljaa.

— Niin, enkö sitten saisi mennä?

— Kyllä sinun on mentävä. Muutoin et mies olisikaan! Kunpa


minäkin pääsisin mukaan!

— Sinä? Mitä siellä sinä tekisit?

— Kaipa siellä olisi työtä tällaisellekin.


Tytön ääni värähti.

— Mitä sinä Kaisu nyt noin…

Lauri laski kätensä tytön olkapäälle. Tyttö näytti tähtien valossa


aivan kalpealta.

Tuli hetkisen kestävä hiljaisuus. Lauri tunsi itsensä tällä kertaa


kovin neuvottomaksi. Hän olisi tahtonut sanoa jotakin rohkaisevaa
tytölle, mutta tunsi itse olevansa rohkaisun tarpeessa. Tuntui hieman
oudolta lähteä ensi kertaa taisteluun, joka kenties tulisi kestämään
kauankin.

— Tämä taitaa sitten olla meille viimeinen tapaaminen, virkkoi tyttö


hiljaa.

— Miten niin? Voihan tämä piankin selvitä, ja kyllä minä terveenä


palaan.

— Sen minä uskon, mutta muuten… sinä et välitä minusta enää


tämän jälkeen.

— Nyt minä en yhtään sinua ymmärrä.

Tyttö loi kirkkaat silmänsä Lauriin ja virkkoi hiljaa:

— Kyllähän sinä tiedät, miten punaisia kotoväkeni ovat, ja nyt… —


tytön ääni takertui kurkkuun — Kustaa lähtee punaisten puolelle.

Hetkiseksi Laurin kasvot synkkenivät.

— Oletko koettanut estää?


— Olen, mutta mikään ei auta. Sepä minua nyt niin painaakin.
Onhan sinun näin ollen mahdotonta minua ajatellakaan. Unohda
pois. Ja tee kaikki mitä voit. Minun ajatukseni seuraavat siunaten
sinua joka paikassa. Hyvästi nyt vain.

Tyttö ojensi kätensä Laurille.

— Näin sinä et saa mennä. Veljesi ei pääse enää lähtemään, jos


ei hän tänä yönä ole lähtenyt. Eikä se meidän välejämme voi rikkoa.
Minä tulen takaisin ja otan omani vaikka punaisten pääpesästä! Nyt
minun täytyy mennä.

Lauri epäröi hetkisen, mutta astui sitten reippaasti suksilleen.

— Näinkö sinä menet? kysyi tyttö tuskin kuultavasti.

Lauri hyppäsi suksiltaan ja sulki tytön syliinsä. Tyttö painoi


huulensa hänen otsalleen, suulleen ja silmilleen, horjahti kuin
juopunut ja pyrähti suksilleen. Lauri jäi kuin typertyneenä seisomaan,
nousi vihdoin ja lähti voimainsa takaa hiihtämään tavoittaakseen
toiset.

Miehet olivat jo saapuneet määräpaikkaansa. Viisikymmentä


vahvaa nuorukaista reppuineen ja aseineen. Toisilla vanha luodikko
tai haulikko, joihin kiireesti valettiin kuulia ja täytettiin panoksia.
Tikareita tahkottiin ja vöitä viimeisteltiin. Miesten jokainen liike osoitti
teräksistä reippautta.

— Tulipahan nuijasota vielä kerran.

— Saadaanpahan tosiaankin tapella. Kunpa nyt olisi tässä ryssiä


alkajaisiksi!
Ja puhuja heilutteli ilmassa välkkyvätä asettaan.

— Tässä on ryssien varalle!

Muuan mies heitti sylyksen pamppuja lattialle.

— Selkä ensin pehmeäksi tavaritseilta ja sitten rajan taakse!

— Punikit samaan matkaan!

— Kukapa jouti ja kehtasi ryssiä kuljettaa. Auetkoon vain maa ja


nielköön heidät!

— Suomen multa on liian hyvää ryssien peitteeksi. Rajan taa,


sanon minä!

— Ja viekööt naisensa mukanaan!

— Taitaisi kertyä niitä yhtä paljon kuin ryssiäkin. Hyi helvetti moista
häpeää! Suomen naiset ryssien hutsuina.

— Hirsipuun ansaitsisi jokainen!

Aseet ja selkäreput olivat kunnossa, rivit järjestyivät lähtemään.


Kuului komennus.

— Asentoon! Rivit kaksintakaa! Eteenpäin mars!

Portaissa törmäsi vahtijoukkueen johtaja vastaan ja ilmoitti, että


punaiset piirittävät taloa parhaillaan. Joku urkkija oli saattanut heille
sanan suojeluskunnan kokoontumisesta, ja punikit olivat
kerääntyneet talon riihen taakse, josta hyökkäsivät piirittämään taloa.

Miehet neuvottelivat silmänräpäyksen.

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