In Greek and Latin poetry, a choriamb (pronounced “kor-ee-AMB”) is a rhythmic pattern made up of four syllables arranged in the order long-short-short-long (— —). This pattern combines a trochee (a long syllable followed by a short one) and an iamb (a short syllable followed by a long one). Choriambs are one of two basic rhythmic patterns that do not appear in spoken language, unlike patterns used in sung or lyrical poetry.
The chivalric romance is a type of story written in prose and verse that was popular in the noble courts of high medieval and early modern Europe. These stories often feature a brave knight who goes on a quest filled with amazing adventures. Over time, it evolved from epics.
Rhyme royal (or rime royal) is a type of poem with a specific rhyme pattern. Geoffrey Chaucer introduced this form to English poetry. It was very popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Characterization is the way characters, such as people, animals, or other beings, are described in stories and plays. It is sometimes called character development. This description can use direct methods, like explaining a character’s traits through words or comments, or indirect methods, where readers learn about a character’s traits by observing their actions, words, or looks.
“Character” (original Dutch title “Karakter”) is a book written by Dutch author Ferdinand Bordewijk and published in 1938. The subtitle, “Een roman van zoon en vader,” translates to “A Novel of Son and Father.” It is a type of story called a Bildungsroman, which follows the development of a young person and shows the relationship between a strict father and his son. “Character” is Bordewijk’s most famous novel and was used as the basis for a 1997 movie with the same name.
A chapbook is a small printed booklet that was widely used for street literature in early modern Europe. These books were made cheaply, often with simple woodcut illustrations and printed on one sheet folded into 8, 12, 16, or 24 pages. Some were stitched together with thread.
Chant royal is a type of poem with a set structure that began in medieval France. It is similar to a ballad but has five stanzas, each with eleven lines. The rhyme pattern follows a specific order, and no rhyming word is used more than once.
A chansonnier is a handwritten or printed book that contains a collection of songs, known as chansons. These songs can be performed with multiple voices (polyphonic) or a single voice (monophonic). Some chansonniers only include the words of songs, not the music, such as the Cancioneiro da Vaticana and Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional, which hold many Galician-Portuguese lyrics.
The chanson de geste (Old French for “song of heroic deeds,” from Latin: gesta “deeds, actions accomplished”) is a medieval story, a type of epic poem that appeared at the beginning of French literature. The earliest poems of this genre were written in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, just before the rise of lyric poetry by troubadours and trouvères, and the first verse romances. These works were most widely accepted between 1150 and 1250.
The Celtic Revival, also called the Celtic Twilight, refers to a series of movements and trends in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries that showed renewed interest in Celtic culture. Artists and writers used traditions from Gaelic literature, Welsh-language literature, and Celtic art, which historians call insular art (a style of art from Ireland and Britain during the Early Medieval period). While the revival had many different parts and occurred in several countries in Northwest Europe, its most well-known part was the Irish Literary Revival.