Balearic Islands PAU Dramatic Literature key terms

A structured written analysis of a play that identifies theme, structure, characters and conflict, then moves to language and staging, always supporting each claim with a short quotation or precise reference to the passage.

The central idea or question a play explores, such as honour, power, love or death. It is stated as an abstract noun plus a comment, not as a plot summary.

The way a play is divided and ordered, through acts, scenes, climax and resolution, and how those parts relate to each other to shape the audience's experience of the action.

The opposition of forces that drives the action, whether between characters, between a character and society or fate, or within a single character's mind. It creates tension and demands resolution.

The character whose fate organises the plot and whose decisions carry the greatest weight. The protagonist need not be sympathetic, but the audience follows the consequences of their choices.

The character, group or force that obstructs the protagonist and generates the main conflict. The antagonist may be a person, a social order or an internal impulse.

The techniques by which a playwright builds a character: what the character says, what others say about them, their actions, and the physical or social details supplied in stage directions and dialogue.

The main units of dramatic division. An act usually marks a large movement of the action, while a scene marks a change of place, time or set of characters within it.

The point of highest tension, where the central conflict reaches its decisive moment and the outcome becomes inevitable, usually followed by falling action and resolution.

A sudden reversal of fortune or intention in the action, in which events turn against or unexpectedly favour a character and the direction of the plot changes sharply.

A moment of recognition in which a character moves from ignorance to knowledge about their own identity, another person or their situation, often transforming the meaning of the action.

Spoken exchange between two or more characters. In analysis, attention goes to turn-taking, interruption, register, rhythm and what the exchange reveals about power and relationship.

An extended speech delivered by one character in the presence of others, revealing thought or narrating events. Unlike a soliloquy, it is addressed outward to listeners on stage.

A speech in which a character, alone on stage, voices inner thoughts aloud. It gives the audience privileged access to motives that other characters cannot hear.

A brief remark spoken by a character that is heard by the audience but not, by convention, by the other characters present, creating complicity or ironic distance.

The playwright's non-spoken instructions in the script, covering setting, entrances, exits, gesture, tone and properties. They guide staging and often carry interpretive weight.

The metrical organisation of dramatic verse, including line length, stress pattern, rhyme and stanza. Changes in verse form often signal shifts in emotion, status or dramatic tempo.

A line of verse with twelve syllables, often divided into two hemistichs by a medial pause. It is a staple of French classical tragedy and of later Spanish and Catalan verse drama.

The running over of a syntactic unit from one verse line into the next without a pause. In drama it can convey urgency, agitation or a character's loss of control.

A strong pause within a verse line, often at its midpoint. Its placement controls the rhythm of a speech and can isolate a word or phrase for emphasis.

A gap between what a character knows and what the audience knows, so that words carry a second meaning for spectators. It produces tension, pity or dark humour.

The political, social and cultural circumstances in which a play was written and first performed, which shape its concerns, conventions and reception, and which must be distinguished from the play's own setting.

A recognised span of literary production sharing conventions and preoccupations, such as the Renaissance, Neoclassicism, Romanticism or the avant-garde. Period labels are useful but always approximate.

A self-conscious grouping of writers around shared aims and manifestos, such as Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism or the historical avant-gardes. Movements often cross national borders and genres.

The development of a writer's career across phases, showing how themes, style and ideology change over time. Placing a work within that trajectory sharpens interpretation.

A serious drama in which a protagonist of high standing suffers a downfall, often through a flaw or fate, producing pity and fear in the audience and ending in loss or death.

The purging or clarification of emotion, especially pity and fear, that Aristotle attributes to tragic performance. It describes the audience's affective response rather than a character's experience.

The error, misjudgement or moral flaw that contributes to a tragic protagonist's downfall. It is not simply a character defect but a mistake made within a particular situation.

Excessive pride or overreaching confidence, typically in a protagonist who transgresses limits set by gods, law or custom and thereby invites retribution or catastrophe.

A drama designed to amuse, usually moving from disorder to a happy or socially reintegrating ending, such as marriage or reconciliation, and often satirising manners or institutions.

A mixed genre combining serious, potentially tragic material with comic episodes or a comic resolution, refusing the strict separation of tragedy and comedy and often foregrounding tonal instability.

In genre theory, a serious play of ordinary life that avoids the extremes of tragedy and comedy, focusing on social or domestic conflict in a realistic register.

A highly comic subgenre built on improbable situations, physical humour, disguise and rapid entrances and exits, valuing laughter and pace over psychological depth or moral seriousness.

Physical comedy based on exaggerated bodily action, collisions, falls and near-misses. It depends on precise timing and staging rather than on verbal wit.

The visual design of a production, covering set, lighting, costume and properties. It creates the fictional world and can carry symbolic meaning beyond mere decoration.

The total arrangement of a production on stage: blocking, movement, design, lighting and sound. It is the director's interpretation made visible to the audience.

The planned positioning and movement of actors on stage. Blocking shapes focus, conveys relationships and hierarchy, and determines what the audience looks at during a scene.

The invisible boundary between stage and auditorium in realistic theatre, where actors behave as if unobserved. Breaking it creates direct address and draws the audience into the fiction.

The audience's willing acceptance of the staged fiction as temporarily real. Conventions, direct address and visible stage machinery can sustain, complicate or deliberately break it.

The classical requirement that a play follow a single coherent plot with no irrelevant episodes, so that every scene contributes to the central action and its resolution.

Neoclassical conventions limiting the action to roughly one day and a single location, intended to preserve plausibility. Modern drama frequently violates them deliberately.

A work fixed by the exam syllabus for the current academic year, whose themes, characters, language and context must be known in detail and supported by brief textual evidence.

The precise vocabulary of genre, versification and staging used to describe texts. Accurate terms make analysis verifiable and distinguish a literary argument from vague impression.

The construction of a reasoned case in an essay: a clear thesis, ordered paragraphs, evidence from the text and explicit links between claim and conclusion, without plot summary alone.

The spectator's readiness to set aside doubts about implausibilities in order to enter the fiction. Strong conventions or poor execution can weaken it during performance.

A mode aiming to represent ordinary life plausibly, with recognisable settings, everyday speech and social detail. In theatre it is associated with the late nineteenth-century stage.