peripety


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Related to peripety: peripeteia

pe·rip·e·ty

 (pə-rĭp′ĭ-tē)
n.
Peripeteia.

[French péripétie, from Greek peripeteia; see peripeteia.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

peripeteia, peripetia, peripety

Literature. a sudden change in the course of events, especially in dramatic works.
See also: Drama
-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.peripety - a sudden and unexpected change of fortune or reverse of circumstances (especially in a literary work); "a peripeteia swiftly turns a routine sequence of events into a story worth telling"
surprise - a sudden unexpected event
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
References in periodicals archive ?
And right here, an abysmal difference springs up between Slovakia and Czechia, where no such energy is observed.Around November 17 of this year, when the Czech Republic went through incredible peripety caused by the scandal surrounding Babi's Stork Nest, a small sign on the pavement in front of the Czech Embassy on Hviezdoslav Square in Bratislava appeared, saying in Czech: "We are sorry about Babiscaron.
This peripety is furthermore made prominent when the word "all" is repeated in verses 300 ("papers all") and 303 ("all things") as a frame, whereas the center itself is marked by a rhyme (flame-frame).
And so blind Homer's story-line creates, Like blind Teiresias, the narratee Of this first-person tale who now awaits His own denouement or peripety As one no prophet ventures to foresee Or final twist of epic plot dictates By law of genre.
Andrei Codrescu's provocatively succinct appreciation (2004: 10) of Hawthorne's seemingly impossibly disturbing scenario of pathos and peripety: "He wanted to split, and he did it, and then he came back.
(3.2.148-51) Ironically, the stiletto, which Romelio has presented as an "engine" of death at the beginning of the scene (3.2.89), now serves as an instrument of healing, (87) a peripety that inverts Romelio's observation that medical incision is close to stabbing: in notable contrast to the tenting metaphor in tragedy, the villain here literally kills to become a surgeon.
This humorous turnabout/reversal (peripety) in the story is a narrative strategy to refer back and to put the story in reverse, but with a new twist: now the quick-thinking mouse also has to outwit the Gruffalo.
There is a line of critical vision that accepts the processual nature that this sonnet form lends to the poem, the peripety of the sonnet's psychic drama taking place at the volta, or "turn," between its eighth and ninth lines, that is, in the transfer from the octave to the sestet.
The tavern's barkeep Mickey Maloy and Jamie Cregan rehearse the history of Con Melody's birth in an Irish manor, his heroism--and libido--in the Seventh Dragoons in Spain, and his peripety outside of Boston.
Contrasting with this approach of conversion as peripety was what Goddard conceives as a medieval, gradualist approach to conversion favored by the Franciscans.
The action, proceeding in the way defined, as one continuous whole, I call simple, when the change in the hero's fortunes takes place without Peripety [Reversal] or Discovery; and complex, when it involves one or the other, or both.