Vignette

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In theater script and poetry writing, vignettes (Fr. 'small window') are short, impressionistic scenes that focus on one moment or give a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting. This type of scene is more common in recent postmodern theater, where adherence to the conventions of theatrical structure and story development are jettisoned. It is particularly influenced by contemporary notions of a scene as shown in film, video and television scripting.

Unlike the traditional scene in a play, the vignette is not strictly linked in with a sequential plot development but establishes meaning through loose symbolic or linguistic connection to other vignettes or scenes. Vignettes are the literary equivalent of a snapshot, often incomplete or fragmentary. In poetry, in the quintain form, they can relate to a short descriptive literary sketch or a short scene or incident from a movie or play. The use of vignettes is suited to those plays in which theme, image, emotion, and character are more important than narrative, though this doesn't mean that a vignette is out of place as an element in a more narrative play.

The term "vignette" is also used in literature for a work of written fiction that is very short in length, often under 1,500 words. Often such a work depicts a single scene or event but has a little plot as such. However, such "vignettes" may have more plot and be closer to traditional story forms than the theatrical or poetic vignettes.

In spanking literature, the entries in the Summer Story Contest are generally vignettes in length, although many have complete, if brief, plots. Funbun is known for the vignettes that accompany his drawings.

The Victorian era sex-and-birching novel "Frank" and I (1902) describes flagellatory brothels in London and Paris that featured staged vignettes called tableaux vivants. In these, prostitutes would dress up in costumes and perform whipping scenarios from other times and places for the


More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Vignette ]


Notes


  • 09/21 - Article updated with information from !sm 201-2017-0315 backup files
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