Vignette (literature)

In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, idea, setting, or object. This type of scene is more common in recent postmodern theater, where less emphasis is placed on adhering to the conventions of theatrical structure and story development. Vignettes have been particularly influenced by contemporary notions of a scene as shown in film, video and television scripting. It is also a part of something bigger than itself: for example, a vignette about a house belonging to a collection of vignettes or a whole story, such as The House On Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros.

A blog can provide a form of vignette.

See also

References

Vignette

Vignette (from the French for "little vine") may refer to:

Vignette (psychology)

A vignette in psychological and sociological experiments presents a hypothetical situation, to which research participants respond thereby revealing their perceptions, values, social norms or impressions of events.

Peter Rossi and colleagues developed a framework for creating vignettes by systematically combining predictor variables in order to dissect the effects of the variables on dependent variables. For example, to study normative judgments of family status, "there might be 10 levels of income; 50 head-of-household occupations, and 50 occupations for spouses; two races, white and black; and ten levels of family size". Since this approach can lead to huge universes of stimuli - half a million in the example - Rossi proposed drawing small random samples from the universe of stimuli for presentation to individual respondents, and pooling judgments by multiple respondents in order to sample the universe adequately. Main effects of predictor variables then can be assessed, though not all interactive effects.

Diorama

The word diorama /ˌdaɪəˈrɑːmə/ can either refer to a 19th-century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle modeling, miniature figure modeling, or aircraft modeling.

Etymology

The word "diorama" originated in 1823 as a type of picture-viewing device, from the French in 1822. The word literally means "through that which is seen", from the Greek di- "through" + orama "that which is seen, a sight". The diorama was invented by Daguerre and Charles Marie Bouton, first exhibited in London September 29, 1823. The meaning "small-scale replica of a scene, etc." is from 1902.

Daguerre's diorama consisted of a piece of material painted on both sides. When illuminated from the front, the scene would be shown in one state and by switching to illumination from behind another phase or aspect would be seen. Scenes in daylight changed to moonlight, a train travelling on a track would crash, or an earthquake would be shown in before and after pictures.