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Black comedy a comedy filled with cynicism and despair using sarcasm.
Caesura a pause in a line of poetry usually indicated by a punctuation mark.
Character a person in a story. Character also denotes the beliefs, habits of
mind, moral choices, and motivation that distinguish one fictional
person from another.
Climax highest point of the action in a story.
Closet drama (or armchair theatre) a play in verse form which is meant to be read
and not performed.
Comedy a story with an amusing plot that ends happily, usually with a marriage.
Comedy of manners a comedy that ridicules the social customs and morays of a
period.
Connotation the cluster of meanings implied or suggested by a word, as
distinguished from its literal or denotative meaning. Connotations of a
word often carry powerful emotional charges. Imaginative literature
depends on much of its emotional and aesthetic effectiveness on the
connotative meaning of words.
Decor setting or background.
Denotation the literal, dictionary meaning of a word.
Denouement a French word denoting an untying; the conclusion to a story; the
part of the plot in which conflicts are finally resolved.
Diction the words used by an author, his/her vocabulary in a particular story. For
example, Gustave Flaubert, the author of MADAME BOVARY, used
medical and technical vocabulary in his novel.
Didactic a literary work designed to teach or instruct the reader. Parables, fables,
and allegories are didactic; their moral themes determine the
characters and the plots. Propaganda is a kind of didactic work which
seeks to convince the reader to take action; often, propaganda may
oversimplify characters and events in order to make its message clear.
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Foreshadowing clues or hints in the text or story that prepare the reader or
spectator for some future event or action.
Formal essay a non-fiction article which presents information in an impersonal
way. Montaignes ESSAYS are much more based in the personal,
which was his intention.
Free verse poetry without meter or rhyme.
Genre a French word used to refer to a literary form or type such as tragedy,
comedy, epic, lyric, novel, or short story.
High comedy a comedy which is more formal in its language with a clever and
amusing dialogue.
Hyperbole an exaggeration in language made to produce a certain effect; figure of
speech containing an exaggeration.
Image an aspect of diction whereby words and phrases suggest concrete, physical,
or descriptive details such as sounds, odors, colors, and tactile
sensations. Language evoking an opening of the senses.
Imagery figurative language that evokes pictures or feelings in the mind of the
reader.
Irony a term referring to the disparity between what is said and what is meant,
between expectations and outcomes.
Italian sonnet a fourteen line poem divided into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet
(six lines).
Local color a descriptive technique in literary works, particularly in the novel,
which attempts to recreate the setting of the story by including long
descriptions of streets, towns, villages, cities, etc.
Low comedy a comedy that can be slapstick containing loud and often boisterous
actions and absurd situations.
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Lyric poetry short verse, considered song-like, which reveals the inner thoughts
and feelings of the speaker. A singing quality or intensity of feeling in a
poem.
Melodrama a play or story that portrays a moral conflict.
Metaphor a comparison in language that compares two unlike things to suggest a
likeness between the two. A metaphor is non-explicit in nature. Like or
as are not used.
Metonymy a use of language in which one conveys the meaning of one word by
the use of another. The process generally takes the form of substituting
the container for the contents, the abstract for the concrete, etc.
Meter a patterned arrangement of syllables in poetic verse.
Motivation the reasons behind a characters actions.
Myth an archetypal story devised to explain some natural phenomenon or to
provide people with a legend of its origins. Typically its characters are
much larger than life size.
Narration or narrative technique the act of presenting or telling the story. It may be
presented in the third person, first person, or even in the second person,
which is the case of the New Novel written in France after 1950. In
fiction, it is where the author is actually telling the story as opposed to
describing or commenting.
Onomatopoeia a formation of words in imitation of natural sounds.
Oxymoron a figure of speech containing contradictory meanings and words, (a
gentle severity).
Paradox a statement in language that says two opposite things.
Persona the character or voice assumed by the writer of the story for the telling of
that story.
Parody the ideas of another writer are imitated through word and style to make
them seem ridiculous.
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