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abstract

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Complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, and seldom uses examples to support its points

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Academic

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Adj describing style, dry and theoretical writing, sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis

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Accent

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In poetry, refers to stressed portion of word, also matter of opinion

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Aesthetic

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"Appealing to the senses", coherent study of taste, study of beauty

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Allegory

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Story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside of the tale itself

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Alliteration

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Repetition of initial consonant sounds, consonant clusters coming closely cramped and compressed

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Allusion

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Reference to another work or famous figure, topical: current event, or popular: something from popular culture

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Anachronism

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"Misplaced in time"

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Analogy

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Comparison, involve two or more symbolic parts and are employed to clarify an action or relationship

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Anecdote

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Short narrative

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Antecedent

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Word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to

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Antagonist

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Primary character in opposition to the protagonist or hero

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Anaphora

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Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of word groups occurring one after the other

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Anthropomorphism

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Inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation

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Anticlimax

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Action produces far smaller results than one had led to expect, frequently comic

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Antihero

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Protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, and any other unsavory qualities

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Anthropomorphism

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Inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation

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Anticlimax

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Action produces far smaller results than one had led to expect, frequently comic

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Antihero

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Protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, and any other unsavory qualities

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Aphorism

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Short and usually witty saying

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Apostrophe

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Figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something nonhuman

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Archaism

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Use of deliberately old fashioned language, create feeling of antiquity

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Aside

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Speech made by actor to audience, as though stepping momentarily outside of the action on stage

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Aspect

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Trait or characteristic

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Assonance

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Repeated use of vowel sounds

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Atmosphere

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Emotional tone or background that surrounds the scene

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Ballad

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Long, narrative poem, usually in regular meter and rhyme. Typically has a naïve folksy quality, a characteristic that distinguishes it from epic poetry

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pathos

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When writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity or sympathy

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Bathos

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When writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries to jerk tears for every little hiccup

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Black humor

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Use of disturbing themes in comedy

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Bombast

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Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language. When one tried to be eloquent by using the largest, most uncommon words

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Burlesque

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Broad parody, one that takes a style or form, such as tragic drama, and exaggerates it into ridiculousness. Parody and burlesque are interchangeable

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Cacophony

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In poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds

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Cadence

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Beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense

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Canto

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Name for section division in a long work of poetry, divides like chapters in a novel

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Caricature

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Portrait that exaggerates a facet of personality

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Catharsis

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Cleansing of emotion an audience member experiences, having lived through the experiences presented on stage

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Chorus

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In drama, group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it

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Classic

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Typical, or an accepted masterpiece

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Coinage

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A new word, usually one invented on the spot, could be a name, neologism

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Colloquialism

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Word or phrase used everyday in conversational English that isn't part of accepted "schoolbook" english

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Complex, dense

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Suggest there is more than one possibility in the meaning of words; there are subtleties and variations; multiple layers of interpretation; meaning both explicit and implicit

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Conceit

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Refers to a startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon over several lines

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Controlling image

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When an image dominate and shapes the entire work

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Connotation

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Everything a else a word suggests or implies

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Denotation

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Literal meaning of a word

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Consonance

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Repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at the begging, alliteration)

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Couplet

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Pair of lines that end in rhyme

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Decorum

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Characters speech must be styled according to her social station and in accordance with the occasion. A bum should speak like a bum about bully things

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Diction

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The authors choice of words

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Syntax

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Ordering and structuring of the words

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Dirge

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Song for the dead, slow, heavy, and melancholy

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Dissonance

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Grating of incomparable sounds

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Doggerel

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Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme. Limericks

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dramatic irony

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When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not

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Dramatic monologue

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When a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience

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Elergy

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Type of poem that meditates on death or morality in a serious, thoughtful manner. Often use death of a recent loved done or noted person as a starting point. Also memorialize specific dead people

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Elements

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Basic techniques of each genre of literature

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Enjambment

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Continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause

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Epic

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Very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style. Glorious and profound subject matter

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Epitaph

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Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place. A line or handful of lines, often serious or religious, but sometimes witty and even irreverent

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Euphemism

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Word or phrase that takes place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. Ex: passed away for died

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Euphony

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When sounds blend harmoniously

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Explicit

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To say or write something directly or clearly

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Farce

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Extremely broad humor

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Feminine rhyme

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Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Penultimate syllables stressed, final syllables unstressed

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First person narration

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Character in the story tells the tale from his/her point of view

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Foil

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Secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast

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Foot

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The basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry. Formed by a combo of two or three syllables, either stressed or unstressed

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Foreshadowing

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Event or statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later

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Free verse

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Poetry written w/out regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern

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Genre

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Subcategory of literature

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Gothic (novel)

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Sensibility derived from gothic novels

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Hubris

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Excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main characters downfall

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Hyperbole

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Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement

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Implicit

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To say or write something that suggests and implies but never says directly or clearly. "Meaning" or "Between the lines"

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In medias res

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Latin for "in the midst of things"

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Interior monologue

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A term for novels and poetry, not dramatic literature. Refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a characters head. Related to stream of consciousness but not identical to. Stream of consciousness is looser and much more given to fleeting mental impressions

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Inversion

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Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase. This type of messing with syntax is called poetic license

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Irony

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The hallmark is an undertow of meaning, sliding against he literal meaning of the words

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Lament

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Poem of sadness or grief over this death of a loved one or over some other intense loss

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Lampoon

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A satire

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Loose sentence

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Complete before its end

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Periodic sentence

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Not grammatically complete until it has reached its final phrase

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Lyric

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Type of poetry that explores the poets personal interpretation of and feeling about the world. When used to describe tone it refers to sweet, emotional melodiousness

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Masculine rhyme

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Rhyme ending on the final stressed syllables

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Means, meaning

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Discovering what makes sense, what's important. Literal which is concrete and explicit, and then emotional

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Melodrama

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Form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very, very good, the villain is mean and rotten, and the heroin oh so pure

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Metaphor

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Comparison or analogy that states one thing is another

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Simile

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Uses like or as

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Metaphysical conceit

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For metaphysical poems

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Metonym

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Word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with

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Nemesis

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Protagonists archenemy or supreme and persistent difficulty

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Neologism

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See coinage

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Objectivity

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Treatment of subject matter is an impersonal or outside view of events

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Subjectivity

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Treatment uses the interior of personal view of a single observer and is typically colored with that observers emotional response

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Omniscient narrator

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Third person narrator who sees, like god, into each characters mind and understand all the action going on

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Onomatopoeia

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Words that sound like what they mean

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Opposition

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It means you have a pair of elements that contrast sharply

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Oxymoron

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Phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction

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Parable

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Like a fable or allegory, it instructs

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Paradox

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Situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not

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Parallelism

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Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect

The glossary of literary terms for the ap English literature and composition exam – Flashcards

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