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Metaphor
a figure of speech in which one thing is referred to as another, for example, "my love is a fragile flower"
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Metonymy
a figure of speech that uses the name of an object, person, or idea to represent somehting which it is associated, such as using "the crown" to refer to a monarch, or "the pen is mightier than the sword"
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Mode
the method or form of a literary work, the manner in which a work of literature is written
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Mood
similar to tone, mood is the primary emotional attitude of a work (the feeling of a work; the atmosphere). Syntax is also a determiner of mood because sentence strength, length, and complexity afect pacing.
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Moral
the lesson drawn from a fictional or nonfictional story. It can also mean a heavily dicatic story.
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Motif
main theme or subject of a work that is elaborated on in the development of the piece, a repeated pattern or idea
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Narraration
the telling of a story in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama; one of the four modes of discourse
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Negative-Positive
sentence that begins by stating what is NOT true, then ending by stating what is true.
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Non-sequitur
latin for "it does not follow". When one statement isn't logically connected to the other.
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Objectivity
an impersonal presentation of events and charachters. It is a writer's attempt to remove himself or herself from any subjective, personal involvement in a story. Hard news journalism is frequently prized for its objectivity, although even fictional stories can be told without a writer rendering personal judgement.
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Onomatopoeia
the use of words that sound like what they mean, such as "hiss", "buzz", "slam", or "boom"
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oversimplificaton
when a writer obscures or denies the complexity of the issues in the argument
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oxymoron
a figure of speech composed of contradictory words or phrases, such as, "wise fool", "bitter-sweet", "pretty ugly", "jumbo shrimp", or "cold fire"
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pacing
the movement of a literary piece from one point or one section to another
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parable
a short tale that teaches a moral, similar to but shorter than an allegory
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paradox
a statement that seems to contradict itself but that turns out to have a rational meaning, as in this quotation, "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
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parallelism
- the technique of arranging words, phrases, clauses, or other by placing them side-by-side and making them similar in form. paralle structures may be as simple as listing two or three modifiers in a row to describe the same noun or verb, or two or more of the same type of phrase, that modifies the same noun or verb, or, parallel structure may be a complex bend of a single-word, phrase, and clause parallelism all in the same sentence
- "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields.
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parody
a work that ridicules the style of another work by imitating and exaggerating its elements. It can be utterly mocking or gently humurous. It depends on allusion and exaggerates and distorts the original style and content.
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pathos
the aspects of a literary work that elicit sorrow or pity from the audience. An appeal to emotion that can be used as a means to persuade. Over-emotionalism can be the result of an excess of pahtos.
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