Lit Terms 6-25

6. Antithesis: a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness. 

7. Aphorism: a terse, pointed statement expressing some wise or clever observation about life.

8.  Apologia: a defense or justification for doctrine, piece of writing, cause, or action; also apology.

9. Apostrophe: a figure of speech in which an absent or dead perosn, an abstract quality, or something inanimate or nonhuman is addressed directly.

      
10. Argument(action): the process of convincing a reader by proving either the truth or the falsity of an idea or proposition; also, the thesis or proposition itself.

picture credit to Ming. 

11. Assumption: the act of supposing, or taking for granted that a thing is truth.

12. Audience: the intended listener or listeners.

13. Characterization: the means by which a writer reveals a character's personality.        

14. Chiasmus: a reversal in the order off words so that the second half of a statement balances the first half in inverted word order.

15. Circumlocution: a roundabout or evasive speech or writing, in which many words are used but a few would have served.

16. Classicism: art, literature, and music reflecting the principles of ancient Greece and Rome; tradition, reason, clarity, order, and balance.

17. Cliché: a phrase or situation overused within society.

18. Climax: the decisive point in a narrative or drama; the point of greatest intensity or interest at which plot question is answered or resolved.

19. Colloquialism: folksy speech, slang words or phrases usually used in informal conversation.

   

20. Comedy: originally a nondramatic literary piece of work that was marked by happy ending; now a term to describe a ludicrous, farcical, or amusing event designed provide enjoyment or produce smiles and laughter

21. Conflict: struggle or problem in a story causing tension.

22. Connotation: implicit meaning, going beyond dictionary definition.

23. Contrast: a rhetorical device by which one element(idea or object) is thrown into opposition to another for the sake of emphasis or clarity.

24. Denotation: plain dictionary definition.

25. Denouement(pronounced day-new-mahn): loose ends tied up in a story after the climax, closure, conclusion.