Literature Terms 31-56

Dialect:
A particular language spoken in a particular region, race, or social group.

Dialectics:
A rationale or dialectic materialism based through on change through conflict or opposing forces.

Dichotomy:
Split between two opposing things.

Diction:
One's style of speaking or writing.


Didactic:
Having to do with the transmission of information.

Dogmatic:
Rigid in beliefs and principles.

Elegy:
A mournful, melancholy, poem especially a funeral song or lament for the dead, sometimes contains
general reflections on death, often with rural or pastoral setting.

Epic:
A long narrative poem unified by the hero who reflects the customs, mores, aspiraitions, of his nation of race as he makes his way through legendary an historic exploits over long periods of time.

Epigram:
Witty aphorism.

“

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience deceptive, judgment difficult.

”

Epitaph:
Any brief inscription or prose in verse on a tombstone; a short formal poem of commemoration.

Epithet:
A short, descriptive name or phrase, that may insult someone's character.


Euphemism:
The use of indirect, wild or vague word or expression for one thought to be coarse,  offensive, or blunt.

Exposition:
Beginning of a story that sets forth facts and ideas.

In The Faults in our Stars, Hazel introduces her life as a young girl who has cancer and who is very depressed, she gives us more information as the beginning progresses. 

Expressionism:
Movement in art, literature, or music consisting of unrealistic representation of an inner idea or feelings.

Fable:
A short, simple, story usually with animals as characters, designed to teach a moral truth.

Fallacy:
From the Latin word, "to deceive", a false or misleading notion, belief, or argument; any kind of erroneous reasoning that makes arguments unsound.

Falling Action:
Part of narrative or drama after the climax.

Farce:
A boisterous comedy involving ludicrous language and dialogue.

Figurative Language:
Apt and imaginative language characterized by figures of speech.

Flashback:
A narrative device that flashes back to prior events.

Foil:
A person or thing that, by contrast, makes another seem better or more prominent.

In Jane Erye, Bertha is Jane's Foil.  

Folk Tale:
Story passed one by word of mouth.

Foreshadowing:
In fiction and drama, a device to prepare the reader for the outcome of the action; "planning" to make the outcome convincing, though not to give it away.

Free Verse:
Verse without conventional metrical pattern, with irregular pattern or rhyme.

Genre:
A category or class of artistic endeavor having a particular form, technique, or form