LITERARY TERMS 2

• Circumlocution: roundabout or indirect speech or writing, rather than short, brief, clear writing
• Classicism: the principles or styles characteristic of the literature and art of ancient Greece and Rome
• Cliché: a hackneyed or trite phrase that has become overused
• Climax: the moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved
• Colloquialism: a word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing
• Comedy: any play or narrative poem in which the main characters manage to avert an impending disaster and have a happy ending
• Conflict: the opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on
• Connotation: the extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary
• Contrast: opposition or juxtaposition of different forms, lines, or colors in a work of art to intensify each element's properties and produce a more dynamic expressiveness
• Denotation: strict definition of a word as found in a dictionary
• Denouement: the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot
• Dialect: the language of a particular district, class, or group of persons
• Dialectics: the art or practice of logical discussion as employed in investigating the truth of a theory or opinion
• Dichotomy: division into two parts, kinds, etc.; subdivision into halves or pairs
• Diction: the choice of a particular word as opposed to others
• Didactic: writing that is "preachy" or seeks overtly to convince a reader of a particular point or lesson
• Dogmatic: asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner; opinionated
• Elegy: in classical Greco-Roman literature, "elegy" refers to any poem written in elegiac meter (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines). More broadly, elegy came to mean any poem dealing with the subject-matter common to the early Greco-Roman elegies--complaints about love, sustained formal lamentation, or somber meditations
• Epic: an epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry that contains an epic hero invoked by a muse who goes on an epic journey
• Epigram: a short verse or motto appearing at the beginning of a longer poem or the title page of a novel, at the heading of a new section or paragraph of an essay or other literary work to establish mood or raise thematic concerns
• Epitaph: an inscription carved on a gravestone; the final statement spoken by a character before his death
• Epithet: a short, poetic nickname--often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase--attached to the normal name
• Euphemism: using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt, embarrassing, or painful one
• Evocative: a phrase that calls forth a feeling intended by the author