| Deliberate underplaying or undervaluing of a thing to create emphasis or irony. |
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| The ways in which the author conveys attitudes about the story material and toward the reader. |
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| Point of view in which one third-person character's thoughts are revealed but the other characters' thoughts are not. |
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| The major or central idea of a work. |
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| Objects, incidents, speeches, and characters that have meanings beyond themselves. |
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| The manipulation of language to create certain effects. |
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| The way in which a plot is assembled: chronologically, through dreams, speeches, fragments, etc. |
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| The reporting of actions in chronological sequence. E. M. Forster: "The King died, and then the Queen died." |
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| Flat characters who represent a class or group. Examples: the braggart soldier, the shrewish wife, the hypocritical Puritan, and so forth. |
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| Flat characters that exhibit no attributes except those of their class. |
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| A type of irony emphasizing that human beings are enmeshed in forces beyond their comprehension and control. |
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| Comparison of two unlike things using "like" or "as." |
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| A work's natural, manufactured, political, cultural, and temporal environment, including everything that the characters know and own. |
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| Story told from the perspective of "you" (uncommon). Example: Lorrie Moore's "How to Become a Writer." |
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| E. M. Forster: "are dynamic--capable of surprising the reader in a convincing way." Round characters recognize, change with, and adjust to circumstances. |
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| The main character of a story; the character around whom the conflict is centered. |
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The voice of the story; the story from the perspective of the person doing the speaking. Examples: first person, second person,
third person omniscient, third person limited omniscient, third person dramatic or objective. |
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| The development and resolution of a conflict; includes the element of causation. E. M. Forster: "The king died, and the queen died of grief." |
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| A short, simple allegory with a moral or religious bent. |
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| Attributing human attributes or actions to nonhuman things or abstractions. |
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| Exaggeration for effect. |
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| Point of view in which an authorial voice reveals all the characters' thoughts; may include commentary by the author. |
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| A turn-of-the-century literary movement in which heredity and environment determine human fate. |
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| A narrative story associated with the religion, philosophy, or collective psychology of various societies and cultures. |
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| Comparison of two unlike things; describing some unlike thing in terms of something understandable to the reader. |
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| The discrepancy between what is perceived and what is revealed; language and situations that seem to reverse normal expectations. |
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| Type of story or theme in which a character moves from innocence to experience. |
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| A character that is static and does not grow |
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| Narration from the perspective of "I" or "We." |
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| A story that features animals with human traits and "morals" or explanations. |
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| sudden sense of radiance and revelation that one may feel while perceiving a commonplace object |
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| hird person point of view in which no authorial commentary reveals characters' thoughts |
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| Situational irony in which a character perceives his or her plight in a limited way while the audience and one or more other characters understand it entirely. |
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| symbol recognized and shared as a result of common social and cultural heritage. |
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| Situational irony that is connected to a pessimistic or fatalistic view of life. |
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| A symbol specific to a particular work that gathers its meaning from the context of the work. |
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| The essence of plot; the opposition between two forces. |
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| The verbal representation of a human being, with all the good and bad traits of being human. |
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| The emotional aura that a work evokes; the permeating emotional texture within a work |
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| a complete and self-contained symbolic narrative signifying another set of conditions. |
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