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| Chiasmus | Figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of parallel clauses is reversed in the second. “Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?”-- T. S. Eliot, |
| Thesis | Focus statement of an essay; premise statement upon which the point of view or discussion in the essay is based. |
| Antithesis | The juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words or phrases. |
| Litote | Form of understatement in which the negative of the contrary is used to achieve emphasis and intensity. For example, "She is not a bad cook." Or "No man ever followed his genius until it misled him." Thoreau |
| Doppelganger | Ghostly counterpart of a living person or an alter ego |
| Zeugma | Grammatically correct linkage of one subject with two or more verbs or a verb with two or more direct objects. The linking shows a relationship between ideas more clearly. |
| Ethos | In dramatic literature, the moral element that determines a character's actions, rather than thought or emotion. |
| Propaganda | Information or rumor deliberately spread to help or harm a person, group, or institution |
| Didactic | Intended for teaching or to teach a moral lesson |
| Formal Language | Language that is lofty, dignified, or impersonal |
| Allegory | Narrative form in which characters and actions have meanings outside themselves; characters are usually personifications of abstract qualities |
| Abstract | Not related to the concrete properties of an object; pertaining to ideas, concepts, or qualities, as opposed to physical attributes |
| In medias res | Opening a story in the middle of the action, requiring filling in past details by exposition or flashback. |
| Colloquial | Ordinary language; the vernacular. For example, depending on where in the United States you live, a sandwich is called a sub, a grinder, or a hero. |
| Isocolon | Parallel structure in which the parallel elements are similar not only in grammatical structure, but also in length. For example, "An envious heart makes a treacherous ear" (Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston). |
| Aesthetic | Pertaining to the value of art for its own sake or for form |
| Juxtaposition | Placing of two items side by side to create a certain effect, reveal an attitude, or accomplish some other purpose |
| Elegy | Poem or prose lamenting the death of a particular person. |
| Antihero | Protagonist of a literary work who does not embody the traditional qualities of a hero |
| Catharsis | Purification or cleansing of the spirit through the emotions of pity and terror as a witness to a tragedy. |
| Epigraph | Quote set at the beginning of a literary work or at its divisions to set the tone or suggest a theme |
| Motif | Recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event |
| Parallelism | Recurrent syntactical similarity where several parts of a sentence or several sentences are expressed alike to show that the ideas in the parts or sentences equal in importance. It also adds balance, rhythm, and clarity to the sentence. For example, "I have always searched for, but never found the perfect painting for that wall." |
| Anaphora | regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses. For example, "We shall fight in the trenches. We shall fight on the oceans. We shall fight in the sky." |
| Anadiplosis | Repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the next clause. For example, "The crime was common, common be the pain." (Alexander Pope) |
| Appeals to: authority | Rhetorical arguments in which the speaker: either claims to be an expert or relies on information provided by experts |
| Appeals to emotion | Rhetorical arguments in which the speaker attempts to affect the listener's personal feelings |
| Appeals to logic | Rhetorical arguments in which the speaker attempts to persuade the listener through use of deductive reasoning |
