Literary Terms

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Literary Terms

• paradox
• parallelism
• anaphora
• parody
• pedantic

By Hannah Faulstick
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PARODOX

• A paradox is a a statement that contains two
  parts that contradict each other, but when looked
  at with more thought and depth have an
  underlining meaning to why they are together.

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Examples

• "Some day you will be old enough to start reading
  fairy tales again."(C.S. Lewis to his godchild,
  Lucy Barfield, to whom he dedicated The Lion, the
  Witch and the Wardrobe)
• "Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox
  here in America--that we are fixed and certain
  only when we are in movement."(Thomas Wolfe, You
  Can't Go Home Again, 1940)
• "The swiftest traveler is he that goes
  afoot."(Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854)

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Paradox

• Visual

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• PARALLELISM

DEFINITION A structure used in writing that has
similar form throughout the place in which it is
used Examples You can fool all the people some
of the time, and some of the people all the time,
but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
-Abraham Lincoln   Ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your country.
-John F. Kennedy   We are not satisfied, and we
will not be satisfied until justice rolls down
like waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream.- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Parallelism

• Visual

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Anaphora

• This is a sub-type of Parallelism
• This is when a word or phrase is repeated exactly
  and placed at the beginning of sentences that
  follow each other

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Examples

•  
• "But one hundred years later, the Negro still is
  not free. One hundred years later, the life of
  the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles
  of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
  One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a
  lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast
  ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years
  later, the Negro is still languishing in the
  corners of American society and finds himself an
  exile in his own land. And so we've come here
  today to dramatize a shameful condition."(Dr.
  Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream," 1963)
• "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all
  the world, she walks into mine."(Rick Blaine in
  Casablanca)
• "We saw the bruised children of these fathers
  clump onto our school bus, we saw the abandoned
  children huddle in the pews at church, we saw the
  stunned and battered mothers begging for help at
  our doors."(Scott Russell Sanders, "Under the
  Influence," 1989)

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Anaphora

• Visual

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Parody
A parody is a mockery of a former piece that is
meant to be humorous
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Examples

• The work is a satirical polemic upon Roundheads,
  Puritans, Presbyterians and many of the other
  factions involved in the English Civil War. The
  work was begun, according to the title page,
  during the civil war and published in three parts
  in 1663, 1664 and 1678, with the first edition
  encompassing all three parts in 1684 (see 1684 in
  poetry).1 The Mercurius Aulicus (an early
  newspaper of the time) reported an unauthorized
  edition of the first part was already in print in
  early 1662.2
•  
• The Dunciad /'d?nsi.æd/ is a landmark literary
  satire by Alexander Pope published in three
  different versions at different times. The first
  version (the "three book" Dunciad) was published
  in 1728 anonymously. The second version, the
  Dunciad Variorum was published anonymously in
  1729. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a
  different hero, appeared in 1743. The poem
  celebrates the goddess Dulness and the progress
  of her chosen agents as they bring decay,
  imbecility, and tastelessness to the Kingdom of
  Great Britain.
• The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a play by
  Francis Beaumont, first performed in 1607 and
  first published in a quarto in 1613. It is
  notable as the first whole parody (or pastiche)
  play in English. The play is a satire on
  chivalric romances in general, similar to Don
  Quixote, and a parody of Thomas Heywood's The
  Four Prentices of London and Thomas Dekker's The
  Shoemaker's Holiday. The play is notable for
  breaking the fourth wall from its outset.

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Parody

• Visual

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Pedantic

• DEFINITION The use of big words in unnecessary
  places in order to sound smarter
• EX "The pedant is he who finds it impossible to
  read criticism of himself without immediately
  reaching for his pen and replying to the effect
  that the accusation is a gross insult to his
  person. He is, in effect, a man unable to laugh
  at himself." from Sigmund Freud's The Ego and the
  Id.
• EXThe intellectual boy scurried home to ponder
  his knowledge.
• EXThe book was juxtapose the backpack.

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Pedantic

• Visual

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Works Cited Slide
Nordquist, Richard Paradox About.com. 2011. New
York Times Company. September 29,2011lthttp//gra
mmer.about.comgt Nordquist, Richard Anaphora
About.com. 2011. New York Times Company.
September 29,2011lthttp//grammer.about.comgt
Writing Tips Parallelism. Writing Center
UNLV. 2006. University of Necada, Las Vagas. 29
September 2011lthttp// writingcenter.unlv.edugt Wh
at is an example of pedantic in literature? Cha
Cha.com. 2011. Cha Cha. 29 September 2011.
lthttp//www.chacha.comgt