Lit Terms 82-100

82. Omniscient Point of View:  knowing all things, usually the third person.

83. Onomatopoeia: use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its

meaning.

84. Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which two contradicting words or phrases are combined to produce a rhetorical effect by means of a concise paradox.

85. Pacing:  rate of movement; tempo.

86. Parable:  a story designed to convey some religious principle, moral lesson, or general truth.

87. Paradox:  a statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really containing a possible truth; an opinion contrary to generally accepted ideas.

88. Parallelism: the principle in sentence structure that states elements of equal function should have equal form.

89. Parody:  an imitation of mimicking of a composition or of the style of a well-known artist.

90. Pathos:  the ability in literature to call forth feelings of pity, compassion, and/or sadness.

91. Pedantry: a display of learning for its own sake.

92. Personification: a figure of speech attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or  abstract ideas.

93. Plot: a plan or scheme to accomplish a purpose.

94. Poignant:  eliciting sorrow or sentiment.

95. Point of View: the attitude unifying any oral or written argumentation; in description, the physical point from which the observer views what he is describing.

96. Postmodernism: literature characterized by experimentation, irony, nontraditional forms, multiple meanings, playfulness and a blurred boundary between real and imaginary.

97. Prose:  the ordinary form of spoken and written language; language that does not have a regular rhyme pattern.

98. Protagonist: the central character in a work of fiction; opposes antagonist.

99. Pun:  play on words; the humorous use of a word emphasizing different meanings or applications.

100. Purpose: the intended result wished by an author.