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Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
In literary terms, a hero (masculine) or heroine (feminine) protagonist is typically admired for their achievements and noble qualities. [13] Heroes are lauded for their strength, courage, virtuousness, and honor, and are considered to be the "good guys" of the narrative.
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. [1] Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history , moral philosophy, social philosophy, and interdisciplinary themes relevant to how people interpret meaning . [ 1 ]
Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or "audience") and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author, content, or form of the work.
New Criticism developed as a reaction to the older philological and literary history schools of the US North, which focused on the history and meaning of individual words and their relation to foreign and ancient languages, comparative sources, and the biographical circumstances of the authors, taking this approach under the influence of nineteenth-century German scholarship.
The usage of the word dates back to the beginnings of Latin civilization. [9] The Latin word derived from the Etruscan word "phersu," with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον (prosōpon). [10] It is the etymology of the word "person," or "parson" in French. [11]
A prominent proponent of this view is E.D. Hirsch, who in his influential book Validity in Interpretation (1967) argues for "the sensible belief that a text means what its author meant". [ 8 ] [ 9 ] Hirsch contends that the meaning of a text is an ideal entity that exists in the author's mind, and the task of interpretation is to reconstruct ...
Frequently, the author surrogate is the same as the main character and/or the protagonist, and is also often the narrator.As an example, the author surrogate may be the one who delivers political diatribe, expressing the author's beliefs, or expound on the strengths and weaknesses of other characters, thereby communicating directly the author's opinion on the characters in question.