Terms for MAUS

Allegory a story that represents abstract ideas or moral qualities and abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters, figures and events. An allegory has both a literal and a symbolic level of meaning. Example: Gulliver’s Travels, Animal Farm

Catachresis the deliberate use of words to create an impossible situation or mixed metaphor. Often used to express extreme alienation or heightened emotions Examples: John Milton wrote of “blind mouths’; in Maus, one section is called, My Father Bleeds History.

Comic relief the intrusion of humor interrupting or immediately following a scene of great excitement. Example: The drunken porter knocks at the door immediately after the killing of King Duncan in Macbeth.

Dialect a particular kind of speech used by members of one specific group because of its geographical location or class. Example: Jim, in Huckleberry Finn says, “Shet de do.’’ [“Shut the door”.]

Epigraph a short quotation that appears in front of a poem, a book, or a chapter, explaining something about what follows. Example: T.S. Eliot places a quotation from Dante’s Inferno before the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which gives the reader an additional method of understanding that Eliot’s poem deals with a person in Hell.

Foreshadowing the use of hints or clues in a story to suggest what action is to come. Foreshadowing is frequently used to create interest and build suspense. Example: Two small and seemingly inconsequential car accidents predict and hint at the upcoming, important wreck in The Great Gatsby.

Frame Narrative or Frame Story a story that has another story or stories within it Examples: The Canterbury Tales, The Arabian Nights.

Irony a perception of inconsistency, sometimes humorous, in which the significance and understanding of a statement or event is changed by its context. Example: The firehouse burned down. Dramatic Irony - the audience or reader knows more about a character’s situation than the character does and knows that the character’s understanding is incorrect. Example: In Medea, Creon asks, “What atrocities could she commit in one day?” The reader, however, knows Medea will destroy her family and Creon’s by day’s end. Structural Irony – the use of a naïve hero, whose incorrect perceptions differ from the reader’s correct ones. Example: Huck Finn. Verbal Irony - a discrepancy between what is said and what is really meant; sarcasm. Example: A large man whose nickname is “Tiny.”

Juxtaposition the placement of two dissimilar items, people, thoughts, places, etc., next to one another to emphasize the differences or heighten the similarities. Example: In The Pearl, the main character instinctively touches the valuable pearl and his knife at the same time.

Litotes (“light tote tease”) a conscious understatement that achieves the opposite effect of the words themselves. Example: I like money a little. Using “not too bad “ for “very good” OR “She is not a beauty queen” meaning she is ugly.

Examples: Tristam Shandy, Maus Metafiction fiction that makes no attempt to disguise itself as factual; fiction that comments on its actually being fiction. Examples: Tristam Shandy, Maus

Metaphor a comparison of two things that are basically dissimilar in which one is described in terms of the other. Example: The moon, a haunting lantern, shone through the clouds.

Mixed Metaphor combining two or more literary terms in such a way that the meaning is ridiculous, impossible, or incorrect. Examples: The athlete sailed down the road of life without missing a step. The President will put the ship of state firmly upon its feet.

Paradox a statement that is self-contradictory on its surface, yet makes a point through the juxtaposition of the ideas and words within the paradox. Examples: “Noon finally dawned for the remaining, weary soldiers”; “He that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat…”–Isaiah 55:1

Parallelism the repetition of similarly constructed phrases, clauses, or sentences within a short section. Examples: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people…”; “When I was a child, I spake as child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child…”I Corinthians 13:11

Pun an expression that achieves emphasis or humor by utilizing: two distinctly different meanings for the same word. Example: “play” meaning “fun” and “play” meaning a performance on stage. OR two similar sounding words. Example: close/clothes. Example: In Romeo and Juliet, one character, Mercutio, says after being fatally stabbed, “Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.”

Symbol an object, person, or place that has a meaning in itself and that also stands for something larger than itself, usually an idea or concept; some concrete thing which represents an abstraction. Example: The sea could be symbolic for “the unknown.” Since the sea is something that is physical and can be seen by the reader, and also has elements that cannot be understood, it can be used symbolically to stand for the abstraction of “mystery,” “obscurity,” or “the unknown.”