The Count of Monte CristoBy Alexandre

Dumas

ALLEGORY•Writing that has a double meaning (from Greek, meaning “speaking otherwise”)•An allegory is a complete narrative with characters, plot, and extensive symbolism. It is an extended metaphor in which persons, abstract ideas, or events represent not only themselves on the literal level, but they also stand for something else on the symbolic level.

ALLEGORYAesop’s Fables: “The Ant and the Grasshopper”

In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

"Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"

"I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."

"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present." But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.

When the winter came the Grasshopper found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing, every day, corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.

Then the Grasshopper knew...It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

•What does the Grasshopper symbolize? What does the Ant symbolize? What do the seasons symbolize? The entire story is an allegory for what?

ALLUSION•A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification•Authors assume that the readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning to the new context

ALLUSIONIf a teacher were to refer to his class as a horde of Mongols, the students will have no idea if they are being praised or vilified unless they know what the Mongol horde was and what activities it participated in historically. This historical allusion assumes a certain level of education or awareness in the audience, so it should normally be taken as a compliment rather than an insult or an attempt at obscurity.

ALLUSIONAllusions can often be taken as an inside joke, a reference that a select group will recognize and others will not even know was present. These allusions are often in reference to popular culture.

IMAGERY

•The "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. •All the sensory perceptions referred to in a work, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. •Also includes auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic sensation (movement).

IMAGERYOpening lines to

"Above the Dock“ by T. E. Hulme:

Above the quiet dock in midnight,Tangled in the tall mast's corded height

Hangs the moon. What seemed so far awayIs but a child's balloon, forgotten after play.

IRONYDRAMATIC: •The reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. •The character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store

IRONYSITUATIONAL: •Accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the poetic justice of a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked. •Both the victim and the audience are simultaneously aware of the situation in situational irony (not the case in dramatic irony)

IRONYVERBAL:•Also called sarcasm•A speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words ostensibly express. •Often this sort of irony is plainly sarcastic in the eyes of the reader, but the characters listening in the story may not realize the speaker's sarcasm as quickly as the readers do.

METAPHOR•Comparison or analogy stated in such

a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking. It does not use signal words (such as “like” or “as”).

SIMILE• A figure of speech that makes a direct

comparison between things which are not alike. Similes usually make use of the words like, as or than. In other words, when something is like something else.

SYMBOL• A word, place, character, or

object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level.

• a metal octagon painted red with white streaks represents the act of coming to a complete stop

• A gold ring represents marital commitment

• The American flag symbolizes our colonial history

CONTEXTUAL SYMBOL

• A unique or original symbol an author creates within the context of his work.

• It represents something literally, but it also takes on symbolic meaning in that particular story.

• It does not, however, have meaning in other stories.

CONTEXTUAL SYMBOL

•The town of Castle Rock, Maine, which in Stephen King's works functions as a microcosmic symbol of human society and contains elements of good, bad, and everything in between.

The Snopes family in Faulkner's collected works symbolizes the South's moral decay.

The white whale in Moby Dick can symbolize God, evil, angels, nature, and many other things.

THEMECentral idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work

Can take the form of a brief and meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life

The author's way of communicating and sharing ideas, perceptions, and feelings with readers, and it may be directly stated in the book, or it may only be implied

THEMETopics may be a single idea such as "progress" (in many Victorian works), "order and duty" (in many early Roman works), "seize-the-day" (in many late Roman works), or "jealousy" (in Shakespeare's Othello)

Themes will be a more complicated doctrine, such as: •Milton's theme in Paradise Lost, "to justify the ways of God to men"

• "Socialism is the only sane reaction to the labor abuses in Chicago meat-packing plants" (Upton Sinclair's The Jungle)