English ⇄ thesaurus

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Terms for subject Literature (1001 entries)

contemporary period	Broadly speaking the term covers literature written from 1939 to the present.
content	Any theme, idea, argument, action or story which is contained within a literary text.
context	Indicates the place of a given passage or section of a literature in relation to the parts which immediately precede and follow it. More broadly speaking it can also indicate the social, historical and political backdrop in which the piece appeared.
contextual symbol	A symbol which keeps its literal meaning while at the same time suggesting other meanings.
contraction	The compression of sounds or words, for example don’t or isn’t.
contrapasso	Seen in Dante's Inferno and carries the idea of the punishment befitting the crime. In the version of Hell Dante visits, punishments are limited to what the sinners had done wrong on earth.
convention	A literary rule, practice or custom, which has been established through frequent and common usage in texts.
cosmic irony	The notion that humans and their world are inconsequential in the scheme of the universe.
cothurni	A style of acting which is tragic.
couplet	A pair of rhyming lines in verse, e.g The dog ate the cat/But forgot about the bat.
coursework	Essays or work done in a student's own time, rather than in examination conditions. The mark from coursework contributes to a candidate's overall grade or qualification.
courtly love	A type of idealised love portrayed in literature of the Middle Ages. The lovers are always of a high social class, and their love is ennobling, although outside marriage.
Credentials Committee	CC
Creole	A native language, which merges together the traits of several languages, i.e. an advanced and fully formed pidgin. In the American South, black slaves were taken from a variety of African tribes sharing no language. Thus, on the plantation they developed first a pidgin (limited and simplified) version of English with heavy Portuguese and African influences. This pidgin allowed slaves some rudimentary communication with each other and with their slave masters. In time, they lost their original African languages and the mixed speech became the native tongue of their children, a Creole.
Crescent City Town Criers Toastmasters	CCTC
crime novel	The term covers both detective fiction and other kinds of crime stories.
critical reading	Careful analysis of a piece of writing. see close reading.
criticism	Refers to the concept of analysis, evaluation and interpretation of literature.
critique	A detailed analysis of a work.
crossed rhyme	A pattern of rhyming of abab.