Common Literary Terms, Badly Explained.

Face withheld to protect the innocent. Yes, he is that good-looking.

Harold C. Jones

Here are a few common literary terms badly explained.

An antonym is the pen-name of an ant.

A simile is what they use when something is going to assimilate you. 

In fact, what I just said is similar to what I meant and how I should have said it in the first place. And now I shall slowly digest you.

Irony is like a Dutchman with a shoe fetish, or a Tea Party member poking a gun in your face and shrieking how much she loves the Constitution.

Onomatopoeia is self-explanatory. Give me a hard one next time, ah, but it’s basically just when the writer uses a lot of ‘o’s.

Punctuation is what the editor wants to do to the writer after a long phone session.

Adverbs. This is when you add verbs to make a sentence complete.

Example.

Before: This is when you to make a sentence complete.

After: This is when you add verbs to make a sentence complete. And just for the record, ‘verb’ is in fact a verb: hence, re-verb-erate. That ain’t a fuckin’ noun, ladies and gentlemen.

Semi-colon. A semi-colon is considered a rather half-assed piece of pumpcutation. Editors hate ‘em; so I throw one in once in a while. It makes their day complete.

Adjective. The opposite of an expletive. This is what you use when your audience is G-rated.

Example: “Move that fucking chair.” (X and R audience.)

               “Move that red chair.” (General Audiences.)     

Allegory. All the categories put together in one big, a mixed-up bag of shit, like a dog’s breakfast. A fairy tale told by animals.

Alliteration. What happens to you after you dive in headfirst and get your feet wet in the world of language. After a while, you become alliterated. It means you can read now. That’s not the same as people accepting you.

Allusion. Showing the reader something that isn’t visible; a literary menage, shimmering above the desert and making you think that’s a lake up ahead.

Theme. This is the stuff that you tell people when they ask, “Hey, why’d you write that crazy book, anyways?” A special kind of nonsense.

Unreliable Narrator. Self-explanatory by this point, I should think.

Didactic. Uninformative, boring. Written by teachers.

Couplet. A short writer and his vertically-truncated wife. Or a short writer and her husband. Or a short writer and their same-sex spousal person.

Denouement. This is when a lady takes her clothes off and the author fades to black. This is basically a French short form for ‘de-nude-moment.’

Epigram. A message written on a piece of skin.

Elegy. Some guy talking in a churchyard—ha. Another easy one.

Flashback. Otherwise known as dis-associative fugue or writer’s block of the active presentation. A mysterious desire not to deal with the present.

Hyerbole. A bole that exists in greater than the traditional four dimensions. I’ve seen one or two over the years.

Motif. Sorry, I’ll have to skip this one. An old editing injury has flared up. Seriously, and it’s driving me crazy.

Woe is me.

I can’t go out in public like this.

BYE

Wisdom.

What is the meaning?

The role of great literature in your life is vast. The trouble is that we tend to forget that part.

I’ll start off big.

Tacitus and Ammianus Marcellinus are considered among the primary sources for the historicity of Jesus Christ. They mentioned the name in nearly-contemporary works.

How does an atheist interpret the historicity of Christ? First of all, he laughs at The Buck-Naked Archaeologist, when he’s on TV and jumping all over Jerusalem, asking in that classic cable-television trope,  “Is this the hole Jesus Christ was buried in? Or is it just another freakin’ wannabe archaeologist asking dumb questions like von Daniken, and not incidentally, making a pretty good living compared to making candles?”

Why, we interpret it as evidence tending to confirm or deny the historicity of Christ.

Nothing more.

Maybe he was a real guy.

Maybe he walked around the countryside telling stories, stories with a moral hook, the sort of shit that gets in you like an intestinal parasite and never leaves, because it’s well, good. The guy was good, I’ll grant you that.

But then I never forget a good story, do I?

Maybe that really happened, in fact that’s one of my own core beliefs—Jesus was a real guy.

I happily concede the point. He probably existed.

Other than that, we as atheists invest these historical writers, way back in history, with no mystical or supernatural embellishments. We do not claim Ammianus was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write his history of the Caesars or whatever, in which Jesus and Christianity was briefly mentioned.

We do not claim that evidence for this Jesus Christ guy somehow proves the validity of his claims of supernatural authority

He was just some guy walking around telling stories with a moral point at their base, root and nerve.

Some people say we have a soul and most of us would agree we have an inner voice, which some label the conscience.

Are we just thinking to hear ourselves talk?

But isn’t that good?

And we do not invest those stories with a Heavenly, supernatural, or all-omnipotent, all-seeing entity as their cause. Some people do, and some people would—an important distinction. Because it is their natural propensity to do so.

We, as atheists, might very well simply accept the fact that Jesus may have lived and said certain things. On that level, we may believe in the authenticity of certain statements made by aforesaid Fellow.

They could be direct quotes, for all we know, even though the evidence is that it was all compiled later, that would be considered objective evidence, that I am referring to.

We believe certain fundamental moral precepts to be true in all cases, and at all times.

We call that truth—oh, you know, stuff about loving your neighbour and your enemy and all of that sort of thing.  I think without such philosophical notions, the world might tend to be a much darker place.

In that sense, morality is useful. It supplements and guides our natural human feelings.

It serves a purpose, and perhaps even a higher one than individual self-aggrandizement. Even I, am willing to go that far.

In that sense, Jesus, and guys like him, Mahomet, Buddha, whomsoever, may be said to have done their jobs.

Some of them guys did a real good job.

Some of that might be backed up by our own personal observation, our own experiences, or even just education. It might just be habit or prejudicial thinking.

But what’s important is that we are thinking.

And we are thinking in moral terms.

I can’t stress that enough, ladies and gentlemen.

***

I was just thinking about all the great books I had read in my life. That set me to thinking about all of the stuff in them.

Some would call this the ‘Infinite Intelligence.’ (Lawrence Block on Facebook for example. I just love that guy. I’m not even really sure why. Maybe Darwin can explain it.)*

All of that stuff, everything we ever read, is still inside of us, every minute of every day. As you get older it tends to accumulate.

Don’t throw it out. It might come in useful someday, if only just save a buck!

Now that’s wisdom. (Wisdom, one of the four cardinal virtues. The four Pabst Blue Ribbon beers consumed in the writing of this whatever the hell it is didn’t exactly hurt either. – ed.)

Wisdom is better than pure rhetoric, I’m not sure why.

Ask somebody else.

Anyhow, I don’t care if you use it or abuse it.

For surely it is ours to do with what we will.

As for dreams, and visions, and miracles and walking on water and all that stuff, it was allegory, it was a necessary fiction.

It was an ignorant age.

In that sense, it was still a marketplace. I suppose it’s understandable, really.

*(Oh, God, Harold. You’re in deep trouble now. – ed.)