Sunday, January 4, 2015

What do 'satire' and 'foreshadowing' mean? They are literary terms and I can't find them any where.

satire - Irony, wit or sarcasm used to mock vice or folly; a literary genre wriitten to this intent. An example is Johnathan Swift's essay "A Modest Proposal" written in 1729 a century before the potato famine in Ireland:

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

foreshadowing - Literary device in which an object or event symbolises a forthcoming negative event, often tragic and irreversible. An example would be the ape-like face appearing in the fireplace before Herbert's death in W.W. Jacob's short story "The Monkey's Paw":

He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. His hand grasped the monkey's paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went up to bed. 

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