Essay:Literary critic's glossary

Introduction.

My experience with formal theories of literature was brief and uneventful. Yet, writing about writing about literature seems all the more alluring for my lack of true qualifications to do so. The format I have chosen is that of the glossary of terms where each term definition comprises a short essay in an attempt to create a lucid portrait of what the term under consideration might portend. David Hume compared the use of language in more popular or active forms of philosophy, to painting pictures using all the most "amiable" colors. I will not insist on a definite metaphysical system of nominalism but I will use abstract terms in the sense that they are universals, that is, labels for things that are instantiated in experience by different entities. When this is not the case, such terms may be either accepted or dismissed as either real or empty abstractions. The latter category, is well stocked with religious terms. For example, "reincarnation" may be used as a literary term, despite our not being able to point to a verifiable example of reincarnation. Likewise we may use the term "God," without a definite antecedent understanding.

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