LITERARY TERMS AND THEORIES

69. Breton Lay Fourteenth Century English narrative poem in rhyme about
courtly love. The poem contains elements of the supernatural. The English
borrowed the Breton-lay format from storytellers in Brittany, France. A lay is a
medieval narrative poem originally intended to be sung. Breton is an
adjective describing anyone or anything from Brittany. "The Franklin's Tale," a
story in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, is an example of a Breton
lay.

70. Epistolary Literature - An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of

documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper
clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic
"documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come
into use. The word epistolary is derived from Latin from the Greek word
epistol, meaning a letter (see epistle).
The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story, because it mimics the
workings of real life. It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view
without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator.
There are three types of epistolary novels: monologic (giving the letters of
only one character, like Letters of a Portuguese Nun and The Sorrows of
Young Werther), dialogic (giving the letters of two characters, like Mme Marie
Jeanne Riccoboni's Letters of Fanni Butlerd (1757), and polylogic (with three
or more letter-writing characters, such as in Bram Stoker's Dracula). In
addition, a crucial element in polylogic epistolary novels like Clarissa, and
Dangerous Liaisons is the dramatic device of 'discrepant awareness': the
simultaneous but separate correspondences of the heroines and the villains
creating dramatic tension.

71. Dystopic vs utopic novel Concepts of utopia and dystopia represent

imaginary societies in which people live their life either in a perfect
environment, governed by the laws that provide happiness to everyone, or in
an oppressive society that is ruled by the repressive and controlled state.
Origin of these concepts can be traced to the year of 380BC when Greek
philosopher Plato released his influential political dialogue called Republic.
In it, he first postulated the main themes of utopian society and his visions of
the perfect Greek city-state that provided stable life for all of its citizens.
The modern world Utopia came to life during early years of 16th century, in
the work of the famous English philosopher Thomas Moore. His description of
utopian society gave birth to an enormous wave of utopian thought that
influenced the life and works of many future philosophers and novelist and
helped in the creation of several significant political movements (most
notably socialism). Utopias that were envisioned by the minds of those
 authors can most easily be divided into several distinct categories, all based
on the means of their creation Ecology utopia, Economic utopia, Political
Utopia, Religious Utopia, Feminists Utopia and Science and technological
utopia. The 19th century gave the birth of the largest wave of utopian
thought the world has ever seen. Numerous novelist and philosophers
focused their careers on the exploration of those themes, and the result of
their work influenced the audiences across the entire world. Most notable
utopian novel from that period was without a doubt Looking Backward by
Edward Bellamy.
Not all examples of utopian life were set in the theory. Some people tried to
realize the dreams postulated in the work of several philosophers, and so the
age of utopian societies came to life. During the 19th century, over a dozen
utopian societies were established in the United States, and few of them
managed to survive even to today.
Utopia
Over the last two thousand years, many philosophers envisioned societies
that were governed by the perfect set of systems that would enable its
citizens to live peaceful and long lives. These utopian visions significantly
affected the rise of several political movements in our modern history.
Dystopia
Authors of the mid-20th century were first to envision futuristic societies in
which people lived in a repressive and controlled state that only from the
outside resembled a Utopia. These dark visions of the future represent great
vehicle for the investigation of concepts such as individuality, freedom, class
distinctions, repression, religion and advanced technology.

72. Green Mansions Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904) is
an exotic romance by William Henry Hudson about a traveller to the Guyana
jungle of southeastern Venezuela and his encounter with a forest dwelling girl
named Rima.

73. Sector Analysis X

74. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic function PARADIGMATIC AND SYNTAGMATIC.

Contrasting terms in (structural) LINGUISTICS. Every item of language has a
paradigmatic relationship with every other item which can be substituted for
it (such as cat with dog), and a syntagmatic relationship with items which
occur within the same construction (for example, in The cat sat on the mat,
cat with the and sat on the mat). The relationships are like axes, as shown in
the accompanying diagram. Paradigmatic contrasts at the level of sounds
allow one to identify the phonemes (minimal distinctive sound units) of a
language: for example, bat, fat, mat contrast with one another on the basis of
a single sound, as do bat, bet, bit, and bat, bap, ban. Stylistically, rhyme is
due to the paradigmatic substitution of sounds at the beginning of syllables
or words, as in: Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night.
 On the lexical level, paradigmatic contrasts indicate which words are likely to
belong to the same word class (part of speech): cat, dog, parrot in the
diagram are all nouns, sat, slept, perched are all verbs. Syntagmatic relations
between words enable one to build up a picture of co-occurrence restrictions
within SYNTAX, for example, the verbs hit, kick have to be followed by a noun
(Paul hit the wall, not *Paul hit), but sleep, doze do not normally do so (Peter
slept, not *Peter slept the bed). On the semantic level, paradigmatic
substitutions allow items from a semantic set to be grouped together, for
example Angela came on Tuesday (Wednesday, Thursday, etc.), while
syntagmatic associations indicate compatible combinations: rotten apple, the
duck quacked, rather than *curdled apple, *the duck squeaked.

75. Interpretative Community - nterpretive communities are a theoretical

concept stemming from reader-response criticism and publicized by Stanley
Fish although it was in use in other fields and may be found as early as 1964
in the "Historical News and Notices" of the Tennessee Historical Quarterly (p.
98) and also, and again before Fish's usage, in Richard Crouter's 1974 "H.
Reinhold Neibuhr and Stoicism" in The Journal of Religious Ethics . They
appeared in an article by Fish in 1976 entitled "Interpreting the Variorum".[1]
Fish's theory states that a text does not have meaning outside of a set of
cultural assumptions regarding both what the characters mean and how they
should be interpreted. This cultural context often includes authorial intent,
though it is not limited to it. Fish claims that we as individuals interpret texts
because each of us is part of an interpretive community that gives us a
particular way of reading a text. Furthermore, he claims, we cannot know
whether someone is a part of our interpretive community or not, because any
act of communication that we could engage in to tell whether we are part of
the same interpretive community would have to be interpreted. That is,
because we cannot escape our interpretive community, we can never really
know its limits.

76. Canon - Originated from a Greek term kanon, canon means a yard stick
or a measuring rod. Generally, the term canon is used in three different
meanings.
First, it is defined as a traditional collection of writings against which other
writings are evaluated. In other words, it means a long list of works taken as
authentic in the Bible written in Hebrew or even translated versions. This
sense makes canon opposite to apocrypha, which means written works
having anonymous authors. The Bible was considered a yardstick to evaluate
a literary piece according to a certain criterion.
Secondly, students of literature use it to refer to the writings included in
anthologies, or textbooks under certain genres and thus are evaluated
according to the genre they are placed under. This meaning covers the entire
 literature generally thought as suitable for aesthetic admiration and
academic use.
The third definition of the term indicates the literary writings of a particular
author, which are considered by scholars and critics in general to be the
genuine creations of that particular author based on some already deduced
rules intended to be applied on the future pieces in the same genre. The term
canon is also confused with a homonym cannon, which means a military
weapon.
77. Vopatrization/focalization

78. Stichomythia (stik uh MITH e uh) In a stage play brief, alternating lines of
dialogue spoken in rapid-fire succession. It occurs frequently in Greek drama,
especially when characters are arguing or expressing strong emotions.
Following is an example of stichomythia in The Clouds, by Aristophanes, in
which two charactersUnjust Cause and Just Causeare insulting each other:
Unj. You are a dotard and absurd.
Just You are debauched and shameless.
Unj. You have spoken roses of me.
Just And a dirty lickspittle.
Unj. You crown me with lilies.
Just And a parricide.
Unj. You don't know that you are sprinkling me with
gold.
Just Certainly not so formerly, but with lead.
Unj. But now this is an ornament to me.
Just You are very impudent.
Unj. And you are antiquated.

79. Populism - Populism is a political doctrine that proposes that the common
people are exploited by a privileged elite, and which seeks to resolve this.
The underlying ideology of populists can be left, right, or center. Its goal is
uniting the uncorrupt and the unsophisticated "little man" against the corrupt
dominant elites (usually established politicians) and their camp of followers
(usually the rich and influential). It is guided by the belief that political and
social goals are best achieved by the direct actions of the masses. Although it
chiefly comes into being where mainstream political institutions are perceived
to have failed to deliver, there is no identifiable economic or social set of
conditions that give rise to it, and it is not confined to any particular social
class.[1]
Political parties and politicians often use the terms populist and populism as
pejoratives against their opponents. Such a view sees populism as
demagogy, merely appearing to empathize with the public through rhetoric or
unrealistic proposals in order to increase appeal across the political spectrum.
80. Confessional Poetry - Confessional poetry or 'Confessionalism' is a style of
poetry that emerged in the United States during the 1950s. It has been
described as poetry "of the personal," focusing on extreme moments of
individual experience, the psyche, and personal trauma, including previously
and occasionally still taboo matters such as mental illness, sexuality, and
suicide, often set in relation to broader social themes.[1] It is sometimes also
classified as Postmodernism.
The school of "Confessional Poetry" was associated with several poets who
redefined American poetry in the 1950s and 1960s, including Robert Lowell,
Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, and W. D.
Snodgrass

81. Yugen vs satori - Ygen (?) is an important concept in traditional

Japanese aesthetics. The exact translation of the word depends on the
context. In the Chinese philosophical texts the term was taken from, ygen
meant "dim", "deep" or "mysterious". In the criticism of Japanese waka
poetry, it was used to describe the subtle profundity of things that are only
vaguely suggested by the poems, and was also the name of a style of poetry
(one of the ten orthodox styles delineated by Fujiwara no Teika in his
treatises).
Ygen suggests that which is beyond what can be said, but it is not an
allusion to another world.[11] It is about this world, this experience. All of
these are portals to ygen:
"To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill.
To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the
shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To
contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds.
And, subtle shadows of bamboo on bamboo." Zeami Motokiyo

Zeami was the originator of the dramatic art form Noh theatre and wrote the
classic book on dramatic theory (Kadensho). He uses images of nature as a
constant metaphor. For example, "snow in a silver bowl" represents "the
Flower of Tranquility". Ygen is said to mean "a profound, mysterious sense of
the beauty of the universe ... and the sad beauty of human suffering".[12] It
is used to refer to Zeami's interpretation of "refined elegance" in the
performance of Noh.

Satori (?) (Chinese: ; pinyin: w; Korean: o; Vietnamese: ng) is a

Japanese Buddhist term for awakening, "comprehension; understanding".[1]
It is derived from the Japanese verb satoru.[2]

In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to the experience of kensh,[3]

"seeing into one's true nature". Ken means "seeing," sh means "nature" or
"essence."[3]
 Satori and kensh are commonly translated as enlightenment, a word that is
also used to translate bodhi, prajna and buddhahood.
Satori is considered a "first step" or embarkation toward Buddhahood:

Ch'an expressions refer to enlightenment as "seeing your self-nature". But

even this is not enough. After seeing your self-nature, you need to deepen
your experience even further and bring it into maturation. You should have
enlightenment experience again and again and support them with continuous
practice. Even though Ch'an says that at the time of enlightenment, your
outlook is the same as of the Buddha, you are not yet a full Buddha.[8]

The student's mind must be prepared by rigorous study, with the use of
koans, and the practice of meditation to concentrate the mind, under the
guidance of a teacher. Koans are short anecdotes of verbal exchanges
between teachers and students, typically of the Song dynasty, dealing with
Buddhist teachings. The Rinzai-school utilizes classic collections of koans
such as the Gateless Gate. The Gateless Gate was assembled by the early
13th-century Chinese Zen master Wumen Hui-k'ai ().

Wumen struggled for six years with koan "Zhaozhous dog", assigned to him
by Yuelin Shiguan (; Japanese: Gatsurin Shikan) (11431217), before
attaining kensh. After his understanding had been confirmed by Yuelin,
Wumen wrote the following enlightenment poem:

A thunderclap under the clear blue sky

All beings on earth open their eyes;

Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.

82. Mono no aware - Mono no aware (?), literally "the pathos of things",
and also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to
ephemera", is a Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence (
muj?), or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or
wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about
this state being the reality of life. Notable manga artists who use mono no
awarestyle storytelling include Hitoshi Ashinano, Kozue Amano, and Kaoru
Mori. In anime, both Only Yesterday by Isao Takahata and Mai Mai Miracle by
Sunao Katabuchi emphasize the passing of time in gentle notes and by
presenting the main plot against a parallel one from the past. In addition, the
Japanese director Yasujir Ozu was well known for creating a sense of mono
no aware, frequently climaxing with a character very understatedly saying "Ii
tenki desu ne?" (?, "Fine weather, isn't it?"), after a familial and
societal paradigm shift, such as a daughter being married off, against the
backdrop of a swiftly changing Japan
83. Conscientification/ consciensification Literacy is not viewed in the
traditional sense of the mechanical techniques of writing, reading, and
thinking. It is conceived as a form of conscientification, that is to move
towards action. It is not separate from social contexts (gender, race, class,
sexual orientation) and therefore is not perceived as passively acquired.

84. Theater of the Absurd - The Theatre of the Absurd (French: thtre de
l'absurde [tet() d lapsyd]) is a postWorld War II designation for
particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European
playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has
evolved from their work. Their work focused largely on the idea of
existentialism and expressed what happens when human existence has no
meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down, in fact
alerting their audiences to pursue the opposite. Logical construction and
argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate
conclusion, silence.[1]
Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay "Theatre of the
Absurd."[2] He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd,
similar to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay, The Myth of
Sisyphus.[3] The Absurd in these plays takes the form of mans reaction to a
world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or
menaced by invisible outside forces. This style of writing was first popularized
by the 1952 Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot. Though the term is
applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the
plays: broad comedy, often similar to vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic
images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or
meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichs, wordplay, and nonsense; plots
that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism
and the concept of the "well-made play". These plays were shaped by the
political turmoil, scientific breakthrough, and social upheaval going on in the
world around the playwrights during these times.

85. Existential hero A protagonist who grasps the absurd pointlessness of his
task (existing) and chooses to embrace it anyway
Has flaws
Often misunderstood by society
Sometimes immoral
Selfish
Lacks idealism of courage
Rejection of traditional values
Seeks revenge (sometimes for greater good of society)
Disillusioned with society
Can be rude, selfish, disloyal, obnoxious, violent
Will still fight on the "good side" if they are will to or forced to.
86. The Guest Short Story -
The Guest follows the story of Daru, who is a schoolteacher in a remote
plateau region. The area has gone through a draught, but recently a blizzard
has passed through, leaving everything covered in snow. This has kept away
Daru's pupils.
The narrative opens as Daru watches two men approach his schoolhouse. He
watches them climb the hill. One of the men, a gendarme named Balducci, is
very familiar to Daru. He leads an Arab prisoner who has been accused of
murdering his cousin in a family squabble. Balducci has been ordered to bring
the Arab to Daru, and then return immediately to his post. Likewise, Daru has
orders to turn in the prisoner to police headquarters at a town approximately
twenty kilometers away. Daru refuses this task, considering it dishonorable.
Balducci agrees with the schoolmaster, but insists that in war men must be
prepared to do many different jobs. The gendarme is insulted by Daru's
stubborn refusal, and leaves in anger.
Daru feeds the Arab and spends the night sleeping in the same room as the
prisoner. During the night the Arab gets up for water, and Daru mistakenly
thinks he has escaped. The next day Daru leads the Arab to a point on the
plateau, and equips him with money and food supplies. He points him in the
direction of imprisonment, and then also points him in the direction away
from police headquarters, where he will find shelter with the native people.
He leaves the Arab with the choice, but when he looks back, he is upset to
see the Arab ultimately chooses the direction leading towards imprisonment.
The story ends with Daru looking out the window of his schoolhouse.

87. Transference - Transference is a psychoanalytic term that refers to

something that is very common in daily life: People displace unresolved
conflicts, dependencies, and aggressions onto others (e.g. substituting a
lover, spouse, etc. for ones parent) for reasons that are not easily
understandable. This operation occurs commonly in psychotherapy, when a
client transfers feelings that were previously directed to someone else to the
therapist. The client sees in her therapist the return of some important figure
from her childhood or past, and consequently transfers on to him feelings and
reactions from the past. Early childhood relationships, memories, and
emotions, are deeply intertwined; this bundle resurfaces in current
relationships again and again. It becomes evident in the analytic process that
the transference is an instrument of irreplaceable value to decode the clients
past, and it is also a source of serious dangers for the clinical relationship.
From this perspective, transference refers to the actualization of unconscious
fantasies, memories, and wishes during psychoanalytic treatment. They are
unconscious because neither the client nor the analyst knows initially what is
happening. in the process. The general assumption is that by working
through the transference of feelings onto the therapist or analyst, the client
comes to confront the actual cause of his or her feelings.
88. Higulian Dialectism - Hegels dialectics refers to the particular dialectical
method of argument employed by the 19th Century German philosopher,
G.W.F. Hegel (see entry on Hegel), which, like other dialectical methods,
relies on a contradictory process between opposing sides. Whereas Platos
opposing sides were people (Socrates and his interlocutors), however, what
the opposing sides are in Hegels work depends on the subject matter he
discusses. In his work on logic, for instance, the opposing sides are different
definitions of logical concepts that are opposed to one another. In the
Phenomenology of Spirit, which presents Hegels epistemology or philosophy
of knowledge, the opposing sides are different definitions of consciousness
and of the object that consciousness is aware of or claims to know.

89. Post Colonial Hybridity - Hybridity in post-colonial discourse[edit]

Hybrid talk, the rhetoric of hybridity, is fundamentally associated with the
emergence of post-colonial discourse and its critiques of cultural imperialism.
It is the second stage in the history of hybridity, characterized by literature
and theory that study the effects of mixture (hybridity) upon identity and
culture. The principal theorists of hybridity are Homi Bhabha, Nstor Garca
Canclini, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, and Paul Gilroy, whose works respond to
the multi-cultural awareness that emerged in the early 1990s.[12]
In the theoretic development of hybridity, the key text is The Location of
Culture (1994), by Homi Bhabha, wherein the liminality of hybridity is
presented as a paradigm of colonial anxiety.[13] The principal proposition is
the hybridity of colonial identity, which, as a cultural form, made the colonial
masters ambivalent, and, as such, altered the authority of power; as such,
Bhabha's arguments are important to the conceptual discussion of hybridity.
Hybridity demonstrates how cultures come to be represented by processes of
iteration and translation through which their meanings are vicariously
addressed to throughan Other. This contrasts any "essentialist claims for
the inherent authenticity or purity of cultures which, when inscribed in the
naturalistic sign of symbolic consciousness frequently become political
arguments for the hierarchy and ascendary of powerful cultures." [13] This
also means that the colonial subject takes place, its subaltern position
inscribed in that space of iteration. The colonial subject is located in a place
of hybridity, its identity formed in a space of iteration and translation by the
colonizer. Bhabha emphasizes that "the discriminatory effects of the
discourse of cultural colonialism, for instance, do not simply or singly refer to
a person or to a discrimination between mother culture and alien culture
the reference of discrimination is always to a process of splitting as the
condition of subjection: a discrimination between the mother and its
bastards, the self and its doubles, where the trace of what is disavowed is not
repressed but repeated as something differenta mutation."
90. Oxymoron - Oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are
joined to create an effect. The common oxymoron phrase is a combination of
an adjective proceeded by a noun with contrasting meanings, e.g. cruel
kindness or living death.
However, the contrasting words/phrases are not always glued together. The
contrasting ideas may be spaced out in a sentence, e.g. In order to lead, you
must walk behind.
Difference between Oxymoron and Paradox
It is important to understand the difference between a paradox and an
oxymoron. A paradox may consist of a sentence or even a group of
sentences. An oxymoron, on the other hand, is a combination of two
contradictory or opposite words. A paradox seems contradictory to the
general truth but it does contain an implied truth. An oxymoron, however,
may produce a dramatic effect but does not make sense. Examples of
oxymoron are found both in casual conversations and in literature.

91. Diaspora - Diaspora (from the Greek word for scattering) refers to the
dispersion of a people from their homeland. A simple definition of diaspora
literature, then, would be works that are written by authors who live outside
their native land. The term identifies a works distinctive geographic origins.
But diaspora literature may also be defined by its contents, regardless of
where it was written. For example, the story of Joseph (Gen 37-50) is often
called a diaspora story because although its final form was written within
the land of Israel, it describes how Joseph learns to survive outside his
homeland.
Verisimilitude Definition

In a literary work, verisimilitude is likeness to the truth

i.e. resemblance of a fictitious work to a real event
even if it is a far-fetched one.

Verisimilitude ensures that even a fantasy must be

rooted in reality, which means that events should be
plausible to the extent that readers consider them
credible enough to be able to relate them somehow to
their experiences of real life.
Origin of Verisimilitude

The theory of verisimilitude comes from a Platonic

and Aristotelian dramatic theory called mimesis.
According to this theory, a work of art should convince
the audience by imitating and representing nature and
having basis in reality. The playwright, conforming to
the above- mentioned theory, had to draw themes
from sources well-known to the common people of his
time and maintain the unities of action, place and
time. Besides, he had to bring a realistic union
between the style and the subject.
Suspension of Disbelief

The theory of verisimilitude leads to the idea of

suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of
disbelief, a term coined in 1817 by Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. He was of the opinion that if a writer was
able to fill his work with a human interest and a
semblance of truth, the readers would willingly
suspend or delay their judgment in relation to the
doubtfulness of a narrative. In his Biographia Literaria,
Coleridge says:
It was agreed, that my endeavours should be
directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at
least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward
nature a human interest and a semblance of truth
sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination
that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment,
which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the
other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to
give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and
to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by
awakening the minds attention from the lethargy of
custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the
wonders of the world before us
Verisimilitude Examples in Literature

Example #1

Jonathan Swifts Gulliver Travels is a brilliant work of

fantasy that may be considered as one of the best
examples of Verisimilitude. It achieves verisimilitude
due to the fact it is one of the finest examples of
political satire in English Literature. Readers find in it
a resemblance to a reality as they are aware of the
fact that Swift satirizes contemporary politics, religion,
and English culture. For instance, criticizing party
politics in England, Swift writes,

that for above seventy Moons past there have been

two struggling Parties in this Empire, under the
Names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan from the high
and low Heels on their shoes, by which they
distinguish themselves.

Two rival political parties, the Whigs and the Tories,

dominated England political scene during Swifts time.
In his novel the fictitious kingdom of Lilliput is
dominated by two parties distinguished by the size of
the heels of their boots. By relating the trivial disputes
between the two Lilliputian parties, Swift relentlessly
satirizes the insignificant disputes of the two English
parties of his period. He achieves verisimilitude
through this.
Example #2

Mark Twain in Adventure of Huckleberry Fin used

Black American Vernacular to show realistically how
the negroes [Black Americans] talked in real life:

I didnt want to go back no more. I had stopped

cussing, because the widow didnt like it; but now I
took to it again because pap hadnt no objections
But by-and-by pap got too handy with his hickry, and I
couldt stand it. I was all over with welts. He got to
going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he
locked me in and was gone three days. It was
dreadful lonesome.

Twain successfully achieves verisimilitude or

resemblance to a reality by
introducing colloquialism in his narrative. The use of
double negatives is quite evident in the above
passage.