LITERARY TERMS

POLITICAL PAMPHLET was the most memorable writing of the period due to the urgent issues of national independence, statehood and government. Pamphleteering was a means of propagating new or controversial ideas through the distribution of inexpensive and easily produced tracts or pamphlets,Pamphleteering had its roots in English practice, particularly during the religious controversies and political contests of the commonwealth period. Sermons, often with a political tinge, were distributed as pamphlets in colonial America.The most renowned pamphleteer of the American Revolution was Thomas Paine. His Common Sense was one of the strongest and most effective arguments for independence, and The Crisis papers were a powerful buttress to the morale of the patriot cause.

SATIRE is the literary art of diminishing a subject by making it ridiculous. It evokes toward the subject attitudes of amusement, contempt, indignation, or scorn. It differs from the comic in that comedy evokes laughter mainly as an end in itself. However, satire derides, i.e., it uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt existing outside the work itself. That butt may be an individual or a type of person, a class, an institution, a nation, or even, (as in parts of Gulliver's Travels) the whole race of man.

PARODY ridicules a serious literary work or the characteristic style of an author by handling either and elevated subject in a trivial manner or a low subject with mock dignity. This is usually achieved by exaggerating some traits, using more or less the same technique as the cartoon caricaturist. As a branch of satire its purpose may be corrective as well as derisive.

BATHOS is intentional or unintentional change from what is deeply moving or sublime to what is unimportant, ridiculous or foolish.