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The Four Literary Tools

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The Top Ten Tools are the essential key to critically analyzing literature. With these tools, including The Four Topos elements, The Three Matter of Facts, and The Three Appeals, literature can be broken down into segments allowing the reader to get a complete understanding of the purpose for that specific piece. Throughout the course, we have navigated through various essays that could all be examples of these top ten tools. However, certain essays better illustrate specific tools, which can be used as examples to define the true meaning of a literary tool. Pertaining to The Four Topos, the first literary tool of Definition can be defined as the displaying of the major idea of the essay. By definition, the reader can analyze the true …show more content…

Comparison is most effective when the reader compares their current knowledge to a piece of literature, resulting in a greater understanding of what they are reading. This specific tool exhibits sections of extensional definition because of its use of common knowledge. An example of an essay that would best exemplify the idea of comparison would be John Tierney’s essay, “ Ángels in America”. The reason this essay best suits the issue of comparison is because of Tierney’s use of the common knowledge of Immigration. He takes the common issue that is apparent to the country now of Mexican immigration and compares it to, what some would call “common knowledge of Americans”, which is the immigration of certain nationalities in the early 1800s to North America. By delivering the idea of current immigration and comparing it to an identical situation to which one can compare is literary …show more content…

The Three appeals define the idea of persuasion throughout a piece of literature. Throughout an argument, the elements of Logos, Ethos and Pathos are present in some fashion. The use of Logos focuses on the persuasion through evidence aspect. An author who understands that they have the Matter of Fact and Policy on their side typically uses logos. Logos is typically not something an author strives to use, but is apparent to the reader. An example for a logos essay would be Susan Brownmiller’s essay, “Let’s Put Pornography Back in the Closet”. One way that this essay provides logos type qualities is by the clear reasoning that she gives, along with the evidence she provides to defend her side. She effectively acknowledges the opposing side of the argument as well as providing reasonable claims that address specific cases such as the Miller v. California case in

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