abjection (en)

(noun) a low or downcast state; degradation / (noun) the act of making abject; humbling rejection

abnegation (en)

(noun) the act of renouncing or rejecting something; self-denial

abrogation (en)

the repeal or abolition of a law, right, or agreement

abrogation (en)

the repeal or abolition of a law, right, or agreement

alterity (en)

(noun) otherness / (noun) the quality or state of being radically alien to the conscious self or a particular cultural orientation

alterity (en)

(noun) otherness / (noun) the quality or state of being radically alien to the conscious self or a particular cultural orientation

anodyne (en)

(noun) a painkilling drug or medicine

anomie (en)

lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group, which lessens social cohesion and fosters decline; popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide

antinomy (en)

a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox

ars gratia artis (la)

art for art's sake

attestation (en)

defined by Ricoeur as the balance of the idem and the ipse: one's belief in oneself, which cannot be verified by empirical evidence or extrinsic proof, but is based in confidence

bathos (en)

(noun) a literary term coined by Alexander Pope to describe to describe amusingly failed attempts at sublimity (an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous); adj is "bathetic"

clarion (en)

(noun) a medieval trumpet with clear shrill tones / (noun) the sound of or as if of a clarion / (adjective) brilliantly clear / (adjective) loud and clear

decoct (en)

extract the essence from (something) by heating or boiling it

dialectic (en)

a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments

dialethism (en)

the view that some statements can be both true and false simultaneously

dialogic (en)

pertaining to a dialogue; used by the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in his work of literary theory, The Dialogic Imagination

eisegesis (en)

the process of interpreting a text or portion of text in such a way that the process introduces one's own presuppositions, agendas, or biases into and onto the text

equipoise (en)

(noun) a state of equilibrium / (noun) counterbalance / (verb) to serve as an equipoise to / (verb) to put or hold in equipoise

etiology (en)

(noun) cause, origin / (noun) the cause of a disease or abnormal condition / (noun) a branch of knowledge concerned with causes / (noun) a branch of medical science concerned with the causes and origins of diseases

hagiography (en)

relating to the writing of the lives of saints; (derogatory) adulatory writing about another person

hysterical realism (en)

a term coined in 2000 by English critic James Wood to describe what he sees as a literary genre typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization, on the one hand, and careful, detailed investigations of real, specific social phenomena on the other (see DeLillo, Pynchon, DFW, Zadie Smith)

idiolect (en)

(noun) the language or speech pattern of one individual at a particular period of life

inchoate (en)

just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary

lacuna (en)

an unfilled space; a gap (plural: lacunae)