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Literature Glossary

Don’t be an oxymoron. Know your literary terms.

Over 200 literary terms, Shmooped to perfection.

Chiasmus

Definition:

Chiasmus is a specific type of parallelism. It consists of two parallel phrases in which corresponding words or phrases are placed in the opposite order.

That's a mouthful, right? Why don't we go ahead and explain by example: "Fair is foul, foul is fair" or "Beauty is truth, truth beauty".

Get it? Got it? Awesome.