The Order of Things Literary Elements

The Order of Things Literary Elements

Genre

Philosophy, Non-fiction.

Setting and Context

Modern Era.

Narrator and Point of View

Michel Foucault is the third-person narrator.

Tone and Mood

Deconstructive, allegorical, philosophical, explanatory, and factual.

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonist and antagonist are excluded.

Major Conflict

Reconciliation of the three predominant epistemes applied in human sciences.

Climax

Man’s ability to redefine and reinvent himself through the eras.

Foreshadowing

Foucault employs flashbacks in describing philosophies of past centuries.

Understatement

N/A

Allusions

Allusions to art (such as painting), allusions to nature (sky and flora and fauna), and allusions to religion.

Imagery

Things, be it plants or animals, communicate with each other, which creates order; the order, which is comparable to syntax, is imperative in their existence.

Paradox

N/A

Parallelism

The components in the sky are parallel to those on the earth's surface.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

A ‘blind spot’ denotes invisibility.

Personification

Plants are personified: they can hold secrets.

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