AP Lit Terms

Alexandrine

• An iambic hexameter line that is, a poetic line consisting of six iambic feet

Allegory

• A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities

• A story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning

Alliteration

• The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants or consonant clusters, in a group of words

• Sometimes the term is limited to the repetition of initial consonant sounds

• When alliteration occurs at the beginning of words, it is called initial alliteration; when it occurs within words, it is called internal or hidden alliteration. It usually occurs on stressed syllables'

• Mainly a poetic device - pleasing to the ear and emphasized the words in which it occurs

Allusion

• A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to

• May be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion

Analogy

• A comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them.

• Often used for illustration to explain something unfamiliar by comparing it to something familiar or for argument to persuade that what holds true for one thing holds true for the thing to which it is compared

Antagonist

• A person or force opposing the protagonist in a narrative; a rival of the hero or heroine

Antipastoral

• Literary or artistic work that shatters the traditional, romanticized view of rural life

• Instead of showing the countryside as peaceful, the harsh reality of poverty, labor, etc is shown

Antipetrarchan

• Poetry that rejects or subverts the exaggerated, idealized love conventions of the Italian poet Petrarch

• Instead of worshipping an untouchable, flawless goddess with hyperbole, an antipetrarchan poem presents a realistic, grounded, and physically flawed human being

Antistrophe

• The second part of a classical Greek choral ode that mirrors and answers the first part (the strophe)

• A rhetorical scheme where the same word or phrase is repeated at the end of consecutive clauses

Antithesis

• The balancing of two contrasting ideas, words, phrases, or sentences

• Often expressed in a balanced sentence, that is, a sentence in which identical or similar grammatical structure is used to express contrasting ideas

Aphorism

• A concise, pointed statement expressing a wise or clever observation about life

Apostrophe

• A figure of speech in which an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman is addressed directly

Aside

• In drama, lines spoken by a character in a undertone or directly to the audience

• Meant to be heard by the audience, but it is supposedly not head by the other characters onstage

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds, especially in poetry

Atmosphere

• The prevailing mood or feeling of a literary work

• Often developed, at least in part, through descriptions of setting

Autobiography

• A person’s account of his or her own life

Ballad

• A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung

Ballad Stanza

• A type of four-line stanza

• The first and third lines have four stressed words or syllables; the second and fourth lines have three stresses

Biography

• A detailed account of a person’s life written by another person

Blank Verse

• Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter

Caesura

• A break or pause in a line of poetry

Canto

• A section or division of a long poem

Caricature

• The use of exaggeration or distortion to make a figure appear in comic or ridiculous

Carpe Diem Tradition

• A tradition dating back to classical Greek and Latin poetry and particularly popular among English Cavalier poets

• Carpe diem means “seize the day“

Characterization

• The personality a character displays; also, the means by which a writer reveals that personality

Classicism

• A movement in tendency in art, literature, or music that reflects the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece and Rome

Climax

• The point of great intensity, interest, or suspense in a narrative

Comedy

• In general, a literary work that ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice between the protagonist and society

Conceit

• A kind of metaphor that makes a comparison between two startlingly different things

• May be a brief metaphor, but it usually provides the framework for an entire poem

Conflict

• A struggle between two opposing forces or characters in a short story, novel, play or narrative poem

Connotation

• All the emotions and associations that a word or phrase may arouse

Consonance

• The repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words

Couplet

• Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme

• A heroic couplet is an iambic pentameter couplet

Dactyl

• A three syllable metrical foot in poetry consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, mirroring the joints of a human finger

Denotation

• The literal or dictionary meaning of a word

Denouement

• The outcome of a plot

Diction

• A writer’s choice of words, particularly for clarity, effectiveness, and precision

Dissonance

• A harsh or disagreeable combination of sounds; discord

Dramatic Monologue

• A kind of narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in the poem

Elegy

• A poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual

Emblematic Image

• A verbal picture or figure with a long tradition of moral or religious meaning attached to it

Epic

• A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated

Epigram

• A short, witty, pointed statement often in the form of a poem

Epigraph

• A quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book, short story, or poem that makes some point about the work

Epilogue

• A short addition or conclusion at the end of a literary work

Epiphany

• A moment of illumination, usually occurring at or near the end of a work

Epitaph

• An inscription on a gravestone or a short poem written in memory of someone who has died

Epithet

A descriptive name or phrase used to characterize someone or something, such as “American the Beautiful" or “Catherine the Great”

Epode

• The final, concluding sentence of a classical Pindaric ode

Essay

• A piece of prose writing, usually short, that deals with a subject in a limited way and expressed a particular point of view

Exemplum

• A tale, usually inserted into the text of a sermon, that illustrates a moral principle

Exposition

• That part of a narrative or drama in which important background information is revealed

Fable

• A brief story that is told to present a moral, or practical lesson

Falling Action

• The segment of a narrative that occurs immediately after the climax

Farce

• A type of comedy based on a ridiculous situation, often with stereotyped characters

Figurative Langauge

• Language that is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense

Figure of Speech

• A word or an expression that is not meant to be interpreted in a literal sense

• Simile, metaphor, personification, metonymy

Flashback

• A scene in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem that interprets the action to show an event that happened earlier

Foil

• A character who sets off another character by contrast

Foot

• The basic unit of measurement in poetry

Foreshadowing

• The use of hints or clues in a narrative to suggest what will happen later

Free Verse

• Verse that has either no metrical pattern or an irregular pattern

Heroic Couplet

• A heroic couplet is an iambic pentameter couplet

Hyperbole

• A figure of speech using exaggeration, or overstatement, for special effect

Iamb

• A two-syllable metrical unit in poetry where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable, creating a “da-DUM“ rhythm

Iambic Pentameter

• A poetic line consisting of five feet (penta- is from a Greek word meaning “five”), with each foot an iamb, that is, an uns

Imagery

• Words or phrases that create pictures, or images, in the reader’s mind

Incremental Repetition

• The repitition of a previous line, or lines, but with a slight variation each time, that advances the narrative stanza by stanza

• Commonly used in ballads

In Medias Res

• A technique of plunging into the middle of a story and only later using a flashback to tell what has happened previously

Interlocking Rhyme

• A rhyme scene found in 4-line stanzas and includes the ABAB pattern

Interlude

• In the late fifteenth century, a play with a nonreligous plot and characters

Internal Rhyme

• When words within the same line or in the middle of different lines rhyme with each other, instead of at the end of lines

Inversion

• The technique of reversing, or inverting, the normal word order (subject, verb, object) of a sentence

Invocation

• At the beginning of an epic (or other poem) a call to a muse, god, or spirit for inspiration

Irony

• A contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is really meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens

Kenning

• In Old English poetry, an elaborate phrase that describes persons, things, or events in a metaphorical and indirect way

Lyric

• A poem, usually a short one, that expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts or feelings

Masque

• An elaborate and spectacular dramatic entertainment that was popular among the English aristocracy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century

Maxim

• A concise statement expressing a principle or rule of conduct

Melodrama

• A drama that has stereotyped characters, exaggerated emotions, and a conflict that its an all-good hero or heroine against an all-evil villain

Metaphor

• A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two things that are basically dissimilar

Metaphysical Conceit

• An elaborate, surprising, and intellectually demanding extended metaphor that links two vastly different things - often pairing an abstract, spiritual, or emotional concept (like love and soul) with a shockingly commonplace, mechanical, or scientific physical object

Metaphysical Poetry

• The poetry of John Donne and other seventeenth century poets who wrote in a similar style

Meter

• A generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry

Metonymy

• A figure of speech in which something very closely associated with a thing is used to stand for or suggest the thing itself

Miracle Play

• A popular religious drama of medieval England

Mock Epic

• A comic literary form that treats a trivial subject in the grand, heroic style of the epic

Morality Play

• An outgrowth of miracle plays

Motif

• A recurring feature (such as a name, an image, or a phrase) in a work o literature

Motivation

• The reasons, either stated or implied, for a character’s behavior

Mystery Play

• A popular form of medieval religious drama based on biblical stories from the Creation to the Last Judgement

Myth

• A story, often about immortals and sometimes connected with religious rituals, that is intended to give meaning to the mysteries of the world

Narrative Poem

• A poem that tells a story

Narrator

• One who narrates, or tells, a story

Naturalism

• An extreme form realism

Neoclassicism

• A revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of classical standards of order, balance, and harmony in literature

Novel

• A book-length fictional prose narrative, having many characters and often a complex plot

Octave

• An eight-line poem or stanza

Ode

• A complex and often lengthy lyric poem, written in a dignified formal style on some lofty or serious subject

Onomatopoeia

• The use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its meaning