AP Literature Exam Review: Periods and Literary Terms

A collection of vocabulary terms covering key literary movements, archetypes, and poetic devices from the Classical period through Postmodernism, based on AP Literature review notes.

Tyche

The role of Chance as experienced in Sophocles' Oedipus the King.

Aristotle's Poetics

A foundational text defining literary concepts such as catharsis, anagnorisis, and peripeteia.

Kenning

A specialized literary device found in Anglo-Saxon texts like Beowulf.

Caesura

A rhythmic break or pause in a line of poetry, characteristic of Anglo-Saxon verse.

Dual Epistemologies

Represented in Beowulf as the coexistence of pre-Christian Norse and Christian worldviews.

Frame Narrative

A story within a story structure found in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Spenserian Stanza

A verse form consisting of $8$ iambic pentameter lines followed by a $9^{ ext{th}}$ line of $6$ iambic feet, known as an alexandrine, with a rhyme scheme of $ababbcbcc$.

Alexandrine

The final line of a Spenserian stanza, consisting of $6$ iambic feet (a hexameter).

Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet

A sonnet structure consisting of an $8$-line octave rhyming $ABBAABBA$ and a $6$-line sestet rhyming $CDCDCD$ or $CDECDE$.

English/Shakespearean Sonnet

A sonnet comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, with a rhyme scheme of $abab\,cdcd\,efef\,gg$.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter, frequently used by Shakespeare in Hamlet.

Anastrophe

Inverted word order, a device noted in the works of Shakespeare.

Conceit

An extended or elaborate metaphor characteristic of John Donne and the Metaphysical poets.

Augustan Emphasis

An $18^{ ext{th}}$-century focus on decorum, literary rules, classical unities, and poetic diction.

The Sublime

A central theme of Romanticism relating to the overwhelming power and beauty of nature, childhood, and imagination.

Ballad

A popular narrative song using rhymed ($abcb$) quatrains that alternate four-stress and three-stress lines.

Terza Rima

An interlocking three-line rhyme scheme used by Romantic poets such as Shelley and Byron.

Apostrophe

A rhetorical device where the speaker directly addresses an absent person, an object, or an abstract concept, common in the odes of Shelley and Keats.

Epistolary Novel

A novel written as a series of documents, such as letters, used by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein.

Dramatic Monologue

A poetic form used by Robert Browning to explore extreme psychological states through a specific persona.

Euphony

The quality of being pleasing to the ear through harmonious sounds, associated with the poetry of Tennyson.

Sprung Rhythm

A poetic rhythm designed to imitate the natural rhythm of speech, developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Stream of Consciousness

A narrative style portraying the character's continuous flow of thoughts and feelings, used by Modernist authors like Eliot, Joyce, and Woolf.

Existence Precedes Essence

The central reversal of traditional Western philosophy found in Existentialism, suggesting individuals define their own nature.

Vignette

A short, descriptive literary sketch, exemplified by Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street.