AP Lit Terms

allegory

a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one

allusion

a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work. These are largely historical, literary, biblical, or mythological

connotation

an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning. (Ex: Cool means cold and cool also means popular)

denotation

the literal or primary meaning of a word

diction

the use of words in a literary work

colloquial(ism)

the everyday usage of a group, including terms and constructions accepted in that group but not universally acceptable

literal language

exactly what is written (an important distinction from figurative)

slang

a group of newly coined words which are not acceptable for formal usage as yet

farce

a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations (Ex: Three Stooges, The Hangover)

parody

an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or gene with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect. (Ex: Spaceballs parodies Star Wars)

theme

the main thought expressed by a work

tone

the manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude: the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning. (Remember that the voice need not be that of the poet.)

shift

when speakers or writers alter their style or tone in a piece. It is often accompanied by a shift in focus

comedy

a work written to amuse or entertain a reader

tragedy

the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual

convention

the defining characteristics, or must-haves, of a given genre

caesura

a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause. For example, one would naturally pause after human in the following line from Alexander Pope: To err is human, to forgive divine

end-stopped

a line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, a comma, a colon, a semicolon, an exclamation point, or a question mark

enjambment

the continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next

parallelism

a similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry. (Ex: all verbs ending in “ing”)

apostrophe

a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present

metonymy

a figure of speech which is characterized by the substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself. In this way we commonly speak of the king as the crown, and object closely associated with kingship

conceit

an ingenious and fanciful notion or conception, usually expressed through an elaborate analogy, and pointing to a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things. May be a brief metaphor, but it also may form the framework of an entire poem. It can also be an oxymoron or an idiom