AP English Literature Open-Ended Prompt Vocabulary

A collection of literary terms, devices, and concepts explicitly defined or described in the AP English Literature Open-ended Prompt list.

Bildungsroman

A coming-of-age novel that recounts the psychological or moral development of its protagonist from youth to maturity, when this character recognizes his or her place in the world.

Foil

A minor character in a literary work who possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character.

Symbol

An object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself, which can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning.

Confidant / Confidante

A character (male confidant, female confidante), often a friend or relative of the hero or heroine, whose role is to be present when the hero or heroine needs a sympathetic listener to confide in.

Exile (Edward Said)

The unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home, whose essential sadness can never be surmounted, but which can also become a potent, even enriching experience.

Illuminating Incident (Edith Wharton)

An episode or moment that a novelist relies on at every stage in the progress of a tale to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation, functioning as magic casements or vistas on infinity.

Morally Ambiguous Characters

Characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good.

Purpose of Imaginative Literature (Sir Philip Sidney)

According to Sir Philip Sidney in The Defence of Poesy (1595), the purpose of imaginative literature is to teach and delight by hiding serious messages in pleasant tales to win the mind from wickedness to virtue.

Thoughtful Laughter

The true test of comedy, awakened in the reader by a scene or character in a novel, play, or long poem.

Happy Ending (Fay Weldon)

An ending achieved through moral development, offering spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation (even with the self or at death), rather than mere fortunate events like a marriage or last-minute rescue.

Tragic Heroes (Northrop Frye)

Figures who are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, like great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass.

Madness

Mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it, which Emily Dickinson described as divinest Sense to a discerning Eye.

Ideal View of the World (V. S. Naipaul)

A perspective held by a character in literature where, according to V. S. Naipaul in Magic Seeds (2004), the mischief starts and where everything starts unravelling.

Outward Existence vs. Inward Life (Kate Chopin)

A duality identified in Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899) through Edna Pontellier, involving an outward existence which conforms alongside an inward life that questions.

Uncivilized Free and Wild Thinking (Henry David Thoreau)

In his essay Walking, Henry David Thoreau's term for the untamed thinking in literature (such as in Hamlet and The Iliad) that delights readers because in literature it is only the wild that attracts us.