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AP English Lit Literary Devices.
Allegory
a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
Allusion
an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference.
Analogy
a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
Connotation
an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.
Denotation
the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.
Diction
the choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing.
Epigraph
a brief quotation set at the beginning of a text (a book, a chapter of a book, an essay, a poem) to suggest its theme.
Enjambed lines
a line typically lacks punctuation at its line break, so the reader is carried smoothly and swiftly—without interruption—to the next line of the poem.
Stanza
a group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse.
Hyperbole
exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
Imagery
visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work.
Irony
the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
Juxtaposition
the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.
Metaphor
a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without using 'like' or 'as'.
Motif
an object, image, sound, or phrase that is repeated throughout a story to point toward the story's larger theme.
Oxymoron
a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.
Onomatopoeia
the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named.
Parody
an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.
Pastiche
an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.
Personification
the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman.
Pun
a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.
Simile
Comparison using like or as.
Syntax
the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.
Stream of consciousness
a narrative mode or method that attempts to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind of a narrator.
Tone
the author's attitude toward a subject.
Alliteration
the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Assonance
the repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in nonrhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible.
Consonance
the recurrence of similar sounds, especially consonants, in close proximity.
Couplet
two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit.
Free verse
an open form of poetry which does not use a prescribed or regular meter or rhyme.
Haiku
three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.
Meter
the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse.
Open stanza
an open form poetry, the poet doesn't follow any rules but their own.
Pentameter
a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet.
Rhyme
End rhyme is when the last syllables within a verse rhyme.
Stanza
visual groupings of lines in poetry.
Verse
a term that refers to various parts of poetry, such as a single line of poetry, a stanza, or the entire poem.
Epic
a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters.
Limerick
a humorous, frequently bawdy, verse of three long and two short lines rhyming aabba.
Shakespearean sonnet
a type of sonnet written in iambic pentameter and consisting of three quatrains and a final couplet with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.
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