AP Literature Summer Terms

Alexandrine

An iambic hexameter line that is a poetic line consisting of six iambic feet. The last line of a Spenserian stanza is an alexandrine. The following alexandrine is from a stanza of John Keat’s “The Eve of St. Agnes.”

She signed for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year

Allegory

A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. Thus, an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and symbolic meaning. The most famous allegory in English literature is John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan's hero, Christian, makes a journey to the Celestial City, during whcih he meets such characters as Hope, Shame, and Despair.

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.

Although alliteration sometimes appears in prose, it 1s manly a poetic device. Like other torms of sound repetition, alliteration in poetry serves two important purposes: it is pleasing to the ear, and it emphasizes the words in which it occurs. A well-known example of alliteration is this line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan": "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion."

Alliteration is an important poetic device in Anglo-Saxon poetry where it generally occurs on three of the four stressed syllables in a line. Something of the alliterative effect can be seen in this line from Beowulf: "And the heathen's only hope, Hell."

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. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion. In Act One of Macbeth, Ross praises Macbeth's valor and skill in battle by referring to him as "Bellona's bridegroom." In Roman mythology Bellona was the goddess of war.

The title of Elizabeth Bowen’s story “Tears, Idle Tears” alludes to a poem of the same title by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.