AP Lit SG

allusion

a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work.

antithesis

a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas, as in: Man proposes; God disposes. Antithesis is a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness.

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.

assonance

the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds.

blank verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter. The meter of most of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as that of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

cacophony

a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones. It may be an unconscious flaw in the poet’s music, resulting in harshness of sound or difficulty of articulation, or it may be used consciously for effect.

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.

couplet

a two-line stanza, usually with end-rhymes the same.

consonance

the repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words.

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 are end-stopped lines.

enjambment

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

extended metaphor

an implied analogy, or comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or an entire poem.

euphony

a style in which combinations of words pleasant to the ear predominate.

eye rhyme

rhyme that appears correct from spelling, but is half-rhyme or slant rhyme from the pronunciation.

figurative language

writing that uses figures of speech such as metaphor, irony, and simile.

free verse

poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical.

hyperbole

a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used for either serious or comic effect.

imagery

the images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work.

irony

the contrast between actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning.

internal rhyme

rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end.

metaphor

a figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like 'as,' 'like,' or 'than.'

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.

onomatopoeia

the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning.

oxymoron

a form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression.

paradox

a situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense.

parallelism

a similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry.

personification

a kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics.

poetic foot

a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it.

pun

a play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings.

quatrain

a four-line stanza with any combination of rhymes.

refrain

a group of words forming a phrase or sentence and consisting of one or more lines repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza.

rhyme

close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse.

rhythm

the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. The presence of rhythmic patterns lends both pleasure and heightened emotional response to the listener or reader.

sarcasm

a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it.

sestet

a six-line stanza. Most commonly, sestet refers to the second division of an Italian sonnet.

simile

a directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with 'like,' 'as,' or 'than.'

sonnet

normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem.

stanza

usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.

synecdoche

a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole.