AP Lit Poetry Terms Vocab 1

alliteration

the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words

allusion

brief, often implicit and indirect reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text (eg the Bible, a myth, another literary work, a painting or a piece of music) or any imaginary or historical person, place, or thing

anaphora

figure of speech involving the repetition of the same word or phrase in (and especially at) the beginning of successive lines

assonance

repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words with different endings

caesura

short pause within a line of poetry

connotation

what is suggested by a word, apart from what it literally means or how it is defined in the dictionary

consonance

the repetition of certain consonant sounds in close proximity (such as mishmash)

end-stopped line

line of verse that contains or concludes a complete clause and usually ends with a punctuation mark

enjambment

in poetry, the technique of running over from one line to the next without stop (no punctuation)

imagery

broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object (could be auditory, tactile, visual, or olfactory)

juxtaposition

placing two or more things next to each other, side by side, to highlight their differences to create contrast, tension, or emphasis

metaphor

figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly

personification

figure of speech that involves treating something nonhuman, such as an abstraction, as if it were a person by endowing it with humanlike qualities

shift / volta

a turn of thought or argument in a poem

sibilance

Repetition of 's' and 'sh' sounds (eg sash)

simile

figure of speech involving a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually with a world like or as to draw the connection

analogy

An extended simile

speaker

the person who is the voice of a poem

stanza

section of a poem, marked by an extra line spacing before and after, that often has a single pattern or meter and/or rhyme

tone

attitude a literary work takes toward its subject or that a character in the work or speaker of a poem conveys, especially as revealed through diction