AP Literature Vocabulary Terms

ALLEGORY

story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities.

EXAMPLE: Animal Farm; Dante’s Inferno; Lord of the Flies

ALLITERATION

repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.

ALLUSION

reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or another branch of culture. An indirect reference to something (usually from literature, etc.).

AMBIGUITY

deliberately suggesting two or more different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work. An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way-- this is done on purpose by the author, when it is not done on purpose, it is vagueness, and detracts from the work.

ANACHRONISM

an event, object, custom, person or thing that is out of its natural order of time

EXAMPLE: Back to the Future

ANALOGY

 Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike

ANAPHORA

 Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row. This is a deliberate form of repetition and helps make the writer’s point more coherent.

ANASTROPHE

 Inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence. Purpose is rhythm or emphasis or euphony. It is a fancy word for inversion.

ANECDOTE

Brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something, often shows character of an individual.

ANTAGONIST

Opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero, or protagonist, in a story.

ANTIMETABOLE

Repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order. 

Moliere: “One should eat to live, not live to eat.” In poetry, this is called chiasmus.

ANTITHESIS

Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure.

ANTIHERO

Central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes. may lack courage, grace, intelligence, or moral scruples.

ANTHROPOMORPHISM

attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object (Personification)

APHORISM

brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life, or of a principle or accepted general truth. Also called maxim, epigram

APOSTROPHE

calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place or thing, or a personified abstract idea. If the character is asking a god or goddess for inspiration it is called an invocation.

Josiah Holland ---“Loacöon! Thou great embodiment/ Of human life and human history!”

ARCHETYPE

a pattern or model of an action, a character type, or an image that recurs consistently enough in life and literature to be considered universal. 

EXAMPLE: Voldemort (villain) 

ASSONANCE

the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds especially in words that are together.

EXAMPLE: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary” (Poe)

ASYNDETON

Commas used without conjunction to separate a series of words, thus emphasizing the parts equally: instead of X, Y, and Z... the writer uses X,Y,Z.... See polysyndeton.

BALANCE

Constructing a sentence so that both halves are about the same length and importance. Sentences can be unbalanced to serve a special effect as well.

BALLAD

a form of narrative poetry that presents a single dramatic episode, which is often tragic or violent

EXAMPLE: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Coleridge)

BILDUNGSROMAN

a coming of age work that follows its protagonist from youth to experience, or maturity

EXAMPLE: To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter series 

BLANK VERSE

 poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter 

CAESURA

a pause in a line of verse, often coinciding with a break between clauses and sentences

CARICATURE

a picture, descriptions, etc., ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of persons or things 

CHARACTERIZATION

the process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character.

INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

 the author reveals to the reader what the character is like by describing how the character looks and dresses, by letting the reader hear what the character says, by revealing the character’s private thoughts and feelings, by revealing the characters effect on other people (showing how other characters feel or behave toward the character), or by showing the character in action. Common in modern literature

DIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

the author tells us directly what the character is like: sneaky, generous, mean to pets and so on. Romantic style literature relied more heavily on this form.

STATIC CHARACTER

is one who does not change much in the course of a story.

DYNAMIC CHARACTER

 is one who changes in some important way as a result of the story’s action.

FLAT CHARACTER

 has only one or two personality traits. They are one dimensional, like a piece of cardboard. They can be summed up in one phrase.

ROUND CHARACTER

has more dimensions to their personalities---they are complex, just a real people are.

CHIASMUS

In poetry, a type of rhetorical balance in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but with the parts reversed. 

Coleridge: “Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike.” In prose this is called antimetabole.

CLICHE

is a word or phrase, often a figure of speech, that has become lifeless because of overuse. Avoid clichés like the plague. (That cliché is intended.)

COLLOQUIALISM

a word or phrase in everyday use in conversation and informal writing but is inappropriate for formal situations.

Example: “He’s out of his head if he thinks I’m gonna go for such a stupid idea.

COMEDY

in general, a story that ends with a happy resolution of the conflicts faced by the main character or characters.

CONCEIT

an elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different. Often an extended metaphor.

CONFESSIONAL POETRY

a twentieth century term used to describe poetry that uses intimate material from the poet’s life.

CONFLICT

the struggle between opposing forces or characters in a story.

EXTERNAL CONFLICT

conflicts can exist between two people, between a person and nature or a machine or between a person a whole society.

INTERNAL CONFLICT

a conflict can be internal, involving opposing forces within a person’s mind.

CONNOTATION

the associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase, in addition to its strict dictionary definition.

CONSONANCE

the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different.

COUPLET

two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.

DIALECT

a way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain social group or of the inhabitants of a certain geographical area.

DICTION

 a speaker or writer’s choice of words.

DIDACTIC

form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking.

ELEGY

a poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died. A Eulogy is great praise or commendation, a laudatory speech, often about someone who has died.

EPIC

a long narrative poem, written in heightened language , which recounts the deeds of a heroic character who embodies the values of a particular society.

EPIGRAPH

a quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme.

EPISTROPHE

Device of repetition in which the same expression (single word or phrase) is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences (it is the opposite of anaphora).

EPITHET

an adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing that is frequently used to emphasize a characteristic or quality. 

“Father of our country” and “the great Emancipator” are examples. A Homeric epithet is a compound adjective used with a person or thing: “swift-footed Achilles”; “rosy-fingered dawn.”

ESSAY

a short piece of nonfiction prose in which the writer discusses some aspect of a subject.