AP Literature Summer Terms

Allegory

A story in which characters, events, or settings represent deeper moral, political, or symbolic meanings.

Alliteration

The repetition of the same beginning consonant sound in nearby words.

Allusion

An indirect reference to a person, event, place, or literary work.

Anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines.

Anti-Hero

A main character who lacks traditional heroic qualities.

Aphorism

A brief statement expressing a general truth or principle.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech in which a speaker addresses someone absent, dead, or something nonhuman.

Archetype

A recurring character, image, symbol, or situation found across literature.

Aside

A remark spoken by a character that is heard by the audience but not by other characters.

Ballad

A narrative poem that tells a story, often using simple language and repeated refrains.

Bildungsroman

A novel focusing on a character's growth and development from youth to adulthood.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed poetry written in iambic pentameter.

Byronic Hero

A complex, rebellious, and flawed hero who is often isolated and emotionally conflicted.

Caesura

A deliberate pause within a line of poetry.

Catharsis

The emotional release or purification experienced by the audience, especially in tragedy.

Indirect Characterization

Revealing a character through actions, dialogue, thoughts, appearance, and others' reactions.

Direct Characterization

The author directly describes a character's traits.

Climax

The turning point or moment of greatest tension in a story.

Comedy

A literary work with humorous elements that typically ends happily.

Conceit

An extended, imaginative comparison between two very different things.

Internal Conflict

A struggle occurring within a character's mind or emotions.

External Conflict

A struggle between a character and an outside force such as another person, society, or nature.

Connotation

The emotional or cultural associations connected with a word.

Couplet

Two consecutive lines of poetry, usually with the same rhyme and meter.

Denotation

A word's literal, dictionary definition.

Dialect

A form of language specific to a region or social group.

Diction

An author's choice of words and style of expression.

Dynamic Character

A character who changes significantly throughout a story.

Dystopia

An imagined society characterized by suffering, oppression, or injustice.

Elegy

A poem expressing sorrow, often mourning someone's death.

Enjambment

When a sentence continues from one line of poetry to the next without punctuation or pause.

Epic

A long narrative poem about the adventures of a heroic figure important to a culture or nation.

Equivocation

The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or avoid commitment.

Ethos

An appeal to credibility, ethics, or the speaker's character.

Exposition

The part of a story that introduces characters, setting, and background information.

Figurative Language

Language that goes beyond literal meaning, such as metaphors and similes.

Foil

A character whose traits contrast with another character to highlight differences.

Free Verse

Poetry that does not follow a regular rhyme or meter.

Genre

A category or type of literature defined by common characteristics.

Hegemony

The dominance or influence of one group over others, often culturally or politically.

Hubris

Excessive pride or arrogance that often leads to a character's downfall.

Hyperbole

An intentional exaggeration used for emphasis or effect.

Imagery

Descriptive language that appeals to the senses.

Intertextuality

The relationship between texts through references or shared ideas.

Irony

A contrast between expectation and reality, including verbal, situational, and dramatic irony.

Kenning

A two-word metaphorical expression, common in Old English poetry (e.g., "whale-road" for sea).

Logos

An appeal to logic and reason using facts or evidence.

Male Gaze

A perspective that presents women as objects viewed from a heterosexual male viewpoint.

Metaphor

A direct comparison between two unlike things without using "like" or "as."

Meter

The regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

Metonymy

Replacing the name of one thing with something closely associated with it.

Metrical Foot

The basic rhythmic unit in poetry made up of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Mood

The emotional atmosphere created for the reader.

Motif

A recurring element that contributes to a work's overall meaning.

Onomatopoeia

A word that imitates the sound it represents (e.g., buzz, bang).

Oxymoron

A combination of contradictory words (e.g., "deafening silence").

Parallelism

The repetition of similar grammatical structures for emphasis.

Pathos

An appeal to the audience's emotions.

Personification

Giving human qualities to nonhuman objects or ideas.

First Person POV

A narrative told by a character using "I," "me," or "we."

Third Person POV

A narrative told using "he," "she," "they," or character names.

Omniscient POV

A narrator who knows the thoughts and feelings of all characters.

Limited Omniscient POV

A narrator who knows the thoughts and feelings of only one character.

Prose

Ordinary written or spoken language without a regular poetic structure.

Regionalism

Literature that emphasizes the customs, dialect, and setting of a specific region.

Rhyme

The repetition of similar ending sounds in words.

Rhythm

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables or beats in language.

Satire

A work that uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to criticize human flaws or society.

Setting

The time and place in which a story occurs.

Simile

A comparison using "like" or "as."

Slant Rhyme

An imperfect rhyme in which the sounds are similar but not identical.

Soliloquy

A speech in which a character reveals thoughts while alone on stage.

Sonnet

A fourteen-line poem following a specific rhyme scheme and structure.

Stanza

A grouped set of lines in a poem, similar to a paragraph.

Static Character

A character who undergoes little or no change throughout a story.

Symbol

A person, object, or event that represents a larger idea or meaning.

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part represents the whole or the whole represents a part.

Syntax

The arrangement of words and phrases to form sentences.

Theme

The central message or underlying idea of a literary work.

Thesis

The main argument or controlling idea of an essay or analysis.

Tone

The author's attitude toward the subject or audience.

Tragedy

A literary work in which a central character experiences downfall because of a fatal flaw or circumstances.

Tragic Flaw

A character trait that leads to a tragic hero's downfall.

Tragic Hero

A noble character whose tragic flaw results in suffering or defeat.

Trope

A common literary device, theme, or recurring pattern in storytelling.

Wit

Clever, inventive language or humor.