AP LIT PROSE TERMS

Apostrophe

A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply

Connotation

What a word suggests beyond its basic definition; a word's overtones of meaning

Denotation

The basic definition or dictionary meaning of a word

Ekphrasis

The poetic representation of a painting or sculpture in words

Epigram (1)

A short, witty poem expressing a single thought or observation. (2) A concise, clever, often paradoxical statement.

Extended figure

(also knows as sustained figure) A figure of speech (usually metaphor, simile, personification, or apostrophe) sustained or developed through a considerable number of lines or through a whole poem

Figurative language

Language employing figures of speech; language that cannot be taken literally or only literally

Figure of speech

Broadly, any way of saying something other that the ordinary way; more narrowly (and for the purposes of this class) a wayof saying one thing and meaning another

Juxtaposition

Positioning opposites next to each other to heighten the contrast

Metaphor

A figure of speech in which an implicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which some significant aspect or detail of an experience is used to represent the whole experience

Onomatopoeia

The use of words that supposedly mimic their meaning in their sound (for example, boom, click, plop).

Personification

A figure of speech in which human attributes are given to an animal, an object, or a concept

Rhythm

Any wavelike recurrence of motion or sound

Sentimentality

Unmerited or contrived tender feeling; that quality in a story that elicits or seeks to elicit tears through an oversimplification or falsification of reality

Simile

A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike. The comparison is made explicit by the use of some such word or phrase as like, as, than, similar to, resembles, or seems

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole. In this class it is subsumed under the term Metonymy.

Syntax

Word organization and order.

Alliteration

The repetition at close intervals of the initial consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words (for example, map-moon, kill-code, preach-approve)

Approximate rhyme

(also known as imperfect rhyme, near rhyme, slant rhyme, or oblique rhyme) A term used for words in a rhyming pattern that have some kind of sound correspondence but are not perfect rimes (for example, arrayed-said)

Assonance

The repetition at close intervals of the vowel sounds of accented syllables or important words (for example, hat-ran-amber, vein-made).

Blank verse

Poetry with a meter, but not rhymed, usually in iambic pentameter

Consonance

The repetition at close intervals of the final consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words (for example, book-plaque-thicker)

Couplet

Two successive lines, usually in the same meter, linked by rhyme

End rhyme

Rhymes that occur at the ends of lines

End-stopped line

A line that ends with a natural speech pause, usually marked by punctuation — the opposite of enjambment

Enjambment

Or run-on line, a line which has no natural speech pause at its end, allowing the sense to flow uninterruptedly into the succeeding line — the opposite of an end-stopped line

English (or Shakespearean) sonnet

A sonnet rhyming ababcdcdefefgg. Its content or structure ideally parallels the rhyme scheme, falling into three coordinate quatrains and a concluding couplet; but it is often structured, like the Italian sonnet, into octave and sestet, the principal break in thought coming at the end of the eighth line.

Foot

The basic unit used in the scansion or measurement of verse. A foot usually contains one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables

Free verse

Nonmetrical verse. Poetry written in free verse is arranged in lines, may be more or less rhythmical, but has no fixed metrical pattern or expectation

Half rhyme

(Sometimes called slant rhyme, sprung, near rhyme, oblique rhyme, off rhyme or imperfect rhyme), is consonance on the final consonants of the words involved

Heroic couplet

Poems constructed by a sequence of two lines of (usually rhyming) verse in iambic pentameter.

Iamb

A metrical foot consisting of one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable (for example, rehearse)

Internal rhyme

A rhyme in which one or both of the rhyme-words occur within the line

Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet

A sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abbaabba and of a sestet using any arrangement of two or three additional rhymes, such as cdcdcd or cdecde

Octave

(1) An eight-line stanza.

Perfect rhyme

A rhyme in which is when the later part of the word or phrase is identical sounding to another. (rot, dot)

Quatrain

A four line stanza

Refrain

A repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines, normally at some fixed position in a poem written in stanziac form

Rhyme

The repetition of an identical or similarly accented sound or sounds in a work.

Rhyme scheme

Any fixed pattern of rhymes characterizing a whole poem or its stanzas

Scansion

The process of measuring verse, that is, of marking accented and unaccented syllables, dividing the lines into feet, identifying the

metrical pattern, and noting significant variations from that pattern

Sestet

A six-line stanza

Stanza

A group of lines whose metrical pattern (and usually its rhyme scheme as well) is repeated throughout a poem

Ballad

Ballad a narrative folk song. Ballads were usually created by common people and passed orally due to the illiteracy of the time.

Elegy

A type of literature defined as a song or poem, written in elegiac couplets, that expresses sorrow or lamentation, usually for one who has died.

Epic

A long poem in a lofty style about the exploits of heroic figures.

Lyric

a song-like poem written mainly to express the feelings of emotions or thought from a particular person.

Narrative poem

A poem that tells a story.

Ode

Usually a lyric poem of moderate length, with a serious subject, an elevated style, and an elaborate stanza pattern. The ode often praises people, the arts of music and poetry, natural scenes, or abstract concepts.

Sonnet

A fixed form of fourteen lines, normally iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme conforming to or approximating one of two main types—the Italian or the English