AP Lit Glossary (PR)

Antecedent

The noun to which a pronoun refers

Gerund

word ending in -ing that is a noun (swimming)

Participle

A word acting as both an adjective and a verb

Abstract

A writing style discussing intangible qualities without many examples

Academic

An adjective describing dry and theoretical analytical writing

Accent

The stressed portion of a word in poetry

Aesthetic

A coherent sense of taste or something appealing to the senses

Aesthetics

The study of beauty

Allegory

A story where aspects have symbolic meanings outside the tale

Alliteration

The repetition of initial sounds in closely placed words

Allusion

A reference to another work or famous figure

Anachronism

Something misplaced in time (a character using a smartphone in a 1920s movie)

Analogy

A comparison used to clarify an action or relationship

Anecdote

A short narrative

Anthropomorphism

Giving human characteristics or motivation to nonhuman objects

Anticlimax

An action producing much smaller results than expected

Aphorism

A short and usually witty saying

Apostrophe

An address to someone not present or a personified idea

Archaism

The use of deliberately old-fashioned language

Archetypes

Standard or clichéd character types

Argumentation

The process of analyzing evidence and developing claims

Aside

A short comment made by an actor to the audience

Aspect

A trait or characteristic

Atmosphere

The emotional tone surrounding a scene

Attitude

A speaker's nature toward or opinion of a subject

Ballad

A long narrative poem with regular meter and rhyme

Bathos

sudden shift from a serious tone to something ridiculous. (After years of searching for the meaning of life, he found it: it's a tuna sandwich)

Black Humor

The use of disturbing themes in comedy

Bombast

Pretentious and exaggeratedly learned language

Burlesque

Broad parody that exaggerates a style into ridiculousness

Cacophony

The use of deliberately harsh or awkward sounds in poetry

Cadence

The general beat or rhythm of poetry

Canto

A section division in a long work of poetry

Caricature

A portrait that exaggerates a facet of personality

Catharsis

The cleansing/release of emotion an audience experiences through drama

Character

The features that make up an individual in literature

Chorus

A group in drama commenting on the main action

Classic

An accepted masterpiece or something typical

Classical

Relating to the arts of ancient Greece and Rome

Coinage

A new word invented on the spot

Colloquialism

A word used in everyday conversational English

Conceit

A startling or unusual extended metaphor

Denotation

The literal meaning of a word

Connotation

Everything a word suggests or implies beyond literal meaning

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds within words

Couplet

A pair of lines that end in rhyme

Decorum

Styling a character's speech according to social station

Devices of Sound

Techniques like rhyme and alliteration used for imagery

Diction

Word choice

Dirge

A slow and melancholy song for the dead (funeral _____)

Dissonance

The grating of incompatible sounds

Doggerel

intentionally or unintentionally bad, simplistic, or irregular poetry, often featuring forced rhymes and a clunky rhythm

Dramatic Irony

When the audience knows something characters do not

Dramatic Monologue

When a single speaker says something to a silent audience

Dystopia

A seemingly ideal world that is actually destructive

Elegy

A poem meditating on death or mortality

Elements

The basic techniques of each genre of literature

Enjambment

The continuation of a syntactic unit with no pause

Epic

A long narrative poem on a serious theme

Epitaph

Lines commemorating the dead at their burial place

Ethos

An appeal to credibility and trust

Euphemism

A phrase taking the place of an unpleasant reality

Euphony

The result when sounds blend harmoniously

Farce

Extremely broad humor or a funny play

Feminine Rhyme

Lines rhymed by their final two syllables

Figurative Language

Writing that means something other than the literal meaning

Foil

A character used to highlight another through contrast

Foot

the basic, repeating unit of rhythm (meter) in a line of verse

Free Verse

Poetry without a regular rhyme or meter

Gothic

A sensibility derived from dark and twisty stories

Hubris

Excessive pride leading to a character's downfall

Imagery

Sensory details that appeal to the reader's senses

Implicit

Something suggested or implied but not said directly

In Medias Res

Action that begins in the midst of things

Inversion

Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence

Irony

A contradiction between expectation and reality

Juxtaposition

Placing concepts together for comparison or contrast

Lament

A poem of sadness over death or loss

Logos

An appeal to logic

Loose Sentence

A sentence that is complete before its end

Periodic Sentence

A sentence not grammatically complete until its final phrase

Lyric

Poetry exploring personal interpretations and feelings

Masculine Rhyme

A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (fair and compare, dog and log)

Melodrama

A form of theater with exaggeratedly good or evil characters

Metaphor

A comparison between two unlike ideas without using like or as (He has a heart of gold)

Metonym

word or phrase is substituted with another word or phrase that is closely associated with it

Motif

A recurring symbol

Narrative Techniques

Methods employed in the telling of a story

Objectivity

An impersonal or outside view of events

Onomatopoeia

Words that imitate sounds

Oxymoron

A phrase composed of opposites or a contradiction (bittersweet)

Parable

A story that instructs

Paradox

A statement that seems to contradict itself but does not

Parallelism

Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect

Paraphrase

To restate phrases in your own words

Parenthetical Phrase

A phrase set off by commas interrupting a sentence

Parody

A work making fun of another by exaggerating qualities

Pastoral

A poem set in tranquil nature

Pathos

An appeal to emotions

Persona

A created personality reflective of the author