AP Literature

First 50 Literary Terms

Allegory

A literary work in which characters, objects, or actions represent abstractions

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds

Allusion

A reference to another work of literature, person, or event

Anaphora

repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of phrases, clauses, or lines

Antagonist

A character or force in conflict with the main character

Apostrophe

A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified abstraction, such as liberty or love.

Archetype

A detail, image, or character type that occurs frequently in literature and myth and is thought to appeal in a universal way to the unconscious and to evoke a response

Asyndeton

A construction in which elements are presented in a series without conjunctions

Bildungsroman

A coming of age story

Cacophony

A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds

Caesura

a strong pause within a line of verse

Conceit

extended metaphor

Connotation

the implied or associative meaning of a word

Denotation

dictionary definition

Diction

word choice

Dramatic Irony

Irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play.

End-Stopped Lines

lines of poetry that end with punctuation marks

Enjambment

the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza.

Epiphany

A moment of realization

Epigraph

the use of a quotation at the beginning of a work that hints at its theme

Epistrophe

Repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends of successive clauses

Euphemism

An indirect, less offensive way of saying something that is considered unpleasant

Foil

A character who acts as a contrast to another character

Foreshadowing

A warning or indication of a future event

Hubris

excessive pride

Hyperbole

exaggeration

Juxtaposition

placing two elements side by side to present a comparison or contrast

Metaphor

A comparison without using like or as

Mood

How the reader feels about the text while reading.

Motif

A recurring theme, subject or idea

Narrator

Person telling the story

Onomatopoeia

A word that imitates the sound it represents.

Oxymoron

A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.

Paradox

a contradiction or dilemma

Personification

A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes

Polysyndeton

Deliberate use of many conjunctions

Point of View

the perspective from which a story is told

Prose

Any writing that is not poetry

Protagonist

main character

Satire

A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies.

Simile

A comparison using "like" or "as"

Situational Irony

An outcome that turns out to be very different from what was expected

Soliloquy

A long speech expressing the thoughts of a character alone on stage

Sonnet

14 line poem

Speaker

the voice of the poem

Symbol

A thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract.

Syntax

Sentence structure

Stanza

A group of lines in a poem

Theme

Central idea of a work of literature

Tone

Attitude a writer takes toward the audience, a subject, or a character