AP LIt Poetry Flashcards

Apostrophe: Literary device in which the speaker addresses either an absent person or a non-human object, idea, or being.

• Purpose: personify or bring to life something not living so the poet is able to address it directly.

• EX: “Twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what you are” 

Understatement: A literary device used to downplay a situation as less serious, less significant, or smaller than it really is.

• It was only a little spark that burnt the house down.

Conceit: Embellished or extended metaphor (generally found in poetry) (Comedic value)

• Create an imaginative connection between items/ideas

• Life is like a box of chocolates

Synecdoche: Where part of something is substituted for the whole

• When writers want a more natural dialogue or more evocative imagery

• I like your wheels!

• Put him behind bars (bars are part of jail)

• The pen is mightier than the sword

Litotes

• Literary Definition: Ironic understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary

• Purpose of Use: To describe something in a comedic or ironic way.

• Examples: It’s not the worst thing I’ve eaten, She doesn’t seem the happiest, AP Literature was not totally unbearable.

Metonymy

• Literary Definition: The substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant

• Purpose for use: Allows for writers to make single words or phrases have a deeper meaning than what you see on the surface.

• Examples: In “lend a hand”, "hand" is a metonym for helping, In “head count”, "head" stands in for people, In “Be a buddy not a bully”, “buddy” means an outstanding citizen

Caesura

• Pause occuring within a line of poetry

• Purpose: breaks rhythm of a line and forces readers to pause; identifies phrases or clauses to establish meaning

• It is for you we speak, not for ourselves:

• That will be damn’d for’t; and something else ….

• Can be a . or ----  or ; or : or , in a line

End-stopped line

• A line of poetry that ends with a natural speech pause, usually marked by punctuation

• Purpose: slows down the speed and gives a clear idea in each line by giving a break at the end

Enjambment

• The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza in a poem

• Purpose: speeds up the tempo; allows a poet to express a complicated idea beyond the restriction of a single line

Structure NOTES:

Form follows function: The shape of a building or object should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose.

• Basic unit of poem = line

• Stanza in poetry = a paragraph in prose

• Paragraphs are structured to focus on one dominant idea, poems do the same thing

• Stanza Arrangement

Shifts:

• What does each shift reveal?

Title Revisited

• What new insight do we gain from poem when you come back to title

• If the title matches the initial prediction, a key to the poem has been highlighted → why is it important?

• Title contradicts prediction, why did the poet want us to think about something that isn’t obviously relevant? 

• Does the title add info that makes us see the poem in a different light?

• Do the words in title have multiple meanings?

Theme Statement:

Your theme should be expressed in a sentence which answers one of the following:

• What statement about the human condition is the poet making? 

• What image is the poet capturing and why?

Reminders

• Not just a word/concept

• Not a cliche

• Not a moral or directive (ex: you should….)