from the book by the Princeton Review and Barron's AP Literature Review
Terms : Hide Images
| 4240676969 | aesthetic, aesthetics | As an adjective, it means "appealing to the senses." As a noun, it is a coherent sense of taste. | 0 | |
| 4240676970 | allegory | a story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself | 1 | |
| 4240676971 | alliteration | the repetition of initial consonant sounds | 2 | |
| 4240676972 | allusion | a reference to another work or famous figure It may be classical, topical, or popular. | 3 | |
| 4240676973 | anachronism | derived from Greek means "misplaced in time" | 4 | |
| 4240676974 | analogy | a comparison usually involving two or more symbolic parts that is employed to clarify an action or a relationship | 5 | |
| 4240676975 | anecdote | a short narrative a little story embedded into a poem or story for effect | 6 | |
| 4240676976 | antecedent | the word, phrase, or clause that a pronoun refers to or replaces | 7 | |
| 4240676977 | anthropomorphism | when inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation but are NOT given human form Example: Winnie the Pooh | 8 | |
| 4240676978 | anticlimax | when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect | 9 | |
| 4240676979 | antihero | a protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, etc. | 10 | |
| 4240676980 | aphorism | a short and usually witty saying Ex. Tuesday's with Morrie, "Death ends a life, not a relationship." | 11 | |
| 4240676981 | apostrophe | an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea | 12 | |
| 4240676982 | aside | a speech (usually just a short comment) made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping outside of the action on stage | 13 | |
| 4240676983 | assonance | the repeated use of vowel sounds |  | 14 |
| 4240676984 | atmosphere | the emotional tone or background of a scene | 15 | |
| 4240676985 | ballad | a long, narrative poem, usually in very regular meter and rhyme typically has a naive folksy quality | 16 | |
| 4240676986 | bathos | Bathos is a literary term derived from a Greek word meaning "depth". Bathos is when a writer or a poet falls into inconsequential and absurd metaphors, descriptions or ideas in an effort to be increasingly emotional or passionate. |  | 17 |
| 4240676987 | pathos | when the writing of a scene evokes an emotional response | 18 | |
| 4240676988 | black humor | the use of disturbing themes in comedy | 19 | |
| 4240676989 | bombast | -pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language -high-sounding language with little meaning, used to impress people |  | 20 |
| 4240676990 | burlesque | an absurd or comically exaggerated imitation. aka: parody | 21 | |
| 4240676991 | cacophony | using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds | 22 | |
| 4240676992 | cadence | the beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense | 23 | |
| 4240676993 | canto | the name for a division in a long work of poetry | 24 | |
| 4240676994 | caricature | a portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality | 25 | |
| 4240676995 | catharsis | the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences, having lived (vicariously) through the experiences presented on stage | 26 | |
| 4240676996 | chorus | in drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it | 27 | |
| 4240676997 | classic | as an adjective, it means "typical" as a noun, it means an accepted masterpiece | 28 | |
| 4240676998 | coinage (neologism) | a new word, usually one invented on the spot | 29 | |
| 4240676999 | colloquialism | word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "schoolbook" English | 30 | |
| 4240677000 | complex/dense | it suggests that there is more than one possibility in the meaning of words (image, idea, opposition) subtleties and variations multiple layers of interpretation the meaning is both explicit and implicit | 31 | |
| 4240677001 | conceit | a startling or unusual metaphor, or a metaphor developed and expanded upon over several lines Ex: "Life is a tale told by an idiot-full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" -Macbeth | 32 | |
| 4240677002 | connotation | everything that the word suggests or implies | 33 | |
| 4240677003 | denotation | the literal meaning of a word | 34 | |
| 4240677004 | consonance | the repetition of consonant sounds within words | 35 | |
| 4240677005 | couplet | a pair of lines that end in rhyme | 36 | |
| 4240677006 | diction | the author's choice of words | 37 | |
| 4240677007 | syntax | the ordering and structuring of the words the arrangement of words in a sentence | 38 | |
| 4240677008 | dirge | a song for the dead | 39 | |
| 4240677009 | dissonance | the grating of incompatible sounds | 40 | |
| 4240677010 | doggerel | crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme | 41 | |
| 4240677011 | dramatic monologue | when a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience | 42 | |
| 4240677012 | elegy | a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner | 43 | |
| 4240677013 | elements | the basic techniques of each genre of literature | 44 | |
| 4240677014 | enjambment | the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause |  | 45 |
| 4240677015 | epic | a very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style | 46 | |
| 4240677016 | epitaph | lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place may be written on a tombstone or spoken at a funeral | 47 | |
| 4240677017 | euphemism | a word or phrase that takes the place of harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality | 48 | |
| 4240677018 | explicit | to say or write something directly and clearly | 49 | |
| 4240677019 | farce | extremely broad humor | 50 | |
| 4240677020 | feminine rhyme | lines rhymed by their final two syllables ("running" and "gunning") | 51 | |
| 4240677021 | foil | a secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a man character, usually by contrast | 52 | |
| 4240677022 | foot | the basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry | 53 | |
| 4240677023 | foreshadowing | an event or statement in a narrative that suggests, in miniature, a larger event that comes later | 54 | |
| 4240677024 | free verse | poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern | 55 | |
| 4240677025 | genre | a subcategory of literature | 56 | |
| 4240677026 | gothic/gothic novel | gloomy and suspenseful novels popular in the 18th century the sensibility derived from these novels | 57 | |
| 4240677027 | hubris | the excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall | 58 | |
| 4240677028 | hyperbole | exaggeration or deliberate overstatement | 59 | |
| 4240677029 | implicit | to say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly | 60 | |
| 4240677030 | in medias res | Latin for "in the midst of things" | 61 | |
| 4240677031 | interior monologue | writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head tends to be coherent, as though the character were actually talking | 62 | |
| 4240677032 | inversion | switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase | 63 | |
| 4240677033 | verbal irony | a statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean has an undertone of meaning that seems to ask "Do you understand what I really mean?" Ex:"A little more than kin, and less than kind"-Hamlet | 64 | |
| 4240677034 | Situational Irony | irony involving a situation in which actions have an effect that is opposite from what was intended, so that the outcome is contrary to what was expected. Ex: The swords being switched and Laertes dying by the poison intended for Hamlet. | 65 | |
| 4240677035 | Dramatic Irony | Dramatic irony is created when the audience knows something that the characters do not. Ex 1: Only the readers and Horatio know that Hamlet is pretending to be mad. Ex2: When watching the film, Titanic, the audience knows the ship will sink, but the characters do not. | 66 | |
| 4240677036 | lament | a poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss | 67 | |
| 4240677037 | lampoon | a satire | 68 | |
| 4240677038 | loose sentence | sentence that is complete before its end | 69 | |
| 4240677039 | periodic sentence | sentence that is not complete until it has reached its final phrase | 70 | |
| 4240677040 | lyric | a type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world when it describes tone, it refers to a sweet, emotional melodiousness | 71 | |
| 4240677041 | masculine rhyme | a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (a regular rhyme) |  | 72 |
| 4240677042 | melodrama | a form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very, very good, the villain mean and rotten, and the heroine oh-so-pure | 73 | |
| 4240677043 | metonymy | a word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with | 74 | |
| 4240677044 | nemesis | the protagonist's archenemy or supreme and persistent difficulty | 75 | |
| 4240677045 | onomatopoeia | words that sounds like what they mean | 76 | |
| 4240677046 | opposition | a pair of elements that contrast sharply but that do not make a "conflict" the stronger the differences in the images, the more striking and informative the effect | 77 | |
| 4240677047 | oxymoron | a phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction | 78 | |
| 4240677048 | parable | like a fable or an allegory, a story that instructs | 79 | |
| 4240677049 | paradox | a situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not | 80 | |
| 4240677050 | parallelism | repeated syntactical similarities used for effect | 81 | |
| 4240677051 | paraphrase | to restate phrases and sentence in your own words; to rephrase | 82 | |
| 4240677052 | parenthetical phrase | a phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail | 83 | |
| 4240677053 | pastoral | a poem set in a tranquil nature, or even more especially, one about shepherds | 84 | |
| 4240677054 | persona | the narrator in a non-first-person novel the author's personality that manipulates the reader's impressions of the book | 85 | |
| 4240677055 | personification | giving an inanimate object human qualities or FORM | 86 | |
| 4240677056 | point of view | the perspective from which the action of a novel (or narrative poem) is presented | 87 | |
| 4240677057 | omniscient narrator | third-person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action going on. | 88 | |
| 4240677058 | limited omniscient narrator | third-person narrator who generally reports only what one or two characters (usually the main characters) sees, and who only reports the thoughts of those few privileged characters | 89 | |
| 4240677059 | objective (camera-eye) narrator | third-person narrator who only reports on what would be visible to a camera does not know what the character is thinking unless the character speaks of it | 90 | |
| 4240677060 | first-person narrator | a character in the story who tells the tale from his or her point of view | 91 | |
| 4240677061 | stream of consciousness technique | like first-person narration but, instead of the character telling the story, the author places the reader inside the main character's head and makes the reader privy to all of the character's thoughts as they scroll through her consciousness | 92 | |
| 4240677062 | prelude | an introductory poem to a longer work of verse | 93 | |
| 4240677063 | protagonist | the main character of a novel or play | 94 | |
| 4240677064 | pun | the usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings | 95 | |
| 4240677065 | refrain | a line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem | 96 | |
| 4240677066 | requiem | a song of prayer for the dead | 97 | |
| 4240677067 | rhetorical question | a question that suggests an answer | 98 | |
| 4240677068 | satire | exposes common character flaws to the cold light of humor usually attempts to improve things by pointing our people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behavior will become less common | 99 | |
| 4240677069 | soliloquy | a speech spoken by a character alone on stage meant to convey the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thoughts the actor does not acknowledge the audience's presence | 100 | |
| 4240677070 | stanza | a group of lines in verse, roughly analogous in function to the paragraph in prose | 101 | |
| 4240677071 | suspension of disbelief | the demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with imagination the acceptance on an audience's or reader's part of the incidents of plot in a play or story | 102 | |
| 4240677072 | symbolism | a device in literature where an object represents an idea | 103 | |
| 4240677073 | theme | the main idea of the overall work; the central idea the topic of discourse or discussion | 104 | |
| 4240677074 | thesis | the main position of an argument the central contention that will be supported | 105 | |
| 4240677075 | tragic flaw | in a tragedy, this is the weakness of character in an otherwise good (or even great) individual that ultimately leads to his demise | 106 | |
| 4240677076 | travesty | a grotesque parody | 107 | |
| 4240677077 | utopia | an idealized place imaginary communities in which people are able to live in happiness, prosperity, and peace | 108 | |
| 4240677078 | ambiguity | a vagueness of meaning; a conscious lack of clarity meant to evoke multiple meanings and interpretation. | 109 | |
| 4240677079 | antithesis | a rhetorical opposition or contrast of ideas by means of grammatical arrangement of words, clauses or sentences | 110 | |
| 4240677080 | archetype | a recurring pattern of situation, character or symbol existing universally and instinctively | 111 | |
| 4240677081 | Bildungsroman | German word for a novel structured as a series of events that take place as a protagonist grows from youth to adulthood; coming of age story | 112 | |
| 4240677082 | blank verse | poetry written in iambic pentameter; it is blank because the lines do not generally rhyme | 113 | |
| 4240677083 | caesura | a pause somewhere in the middle of a line, often (but not always) marked by punctuation | 114 | |
| 4240677084 | end-stopped | a term that describes a line of poetry that ends with a natural pause often indicated by a punctuation mark | 115 | |
| 4240677085 | euphony | pleasing, harmonious sounds like "s" and "r" | 116 | |
| 4240677086 | heroic couplet | two rhymed lines written in iambic pentameter | 117 | |
| 4240677087 | idyll | a lyric poem or passage that describes a kind of ideal life or place | 118 | |
| 4240677088 | litotes | a form of understatement in which the negative of the contrary is used to achieve emphasis Ex: He is not a bad dancer. | 119 | |
| 4240677089 | anaphora | a repeating sequence of words at the beginning of neighboring clauses or phrases or sentences | 120 | |
| 4240677090 | epistrophe | a repeating sequence of words at the end of neighboring clauses, phrases or sentences |  | 121 |
| 4240677091 | asyndeton | a sentence construction that omits conjunctions between words, phrases or clauses | 122 | |
| 4240677092 | chiasmus | rhetorical device in which two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures in order to produce an artistic effect; abba |  | 123 |
| 4240677093 | motif | a phrase, idea, event or image that through repetition serves to unify or convey a theme in a literary work | 124 | |
| 4240677094 | non sequitur | a statement or idea that does NOT follow logically from the one before |  | 125 |
| 4240677095 | ode | a lyric poem marked by serious, respectful, exalted feelings toward a subject | 126 | |
| 4240677096 | pentameter | a verse with five poetic feet per line; 10 syllables | 127 | |
| 4240677097 | quatrain | a four line poem or four line unit of a longer poem | 128 | |
| 4240677098 | sonnet | verse consisting of fourteen lines and a prescribed rhyme scheme; English/Shakespearean or Italian/Petrarchan | 129 | |
| 4240677099 | synecdoche | figure of speech in which a part signifies the whole or the whole signifies a part | 130 | |
| 4240677100 | villanelle | poetic form calculate to appear simple and spontaneous but consisting of nineteen lines and a prescribed pattern of rhyme | 131 | |
| 4240677101 | polysyndeton | a sentence construction that uses multiple conjunctions in close succession | 132 |
