Key terms in AP English Literature and Composition from the Kaplan study guide.
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| 4299161430 | allegory | a prose or poetic narrative in which the characters, behavior, or setting demonstrate multiple levels of meaning or significance | 0 | |
| 4299161431 | alliteration | the sequential repetition of a similar initial sound | 1 | |
| 4299161432 | allusion | a reference to a literary or historical event, person, or place | 2 | |
| 4299161438 | apostrophe | an address or invocation to something that is inanimate | 3 | |
| 4299161439 | archetypes | recurrent designs, patterns of action, character types, themes, or images which are identifiable in a wide range of literature | 4 | |
| 4299161440 | assonance | a repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds | 5 | |
| 4299161442 | attitude | the sense expressed by the tone of voice and/or mood of a piece of writing | 6 | |
| 4299161443 | ballad | a narrative poem that is, or originally was, meant to be sung | 7 | |
| 4299161444 | ballad stanza | a common stanza form, consisting of a quatrain (stanza of four lines) that alternates four-beat (iambic tetrameter) and three-beat (iambic trimeter) lines: "In SCARlet TOWN where I was BORN/ there LIVED a FAIR maid DWELLin'" | 8 | |
| 4299161445 | blank verse | the verse form that most resembles common speech, consisting of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter | 9 | |
| 4299161446 | caesura | a pause in a line of verse, indicated by natural speech patterns rather than specific metrical patterns | 10 | |
| 4299161449 | colloquial | ordinary language, the vernacular | 11 | |
| 4299161451 | connotation | what is suggested by a word, apart from what it implicitly describes | 12 | |
| 4299161452 | consonance | the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowels: "pitter-patter, pish-posh" | 13 | |
| 4299161453 | couplet | two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter that together present a single idea or connections: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see/So long lives this and this gives life to thee." | 14 | |
| 4299161454 | dactylic | a metrical foot in poetry consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable: "Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight." | 15 | |
| 4299161457 | diction | the specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone | 16 | |
| 4299161459 | elegy | a poetic lament upon the death of a particular person, usually ending in consolation | 17 | |
| 4299161460 | enjambment | the continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next | 18 | |
| 4299161461 | epic | a poem that celebrates, in a continuous narrative, the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines, often concerned with the founding of a nation or developing of a culture | 19 | |
| 4299161463 | extended metaphor | a detailed or complex metaphor that extends over a long section of a work, also known as a conceit | 20 | |
| 4299161465 | falling action | that part of plot structure in which the complications of the rising action are untangled; also known as the denouement | 21 | |
| 4299161468 | foreshadowing | to hint at or to present an indication of the future beforehand | 22 | |
| 4299161470 | free verse | poetry that is characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and non-rhyming lines | 23 | |
| 4299161473 | iambic | a metrical foot in poetry that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate." | 24 | |
| 4299161475 | imagery | any sensory detail or invocation in a work; also, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, call to mind an idea, or describe and object | 25 | |
| 4299161478 | irony | a situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant | 26 | |
| 4299161486 | metaphor | one thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them | 27 | |
| 4299161494 | ode | a lyric poem that is somewhat serious in subject and treatment, is elevated in style, and sometimes uses elaborate stanza structure, which is often patterned in sets of three; often written to praise or exalt a person, quality, characteristic, or object | 28 | |
| 4299161500 | paradox | a statement that seems contradictory but may actually be true: "fight for peace" | 29 | |
| 4299161501 | parallel structure | the use of similar forms in writing for nouns, verbs, phrases, or thoughts: "Jane likes reading, writing, and skiing," NOT "Martha takes notes quickly, thoroughly, and in a detailed manner." | 30 | |
| 4299161502 | parody | a work that imitates another work for comic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original | 31 | |
| 4299161503 | pastoral | a work that describes the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live a timeless, painless life in a world full of beauty, music, and love; also called an eclogue, a bucolic, or and idyll | 32 | |
| 4299161505 | personification | treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by endowing it with human qualities | 33 | |
| 4299161506 | persona | the voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share the values of the actual author (e.g. adult Scout in 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' Watson in 'Sherlock Holmes') | 34 | |
| 4299161510 | quatrain | a poetic stanza of four lines | 35 | |
| 4299161514 | rhyme | the repetition of the same or similar sounds, most often at the ends of lines | 36 | |
| 4299161516 | rising action | the development of action in a work, usually at the beginning | 37 | |
| 4299161517 | sarcasm | a form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually harshly or bitterly critical | 38 | |
| 4299161518 | satire | a literary work that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure | 39 | |
| 4299161520 | setting | the time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play | 40 | |
| 4299161524 | soliloquy | a monologue in which the character in a play is alone and speaking only to himself or herself | 41 | |
| 4299161525 | speaker | the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem | 42 | |
| 4299161534 | stereotype | a characterization based on conscious or unconscious assumptions that some aspect, such as gender, age, ethnic or national identity, religion, occupation, marital status, and so on, are predictable accompanied by certain character traits, action, and even values | 43 | |
| 4299161537 | structure | the organization or arrangement of the various elements in a work | 44 | |
| 4299161540 | synecdoche | when a part is used to signify a whole: "All hands on deck," "He stole five hundred head of longhorns." | 45 | |
| 4299161541 | syntax | the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences | 46 | |
| 4299161545 | tragedy | a drama in which a character (usually good and noble and of high rank) is brought to a disastrous end in his or her confrontation with a superior force due to a fatal flaw in his or her character | 47 | |
| 4299161547 | turning point | the third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing; also called the climax | 48 | |
| 4299161548 | villanelle | a verse form consisting of 19 lines divided into six stanzas - five tercets and one quatrain; the first and third lines of the first tercet rhyme, and this rhyme is repeated through each of the next four tercets and in the last two lines of the concluding quatrain | 49 |
