The Glossary of Literary Terms for the AP English Literature and Composition Test
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| 4304587551 | Allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself. | 0 | |
| 4304587554 | Anachronism | "Misplaced in time." An aspect of a story that doesn't belong in its supposed time setting. | 1 | |
| 4304587557 | Antecedent | The word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to. | 2 | |
| 4304587558 | Anthropomorphism | When inanimate objects are given human characteristics. Often confused with personification. | 3 | |
| 4304587559 | Anticlimax | Occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect. | 4 | |
| 4304587560 | Antihero | A protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities. | 5 | |
| 4304587561 | Aphorism | A short and usually witty saying. | 6 | |
| 4304587562 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman. | 7 | |
| 4304587563 | Archaism | The use of deliberately old-fashioned language. | 8 | |
| 4304587564 | 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. | 9 | |
| 4304587566 | Assonance | The repeated use of vowel sounds: "Old king Cole was a merry old soul." | 10 | |
| 4304587568 | Ballad | A long, narrative poem, usually in meter and rhyme. Typically has a naive folksy quality. | 11 | |
| 4304587569 | Bathos | Writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries too hard to be a tear jerker. | 12 | |
| 4304587570 | Pathos | Writing evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy. | 13 | |
| 4304587572 | Bombast | Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language. | 14 | |
| 4304587573 | Burlesque | Broad parody, one that takes a style or form and exaggerates it into ridiculousness. | 15 | |
| 4304587574 | Cacophony | In poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds. | 16 | |
| 4304587575 | Cadence | The beat or rhythm or poetry in a general sense. | 17 | |
| 4304587576 | Canto | The name for a section division in a long work of poetry. | 18 | |
| 4304587578 | Catharsis | Drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy. Refers to the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences during a play | 19 | |
| 4304587579 | Chorus | In Greek drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it. | 20 | |
| 4304587581 | Coinage (neologism) | A new word, usually one invented on the spot. | 21 | |
| 4304587582 | Colloquialism | A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English. | 22 | |
| 4304587583 | Complex (Dense) | Suggesting that there is more than one possibility in the meaning of words; subtleties and variations; multiple layers of interpretation; meaning both explicit and implicit | 23 | |
| 4304587584 | Conceit (Controlling Image) | A startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon several lines. | 24 | |
| 4304587585 | Denotation | A word's literal meaning. | 25 | |
| 4304587587 | Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings) | 26 | |
| 4304587588 | Couplet | A pair of lines that end in rhyme | 27 | |
| 4304587589 | Decorum | A character's speech must be styled according to her social station, and in accordance to the situation. | 28 | |
| 4304587590 | Diction | The words an author chooses to use. | 29 | |
| 4304587591 | Syntax | The ordering and structuring of words. | 30 | |
| 4304587592 | Dirge | A song for the dead. Its tone is typically slow, heavy, depressed, and melancholy | 31 | |
| 4304587593 | Dissonance | Refers to the grating of incompatible sounds. | 32 | |
| 4304587594 | Doggerel | Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme, like limericks. | 33 | |
| 4304587595 | Dramatic Irony | When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not | 34 | |
| 4304587596 | Dramatic Monologue | When a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience. | 35 | |
| 4304587597 | Elegy | A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner. | 36 | |
| 4304587598 | Elements | Basic techniques of each genre of literature | 37 | |
| 4304587599 | Enjambment | The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause. | 38 | |
| 4304587600 | Epic | A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter. | 39 | |
| 4304587601 | Epitaph | Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place. | 40 | |
| 4304587602 | Euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. | 41 | |
| 4304587603 | Euphony | When sounds blend harmoniously. | 42 | |
| 4304587605 | Farce | Extremely broad humor; in earlier times, a funny play or a comedy. | 43 | |
| 4304587607 | Foil | A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast. | 44 | |
| 4304587608 | Foot | The basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by a combination of two or three syllables, either stressed or unstressed. | 45 | |
| 4304587610 | Free verse | poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern | 46 | |
| 4304587612 | Gothic | A sensibility that includes such features as dark, gloomy castles and weird screams from the attic each night. | 47 | |
| 4304587613 | Hubris | The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall | 48 | |
| 4304587616 | In media res | Latin for "in the midst of things," i.e. beginning an epic poem in the middle of the action. | 49 | |
| 4304587617 | Interior Monologue | Refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; tends to be coherent. | 50 | |
| 4304587618 | Inversion | Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase. | 51 | |
| 4304587619 | Irony | A statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean; uses an undertow of meaning, sliding against the literal a la Jane Austen. | 52 | |
| 4304587620 | Lament | A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss. | 53 | |
| 4304587621 | Lampoon | A satire. | 54 | |
| 4304587622 | Loose sentence | A sentence that is complete before its end: Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh. | 55 | |
| 4304587623 | Periodic Sentence | A sentence that is not grammatically complete until it has reached it s final phrase: Despite Barbara's irritation at Jack, she loved him. | 56 | |
| 4304587624 | Lyric | A type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world. | 57 | |
| 4304587625 | Masculine rhyme | A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (regular old rhyme) | 58 | |
| 4304587627 | 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. | 59 | |
| 4304587630 | Metonymy | A word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with. | 60 | |
| 4304587631 | Nemesis | The protagonist's arch enemy or supreme and persistent difficulty. | 61 | |
| 4304587632 | Objectivity | Treatment of subject matter in an impersonal manner or from an outside view. | 62 | |
| 4304587635 | Opposition | A pairing of images whereby each becomes more striking and informative because it's placed in contrast to the other one. | 63 | |
| 4304587636 | Oxymoron | A phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction. | 64 | |
| 4304587637 | Parable | A story that instructs. | 65 | |
| 4304587638 | Paradox | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. | 66 | |
| 4304587639 | Parallelism | Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect. | 67 | |
| 4304587641 | Parenthetical phrase | A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail. | 68 | |
| 4304587643 | Pastoral | A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds. | 69 | |
| 4304587644 | Persona | The narrator in a non first-person novel. | 70 | |
| 4304587646 | Plaint | A poem or speech expressing sorrow. | 71 | |
| 4304587647 | Point of View | The perspective from which the action of a novel is presented. | 72 | |
| 4304587648 | Omniscient | A third person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action going on. | 73 | |
| 4304587649 | Limited Omniscient | A Third person narrator who generally reports only what one character sees, and who only reports the thoughts of that one privileged character. | 74 | |
| 4304587650 | Objective | A thrid 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 it. | 75 | |
| 4304587654 | Protagonist | The main character of a novel or play | 76 | |
| 4304587656 | Refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem. | 77 | |
| 4304587657 | Requiem | A song of prayer for the dead. | 78 | |
| 4304587658 | Rhapsody | An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise. | 79 | |
| 4304587659 | Rhetorical question | A question that suggests an answer. | 80 | |
| 4304587661 | 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. | 81 | |
| 4304587663 | Stock characters | Standard or cliched character types. | 82 | |
| 4304587664 | Subjunctive Mood | A grammatical situation involving the words "if" and "were," setting up a hypothetical situation. | 83 | |
| 4304587667 | Suspension of disbelief | The demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination. | 84 | |
| 4304587669 | Technique | The methods and tools of the author. | 85 | |
| 4304587673 | Travesty | A grotesque parody | 86 | |
| 4304587674 | Truism | A way-too obvious truth | 87 | |
| 4304587677 | Zeugma | The use of a word to modify two or more words, but used for different meanings. He closed the door and his heart on his lost love. | 88 | |
| 4304587678 | Ode | A poem in praise of something divine or noble | 89 | |
| 4304587679 | Iamb | A poetic foot -- light, heavy | 90 | |
| 4304587680 | Trochee | A poetic foot -- heavy, light | 91 | |
| 4304587681 | Spondee | A poetic foot -- heavy, heavy | 92 | |
| 4304587682 | Pyrrhie | A poetic foot -- light, light | 93 | |
| 4304587683 | Anapest | A poetic foot -- light, light, heavy | 94 | |
| 4304587684 | Ambibranch | A poetic foot -- light, heavy, light | 95 | |
| 4304587685 | Dactyl | A poetic foot -- heavy, light, light | 96 | |
| 4304587686 | Imperfect | A poetic foot -- single light or single heavy | 97 | |
| 4304587687 | Pentameter | A poetic line with five feet. | 98 | |
| 4304587688 | Tetrameter | A poetic line with four feet | 99 | |
| 4304587689 | Trimeter | A poetic line with three feet | 100 | |
| 4304587690 | Blank Verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter. | 101 |
