The Glossary of Literary Terms for the AP English Literature and Composition Test
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| 6336954390 | Accent | In poetry, the stressed portion of a word. | 0 | |
| 6336954392 | Allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself; a second meaning beneath the surface one | 1 | |
| 6336954393 | Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds at the beginning of STRESSED syllables | 2 | |
| 6336954394 | Allusion | A reference to another work or famous figure. | 3 | |
| 6336954396 | Anadiplosis | Repetition at the start of a line, taking works from the end of the previous line | 4 | |
| 6336954397 | Anaphora | Repetition of an opening word or phrase in a series of lines | 5 | |
| 6336954398 | Antagonist | the character pitted against the protagonist of a work | 6 | |
| 6336954399 | Antithesis | A rhetorical figure in which two ideas are directly opposed. The opposing ideas must be presented in a grammatically parallel way, thus creating a perfect rhetorical balance. | 7 | |
| 6336954402 | Aphorism | A concise, pointed, epigrammatic statement that reveals a truth or principle: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" | 8 | |
| 6336954403 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could not reply. | 9 | |
| 6336954404 | Approximate Rhyme (half-rhyme) | A form of rhyme in which words contain similar sounds, but do not rhyme perfectly. | 10 | |
| 6340147149 | Archetype | The original model from which something is developed or made. It is characters, settings, and plots that are universally observed and acknowledged by people in general | 11 | |
| 6336954405 | Aside | A convention in drama whereby a character onstage addresses the audience to reveal some inner thought or feeling that is presumed inaudible to any other characters who might be within earshot | 12 | |
| 6336954407 | Assonance | The repeated use of similar or identical or vowel sounds, usually in STRESSED syllables, followed by different consonant sounds in proximate words: "Old king Cole was a merry old soul." | 13 | |
| 6336954408 | Atmosphere/Mood | The general feeling created in the reader or by the audience by a work at a given point; used interchangeably | 14 | |
| 6340169790 | Aubade | A poem about dawn; a morning love song: a poem about the parting of lovers at dawn. | 15 | |
| 6336954409 | Ballad | A fairly short narrative poem in a songlike stanza form. Recounts a story, usually some dramatic episode, that has been composed to be sung. | 16 | |
| 6336954410 | Blank Verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter | 17 | |
| 6336954412 | Boxed narrative/frame story | A story that contains another story or stories. Usually, the frame story explains why the interior story or stories are being told. | 18 | |
| 6336954415 | Cacophony | a mixture of harsh, discordant, unpleasant sounds - both in poetry and prose. | 19 | |
| 6336954416 | Caesura | A speech pause occurring within a line- sometimes called a grammatical or rhetorical pause. | 20 | |
| 6336954419 | Catharsis | Drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy. Refers to the emotional effect a tragic drama has on an audience member | 21 | |
| 6336954422 | Cliché | An expression used so often that it has become hackneyed and loses its impact. | 22 | |
| 6336954423 | Colloquialism | A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English. | 23 | |
| 6336954425 | Conceit | An elaborate and surprising effective comparison between two apparently highly dissimilar things. May involve original images or familiar things used in an unusual way. | 24 | |
| 6336954427 | Connotation | The association evoked by a word beyond its literal meaning. Usually reflects broad cultural associations. | 25 | |
| 6336954428 | Consonance | The repetition of final consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds in proximate words. Can happen within a word as long as the stressed syllable is compared. | 26 | |
| 6336954430 | Couplet | Two successive lines of rhyming verse, often of the same meter and with a focus on the same theme. | 27 | |
| 6336954426 | Denotation | A word's literal meaning. | 28 | |
| 6342733641 | Dialect | a particular form of language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group | 29 | |
| 6336954431 | Diction | an author's word choice | 30 | |
| 6336954433 | Dirge | A song for the dead. Its tone is typically slow, heavy, depressed, and melancholy; expresses grief or mourning for a death | 31 | |
| 6342735286 | Dimeter | two feet in one line; for instance two feet of iamb or spondee | 32 | |
| 6342734329 | Didactic | intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive | 33 | |
| 6336954438 | Elegy | A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner; laments and praises the dead | 34 | |
| 6336954439 | Ellipsis | omission of a word or words necessary for complete grammatical construction, but understood in the context. shown by the "dot, dot, dot." | 35 | |
| 6342740818 | End rhyme | when words at the end of poetry lines rhyme | 36 | |
| 6342742058 | English/Shakespearean Sonnet | A sonnet rhyming ababcdcdefefgg | 37 | |
| 6336954440 | Enjambment | the running on of a line of poetry from one line to the next, continuing an idea, without any punctuation | 38 | |
| 6342743438 | Epanalepsis | Opening and closing of a sentence with the same word or phrase for surprise and emphasis; only applies to prose | 39 | |
| 6336954441 | Epic | A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter, such as the adventures of a hero of mythic proportions | 40 | |
| 6336954442 | Epigraph | a short poem with a brief, pointedly humorous ending OR a terse, witty statement in and of itself. always witty and satiric. | 41 | |
| 6336954443 | Euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. | 42 | |
| 6336954444 | Euphony | When sounds blend harmoniously; opposite of cacophony | 43 | |
| 6336954445 | Fable | a short, fictional, non-historical prose or verse; a tale with a specific moral that illustrates a point or lesson | 44 | |
| 6336954447 | Figurative language | language that employs one or more figures of speech to supplement the literal, denotative meanings of words with additional connotations and richness | 45 | |
| 6342751868 | Figure of speech | a literary device involving unusual use of language, often to associate or compare distinct thins | 46 | |
| 6342753188 | Flashback | a scene that interrupts the present action of a narrative work to depict some earlier event- often an event that occurred before the opening scene of the work; a break in chronological order that can occur through reverie | 47 | |
| 6342753929 | Flat character | lack complexity, do not change throughout literature; characterized by one quality | 48 | |
| 6336954448 | Foil | A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast. | 49 | |
| 6342756659 | Folk tale | a short narrative that has been orally transmitted through successive generations within a given community and that typically evolves over time. | 50 | |
| 6336954449 | Foot | the metrical rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by a combination of two or three syllables, either stressed or unstressed. | 51 | |
| 6336954450 | Foreshadowing | the technique of introducing into a narrative material that prepares the reader for future events, actions, or revelations | 52 | |
| 6336954451 | Free verse | non-metrical poetry in which the basic rhythmic unit is the line, and in which pauses, line breaks and formal patterns develop organically from the requirements of the poem | 53 | |
| 6336954452 | Genre | the classification of literary works on the basis of their content, form, or technique. (prose, poem, fiction, drama, lyric, comedy) | 54 | |
| 6336954453 | Gothic | refers to a genre characterized by a general mood of decay, dramatic and violent action, passionate love, and gloomy, bleak, grandiose settings. | 55 | |
| 6336954454 | Hubris | The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall | 56 | |
| 6336954455 | Hyperbole | a figure of speech that uses exaggeration | 57 | |
| 6342769804 | Imagery | a central component of all imaginative literature, often the chief element of poetry. provides readers with a sense of vividness and immediacy. Literal = descriptive, while Figurative = call to mind things that can be perceived by the senses | 58 | |
| 6342771735 | Innocent eye narrator | the character telling the story might be a child or a developmentally disabled person who is naive or has no 'filter' and tells the story as he/she sees it without any 'coloring' of the details | 59 | |
| 6336954459 | Internal rhyme | rhyme that occurs within a line | 60 | |
| 6336954460 | Irony | A statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean, often for humorous or emphatic effect | 61 | |
| 6342774929 | Verbal Irony | when a person says/writes one thing and means another; uses words to convey a meaning opposite of the literal meaning | 62 | |
| 6342775682 | Dramatic Irony | irony understood by the audience but not the characters in the play | 63 | |
| 6342779195 | Situational Irony | a situation in which actions have an effect that is opposite from what was intended | 64 | |
| 6336954461 | Juxtaposition | an act or instance of placing close together or side by side for comparison or contrast | 65 | |
| 6336954462 | Legend | details the adventures of a human cultural hero | 66 | |
| 6336954463 | Linguistics | the scientific study of language and its structure | 67 | |
| 6336954464 | Litotes | an understatement which is expressed with a negative | 68 | |
| 6336954465 | Magical Realism | sometimes referred to as Marvelous Realism; portrays magical or unreal elements as a natural part in an otherwise realistic or mundane environment | 69 | |
| 6336954466 | Metaphor | a figure of speech that identifies something as being the same as some unrelated thing for rhetorical effect, thus highlighting similarities between the two | 70 | |
| 6336954467 | Meter | the basic rhythmic structure of a verse | 71 | |
| 6336954468 | Metonymy | a figure of speech in which one thing that is represented by another that is commonly and often physically associated with it; ex: calling a monarch the "crown" | 72 | |
| 6336954469 | Motif | a unifying element in an artistic work, especially any recurrent image, symbol, theme or character type. | 73 | |
| 6342799254 | Monologue | an extended narrative delivered uninterrupted and exclusively by one person, although it may be heard or witnessed by others | 74 | |
| 6342800065 | Myth | a traditional anonymous story, originally religious in nature, told by a particular cultural group in order to explain a natural or cosmic phenomenon | 75 | |
| 6336954472 | Naturalism | a literary movement from the 19th/20th century that produced a type of 'realistic' fiction; assumes humans have little control over what happens. instead, things HAPPEN to people | 76 | |
| 6342831608 | Octave | an 8-line stanza or the 1st 8 lines of an Italian Sonnet | 77 | |
| 6342832027 | Ode | a relatively long, serious and meditative lyric poem that treats a noble subject in a dignified and calm manner | 78 | |
| 6342833941 | Oedipus complex | a psychoanalytic term used by Freud to describe desire by a young boy for his mother and the rivalry and hostility the child correspondingly feels toward the father | 79 | |
| 6342834950 | Omniscient narrator | a third person point of view in fictional writing that permits the author to present external details and info; offers insight into inner thoughts and emotions of characters | 80 | |
| 6336954475 | Onomatopoeia | Words that sound like what they mean | 81 | |
| 6336954477 | Oxymoron | a compact paradox in which two successive words seemingly contradict each other | 82 | |
| 6336954478 | Palindrome | writing a word, sentence or poetic line, where the letters are exactly the same whether read forward or backward | 83 | |
| 6336954479 | Paradox | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. | 84 | |
| 6336954480 | Pathetic Fallacy | the attribution of human emotions to inanimate nature | 85 | |
| 6336954481 | Pedantic | state of mind that is about caring a lot about formalities, often more than necessary | 86 | |
| 6336954486 | Personification | a figure of speech that bestows human characteristics upon anything nonhuman | 87 | |
| 6336954487 | Petrarchan/Italian sonnet | a fourteen line sonnet consisting of two parts- the octave with a rhyme scheme of abbaabba and the sestet following the rhyme scheme cdecde or cdcdcd | 88 | |
| 6336954488 | Point of View | The perspective from which the action of a novel is presented. | 89 | |
| 6336954495 | Protagonist | The main character of a novel or play | 90 | |
| 6336954497 | Quatrain | a stanza containing four lines | 91 | |
| 6336954498 | Realism | broadly speaking, a term that can be applied to the accurate depiction in any literary work of everyday life of a place or period | 92 | |
| 6336954499 | Rhetoric | art of persuasion through speaking and writing | 93 | |
| 6336954500 | Rhetorical question | a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked in order to make a point rather than elicit an answer | 94 | |
| 6345240206 | Perfect Rhyme | the repetition of identical vowel sounds in the stressed syllable of two or more words, as well as of all subsequent sounds after this vowel sound | 95 | |
| 6345243529 | Half Rhyme | contain similar sounds, but do not rhyme exactly; often achieved through consonance and assonance | 96 | |
| 6345250130 | eye-rhyme | when words appear to rhyme based on their spelling, but sound completely different when pronounced; no rhyme really exists | 97 | |
| 6345253600 | Rhyme Scheme | the pattern of rhyme in a poem. you can designate the rhyme scheme by using letters a b c | 98 | |
| 6345258412 | Rhythm | from the Greek for "flow"- a term referring to a measured flow of words and signifying the basic beat or pattern in language that is established by stressed and unstressed syllables | 99 | |
| 6345262585 | Romanticism | applies to philosophy, lit, and arts. focuses on subjective experience, innovation, imagination, and the individual. usually with improbable plots, exotic settings, and plenty descriptive writing and imagery. | 100 | |
| 6345268623 | Round Character | have the level of complexity and depth that we associate with real people. fully developed by the author. | 101 | |
| 6345272839 | Sarcasm | intentional derision, generally directed at another person and intended to hurt; a cutting remark. involves obvious, exaggerated verbal irony | 102 | |
| 6336954501 | Satire | a literary genre that uses irony, wit, and sometimes sarcasm to expose humanity's vices and foibles, giving impetus to change or reform through ridicule | 103 | |
| 6345287875 | Scansion | a system for describing conventional poetic rhythms by dividing the lines into feet | 104 | |
| 6345290040 | Semantics | the meaning of words | 105 | |
| 6345291914 | Sestet | a six line stanza, poem, or the last six lines of a sonnet | 106 | |
| 6345293944 | Setting | the combination of place, historical time, and social milieu that provides the general background for the characters and plot of a work | 107 | |
| 6345297063 | Shift | introduces a change in the speaker's understanding of what he is narrating, signaling to the readers that he has reached an insight. mostly used in poetry | 108 | |
| 6345299473 | Simile | a figure of speech that directly compares things through the explicit use of words such as like or as | 109 | |
| 6336954502 | Soliloquy | A speech spoken by a character alone on stage who reveals his inner thoughts, meant to convey the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thoughts. | 110 | |
| 6336954503 | Stanza | a grouped set of lines in a poem usually physically set off from other such clusters by a blank line | 111 | |
| 6336954509 | Stream of Consciousness | a literary technique that approximates the flow or jumble of thoughts and sensory impressions that pass through the mind each instant. works appear choppy or fragmented | 112 | |
| 6345319949 | Stress/Accent | the emphasis placed on a syllable | 113 | |
| 6345321889 | Structure | refers to the arrangement of material in a work, that is the ordering of its component parts or the design devised by the author to convey content and meaning. ex: in a poem, structure encompasses the division of the material into stanzas | 114 | |
| 6345326101 | Synecdoche | a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole | 115 | |
| 6345327457 | Syntax | the arrangement - the ordering, grouping and placement - of words within a sentence. the degree of complexity or fragmentation within the arrangements | 116 | |
| 6345332693 | Tercet | a three-line stanza exhibited in a villanelle as well as in other poetic forms | 117 | |
| 6336954511 | Theme | The main idea of the overall work; the central idea, that is often a moral or lesson. | 118 | |
| 6336954515 | Tone | belongs to the author; the author's attitude toward a particular subject matter | 119 | |
| 6345341638 | Trope | one of two divisions of figures of speech. people use 'trope' and 'figure of speech' interchangeable. it is to turn or twist some word or phrase to make it mean something else. ex: metaphors, personification, and synecdoche are the tropes | 120 | |
| 6336954516 | Unreliable narrator | when a narrator cannot fully comprehend the word around him and gives the reader a skewed look at the action | 121 | |
| 6345355239 | Vernacular | the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particularly country or region | 122 | |
| 6345356341 | Verisimilitude | the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood or probability | 123 | |
| 6345358158 | Verse | metrical language; the opposite of prose | 124 | |
| 6345362333 | Vignette | a short scene that focuses on one moment or gives a snippet of info about a character, idea, or setting. can be part of something bigger. no major plot development, story line, or climax and falling action in a vignette. | 125 | |
| 6345366424 | Villanelle | a nineteen-line fixed form consisting of five tercets rhymed aba, and concluding quatrain rhymed abaa. | 126 | |
| 6336954520 | Iamb | unstressed, stressed | 127 | |
| 6336954526 | Dactyl | stressed, unstressed, unstressed | 128 | |
| 6336954524 | Anapest | unstressed, unstressed, stressed | 129 | |
| 6336954521 | Trochee | stressed, unstressed | 130 | |
| 6336954522 | Spondee | stressed, stressed | 131 | |
| 6336954523 | Pyrrhic | unstressed, unstressed | 132 | |
| 6336954528 | Pentameter | A poetic line with five feet. | 133 | |
| 6336954529 | Tetrameter | A poetic line with four feet | 134 | |
| 6336954530 | Trimeter | A poetic line with three feet | 135 | |
| 6345391547 | Dimeter | two feet per line | 136 |
