The Glossary of Literary Terms for the AP English Literature and Composition Test
Terms : Hide Images
| 2127895835 | Abstract | Complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, seldom uses examples to support its points. | 0 | |
| 2127895836 | Academic | Dry and rhetorical writing; sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis. | 1 | |
| 2127895837 | Accent | In poetry, the stressed portion of a word. | 2 | |
| 2127895838 | Aesthetic | Appealing to the senses; a coherent sense of taste. | 3 | |
| 2127895839 | Allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself. | 4 | |
| 2127895840 | Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds. | 5 | |
| 2127895841 | Allusion | A reference to another work or famous figure. | 6 | |
| 2127895842 | Anachronism | "Misplaced in time." An aspect of a story that doesn't belong in its supposed time setting. | 7 | |
| 2127895843 | Analogy | A comparison, usually involving two or more symbolic parts, employed to clarify an action or a relationship. | 8 | |
| 2127895844 | Anecdote | A Short Narrative | 9 | |
| 2127895845 | Antecedent | The word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to. | 10 | |
| 2127895846 | Anthropomorphism | When inanimate objects are given human characteristics. Often confused with personification. | 11 | |
| 2127895847 | Anticlimax | Occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect. | 12 | |
| 2127895848 | Antihero | A protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities. | 13 | |
| 2127895849 | Aphorism | A short and usually witty saying. | 14 | |
| 2127895850 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman. | 15 | |
| 2127895851 | Archaism | The use of deliberately old-fashioned language. | 16 | |
| 2127895852 | 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. | 17 | |
| 2127895853 | Aspect | A trait or characteristic | 18 | |
| 2127895854 | Assonance | The repeated use of vowel sounds: "Old king Cole was a merry old soul." | 19 | |
| 2127895855 | Atmosphere | The emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene | 20 | |
| 2127895856 | Ballad | A long, narrative poem, usually in meter and rhyme. Typically has a naive folksy quality. | 21 | |
| 2127895857 | Bathos | Writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries too hard to be a tear jerker. | 22 | |
| 2127895858 | Pathos | Writing evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy. | 23 | |
| 2127895859 | Black humor | The use of disturbing themes in comedy. | 24 | |
| 2127895860 | Bombast | Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language. | 25 | |
| 2127895861 | Burlesque | Broad parody, one that takes a style or form and exaggerates it into ridiculousness. | 26 | |
| 2127895862 | Cacophony | In poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds. | 27 | |
| 2127895863 | Cadence | The beat or rhythm or poetry in a general sense. | 28 | |
| 2127895864 | Canto | The name for a section division in a long work of poetry. | 29 | |
| 2127895865 | Caricature | A portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality. | 30 | |
| 2127895866 | Catharsis | Drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy. Refers to the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences during a play | 31 | |
| 2127895867 | Chorus | In Greek drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it. | 32 | |
| 2127895868 | Classic | Typical, or an accepted masterpiece. | 33 | |
| 2127895869 | Coinage (neologism) | A new word, usually one invented on the spot. | 34 | |
| 2127895870 | Colloquialism | A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English. | 35 | |
| 2127895871 | 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 | 36 | |
| 2127895872 | Conceit (Controlling Image) | A startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon several lines. | 37 | |
| 2127895873 | Denotation | A word's literal meaning. | 38 | |
| 2127895874 | Connotation | Everything other than the literal meaning that a word suggests or implies. | 39 | |
| 2127895875 | Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings) | 40 | |
| 2127895876 | Couplet | A pair of lines that end in rhyme | 41 | |
| 2127895877 | Decorum | A character's speech must be styled according to her social station, and in accordance to the situation. | 42 | |
| 2127895878 | Diction | The words an author chooses to use. | 43 | |
| 2127895879 | Syntax | The ordering and structuring of words. | 44 | |
| 2127895880 | Dirge | A song for the dead. Its tone is typically slow, heavy, depressed, and melancholy | 45 | |
| 2127895881 | Dissonance | Refers to the grating of incompatible sounds. | 46 | |
| 2127895882 | Doggerel | Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme, like limericks. | 47 | |
| 2127895883 | Dramatic Irony | When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not | 48 | |
| 2127895884 | Dramatic Monologue | When a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience. | 49 | |
| 2127895885 | Elegy | A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner. | 50 | |
| 2127895886 | Elements | Basic techniques of each genre of literature | 51 | |
| 2127895887 | Enjambment | The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause. | 52 | |
| 2127895888 | Epic | A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter. | 53 | |
| 2127895889 | Epitaph | Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place. | 54 | |
| 2127895890 | Euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. | 55 | |
| 2127895891 | Euphony | When sounds blend harmoniously. | 56 | |
| 2127895892 | Explicit | To say or write something directly and clearly. | 57 | |
| 2127895893 | Farce | Extremely broad humor; in earlier times, a funny play or a comedy. | 58 | |
| 2127895894 | Feminine rhyme | Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Properly, the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed. | 59 | |
| 2127895895 | Foil | A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast. | 60 | |
| 2127895896 | Foot | The basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by a combination of two or three syllables, either stressed or unstressed. | 61 | |
| 2127895897 | Foreshadowing | An event of statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later. | 62 | |
| 2127895898 | Free verse | poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern | 63 | |
| 2127895899 | Genre | A sub-category of literature. | 64 | |
| 2127895900 | Gothic | A sensibility that includes such features as dark, gloomy castles and weird screams from the attic each night. | 65 | |
| 2127895901 | Hubris | The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall | 66 | |
| 2127895902 | Hyperbole | Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement. | 67 | |
| 2127895903 | Implicit | To say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly. | 68 | |
| 2127895904 | In media res | Latin for "in the midst of things," i.e. beginning an epic poem in the middle of the action. | 69 | |
| 2127895905 | Interior Monologue | Refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; tends to be coherent. | 70 | |
| 2127895906 | Inversion | Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase. | 71 | |
| 2127895907 | 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. | 72 | |
| 2127895908 | Lament | A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss. | 73 | |
| 2127895909 | Lampoon | A satire. | 74 | |
| 2127895910 | Loose sentence | A sentence that is complete before its end: Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh. | 75 | |
| 2127895911 | 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. | 76 | |
| 2127895912 | Lyric | A type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world. | 77 | |
| 2127895913 | Masculine rhyme | A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (regular old rhyme) | 78 | |
| 2127895914 | Meaning | What makes sense, what's important. | 79 | |
| 2127895915 | 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. | 80 | |
| 2127895916 | Metaphor | A comparison or analogy that states one thing IS another. | 81 | |
| 2127895917 | Simile | A comparison or analogy that typically uses like or as. | 82 | |
| 2127895918 | Metonymy | A word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with. | 83 | |
| 2127895919 | Nemesis | The protagonist's arch enemy or supreme and persistent difficulty. | 84 | |
| 2127895920 | Objectivity | Treatment of subject matter in an impersonal manner or from an outside view. | 85 | |
| 2127895921 | Subjectivity | A treatment of subject matter that uses the interior or personal view of a single observer and is typically colored with that observer's emotional responses. | 86 | |
| 2127895922 | Onomatopoeia | Words that sound like what they mean | 87 | |
| 2127895923 | Opposition | A pairing of images whereby each becomes more striking and informative because it's placed in contrast to the other one. | 88 | |
| 2127895924 | Oxymoron | A phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction. | 89 | |
| 2127895925 | Parable | A story that instructs. | 90 | |
| 2127895926 | Paradox | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. | 91 | |
| 2127895927 | Parallelism | Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect. | 92 | |
| 2127895928 | Paraphrase | To restate phrases and sentences in your own words. | 93 | |
| 2127895929 | Parenthetical phrase | A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail. | 94 | |
| 2127895930 | Parody | The work that results when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness. | 95 | |
| 2127895931 | Pastoral | A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds. | 96 | |
| 2127895932 | Persona | The narrator in a non first-person novel. | 97 | |
| 2127895933 | Personification | When an inanimate object takes on human shape. | 98 | |
| 2127895934 | Plaint | A poem or speech expressing sorrow. | 99 | |
| 2127895935 | Point of View | The perspective from which the action of a novel is presented. | 100 | |
| 2127895936 | Omniscient | A third person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action going on. | 101 | |
| 2127895937 | 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. | 102 | |
| 2127895938 | 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. | 103 | |
| 2127895939 | First person | A narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale from his or her point of view. | 104 | |
| 2127895940 | Stream of Consciousness | 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. | 105 | |
| 2127895941 | Prelude | An introductory poem to a longer work of verse | 106 | |
| 2127895942 | Protagonist | The main character of a novel or play | 107 | |
| 2127895943 | Pun | The usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings | 108 | |
| 2127895944 | Refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem. | 109 | |
| 2127895945 | Requiem | A song of prayer for the dead. | 110 | |
| 2127895946 | Rhapsody | An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise. | 111 | |
| 2127895947 | Rhetorical question | A question that suggests an answer. | 112 | |
| 2127895948 | Satire | Attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behavior will become less common. | 113 | |
| 2127895949 | 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. | 114 | |
| 2127895950 | Stanza | A group of lines roughly analogous in function in verse to the paragraphs function in prose. | 115 | |
| 2127895951 | Stock characters | Standard or cliched character types. | 116 | |
| 2127895952 | Subjunctive Mood | A grammatical situation involving the words "if" and "were," setting up a hypothetical situation. | 117 | |
| 2127895953 | Suggest | To imply, infer, indicate. | 118 | |
| 2127895954 | Summary | A simple retelling of what you've just read. | 119 | |
| 2127895955 | Suspension of disbelief | The demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination. | 120 | |
| 2127895956 | Symbolism | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. | 121 | |
| 2127895957 | Technique | The methods and tools of the author. | 122 | |
| 2127895958 | Theme | The main idea of the overall work; the central idea. | 123 | |
| 2127895959 | Thesis | The main position of an argument. The central contention that will be supported. | 124 | |
| 2127895960 | Tragic flaw | In a tragedy, this is the weakness of a character in an otherwise good (or even great) individual that ultimately leads to his demise. | 125 | |
| 2127895961 | Travesty | A grotesque parody | 126 | |
| 2127895962 | Truism | A way-too obvious truth | 127 | |
| 2127895963 | Unreliable narrator | When the first person narrator is crazy, a liar, very young, or for some reason not entirely credible | 128 | |
| 2127895964 | Utopia | An idealized place. Imaginary communities in which people are able to live in happiness, prosperity, and peace. | 129 | |
| 2127895965 | 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. | 130 | |
| 2127895966 | Ode | A poem in praise of something divine or noble | 131 | |
| 2127895967 | Iamb | A poetic foot -- light, heavy | 132 | |
| 2127895968 | Trochee | A poetic foot -- heavy, light | 133 | |
| 2127895969 | Spondee | A poetic foot -- heavy, heavy | 134 | |
| 2127895970 | Pyrrhie | A poetic foot -- light, light | 135 | |
| 2127895971 | Anapest | A poetic foot -- light, light, heavy | 136 | |
| 2127895972 | Ambibranch | A poetic foot -- light, heavy, light | 137 | |
| 2127895973 | Dactyl | A poetic foot -- heavy, light, light | 138 | |
| 2127895974 | Imperfect | A poetic foot -- single light or single heavy | 139 | |
| 2127895975 | Pentameter | A poetic line with five feet. | 140 | |
| 2127895976 | Tetrameter | A poetic line with four feet | 141 | |
| 2127895977 | Trimeter | A poetic line with three feet | 142 | |
| 2127895978 | Blank Verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter. | 143 | |
| 2127896283 | AP Literature Terms | 144 |
