The Glossary of Literary Terms for the AP English Literature and Composition Test
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| 14200631916 | Abstract | Complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, seldom uses examples to support its points. | 0 | |
| 14200631917 | Academic | Dry and rhetorical writing; sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis. | 1 | |
| 14200631918 | Accent | In poetry, the stressed portion of a word. | 2 | |
| 14200631919 | Aesthetic | Appealing to the senses; a coherent sense of taste. | 3 | |
| 14200631920 | Allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself. | 4 | |
| 14200631921 | Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds. | 5 | |
| 14200631922 | Allusion | A reference to another work or famous figure. | 6 | |
| 14200631923 | Anachronism | "Misplaced in time." An aspect of a story that doesn't belong in its supposed time setting. | 7 | |
| 14200631924 | Analogy | A comparison, usually involving two or more symbolic parts, employed to clarify an action or a relationship. | 8 | |
| 14200631925 | Anecdote | A Short Narrative | 9 | |
| 14200631926 | Anthropomorphism | When inanimate objects are given human characteristics. Often confused with personification. | 10 | |
| 14200631927 | Anticlimax | Occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect. | 11 | |
| 14200631928 | Antihero | A protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities. | 12 | |
| 14200631929 | Aphorism | A short and usually witty saying. | 13 | |
| 14200631930 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman. | 14 | |
| 14200631931 | Archaism | The use of deliberately old-fashioned language. | 15 | |
| 14200631932 | 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. | 16 | |
| 14200631933 | Aspect | A trait or characteristic | 17 | |
| 14200631934 | Assonance | The repeated use of vowel sounds: "Old king Cole was a merry old soul." | 18 | |
| 14200631935 | Atmosphere | The emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene | 19 | |
| 14200631936 | Ballad | A long, narrative poem, usually in meter and rhyme. Typically has a naive folksy quality. | 20 | |
| 14200631937 | Bathos | Writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries too hard to be a tear jerker. | 21 | |
| 14200631938 | Pathos | Writing evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy. | 22 | |
| 14200631939 | Black humor | The use of disturbing themes in comedy. | 23 | |
| 14200631940 | Bombast | Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language. | 24 | |
| 14200631941 | Burlesque | Broad parody, one that takes a style or form and exaggerates it into ridiculousness. | 25 | |
| 14200631942 | Cacophony | In poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds. | 26 | |
| 14200631943 | Cadence | The beat or rhythm or poetry in a general sense. | 27 | |
| 14200631944 | Canto | The name for a section division in a long work of poetry. | 28 | |
| 14200631945 | Caricature | A portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality. | 29 | |
| 14200631946 | Catharsis | Drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy. Refers to the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences during a play | 30 | |
| 14200631947 | Chorus | In Greek drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it. | 31 | |
| 14200631948 | Classic | Typical, or an accepted masterpiece. | 32 | |
| 14200631949 | Coinage (neologism) | A new word, usually one invented on the spot. | 33 | |
| 14200631950 | Colloquialism | A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English. | 34 | |
| 14200631951 | Conceit (Controlling Image) | A startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon several lines. | 35 | |
| 14200631952 | Denotation | A word's literal meaning. | 36 | |
| 14200631953 | Connotation | Everything other than the literal meaning that a word suggests or implies. | 37 | |
| 14200631954 | Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings) | 38 | |
| 14200631955 | Couplet | A pair of lines that end in rhyme | 39 | |
| 14200631956 | Decorum | A character's speech must be styled according to her social station, and in accordance to the situation. | 40 | |
| 14200631957 | Diction | The words an author chooses to use. | 41 | |
| 14200631958 | Syntax | The ordering and structuring of words. | 42 | |
| 14200631959 | Dirge | A song for the dead. Its tone is typically slow, heavy, depressed, and melancholy | 43 | |
| 14200631960 | Dissonance | Refers to the grating of incompatible sounds. | 44 | |
| 14200631961 | Doggerel | Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme, like limericks. | 45 | |
| 14200631962 | Dramatic Irony | When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not | 46 | |
| 14200631963 | Elegy | A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner. | 47 | |
| 14200631964 | Enjambment | The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause. | 48 | |
| 14200631965 | Epic | A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter. | 49 | |
| 14200631966 | Epitaph | Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place. | 50 | |
| 14200631967 | Euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. | 51 | |
| 14200631968 | Euphony | When sounds blend harmoniously. | 52 | |
| 14200631969 | Explicit | To say or write something directly and clearly. | 53 | |
| 14200631970 | Farce | Extremely broad humor; in earlier times, a funny play or a comedy. | 54 | |
| 14200631971 | Foil | A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast. | 55 | |
| 14200631972 | Foreshadowing | An event of statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later. | 56 | |
| 14200631973 | Free verse | poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern | 57 | |
| 14200631974 | Genre | A sub-category of literature. | 58 | |
| 14200631975 | Hyperbole | Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement. | 59 | |
| 14200631976 | Implicit | To say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly. | 60 | |
| 14200631977 | In media res | Latin for "in the midst of things," i.e. beginning an epic poem in the middle of the action. | 61 | |
| 14200631978 | Interior Monologue | Refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; tends to be coherent. | 62 | |
| 14200631979 | Inversion | Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase. | 63 | |
| 14200631980 | 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. | 64 | |
| 14200631981 | Lament | A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss. | 65 | |
| 14200631982 | Lampoon | A satire. | 66 | |
| 14200631983 | Lyric | A type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world. | 67 | |
| 14200631984 | Metaphor | A comparison or analogy that states one thing IS another. | 68 | |
| 14200631985 | Metonymy | A word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with. | 69 | |
| 14200631986 | Onomatopoeia | Words that sound like what they mean | 70 | |
| 14200631987 | Oxymoron | A phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction. | 71 | |
| 14200631988 | Parable | A story that instructs. | 72 | |
| 14200631989 | Paradox | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. | 73 | |
| 14200631990 | Parody | The work that results when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness. | 74 | |
| 14200631991 | Pastoral | A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds. | 75 | |
| 14200631992 | Personification | When an inanimate object takes on human shape. | 76 | |
| 14200631993 | Point of View | The perspective from which the action of a novel is presented. | 77 | |
| 14200631994 | Omniscient | A third person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action going on. | 78 | |
| 14200631995 | 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. | 79 | |
| 14200631996 | 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. | 80 | |
| 14200631997 | Protagonist | The main character of a novel or play | 81 | |
| 14200631998 | Refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem. | 82 | |
| 14200631999 | Rhetorical question | A question that suggests an answer. | 83 | |
| 14200632000 | Satire | Attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behavior will become less common. | 84 | |
| 14200632001 | 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. | 85 | |
| 14200632002 | Stanza | A group of lines roughly analogous in function in verse to the paragraphs function in prose. | 86 | |
| 14200632003 | Symbolism | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. | 87 | |
| 14200632004 | Theme | The main idea of the overall work; the central idea. | 88 | |
| 14200632005 | Tercet | This is a poetic stanza of three lines | 89 | |
| 14200632006 | Terza Rima | A three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc. | 90 | |
| 14200632007 | Theme | Generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work. | 91 | |
| 14200632008 | Tone | Attitude a writer takes toward the audience, a subject, or a character | 92 | |
| 14200632009 | Tragedy | A serious form of drama dealing with the downfall of a heroic or noble character | 93 | |
| 14200632010 | turn | The moment a sonnet switches from a problem to solution, question to answer, etc. | 94 | |
| 14200632011 | turning point | This is the third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising and begins reversing or falling. It is sometimes referred to as the climax of the story. | 95 | |
| 14200632012 | Antithesis | the juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas to give a feeling of balance | 96 | |
| 14200632013 | Archetype | a very typical example of a certain person or thing | 97 | |
| 14200632014 | Assonance | Repetition of vowel sounds | 98 | |
| 14200632015 | attitude | the sense expressed by the tone of voice and/or the mood of a piece of writing | 99 | |
| 14200632016 | blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter | 100 | |
| 14200632017 | cacophony | A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds | 101 | |
| 14200632018 | Chiasmus | a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases | 102 | |
| 14200632019 | Consonance | Repetition of a consonant sound within two or more words in close proximity. | 103 | |
| 14200632020 | Dialect | A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation. | 104 | |
| 14200632021 | Exposition | Background information presented in a literary work. | 105 | |
| 14200632022 | extended metaphor | A metaphor developed at great length, occurring frequently in or throughout a work. | 106 | |
| 14200632023 | Fable | A brief story that leads to a moral, often using animals as characters | 107 | |
| 14200632024 | Heptaitch | This is a poetic stanza of seven lines | 108 | |
| 14200632025 | Idiom | A common, often used expression that doesn't make sense if you take it literally. | 109 | |
| 14200632026 | Imagery | Description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) | 110 | |
| 14200632027 | informal diction | language that is not as lofty or impersonal as formal diction; similar to everyday speech | 111 | |
| 14200632028 | Jargon | special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand. | 112 | |
| 14200632029 | Juxtaposition | Placement of two things closely together to emphasize comparisons or contrasts | 113 | |
| 14200632030 | Melodrama | A literary form in which events are exaggerated in order to create an extreme emotional response. | 114 | |
| 14200632031 | meter | A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry | 115 | |
| 14200632032 | misanthropy noun | hatred of mankind | 116 | |
| 14200632033 | Motif | A recurring theme, subject or idea | 117 | |
| 14200632034 | Overstatement | exaggeration | 118 | |
| 14200632035 | Pathos | Appeal to emotion | 119 | |
| 14200632036 | Petrarchan sonnet | a sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba, followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern cdecde or cdcdcd | 120 | |
| 14200632037 | Plot | Sequence of events in a story | 121 | |
| 14200632038 | Polysyndeton | Deliberate use of many conjunctions | 122 | |
| 14200632039 | Quatrain | A four line stanza | 123 | |
| 14200632040 | Realism | the attribute of accepting the facts of life and favoring practicality and literal truth | 124 | |
| 14200632041 | Rhythm | Pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables | 125 | |
| 14200632042 | rising action | Events leading up to the climax | 126 | |
| 14200632043 | Renaissance | "rebirth"; following the Middle Ages, a movement that centered on the revival of interest in the classical learning of Greece and Rome | 127 | |
| 14200632044 | Sarcasm | the use of irony to mock or convey contempt | 128 | |
| 14200632045 | Scansion | the action of scanning a line of verse to determine its rhythm | 129 | |
| 14200632046 | Sestet | six line stanza | 130 | |
| 14200632047 | Shakespearean sonnet | a sonnet consisting three quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg | 131 | |
| 14200632048 | stereotype | Characterization based on conscious or unconscious assumptions | 132 | |
| 14200632049 | Style | the choices a writer makes; the combination of distinctive features of a literary work | 133 | |
| 14200632050 | Syndeton | a sentence style in which words, phrases, or clauses are joined by conjunctions (usually and). | 134 | |
| 14200632051 | Syntax | Sentence structure | 135 |
