The Glossary of Literary Terms for the AP English Literature and Composition Test
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| 7252534926 | Abstract | Complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, seldom uses examples to support its points. | 0 | |
| 7252534927 | Academic | Dry and rhetorical writing; sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis. | 1 | |
| 7252534929 | Aesthetic | Appealing to the senses; a coherent sense of taste. | 2 | |
| 7252534930 | Allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself. | 3 | |
| 7252534931 | Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds. | 4 | |
| 7252534932 | Allusion | A reference to another work or famous figure. | 5 | |
| 7252534933 | Anachronism | "Misplaced in time." An aspect of a story that doesn't belong in its supposed time setting. | 6 | |
| 7252534934 | Analogy | A comparison, usually involving two or more symbolic parts, employed to clarify an action or a relationship. | 7 | |
| 7252534935 | Anecdote | A Short Narrative | 8 | |
| 7252534936 | Antecedent | The word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to. | 9 | |
| 7252534937 | Anthropomorphism | When inanimate objects are given human characteristics. Often confused with personification. | 10 | |
| 7252534938 | Anticlimax | Occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect. | 11 | |
| 7252534939 | Antihero | A protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities. | 12 | |
| 7252534940 | Aphorism | A short and usually witty saying. | 13 | |
| 7252534941 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman. | 14 | |
| 7252534942 | Archaism | The use of deliberately old-fashioned language. | 15 | |
| 7252534943 | 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 | |
| 7252534944 | Aspect | A trait or characteristic | 17 | |
| 7252534945 | Assonance | The repeated use of vowel sounds: "Old king Cole was a merry old soul." | 18 | |
| 7252534946 | Atmosphere | The emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene | 19 | |
| 7252534948 | Bathos | Writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries too hard to be a tear jerker. | 20 | |
| 7252534949 | Pathos | Writing evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy. | 21 | |
| 7252534950 | Black humor | The use of disturbing themes in comedy. | 22 | |
| 7252534951 | Bombast | Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language. | 23 | |
| 7252534952 | Burlesque | Broad parody, one that takes a style or form and exaggerates it into ridiculousness. | 24 | |
| 7252534953 | Cacophony | In poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds. | 25 | |
| 7252534956 | Caricature | A portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality. | 26 | |
| 7252534957 | Catharsis | Drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy. Refers to the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences during a play | 27 | |
| 7252534958 | Chorus | In Greek drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it. | 28 | |
| 7252534959 | Classic | Typical, or an accepted masterpiece. | 29 | |
| 7252534960 | Coinage (neologism) | A new word, usually one invented on the spot. | 30 | |
| 7252534961 | Colloquialism | A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English. | 31 | |
| 7252534962 | 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 | 32 | |
| 7252534963 | Conceit (Controlling Image) | A startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon several lines. | 33 | |
| 7252534964 | Denotation | A word's literal meaning. | 34 | |
| 7252534965 | Connotation | Everything other than the literal meaning that a word suggests or implies. | 35 | |
| 7252534966 | Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings) | 36 | |
| 7252534968 | Decorum | A character's speech must be styled according to her social station, and in accordance to the situation. | 37 | |
| 7252534969 | Diction | The words an author chooses to use. | 38 | |
| 7252534970 | Syntax | The ordering and structuring of words. | 39 | |
| 7252534972 | Dissonance | Refers to the grating of incompatible sounds. | 40 | |
| 7252534974 | Dramatic Irony | When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not | 41 | |
| 7252534977 | Elements | Basic techniques of each genre of literature | 42 | |
| 7252534979 | Epic | A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter. | 43 | |
| 7252534980 | Epitaph | Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place. | 44 | |
| 7252534981 | Euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. | 45 | |
| 7252534982 | Euphony | When sounds blend harmoniously. | 46 | |
| 7252534983 | Explicit | To say or write something directly and clearly. | 47 | |
| 7252534984 | Farce | Extremely broad humor; in earlier times, a funny play or a comedy. | 48 | |
| 7252534986 | Foil | A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast. | 49 | |
| 7252534988 | Foreshadowing | An event of statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later. | 50 | |
| 7252534990 | Genre | A sub-category of literature. | 51 | |
| 7252534991 | Gothic | A sensibility that includes such features as dark, gloomy castles and weird screams from the attic each night. | 52 | |
| 7252534992 | Hubris | The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall | 53 | |
| 7252534993 | Hyperbole | Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement. | 54 | |
| 7252534994 | Implicit | To say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly. | 55 | |
| 7252534995 | In media res | Latin for "in the midst of things," i.e. beginning an epic poem in the middle of the action. | 56 | |
| 7252534996 | Interior Monologue | Refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; tends to be coherent. | 57 | |
| 7252534997 | Inversion | Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase. | 58 | |
| 7252534998 | 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. | 59 | |
| 7252535000 | Lampoon | A satire. | 60 | |
| 7252535001 | Loose sentence | A sentence that is complete before its end: Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh. | 61 | |
| 7252535002 | 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. | 62 | |
| 7252535005 | Meaning | What makes sense, what's important. | 63 | |
| 7252535006 | 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. | 64 | |
| 7252535007 | Metaphor | A comparison or analogy that states one thing IS another. | 65 | |
| 7252535008 | Simile | A comparison or analogy that typically uses like or as. | 66 | |
| 7252535009 | Metonymy | A word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with. | 67 | |
| 7252535010 | Nemesis | The protagonist's arch enemy or supreme and persistent difficulty. | 68 | |
| 7252535011 | Objectivity | Treatment of subject matter in an impersonal manner or from an outside view. | 69 | |
| 7252535012 | 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. | 70 | |
| 7252535013 | Onomatopoeia | Words that sound like what they mean | 71 | |
| 7252535014 | Opposition | A pairing of images whereby each becomes more striking and informative because it's placed in contrast to the other one. | 72 | |
| 7252535015 | Oxymoron | A phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction. | 73 | |
| 7252535016 | Parable | A story that instructs. | 74 | |
| 7252535017 | Paradox | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. | 75 | |
| 7252535018 | Parallelism | Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect. | 76 | |
| 7252535019 | Paraphrase | To restate phrases and sentences in your own words. | 77 | |
| 7252535020 | Parenthetical phrase | A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail. | 78 | |
| 7252535021 | Parody | The work that results when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness. | 79 | |
| 7252535023 | Persona | The narrator in a non first-person novel. | 80 | |
| 7252535024 | Personification | When an inanimate object takes on human shape. | 81 | |
| 7252535026 | Point of View | The perspective from which the action of a novel is presented. | 82 | |
| 7252535027 | Omniscient | A third person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action going on. | 83 | |
| 7252535028 | 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. | 84 | |
| 7252535029 | 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. | 85 | |
| 7252535030 | First person | A narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale from his or her point of view. | 86 | |
| 7252535031 | 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. | 87 | |
| 7252535033 | Protagonist | The main character of a novel or play | 88 | |
| 7252535034 | Pun | The usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings | 89 | |
| 7252535035 | Refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem. | 90 | |
| 7252535038 | Rhetorical question | A question that suggests an answer. | 91 | |
| 7252535039 | Satire | Attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behavior will become less common. | 92 | |
| 7252535040 | 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. | 93 | |
| 7252535042 | Stock characters | Standard or cliched character types. | 94 | |
| 7252535043 | Subjunctive Mood | A grammatical situation involving the words "if" and "were," setting up a hypothetical situation. | 95 | |
| 7252535044 | Suggest | To imply, infer, indicate. | 96 | |
| 7252535045 | Summary | A simple retelling of what you've just read. | 97 | |
| 7252535046 | Suspension of disbelief | The demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination. | 98 | |
| 7252535047 | Symbolism | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. | 99 | |
| 7252535048 | Technique | The methods and tools of the author. | 100 | |
| 7252535049 | Theme | The main idea of the overall work; the central idea. | 101 | |
| 7252535050 | Thesis | The main position of an argument. The central contention that will be supported. | 102 | |
| 7252535051 | 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. | 103 | |
| 7252535052 | Travesty | A grotesque parody | 104 | |
| 7252535053 | Truism | A way-too obvious truth | 105 | |
| 7252535054 | Unreliable narrator | When the first person narrator is crazy, a liar, very young, or for some reason not entirely credible | 106 | |
| 7252535055 | Utopia | An idealized place. Imaginary communities in which people are able to live in happiness, prosperity, and peace. | 107 | |
| 7252535056 | 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. | 108 | |
| 7252535069 | Blank Verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter. | 109 |
