6754524476 | Alliteration | The repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close to another. | 0 | |
6754524477 | Allegory | A story in which the people, things, and events have another extended, frequently abstract, meaning. An examples is Orwell's "Animal Farm." | 1 | |
6754527128 | Allusion | A reference to a statement, person, place, event, or thing that is known from literature, history, religion, myth, politics, sports, science, or popular culture. | 2 | |
6754527129 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses aan absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman as if it were present and capable of responding. | 3 | |
6754527130 | Assonance | The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in words that are close together, for example, face and fade. | 4 | |
6754528918 | Anaphora | A repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases or sentences. | 5 | |
6754528919 | Ballad | A song or songlike poem that tells a story: simple language with a great deal of repetition, usually a refrain-usually stories of tragedy, adventure, betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. An folk example is "Lord Randall," an literary example is Keat's "La Belle Dam sans Merci." | 6 | |
6754528920 | Blank Verse | Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Examples are Shakespeare's plays, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's poem "Birches." | 7 | |
6754530887 | Caesura | A pause or break within a line of poetry, usually indicated by the nature rhythm of language. | 8 | |
6754530888 | Cacophony | A harsh, discordant sound often mirroring the meaning of the context in which it is used. For example, "Grate on the scrannel pipes of wretched straw." | 9 | |
6754530889 | Character | An individual in a story or play. | 10 | |
6754533330 | Chiche | An expression that was fresh and apt when first coined but which is now so overused that it has become hackneyed and stale. | 11 | |
6754533331 | Climax | The point of greatest emotional intensity or suspense in a plot. | 12 | |
6754533332 | Conceit | A fanciful and elaborate figure of speech that makes a surprising connection between two seemingly dissimilar things. | 13 | |
6754535801 | Concrete Poetry | A visual poetry composed exclusively for tht page in which a picture or image is made of printed letters and words; they usually rely on puns and cleverness. | 14 | |
6754535802 | Conflict | A struggle or clash between opposing characters, forces, or emotions-external or internal. | 15 | |
6754535803 | Connotation | All the meanings, associations, or emotions that a word suggests. | 16 | |
6754537720 | Consonance | The repetition of a final consonant sound after different vowel sounds; such as, dig and dog, or struts and frets. | 17 | |
6754537721 | Denotation | The literal, dictionary definition of a word. | 18 | |
6754537722 | Dialect | A way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people: sometimes called a vernacular. | 19 | |
6754711336 | Dialogue | Conversation between two or more people. | 20 | |
6754716470 | Didactic | Explicitly instructive | 21 | |
6754719320 | Diction | A writer or speaker's choice of words. | 22 | |
6754722205 | Digression | A section of a composition or speech that marks a temporary shift of subject; it ends when the writer or speaker returns to the main topic. They can be used intentionally as a stylistic rhetorical device. | 23 | |
6754735448 | Elegy | A poem that mourns the death of a person or laments something lost. | 24 | |
6754739281 | Ellipsis | A literary device that is used in narratives to omit some parts of a sentence or event, which gives the reader a chance to fill the gaps while acting or reading it out. It is usually written between the sentences as "..." | 25 | |
6754750014 | End Rhyme | Rhyme that occurs at the end of a line of poetry. | 26 | |
6754753264 | Epic | A long narrative poem that relates the great deeds of a larger-than-life hero who embodies the values of a particular society (The Odyssey). | 27 | |
6754760558 | Epiphany | A moment of sudden insight or revelation that a character experiences. | 28 | |
6754764533 | Epitaph | An inscription on a tombstone, or a commemorative poem written as if for that purpose. | 29 | |
6754770858 | Epithet | An adjective or other descriptive phrase that is regularly used to characterize a person, place, or thing. | 30 | |
6754779421 | Epigram | A brief, clever, and usually memorable statement. | 31 | |
6754785308 | Essay | A short piece of nonfiction prose that examines a single subject from a limited point of view. | 32 | |
6754789249 | Euphemism | A figure of speech utilizing indirection to avoid offensive bluntness, such as "deceased" for "dead" or "remains" for "corpse." | 33 | |
6754799007 | Euphony | The harmonious effect when the sounds of words connect with the meaning in a way pleasing to the ear and mind. | 34 | |
6754805505 | Flashback | A scene in a movie, play, short story, novel, or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to flash backward and tell what happened at an earlier time. | 35 | |
6754813555 | Foil | A character who sets off another character by strong contrast. | 36 | |
6754817807 | Foreshadowing | The use of clues to hint at what is going to happen later in the plot. | 37 | |
6754821740 | Frame Story | An introductory narrative within which one or more of the characters proceeds to tell a story (Frankenstein). | 38 | |
6754827894 | Form | The means by which a literary work expresses its content. It is used to describe the design of a poem. | 39 | |
6754834006 | Free Verse | Poetry that has no regular meter or rhyme scheme. This poetry places a great emphasis on imagery. | 40 | |
6754839595 | Gothic | A term used to describe literary works that contain primitive, medieval, wild, mysterious, or natural elements. | 41 | |
6754846519 | Grotesque | Characterization by distortion sor incongruities. | 42 | |
6754850691 | Slant Rhyme | Words sound similar by do not rhyme exactly. | 43 | |
6754854268 | Hubris | The pride of the tragic hero that leads him to ignore or overlook warning of impending disaster or to break moral laws. | 44 | |
6754862821 | Hyperbole | A figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion or create a comic effect. | 45 | |
6754869326 | Iambic Pentameter | A line of poetry made up of five iambs of metrical feet, or units of measurement. | 46 | |
6754874354 | Imagery | Language that appeals to the five senses of sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. | 47 | |
6754878684 | Irony | A contrast between what appears to be ture and what really is true. | 48 | |
6754881318 | Verbal Irony | Irony that is contained in words; saying one thing but meaning another. | 49 | |
6754885360 | Dramatic Irony | A special kind of suspenseful irony or expectation when the audience or reader understands the implementation and meaning of a situation usually onstage and foresees an oncoming disaster or triumph but the character does not. | 50 | |
6754897446 | Situational Irony | Irony in which the discrepancy exists when something is about to happen to a character or characters who expect the opposite outcome. | 51 | |
6754904831 | Internal Rhyme | Rhyme that occurs within lines of poetry. | 52 | |
6754910326 | Anastrophe | A literary technique in which the normal order of words is reversed in order to achieve a particular effect on emphasis or meter. | 53 | |
6754918118 | Lyric | Poetry that focuses on expressing emotions or thoughts, rather than on telling a story. | 54 | |
6754923426 | Malapropism | A use of an incorrect word in place of a similar sounding word that results in a nonsensical and humorous expression. | 55 | |
6754930152 | Metaphor | A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things without the use of the connective words like, as, than, or resembles. | 56 | |
6754937599 | Metaphysical Poetry | The work of poets which employs elaborate conceits; such poetry is highly intellectual and expresses life's complexities. | 57 | |
6754947433 | Meter | A generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry. It is measured in feet, or patterns of stress/unstressed sounds. | 58 | |
6754954421 | Metonymy | A figure of speech in which something closely relatred to a thing or suggested by it is subsitituted for the thing itself. The king is called "the crown." | 59 | |
6754964777 | Mood | The atmosphere or feeling in a literary work | 60 | |
6754967106 | Narrative | A story | 61 | |
6754977013 | Naturalism | A mode of work in which the writer applies total objectivity in his/her observations and treatment of life without idealizing, imposing value judgements, or avoiding the repulsive; in practive authors have distorted this objectivity by introducing excessively noble heroes and sensational incidents. | 62 | |
6754991800 | Non Sequitur | Literary devices which include the statements, sayings, and conclusions that do not follow the fundamental principles of logic and reason. They are frequently used in theater and comedies to create comedic effects. | 63 | |
6755005255 | Octave | An eight-line stanza or poem or the first eight lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. | 64 | |
6755009620 | Ode | A complex, generally long, lyric poem on a serious subject. | 65 | |
6755013289 | Oxymoron | A figure of speech that combines apparently contradictory or incongruous ideas. | 66 | |
6755018055 | Parable | A short, allegorical story that teaches a moral or religious lesson about life. | 67 | |
6755021833 | Parallel Structure | The repetition of a work of literature, art, or music for amusement or instruction and for comic effect. | 68 | |
6755027609 | Pastoral | A type of poem that depicts rustic life in idyllic, idealized terms. | 69 | |
6755031912 | Personification | A kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human. | 70 | |
6755038363 | Point of View | The vantage point from which a writer tells a story. | 71 | |
6755042368 | Prose | A form of language that has no formal metrical structure. It applies a natural flow of speech, and ordinary grammatical structure rather than rhythmic structure, such as in the case of traditional poetry. | 72 | |
6755052605 | Prose Poetry | Poetic langauage printed in prose paragraphs, but displaying the carful attention to sound, imagery, and figurative langauge characteristic of poetry. | 73 | |
6755060404 | Protagonist | The main character in fiction, drama, or narrative poetry. | 74 | |
6755064953 | Quatrain | A four-line stanze or poem, or a group of four lines unified by a rhyme scheme | 75 | |
6755069777 | Refrain | A reapeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines. | 76 | |
6755073611 | Renaissance | Specifically meaning "rebirth"; also, applied to the period between the medieval and the modern world. | 77 | |
6755082284 | Repetition | A literary device that repeats the same words or phrases a few times to make an idea clearer. There are several types of these commonly used in both prose and poetry. | 78 | |
6755091269 | Rhetoric | The art of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. | 79 | |
6755094293 | Rhetorical Question | A question asked for effect, not in expectation of a reply. | 80 | |
6755098566 | Rhyme Scheme | The pattern of rhymed lines in a poem. | 81 | |
6755101228 | Romance | A medieval verse narrative chronicling the adventures of a brave knight or other hero whomust undertake a quest and overcome great danger for love of a noble lady or high ideal. | 82 | |
6755108663 | Romanticism | The depiction of idealized, fabulous, or fantastic characters and events; the stories abound in dashing, extravagant adventures, characters of extreme virtues or faults, exotic worlds, strong and inflexible loyalities, and idealized love. | 83 | |
6755124876 | Sarcasm | A king of particularly cutting irony, in which praise is used tauntingly to indicate its opposite in meaning. | 84 | |
6755130228 | Satire | A kind of writing that ridicules human weakness, vice, or folly in order to bring about social reform. | 85 | |
6755136686 | Sestet | A six-line stanza or poem, or the last six lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnent. | 86 | |
6755142227 | Setting | Background information for a story: time, place, information previous to the opening of a story. | 87 | |
6755147733 | Simile | A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things by using a connective word such as like, as, than, or resembles. | 88 | |
6755155989 | Sonnet | A fourteen-line poem, usually written in iambic pentameter, that has one of several rhyme schemes. | 89 | |
6755163141 | Soliloquy | A long speech in which a character who is usually alone onstage expresses his or her private thoughts or feelings. | 90 | |
6755169037 | Speaker | The imaginary voice, or persona, assumed by the author or a poem. | 91 | |
6755172653 | Spenserian Stanza | A nine-line stanza with the rhyme scheme "ababbcbbc." | 92 | |
6755177936 | Stream of Consciousness | A writing style that tries to depict the randon flow of thoughts, emotions, memories, and associations rushing through a character's mind. | 93 | |
6755186442 | Stanza | A group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a single unit. | 94 | |
6755193959 | Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part of a thing stands for the whole, as in "lend a hand." | 95 | |
6755197947 | Syntax | The way in which words are arranged or put together to form phrases, causes, or sentences. | 96 | |
6755205417 | Surrealism | An attempt to reproduce and interpret the visions and images of the unconscious mind as manfiested in dreams; characterized by an irrational arrangement of bizarre experiences. | 97 | |
6755219284 | Theme | The centralized idea, truth, or insight found in a work of literature. | 98 | |
6755222578 | Tone | The attitude the writer takes toward the audience, the subject, or a character. | 99 | |
6755227473 | Turn | It is the sestet to the octave in a Petrarchan sonnet where the answer or point to the previous question or problem is given, usually begins with "but" or "yet." | 100 | |
6755238412 | Transcendentalism | A form of romanticism, largely of a philosophical nature; sponsored by Americans such as Emerson and Thoreau. | 101 | |
6755245603 | Understatement | A figure of speech that consists of saying less than what is really meant, or saying something with less force than is appropriate. | 102 | |
6755252370 | Villanelle | A nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets (three-line stanzas), each with the rhyme scheme "aba" and a final quatrian with the rhyme scheme "abaa." | 103 |
AP Literature Term Definitions Flashcards
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