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AP Literature Vocabulary Flashcards

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9620098552allegoryuniversal symbol or personified abstraction (ex: Death being portrayed as cloaked in black with a scythe and hourglass)0
9620197675alliterationsequential repetition of a similar sound (consonants) (ex: peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers)1
9620267488allusiona reference to a literary or historical event, person, or place (Scar from the Lion King represents Claudius from Hamlet)2
9620288718Anapestica measurement in poetry of two unstressed and one stressed syllable3
9620313473Anaphorathe regular repetition of the same word or phase at the beginning of successive phrases (ex: starting every sentence with the same word)4
9620426528anecdotea brief story told by a character in a piece of literature5
9620479370antagonistany force that is in opposition to the main character/protagonist (does not have to be a person, ex: nature)6
9620526272antithesisthe juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced/parallel words, phrases, grammatical structure, or ideas (ex: "beauty is truth, truth beauty")7
9620566854apostrophean address to something inanimate8
9620580984archetyperecurrent themes/images that are identifiable in a wide range of literature (ex: water symbolizing renewal, femme fatale)9
9620664497assonancea repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds10
9620678058asyndetona style in which conjunctions are omitted, creating a fast pace prose (ex: "I came, I saw, I conquered")11
9620696895attitudethe sense expressed by the tone of voice/mood of the piece writing; the feelings the author holds toward a subject/people/events/setting/reader12
9620762023ballada narrative poem that was originally meant to be sung, usually characterized by a reoccurring phrase13
9620804628ballad stanzaa common stanza (4 lines in iambic that alternate 3 beat and 4 beat lines, lines 1 and 3 do not rhyme, lines 2 and 4 rhyme)14
9620837124blank verseform of verse that resembles common speech (unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter) (ex: Shakespeare's plays)15
9620859199Caesuraa pause in a line of verse indicated by natural speech patterns (ex: Alas how changed! II What sudden horrors rise!)16
9620877190caricaturea depiction in which a character's traits are exaggerated to render them absurd (ex: political cartoons)17
9620892641chiasmusa figure of speech by which the order of the terms are switched (ex: "beauty is truth, truth beauty" or "pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure")18
9620918387colloquialordinary language, the vernacular (ex: north = "soda", south = "pop")19
9620941329conceita comparison of two unlikely things, an extended metaphor within a poem (ex: love affair can be describes as a flower growing, budding, fruiting, and dying)20
9620966299connotationwhat is suggested by a word (apart from what it actually means), the implied meaning of a word (ex: awesome, sweet, wicked mean different things now than they used to)21
9620988541consonancethe repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the vowels (ex: pitter-patter, cling-clang)22
9621015513couplettwo rhyming lines of iambic pentameter that together present a single idea/connection (ex: "So long as men can breath or eyes can see / So long lives this and this gives life to thee")23
9621048211dactylicmeasurement in poetry that consists of 2 stressed syllables followed by 1 unstressed syllable24
9621061623denotationa direct and specific meaning, referring to the dictionary meaning of a word25
9621069506dialectthe language/speech of a specific region/people (ex: Mark Twain captures southern dialect in Huck Finn)26
9621085793dictionthe specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone/purpose/effect (ex: "I hadn't so much forgot as I couldn't bring myself to remember" has more impact than "I chose not to remember")27
9621115340dramatic monologuea monologue set in a specific situation and spoken to an imaginary audience (ex: "to be or not to be" speech in Hamlet)28
9621128449elegy29

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