AP Lit Exam Terms

86925108	Abstract	complex writing, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil; seldom uses exmples to support its points
86925109	academic	writing style- dry and theoretic; sucks all the life out of its subject with analysis
86925110	accent	the stressed word(s) or portion in a line of poetry; opens that portion up for a variety of interpretations
86925111	aesthetic	appealing to the senses (adj).; coherent sense of taste (noun)
86925112	aesthetics	the study of beauty ("what is beauty?", "is the beautiful always good?")
86925113	allegory	a story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself
86925114	alliteration	the repetition of initial consonant sounds ("happy houdini")
86925115	allusion	a reference to another work or a famous figure
86925116	topical allusion	refers to a current event
86925117	popular allusion	refers to something from popular culture, such as tv or a hit movie
86925118	anachronism	"misplaced in time"; when someone forgets to do something important and the mistake or late timing is comical
86925119	analogy	a comparison; usually involve two or more symbolic parts and are employed to clarify an action or a relationship
86925120	anecdote	a short narrative
86925121	antecedent	the word, phrase, or clause that a pronoun refers to or replaces
86925122	anthropomorphism	when inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation (confused with personification, but personification is when something nonhuman takes on human shape)
86925123	anticlimax	when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect; frequently comic
86925124	antihero	a protagonist who is remarkably unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities
86925125	aphorism	a short and usually witty saying ("classic? a book which people praise and don't read." -Mark Twain)
86925126	apostrophe	an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea
86925127	archaism	the use of deliberately old-fashioned language- used to create a feeling of antiquity
86925128	aside	a speech made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping out of the action on stage (as if we were in his mind)
86925129	aspect	a trait or characteristic (an aspect of the dew drop)
86925130	assonance	the repeated use of vowel sounds "Old king cole was a merry old soul."
86925131	atmosphere	the emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene
86925132	ballad	a long, narrative poem, usually in a very regular meter and rhyme; typically has a naive folksy quality, a characteristic that distinguishes it from epic poetry
86925133	bathos	when writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries to elicit tears from every hiccup
86925134	pathos	when the writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy
86925135	black humor	the use of disturbing themes in comedy (fighting over who will commit suicide first- "Waiting for Godot")
86925136	bombast	pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language; when one tries to use the largest, most uncommon words, they fall into this
86925137	burlesque	a broad parody that takes a style or form, such as a tragic drama, and exaggerates it into ridiculousness- like Hamlet (interchangeable with parody)
86925138	cacophony	using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds
86925139	cadence	the beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense; can be gentle, conversational, marching, etc.
88958354	canto	the name for a section division in a long work of poetry; divides a long poem into parts the way chapters divide a novel
88958355	caricature	a portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality
88958356	catharsis	(term drawn for Aristotle's writings on tragedy); refers to the "cleansing" of emotion of an audience member experiences, having lived vicariously through the experiences presented on stage
88958357	chorus	in drama, it is a group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it
88958358	classic	can mean typical; it can also mean an accepted masterpiece
88958359	classical	the arts of ancient greece and rome and the qualities of those arts
88958360	coinage (neologism)	a new word--usually invented on the spot; neologism is the technical term
88958361	colloquialism	a word or phrase used in everyday conversational english that isn't part of accepted "schoolbook" english "i'm toasted."
88958362	complex, dense	both mean that there is more than one possibility in the meaning of words, that there are subtleties or variations and multiple layers of interpretation; they imply that the meaning is both explicit and implicit
88958363	conceit	a startling or unusual metaphor in poetry or a metaphor developed and expanded upon over several lines
88958364	controlling image	when an image or idea dominates and shapes an entire work
88958365	connotation	everything else but the literal meaning that a word suggests or implies ("dark" can mean dangerous, not just a lack of light)
88958366	denotation	the literal meaning of a word
88958367	consonance	the repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings, which is alliteration); "a flock of sick, black-checkered ducks"
89400897	couplet	a pair of lines that end in rhyme
89400898	decorum	in order to observe this, a character's speech must be styled according to his social station, and in accordance with the occasion
89400899	diction	the author's choice of words
89400900	syntax	the ordering and structuring of words
89400901	dirge	a song for the dead; its tone is typically slow, heavy, and melancholy
89400902	dissonance	the grating of incompatible sounds
89400903	doggerel	crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme (limericks are a kind of doggerel)
89400904	dramatic irony	when the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not
89400905	dramatic monologue	when a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience
89400906	elegy	a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner; often memorialize specific dead people
89400907	element	a word used constantly and with the assumption that you know exactly what it means-- that is, the beasic techniques of each genre of literature (elements of a short story: characters, irony, theme, symbol, etc.)
89400908	enjambment	the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause
89400909	epic	a long, narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with profound or glorious subject matter (a great war, a herioc journey, a battle with supernatural forces, etc.)
89400910	mock-epic	a parody form of writing that deals with mundane events and ironically treats them as worthy of epic poetry
89400911	epitaph	a line or handful of lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place; sometimes serious and religious, sometimes witty and slightly irreverent