AP Literature Terms Flashcards

The Glossary of Literary Terms for the AP English Literature and Composition Test

2771499898	Abstract	Complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, seldom uses examples to support its points.	0
2771499899	Academic	Dry and rhetorical writing; sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis.	1
2771499900	Accent	In poetry, the stressed portion of a word.	2
2771499901	Aesthetic	Appealing to the senses; a coherent sense of taste.	3
2771499902	Allegory	A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself.	4
2771499903	Alliteration	The repetition of initial consonant sounds.	5
2771499904	Allusion	A reference to another work or famous figure.	6
2771499905	Anachronism	"Misplaced in time." An aspect of a story that doesn't belong in its supposed time setting.	7
2771499906	Analogy	A comparison, usually involving two or more symbolic parts, employed to clarify an action or a relationship.	8
2771499907	Anecdote	A Short Narrative	9
2771499908	Antecedent	The word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to.	10
2771499909	Anthropomorphism	When inanimate objects are given human characteristics. Often confused with personification.	11
2771499910	Anticlimax	Occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect.	12
2771499911	Antihero	A protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities.	13
2771499912	Aphorism	A short and usually witty saying.	14
2771499913	Apostrophe	A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman.	15
2771499914	Archaism	The use of deliberately old-fashioned language.	16
2771499915	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.	17
2771499916	Aspect	A trait or characteristic	18
2771499917	Assonance	The repeated use of vowel sounds: "Old king Cole was a merry old soul."	19
2771499918	Atmosphere	The emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene	20
2771499919	Ballad	A long, narrative poem, usually in meter and rhyme. Typically has a naive folksy quality.	21
2771499920	Bathos	Writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries too hard to be a tear jerker.	22
2771499921	Pathos	Writing evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy.	23
2771499922	Black humor	The use of disturbing themes in comedy.	24
2771499923	Bombast	Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language.	25
2771499924	Burlesque	Broad parody, one that takes a style or form and exaggerates it into ridiculousness.	26
2771499925	Cacophony	In poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds.	27
2771499926	Cadence	The beat or rhythm or poetry in a general sense.	28
2771499927	Canto	The name for a section division in a long work of poetry.	29
2771499928	Caricature	A portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality.	30
2771499929	Catharsis	Drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy. Refers to the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences during a play	31
2771499930	Chorus	In Greek drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it.	32
2771499931	Classic	Typical, or an accepted masterpiece.	33
2771499932	Coinage (neologism)	A new word, usually one invented on the spot.	34
2771499933	Colloquialism	A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English.	35
2771499934	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	36
2771499935	Conceit (Controlling Image)	A startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon several lines.	37
2771499936	Denotation	A word's literal meaning.	38
2771499937	Connotation	Everything other than the literal meaning that a word suggests or implies.	39
2771499938	Consonance	The repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings)	40
2771499939	Couplet	A pair of lines that end in rhyme	41
2771499940	Decorum	A character's speech must be styled according to her social station, and in accordance to the situation.	42
2771499941	Diction	The words an author chooses to use.	43
2771499942	Syntax	The ordering and structuring of words.	44
2771499943	Dirge	A song for the dead. Its tone is typically slow, heavy, depressed, and melancholy	45
2771499944	Dissonance	Refers to the grating of incompatible sounds.	46
2771499945	Doggerel	Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme, like limericks.	47
2771499946	Dramatic Irony	When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not	48
2771499947	Dramatic Monologue	When a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience.	49
2771499948	Elegy	A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner.	50
2771499949	Elements	Basic techniques of each genre of literature	51
2771499950	Enjambment	The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause.	52
2771499951	Epic	A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter.	53
2771499952	Epitaph	Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place.	54
2771499953	Euphemism	A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality.	55
2771499954	Euphony	When sounds blend harmoniously.	56
2771499955	Explicit	To say or write something directly and clearly.	57
2771499956	Farce	Extremely broad humor; in earlier times, a funny play or a comedy.	58
2771499957	Feminine rhyme	Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Properly, the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed.	59
2771499958	Foil	A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast.	60
2771499959	Foot	The basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by a combination of two or three syllables, either stressed or unstressed.	61
2771499960	Foreshadowing	An event of statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later.	62
2771499961	Free verse	poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern	63
2771499962	Genre	A sub-category of literature.	64
2771499963	Gothic	A sensibility that includes such features as dark, gloomy castles and weird screams from the attic each night.	65
2771499964	Hubris	The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall	66
2771499965	Hyperbole	Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement.	67
2771499966	Implicit	To say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly.	68
2771499967	In media res	Latin for "in the midst of things," i.e. beginning an epic poem in the middle of the action.	69
2771499968	Interior Monologue	Refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; tends to be coherent.	70
2771499969	Inversion	Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase.	71
2771499970	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.	72
2771499971	Lament	A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss.	73
2771499972	Lampoon	A satire.	74
2771499973	Loose sentence	A sentence that is complete before its end: Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh.	75
2771499974	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.	76
2771499975	Lyric	A type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world.	77
2771499976	Masculine rhyme	A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (regular old rhyme)	78
2771499977	Meaning	What makes sense, what's important.	79
2771499978	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.	80
2771499979	Metaphor	A comparison or analogy that states one thing IS another.	81
2771499980	Simile	A comparison or analogy that typically uses like or as.	82
2771499981	Metonymy	A word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with.	83
2771499982	Nemesis	The protagonist's arch enemy or supreme and persistent difficulty.	84
2771499983	Objectivity	Treatment of subject matter in an impersonal manner or from an outside view.	85
2771499984	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.	86
2771499985	Onomatopoeia	Words that sound like what they mean	87
2771499986	Opposition	A pairing of images whereby each becomes more striking and informative because it's placed in contrast to the other one.	88
2771499987	Oxymoron	A phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction.	89
2771499988	Parable	A story that instructs.	90
2771499989	Paradox	A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not.	91
2771499990	Parallelism	Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect.	92
2771499991	Paraphrase	To restate phrases and sentences in your own words.	93
2771499992	Parenthetical phrase	A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail.	94
2771499993	Parody	The work that results when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness.	95
2771499994	Pastoral	A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds.	96
2771499995	Persona	The narrator in a non first-person novel.	97
2771499996	Personification	When an inanimate object takes on human shape.	98
2771499997	Plaint	A poem or speech expressing sorrow.	99
2771499998	Point of View	The perspective from which the action of a novel is presented.	100
2771499999	Omniscient	A third person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action going on.	101
2771500000	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.	102
2771500001	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.	103
2771500002	First person	A narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale from his or her point of view.	104
2771500003	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.	105
2771500004	Prelude	An introductory poem to a longer work of verse	106
2771500005	Protagonist	The main character of a novel or play	107
2771500006	Pun	The usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings	108
2771500007	Refrain	A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem.	109
2771500008	Requiem	A song of prayer for the dead.	110
2771500009	Rhapsody	An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise.	111
2771500010	Rhetorical question	A question that suggests an answer.	112
2771500011	Satire	Attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behavior will become less common.	113
2771500012	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.	114
2771500013	Stanza	A group of lines roughly analogous in function in verse to the paragraphs function in prose.	115
2771500014	Stock characters	Standard or cliched character types.	116
2771500015	Subjunctive Mood	A grammatical situation involving the words "if" and "were," setting up a hypothetical situation.	117
2771500016	Suggest	To imply, infer, indicate.	118
2771500017	Summary	A simple retelling of what you've just read.	119
2771500018	Suspension of disbelief	The demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination.	120
2771500019	Symbolism	A device in literature where an object represents an idea.	121
2771500020	Technique	The methods and tools of the author.	122
2771500021	Theme	The main idea of the overall work; the central idea.	123
2771500022	Thesis	The main position of an argument. The central contention that will be supported.	124
2771500023	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.	125
2771500024	Travesty	A grotesque parody	126
2771500025	Truism	A way-too obvious truth	127
2771500026	Unreliable narrator	When the first person narrator is crazy, a liar, very young, or for some reason not entirely credible	128
2771500027	Utopia	An idealized place. Imaginary communities in which people are able to live in happiness, prosperity, and peace.	129
2771500028	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.	130
2771500029	Ode	A poem in praise of something divine or noble	131
2771500030	Iamb	A poetic foot -- light, heavy	132
2771500031	Trochee	A poetic foot -- heavy, light	133
2771500032	Spondee	A poetic foot -- heavy, heavy	134
2771500033	Pyrrhie	A poetic foot -- light, light	135
2771500034	Anapest	A poetic foot -- light, light, heavy	136
2771500035	Ambibranch	A poetic foot -- light, heavy, light	137
2771500036	Dactyl	A poetic foot -- heavy, light, light	138
2771500037	Imperfect	A poetic foot -- single light or single heavy	139
2771500038	Pentameter	A poetic line with five feet.	140
2771500039	Tetrameter	A poetic line with four feet	141
2771500040	Trimeter	A poetic line with three feet	142
2771500041	Blank Verse	unrhymed iambic pentameter.	143