AP Literature Terms Flashcards

3711605311	allegory	story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or abstract ideas	0
4170597325	alliteration	repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together	1
4170599015	allusion	reference to someone or something that is well known	2
4170600231	ambiguity	deliberately suggesting two or more different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work	3
4170605939	analogy	comparison made between two things to show how they are alike	4
4170607280	anaphora	repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row	5
4170610120	anastrophe	inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of parts in a sentence	6
4170615009	anecdote	brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something, often shows character of an individual	7
4170616822	antagonist	opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero	8
4170618203	antimetabole	repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order	9
4170621086	antithesis	balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted	10
4170623033	antihero	central character who lacks the qualities traditionally associated with heros	11
4170625168	anthropomorphism	attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object	12
4170627104	aphorism	brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life	13
4170630600	apostrophe	calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place or thing, or a personified abtract idea	14
4170633225	apposition	placing in immediately succeeding order of two or more coordinate elements	15
4170637571	assonance	the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds especially in words that are together	16
4170641572	asyndeton	commas used without conjunction to separate a series of words, this emphasizing the parts equally	17
4170646225	balance	constructing a sentence so that both halves are about the same length and importance	18
4170649095	cliche	a word or phrase, often a figure of speech, that has become lifeless because of overuse	19
4170654502	colloquialism	a word or phrase in everyday use in conversation and informal writing but is inappropriate for formal situations	20
4170657238	conceit	an elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different	21
4170659180	connotation	the associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase	22
4170661585	couplet	two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry	23
4170663751	didactic	form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking	24
4170667332	elegy	poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died	25
4170669347	epigraph	a quotation at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme	26
4170672374	epistrophe	device of repetition in which the same expressions is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences	27
4170675012	fable	a very short story told in prose or poetry that teaches a practical lesson about how to succeed in life	28
4170679483	farce	a type of comedy in which ridiculous and often stereotyped characters are involved in silly, far-fetched situations	29
4170681904	figurative language	words which are inaccurate in interpreted literally, but are used to describe something else	30
4170684492	FOIL	a character who acts as a contrast to another character	31
4170687987	free verse	poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme	32
4170689660	hyperbole	a figure of speech that uses an incredible exaggeration or overstatement for effect	33
4170691804	imagery	the use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, thing, place, or experience	34
4170698050	inversion	the reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase	35
4170698983	irony	a discrepancy between appearances and reality	36
4170700755	juxtaposition	poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit	37
4170706376	litotes	form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form	38
4170708825	lyric poem	a poem that does not tell a story but expresses the personal feelings or thoughts of the speaker	39
4170712767	metonymy	a figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing, is referred to by something closely associated with it	40
4170715255	mood	an atmosphere created by a writer's diction and the details selected	41
4170719467	onomatopoeia	the use of words whose sounds echo their sense	42
4170722713	parable	a relatively short story that teaches a moral, or lesson about how to lead a good life	43
4170725267	parallelism	the repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structures	44
4170727821	parody	a work that makes fun of another work by imitating some aspect of the writer's style	45
4170730813	polysyndeton	sentence which uses a conjunction with no commas to separate the items in a series	46
4170735893	quatrain	a poem consisting of four lines, or four lines of a poem that can be considered as a unit	47
4170740670	refrain	a word, phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated several times in a poem	48
4170742476	rhetoric	art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse	49
4170745424	satire	a type of writing that ridicules the shortcomings of people or institutions in an attempt to bring about a change	50
4170748583	synecdoche	a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole	51
4170751113	tone	the attitude a writer takes toward the subject of a work, the characters in it, or the audience, revealed through diction, figurative language, and organization	52