AP Literature - Terminology Master Flashcards

Key terms in AP English Literature and Composition from the Kaplan study guide.

4770967546	allegory	a prose or poetic narrative in which the characters, behavior, or setting demonstrate multiple levels of meaning or significance	0
4770967547	alliteration	the sequential repetition of a similar initial sound	1
4770967548	allusion	a reference to a literary or historical event, person, or place	2
4770967549	anapestic	a metrical foot in poetry that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one: "Twas the NIGHT before CHRISTmas"	3
4770967550	anaphora	the regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses	4
4770967551	anecdote	a brief story or tale told by a character in a piece of literature	5
4770967552	antagonist	any character or force that is in opposition to the main character, or protagonist	6
4770967553	antithesis	the juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words	7
4770967554	apostrophe	an address or invocation to something that is inanimate	8
4770967555	archetypes	recurrent designs, patterns of action, character types, themes, or images which are identifiable in a wide range of literature	9
4770967556	assonance	a repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds	10
4770967557	asyndeton	a style in which conjunctions are omitted	11
4770967558	attitude	the sense expressed by the tone of voice and/or mood of a piece of writing	12
4770967559	ballad	a narrative poem that is, or originally was, meant to be sung	13
4770967560	ballad stanza	a common stanza form, consisting of a quatrain (stanza of four lines) that alternates four-beat (iambic tetrameter) and three-beat (iambic trimeter) lines: "In SCARlet TOWN where I was BORN/ there LIVED a FAIR maid DWELLin'"	14
4770967561	blank verse	the verse form that most resembles common speech, consisting of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter	15
4770967562	caesura	a pause in a line of verse, indicated by natural speech patterns rather than specific metrical patterns	16
4770967563	caricature	a depiction in which a character's characteristics or features are so deliberately exaggerated as to render them absurd	17
4770967564	chiasmus	a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second: "Pleasure is a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure."	18
4770967565	colloquial	ordinary language, the vernacular	19
4770967566	conceit	a comparison of two unlikely things that is drawn out within a piece of literature, particularly a piece of extended metaphor within a poem	20
4770967567	connotation	what is suggested by a word, apart from what it implicitly describes	21
4770967568	consonance	the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowels: "pitter-patter, pish-posh"	22
4770967569	couplet	two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter that together present a single idea or connections: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see/So long lives this and this gives life to thee."	23
4770967570	dactylic	a metrical foot in poetry consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable: "Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight."	24
4770967571	denotation	a direct or specific meaning, often referred to as the dictionary meaning of a word	25
4770967572	dialect	the language and speech idiosyncrasies of a specific area, region, or group of people	26
4770967573	diction	the specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone	27
4770967574	dramatic monologue	a monologue set in a specific situation and spoken to an imaginary audience; soliloquy	28
4770967575	elegy	a poetic lament upon the death of a particular person, usually ending in consolation	29
4770967576	enjambment	the continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next	30
4770967577	epic	a poem that celebrates, in a continuous narrative, the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines, often concerned with the founding of a nation or developing of a culture	31
4770967578	exposition	that part of the structure that sets the scene, introduces or identifies characters, and establishes the situation at the beginning of a story or play	32
4770967579	extended metaphor	a detailed or complex metaphor that extends over a long section of a work, also known as a conceit	33
4770967580	fable	a legend or short story often using animals as characters	34
4770967581	falling action	that part of plot structure in which the complications of the rising action are untangled; also known as the denouement	35
4770967582	farce	a play or scene in a play or book that is characterized by broad humor, wild antics, and often slapstick or physical jokes	36
4770967583	flashback	retrospection, where an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronology of the narrative	37
4770967584	foreshadowing	to hint at or to present an indication of the future beforehand	38
4770967585	formal diction	language that is lofty, dignified, and impersonal	39
4770967586	free verse	poetry that is characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and non-rhyming lines	40
4770967587	genre	a type or class of literature such as epic or narrative poetry or belles lettres	41
4770967588	hyperbole	overstatement characterized by exaggerated language	42
4770967589	iambic	a metrical foot in poetry that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate."	43
4770967590	idyll	a short poem describing a country or pastoral scene, praising the simplicity of rustic life	44
4770967591	imagery	any sensory detail or invocation in a work; also, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, call to mind an idea, or describe and object	45
4770967592	informal diction	language that is not as lofty or impersonal as formal diction; similar to everyday speech	46
4770967593	in medias res	"in the midst of things"; refers to opening a story in the middle of the action, necessitating filling in past details by exposition or flashback	47
4770967594	irony	a situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant	48
4770967595	jargon	specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group	49
4770967596	juxtaposition	the location of one thing as being adjacent or juxtaposed with another, to create a certain effect	50
4770967597	limited point of view	a perspective confined to a single character, whether a first person or a third person	51
4770967598	litote	a figure of speech that emphasizes its subject by conscious understatement: "Last week I saw a woman flayed and you would hardly believe how it altered her appearance for the worse."	52
4770967599	loose sentence	a sentence grammatically complete and usually stating its main idea before the end	53
4770967600	lyric	originally designated poems meant to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre; now any short poem in which the speaker expresses intense personal emotion rather than describing a narrative or dramatic situation	54
4770967601	message	a misleading term for theme; the central statement or idea of a story, misleading because it suggests a simple, packaged statement that pre-exists and for the simple communication of which the story was written	55
4770967602	metaphor	one thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them	56
4770967603	meter	the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry	57
4770967604	metonymy	a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something: "The White House announced today," "The pen is mightier than the sword."	58
4770967605	mood	a feeling or ambiance resulting from the tone of the piece as well as the writer/narrator's attitude and point of view	59
4770967606	motif	a recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event	60
4770967607	narrative structure	a textual organization based on sequences of connected events, usually presented in a straightforward, chronological framework	61
4770967608	narrator	the character who "tells" the story, or in poetry, the persona	62
4770967609	occasional poem	a poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private	63
4770967610	ode	a lyric poem that is somewhat serious in subject and treatment, is elevated in style, and sometimes uses elaborate stanza structure, which is often patterned in sets of three; often written to praise or exalt a person, quality, characteristic, or object	64
4770967611	omniscient point of view	also called unlimited focus; a perspective that can be seen from one character's view, then another's, then another's and can be moved at any time	65
4770967612	onomatopoeia	a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes: "buzz," "clank"	66
4770967613	overstatement	exaggerated language also called hyperbole	67
4770967614	oxymoron	a figure of speech that combines to apparently contradictory elements: "jumbo shrimp," "deafening silence"	68
4770967615	parable	a short fictional story that illustrates an explicit moral lesson through the use of analogy	69
4770967616	paradox	a statement that seems contradictory but may actually be true: "fight for peace"	70
4770967617	parallel structure	the use of similar forms in writing for nouns, verbs, phrases, or thoughts: "Jane likes reading, writing, and skiing," NOT "Martha takes notes quickly, thoroughly, and in a detailed manner."	71
4770967618	parody	a work that imitates another work for comic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original	72
4770967619	pastoral	a work that describes the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live a timeless, painless life in a world full of beauty, music, and love; also called an eclogue, a bucolic, or and idyll	73
4770967620	periodic sentence	a sentence that is not grammatically complete until the end: "The child, who looked as if she were being chased by demons, ran."	74
4770967621	personification	treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by endowing it with human qualities	75
4770967622	persona	the voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share the values of the actual author (e.g. adult Scout in 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' Watson in 'Sherlock Holmes')	76
4770967623	Petrarchan sonnet	a sonnet form that divides the poem into one section of eight lines (octave) and a second section of six lines (sestet) usually following the abba abba cde cde rhyme scheme; also called an Italian sonnet	77
4770967624	plot	the arrangement of the narration based on the cause-effect relationship of the events	78
4770967625	protagonist	the main character in a work, who may or may not be heroic	79
4770967626	quatrain	a poetic stanza of four lines	80
4770967627	realism	the practice in literature of attempting to describe nature and life without idealism and with attention to detail	81
4770967628	refrain	a repeated stanza or line(s) in a poem or song	82
4770967629	rhetorical question	a question that is simply asked for stylistic effect and is not expected to be answered	83
4770967630	rhyme	the repetition of the same or similar sounds, most often at the ends of lines	84
4770967631	rhythm	the modulation of weak and strong elements in the flow of speech	85
4770967632	rising action	the development of action in a work, usually at the beginning	86
4770967633	sarcasm	a form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually harshly or bitterly critical	87
4770967634	satire	a literary work that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure	88
4770967635	scansion	the analysis of verse to show its meter	89
4770967636	setting	the time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play	90
4770967637	Shakespearean sonnet	a sonnet form that divides the poem into three units of four lines each and a final unit of two lines, usually abab cdcd efef gg; also called an English sonnet	91
4770967638	shaped verse	another name for concrete poetry, poetry that is shaped to look like an object	92
4770967639	simile	a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, using the words 'like' or 'as'	93
4770967640	soliloquy	a monologue in which the character in a play is alone and speaking only to himself or herself	94
4770967641	speaker	the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem	95
4770967642	stanza	a section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing	96
4770967643	couplet	two-line stanza	97
4770967644	tercet	three-line stanza	98
4770967645	quatrain	four-line stanza	99
4770967646	cinquain	five-line stanza	100
4770967647	sestet	six-line stanza	101
4770967648	heptatich	seven-line stanza	102
4770967649	octave	eight-line stanza	103
4770967650	stereotype	a characterization based on conscious or unconscious assumptions that some aspect, such as gender, age, ethnic or national identity, religion, occupation, marital status, and so on, are predictable accompanied by certain character traits, action, and even values	104
4770967651	Everyman character	main character that actually represents all people	105
4770967652	stock character	character who appears in a number of stories or plays such as the cruel stepmother, the femme fatale, etc.	106
4770967653	structure	the organization or arrangement of the various elements in a work	107
4770967654	style	a distinctive manner of expression	108
4770967655	symbol	a person, place, thing, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time figuratively represents or "stands for" something else	109
4770967656	synecdoche	when a part is used to signify a whole: "All hands on deck," "He stole five hundred head of longhorns."	110
4770967657	syntax	the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences	111
4770967658	terza rima	a verse form consisting of three-line stanzas in which the second line of each rhymes with the first and third of the next, in the form ababcb	112
4770967659	theme	a generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work	113
4770967660	tone	the attitude a literary work takes toward its subject and theme	114
4770967661	tragedy	a drama in which a character (usually good and noble and of high rank) is brought to a disastrous end in his or her confrontation with a superior force due to a fatal flaw in his or her character	115
4770967662	trochaic	a metrical foot in poetry that is the opposite of iambic, with the first syllable stressed and the second not: "BY the SHORES of GITCHee GUMee,/BY the SHINing BIG-Sea-WATer"	116
4770967663	turning point	the third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing; also called the climax	117
4770967664	villanelle	a verse form consisting of 19 lines divided into six stanzas - five tercets and one quatrain; the first and third lines of the first tercet rhyme, and this rhyme is repeated through each of the next four tercets and in the last two lines of the concluding quatrain	118
4770967665	voice	the acknowledged or unacknowledged source of the words of the story; the "person" telling the story or poem	119