AP Literature - Key Terminology Flashcards

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

4801940072	allegory	a prose or poetic narrative in which the characters, behavior, or setting demonstrate multiple levels of meaning or significance	0
4801940073	alliteration	the sequential repetition of a similar initial sound	1
4801940074	allusion	a reference to a literary or historical event, person, or place	2
4801940075	anapestic	a metrical foot in poetry that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one: "Twas the NIGHT before CHRISTmas"	3
4801940076	anaphora	the regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses	4
4801940077	anecdote	a brief story or tale told by a character in a piece of literature	5
4801940078	antagonist	any character or force that is in opposition to the main character, or protagonist	6
4801940079	antithesis	the juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words	7
4801940080	apostrophe	an address or invocation to something that is inanimate	8
4801940081	archetypes	recurrent designs, patterns of action, character types, themes, or images which are identifiable in a wide range of literature	9
4801940082	assonance	a repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds	10
4801940083	asyndeton	a style in which conjunctions are omitted	11
4801940084	attitude	the sense expressed by the tone of voice and/or mood of a piece of writing	12
4801940085	ballad	a narrative poem that is, or originally was, meant to be sung	13
4801940086	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
4801940087	blank verse	the verse form that most resembles common speech, consisting of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter	15
4801940088	caesura	a pause in a line of verse, indicated by natural speech patterns rather than specific metrical patterns	16
4801940089	caricature	a depiction in which a character's characteristics or features are so deliberately exaggerated as to render them absurd	17
4801940090	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
4801940091	colloquial	ordinary language, the vernacular	19
4801940092	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
4801940093	connotation	what is suggested by a word, apart from what it implicitly describes	21
4801940094	consonance	the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowels: "pitter-patter, pish-posh"	22
4801940095	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
4801940096	dactylic	a metrical foot in poetry consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable: "Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight."	24
4801940097	denotation	a direct or specific meaning, often referred to as the dictionary meaning of a word	25
4801940098	dialect	the language and speech idiosyncrasies of a specific area, region, or group of people	26
4801940099	diction	the specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone	27
4801940100	dramatic monologue	a monologue set in a specific situation and spoken to an imaginary audience; soliloquy	28
4801940101	elegy	a poetic lament upon the death of a particular person, usually ending in consolation	29
4801940102	enjambment	the continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next	30
4801940103	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
4801940104	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
4801940105	extended metaphor	a detailed or complex metaphor that extends over a long section of a work, also known as a conceit	33
4801940106	fable	a legend or short story often using animals as characters	34
4801940107	falling action	that part of plot structure in which the complications of the rising action are untangled; also known as the denouement	35
4801940108	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
4801940109	flashback	retrospection, where an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronology of the narrative	37
4801940110	foreshadowing	to hint at or to present an indication of the future beforehand	38
4801940111	formal diction	language that is lofty, dignified, and impersonal	39
4801940112	free verse	poetry that is characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and non-rhyming lines	40
4801940113	genre	a type or class of literature such as epic or narrative poetry or belles lettres	41
4801940114	hyperbole	overstatement characterized by exaggerated language	42
4801940115	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
4801940116	idyll	a short poem describing a country or pastoral scene, praising the simplicity of rustic life	44
4801940117	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
4801940118	informal diction	language that is not as lofty or impersonal as formal diction; similar to everyday speech	46
4801940119	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
4801940120	irony	a situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant	48
4801940121	jargon	specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group	49
4801940122	juxtaposition	the location of one thing as being adjacent or juxtaposed with another, to create a certain effect	50
4801940123	limited point of view	a perspective confined to a single character, whether a first person or a third person	51
4801940124	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
4801940125	loose sentence	a sentence grammatically complete and usually stating its main idea before the end	53
4801940126	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
4801940127	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
4801940128	metaphor	one thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them	56
4801940129	meter	the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry	57
4801940130	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
4801940131	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
4801940132	motif	a recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event	60
4801940133	narrative structure	a textual organization based on sequences of connected events, usually presented in a straightforward, chronological framework	61
4801940134	narrator	the character who "tells" the story, or in poetry, the persona	62
4801940135	occasional poem	a poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private	63
4801940136	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
4801940137	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
4801940138	onomatopoeia	a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes: "buzz," "clank"	66
4801940139	overstatement	exaggerated language also called hyperbole	67
4801940140	oxymoron	a figure of speech that combines to apparently contradictory elements: "jumbo shrimp," "deafening silence"	68
4801940141	parable	a short fictional story that illustrates an explicit moral lesson through the use of analogy	69
4801940142	paradox	a statement that seems contradictory but may actually be true: "fight for peace"	70
4801940143	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
4801940144	parody	a work that imitates another work for comic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original	72
4801940145	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
4801940146	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
4801940147	personification	treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by endowing it with human qualities	75
4801940148	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
4801940149	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
4801940150	plot	the arrangement of the narration based on the cause-effect relationship of the events	78
4801940151	protagonist	the main character in a work, who may or may not be heroic	79
4801940152	quatrain	a poetic stanza of four lines	80
4801940153	realism	the practice in literature of attempting to describe nature and life without idealism and with attention to detail	81
4801940154	refrain	a repeated stanza or line(s) in a poem or song	82
4801940155	rhetorical question	a question that is simply asked for stylistic effect and is not expected to be answered	83
4801940156	rhyme	the repetition of the same or similar sounds, most often at the ends of lines	84
4801940157	rhythm	the modulation of weak and strong elements in the flow of speech	85
4801940158	rising action	the development of action in a work, usually at the beginning	86
4801940159	sarcasm	a form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually harshly or bitterly critical	87
4801940160	satire	a literary work that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure	88
4801940161	scansion	the analysis of verse to show its meter	89
4801940162	setting	the time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play	90
4801940163	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
4801940164	shaped verse	another name for concrete poetry, poetry that is shaped to look like an object	92
4801940165	simile	a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, using the words 'like' or 'as'	93
4801940166	soliloquy	a monologue in which the character in a play is alone and speaking only to himself or herself	94
4801940167	speaker	the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem	95
4801940168	stanza	a section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing	96
4801940169	couplet	two-line stanza	97
4801940170	tercet	three-line stanza	98
4801940171	quatrain	four-line stanza	99
4801940172	cinquain	five-line stanza	100
4801940173	sestet	six-line stanza	101
4801940174	heptatich	seven-line stanza	102
4801940175	octave	eight-line stanza	103
4801940176	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
4801940177	Everyman character	main character that actually represents all people	105
4801940178	stock character	character who appears in a number of stories or plays such as the cruel stepmother, the femme fatale, etc.	106
4801940179	structure	the organization or arrangement of the various elements in a work	107
4801940180	style	a distinctive manner of expression	108
4801940181	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
4801940182	synecdoche	when a part is used to signify a whole: "All hands on deck," "He stole five hundred head of longhorns."	110
4801940183	syntax	the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences	111
4801940184	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
4801940185	theme	a generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work	113
4801940186	tone	the attitude a literary work takes toward its subject and theme	114
4801940187	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
4801940188	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
4801940189	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
4801940190	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
4801940191	voice	the acknowledged or unacknowledged source of the words of the story; the "person" telling the story or poem	119