AP LITERATURE TERMINOLOGY FINAL Flashcards

6667978024	allegory	a prose or poetic narrative in which the characters, behavior, or setting demonstrate multiple levels of meaning or significance	0
6667978025	alliteration	the sequential repetition of a similar initial sound	1
6667978026	allusion	a reference to a literary or historical event, person, or place	2
6667978027	anaphora	the regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses	3
6667978028	anecdote	a brief story or tale told by a character in a piece of literature	4
6667978029	antagonist	any character or force that is in opposition to the main character, or protagonist	5
6667978030	antithesis	the juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words	6
6667978031	apostrophe	an address or invocation to something that is inanimate	7
6667978032	archetypes	recurrent designs, patterns of action, character types, themes, or images which are identifiable in a wide range of literature	8
6667978033	assonance	a repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds	9
6667978034	asyndeton	a style in which conjunctions are omitted	10
6667978035	attitude	the sense expressed by the tone of voice and/or mood of a piece of writing	11
6667978036	ballad	a narrative poem that is, or originally was, meant to be sung	12
6667978037	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	13
6667978038	blank verse	the verse form that most resembles common speech, consisting of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter	14
6667978039	caesura	a pause in a line of verse, indicated by natural speech patterns rather than specific metrical patterns	15
6667978040	caricature	a depiction in which a character's characteristics or features are so deliberately exaggerated as to render them absurd	16
6667978041	chiasmus	a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second	17
6667978042	colloquial	ordinary language, the vernacular	18
6667978043	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	19
6667978044	connotation	what is suggested by a word, apart from what it implicitly describes	20
6667978045	consonance	the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowels	21
6667978046	couplet	two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter that together present a single idea or connections	22
6667978047	dactylic	a metrical foot in poetry consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable	23
6667978048	denotation	a direct or specific meaning, often referred to as the dictionary meaning of a word	24
6667978049	dialect	the language and speech idiosyncrasies of a specific area, region, or group of people	25
6667978050	diction	the specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone	26
6667978051	dramatic monologue	a monologue set in a specific situation and spoken to an imaginary audience; soliloquy	27
6667978052	elegy	a poetic lament upon the death of a particular person, usually ending in consolation	28
6667978053	enjambment	the continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next	29
6667978054	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	30
6667978055	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	31
6667978056	extended metaphor	a detailed or complex metaphor that extends over a long section of a work, also known as a conceit	32
6667978057	falling action	that part of plot structure in which the complications of the rising action are untangled; also known as the denouement	33
6667978058	farce	a play or scene in a play or book that is characterized by broad humor, wild antics, and often slapstick or physical jokes	34
6667978059	flashback	retrospection, where an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronology of the narrative	35
6667978060	foreshadowing	to hint at or to present an indication of the future beforehand	36
6667978061	formal diction	language that is lofty, dignified, and impersonal	37
6667978062	free verse	poetry that is characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and non-rhyming lines	38
6667978063	genre	a type or class of literature such as epic or narrative poetry or belles lettres	39
6667978064	hyperbole	overstatement characterized by exaggerated language	40
6667978065	iambic	a metrical foot in poetry that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable	41
6667978066	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	42
6667978067	informal diction	language that is not as lofty or impersonal as formal diction; similar to everyday speech	43
6667978068	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	44
6667978069	irony	a situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant	45
6667978070	jargon	specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group	46
6667978071	juxtaposition	the location of one thing as being adjacent or juxtaposed with another, to create a certain effect	47
6667978072	limited point of view	a perspective confined to a single character, whether a first person or a third person	48
6667978073	litote	a figure of speech that emphasizes its subject by conscious understatement	49
6667978074	loose sentence	a sentence grammatically complete and usually stating its main idea before the end	50
6667978075	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	51
6667978076	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	52
6667978077	metaphor	one thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them	53
6667978078	meter	the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry	54
6667978079	metonymy	a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something	55
6667978080	mood	a feeling or ambiance resulting from the tone of the piece as well as the writer/narrator's attitude and point of view	56
6667978081	motif	a recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event	57
6667978082	narrative structure	a textual organization based on sequences of connected events, usually presented in a straightforward, chronological framework	58
6667978083	narrator	the character who "tells" the story, or in poetry, the persona	59
6667978084	occasional poem	a poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private	60
6667978085	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	61
6667978086	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	62
6667978087	onomatopoeia	a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes: "buzz," "clank"	63
6667978088	overstatement	exaggerated language; also called hyperbole	64
6667978089	oxymoron	a figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory elements	65
6667978090	parable	a short fictional story that illustrates an explicit moral lesson through the use of analogy	66
6667978091	paradox	a statement that seems contradictory but may actually be true	67
6667978092	parallel structure	the use of similar forms in writing for nouns, verbs, phrases, or thoughts	68
6667978093	parody	a work that imitates another work for comic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original	69
6667978094	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	70
6667978095	periodic sentence	a sentence that is not grammatically complete until the end	71
6667978096	personification	treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by endowing it with human qualities	72
6667978097	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	73
6667978098	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	74
6667978099	plot	the arrangement of the narration based on the cause-effect relationship of the events	75
6667978100	protagonist	the main character in a work, who may or may not be heroic	76
6667978101	quatrain	a poetic stanza of four lines	77
6667978102	realism	the practice in literature of attempting to describe nature and life without idealism and with attention to detail	78
6667978103	refrain	a repeated stanza or line(s) in a poem or song	79
6667978104	rhetorical question	a question that is simply asked for stylistic effect and is not expected to be answered	80
6667978105	rhyme	the repetition of the same or similar sounds, most often at the ends of lines	81
6667978106	rhythm	the modulation of weak and strong elements in the flow of speech	82
6667978107	rising action	the development of action in a work, usually at the beginning	83
6667978108	sarcasm	a form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually harshly or bitterly critical	84
6667978109	satire	a literary work that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure	85
6667978110	scansion	the analysis of verse to show its meter	86
6667978111	setting	the time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play	87
6667978112	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	88
6667978113	shaped verse	another name for concrete poetry, poetry that is shaped to look like an object	89
6667978114	simile	a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, using the words 'like' or 'as'	90
6667978115	soliloquy	a monologue in which the character in a play is alone and speaking only to himself or herself	91
6667978116	speaker	the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem	92
6667978117	stanza	a section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing	93
6667978118	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	94
6667978119	stock character	character who appears in a number of stories or plays such as the cruel stepmother, the femme fatale, etc.	95
6667978120	structure	the organization or arrangement of the various elements in a work	96
6667978121	style	a distinctive manner of expression	97
6667978122	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	98
6667978123	synecdoche	when a part is used to signify a whole	99
6667978124	syntax	the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences	100
6667978125	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	101
6667978126	theme	a generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work	102
6667978127	tone	the attitude a literary work takes toward its subject and theme	103
6667978128	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	104
6667978129	trochaic	a metrical foot in poetry that is the opposite of iambic, with the first syllable stressed and the second not	105
6667978130	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	106
6667978131	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	107
6667978132	voice	the acknowledged or unacknowledged source of the words of the story; the "person" telling the story or poem	108