AP Literature Flashcards

6604856046	Abstract (style)	Typically complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, doesn't use examples to support points	0
6604856381	Academic (style)	Dry, theoretical writing, very analytical	1
6604859420	Accent (poetic)	Stressed portion of the word, can be a matter of opinion which part is actually stressed	2
6604859980	Aesthetic (adjective)	"Appealing to the senses," artistic judgment	3
6604861495	Aesthetic (noun, singular)	Coherent sense of taste	4
6604862149	Aesthetics (noun, plural)	The study of beauty	5
6604864142	Allegory	A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself (e.x. the Ant and the Grasshopper)	6
6604865364	Alliteration	The repetition of initial CONSONANT sounds	7
6604865685	Allusion	A reference to another work, event, or famous figure (topical = current event, popular = pop culture)	8
6604867624	Anachronism	"Misplaced in time" in Greek (e.x. if someone in Julius Caesar forgets to take off a digital wristwatch)	9
6604868947	Analogy	Comparison using two symbolic parts to clarify an action or relationship	10
6604869390	Anecdote	Short narrative	11
6604869391	Antecedent	The word, phrase, or clause that a pronoun refers to or replaces. (E.x. the principal asked the children where they were going - they = pronoun, children = antecedent)	12
6604871024	Anthropomorphism	In literature, when inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation	13
6604872234	Anticlimax	Occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect, frequently used comically	14
6604873151	Antihero	A protagonist who is markedly unheroic, morally weak, cowardly, dishonest	15
6604873608	Aphorism	A short and witty saying	16
6604874527	APOSTROPHE (not the punctuation mark)	An address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea	17
6604875706	Archaism	The use of deliberately-old fashioned language to create a feeling of antiquity	18
6604876038	Aside	A speech or short comment made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping outside the action onstage	19
6604876763	Aspect	Trait or characteristic	20
6604876764	Assonance	The repeated use of VOWEL sounds	21
6604877267	Atmosphere	Tone or emotional background surrounding the scene	22
6604878481	Ballad	A long, narrative poem, usually regular in meter and rhyme, with a folksy quality (that distinguishes it from epic poetry)	23
6604879267	Bathos	Writing strains for grandeur it can't support, tries to elicit too much emotion	24
6604879804	Pathos	Writing of scene evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy	25
6604880096	Black humor	Use of disturbing themes in comedy (e.x. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot)	26
6604881262	Bombast	Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language, trying to be eloquent by using large and uncommon words	27
6604882231	Burlesque (Parody)	Broad parody that takes a style and exaggerates it into ridiculousness	28
6604883266	Cacophony	Using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds	29
6604883267	Cadence	The beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense	30
6604883972	Canto	Name for a section division in a long work of poetry, dividing it into chapters	31
6604886519	CARICATURE	A portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality	32
6604886851	Catharsis	Aristotle's theories on tragedy, refers to the "cleansing" of emotion experienced by audience members who live vicariously through the play	33
6604887240	Chorus (drama)	Group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it	34
6604887812	Classic	An accepted masterpiece (though classical refers to Greece/Rome)	35
6604888998	Coinage (neologism)	New word typically invented on the spot	36
6604889476	Colloquialism	Word or phrase used in everyday English but isn't accepted	37
6604889760	Complex/Dense	Carry meaning of suggesting that there is more than one possibility in the meaning of words, subtleties, multiple layers of interpretation	38
6604892381	CONCEIT (CONTROLLING IMAGE)	Startling or unusual metaphor, developed and expanded over several lines (can dominate entire work)	39
6604893952	Connotation	Everything else that the word suggests or implies besides its literal meaning	40
6604893953	Denotation	Literal meaning of a word	41
6604894746	Consonance	Repetition of consonant sounds WITHIN words (rather than at the beginning)	42
6604895803	COUPLET	A pair of lines that end in rhyme	43
6604897196	Decorum	A character's speech must be styled according to their social station and in accordance with the occasion	44
6604897576	DICTION	Author's choice of words	45
6604897905	SYNTAX	Author's structure of words (sentence structure)	46
6604898217	Dirge	Song for the dead, typically slow and melancholy	47
6604898764	Dissonance	Grating of incompatible sounds	48
6604898765	Doggerel	Crude, simplistic verse in sing-song rhyme (e.x. limericks)	49
6604899210	DRAMATIC IRONY	When the audience knows something that the characters in the work do not	50
6604899673	Elegy	Poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner, using the death of recent, noted person as a starting point, memorialize	51
6604900910	Short Story (elements)	Characters, irony, theme, symbol, plot, setting	52
6604901543	Poetry (elements)	Figurative language, symbol, imagery, rhythm, rhyme	53
6604902005	Drama (elements)	Conflict, characters, climax, conclusion, exposition, rising action, falling action, sets, props	54
6604902478	Nonfiction/Rhetorical (elements)	Argument, evidence, reason, appeals, fallacies, thesis	55
6604903005	ENJAMBMENT	The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause	56
6604904063	Epic	Long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style, dealing with a glorious subject or profound subject matter (war, heroic journey, Fall from Eden, supernatural forces)	57
6604905085	Epitaph	Lines that commemorate the dead at burial, line or handful of lines, can be serious/religious, sometimes witty	58
6604909926	Euphemism	Word or phrase that takes place of harsh, unpleasant, impolite reality (e.x. passed away = died, let go = fired)	59
6604910782	Euphony	When sounds blend together harmoniously	60
6604911088	Explicit	To say or write something directly or clearly	61
6604911089	Farce	Extremely broad humor, but in the past, meant funny play or comedy	62
6604912127	Feminine Rhyme	Lines rhymed by their final two syllables	63
6604916009	Foil	Secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast	64
6604916447	Foot	The basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by two or three stressed or unstressed syllables	65
6604916850	FORESHADOWING	Event or statement that suggests that something larger/worse could come later	66
6604917303	Free Verse	Poetry without rhyme scheme or metric pattern	67
6604917590	Genre	Subcategory of literature	68
6604917591	Gothic	Sensibility derived from gothic novels, 18th century, Edgar Allan Poe	69
6604918311	Hubris	Excessive pride or ambition leading to a character's downfall	70
6604919883	HYPERBOLE	Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement	71
6604919884	Implicit	To say something that suggests, implies, but never says directly or clearly. Meaning is present, but it's in the imagery, or between the lines.	72
6604921197	en media res	Latin, "in the midst of things" - story begins when action has already started occurring	73
6604921756	Interior monologue	Novels/poetry, writing recording the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head, coherent	74
6604924539	Inversion	Switching customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase, common in poetry	75
6604924963	IRONY	Powerful verbal tool, a statement that's the opposite of what it seems to mean, insinuates	76
6604926207	Lament	A poem of sadness or grief about the death of a loved one, or some other loss	77
6604926857	Lampoon	A satire	78
6604926858	Loose Sentence	Grammatically complete before its end	79
6604927406	Periodic Sentence	Not grammatically complete until its final phrase	80
6604927794	Lyric	Type of poetry that explores poet's personal interpretation of, and feelings about, the world	81
6604928591	Masculine Rhyme	A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable	82
6604930576	Melodrama	A form of cheesy theater in which the hero is good, the villain mean and rotten, and the heroine pure	83
6604931181	METAPHOR	A comparison or analogy without using like or as	84
6604931509	SIMILE	A comparison or analogy that uses like or as	85
6604932482	Metonym	A word that is used to stand for something else that has the attributes of, or is associated with (E.x. 50 cows = 50 head of cattle)	86
6604938291	Nemesis	The protagonist's archenemy, difficulty	87
6604938731	OBJECTIVITY	Treatment of subject matter that is impersonal or outside	88
6604938993	SUBJECTIVE	Interior or personal view of a single observer, colored with that viewer's emotional response	89
6604939618	Onomatopoeia	Words that describe noises	90
6604941010	OPPOSITION	Elements that contrast sharply, not necessarily conflict but a pairing of images that strengthen each other by the contrast they create	91
6604942361	Oxymoron	A phrase composed of opposites	92
6604942362	Parable	A story that instructs, like a fable or allegory	93
6604942628	PARADOX	A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not.	94
6604943182	Parallelism	Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect	95
6604943949	Paraphrase	Restate phrases in your own words	96
6604943950	Parenthetical Phrase	A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with commentary or added detail	97
6604944514	Pastoral	Poem set in tranquil nature	98
6604944919	Persona	The narrator in a non-first-person novel, some idea of the author's personality	99
6604945674	PERSONIFICATION	Giving an inanimate object human qualities or form	100
6604946036	Plaint	A poem or speech expressing sorrow	101
6604947919	POINT OF VIEW	Perspective from which the action of a novel is presented	102
6604948364	Omniscient narrator	Third-person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action	103
6604948762	Limited Omniscient Narrator	Third-person narrator who generally reports only what one character sees and reports that character's thoughts	104
6604949604	Objective/camera-eye	Third-person who only reports on what is visible to a camera	105
6604950570	First-person	Narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale from his or her point of view, can be unreliable	106
6604951876	Stream of consciousness technique	First-person narration but places reader inside main character's head, makes reader privy to all character's thoughts	107
6604955656	Prelude	Introductory poem to longer work of verse	108
6604957181	Refrain	Line or set of lines repeated over several times over the course of a poem	109
6604957526	Requiem	Song/prayer for the dead	110
6604957794	Rhapsody	Intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually love or praise	111
6604958482	Rhetorical Question	A question that suggests an answer, making the listener feel like she has to come up with the answer herself	112
6604958903	SATIRE	Exposes common character flaws with humor, points out peoples' mistakes in hope to reduce that behavior	113
6604959668	Soliloquy	Speech spoken alone by character onstage, convey the impression of listening to the audience's thoughts	114
6604960118	STANZA	Group of lines in a poem, almost like a paragraph	115
6604960402	Stock characters	Standard or cliché characters	116
6604960854	Subjunctive Mood	A hypothetical situation is set up	117
6604960855	Suggest	To imply, infer, indicate, implicit	118
6604961267	Summary	Mechanical, superficial retelling of what was read	119
6604961268	Suspension of disbelief	The demand made of theater audience to accept limitations of staging, supply the details with imagination	120
6604963191	SYMBOLISM	An object represents an idea	121
6604963192	Technique	Methods of the author, tone, opposition, etc.	122
6604963944	THEME	Main idea of overall work, central idea, topic of discourse/discussion	123
6604964292	Thesis	Main position of an argument	124
6604964293	Tragic flaw	Weakness of character in good individual that ultimately leads to demise	125
6604964683	Travesty	Grotesque parody	126
6604964684	Truism	Way-too-obvious truth	127
6604964962	Utopia	Idealized place, imaginary community where people live in happiness	128
6604966019	Zeugma	Use of word to modify two or more words, used for different meanings (e.x. He closed the door and his heart on his lost love).	129