AP Literature Terms (OHS) Flashcards

5265220648	allegory	a figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary metaphorical meaning	0
5265220649	allusion	an indirect reference	1
5265220650	coming-of-age story	a type of novel where the protagonist is initiated into adulthood through knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment	2
5265220651	conceit	an extended and elaborated comparison	3
5265220652	detail	the selection of individual events, names, description, and so on that make up the content of a work	4
5265220653	diction	word choice	5
5265220654	dramatic irony	the irony felt when the audience is aware of important information that a character is not aware of	6
5265220655	frame	a narrative structure that provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative in a novel	7
5265220656	imagery	language that appeals vividly to the senses	8
5265220657	irony	something contrary to what is expected and yet having a peculiar kind of fitness	9
5265220658	parody	a work intended to poke fun at another work or other specific target through imitation, exaggeration, and ridicule	10
5265220659	persona	the personality adopted for or reflected in an act of communication	11
5265220660	sarcasm	verbal irony aimed at ridiculing a specific target	12
5265220661	satire	a work intended to critique society, institutions, etc., through ridicule	13
5265220662	situational irony	when the circumstances themselves are ironic	14
5265220663	style	the author's characteristic approach and use of language	15
5265220664	syntax	the rules for, and art of, constructing sentences	16
5265220665	tone	the narrator's attitude toward the subject	17
5265220666	verbal irony	words that are the opposite of what is really meant	18
5265220667	voice	the narrator's persona and characteristic use of language	19
5265220668	burlesque	form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion	20
5265220669	caricature	a representation in which the subject's distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect	21
5265220670	colloquialism	use of slang or informal language-includes regional dialect	22
5265220671	deflation	an object either assumes or is given elevated status and then is treated in such as way that estimation of the object decreases	23
5265220672	disparagement	to speak of in a slighting way; belittle; reduce in rank or esteem	24
5265220673	euphemism	a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept	25
5265220674	farce	a light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot, exaggerated character, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect	26
5265220675	high comedy	pure or serious comedy that appeals to the intellect and arouses thoughtful laughter	27
5265220676	hyperbole	exaggeration or overstatement	28
5265220677	incongruity	surprising contrast occurring through situation, image, allusion, character, diction, anachronism, etc.	29
5265220678	invective	harsh, abusive language directed against a person or cause	30
5265220679	lampoon	a broad satirical piece that uses ridicule to attack a person or group	31
5265220680	litotes	a form of understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite	32
5265220681	low comedy	comedy that lacks seriousness of purpose or subtlety of manner and has little intellectual appeal	33
5265220682	malapropism	an inappropriateness of speech resulting from the use of one word for another which resembles it	34
5265220683	non-sequitur	inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premise or evidence	35
5265220684	oxymoron	a group of apparently contradictory terms suggesting a paradox	36
5265220685	paradox	a statement or situation that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity	37
5265220686	slapstick	boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes	38
5265220687	travesty	presents a serious (often religious) subject frivolously and reduces everything to its lowest level	39
5265220688	adventure novel	a novel where exciting events are more important than character development and sometimes theme	40
5265220689	anecdote	a summarized version of a story, generally told to illustrate a point	41
5265220690	bildungsroman	a novel concerned with the development of the protagonist's mind, spirit, and character from childhood to adulthood	42
5265220691	dystopian novel	an anti-utopian novel where, instead of a paradise, everything has gone wrong in the attempt to create a perfect society	43
5265220692	episodic plot	a plot that consists of a series of smaller stories	44
5265220693	epistolary novel	this first person narrative progresses in the form of letters, journals, or diaries	45
5265220694	existentialist novel	a novel written from an existentialist viewpoint, often pointing out the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence	46
5265220695	frame	a narrative structure that provides a setting and exposition for the main narrative in a novel	47
5265220696	gothic novel	a novel in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of unknown terror pervades the action	48
5265220697	novel of manners	a work that defines the social mores of a specific group, often the upper-middle class, which control the actions of the characters	49
5265220698	novel	an extended prose fiction narrative of 50,000 words or more, broadly realistic--concerning the everyday events of ordinary people--and concerned with character	50
5265220699	novella	an extended prose fiction narrative longer than a short story but shorter than a novel	51
5265220700	picaresque	a novel that relates the adventures of an eccentric or disreputable hero in episodic form	52
5265220701	regional novel	represents accurately the habits, speech, and folklore of a particular geographical section	53
5265220702	roman a clef	a novel in which historical events and actual people are written about under the pretense of being fiction	54
5265220703	romance	an extended fictional prose narrative about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people	55
5265220704	sentimental fiction	a type of novel, popular in the eighteenth century, that overemphasizes emotion and seeks to create emotional responses in the reader	56
5265220705	utopian novel	a novel that depicts an ideal world	57
5265220706	verisimilitude	the appearance of reality	58
5265220707	vignette	a brief, descriptive narrative piece that does not tell a complete story	59
5265220708	apostrophe	addressing speech to something insensate	60
5265220709	assonance	the use of similar vowel sounds repeated in successive or proximate words containing different consonants	61
5265220710	ballad meter	four lines of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimester	62
5265220711	blank verse	unrhymed iambic pentameter	63
5265220712	caesura	a pause, metrical or rhetorical, occurring somewhere in a line of poetry	64
5265220713	elegy	a poem eulogizing the dead	65
5265220714	end-stopped	a line that has a natural pause at the end (period, comma, etc.)	66
5265220715	enjambment	the running over of a sentence or thought into the next couplet or line without a pause at the end of the line; a run-on line	67
5265220716	eye-rhyme	words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough, etc)	68
5265220717	foot	the smallest unit of verse	69
5265220718	free verse	poetry that has no pattern of rhyme or rhythm	70
5265220719	heroic couplet	two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter	71
5265220720	iamb	a set of two syllables in which the accent is on the second syllable	72
5265220721	internal rhyme	rhyme within a line of poetry	73
5265220722	metonymy	a figurative device that uses a closely associated object, etc., to stand in for the person or thing that is the real subject	74
5265220723	musical devices	techniques that can be used to create a desired "sound" to a passage of language, such as alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition, rhyme and rhythm	75
5265220724	near rhyme	words that nearly rhyme but are not true rhymes	76
5265220725	octave	a set or stanza of eight lines generally rhymed abbaabba	77
5265220726	ode	dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally	78
5265220727	onomatopoeia	words that mimic the sounds of the objects they name	79
5265220728	synecdoche	the use of the whole to represent one of its parts or the use of a part to represent the whole	80
5265220729	aside	a brief speech that excludes at least one character from hearing	81
5265220730	catharsis	the purging of the feelings of pity and fear that, according to Aristotle, occur in the audience of tragic drama	82
5265220731	comic relief	the use of a comic scene to interrupt a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments	83
5265220732	dialogue	the lines spoken by the characters	84
5265220733	deus ex machina	a god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention. the latin phrase means, literally, 'a god from the machine.' the phrase refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play	85
5265220734	everyman	a character found in medieval morality plays, intended to allegorically represent mankind; thus, any literary character intended to function more or less as a stand-in for mankind	86
5265220735	foil	a character meant to parallel another character in most ways so that some important difference can be highlighted	87
5265220736	fourth wall	the imaginary wall of the box theater setting, supposedly removed to allow the audience to see the action	88
5265220737	hamartia	Aristotle's term for a "tragic error"	89
5265220738	melodrama	a form of play that intensifies sentiment, exaggerates emotions, and relates sensational and thrilling action with four basic sharply contrasted and simplified characters: the hero, the heroine, their comic ally, and a villain	90
5265220739	monologue	a long speech by one character that has an intended audience	91
5265220740	morality play	a common medieval european dramatic form in which the adventures of allegorical characters taught the audience christian values	92
5265220741	reversal	the point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist	93
5265220742	soliloquy	a long speech by one character with no intended audience	94
5265220743	stage directions	a playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play	95
5265220744	anadiplosis	repetition of a word or phrase that ends one clause at the beginning of the next	96
5265220745	anaphora	the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines	97
5265220746	antistrophe	repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses	98
5265220747	antithesis	opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction	99
5265220748	asyndeton	lack of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words	100
5265220749	cacophony	harsh joining of sounds	101
5265220750	chiasmus	a crossing parallelism, where the second part of a grammatical construction is balanced or paralleled by the first part, only in reverse order	102
5265220751	diacope	repetition with only one or two words between each repeated phrase	103
5265220752	epithet	an adjective or adjective phrase appropriately qualifying a subject (noun) by naming a key or important characteristic of the subject, as in "laughing happiness," "sneering contempt," "untroubled sleep," "peaceful dawn," and "life-giving water."	104
5265220753	epizeuxis	repetition of words in immediate succession, for vehemence or emphasis	105
5265220754	juxtaposition	positioning of two elements next to one another in order to make a point	106
5265220755	lyrical	prose that is particularly poetic, musical, and expressive	107
5265220756	parallelism	a repeated pattern of syntax	108
5265220757	paraprosdokian	surprise or unexpected ending of a phrase or series	109
5265220758	paronomasia	use of similar sounding words; often etymological word-play	110
5265220759	polysyndeton	the repetition of conjunctions in a series of coordinate words, phrases, or clauses	111
5265220760	rhetorical question	a question meant to provoke thought and not meant to be answered	112
5265220761	sentimentality	a pejorative term used to describe the effort by an author to induce emotional responses in the reader that exceed what the situation warrants	113
5265220762	structure	the order in which a piece is presented and any devices or features that reinforce or give meaning to this order	114
5265220763	Apollonian	having to do with the god Apollo, with ideas associated with Apollo-justice, balance, rules, order, life, consciousness-or with symbols of Apollo-the sun, light, etc.	115
5265220764	archetype	a repeated pattern in a culture's literature	116
5265220765	aubade	a poem about dawn, or about lovers in the morning	117
5265220766	connotations	the cultural associations, whether positive (honorific) or negative (pejorative), charged or not, that make the true meaning of a word more than its denotation	118
5265220767	denotation	the dictionary meaning of a word-its most basic meaning	119
5265220768	didactic	preaching or lecturing	120
5265220769	Dionysian	having to do with the god Dionysus, with ideas associated with Dionysus-chaos, celebration, drunkenness, sexuality, discord, death, the subconscious-or with symbols of Dionysus-the ocean, etc.	121
5265220770	editorializing	writing that departs from the narrative or dramatic mode and instructs the reader how to think or feel about the events of a story or behavior of a character	122
5265220771	epigram	a brief verse or statement that is clever in its concise and witty use of words	123
5265220772	epiphany	a moment in which a character achieves a spiritual insight into life or into his or her own circumstances; the moment at which a character most truly knows him- or herself	124
5265220773	grotesque	irregular, extravagant, and fantastic in form	125
5265220774	in medias res	a story that is already in progress at the point when the narrative begins	126
5265220775	indeterminate ending	an ending in which the central conflict is not resolved or is resolved ambiguously	127
5265220776	internal monologue	a character's actual thoughts, rather than a summary of these thoughts, given as they happen, not altered to suit the needs of a reader or the tense of the narrative	128
5265220777	motif	a repeated pattern (of symbols, images, etc.) found in a piece of literature; more individual to an author or a particular work than the archetype, which is culturally determined	129
5265220778	prose poem	a short composition having the intentions of poetry but not written in verse	130
5265220779	shift	a change in structure, in tone, in narrative point of view, in mood or atmosphere, etc	131
5265220780	synesthesia	presentation of one sense in terms usually associated with another sense	132
5265220781	unreliable narrator	a narrator who is, for one of any number of reasons, not capable of accuracy and whom we are encouraged to distrust	133