Ap Literature Vocab Flashcards

8004811018	allegory	a piece of literature that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, normally of political or moral nature	0
8004813927	ballad	a poem that is typically arranged in quatrains with the rhyme scheme ABAB. Ballads are usually narrative, which means they tell a story. Ballads began as folk songs and continue to be used today in modern music.	1
8004818723	apostrophe	a punctuation used to indicate either possession or the omission of letters or numbers	2
8004821693	stanza	a group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse	3
8004823228	theme	the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a person's thoughts, or an exhibition; a topic	4
8004827640	elegy	A poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.	5
8004832045	epic	A long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition.	6
8004833343	epithet	An adjective or descriptive phrase expressing a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned.	7
8004840794	rhetoric	the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing.	8
8004844209	soliloquy	an act of speaking one's thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play.	9
8004848974	vignette	a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or character and gives a trenchant impression about that character, an idea, setting, and/or object.	10
8004852535	aphorism	a statement of truth or opinion expressed in a concise and witty manner.	11
8004860781	aubade	a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn	12
8004864155	apotheosis	exaltation to divine rank or stature; deification	13
8004866615	asyndeton	a stylistic device used in literature and poetry to intentionally eliminate conjunctions between the phrases and in the sentence, yet maintain the grammatical accuracy	14
8004869080	bathos	when a writer or a poet falls into inconsequential and absurd metaphors, descriptions or ideas in an effort to be increasingly emotional or passionate	15
8004873616	bombast	a noun meaning pretentious or boastful talk	16
8004876275	caesura	a pause in a line that is formed by the rhythms of natural speech rather than meter	17
8004878422	chiasmus	a rhetorical device in which two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures in order to produce an artistic effect	18
8004883120	catharsis	an emotional discharge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from anxiety and stress	19
8004887688	conceit	a kind of metaphor that compares two very unlike things in a surprising and clever way	20
8004892663	didactic verse	a novel, play or poem that aims to teach us something	21
8004895661	epigram	a short but insightful statement, often in verse form, which communicates a thought in a witty, paradoxical, or funny way.	22
8004899052	foil	a character that shows qualities that are in contrast with the qualities of another character with the objective to highlight the traits of the other character.	23
8004901234	foot	the most basic unit of a poem's meter	24
8004903027	iamb	a foot containing unaccented and short syllables followed by a long and accented syllable in a single line of a poem	25
8004907881	form	a piece of writing is simply its structure, how it is constructed and organized	26
8004911009	hamartia	the protagonist's error or tragic flaw that leads to a chain of plot actions culminating in a reversal of their good fortune to bad	27
8004914845	hexameter	a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet.	28
8004916157	homily	any serious talk, speech, or lecture providing moral or spiritual advice.	29
8004919503	hyperbole	a figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or overstatement. example: "mountains of roast and boiled potatoes" (Rowling 203) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	30
8004922851	gustatory imagery	imagery related to the sense of taste	31
8004925501	olfactory imagery	imagery related to the sense of sight	32
8004927360	juxtaposition	two or more ideas, places, characters and their actions are placed side by side in a narrative or a poem for the purpose of developing comparisons and contrasts.	33
8004930717	neoclassicism	a movement inspired by classical culture	34
8004932935	motif	any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story	35