AP Literature Literary Terms Flashcards

6420750575	Alliteration	The repetition of initial sounds, usually consonants, in successive or neighboring words	0
6420750576	Allusion	A reference to something literary, mythological, or historical that the author assumes the reader will recognize	1
6420750577	Ambiguity	A word or idea that can be understood in multiple ways; frequently refers to the condition of being obscure or difficult to understand	2
6420750573	Anagnorisis	Recognition of truth about one's self and his actions; moment of clarity	3
6420750578	Anachronism	The misplacement of a person, occurrence, custom, or idea in time; also may refer to an individual or thing that is incorrectly placed in time	4
6420750579	Analysis	Separating something into the components or elements of which it is made for close study	5
6430268805	Antihero	a leading character who is not, like a hero, perfect or even outstanding, but is rather ordinary and representative of the more or less average person	6
6420750580	Antithesis	means opposite and is used as a literary device to put two contrasting ideas together	7
6420750581	Apostrophe	A figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or dead person, or to an object, quality, or idea	8
6420750582	Archetype	A theme, motif, symbol or stock character holding a familiar place in a culture's consciousness OR an original model on which copies are made	9
6420750583	Assonance	The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sequence of nearby words	10
6420750584	Asyndeton	A construction in which elements are presented in a series without conjunctions	11
6420750586	Cacophony/dissonance	The clash of discordant or harsh sounds within a sentence or phrase	12
6420750587	Catharsis	A cleansing or purification of one's emotions through art	13
6420750588	Characterization	The method of acquainting readers with characters by creating well-developed characters--the techniques a writer uses to develop various types of characters	14
6420750589	Cliche	An expression that has been used so frequently it has lost its expressive power	15
6420750590	Climax	The point of highest interest or greatest intensity in a literary work, or the major turning point in the plot	16
6420750591	Colloquialism	Informal expression, or slang term--acceptable in conversation by not usually in formal writing	17
6420750592	Conceit	A fanciful, particularly clever extended metaphor	18
6420750593	Conflict	The problem or struggle in a narrative	19
6420750594	Connotation	The association or implied meaning that a word carries along with its literal meaning	20
6420750595	Consonance	The repetition of consonants in a sequence of nearby words, especially at the end of stressed syllables when there is no similar repetition of vowel sounds	21
6420750596	Couplet	A pair of rhyming lines in a poem	22
6420750597	Denotation	The explicit, literal meaning of a word	23
6420750598	Diction	Specific word choice made by an author, often for effect but also for correctness and clarity	24
6420750599	Dramatic irony/tragic irony	Technique in which the author lets the audience in on a character's situation while the character remains uninformed	25
6420750600	Dramatic monologue	a poem in which a character speaks to one or more listeners who remain silent or whose replies are not revealed	26
6420750601	Emphasis	Force or intensity of expression brought to bear on a particular part of a text or speech	27
6420750602	Enjambment	The continuation of syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem into the next with no pause	28
6420750574	Epiphany	A moment of sudden revelation or insight	29
6420750603	Euphemism	An indirect, less offensive way of saying something that is considered unpleasant or vulgar	30
6420750604	Euphony	A pleasing arrangement of sounds	31
6420750605	Foil	A character who illuminates the qualities of another character by means of contrast	32
6420750606	Foreshadow	To present ideas, images, events, or comments that hint at events to come in a story	33
6420750607	Hubris	Excessive pride or arrogance that results in the downfall of the protagonist	34
6420750608	Hyperbole	Excessive overstatement or conscious exaggeration of fact for effect	35
6420750610	Imagery	Language that brings to mind sense-impressions, especially via figures of speech	36
6420750611	Inversion	The syntactic reversal of the normal order of the words and phrases in a sentence	37
6420750612	Juxtaposition	Technique of placing two elements side by side to present a compare/contrast of the two	38
6420750613	Metonymy	A figure of speech substituting the name of one object for another object closely associated with it	39
6420750614	Mood	The emotional atmosphere created by a work (most notably by its setting)	40
6420750615	Motif	A recurring idea, structure, contrast, or device that develops or informs the major themes of a work	41
6420750616	Motivation	A psychological factor that provides a directional force or reason for behavior.	42
6420750617	Narrator	The one who tells the story; may be first- or third-person, limited or omniscient	43
6420750618	Nostalgia	A yearning for the past or for some condition or state of existence that cannot be recovered	44
6420750619	Octave	An eight-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the first eight lines of an Italian sonnet	45
6420750620	Onomatopoeia	Words that sound like the thing or action they refer to	46
6420750621	Overstatement	An exaggeration of fact	47
6420750622	Paradox	A statement that seems absurd or even contradictory but that often expresses a deeper truth	48
6420750623	Parallelism	Phrases or sentences of a similar construction/meaning placed side by side, balancing each other	49
6420750624	Petrarchan/Italian sonnet	a sonnet which consists of an octave and a sestet with the rhyme scheme being abbaabba cdecde. There is usually a pronounced tonal shift between the octave and sestet as well.	50
6420750625	Polysyndeton	The use, for rhetorical effect, of more conjunctions than is necessary or natural	51
6420750626	Pun	A play on words that exploits the similarity in sound between two words with distinctly different meanings	52
6420750627	Quatrain	A four-line stanza with a rhyming pattern	53
6420750628	Repetition	Bringing up words or ideas on multiple occasions to emphasize the importance of these words or ideas	54
6420750629	Retrospection	A narrative technique in which some of the events of a story are described after events that occur later in time have already been narrated; also called analepsis and flashback	55
6420750630	Satire	A work (usually humorous) that exposes to ridicule the shortcomings of individuals, institutions, or society, often to make a political point	56
6420750631	Sestet	A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an Italian sonnet	57
6420750632	Setting	The location of a narrative in time and space creating mood and/or atmosphere	58
6420750633	Shakespearean/English sonnet	a sonnet which consists of three quatrains and a couplet. The most common rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg.	59
6420750634	Shifts/turns	Changes in the speaker's attitude. Look for key words such as but, yet, however, and although, punctuation, and stanza division.	60
6420750635	Situational irony	Technique in which one understanding of a situation stands in sharp contrast to another, usually more prevalent, understanding of the same situation	61
6420750636	Soliloquy	A speech in which a character does not address others	62
6420750638	Speaker	The personage or persona responsible for the voice in a piece of literature; should not be confused with the author	63
6420750639	Stanza	A fixed number of lines of verse forming a unit of a poem	64
6420750640	Stream-of-consciousness	A writing style in which the author tries to reproduce the random flow of thoughts in the human mind	65
6420750641	Structure	The arrangement or framework of a sentence, paragraph, or entire work	66
6420750642	Style	The choices an author makes; the combination of distinctive features of a literary work	67
6420750643	Symbolism	The use of objects, characters, figures, or colors to represent abstract ideas or concepts	68
6420750644	Synecdoche	A figure of speech, using one part of an object to represent the entire object	69
6420750645	Syntax	The way the words in a piece of writing are arranged into sentences	70
6420750646	Theme	A fundamental and universal idea explored in a literary work; a central idea of a work	71
6420750647	Thesis	The primary position taken by a writer or speaker--a statement of purpose, intent, or main idea of an essay	72
6420750648	Tone	The attitude of an author, usually implied, toward the subject or audience	73
6420750572	Tragic flaw	A character trait that leads to the downfall of a hero, while also (often) making him admirable	74
6420750650	Turning point	A point in a work in which a very significant change occurs	75
6420750651	Understatement	The deliberate representation of something as lesser in magnitude than it actually is; a deliberate under-emphasis	76
6420750652	Unreliable narration	A process of narrating in which the narrator is revealed over time to be an untrustworthy source of information	77
6420750653	Verbal irony	The use of a statement that, because of its context, means its opposite	78
6420750654	Voice	An author's individual way of using language to reflect his/her own personality and attitudes; communicated through tone, word choice (or diction), and sentence structure	79