AP English Literature Terms Flashcards

4384770944	Allegory	Characters, events, and settings represent abstract ideas and principles and have an underlying meaning	0
4384770945	Alliteration	The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are close to one another	1
4384770946	Allusion	A brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or idea of significance	2
4384770947	Ambiguity	A word, phrase, or statement with more than one meaning	3
4384770948	Anachronism	Something located at a time when it could not have existed or occurred	4
4384770949	Analogy	Drawing a comparison in order to show a similarity in some respect	5
4384770950	Anaphora	The deliberate repition of the first part of the sentence	6
4384770951	Antagonist	Stands in opposition to the protagonist/main character; villain	7
4384770952	Antihero	A prominent character whose qualities are opposite to a conventional hero	8
4384770953	Antithesis	A contrast emphasized by parallelism	9
4384770954	Aphorism	A short concise instructive saying that embodies a moral	10
4384770955	Apostrophe	The speaker addresses an imaginary, inanimate, or absent person, thing, or idea in his speech	11
4384770956	Aside	A comment made by a character in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience, but not other characters	12
4384770957	Assonance	Two or more words that are close to each other have the same vowel sound but start with different consonance sounds	13
4384770958	Archetype	Something that serves as a model or a basis for making copies shared by by people across cultures	14
4384770959	Ballad	A narrative song with a recurrent refrain or a narrative poem of popular origin	15
4384770960	Bathos	Insincere pathos (also a malapropism)	16
4384770961	Blank Verse	Unrhymed verse, usually in iambic pentameter	17
4384770962	Bildungsroman	A novel dealing with someone's formative years	18
4384770963	Cadence	The accent in a metrical foot of verse	19
4384770964	Caesura	A pause or interruption in a line of poetry	20
4384770965	Canto	A major division of a long poem	21
4384770966	Catharsis	Purging of fear and pity that occur in the audience of a tragedy/drama	22
4384770967	Characterization	The act of describing distinctive characteristics or essential features	23
4384770968	Climax	The specific point in a story when the conflict or tension hits the highest point	24
4384770969	Colloquialism	The use of informal words, phrases, or slang in a piece of writing	25
4384770970	Comedy	Light and humorous drama with a happy ending	26
4384770971	Conceit	An elaborate poetic image or a far-fetched comparison of very dissimilar things (extended metaphor)	27
4384770972	Conflict	A struggle between two opposing forces	28
4384770973	Connotation	A meaning implied by a word aside from its explicit meaning; can be positive or negative	29
4384770974	Consonance	Repetition of consonants within a phrase	30
4384770975	Couplet	A stanza consisting of two successive lines of verse; usually rhymed	31
4384770976	Denotation	Literal meanings of words	32
4384770977	Dénouement	The resolution of an issue in a complicated plot	33
4384770978	Dialect	The language, spelling, grammar, and punctuation used by people in a specific area, class, district, etc.	34
4384770979	Diction	The style of speaking or writing determined by the writer's choice of words	35
4384770980	Didactic	Instructive, especially excessively	36
4384770981	Direct Characterization	The author specifically reveals traits about the character in a direct, straightforward manner	37
4384770982	Dramatic Monologue	A poem in the form of a speech or narrative in which the speaker reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events	38
4384770983	Dynamic Character	A character who undergoes change through actuons and events in the plot	39
4384770984	Dystopia	A work of fiction describing an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation, oppression, or terror	40
4384770985	Elegy	A mournful poem; a lament for the dead	41
4384770986	Enjambment	The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pause in poetry	42
4384770987	Epic	A long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds	43
4384770988	Epigram	A brief witty poem; often satirical	44
4384770989	Epigraph	A quotation at the beginning of some piece of writing	45
4384770990	Epistolary Novel	A novel written in the form of letters or correspondence	46
4384770991	Epithet	A defamatory or abusive word or phrase	47
4384770992	Ethos	Persuasion by ethics	48
4384770993	Euphemism	An inoffensive or indirect expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive or too harsh	49
4384770994	Eurocentrism	Belief in the preeminence of Europe and Europeans	50
4384770995	Equivocation	Possession of more than one meaning	51
4384770996	Exposition	Introduces background info of the setting, character, events, etc.	52
4384770997	Fable	A short moral story (often with animal characters); a story about mythical or supernatural beings or events	53
4384770998	Farce	A comedy characterized by broad satire and improbable situations	54
4384770999	Figurative Language	Uses words whose meanings differ from their loteral meanings	55
4384771000	First Person Point of View	A point of view where the story is narrated by one character at a time who is speaking about him or herself or sharing events that he or she is experiencing	56
4384771001	Foil	A character whose traits serve to show opposition to another character's good qualities	57
4384771002	Foreshadowing	An advance hint of what will occur later in the story	58
4384771003	Free Verse	Unrhymed verse without a consistent metrical pattern	59
4384771004	Genre	A kind of literary or artistic work	60
4384771005	Hegemony	The dominance or leadership of one social group or nation over others	61
4384771006	Hero	A man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength	62
4384771007	Heroic Couplet	A couplet consisting of two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter and written in an elevated style	63
4384771008	Hubris	Overbearing pride or presumption	64
4384771009	Hyperbole	An extreme exaggeration of ideas for emphasis	65
4384771010	Idyll	An episode of such pastoral or romantic charm as to quantify as the subject of a poetic idyll	66
4384771011	Indirect Characterization	The narrator shows the reader something about the character through the character's actions, things the character says, or things other characters say	67
4384771012	In Medias Res	Into or in the middle	68
4384771013	Interior Monologue	A literary genre that presents a fictional character's sequence of thoughts in the form of a monologue	69
4384771014	Intertextuality	The idea that a given text is a responsr to what has already been written, whether it is explicit or implicit	70
4384771015	Invective	Abusive or venemous language used to express blame or censure or bitter deep-seated ill will	71
4384771016	Inversion	The reversal of the normal order of words	72
4384771017	Irony	A difference between appearance and reality; intended meaning is different from the actual meaning; a situation ended in a different way than expected	73
4384771018	Juxtaposition	The act of positioning things close together (comparing)	74
4384771019	Kenning	Conventional metaphoric name for something (epithet for a thing)	75
4384771020	Limited Omniscient POV	The narrator only knows the thoughts and feelings of one character and all characters are described using pronouns	76
4384771021	Litotes	Understatement for rhetorical effect	77
4384771022	Local Color	Regionalism	78
4384771023	Lyrical Ballad	A type of poetry or verse used as songs	79
4384771024	Lyric Poem	A short poem of songlike quality	80
4384771025	Malapropism	The unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar	81
4384771026	Metaphysical Poetry	Characterized by the inventive use of conceits and by questioning abstract topics	82
4384771027	Meter	The accent in a metrical foot of a verse	83
4384771028	Metonymy	Substituting the name of an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself	84
4384771029	Metrical Feet	A group of 2 or 3 syllables forming the basic unit of poetic rhythm	85
4384771030	Misanthrope	Someone who dislikes people in general	86
4384771031	Mock Epic	Satires or parodies that mock common Classical stereotypes of heroes or heroic literature	87
4384771032	Motif	A unifying idea that is a recurrent element in literacy or artistic work	88
4384771033	Misogynist	A misanthrope who dislikes women in particular	89
4384771034	Objective POV	The narrator tells what happens factually and never states what characters may feel or think	90
4384771035	Ode	A lyric poem with complex stanza forms	91
4384771036	Omniscient POV	Third person where the narrator knows the feelings and thoughts of every character	92
4384771037	Onomatopoeia	A word that imitates a natural sound	93
4384771038	Oxymoron	Two opposite ideas are joined to make an effect	94
4384771039	Parable	A short moral story	95
4384771040	Paradox	A statement appearing to be self-contradictory or silly, but may include truth	96
4384771041	Parallelism	Phrases/sentences put close to each other with the same structure	97
4384771042	Parody	An imitation of a writer, artist, or genre, exaggerating it to produce a comedic effect	98
4384771043	Pastoral	A literary work idealizing the rural lofe	99
4384771496	Pathos	Persuasion by emotion; stimulates the audience to feel pity and sorrow	100
4384771497	Persona	A personality an author takes on	101
4384771498	Personification	A thing, idea, or animal is given human characteristics	102
4384771499	Petrarchan Sonnet	A sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern "abbaabba" followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern "cdecde" or "cdcdcd"	103
4384771500	POV	Perspective, way of considering things	104
4384771501	Primary Epic	A written epic, or a long narrative poem, which presents characters of high position in a series of adventures and are often of heroic proportions	105
4384771502	Prose	Ordinary writing as distingushed from verse	106
4384771503	Protagonist	The central character in a story	107
4384771504	Regionalism	A feature characteristic of a particular region (local color)	108
4384771505	Rhetoric	Using language effectively to please or persuade	109
4384771506	Rhetorical Question	A statement that is formulated as a question but that is not supposed to be answered	110
4384771507	Rhyme	Repetition of similar sounding words at the end of each line	111
4384771508	Rhythm	Demonstrates the long and short patterns through stressed and unstressed syllables	112
4384771509	Romance	A novel dealing with idealized events remote from everyday life	113
4384771510	Satire	Exposes and criticizes foolishness and corruption of an individual or a society by using irony, humor, exaggeration, or ridicule	114
4384771511	Schemata	An internal representation of the world	115
4384771512	Scheme	Deals with syntax, diction, sounds, but not meanings	116
4384771513	Secondary Epic	Written epics that were traditionally told orally	117
4384771514	Setting	The place where an event takes place	118
4384771515	Shakespearean Sonnet	A sonnet consisting of three quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern "abab cdcd efef gg"	119
4384771516	Slant Rhyme	Type of rhyme formed by words of similar sounds, but not identical as in a typical rhyme	120
4384771517	Soliloquy	A dramatic speech intended to give the illusion of unspoken reflections	121
4384771518	Sonnet	A verse form consisting of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme	122
4384771519	Stanza	A fixed number of lines of verse forming a unit of a poem	123
4384771520	Static Character	A character who does not change throughout the plot	124
4384771521	Style	The way a writer writes the technique an author uses	125
4384771522	Subjugate	To put down by force or intimidation, conquer, or subdue	126
4384771523	Symbol	Something that represents another thought, idea, or thing	127
4384771524	Synecdoche	Substituting a more inclusive term for a less inclusive one or vice versa	128
4384771525	Synesthesia	A close association or confusion of sense impressions	129
4384771526	Syntax	A set of rules in a language; the way words are put together to express a thought	130
4384771527	Theme	A main idea or an underlying meaning hat can be directly or indirectly stated	131
4384771528	Thesis	A statement that a writer intends to support or prove in a work	132
4384771529	Third Person POV	Narrated by an outside person not involved in the story	133
4384771530	Tone	The attitude of the writer toward the subject or audience and is conveyed through word choice	134
4384771531	Tragedy	Drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance	135
4384771532	Tragic Flaw	The character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall	136
4384771533	Tragic Hero	A person with heroic or potentially heroic qualities who is fated to doom and destruction	137
4384771534	Transition	A change from one place, state, subject, or stage to another	138
4384771535	Trope	Changes meaning of a word	139
4384771536	Understatement	A statement restrained in ironic contrast to what might have been said	140
4384771537	Unity of Design	All the elements in a work fit together and make a harmonious effect	141
4384771538	Verisimilitude	The appearance of truth, willing suspension of disbelief	142
4384771539	Wit	Reason or reasoning ability	143