AP Literature and Composition Vocabulary Flashcards

2496057278	abstract	a style in writing that is typically complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, and seldom uses examples to support its points	0
2496057279	academic	an adjective describing style; dry and theoretical writing; piece of writing seems to be sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis	1
2496057280	accent	in poetry, the stressed portion of a word; sometimes set, often a matter of opinion	2
2496057281	aesthetic	adj.: "appealing to the senses"; noun: coherent (logically connected) sense of taste	3
2496057282	aesthetics	the study of beauty; "What is beauty?" "Is the beautiful always good?"	4
2496057283	allegory	a story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself; many fables have this quality; true ones are even more hard and fast; example: Orwell's Animal Farm	5
2496057284	alliteration	the repetition of INITIAL consonant sounds; consonant clusters coming closely cramped and compressed	6
2496057285	allusion	a reference to another work or famous figures; can be classical (refers to Greek and Roman mythology or literature), topical (refers to current event), or popular (refers to something from pop culture--TV show or hit movie)	7
2496057286	anachronism	Greek for "misplaced in time"; something or someone that isn't in its correct historical or chronological time--i.e., Brutus wearing a watch	8
2496057287	analogy	a comparison usually involving two or more symbolic parts; employed to clarify an action or relationship	9
2496057288	anecdote	a short narrative	10
2496057289	antecedent	the word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to	11
2496057290	anthropomorphism	when inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behaviour, or motivation--"In the forest, the darkness waited for me, I could hear its patient breathing."	12
2496057291	anticlimax	occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect; frequently comic	13
2496057292	antihero	a protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities	14
2496057293	aphorism	a short and usually witty saying; astute observation--"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Lord Acton)	15
2496057294	apostrophe	a figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman, absent, or dead	16
2496057295	archaism	the use of deliberately old-fashioned language, used to create a feeling of antiquity	17
2496057296	aside	a speech (usually just a short comment) made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping outside of the action on stage	18
2496057297	aspect	a trait or characteristic	19
2496057298	assonance	the repeated use of vowel sounds--"Old king Cole was a merry old soul."	20
2496057299	atmosphere	the emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene	21
2496057300	ballad	a long, narrative poem, usually in regular meter and rhyme; typically has a naive folksy quality that sets it apart from epic poetry	22
2496057301	bathos	when the writing of a scene strains for grandeur it can't support and tries to jerk tears from every little hiccup; intends to be dramatic but goes to the extreme of becoming ridiculous	23
2496057302	pathos	when the writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy	24
2496057303	black humor	the use of disturbing themes in comedy; morbid humor used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox, and cruelty of the modern world, ordinary characters or situations exaggerated beyond normal limits of satire or irony	25
2496057304	bombast	pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language; one tries to be eloquent by using the largest, most uncommon words	26
2496057305	burlesque	broad parody, one that takes a style or form, such as tragic drama, and exaggerates it into ridiculousness; achieves its effects through caricature, ridicule, and distortion, devoid of any ethical element; interchangeable with parody	27
2496057306	cacophony	using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds--the sound of midday traffic	28
2496057307	cadence	the beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense e.g., iambic pentameter; can be gentle and pulsing, conversational, and even vigorous, marching	29
2496057308	canto	the name for a section division in a long work of poetry; divides a long poem into parts the way chapters divide a novel--like in Dante's Inferno	30
2496057309	caricature	a portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality	31
2496057310	catharsis	drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy; refers to the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences, having lived (vicariously) through the experiences presented on stage; purging of emotions through a form of art, in this case, literature	32
2496057311	chorus	the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it	33
2496057312	classic	typical; an accepted masterpiece	34
2496057313	classical	refers to the arts of ancient Greece and Rome and the qualities of those arts	35
2496057314	coinage (tech. term: neologism)	a new word, usually one invented on the spot	36
2496057315	colloquialism	a word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "schoolbook" English; slang words, informal English	37
2496057316	complex, dense	two terms carrying the similar meaning of suggesting that there is more than one posibilty in the meaning of words (image, idea, opposition); there are subtleties and variations; there are multiple layers of interpretation; the meaning is both explicit and implicit	38
2496057317	conceit	refers to a startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon over several lines	39
2496057318	controlling image	when the image of conceit dominates and shapes the entire work	40
2496057319	connotation	what a word suggests or implies, not its literal meaning--i.e., dark meaning dangerous instead lacking of light	41
2496057320	denotation	the literal meaning of a word	42
2496057321	consonance	the repetition of consonant sounds WITHIN words--"A flock of sick, black-checkered ducks."	43
2496057322	couplet	a pair of lines that end in rhyme	44
2496057323	decorum	in order to observe, a character's speech must be styled according to his or her social station, and in accordance with the occasion--bum speaks like a bum about bumly things	45
2496057324	diction	author's choice of words, choice of specific words	46
2496057325	syntax	author's choice of words; refers to the ordering and structuring of the words	47
2496057326	dirge	a song for the dead, tone is typically slow, heavy, and melancholy	48
2496057327	dissonance	the grating of incompatible sounds	49
2496057328	doggerel	crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme--i.e., limericks	50
2496057329	dramatic irony	when the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not	51
2496057330	dramatic monologue	when a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience	52
2496057331	elegy	a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner; often use the recent death of a noted or loved person as a starting point; also memorialize specific dead people	53
2496057332	elements	the basic techniques of each genre of literature	54
2496057333	enjambment	the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause--i.e.,	55
2496057334	epic	a very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter--i.e., great war, heroic journey, battle with supernatural, etc.	56
2496057335	mock-epic	parody form that deals with mundane events and ironically treats them as worthy of epic poetry	57
2496057336	epitaph	lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place; usually a line or a handful of lines, often serious or religious, but sometimes witty and even irreverent	58
2496057337	euphemism	a word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality--i.e., passed away for died, let go for fired	59
2496057338	euphony	when sounds blend harmoniously	60
2496057339	explicit	to say or write something directly and clearly	61
2496057340	farce	today it's used to refer to extremely broad humor; in earlier times, it was used to mean a simply funny play; a comedy (generic term for play then, btw, no implication of humor)	62
2496057341	feminine rhyme	lines rhymed by their final two syllables--running, gunning; properly, the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed	63
2496057342	foil	a secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast	64
2496057343	foot	the basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by a combination of two or three syllables, either stressed or unstressed	65
2496057344	foreshadowing	an event or statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later	66
2496057345	free verse	poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern	67
2496057346	genre	a subcategory of literature--i.e., scientific fiction, detective stories->types of fiction	68
2496057347	Gothic, Gothic novel	form first showed up in the middle of the 1700s, heyday of popularity for sixty years; sensibility: mysterious, gloomy, sinister	69
2496057348	hubris	the excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall--like Caesar	70
2496057349	hyperbole	exaggeration or deliberate overstatement: He has a watermelon head.	71
2496057350	implicit	to say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly; reading between the lines	72
2496057351	in medias res	Latin for "in the midst of things;" one of the conventions of epic poetry	73
2496057352	interior monologue	a term for novels and poetry, not dramatic literature; refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; related, but not identical to the stream of consciousness; tends to be coherent, as though the character is actually talking	74
2496057353	inversion	switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase--Yoda speech!	75
2496057354	*irony	comes in a variety of forms; a statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean, deeper than sarcasm though; an undertow of meaning	76
2496057355	lament	a poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss	77
2496057356	lampoon	a satire	78
2496057357	loose sentence	sentence is clear in the beginning, begins with main clause, followed by subordinates and modifiers	79
2496057358	periodic sentence	leaves the completion of its main clause to the end, often produces effect of suspense	80
2496057359	lyric	a type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world; when used to describe a tone, refers to a sweet, emotional melodiousness	81
2496057360	masculine rhyme	a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable--spent, went	82
2496057361	means, meaning	literal meaning-concrete and explicit; emotional meaning	83
2496057362	melodrama	a form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very, very good, the villain mean and rotten, and the heroine oh-so-pure	84
2496057363	metaphor	a comparison, or analogy that states one thing IS another--His eyes were burning coals.	85
2496057364	metonym	a word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with---"the crown" referring to the king, "The pen is mightier than the sword." (pen reps writers and ideas, sword reps war)	86
2496057365	nemesis	the protagonist's archenemy or supreme and persistent difficulty	87
2496057366	objectivity	treatment of a matter as impersonal or as an outside view of events	88
2496057367	subjectivity	treatment of a matter using the interior personal view of a single observer and is typically coloured with that observer's emotional responses	89
2496057368	onomatopoeia	words that sound how they're spelled--boom, splat	90
2496057369	opposition	a pair of elements that contrast sharply, not necessarily "conflict," rather a pairing of images, each becomes more striking and informative because it's placed in contrast to the other one; creates mystery and tension, can be obvious or lead to irony, not always though	91
2496057370	oxymoron	a phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction	92
2496057371	parable	a story that instructs like a fable or an allegory	93
2496057372	paradox	a situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, it does not---"It's raining, but I don't believe that it is."	94
2496057373	parallelism	repeated syntactical similarities used for effect--He likes playing the piano, eating cookies, and reading lengthy novels.	95
2496057374	paraphrase	to restate phrases and sentences in your own words, to rephrase; not an analysis or interpretation	96
2496057375	parenthetical phrase	a phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail	97
2496057376	parody	when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness	98
2496057377	pastoral	a poem set in a tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds	99
2496057378	persona	the narrator in a non-first-person novel. in third person, get an idea of author's personality, but isn't really the author's personality; shadow-author	100
2496057379	personification	giving an inanimate object human qualities or form--The darkness of the forest became the figure of a beautiful, pake-skinned woman in night-black clothes.	101
2496057380	plaint	a poem or speech expressing sorrow	102
2496057381	point of view	the perspective from which the action of a novel (or narrative poem) is presented	103
2496057382	omniscient narrator	third-person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action that's going on	104
2496057383	limited omniscient narrator	third-person narrator who generally reports only what one character (usually main character) sees, reports only thoughts of that one character	105
2496057384	objective/camera-eye narrator	third-person narrator who only reports on what would be visible to a camera, doesn't know what the character is thinking unless character speaks of it	106
2496057385	first-person narrator	narrator who is a character in the story and tells the story from his or her point of view; when crazy, a liar, or very young, narrator is unreliable	107
2496057386	stream of consciousness technique	method is like first-person, but instead of the character telling the story, the author puts the reader in the character's head	108
2496057387	prelude	an intro poem to a longer work or verse	109
2496057388	protagonist	the main character of a novel or play	110
2496057389	pun	usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings	111
2496057390	refrain	a line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem	112
2496057391	requiem	a song or prayer for the dead	113
2496057392	rhapsody	an intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise	114
2496057393	rhetorical question	a question that suggests an answer	115
2496057394	satire	exposes common character flaws to humor; attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behaviours will become less common--hypocrisy, vanity, greed	116
2496057395	simile	like a metaphor but softens the full-out equation of things, often, but not always, by using like or as	117
2496057396	soliloquy	a speech spoken by a character alone on stage; meant to convey the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thoughts; not meant to imply that the actor acknowledges the audience is listening	118
2496057397	stanza	a group of lines roughly analogues in function in verse to the paragraph's function in prose	119
2496057398	stock characters	standard or cliched character types: the drunk, the miser, the foolish girl, etc.	120
2496057399	subjunctive mood	a mood that represents an act or state (not as a fact but) as contingent or possible; wishful thinking--if I were you, if he were honest	121
2496057400	suggest	to imply, infer, indicate; you have to pull out the meaning yourself	122
2496057401	summary	a simple retelling of what you've just read; covers more material than paraphrase, more general, includes all the facts	123
2496057402	suspension of disbelief	demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with imagination	124
2496057403	symbolism	a device in literature where an object reps an idea	125
2496057404	technique	the methods, the tools, "how-you-do-it" ways of the author	126
2496057405	theme	the main idea of the overall work; the central idea; topic of discourse or discussion	127
2496057406	thesis	the main position of an argument; the central contention that will be supported	128
2496057407	tragic flaw	in tragedy, weakness of character in an other wise good/great individual that leads to his demise	129
2496057408	travesty	a grotesque parody	130
2496057409	truism	a way-too-obvious truth	131
2496057410	utopia	an idealized place; paradise	132
2496057411	zeugma	the use of a word to modify two or more words, but used for different meanings--On the fishing trip, he caught three trout and a cold.	133