AP Literature Terms Flashcards

9861547684	allegory	story conveying a meaning other than the literal; abstract principles represented by characters or figures	0
9861555342	alliteration	repetition of initial consonant sounds	1
9861558590	anagorisis	discovery; hero suddenly becoming aware of a situation or true character	2
9861571666	anaphora	repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of neighboring clauses for emphasis	3
9861583366	antecedent	word, phrase, or clause that a pronoun replaces	4
9861586515	apologue	short story with a moral, often involving whaling animals or objects; a fable; short allegory	5
9861600709	apostrophe	speaker addresses an inanimate object	6
9861610751	assonance	repetition of vowel sounds	7
9861625601	ballad	relatively short narrative poem written in song-like stanza form	8
9861631251	bildungsroman	novel tracing the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character usually from childhood to maturity	9
9861649047	blank verse	unrhymed iambic pentameter	10
9861652033	cacophony	deliberate use of harsh and awkward sounds	11
9861655623	caesura	pause or interruption in a poem; opposite of enjambment	12
9861670651	canon	works of a writer	13
9861673894	caricature	portrait that exaggerates a human trait	14
9861685961	catharsis	emotional release of an audience at the end of a successful tragedy	15
9861691111	clerihew	rhyme of four lines, usually regarding a subject mentioned in the first line	16
9861750260	colloquialism	informal speech	17
9861755343	comedy of manners	play that satires the manners and affections of a social class, often using stereotypes	18
9861760092	conceit	extended metaphor that compares two seemingly dissimilar things	19
9861766183	connotation	implied meanings of a word	20
9861783967	consonance	repetition of consonant sounds within words	21
9861787715	controlling image	metaphor that dominates an entire work	22
9861790318	couplet	rhyming pairs of lines	23
9861794720	dactyl	poetical foot with three syllables, one stressed and two short or unstressed	24
9863276342	denotation	literal meaning of a word; dictionary definition	25
9863282170	deus ex machina	literally "god out of a machine;" sudden artificial or improbably resolution to a story, often implying a lack of skill on the part of the writer	26
9863296935	diction	word choice	27
9863297834	dramatic monologue	poem in which a character delivers a speech explaining his/her feelings, actions, or motives	28
9863305793	elegy	mournful or melancholic poem	29
9863311275	English sonnet	sonnet divided into 3 quatrains and a final couplet, using the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg; Shakespearean sonnet	30
9863323152	enjambment	continuation of a phrase or clause to another line without pause (punctuation); opposite of caesurae	31
9863330546	epigram	short, clever poem with a witty turn of thought	32
9863335455	farce	extremely broad humor	33
9863339875	foil	character that contrasts with another character, usually the protagonist, to emphasize the other character's traits	34
9863347223	foot	combination of stressed and unstressed syllables	35
9880335532	foreshadowing	event or statement that suggests a future event	36
9880352385	free verse	poetry without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern	37
9880356464	hamartia	fatal flaw of a tragic hero	38
9880361277	hubris	excessive pride that leads to a protagonist's downfall	39
9880367262	hyperbole	exaggeration or overstatement; opposite of understatement	40
9880370456	iamb	poetical foot with two syllables, first unstressed and second stressed	41
9880379520	implicit	implied meaning; opposite of explicit	42
9880387456	lyric	expression of observations and feelings of a single speaker	43
9880390845	magical realism	combination of realistic details with surreal, dreamlike, or magical elements	44
9880420058	metaphor	analogy that states one thing as another	45
9880422192	metonymy	use of a part to mean a whole object (i.e. hands to mean laborers); related to synecdoche	46
9880433366	motif	recurring or dominant element in a work	47
9880436653	objectivity	impersonal view of events	48
9880449561	onomatopoeia	word that sounds like what is represents	49
9880449562	opposition	contrasting pairs of elements	50
9880453115	paradox	seemingly apparent contradiction with is accurate on closer inspection	51
9880456727	parallelism	repeated words, phrases, clauses, or grammatical structure used for effect	52
9880469580	pastoral	work idealizing the simple life of shepherds or of tranquil nature	53
9880472745	peripeteia	reversal of fortune or character	54
9880475215	persona	narrator in a non-first-person novel	55
9880479674	personification	giving human qualities or form to inanimate objects	56
9880484115	protagonist	main character	57
9880484116	quatrain	four-line stanza	58
9880487021	satire	genre which ridicules its subject by exposing flaws, often to provoke or prevent change	59
9880499806	sestina	poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet (three-line stanza), for a total of thirty-nine lines (same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order)	60
9880522606	simile	"weak" metaphor, often uses "like" or "as"	61
9880526419	stanza	group of lines in verse; poetical equivalent of a paragraph	62
9880534347	subjectivity	personal view of events	63
9880538706	subjunctive mood	mood (grammar) that sets up a hypothetical situation (i.e. if...were...)	64
9880550247	symbol	word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level	65
9880554959	synecdoche	metaphor in which a part is spoken of as the whole object, related to metonymy	66
9880563373	synthesis	one kind of sensation is described in the terms of another; mixing of senses	67
9880568302	syntax	word order	68
9880568303	theme	central idea of a work	69
9880570807	terza rime	poem with verses of three lines and rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc	70
9880574167	tragic flaw	weakness of an otherwise good or great individual that leads to his/her downfall	71