AP Literature Vocabulary Flashcards

10334283871	Allegory	a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning	0
10334283872	Alliteration	the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.	1
10334283873	Allusion	A reference to another work of literature, person, or event	2
10334283874	Ambiguity	An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way.	3
10334283875	Anachronism	something or someone out of place in terms of historical or chronological context	4
10334283876	Analogy	A similarity or comparison between two different things or the relationship between them.	5
10334283877	Anaphora	the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses	6
10334283878	Antagonist	A character or force in conflict with the main character	7
10334283879	Antihero	a central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes.	8
10334283880	Antithesis	a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else a literary device that is used to put two contrasting ideas together	9
10334283881	Aphorism	A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life.	10
10334283882	Apostrophe	A figure of speech wherein the speaker speaks directly to something nonhuman	11
10334283883	Archetype	a typical character, action, or situation that seems to represent universal patterns of human nature	12
10334283884	Aside	Lines that are spoken by a character directly to the audience	13
10334283885	Assonance	Repetition of a vowel sound within two or more words in close proximity	14
10334283886	Asyndeton	Omission of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words	15
10334283887	Bildungsroman	a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education.	16
10334283888	blank verse	Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter	17
10334283889	Bombast	Inflated, pretentious language	18
10334283890	Cacophony	A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds	19
10334283891	Caesura	A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line.	20
10334283892	Catharsis	A release of emotional tension	21
10334283893	Chiasmus	a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases	22
10334283894	Climax	the most intense, exciting, or important point of something; a culmination or apex.	23
10334283895	Conceit	A fanciful, particularly clever extended metaphor	24
10334283896	Connotation	the implied or associative meaning of a word	25
10334283897	Consonance	Repetition of consonant sounds	26
10334283898	Couplet	two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit.	27
10334283899	Denotation	The dictionary definition of a word	28
10334283900	Denouement	the final resolution of the main complication of a literary or dramatic work	29
10334283901	Deus ex machina	an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation	30
10334283902	Diction	A writer's or speaker's choice of words	31
10334283903	Didactic	a work that is intended to preach or teach, often containing a particular moral or political point	32
10334283904	Dissonance	Unpleasant or unharmonious sound	33
10334283905	Elegy	a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.	34
10334283906	End-stopped	A line with a pause at the end	35
10334283907	Enjambment	poetic sentence which goes into the next line or verse with no end stop in between lines	36
10334283908	Epigram	A witty saying expressing a single thought or observation	37
10334283909	Epigraph	A brief quotation which appears at the beginning of a literary work.	38
10334283910	Euphemism	An indirect, less offensive way of saying something that is considered unpleasant	39
10334283911	Euphony	pleasant, harmonious sound	40
10334283912	Foil	A character who acts as a contrast to another character	41
10334283913	Foot	A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables.	42
10334283914	Anapestic foot	Three syllables with the stress on the last syllable u u /	43
10334283915	Dactylic foot	Three syllables with the stress on the first syllable / u u	44
10334283916	Iambic foot	an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable u /	45
10334283917	Spondee foot	consists of two stressed syllables / /	46
10334283918	Trochee Foot	A foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. / u	47
10334283919	Foreshadowing	A narrative device that hints at coming events; often builds suspense or anxiety in the reader.	48
10334283920	Free verse	Poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme	49
10334283921	Heroic couplet	a pair of rhyming iambic pentameters	50
10334283922	Hubris	Excessive pride or self-confidence	51
10334283923	Hyperbaton	Reversal of normal word order (as in 'cheese I love') to convey the same meaning	52
10334283924	Hyperbole	A figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion, make a point, or evoke humor	53
10334283925	Image	Description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste)	54
10334283926	In medias res	In or into the middle of a plot; into the middle of things	55
10334283927	Irony	the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning	56
10334283928	Dramatic irony	When the audience knows something the characters don't	57
10334283929	Verbal irony	Words are used to suggest the opposite of what is meant	58
10334283930	Situational irony	An outcome that turns out to be very different from what was expected	59
10334283931	Juxtaposition	Placement of two things closely together to emphasize comparisons or contrasts	60
10334283932	Metaphor	A comparison without using like or as	61
10334283933	Meter	A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry	62
10334283934	Metonymy	the substituting of one word for another that is closely related to it.	63
10334283935	Monologue	A long speech made by one performer or by one person in a group.	64
10334283936	Motif	A recurring theme, subject or idea	65
10334283937	Octave	a verse form consisting of eight lines of iambic pentameter (in English) or hendeccasyllables (in Italian)	66
10334283938	Omniscient narrator	an all-knowing, usually third-person narrator	67
10334283939	Onomatopoeia	A word that imitates the sound it represents.	68
10334283940	Oxymoron	conjoining contradictory terms (as in 'deafening silence')	69
10334283941	Parable	A simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson	70
10334283942	Paradox	a statement that seems contradictory but is actually true	71
10334283943	Parody	Humorous imitation	72
10334283944	Pathetic fallacy	Faulty reasoning that inappropriately ascribes human feelings to nature or nonhuman objects	73
10334283945	Pentameter	verse written in lines of five metrical feet	74
10334283946	Personification	A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes	75
10334283947	Point of view	The perspective from which a story is told	76
10334283948	Polysyndeton	The deliberate use of a series of conjunctions.	77
10334283949	Prosody	the study of sound and rhythm in poetry	78
10334283950	Protagonist	Main character	79
10334283951	Pun	a humorous play on words	80
10334283952	Quatrain	a stanza of four lines, especially one having alternate rhymes.	81
10334283953	Rhyme scheme	A regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem	82
10334283954	Sarcasm	the use of irony to mock or convey contempt	83
10334283955	Scansion/Scanning	analysis of a poem to determine its meter (stressed and unstressed syllables, etc.,.)	84
10334283956	Sestet	Grouping of six lines in a poem	85
10334283957	Simile	A comparison using "like" or "as"	86
10334283958	Soliloquy	Speech to oneself	87
10334283959	Sonnet	is a fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter with 10 syllables in each line	88
10334283960	English Sonnet (Shakespearean)	fourteen line poem consisting of three quatrains and a couplet rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg	89
10334283961	Italian Sonnet (Petrarchan)	fourteen line poem broken into an octave and a sestet rhyme scheme: abbaabba cdecde or cdcdcd	90
10334283962	Stanza	A group of lines in a poem	91
10334283963	Subtext	The hidden or underlying meaning of something	92
10334283964	Symbolism	A device in literature where an object represents an idea.	93
10334283965	Synecdoche	a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa	94
10334283966	Tercet	3 line stanza	95
10334283967	Theme	Central idea of a work of literature	96
10334283968	Trope	The generic name for a figure of speech such as image, symbol, simile, and metaphor.	97
10334283969	Verse	A single line of poetry	98
10334283970	Verisimilitude	the appearance of being true or real	99