AP Literature Vocab Flashcards

9299378070	Accent	Refers to the stressed portion of a word	0
9299380356	Allegory	A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbol meaning outside of the tale itself	1
9299383717	Alliteration	The repetition of initial consonant sounds	2
9299385948	Allusion	A reference to another work or famous figure	3
9299388332	Anachronism	A misplacement in time	4
9299390377	Analogy	A comparison, usually involving different things	5
9299393864	Antagonist	The force or character opposing the protagonist	6
9299395409	Antecedent	The word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to	7
9299403888	Anticlimax	When an action produced far smaller results than one has been led to expect	8
9299407385	Apostrophe	A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman	9
9299409245	Archaism	The use of deliberately old-fashioned language	10
9299411008	Archetype	A pattern, symbol, or other element that recurs in far-flung and mythic literature	11
9299413020	Assonance	The repeated use of vowel sounds	12
9299414978	Atmosphere	The emotional tone/feeling or background that surrounds a scene, poem, or work	13
9299417474	Ballad	A long, narrative poem, usually in very regular meter and rhyme, typically having a naive folksy quality	14
9299421615	Bathos	When writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries to jerk tears from every moment	15
9299426240	Blank verse	Poetry in unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, usually	16
9299428544	Bombast	Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language	17
9299431490	Bildungsroman	A novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education	18
9299436259	Caesura	A song pause build into the middle of a poetic line	19
9299438077	Cacophony	Using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds	20
9299440044	Cadence	The beat of rhythm of a poem in a general sense	21
9467065864	Canto	The name for a sectional division in a long work of poetry	22
9467067146	Caricature	A portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality	23
9467069220	Catharsis	The cleansing of emotion an audience member experiences, having lived vicariously through the experiences presented on stage	24
9467074076	Chorus	The group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it	25
9467076890	Coinage (neologism)	When a new word is invented on the spot	26
9467078989	Colloquialism	A word or phrases that is used in conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "schoolbook" English	27
9467085424	Conceit	Refers to a startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon over several lines	28
9467088763	Denotation and Connotation	The __________ of a word it its literal meaning. The _________ are everything else that the word might suggest or imply	29
9467095688	Consonance	The repetition of consonant sounds within words	30
9467097238	Couplet	A pair of lines that end in rhyme	31
9467097239	Denouement	The final part of a narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved	32
9467101284	Deus ex machina	The unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel	33
9467107745	Dead metaphor	An implied figurative comparison that through frequent use no longer evokes a picture	34
9467111281	Decorum	In order to observe this, a character's speech must be styled according to their social situation, and in accordance with the occasion	35
9467117294	Didactic	Instructive, intent on imparting a moral, something excessively so	36
9467120205	Diction	A writer's selection of words	37
9467120206	Dirge	A song for the dead	38
9467121767	Dissonance	The grating of incompatible sounds	39
9467124117	Doggerel	Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme	40
9467126144	Dramatic irony	When the audience knows something the character in the drama do not	41
9469630839	Dramatic monologue	When a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience	42
9469634084	Elegy	A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner	43
9469637066	Eulogy	Remarks in praise of someone who has died	44
9469639346	End-rhyme	Rhyme at the ends of poetic lines	45
9469641445	End-stopped	Poetic lines whose sense concludes as the line concludes	46
9487861024	Anthropomorphism	When inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation	47
9543161881	Enjambment	The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause	48
9543166363	Epic	A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style	49
9543170383	Epitaph	Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place	50
9543174693	Epigraph	A quotation at the beginning of a piece or writing	51
9543179614	Euphemism	A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality	52
9543189850	Euphony	When sounds blend harmoniously	53
9543192959	Farce	A funny play or a comedy	54
9543196206	Feminine rhyme	Rhymes involving words of one stressed and then one slack or unstressed syllable	55
9543200761	Foil	A secondary character whose purpose is the highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast	56
9543205153	Foot	The basic unit of measurement of meter, usually containing one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable	57
9543215197	Foreshadowing	An event or statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later	58
9543219899	Free verse	Poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical platter	59
9543224910	Genre	A subcategory of literature	60
9543230975	Gothic novel	An English genre of fiction popular in the 18th to early 19th centuries, characterized by an atmosphere of mystery and horror and having a pseudo-medieval setting	61
9543247875	Hubris	The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall	62
9543251758	Hyperbole	Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement	63
9543254931	In media res	Latin for "in the midst of things." When a narrative begin in the middle of the action	64
9543261067	Irony	A discrepancy between what is states and what is implied	65
9543265423	Verbal irony	Saying one thing while meaning the opposite	66
9543268213	Cosmic irony	When fate dashes the protagonist's false hopes	67
9543279129	Situational irony	When events turn out to be the opposite of what one would reasonably expect	68
9543283006	Lament	A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one	69
9543285879	Lampoon	A satire	70
9543285880	Lyric	A type of poem that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world	71
9579714740	Masculine rhyme	A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable	72
9579717378	Melodrama	A form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very, very good, the villain is oh so evil, and the heroine oh so pure	73
9579721616	Metaphor and Simile	1. A comparison or analogy that states one thing is another 2. Like #1, but softens the full-out equation of things	74
9579729412	Meter	Rhythmic patterns of stressed and un-stressed syllables	75
9579731582	Metonymy	A word that is used to stand for something else that it attributes of is is associated with	76
9579735628	Motif	A recurring element or device	77
9579737839	Nemesis	The protagonist's archenemy or supreme and persistent difficulty	78
9579750064	Onomatopoeia	Word that sound like they mean	79
9579751915	Opposition	To have a pair of elements that contrast sharply, not necessarily in conflict	80
9579758990	Oxymoron	A phrase-like contradiction	81
9579774330	Palindrome	A word or phrase that reads the same forward and back	82
9579782213	Parable	Like a fable or an allegory, this is a story that instructs	83
9579783688	Paradox	A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not	84
9579789025	Parallelism	Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect	85
9579796217	Parenthetical phrase	A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some added detail	86
9580483677	Parody	The work that results when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness	87
9580487379	Pastoral	A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, about shepherds	88
9580491864	Pathos	Literature that seeks to arouse and intensify sorrow, pity, or sympathy	89
9580495027	Personification	Giving an inanimate object human qualities or form	90
9580502459	Plaint	A poem or speech expressing sorrow	91
9580506048	The omniscient narrator	A third-person narrator who sees, like God, into each character's mind and understand all the action going on	92
9580517079	The limited omniscient narrator	A third-person narrator who generally reports only what one character (usually the main character) sees, and who only reports the thoughts of that one character	93
9580526175	The objective, or camera-eye narrator	A third-person narrator who only reports on what would be visible to a camera. This narrator does not know what a character is thinking unless the character speaks of it	94
9580533016	The first-person narrator	A narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale from his or her point of view	95
9580535096	The stream consciousness technique	Like a first-person narration, but instead of the characters telling the story, the author places the reader inside the main character's head, making them privy to all the character's thoughts	96
9656174915	Prelude	An introductory poem to a longer work of verse	97
9656175009	Protagonist	The main character	98
9656177257	Picaresque	An episodic tale of an incorrigible rascal who undertakes a series of adventures	99
9656180397	Pun	The usually humorous use of a word in such as way to suggest two or more meanings	100
9656183062	Rhymed verse	Poetry with both rhyme and regular rhythm	101
9656186304	Refrain	A line or set of lines repeated several times in a poem	102
9656188311	Requiem	A son or prayer for the dead	103
9656190518	Rhapsody	An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise	104
9657161953	Satire	A work that exposes common character flaws to the cold light of humor	105
9657163838	Soliloquy	A speech spoken by a character alone on stage	106
9657167564	Sonet	A lyric poem consisting of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter	107
9657169662	Symbolism	A device in literature where an object represents an idea	108
9657172376	Synecdoche	A figure of speech in which a part comes to stand for the whole	109
9657175676	Tragic Flaw	In a tragedy, this is the weakness of a character in an otherwise good individual that usually leads to their downfall	110
9657180393	Truism	A way too obvious truth	111
9657181899	Verisimilitude	The appearance of actuality	112
9657183565	Weltanschauung	A comprehensive conception or theory of the world and the place of humanity within it	113