AP Literature Terms (Princeton Review) Flashcards

13654740235	abstract	a typically complex style of writing that discusses intangible qualities like good and evil and seldom uses examples to support its points	0
13654740236	academic	a dry and theoretical writing style	1
13654740237	accent	the stressed portion of a word	2
13654740238	aesthetic	appealing to the senses	3
13654740239	allegory	a story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself; ex. The Ant and the Grasshopper	4
13654740240	alliteration	repetition of initial consonant sounds	5
13654740241	allusion	a reference to another work or famous figure	6
13654740242	anachronism	misplaced in time	7
13654740243	analogy	a comparison, usually involving two or more symbolic parts to clarify an action or relationship	8
13654740244	anecdote	a short narrative	9
13654740245	antecedent	the word, phrase, or clause that a pronoun refers to or replaces	10
13654740246	anthromorphism	when inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation	11
13654740247	anticlimax	when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect	12
13654740248	antihero	a protagonist who is markedly unheroic	13
13654740249	aphorism	a short and usually witty saying	14
13654740250	apostrophe	an address to someone not present or to a personified object or idea	15
13654740251	archaism	the use of deliberately old-fashioned language	16
13654740252	aside	a speech or comment made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping outside of the action on stage	17
13654740253	aspect	a trait or characteristic	18
13654740254	assonance	the repeated use of vowel sounds	19
13654740255	atmosphere	the emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene	20
13654740256	ballad	a long, narrative poem usually in very regular meter and rhyme; typically has a naive folksy quality	21
13654740257	bathos	writing that strains for grandeur it can't support; writing that tries to elicit tears from every little hiccup	22
13654740258	pathos	writing that evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy	23
13654740259	black humor	use of disturbing themes in comedy	24
13654740260	bombast	pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language	25
13654740261	burlesque	broad parody, one that takes a style or form such as tragic drama and exaggerates it into ridiculousness	26
13654740262	cacophony	deliberately harsh, awkward sounds	27
13654740263	cadence	the beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense	28
13654740264	canto	the name for a section division in a long work of poetry	29
13654740265	caricature	a portrait that exaggerates a facet of personality	30
13654740266	catharsis	the cleansing of emotion an audience member experiences having lived vicariously through the experiences presented on stage	31
13654740267	chorus	the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it	32
13654740268	classic	can mean either typical or an accepted masterpiece	33
13654740269	classical	the arts of ancient Greece and Rome and the qualities of those arts	34
13654740270	coinage (neologism)	a new word, usually invented on the spot	35
13654740271	colloquialism	a word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "schoolbook" English	36
13654740272	complex	more than one possibility in the meaning of words	37
13654740273	conceit	a startling or unusual metaphor, one developed and expanded upon over several lines	38
13654740274	controlling metaphor	when conceit dominates and shapes an entire work	39
13654740275	connotation	what words suggest or imply	40
13654740276	denotation	the literal meaning of a word	41
13654740277	consonance	the repetition of consonant sounds within words	42
13654740278	couplet	a pair of lines that end in rhyme	43
13654740279	decorum	when a character's speech must be styled according to his/her social station and in accordance with the ocassion	44
13654740280	diction	choice of words	45
13654740281	syntax	the ordering and structuring of words	46
13654740282	dirge	a song for the dead	47
13654740283	dissonance	grating of incompatible sounds	48
13654740284	doggerel	crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme	49
13654740285	dramatic irony	when the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not	50
13654740286	dramatic monologue	when a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience	51
13654740287	elegy	a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner	52
13654740288	elements	the basic techniques of each genre of literature	53
13654740289	enjambment	the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause	54
13654740290	epic	a very long narrative poem on a serious theme and in a dignified style; typically glorious or profound subject matter	55
13654740291	mock epic	a parody form of an epic that deals with mundane events and ironically treats them as being worthy of epic poetry	56
13654740292	epitaph	lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place	57
13654740293	euphemism	a word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh reality	58
13654740294	euphony	a blend of harmonious sounds	59
13654740295	explicit	to say or write something directly and clearly	60
13654763127	anaphora	the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses	61
13654740296	farce	a funny play, a comedy	62
13654740297	feminine rhyme	lines rhymed by their final two syllables; ex. running and gunning	63
13654740298	foil	a secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast	64
13654740299	foot	the basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry	65
13654740300	foreshadowing	an event or statement in a narrative that suggests a larger event that comes later	66
13654740301	free verse	poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern	67
13654740302	genre	a subcategory of literature	68
13654740303	gothic	a style of writing that is characterized by elements of fear, horror, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality, and very high emotion	69
13654740304	hubris	the excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall	70
13654740305	hyperbole	exaggeration or deliberate overstatement	71
13654740306	implicit	to say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly	72
13654740307	in medias res	in the midst of things	73
13654740308	interior monologue	writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; more coherent than stream of consciousness	74
13654740309	inversion	switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase	75
13654740310	irony	a statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean	76
13654772592	juxtaposition	placement of two things closely together to emphasize comparisons or contrasts	77
13654740311	lament	a poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or some other intense loss	78
13654740312	lampoon	a satire	79
13654740313	loose sentence	a sentence that is complete before its end; ex. Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh, her complaining, and her terrible taste in shoes	80
13654740314	periodic sentence	a sentence that is not grammatically complete until it has reached its final phrase; ex. Despite Barbara's irritation at Jack's peculiar habit of picking between his toes while watching MTV and his terrible haircut, she loved him	81
13654740315	lyric	a type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world	82
13654740316	masculine rhyme	a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable	83
13654740317	melodrama	a form of cheesy theater that exploits stereotypes	84
13654740318	metaphor	a comparison or analogy that states one thing is another	85
13654740319	simile	a metaphor that softens the full-out equation of things by using like or as	86
13654740320	metonym	a word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with	87
13654740321	motif	a recurring symbol	88
13654740322	nemesis	the protagonist's archenemy	89
13654740323	objectivity	a treatment of subject matter that is impersonal or an outside view of events	90
13654740324	subjectivity	a treatment of subject matter that uses the interior or personal view of a single observer and is typically colored with that observer's emotional responses	91
13654740325	onomatopoeia	words that sound like what they mean	92
13654740326	opposition	a pair of elements that contrast sharply	93
13654740327	oxymoron	a phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction	94
13654740328	parable	a story that instructs; similar to a fable or allegory	95
13654740329	paradox	a situation or statement that seems to contradict itself but on closer inspection does not	96
13654740330	parallelism	repeated syntactical similarities for used effect	97
13654740331	paraphrase	to restate phrases and sentences in your own words	98
13654740332	parenthetical phrase	a phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary	99
13654740333	parody	a work that makes fun of another work by exaggerating its qualities to ridiculousness	100
13654740334	pastoral	a poem set in tranquil nature	101
13654740335	persona	the narrator in a non-first-person novel	102
13654740336	personification	giving an inanimate object human qualities or form	103
13654740337	plaint	a poem or speech expressing sorrow	104
13654740338	point of view	perspective from which the action of a novel or poem is presented	105
13654788258	omniscient narrator	a narrator who is able to know, see, and tell all, including the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters	106
13654790311	limited omniscient narrator	the third person narrator relates the thoughts and feelings of only one character.	107
13654740339	prelude	an introductory poem to a longer work or verse	108
13654740340	protagonist	the main character of a novel or play	109
13654740341	pun	play on words	110
13654740342	refrain	a line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem	111
13654740343	requiem	a song of prayer for the dead	112
13654740344	rhapsody	an intensely passionate verse usually of love or praise	113
13654740345	rhetorical question	a question that suggests an answer	114
13654740346	satire	a form of writing that exposes common character flaws to the cold light of humor	115
13654740347	soliloquy	a speech spoken by a character alone on stage	116
13654740348	stanza	a group of lines in verse	117
13654740349	stock characters	standard or cliched character types	118
13654740350	suspension of disbelief	demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with imagination	119
13654740351	symbolism	when an object represents an idea	120
13654802600	syncope	contracting, or shortening, a word by removing internal sounds, syllables, or letters and inserting an apostrophe	121
13654740352	synecdoche	figure of speech in which a part represents the whole	122
13654740353	theme	the main idea of the overall work	123
13654740354	thesis	the main position of an argument	124
13654740355	tragic flaw	the weakness of character in an otherwise good individual	125
13654740356	travesty	a grotesque parody	126
13654740357	truism	a way-too-obvious truth	127
13654812239	versimilitude	the quality of appearing to be true, real, likely, or probable.	128
13654740358	zeugma	the use of a word to modify two or more words but used for different meanings	129