AP literature lit terms Flashcards

8405523527	pathos	when the writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy	0
8405523528	catharsis	the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences, having lived through the experiences presented on stage	1
8405523529	metonymy	when a word is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with	2
8405526770	interior monologue	refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head	3
8405526771	analogy	a comparison involving 2 or more symbolic parts, employed to clarify an action or a relationship	4
8405526772	atmosphere	the emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene	5
8405526773	apostrophe	a figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman	6
8405530170	black humor	use of disturbing themes in comedy	7
8405530171	ballad	a long, narrative poem, usually in regular meter and rhyme	8
8405530172	archaism	use of deliberately old-fashioned language	9
8405533381	aphorism	a short and witty saying	10
8405533382	hyperbole	exaggeration or deliberate overstatement	11
8405533383	periodic sentence	not grammatically complete until it has reached its final phrase	12
8405533384	implicit	to say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly	13
8405537107	foil	a secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast	14
8405537108	euphemism	a word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality	15
8405537109	lament	a poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss	16
8405537110	lyric	a type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world	17
8405540781	limited omniscient narrator	a third person narrator who generally reports only what one character sees, and who only reports the thoughts of that one privileged character	18
8405540782	stream of consciousness	the author places the reader inside the main characters head and makes the reader privy to all of the characters thoughts as they scroll through her consciousness	19
8405558287	suggest	to imply, infer, indicate	20
8405558288	subjunctive mood	when it expresses a condition which is doubtful or not factual, uses words like "if" and "were"	21
8405558289	loose sentence	complete before its end	22
8405561670	dramatic irony	when the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not	23
8405561671	epic	a very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style	24
8405561672	genre	a sub-category of literature	25
8405561673	inversion	switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase	26
8405566207	meaning	what makes sense, whats important	27
8405566208	enjambment	the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause	28
8405566209	free verse	poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern	29
8405570211	melodrama	a form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very very good, the villain mean and rotten, and the heroine of so pure	30
8405570212	personification	when an inanimate object takes on human shape	31
8405581995	satire	attempts to improve things by pointing out peoples mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behavior will become less common	32
8405581996	pun	the usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings	33
8405581997	refrain	a line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem	34
8405586601	rhetorical question	a question that suggests an answer	35
8405586602	dirge	a song for the dead	36
8405586603	pastoral	a poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds	37
8405586604	allegory	a story in which each aspect of the story has symbolic meaning outside the tale itself	38
8405589880	summary	a simple retelling of what you've just read	39
8405589881	oxymoron	a phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction	40
8405589882	bombast	pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language	41
8405592974	suspension of disbelief	the demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination	42
8405592975	antecedent	the word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to	43
8405592976	opposition	a pair of elements that contrast sharply	44
8405592977	canto	the name for a section division in a long work of poetry, like a chapter but for a poem	45
8405596875	elements	basic techniques of each genre of literature	46
8405596876	alliteration	the repetition of initial consonant sounds	47
8405596877	antihero	a protagonist who is markedly unheroic	48
8405596878	chorus	in greek drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it	49
8405600903	pathetic fallacy	the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, found in poetic writing	50
8405600904	anecdote	a short narrative	51
8405600905	anachronism	"misplaced in time"	52
8405600906	academic	means dry and theoretical writing	53
8405604855	abstract	complex style, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil	54
8405604856	aesthetic	appealing to the senses	55
8405604857	assonance	the repeated use of vowel sounds	56
8405604858	allusion	a reference to another work or famous figure	57
8405625039	epitaph	lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place	58
8405625040	parenthetical phrase	a phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail	59
8405625041	elegy	a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious thoughtful manner	60
8405629691	nemesis	the protagonists arch enemy or supreme and persistent difficulty	61
8405629692	hubris	the excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main characters downfall	62
8405635559	gothic	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	63
8405635560	feminine rhyme	lines rhymed by their final two syllables	64
8405635561	foreshadowing	an event or statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later	65
8405639279	foot	the basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry	66
8405639280	doggerel	crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme	67
8405639281	dramatic monologue	when a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience	68
8405639282	euphony	when sounds blend harmoniously	69
8405642584	simile	like a metaphor but softens the full out equation of things, usually using like or as	70
8405646131	metaphor	a comparison or analogy that states one thing is another	71
8405646132	colloquialism	a word or phrase used in everyday conversational english that isn't a part of accepter school-book english	72
8405646133	conceit	refers to a startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded over several lines	73
8405646134	connotation	everything that a word suggests or implies other than its literal meaning	74
8405651184	denotation	the literal meaning of a word	75
8405651185	couplet	a pair of lines that end in rhyme	76
8405651186	decorum	styled according to social station, and in accordance with the occasion	77
8405651187	diction	the authors choice of words	78
8405651188	plaint	a poem or speech expressing sorrow	79
8405655185	anticlimax	occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led on to expect	80
8405655186	objective	an impersonal or outside view of events	81
8405664672	aside	a speech made by an actor to the audience as though momentarily stepping outside of the action on stage	82
8405664673	stanza	a group of lines roughly analogous in function in verse to the paragraphs function in prose	83
8405664674	accent	refers to the stressed portion of a word	84
8405668512	imagery	visually descriptive or figurative language	85