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AP Lit Vocab
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Accent | The emphasis or stress given a syllable in pronunciation. |
| Act | Division between action in a play; different parts. |
| Allegory | A narration or description restricted to a single meaning to represent specific abstractions or ideas. |
| Alliteration | The repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable. |
| Allusion | A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature. |
| Ambiguity | Allows for two or more simultaneous interpretations of a word, phrase, action, or situation, all of which can be supported by the context of the work. |
| Anagram | A word or phrase made from the letters of another word or phrase. |
| Anachronism | An event, object, custom, person, or thing that is out of order in time. |
| Anecdote | A short, simple narrative of an incident. |
| Antagonist | The character, force, or collection of forces in fiction or drama that opposes the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story; an opponent of the protagonist. |
| Antihero | A protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero; may learn that the world isolates them in an existence devoid of God and absolute values. |
| Aphorism | A short, often witty statement of a principle or a truth about life. |
| Apostrophe | An address, either to someone who is absent and therefore cannot hear the speaker or to something nonhuman that cannot comprehend; allows the speaker an opportunity to think aloud. |
| Approximate rhyme | Where sounds are almost alike, but not quite. |
| Archetype | Used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and sometimes unconscious responses in readers; characters, images, and themes that symbolically embody universal meanings and basic human experiences. |
| Aside | In drama, a speech directed to the audience that supposedly is not audible to the other characters onstage at the time. |
| Assonance | The repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end the same. |
| Ballad | A song passed down orally through generations that tells a story and cannot be traced to a specific author; dramatic, condensed, and impersonal. |
| Ballad stanza | A four-line stanza called a quatrain that has alternating eight and six-syllable lines; second and fourth lines usually rhyme. |
| Biographical criticism | Analyzing a work based on the context of the author's background. |
| Blank verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter; closest to English speech rhythm. |
| Cacophony | Language that is discordant and hard to pronounce; could be unintentional or used for dramatic effect. |
| Caesura | A pause within a line of poetry contributing to the rhythm of the line; indicated by double vertical lines. |
| Canon | Works considered by scholars and critics to be crucial to read and analyze; the masterpieces of literature. |
| Carpe diem | Latin for "seize the day;" describes the literary theme that life is too short for hesitation. |
| Catharsis | A purge of emotions of pity and fear by audiences after a tragedy; a confrontation of human values, experiences, and vulnerabilities. |
| Character/characterization | A person presented in a dramatic or narrative work and how the writer makes them seem real. |
| Chorus | In Greek tragedies, a group of people who serve as commentators on the characters. |
| Classicism | Principles and styles admired from Greek and Roman classic literature such as objectivity, sensibility, restraint, and formality. |
| Cliche | Idea or expression that has become tired and trite from overuse; a sign of weak writing. |
| Climax | The moment of greatest emotional tension in a narrative, marking a turning point in the plot. |
| Closet drama | A play written to be read rather than performed. |
| Colloquialism | A word or phrase of informal diction that reflects casual, conversational language and often includes slang expressions. |
| Comedy | A work intended to interest, involve, and amuse the reader or audience, in which no terrible disaster occurs and the main characters get a happy ending. |
| Comic relief | A humorous scene or incident that alleviates tension in an otherwise serious work; often adds to the thematic significance of the story. |
| Conceit | An elaborate figure of speech in which two seemingly dissimilar things or situations are compared. |
| Conflict | The struggle within the plot between opposing forces. |
| Connotation | Associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word, which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the associations people make with it. |
| Consonance | A common type of near rhyme that consists of identical consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds. |
| Contextual symbol | A symbol that is only such because the author made it a symbol in the context of the literary work. |
| Convention | A characteristic of a literary genre that, while unrealistic, has been used so often that they have become familiar to the audience. |
| Conventional symbol | A symbol with a widely accepted interpretation. |
| Cosmic irony | When a writer uses God, destiny, or fate to dash the hopes and expectations of a character or of humankind in general. |
| Couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that usually rhyme and have the same meter. |
| Crisis | A turning point in the action of a story that has a powerful effect on the protagonist; opposing forces come together decisively to lead to the climax of the plot. |
| Cultural criticism | An approach to analyzing literature where historical, social, political, and economic contexts of a work are focused on. |
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cramdel37
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