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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. |