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AP LIT 114 Terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Allegory | a prose or poetic narrative in which the characters, behavior, and even the setting demonstrates multiple levels of meaning and significance. |
| Alliteration | The sequential repetition of a similar initial sound, usually applied to consonants, usually in closely proximate stressed syllables. |
| Allusion | a reference to a literary or historical event, person, or place |
| Anapestic | a metric foot in poetry that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed. |
| Anaphora | the regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses. |
| Anecdote | a brief story or tale told by a character in a piece of literature. |
| Antagonist | any force that is in opposition to the main character, or protagonist |
| Antithesis | the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure |
| Apostrophe | an address or invocation to something that is inanimate. |
| Archetype | recurrent designs, patterns of action, character types, themes, or images which are identifiable in a wide range of literature. |
| Assonance | a repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, usually those found in stressed syllables of close proximity. |
| Asyndeton | a style in which conjunctions are omitted, usually producing a fast-paced, more rapid prose. |
| Attitude | the sense expressed by the tone of voice and/or the mood of a piece of writing, the feelings the author holds toward their subject, the people in their narrative, the events, setting, the theme, or even the reader |
| Ballad | a narrative poem that is, or originally was, meant to be sung. repetition and refrain (recurring phrase or phrases) characterize the ballad |
| Ballad stanza | a common stanza form, consisting of a quatrain (a stanza of four lines) that alternatates four-beat and three-beat lines: one and three are unrhymed iambic tetrameter (four beats), and two and four are rhymed iambic trimeter (three beats) |
| Blank verse | the verse form that most resembles common speech, blank verse consists of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. |
| Caesura | a pause in a line of verse, indicated by natural speech patterns rather than due to specific metrical patterns |
| Caricature | a depiction in which a character's characteristics or features are so deliberately exaggerated as to render them absurd. |
| Chiasmus | a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second, may involve a repetition of the same words. |
| Colloquial | ordinary language, the vernacular. |
| Conceit | a comparison of two unlikely things that is drawn out within a piece of literature, in particular an extended metaphor within a poem |
| Connotation | what is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes, often referred to as the implied meaning of a word. |
| Consonance | the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowels. not to be confused with alliteration, consonance is a special case of alliteration. |
| Couplet | two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter that together present a single idea or connection. |
| Dactylic | metric foot in poetry that consists of two stressed syllables followed by one unstressed syllable |
| Denotation | a direct and specific meaning, often referred to as the dictionary meaning of a word |
| Denouncement | the final resolution of the main conflict in a play or story, generally follows the climax |
| Dialect | the language and speech idiosyncrasies of a specific area, region, or group of people. |
| Diction | the specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone, purpose, or effect |
| Dramatic monologue | a monologue set in a specific situation and spoken to an imaginary audience. another term would be soliloquy |
| Elegy | a poetic lament upon the death of a particular person, usually ending in consolation |
| Enjambment | the continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next |
| Epic | a poem that celebrates, in a continuous narrative, the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines, often concerned with the founding of a nation or developing of a culture, uses elevated language and grand, high style |
| Exposition | that part of the structure that sets the scene, introduces and identifies characters, and establishes the situation at the beginning of a story or play |
| Extended metaphor | a detailed and complex metaphor that extends over a long section of a work, also known as a conceit |
| Fable | a legend or a short moral story often using animals as characters |
| Falling action | that part of plot structure in which the complications of the rising action are untangled, also known as the denouement |
| Farce | a play or scene in a play or book that is characterized by broad humor, wild antics, and often slapstick and physical humor |
| Flashback | retrospection, where an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronology of the narrative |
| Foreshadowing | to hint at or to present an indication of the future beforehand |
| Formal diction | language that is lofty, dignified, and impersonal, often used in narrative epic poetry |
| Free verse | poetry that is characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and non-rhyming lines. example: to be or not to be soliloquy |
| Genre | a type or class of literature such as epic or narrative or poetry or belles lettres |
| Hyperbole | overstatement characterized by exaggerated language. |
| Iambic | a metrical foot in poetry that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. |
| Idyll | a short poem describing a country or pastoral scene, praising the simplicity and peace of rustic life |
| Imagery | broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object |
| Informal diction | language that is not as lofty or impersonal as formal diction; similar to everyday speech |
| In media res | "in the midst of things"; refers to opening a story in the middle of the action, necessitating filling in past details by exposition or flashback. |
| Irony | a situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant; when the opposite of what is expected happens |
| Jargon | specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group. |
| Juxtaposition | the location of one thing as being adjacent or juxtaposed with one another |
| Limited POV | a perspective confined to one character (1st or 3rd person) |
| Litote | A figure of speech that emphasizes its subject by conscious understatement. |
| Loose sentence | a sentence grammatically complete and usually stating its main idea before the end. |
| Lyric | originally designated poems meant to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre; now any short poem in which the speaker expresses intense personal emotion rather than describing a narrative or dramatic situation. examples: sonnet and ode |
| Message | a misleading term for theme, the central idea or statement of a story, or area of inquiry or explanation, misleading because it suggests a simple, packaged statement that pre-exists and for the simple communication of which the story is written |
| Metaphor | one thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them, sometimes used as a general term for figure of speech |
| Meter | the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry, determined by the kind of "foot" and by the number of feet per line |
| Metonymy | a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something. |
| Mood | the feeling or ambiance resulting from the tone of a piece as well as the writer/narrator's attitude and POV |
| Motif | recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event |
| Narrative structure | a textual organization based on sequences of connected events, usually presented in a straightforward, chronological framework |
| Narrator | the "character" who "tells" the story, or in poetry, the persona |
| Occasional poem | a poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private |
| Ode | a lyric poem that is somewhat serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style and sometimes uses elaborate stanza structure, which is often patterned in sets of three |
| Omniscient POV | also called unlimited focus, a perspecitve can be seen from one character's view, then another's, or can be moved in and out of the mind of any character at any time |
| Onomatopoeia | words that sound like what they mean. |
| Overstatement | exaggerated language; also called hyperbole |
| Oxymoron | a figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase. |
| Parable | a short fiction that illustrates an explicit moral lesson through the use of analogy |
| Paradox | a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but may actually be true |
| Parallel structure | the use of similar forms in writing for nouns, verbs, phrases, or thoughts |
| Parody | a work that imitates another for comic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original |
| Pastoral | a work that describes the simple life of country folk. also called ecologue, bucolic, or idyll |
| Periodic sentence | a sentence that is not gramatically complete until the end. |
| Persona | the voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share the values of the actual author. examples: nick carraway from the great gatsby |
| Personification | treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by giving it human qualities. |
| Petrarchan sonnet | also called italian sonnet: a sonnet form that divides the poem into one section of eight lines (octave) and a second section of six lines (sestet), usually following the abba abba cde cde rhyme scheme though the sestet's rhyme varies. |
| Plot | the arrangement of the narration based on the cause-effect relationship of the events |
| Protagonist | the main character in a work, who may or may not be heroic |
| Quatrain | a poetic stanza of four lines |
| Realism | the practice in literature of attempting to describe nature and life without idealization and with attention to detail |
| Refrain | a repeated stanza or line(s) in a poem or song. |
| Rhetorical question | a question that is asked simply for stylistic effect and is not expected to be answered |
| Rhyme | the repetition of the same or similar sounds, most often at the ends of lines |
| Rhythm | the modulation of weak and strong (stressed and unstressed) elements in the flow of speech |
| Rising action | the development of action in a work, usually at the beginning. the first part of plot structure. |
| Sarcasm | a form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually harshly or bitterly critical |
| Satire | a literary work that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure |
| Scansion | the analysis of verse to show its meter |
| Setting | the time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play |
| Shakespearan Sonnet | also called an english sonnet: a sonnet form that divides the poem into three units of four lines each and a final unit of two lines, usually abab cdcd efef gg |
| Shaped verse | another name for concrete poetry: poetry that is shaped to look like an object |
| Simile | a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words like or as to draw the connection |
| Soliloquy | a monologue in which the character in a play is alone and speaking only to themselves |
| Speaker | the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem |
| Stanza | a section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing. can be identified by the number of their lines. |
| Stereotype | a characterization based on conscious or unconscious assumptions that some aspect, such as gender, age, ethnic or national identity, religion, occupation, marital status, and so on, are predictably accompanied by certain characteristics. |
| Stock character | one who appears in a number of stories of plays such as the cruel stepmother, the femme fatal, etc |
| Structure | the organization or arrangement of the various elements in a work |
| Style | a distinctive manner of expression; each author's style is expressed through their diction, rhythm, imagery, it is a writer's typical way or writing. includes word choice, tone, degree of formality, figurative language, rhythm, grammer, structure |
| Symbolism | a person, place, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time figuratively represents or "stands for" something else. |
| Synecdoche | when a part is used to signify a whole. |
| Syntax | the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. syntax is sentence structure and how it influences the way the reader receives a particular piece of writing |
| Terza rima | a verse form consisting of three-line stanzas in which the second line of each rhymes with the first and third of the next |
| Theme | a generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work; the statement a poem makes about its subject |
| Tone | the attitude a literary work takes toward its subject and theme; the tenor of a piece of writing based on particular stylistic devices employed by the writer. tone reflects the narrator's attitude |
| Tragedy | a drama in which a character (usually good and noble and of high rank) is brought to a disasterous end in their confrontation with a superior force. often the protagonist's downfall is a result of a fatal flaw in their character. |
| Trochaic | a metric foot in poetry that is the opposite of iambic. the first syllable is stressed, the second one is not. |
| Turning point | the third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing. sometimes referred to as the climax of the story. |
| Verisimilitude | the quality or characteristic of being true or real |
| Villanelle | a verse form consisting of 19 lines divided into six stanzas - five tercets and one quatrain. |
| Voice | The acknowledged or unacknowledged source of words of the story; the speaker, a "person" telling the story or poem. |
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