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PreAP Lit Terms 1
PreAP Lit Terms
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| abstract | Not attatched to anything specific or concrete |
| active voice | verb that is an action (as opposed to passive voice) ex: Jane SWEEPS the floor |
| ad hominem | an argument attacking an individual's character rather than the issue |
| aesthetic | relating to beauty or to a branch of philosophy concerned with art, beauty, and taste |
| allegory | a narrative in which literal meaning corresponds directly with symbolic meaning. Ex: is an allegory for the Russian Revolution (Napoleon= Stalin. Animal Farm= Russia) |
| alliteration | repetition of similar consonant sounds in the beginning of words |
| allusion | a reference within a literary work to a historical or literary person, place, or event |
| anachronism | the misplacement of a person, occurence, custom, or idea in time. Ex: in Julius Ceaser, a character mentions a watch. Watches did not exist in ancient Rome (they existed in the time of the author, Shakespeare) |
| anadiplosis | repetition of a word at the end of a phrase, sentence, etc. which then begins the next phrase, clause, sentence, etc. Example: I ran to the store. The store had plenty of oranges for me. |
| analogy | a comparison between two things that are otherwise unlike. Often analogies draw a comparison between something abstract and something more concerete or easier to visuaize. Ex: Trying to get a confession out of the suspect was like pulling teeth. |
| anaphora | repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of succesive phrases and sentences |
| antagonist | the person or obstacle that gets in the wasy of the protagonist's accomplishment of his/her goal |
| anecdote | a brief narration of an event or person Example: Aunt Joan loves to tell anecdotes of her childhood |
| antecedent | what noun the pronoun is replacing. Example: "I love reading. It makes me happy." The antecedent of "it" is "reading." |
| antihero/antiheroine | a protagonist who is not a good person |
| antimetabole | reversing the order of repeated words or phrases (ex. all work and no play is as harmful to mental health as all play and no work) |
| antithesis | parallelism with contradictory ideas (ex. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times) |
| aporia | expression of doubt (often feigned) by which a speaker appears uncertain as to what he should think, say, do |
| aposiopesis | a sudden breaking off of speech, usually due to excitement (either positive or negative) |
| apostrophe | direcly addressing a dead person or an inanimate object |