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AP Lit Terms
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Allegory | A story or poem in which characters, setting, and events stand for other people, events, abstract ideas, or qualities such as in ANIMAL FARM and LORD OF THE FLIES. |
| Alliteration | A repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together. |
| Allusion | A reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science of any other branch of culture. |
| Ambiguity | Is deliberately suggesting two or more different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work. An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than once way. Ambiguity is only done intentionally and is referred to as vagueness otherwise. |
| Analogy | A comparison made between two things to show how they are alike. |
| Anaphora | A repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row. This is a deliberate form of repetition and helps make the writer's point more coherent. |
| Anastrophe | An inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence. Purpose is rhythm, euphony or emphasis. It is a fancy word for inversion. |
| Anecdote | A brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something. An anecdote often shows character of an individual. |
| Antagonist | An opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero,also known as the protagonist, in a story. |
| Antimetabole | A repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order. "One should eat to live, not live to eat." -Moliere. |
| Antithesis | A balancing of words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure. |
| Antihero | A central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes. They may lack grace, courage, intelligence, or moral scruples. |
| Anthropomorphism | attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object (Personification) |
| Aphorism | A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life or of a principle or accepted general truth. |
| Apostrophe | is calling out an imaginary, dead, or absent person, a place or thing, or a personified abstract idea. However, if the character is asking a god or goddess for inspiration it is called an invocation. |
| Apposition | Placing in immediately succeeding order of two or more coordinate elements, the later of which is an explanation, qualification, or modification of the first. |
| Assonance | The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds, especially in words that are together. |
| Asyndeton | Commas used without conjunction to separate a series of words, thus emphasizing the parts equally. |
| Balance | Constructing a sentence so that both halves are about the same length and importance. Sentences can be unbalanced to serve a special effect as well. |
| Characterization | The process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character. |
| Indirect characterization | the author reveals to the reader what the character is like by describing how the character looks and dresses, by letting the reader hear what the character says, by revealing the character's private thoughts and feelings,and so on. |
| Direct characterization | the author tells us directly what the character is like: Sneaky, generous, mena to pets and so on. Literature from the Romantic era relied heavily on this. |
| Static character | one who does not change much in the course of a story. |
| Dynamic character | one who changes in some important way as a result of the story's action. |
| Flat character | has only one or two personality traits. They are one dimensional and can be summed up in one phrase. |
| Round character | has more dimennsions to their personalities--- they are complex such as real people. |
| Chiasums | A type of rhetorical balance in poetry in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but with parts reversed. |
| Cliche | A word or phrase, often a figure of speech, that has become lifeless because of overuse. |
| Colloquialism | a word or phrase in everyday conversational use but is informal and inappropriate while writing for formal situations. |
| Comedy | Generally a story that ends with a happy resolution of the conflicts faced by the main character or characters. |
| Conceit | an elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different. |
| Confessional Poetry | A twentieth century term used to describe poetry that uses intimate material from the poet's life. |
| Conflict | the struggle between opposing forces or characters in the story. |
| External conflict | conflicts can exist between two people, between a person and nature or machine, or between a person and a whole society. |
| Internal conflict | A conflict will be internal, involving opposing forces within a person's mind. |
| Connotation | the associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase, in addition to its strict dictionary definition. |
| Couplet | two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry. |
| Dialect | A way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain social group or of the inhabitants of a certain geographical area. |
| Diction | a speaker or writer's choice of words. |
| Didactic | A form of writing that teaches a specific lesson or moral, or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking. |
| Elegy | A poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died. |
| Eulogy | a great praise or commendation, often about someone who has died. |
| Epanalepsis | A device of repetition in which the same expression is repeated both and the beginning and end of the line, clause or sentence. |
| Epigraph | A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme. |
| Epic | A long narrative poem, written in heightened language, which recounts the deeds of a heroic character who embodies the values of a particular society. |
| Epistrophe | A device of repetition in which the same expression is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences. |
| Epithet | An adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing that is frequently used to emphasize a characteristic quality. |
| Homeric epithet | a compound adjective used with a person or thing |
| Essay | A short piece of nonfiction prose in which the writer discusses some aspects of a subject. |
| Argumentative essay | A form of essay that uses logic, ethics and emotional appeals to develop an effective means of convincing the reader to think or act in a certain way. |
| Persuasive essay | relies more on emotional appeal than on fact. |
| Casual relationship | A form of argumentation in which the writer claims that one thing results from another. |
| Explication | the act of interpreting or discovering the meaning of a text |
| Fable | a very short story told in prose or poetry that teaches a practical lesson about how to succeed in life. |
| Farce | a type of comedy in which ridiculous and often stereotyped characters are involved in silly, far-fetched situations. |
| Figurative language | words that are inaccurate if interpreted literally but are used to describe. |
| Flashback | a scene that interrupts the normal chronological sequence of events in a story to depict something that happened at an earlier time. |
| Foil | A character who acts as contrast to another character. |
| Foreshadowing | the use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in the plot |
| Free verse | poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme. |
| Hyperbole | a figure of speech that uses an incredible exaggeration or overstatement for effect. |
| Hypotactic | a sentence marked by the use of connection words between clauses or sentences, explicitly showing the logical or other relationships between them. |
| Imagery | THE USE OF LANGUAGE TO EVOKE A PICTURE OR A CONCRETE SENSATION OF A PERSON, THING, PLACE, OR EXPERIENCE., |
| Inversion | THE REVERSAL OF THE NORMAL WORD ORDER IN A SENTENCE OR PHRASE. |
| Irony | A discrepancy between appearances and reality. |
| Verbal irony | occurs when someone says one thing but really means something else. |
| Situational irony | takes plae when there is a discrepancy between what is expected to happen or what would be appropriate to happen, and what really does happen. |
| Dramatic irony | Is often used on stage. A character in the play or story will think one thing is true when the audience or reader knows otherwise. |
| Juxtaposition | A poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit. |
| Litotes | A form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form. |
| Local color | a term applied to fiction or poetry which tends to place a special emphasis on a particular setting, including its customs, clothing, dialect and landscape. |
| Loose sentence | one in which the main clause comes first, followed by further dependent grammatical units. |
| Lyric Poem | A poem that does not tell a story but expresses the personal feelng or thoughts of the speaker.. |
| Ballad | A form of lyrical poetry that tells a story. |
| Metaphor | a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike thinks without the use of such specific words of comparison. |
| Implied metaphor | does not state explicitly the two terms of comparison. |
| Extended metaphor | a metaphor that is extended or developed as far as the writer wants to take it. |
| Dead metaphor | A metaphor that has been used so often that the comparison is no longer vivid. |
| Mixed metaphor | a metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms so that they are visually or imaginatively incompatible. |
| Metonymy | a figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing is referred to by something closely associated with it. |
| Mood | An atmosphere created by a writer's diction and the details selected. |
| Motif | A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout the work. |
| Onomatopoeia | The use of words that echo their sense. |
| Oxymoron | A figure of speech that combines opposites or contradictory terms in brief phrases. |
| Parable | A relatively short story that teaches a moral or lesson about how to lead a good life. |
| Paradox | A statement that appears self-contradictory but that reveals a kind of truth. |
| Parallel Structure | the repetition of words or phrases that hae similar grammatical structures. |
| Paratactic Sentence | juxtaposes clauses or sentences. |
| Parody | A work that makes fun of another work by imitating some aspect of the writer's style. |
| Periodic | a sentence that places the main idea or central complete thought at the end of the sentence. |
| Personification | a figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feeling, thoughts, or attitudes. |
| Plot | the series of related events in a story or play |
| Exposition | Introduces characters, situations, and setting |
| Rising action | complication sin conflict and situations |
| Climax | The point in a plot that creates the greatest intensity, suspense or interest. |
| Resolution | The conclusion of a story when all or most of the conflicts have been settled |
| Point of View | the vantage point from which the writer tells the story |
| First person P.O.V. | one of the characters tells the story |
| third person P.O.V. | an unknown narrator tells the story, but this narrator zooms in to focus on the thoughts and feeling of only one character. |
| Omniscient P.O.V. | an all knowing narrator tells the story |
| objective P.O.V. | A narrator who is totally impersonal and objective tells the story with no comment on any characters or events. |
| Polysyndeton | A sentence that uses a conjunction with no commas to separate the items in a serious. |
| Protagonist | the central character in a story, the one who initiates or drives the action. Usually the hero. |
| Pun | A play on words based on the multiple meanings of a single word or on words that sound alike but mean different things. |
| Quatrain | A poem consisting of four lines, or four lines of poem that can be considered a poem. |
| Refrain | A word, phrase, line or group of lines that is repeated for effect, several different times. |
| Rhythm | A rise and fall of the voice produced by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language. |
| Rhetoric | the art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse. |
| Rhetorical question | a question asked for effect, not actually requiring an answer. |
| Romance | in general, a story in which an idealized hero or heroine undertakes a quest and is successful. |
| Satire | a type of writing that ridicules the shortcomings of people or institutions in an attempt to bring about a change. |
| Simile | A figure of speech that makes an explicitly comparison between two unlike things using like or as. |
| Soliloquy | A long speech made by a character in a play while no other characters are on stage. |
| Stereotype | a fixed idea or conception of a character or idea which does not allow for any individuality, often based on religion, social, or racial prejudices. |
| Stream of consciousness | A style of writing that portrays the inner workings of a characters mind. |
| Style | the distinctive way in which a writer uses language |
| Suspense | A feeling of uncertainty and curiosity about what will happen next in a story |
| Symbol | A person, place, thing or event that has meaning in itself and also stands for something more. |
| Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a ppart represents the whole. |
| Syntatic fluency | the ability to create a variety of sentence structures, appropriately complex and/or simple and varied in length. |
| Syntactic permutation | sentence structures that are extraordinarily complex and involved. |
| Tall Tale | an outrageously exaggerated, humorous story that is obviously fake. |
| Theme | The insight about human life that is revealed in a literary work. |
| Tone | The attitude a writer takes toward the subject of a work, the characters in it or the audience, revealed through diction, figurative language and organization. |
| tragedy | A story in which the heroic character either dies or comes to an unhappy end. |
| Tricolon | Sentence with three equally important parts, all three having the same length. |
| Understatement | A statement that says less than what it means. |
| Unity | Unified parts of the writing are related to one central idea or organizing principle. |
| Vernacular | the language spoken by the people who live in the particular locality. |
| Impressionism | a nineteenth century movement in literature and art which advocated a recording of the artist's personal impressions of the world rather than a strict representation of reality. |
| Modernism | a term for the bold new experimental styles and forms that swept the arts during the first third of the twentieth century. |
| Naturalism | A nineteenth century literary movement that was an extension of realism and claimed to portray life exactly as it was. |
| Plain style | Writing style that stresses simplicity and clarity of expression and was the main form of Puritan writers. |
| Puritanism | A writing style of America's early English speaking colonists. It emphasizes obedience to God and consists mainly of journals, sermons, and poems. |
| Rationalism | A movement that began in europe in the seventeenth century, which held that we can arrive at truth by using our reason rather than relying on the authority of the past, of the church or of an institution. (AKA the neoclassicism and age of reason) |
| Realism | A style or writing, developed in the nineteenth century that attempts to depict life accurately without idealizing or romanticizing it. |
| Regionalism | literature that emphasizes a specific geographic setting and that reproduces the speech, behavior and attitudes of the people who live in that region. |
| Romanticism | A revolt against rationalism that affected literature and other arts, beginning in the late eighteenth century and remaining strong through most of the nineteenth century. |
| Surrealism | A movement in art and literature that started in Europe during the 1920's. Surrealists wanted to replace conventional realism with the full expressions of the unconscious mind, which the considered to be real than the"real" world of appearances. |
| Symbolism | A literary movement that originated in late nineteenth century France, in which writers rearranged the world of appearances in order to reveal a more truthful version of reality. |
| Transcendentalism | A nineteenth century movement in the Romantic tradition which held that every individual can reach ultimate truths through spiritual intuition which transcends reasons and sensory experience. |
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