Help
Options
Didn't know it?
click below
click below
Knew it?
click below
click below
Don't Know
Remaining cards (0)
Know
retry
shuffle
restart
0:00
Embed Code - If you would like this activity on your web page, copy the script below and paste it into your web page.
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Normal Size Small Size show me how
literary terms
lit terms for AP review
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Allegory | A presentation of an abstract idea through concrete means.Excample: Marlow is the concrete tangible story about him vetuting the darkness, but actually going through the heart of man |
| Alliteration | A repetition of the same sounds, usually initial consonants, in neighboring words Excample: And sings a solitary song. That whistles in the wind. |
| Allusion | A brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or ficticious, or to a work of art. Casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event.An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion. |
| Analogy | A point-by-point comparison between the two dissimilar things in order to clarify the less familiar of the two.Excample: hot is cold as fire is to ice OR hot is cold and fire is to ice |
| Antagonist | A character that doesn't change |
| Aphorism | A brief saying embodying a moral, a concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words. Excample: Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult. |
| Apostrophe | Directly addresses someone who is dead or absentExcample: With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbest the skies. Busy old fool, unruly sun. |
| Archetype | The original model from which something is developed or made; images, figures, chracter types, settings, and story types.Excample: Snake is the archetypical figure of the trickster |
| Aside | An actor's speech, directed to the audience, that is not supposed to be heard by other actors on stage. Usually is used to let the audiece know what a character is about to do or what he or she is thinking.Excample: Hamlet says "To be or not to be" |
| Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds but not consonant sounds.Excample: Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geeks |
| Ballad | A narrative folk song. Subjects usually are killings, feuds, important historical events, and rebellion. |
| Blank verse | Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, which must not be confused with free verse. |
| Cauesura | A natural pause or breakExcample: England - how long I thee! |
| Characterization | The method used by a writer to develop a character. The metd.(1) showing the character's appearance, (2) displaying the character's actions, (3) revealing the character's thoughts, (4) letting the character speak, and (5) getting the reactions of others. |
| Chiasmus | A type of rhetoric in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first. Example: "There's a bridge to cross the great divide. . . . There's a cross to bridge the great divide. . . ." Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike. |
| Climax | The turning point of the story |
| Conceit | An unusually far-fetched or elaborate metaphor presenting a surprisingly apt parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or feelings |
| Connotation | An implied meaning of a wordExcample: Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest (burial) |
| Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds, but not vowels, as in assonanceExcample: Lady lounges lazily, dark deep dread crept in |
| Convention | An accepted or expected style or form (Wicked step-mothers in fairy tales, happy endings, etc.) |
| Couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme and that are written to the same meter, or pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.Excample: Three be the things I shall have till I die:Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. |
| Denotation | The literal meaning of a word, the dictionary meaning. Opposite of connotation.Excample: Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest (sleep) |
| Deus ex Machina | ("god out of a machine")The phrase describes an artificial, or improbable, character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (such as an angel suddenly appearing to solve problems). |
| Diction | The choice of words used in a literary work |
| Elegy | An elaborately formal lyric poem lamenting the death of a friend or public figure, or serious reflection on a serious subject |
| Epic | A long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes in a grand style |
| Euphemism | The substitution of a mild term for one more offensive or hurtfulExcample: He kicked but |
| Exposition | The setting forth of a systematic explanation of or argument about any subject; or the openingpart of a play or story, in which we are introduced to the characters and their situation, often by reference to preceding events. |
| Farce | A type of drama related to comedy but emphasizing improbable situations, violent conflicts, physical action, and coarse wit over characterization or articulated plot. |
| Figurative language | A language that contains figures of speech, such as metaphor, simile, personification, etc. |
| Flashback | An action that interrupts to show an event that happened at an earlier time which is necessary to better understanding. |
| Foil | A character that contrasts another character, often the protagonist, that therefore highlights certain qualities of the protagonist (or whoever the foil may be). Ex: Hamlet Quixote is the foil to Laureates |
| Foreshadowing | The use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in literature. Hint of things to come. |
| Free Verse | Poetry that is free of rhyme and meter resembling natural speech |
| Hamartia | The Greek word for error or failure, used by Aristotle;to designate the false step that leads the protagonist in a *tragedy to his or her downfall. It is the action that the character takes. |
| Hyperbole | Over exaggeration or overstatementExcample: I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.He's as big as a house. |
| Iambic | A lightly stressed syllable followed by a heavily stressed syllable. Example: "The cúrfew tólls the knéll of párting dáy." (Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.") |
| Image | A language that evokes one or all of the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching. |
| In Medias Res | A technique used to heighten dramatic tension or to create a sense of mystery. It's the opposite of the phrase ab ovo, but contains no falshbacks or memories. |
| Irony | An implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meantExample: "A fine thing indeed!" he muttered to himself. |
| Litotes | A figure of speech by which an affirmation is made indirectly by saying its opposite, usually with an effect of understatement Excample: “I’d not be averse to a drink.” |
| Lyric | A usually short, personal poem expressing the poet’s emotions and thoughts rather than telling a story |
| Metaphor | A comparison of two unlike things using the verb "to be" and not using like or as asExcample: He is a pig. Thou art sunshine. |
| Meter | The pattern of measured sound-units recurring more or less regularly in lines of verse |
| Iamb | A metrical foot consisting of two syllables, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented as in the word invade |
| Trochee | A metrical foot consisting of two syllables, an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable, as in the word fortune |
| Anapest | A foot of three syllables, two short followed by one long in quantitative meter, and two unstressed followed by one stressed in accentual meter, as in for the nonce. |
| Dactyl | A foot of three syllables, one long followed by two short in quantitative meter, or one stressed followed by two unstressed in accentual meter, as in gently and humanly |
| Ode | An elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy address to a person or abstract entity, always serious and elevated in tone |
| Oxymoron | Putting two contradictory words togetherExcample:hot ice, cold fire, wise fool, sad joy, eloquent silence |
| Parable | A brief tale intended to be understood as an allegory illustrating some lesson or moral |
| Paradox | Reveals a kind of truth which at first seems contradictory. Two opposing ideas. Excample:Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage. |
| Parody | A composition that ridicules another composition by imitating and exaggerating aspects of its content |
| Persona | The assumed identity or fictional “I” assumed by a writer in a literary work |
| Personification | Giving human qualities to animals or objectsExample: A smiling moon, a jovial sun |
| Conflict/Plot | The struggle found in fiction. Conflict/Plot may be internal or external and is best seen in (1) Man in conflict with another Man: (2) Man in conflict in Nature; (3) Man in conflict with self. |
| Point of View | The vantage point, or stance, from which a story is told; the eye and mind through which the action is perceived and filtered, sometimes called narrative perspective. |
| Prosody | The study of sound and rhythm in poetry |
| Quatrain | A verse stanza of four lines, rhymed or unrhymed |
| Resolution | The end of plot; short story, the lose ends ties up |
| Rhyme | The repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines. Rhyme is predominantly a function of sound rather than spelling.Excample: It runs through the reedsAnd away it proceeds... |
| Internal Rhyme | Occurs when rhyming words fall within a line |
| Slant Rhyme | Occurs when the rhyming sounds are similar, but not exact, as in prove and glove |
| Satire | A literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correcting, or changing, the subject of the satiric attack;uses irony, sarcasm, giving change or reform through ridicule. |
| Sestet | A stanza consisting of exactly six lines |
| Setting | A Time and Place in fiction |
| Simile | A comparison of two unlike things using like or asExcample: He eats like a pig. Vines like golden prisons. |
| Soliloquy | Alone on stage; a speech a character expresses on stage.Shakespeare’s Hamlet delivers perhaps the best known for this, which begins: "To be or not to be." |
| Sonnet | A fixed form of lyric poetry that consists of fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter.Italian sonnets is divided in octives;cdecde, cdcdcd, and cdccdc. Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. |
| Stream-of-consciousness technique | It's most intense use; it takes the reader inside a character’s mind to reveal perceptions, thoughts, and feelings on a conscious or unconscious level.This technique suggests the flow of thought, also makes rapid associations of logic and transitions |
| Symbol | The practice of representing things by the significance to objects, events, or relationships.Excample: the bird of night (owl is a symbol of death) |
| Synecdoche | Part of speech in which part of something represents the wholeExample:lend me your ears (give me your attention). |
| Syntax | The arrangement, the ordering, grouping, and placement of words within a sentence. It is also viwed as one of the two compoents of diction.Excample: "I rode across the meadow" |
| Theme | The general idea or insight about life that a writer wishes to express. All of the elements of literary terms contribute to the this. A simple of this can often be stated in a single sentence. |
| Tone | It is where the attitude of a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, objective. |
| Tragedy | A type of drama in which the protagonist, a person of unusual moral or intellectual stature or outstanding abilities, suffers a fall in fortune due to some error of judgment or flaw in his or her nature |
| Understatement | A type of verbal irony in which something is purposely represented as being far less important than it actually isExcample: On a day of extreme weather, like it is really really hot, one might say, "Is is warm enough for you?" or the opposite. |
| Unreliable Narrator (like J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield) | Reveals an interpretation of events that is somehow different from the author’s own interpretation of those events. The perception of plot, characters, and setting becomes the actual subject of the story. They might lack self knowledge,inexperiance,insain |
| Metonymy | Figure of speech in which one thing is represented by another this is commonly associated with it |
| Protagonist | A character that changes |
| Third person limited | The author limits him/herself to a complete knowledge of one character in the story and tells us only what that one character feels, thinks, sees or hears |
| Third person objective | The author limits him/herself to reporting what the characters say or do; he or she does not interpret their behavior or tell us their private thoughts or feelings |
| Third person omniscient | The author knows all (godlike) and is free to tell us anything, including what the characters are thinking or feeling and why they act as they do |
Created by:
kathschop
Popular English Vocabulary sets