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Ms. Martinson
AP English Literature
Add – Zuegma, Conceit, parallelism, catharsis, lyric poetry, narrative, metaphysical
TERM
Aestheticism
Alliteration
Allegory
Allusion
Ambiguity
Analogy
Anapest
Anaphora
Antagonist
Antecedent
Antithesis
Apostrophe
Archetype
Aside
Assonance
Atmosphere
Ballad
Beat Poets
Blank Verse
Black Humor
Cacophony
Caesura
Cavalier Poets
Characterization
Chiaroscuro
Cliché
Chinese Box
Narrative
Colloquial
Comedy of Manners
The movement developed in Europe in the late 19th century, encouraging the separation
of morality from artistic value.
The repetition of initial consonant sounds
A form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are
equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning
has moral, social, religious, or political significance
A reference to history, mythology, literature or popular culture
A statement whose meaning is intentionally left unclear or that has multiple meanings
Comparison of two things for clarification or explanation
A three beat poetic foot that ends with the accented syllable
The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or
sentences
The force against which the protagonist struggles in a world of literature
the word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun
the placing of a sentence or one of its parts against another to which it is opposed to
form a balanced contrast of ideas
a figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified
abstraction, such as liberty or love
the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on
which they are based; a model or first form
A part of an actor's lines supposedly not heard by others on the stage and intended only
for the audience.
The repetition of vowel sounds in a line of poetry
the emotional mood created by the entirety of a literary work, established partly by the
setting and partly by the author's choice of objects that are described
simple narrative poem of folk origin, composed in short stanzas and adapted for singing
– identified by alternating iambic tetrameter and trimester and ABCB rhyme
A group of writers interested in changing consciousness and defying conventional
writing.
Unrhymed iambic pentameter
a form of humor that regards human suffering as absurd rather than pitiable, or that
considers human existence as ironic and pointless but somehow comic
the use of unharmonious or dissonant speech sounds in language
a break, especially a sense pause, usually near the middle of a verse, and marked in
scansion by a double vertical line
cavaliers together is their use of direct and colloquial language expressive of a highly
individual personality, and their enjoyment of the casual, the amateur, the affectionate
poem
The methods used by authors to develop character traits
The arrangement of light and dark elements in a work of art
A trite or overused expression
refers to a novel or drama that is told in the form of a narrative inside a narrative (and so
on), giving views from different perspectives
a word or phrase appropriate to conversation and other informal situations
a comedy satirizing the manners and customs of a social class, especially one dealing
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Comedy of Ideas
Compression
Conceit
Confessional Poets
Connotation
Consonance
Couplet
Dactyl
Denotation
Dialogue
Diction
Didactic
Dumb Show
Dramatic Irony
Elegy
End Stop
Enjambment
Epic
Epiphany
Epigram
Euphemism
Euphony
Explication
Exposition
Existentialism
Extrametrical
Farce
Figurative Language
AP English Literature
with the amorous intrigues of fashionable society
Dramatic genre that combines comedy with political, philosophical, and controversial
attitudes.
What often distinguishes poetry from prose – the condensed language – compressed for
effect
a fanciful expression, usually in the form of an extended metaphor or surprising analogy
between seemingly dissimilar objects
Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or "I." This style of writing emerged in
the late 1950s and early 1960s
the nonliteral, associative meaning of a word; the implied, suggested meaning
Repetition of internal or ending consonant sounds of words close together in poetry
Two successive lines of poetry that rhyme
A three-beat poetic foot that begins with the accented syllable
the strict, literal, dictionary definition of a word, devoid of any emotion, attitude, or
color
the conversation between characters in a novel, drama, etc
referring to style, diction refers to the writer's word choices, especially with regard to
their correctness, clearness, or effectiveness
instructional literature in artistic form
A part of a play, especially in medieval and Renaissance drama, that is enacted without
speaking
facts or events are unknown to a character but known to the reader or audience or
other characters in work
a mournful, melancholy, or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for
the dead
a grammatical pause at the end of a line of verse
The running on of the thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without a
syntactical break.
noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in
which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style
a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of
something
any witty, ingenious, or pointed saying tersely expressed
a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept
pleasing and harmonious in sound
analysis or interpretation, esp. of a literary passage or work
part of a text that sets the stage for the drama to follow: it introduces the theme, setting,
characters, and circumstances
a modern philosophical movement stressing the importance of personal experience and
responsibility and the demands that they make on the individual
Additional poetic syllables at the start or end of a poetic line
a light, humorous play in which the plot depends upon a skillfully exploited situation
rather than upon the development of character
writing or speech that is not intended to carry literal meaning and is usually meant to
be imaginative and vivid
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Flashback
Foil
Foot
Frame Narration
Free Verse
Genre
Gothic
Hamartia
Hubris
Hyperbole
Iamb (iambic)
Imagery
Inciting Event
Inference
Interior Monologue
Intertextuality
Irony
Juxtaposition
Litotes
Low Comedy
Metaphor
Meter
Metrical Split
Metonymy
AP English Literature
A device in the narrative of a motion picture, novel, etc., by which an event or scene
taking place before the present time in the narrative is inserted into the chronological
structure of the work.
A character that is presented as a contrast to a second character so as to point to or show
to advantage some aspect of the second character.
A single unit of poetic verse consisting of one stressed and on or two unstressed
syllables
Story within a story
Poetry that lacks organized rhyme and rhythm
A general category under which pieces of literature may be grouped
Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that
combines elements of both horror and romance.
Tragic flaw
The sin of extreme pride
a figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or overstatement
A poetic foot consisting of on unaccented and one accented syllable
the sensory details or figurative language used to describe, arouse emotion, or represent
abstractions
In a drama, this begins the action and also sets up the main question (Motivating
Question) that the audience wants the play to answer
to draw a reasonable conclusion from the information presented
A narrative form capturing the unorganized ideas within the mind of a character
the whole network of relations, conventions, and expectations by which the text is
defined; the relationship between texts
An unexpected twist – irony may be situational, verbal or dramatic
an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or
contrast
A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed
by negating its opposite
Comedy that appeals to the lowest elements – pratfalls, bodily noises, etc.
a figure of speech using implied comparison of seemingly unlike things or the
substitution of one for the other, suggesting some similarity
Organized Rhythm in poetry (dimeter, trimester, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter,
heptameter, octameter)
When a line of poetry (or a play in Shakespeare’s case) is split between two speakers
from the Greek "changed label", the name of one object is substituted for that of another
closely associated with it (e.g. "the White House" for the President)
Mood
Motif
the prevailing atmosphere or emotional aura of a word
A recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., especially in a literary, artistic, or musical work.
Octave
Ode
Onomatopoeia
Oxymoron
An 8-lined stanza
A formal, stanzaic poem written in honor or tribute
natural sounds are imitated in the sounds of words
author groups apparently contradictory terms to suggest
a paradox
Paradox
a statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon
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AP English Literature
closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity
Parallelism
the grammatical or rhetorical framing of words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs to
give structural similarity
Parody
a work that closely imitates the style or content of another with the specific aim of
comic effect and/or ridicule
Pastoral
Persona
Personification
refers to a literary work dealing with shepherds and rustic life
the narrator of or a character in a literary work, sometimes identified with the author
a figure of speech in which the author presents or describes concepts, animals, or
inanimate objects by endowing them with human attributes or emotions
Point of View
Prose
Prosody
Protagonist
Pseudonym
Pun
Prose
Rhetoric
the perspective from which a story is told
Non-poetic writing
the science or study of poetic meters and versification
the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other literary work
a fictitious name used by an author to conceal his or her identity
A clever play on words
genre including fiction, nonfiction, written in ordinary language
from the Greek for "orator," the principles governing the art of writing effectively,
eloquently, and persuasively
Rhyme Scheme
Romanticism
The pattern of repeated end rhymes
A movement in literature and the fine arts, beginning in the early nineteenth century,
that stressed personal emotion, free play of the imagination, and freedom from rules of
form
a work that targets human vices and follies or social institutions and conventions for
reform or ridicule
Satire
Sestet
Sestina
Simile
Soliloquy
Sonnet
Spondee
Stream of
Consciousness
Substitution
Subtext
Surrealism
Synesthesia
Symbol
Syntax
Theme
A 6-line stanza
a poem of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy, originally without rhyme, in
which each stanza repeats the end words of the lines of the first stanza, but in different
order
A comparison using like or as
A dramatic speech when a character directly addresses the audience
A formal poem of 14 lines with specific rhyme patterns – Shakespearean and Petrarchan
thought regarded as a succession of ideas and images constantly moving forward in
time
Using one poetic foot to substitute for another
The underlying or implicit meaning, as of a literary work.
a style of art and literature developed principally in the 20th century, stressing the
subconscious or nonrational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or the
exploitation of chance effects
a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as
when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color
anything that represents or stands for something else
the way an author chooses to join words into phrases, clauses, and sentences
the central idea or message of a work, the insight it offers into life
Ms. Martinson
Thesis
Tone
Tragedy
Trochee
Troubadours
Truncation
Unreliable narrator
Verisimilitude
Vignette
Villanelle
Wit
AP English Literature
similar to mood, describes the author's attitude toward his material, the audience, or
both
A dramatic form that follows the downfall of the tragic hero by his or her own flaw
A two syllable poetic foot starting with the accented syllable
Travelling poets who originated aural forms – the ballade being one
The shortening of a line of poetry
A subjective narration where the narrator cannot be believed
the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability
a short graceful literary essay or sketch
A short poem of fixed form, written in tercets, usually five in number, followed by a
final quatrain, all being based on two rhymes.
intellectually amusing language that surprises and delights