AP Lit Terms Flashcards
Alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words
Allegory
A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities
Anapest
Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one
com-pre-HEND, in-ter-VENE
Antagonist
A character or force against which another character struggles
Aside
Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not “heard”by the other characters on stage during a play
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose
(“I rose and told him of my woe”)
Aubade
A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover
Ballad
A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style
Blank Verse
A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter
Caesura
A strong pause within a line of verse
Catastrophe
The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of the play
Catharsis
The purging of the feelings of pity and fear that, according to Aristotle, occur in the audience of tragic drama. The audience experiences catharsis at the end of the play, following the catastrophe
Character
An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static or dynamic
Characterization
The means by which writes present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex. writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions
Chorus
A group of characters in a Grek tragedy (and later forms of drama), who comment on the action of a play without participation in it
Climax
The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work
Closed Form
A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern
Comedy
A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better, In cmodey, things work out happily in the end.
(Comic drama may be either romantic–characterized by a tone of tolerance and geniality–or satiric. Satiric works offer a darker vision of human nature, one that ridicules human folly)
Comic Relief
The use of a comic scene to interrupt a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments. The comedy of scenes offering comedic relief typically parallels that tragic action that the scenes interrupt. Comic relief is lacking in Greek tragedy, but occurs regularly in Shakespeare’s tragedies
Complication
An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work
Conflict
A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters
Connotation
The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poetts especially tend to use words rich in connotation
Convention
A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. Literary conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ballad, sonnet, and play
Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem
Dactyl
A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed one
FLUT-ter-ring, BLUE-ber-ry
Denotation
The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word’s denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications
Denouement
The resolution of the plot of a literary work
In Hamlet, after the tragedy when the stage is littered with corpses
Deus ex Machina
A god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention. The Latin phrase means, literally, “a god from the machine.” The phrase refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play
Dialogue
The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters’ speech is preceded by their names
Diction
The selection of words in a literary work. A work’s diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to one character, or as represented over the body of his or her work
Dramatic Monologue
A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener. As readers, we overhear the speaker in a dramatic monologue
Dramatis Personae
Latin for the characters or persons in a play
Elegy
A lyric poem that laments the dead
Elision
The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter or a line of poetry
Enjambment
A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line to the next. An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped lined in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line
Epic
A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a her. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values
Epigram
A brief witty poerm, often satirical
Exposition
The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. A Doll’s House begins with a conversation between the two central characters, a dialogue that fills the audience in on events that occurred before the action of the play begins, but which are important in the development of its plot
Fable
A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. Fables typically include animals as characters
Falling action
In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution
Falling Meter
Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable. The nonsense line “Higgledy, piggledy” is dactylic, with the accent on the first syllable and the two syllables following falling off from that accent in each word
Fiction
An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. And of course, characters in stories and novels are fictional though they too may be based in some way on real people
Figurative Language
A form of language in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of the thing stands for the whole
Flashback
An interruption of a work’s chronology the describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work’s action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human time
