AP Literary Terms Flashcards
An understatement in which the affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary
Litotes
The repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structures
Parallelism
The intentional repetition of beginning clauses in order to create an artistic effect.
“We shall go. We shall find her. We shall end this”
Anaphora
Addressing an absent figure or the characterization of an abstract figure.
“Oh death, be not proud”
Apostrophe
Using an object associated with something to represent it
Metonymy
Using part of an object to represent the whole.
Synecdoche
Ethos
Ones credibility as an author
Pathos
The emotional power of an appeal
The intellectual power of an appeal
Logos
A stylistic device in which several coordinating conjunctions are used in succession in order to achieve an artistic effect.
“There were frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, at the very door of the railway.”
Polysyndeton
The absence of a word(s). When words are left out of a sentence yet it can still be understood.
“The whole day, rain, torrents of rain”
Ellipsis
A figure of speech where a word applies to two others in different senses.
“John and the milk expired last week.”
“With weeping eyes and hearts”
Zeugma
A rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order, in the same or modified form
“Poetry is the record of best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds”
Chiasmus
Periodic Sentence
“Out of the bosom of the air,
out of the cloud-folds of her garment shaken,
over the woodlands brown and bare”
has the main clause or predicate at the end. Sentence unfolds gradually.
Rhetoric
The art of persuasive argument through writing or speech.
