AP Terms Quiz #2 (30 terms) Flashcards
(30 cards)
Ad Hominem
(Latin) means “against the man”; An argument based on the failings of an opponent rather than on the merits of the case(instead of on his arguments).
**Example: **“How can you argue your case for vegetarianism when you are enjoying your steak?”
This clearly shows how a person is attacked instead of being addressed for or against his argument.
Allegory
A literary work in which characters, objects, or actions represent abstract ideas, lessons, motifs.
Example: “Animal Farm”, written by George Orwell, is an allegory that uses animals on a farm to describe the overthrow of the last of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the Communist Revolution of Russia before WW II. The actions of the animals on the farm are used to expose the greed and corruption of the revolution. It also describes how powerful people can change the ideology of a society. One of the cardinal rules on the farm for the animals is:
“All animals are equal but a few are more equal than others.”
Alliteration
Use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable in a line of verse.
**Example: **She sells sea-shells down by the sea-shore.
Allusion
A reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art.
Example: “He was a real Romeo with the ladies.” Referring to Romeo from *Romeo & Juliet. *
Ambiguity
An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way. Also, the manner of expression of such an event or situation may be ambiguous. Artful language may be ambiguous. Unintentional ambiguity is usually vagueness.
Example: The meteor in the Scarlet Letter shining through while Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale were standing on the scaffold, = interpreted in many different ways. (as a harbinger for the sins they’ve committed or a shining ray of hope for these sinners)
Anachronism: Analepsis/Prolepsis
Anachronism: a Greek word anachronous which means “against time”; Something or someone out of place in terms of historical or chronological context
Example: Act 2 Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar”:
“Brutus: Peace! Count the clock.
Cassius: The clock has stricken three.”
The time this play depicts is a point in history dating back to 44 AD. Mechanical clocks referred to in the above-mentioned dialogue had not been invented at that time but were present in Shakespeare’s time. Thus, the mention of a clock = anachronism.
Analepsis: A form of flashback in which earlier parts of a narrative are related to others that have already been narrated
Example: In the Disney film “Hercules”, Hades’ fate for ruling the world was reached even when the Three Fates have told of what to come of Hercules.
Prolepsis: the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished (flashforward)
**Example: **Oedipus in the Odyssey have been told that he will sleep with his mother and kill his father.
Anadiplosis
A Greek word which means “to reduplicate”; Repeated word(s) that occurs when the last word or terms in one sentence, clause, or phrase is/are repeated at or very near the beginning of the next sentence, clause, or phrase.
**Example: **From Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita,
“What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including that awful French).
Phrase “what I remember of the letter” = anadiplosis. The writer clearly wants his readers to focus on what he is saying and repeating in these words. The message is further enhanced by the use of the word “verbatim”.
Analogy
A comparison of two different things that are similar in some way.
**Example: **
- Life is like a race. The one who keeps running wins the race and the one who stops to catch a breath loses.
- From Amy Lowell’s poem “Night Clouds”.
“The white mares of the moon rush along the sky
Beating their golden hoofs upon the glass Heavens.”
Analogy between clouds and mares. She compares the movement of the white clouds in the sky at night with that of the white mares on the ground.
Anaphora
A rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences.
Example: “Every day, every night, in every way, I am getting better and better”
“My life is my purpose. My life is my goal. My life is my inspiration.”
Antecedent
A word, phrase, or clause to which a following pronoun refers.
Example: Our carnivorous friends will not attend the picnic because they despise tofu hotdogs and black bean burgers.
Friends = antecedent; they = personal pronoun.
When Kris sprained his ankle, Coach Ames replaced him with Jasper, a much slower runner.
Kris = antecedent; him = personal pronoun.
Aphorism
A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life.
Example:
“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” [William Faulkner]
“Life’s Tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” [Benjamin Franklin]
“Life is a tale told by an idiot — full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Shakespeare)
Aporia
Expression of doubt (often pretended) by which a speaker appears uncertain as to what he should think, say, or do.
**Example: **“To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.….”
(Hamlet by William Shakespeare)
This is an opening soliloquy of Hamlet in the play. Here, the statement “to be or not to be” is such a question that introduces the uncertainty that characterizes the paragraph.
Aposiopesis
A breaking-off of speech, usually due to being overcome by passion, excitement, or fear; derived from a Greek word that means “becoming silent”
Example: “She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
Well, I lay if I get hold of you I’ll –
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat….”
(The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain)
Two examples of aposiopesis in this excerpt. First, the writer pauses at “hold of you I’ll –“, and then at the end of the excerpt, “nothing but the cat”. Both sentences are left incomplete.
Appositive
A noun or noun phrase that follows another noun immediately or defines or amplifies its meaning;in order to make a point more clear or to refer to an even more specific component of the noun.
Example:
- The bookshelf, a modern piece of furniture, was moved into the house first.”
- The insect, a large and hairy creature, scared the children as they walked outside.
- My brother, a human garbage disposal, consumed five cheeseburgers in one sitting last night.
Apostrophe
A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply.
Example: Jane Taylor uses apostrophe in the well-known nursery rhyme “The Star”:
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.”
A child addresses a star (an imaginary idea).
Or how Mary Shelly uses apostrophe in her novel “Frankenstein”:
“Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.”
Talking to stars, clouds and winds is an apostrophe.
Assonance
Repetition of a vowel sound (a e i o u sometimes y) within two or more words in close proximity.
Example: “High five.” or “It’s high time you said good-bye.”
Asyndeton
Commas used (with no conjunction) to separate a series of words. The parts are emphasized equally when the conjunction is omitted; in addition, the use of commas with no intervening conjunction speeds up the flow of the sentence. Asyndeton takes the form of X, Y, Z as opposed to X, Y, and Z.
Example: “Without looking, without making a sound, without talking”
(Oedipus at Colonus by Sophecles)
Atmosphere vs. Mood
Atmosphere: The ambiance of the text based on the mood; the vehicle for mood.
Example: Children’s book, A Wrinkle in Time:
“It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky.” sets the scary atmosphere in those lines.
Mood: What the author wants or expects the reader to feel by means of the setting, theme, diction, tone, and the events of the text; more direct statement.
Example: Charles Dickens creates a calm and peaceful mood in his novel “Pickwick Papers”:
“The river, reflecting the clear blue of the sky, glistened and sparkled as it flowed noiselessly on.”
The depiction of idyllic scenery imparts a serene and non-violent mood to the readers.
Attitude
A person’s consistently favorable or unfavorable evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea.
Example: If I say, “I like singing”, it represents positive thinking towards singing. This attitude is formed because I believe that I like singing, or I feel happy while singing.
Audience
Those to whom a speech or piece of writing is addressed or to whom the author wishes to reach.
Example: The audience of Sinners In the Hands of God was a group of very religious Puritans which gave the effect of the speech much more gumption than it would to an audience of a random group of Americans in 2014.
Autotelic
composed of two Greek roots: auto (self) and telos (goal); an autotelic activity is one we do for its own sake bc to experience it is the main goal; applied to personality, autotelic denotes an individual who generally does things for their own sake rather than in order to acheive some later external goal;
Containing its own meaning or purpose
or Deriving meaning and purpose from within
Example:
Bathos
in Greek it means depth; is a descent in literature in which a poet or writer–striving too hard to be passionate or elevated–falls into trivial or stupid imagery, phrasing, or ideas. Alexander Pope coined the usage to mock the unintentional mishaps of incompetent writers, but later comic authors and poets used bathos intentionally for mirthful effects. One of the most common types of bathos is the humorous arrangement of items so that the listed items descend from grandiosity to absurdity. In this technique, important or prestigious ideas precede an inappropriate or inconsequential item.
Example:
- “In the United States, Usama bin Laden is wanted for conspiracy, murder, terrorism, and unpaid parking tickets.” Many modern humorists like Lewis Grizzard make liberal use of bathos, but the technique is common in older literature as well.
- “A creature Of feature More dark, more dark, more dark than skies, Yea, darkly wise, yea, darkly wise: Darkly wise as a formless fate And if he be great If he be great, then rudely great, Rudely great as a plough that plies, And darkly wise, and darkly wise.”
Begging the question
A logical fallacy in which a premise of an argument contains a direct or indirect assumption that the conclusion is true; offering a circular argument; circular reasoning; This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because simply assuming that the conclusion is true (directly or indirectly) in the premises does not constitute evidence for that conclusion.
Example:
- “X is true. The evidence for this claim is that X is true.”
- “The belief in God is universal. After all, everyone believes in God.”
Caesura
A pause separating phrases within lines of poetry–an important part of poetic rhythm. The term caesura comes from the Latin “a cutting” or “a slicing.” Some editors will indicate a caesura by inserting a slash (/) in the middle of a poetic line. Others insert extra space in this location or a comma while some don’t indicate the caesura typographically at all.
Example:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.
