Ap English Literary Terms #2 Words

Front 1

Allegory

Back 1

Device of using a character or story elements symbollically to represent an abstraction in addition to the literal meaning. *Usualy deals with moral truth or generalization about human existance*

Front 2

Ambiguity

Back 2

Multiple meanings, intentional or unintentional, of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage

Front 3

Analogy

Back 3

Similarity or comparison between two different things or the relationship between them. *Metaphores and similies are analogies*

Front 4

Anecdote

Back 4

A short narrative detailing particulars of an interesting episode or event.

Front 5

Antecedent

Back 5

Word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun.

Front 6

Atmosphere

Back 6

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.

Front 7

Colloquial/Colloquialism

Back 7

The use of slang or informalities in speech or writing *vernacular is everyday speech*

Front 8

Conceit

Back 8

A fanciful expression, usually in the form of an extended metaphoror surprising analogy between dissimilar objects. It displays intellectual cleverness.

Front 9

Genre

Back 9

The major catagory into which a literary work fits. Basic divisions are prose, poetry, and drama. But genre is a flexible term and each division has subdivisions.

Front 10

Hyperbole

Back 10

A figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or overstatement. Often produces irony.

Front 11

Loose sentence

Back 11

A type of sentence in which the main idea, independent clause, comes first followed by dependent grammatical units such as phrases or clauses. *Central meaning at beginning*

Front 12

Narrative

Back 12

The telling of a story or an account of an event or series of events.

Front 13

Periodic Sentence

Back 13

A sentence that presents its central meaning in a main clause at the end.

Front 14

Prose

Back 14

One of the major divisions of genre...it refers to fiction and nonfiction

Front 15

Rhetorical Modes

Back 15

Describes the variety and purposes of the major kinds of writing. Four most common are exposition, argumentation, description, and narration.*these four are often called modes of discourse*

Front 16

Style

Back 16

Either evaluates the sum of choices that an author makes in blending diction, syntax, figurative language, and other literery devices or helps to classify authors to a group and then compare to similar authors.

Front 17

Subject complement

Back 17

Word or clauses following a linking verb and completes subject of sentence

Front 18

Symbol

Back 18

Anything that represents itself and stands for something else. Three categories: Natural, Conventional, and Literary

Front 19

Syntax

Back 19

The way an author chooses to join words into phrases, clauses, and sentences. Similar to diction but syntax is a group of words.

Front 20

Thesis

Back 20

Thesis statement is a sentence or group of sentences that directly expresses the author's opinion, purpose, or position.

Front 21

Understatement

Back 21

The ironic minimizing of fact, it presents something as less significant than it is.