Ap English Literature Terms

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Allegory

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A prose or poetic narrative in which the characters, behavior, and even the setting demonstrates multilevels of meaning and significance. e.g. Death portrayed as a black-cloaked grim reaper

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Alliteration

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The sequential initial repetition of a similar sound, usually applied to consonants, usually heard in closely proximate stressed syllables. "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."

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Allusion

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A reference to a literary or historical event, person, or place.

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Anecdote

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A brief story or tale told by a character in a piece of literature. e.g. the Canterbury Tales

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Antithesis

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The juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words, phrases, grammatical structure, or ideas. "To err is human, to forgive divine." i.e. exact opposite.

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Archetype

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Recurrent designs, patterns of action, character types, themes or images which are identifiable in a wide range of literature.

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Asyndeton

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A style in which conjunctions are omitted, usually producing a fast-paced, more rapid prose. e.g. "I came, I saw, I conquered."

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Attitude

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The sense expressed by the tone of voice and/or the mood of a piece of writing; the feelings the author holds towards his subject, the people in his narrative, the events, the setting or even the theme.

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Ballad stanza

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A common stanza form, consisting of a stanza of 4 lines that alternates four-beat & three-beat lines: 1 & 3 are unrhymed iambic tetrameter (4 beats), and 2 & 4 are rhymed iambic trimeter (3 beats).
In Scarlet Town, where I was born
There lived a fair maid dwellin;
Made many a youth cry well-a-day
And her name was Barbara Allen.

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Blank Verse

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The verse form that most resembles common speech, blank verse consists of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter.

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Caesura

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A pause in a line of verse, indicated by natural speech patterns rather than due to specific metrical patterns.

Alas how changed! // What sudden horrors rise! A naked lover // bound and bleeding lies! Where, where was Eloise? // her voice, her hand, Her poniard, // had opposed the dire command.

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Caricature

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A depiction in which a character's characteristics or features are so deliberately exaggerated as to render them absurd.

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Chiasmus

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A figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second.

e.g. "Pleasure's a sin, and somtimes sin's a pleasure" --Byron

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Colloquial

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Ordinary language, the vernacular.

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Conceit

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A comparison of two unlikely things that is drawn out within a piece of literature, in particular an extended metaphor within a poem.

e.g. the idea of tracing a love affair as a flower growing, budding, coming to fruition, and dying.

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Consonance

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The repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowels, such as pitter-patter, pish-posh, clinging and clanging.