Ap Lit Terms

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Allegory

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A prose or petic narrative with multiple levels of meaning. uniiversal symbol

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alliteration

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sequential repetition of a similar initial sound, 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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Anapestic

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a metrical foot in poetry that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed

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Anaphora

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regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of a clause

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Anecdote

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a brief history or tale

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antagonist

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any force that is in opposition to the main character

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antithesis

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the juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words (to err is HUMAN, to forgive is DIVINE)

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Apostrophe

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an address or invocation to something that is inanimate, like screaming to the ocean

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archetype

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a recurrent patter, design or character type, like the trickster archetype

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assonance

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a repitition of identical or similar vowel sounds

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Asyndeton

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a style in which conjunctions are omitted, usually producing a face-paced, more rapid prose. 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

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a narrative poem that is, or originally was, meant to be sung

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ballad stanza

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a common stanza form, consisting of a quatrain (a stanza of four lines) that alternates four-beat and three-beat lines

4-3-4-3

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Blank verse

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the verse form that most resembles common speech, 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 metric

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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

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Colloquial

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ordinary language,

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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. like a flower representing a love affair as growing, budding, and dying

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connotation

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what is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes, often referred to as the implied meaning of a word

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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 voles, such as pitter-patter

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couplet

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two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter that together present a single idea or connection.

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dactylic

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a metrical foot in poetry that consists of two stressed syllables followed by one unstressed syllable

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Denotation

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a direct and specific meaning, often referred to as the dictionary meaning

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diction

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the specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone, purpose or effect

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dramatic monologue

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spoken to an imaginary audience

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elegy

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a poetic lament upon the death of a particular person, usually ending in a consolation

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Enjambment

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the continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next

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epic

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a poem that celebrates, in a continuous narrative, the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines

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exposition

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the part of a structure that sets the scene, introduces and identifies characters and establishes the situation at the beginning of a story or play

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extended metaphor

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a detailed and complex metaphor that extends over a long section of a work, also known as a conceit

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fable

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a legend or short moral story often using animals

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falling action

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denouement part of plot where the complications of the rising action are untangled

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farce

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a play or scene in a play or book that is characterized by broad humor

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formal diction

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language that is lofty, dignified and impersonal

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free verse

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poetry that is characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and nonrhyming lines

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hyperbole

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overstatement characterized by exaggerated language, "I'm starving!"

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iambic

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a metrical foot in poetry that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

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imagery

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broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work

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informal diction

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language that is not as lofty or impersonal as formal diction

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in medias res

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in the midst of things... opening a story in he middle of the action

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irony

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a situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant.

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jargon

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specialized or technical language of a trade

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limited point of view

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a perspective confined to a single character, whether a first person or third person

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litote

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a figure of speech taht emphasizes its subject by conscious understatement

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loose sentence

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a sentence grammatically complete, and usually stating its main idea before the end

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message

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a lisleading term for theme; the central idea or statement of a story

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meter

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the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry

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metonymy

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a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something as in "pen is mightier than sword" where pen stands for publishing and sword for the military

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narrative structure

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a textual organization based on sequences of connected events, usually presented in a straightforward way

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occasional poem

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a poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private

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ode

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a lyric poem that is somewhat serious in subject and treatment, is elevated in style, and sometimes uses elaborate stanza structure

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omniscient point of view

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unlimited focus; a perspective that can be seen from one character's view, then another's, etc, or can be moved in or out of the mind of any character at any time.

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onomatopoeia

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a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes... buzz

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overstatement

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exaggerated language, hyperbole

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oxymoreon

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two contradictory elements

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parable

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a short fiction that illustrates an explicit moral lesson through the use of analogy

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paradox

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a statement that seems contradictory but may actually be true... fight for peace

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parallel structure

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the use of similar forms in writing for nouns, verbs, phrases, or thoughts

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pastoral

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a work (also called an eclogue, bucolic, or an idyll) that describes the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live in timeless, painless life in a world full of beauty, music, and love

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periodic sentence

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a sentence which is not grammatically complete until the end

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persona

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the voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share the values of the actual author

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petrarchan sonnet

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a sonnet that divides the poem into one section of eight lines (octave) and a second section of six lines (sestet)

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quatrain

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a poetic stanza of four lines

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refrain

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a repeated stanza or line in a poem or song

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scansion

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the analysis of verse to show its meter

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setting

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the time and place of the action in a story

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shakespearean sonnet

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divides the poem into three units of four lines each and final unit of two lines

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shaped verse

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another name for concrete poetry; poetry that is shaped to look like an ovject

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stanza

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a section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing. some distinguished a stanza, a division marked by a signle pattern of meter or rhyme, from a verse paragraph, a division marked by thought rather than pattern unlike a paragraph

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stock character

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one who appears in a number of stories or plays such as the cruel stepmother, the femme fatale

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synecdoche

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when a part is used to signify a whole, as in ALL HANDS ON DECK

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syntax

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the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses and sentences

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terza rima

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a verse form consisting of three line stanzas in which the second line of each rhymes with the first and third of the next

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trochaic

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a metrical foot in poetry that is the opposite of iambic. the first syllable is stressed, the second is not

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villanell

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a verse form consisting of nineteen lines divided into six stanza, five tercets, and one quatrain