Ap Lit Terms

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Anagram

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A word or phrase made from the letters of another word or phrase, as "heart" is an anagram of "earth." Anagrams have often been considered merely an exercise of one's ingenuity, but sometimes writers use anagrams to conceal proper names or veiled messages, or to suggest important connections between words, as in "hated" and "death."

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Assonance

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The repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end the same, for example,"asleep under a tree," or "each evening." Similar endings result in rhyme, as in "asleep in the deep." Assonance is a strong means of emphasizing important words in a line. See also alliteration, consonance

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Blank verse

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Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse is the English verse form closest to the natural rhythms of English speech and therefore is the most common pattern found in traditional English narrative and dramatic poetry from Shakespeare to the early twentieth century. Shakespeare's plays use blank verse extensively. See also iambic pentameter

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Consonance

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A common type of near rhyme that consists of identical consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds: home, same; worth, breath.

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Dénouement

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A French term meaning "unraveling" or "unknotting," used to describe the resolution of the plot following the climax

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Didactic poetry

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Poetry designed to teach an ethical, moral, or religious lesson

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Enjambment

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In poetry, when one line ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning. This is also called a run-on line.

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Foot

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The metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured. A foot usually consists of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables. An iambic foot, which consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable ("away"), is the most common metrical foot in English poetry

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Free verse

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Also called open form poetry, free verse refers to poems characterized by their nonconformity to established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza. Free verse uses elements such as speech patterns, grammar, emphasis, and breath pauses to decide line breaks, and usually does not rhyme

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Genre

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A French word meaning "kind" or "type." The major genres in literature are poetry, fiction, drama, and essays. Genre can also refer to more specific types of literature such as comedy, tragedy, epic poetry, or science fiction