Ap Literature Midterm Review

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Anaphora

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A rhetorical device where a word or phrase is repeated, usually at the beginning of a line

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Alliteration

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use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable in a line of verse; "around the rock the ragged rascal ran"

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Allusion

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a brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art.

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Antithesis

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juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas to give a feeling of balance

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Apostrophe

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address to an absent or imaginary person

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Assonance

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vowel rhyme (the repetition of similar vowels in the stressed syllables of successive words)

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Aubade

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An aubade is a poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn.

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Ballad

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: a narrative song with a recurrent refrain, poem set to music

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Blank Verse

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a verse form consisting of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's plays are largely in blank verse

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Caesura

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a pause or interruption (as in a conversation); "after an ominous caesura the preacher continued"

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Consonance

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the repetition of consonants (or consonant patterns) especially at the ends of words, the property of sounding harmonious

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Couplet

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: a stanza consisting of two successive lines of verse; usually rhymed
Didactic: instructive (especially excessively)

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End-Stopped

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(verse) having a rhetorical pause at the end of each line, punctuation

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Enjambment

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the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pause

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Free Verse

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unrhymed verse without a consistent metrical pattern

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Haiku

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A three-line poem in any language, with five syllables in the first and last lines and seven syllables in the second, usually with an emphasis on the season or a naturalistic theme.

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Hyperbole

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extravagant exaggeration

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Irony:

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incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs, witty language used to convey insults or scorn

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Dramatic

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: irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play

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Situationa

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An event occurs that directly contradicts the expectations of the characters, the reader, or the audience.

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Verbal

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The contrast between what is said and what is actually meant.

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Limerick

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a humorous verse form of 5 anapestic (characterized by two short syllables followed by a long one) lines with a rhyme scheme aabba

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Lyric Poetry

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Poetry that expresses a single speaker's emotions or thought and does not tell a story. (Song like quality)

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Anapest

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characterized by two short syllables followed by a long one

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Dactyl

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a metrical unit with stressed-unstressed-unstressed syllables ( long, short, short)

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Iamb

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: unstressed, stressed

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Spondee

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: stressed, stressed

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Trochee

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stressed-unstressed

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Monometer

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A line of verse containing a single metrical foot

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Dimeter

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Two Feet

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Trimeter

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three metrical feet

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tetrameter

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four metrical feet

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Octave

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a rhythmic group of eight lines of verse

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Octet

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a musical composition written for eight performers, a group of eight performing

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Paradox

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(logic) a statement that contradicts itself; "`I always lie' is a paradox because if it is true it must be false"

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Parallelism

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: parallelism is a balance of two or more similar words, phrases, or clauses.
Personification: representing an abstract quality or idea as a person or creature

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Prose

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ordinary writing as distinguished from verse (not poetry)

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Pun

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A play on words that relies on a word’s having more than one meaning or sounding like another word.

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Quatrain:

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stanza with four lines

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Internal Rhyme

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a rhyme between words in the same line (Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary)

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Feminine Rhyme

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A feminine rhyme is a rhyme that matches two or more syllables, usually at the end of respective lines. Often the final syllable is unstressed.

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Masculine Rhyme

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a rhyme on a single stressed syllable at the end of a line of poetry. This term is interchangeable with single rhyme, and is often used contrastingly with the terms "feminine rhyme" and "double rhyme."

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Approximate

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only the final consonant sounds are the same, as in crown/alone, pail/fall

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Scansion

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analysis of verse into metrical patterns

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Soliloquy

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a (usually long) dramatic speech intended to give the illusion of unspoken reflections (monologue, extended, uninterrupted speech or poem by a single person)

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Sonnet

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A fourteen line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme.

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Petrarchan

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Italian sonnet (a sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba, followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern cdecde or cdcdcd)

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Shakespearean

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Elizabethan sonnet, English sonnet (a sonnet consisting three quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg)

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Stichomythia

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a technique in drama or poetry, in which alternating lines, or half-lines, are given to alternating characters, voices, or entities.

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Synecdoche

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A part of something substituted for the whole. Meaning is inferred by the specific part used. Ex: "A nice set of wheels."

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Synesthesia

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: the use of one of the five senses to describe the perception of another. (eg, “hot pink,” “icy whistle.”

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Tercet

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A tercet is three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or complete poem. A three line stanza

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Terza Rima

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verse form with a three rhyme scheme: aba bcb cdc, etc.

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Villanelle

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a type of poetry, consisting of five tercets and one quatrain, with only two rhymes

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Volta

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the shift or point of dramatic change in a poem. The term is most frequently used in discussion of sonnet form, in which the volta marks a shift in thought (often from question to answer or problem to solution). It is most frequently encountered at the end of the octave (first eight lines in Petrarchan or Spenserian sonnets), or the end of the twelfth line in Shakespearean sonnets.