Ap Lit Vocabulary 3

Front 1

Comedy of Manners

Back 1

A work of satire that pokes fun at human behavior in particular social circles. Since it concerns itself with social interactions, it tends to reveal the characters’ foibles or follies as they
try to appear or act in a certain way.

Front 2

Convention

Back 2

In literature, a feature or element of a genre that is commonly used and therefore widely accepted—
and expected—by readers and writers alike. For example, it is a ______ of Shakespearean comedy to end with
a marriage.

Front 3

Dirge

Back 3

An funeral song.

Front 4

Dramatic Irony

Back 4

A situation in which an author or narrator lets the reader know more about a situation than a
character does.
5.

Front 5

Electra Complex

Back 5

The female version of the Oedipus Complex, the ______ suggests that female children
are hostile toward their mothers because of subconscious sexual attraction to their fathers.

Front 6

Elegy

Back 6

A poem of lamentation memorializing the dead or contemplating some nuance of life’s melancholy. Early
Greek employed a fixed form of dactylic hexameter and iambic pentameter couplets.

Front 7

Elision

Back 7

The omission of a vowel or consonant sound within or between words, such as “ne’er” for “never” and
“o’er” for “over.” dramatizes language and allows for flexibility within a poem’s meter.

Front 8

Enjambment

Back 8

The running over of a phrase from one line into another so that closely related words belong to
different lines.

Front 9

Epigraph

Back 9

A quotation or brief passage from another source, included at the beginning of a piece of literature.
Writers use to suggest a major theme or idea in their work.

Front 10

Epiphany

Back 10

A sudden realization or new understanding achieved by a character or speaker. In many short stories, is the climax of the story.