WLPCS AP LIT Literary Terms and Concepts

Ms. Seid (United States of America)
list of literary vocabulary terms for AP Literature & Composition
81 words 34 learners

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words only definitions & notes
  1. aesthete
    one who professes great sensitivity to the beauty of art
    Oscar Wilde is often referred to as "the quintessential Aesthete".
  2. alliteration
    use of the same consonant at the beginning of each word
  3. allusion
    passing reference or indirect mention
    2. direct or indirect reference to another literary work, mythology, The Bible, film or historical figure;
    3. an allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or a representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication.
  4. anachronism
    locating something at a time when it couldn't have existed
  5. anaphora
    repetition of a word or phrase to begin successive clauses
  6. aphorism
    a short pithy instructive saying
  7. apostrophe
    an address to an absent or imaginary person
    an apostrophe in poetry is vastly different from the punctuation mark, although both indicate "an absence" of something
  8. apposition
    the act of placing close together or side by side
  9. archetype
    something that serves as a model
    We first discussed archetype when we discussed the characterization in Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Stanley represents an archetype of masculinity.
  10. aside
    a line spoken by an actor not intended for others on stage
  11. assonance
    the repetition of similar vowels in successive words
  12. ballad
    a narrative poem of popular origin
  13. blank verse
    unrhymed poetry, usually in iambic pentameter
  14. character
    an imaginary person represented in a work of fiction
    in literature or drama, characters can be dynamic or static. A dynamic character undergoes a permanent change in outlook or character during the story; a static character is usually a minor character in a work of fiction who does not undergo substantial change or growth in the course of a story. Also referred to as "two-dimensional characters" or "flat characters," they play a supporting role to the main character, who as a rule should be round, or complex.
  15. chiasmus
    inversion in the second of two parallel phrases
  16. classicism
    a movement in literature and art during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe that favored rationality and restraint and strict forms
  17. conflict
    an open clash between two opposing groups
    great literature usually has a conflict. Conflict is considered an essential element of a short story in which two persons or two ideas have tension.
  18. connotation
    an idea that is implied or suggested
  19. consonance
    the repetition of sounds especially at the ends of words
  20. couplet
    a stanza consisting of two successive lines of verse
  21. denouement
    the outcome of a complex sequence of events
    in French, denouement means unravelling, unfolding or untying a knot. In literature, at the end of the action, the author sometimes reveals the purpose of the story as in a moral, or, in the case of a mystery, solves the crime. It is also known as 'the resolution"
  22. diction
    the manner in which something is expressed in words
    in literature, omniscient refers to a type of narrator who is all knowing (or wise). The omniscient narrator knows what each character is doing and thinking.
  23. double entendre
    a word or phrase with two meanings, one of which is indecent
    words or phrases can be used such that they can be read two ways; thus, double entendre can be translated directly from French, "double meaning"
  24. dystopia
    a work set in an imaginary place where life is extremely bad
  25. elegy
    a mournful poem; a lament for the dead
  26. enjambment
    continuation from one line of verse into the next line
  27. epigram
    a witty saying
    Mark Twain was known for these!
  28. epigraph
    a quotation at the beginning of some piece of writing
  29. epithet
    descriptive word or phrase
    examples would look something like, "the serene and kindly Mrs. Jones" or "man's best friend" for a dog; these can sometimes be nicknames or sobqriquets
  30. euphemism
    an inoffensive expression substituted for an offensive one
  31. fable
    a short moral story
  32. figurative
    not literal
  33. foil
    a person or thing that serves to contrast with another
  34. foreshadow
    indicate by signs
    in literature, the narrative gives clues to events which are likely to happen at a future point in the narrative
  35. free verse
    poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular meter
    be aware of the distinction from blank verse and all of the various forms of verse with particular rhyme and meter schemes
  36. hyperbole
    extravagant exaggeration
  37. iamb
    a metrical unit with unstressed-stressed syllables
  38. irony
    incongruity between what might be expected and what occurs
  39. juxtaposition
    a side-by-side arrangement
  40. literal
    limited to the explicit meaning of a word or text
  41. lyric
    of or relating to poetry that expresses emotion
  42. malapropism
    misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar
    Unintentional use of an inappropriate word similar in sound to the appropriate word, often with humorous effect.
  43. metaphor
    a figure of speech that suggests a non-literal similarity
  44. metaphysical
    pertaining to the philosophical study of being and knowing
    John Donne is considered the master of this genre of poetry; remember also Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"; this poetry genre was very popular in the 17th c
  45. meter
    rhythm as given by division into parts of equal duration
  46. motif
    a recurrent element in a literary or artistic work
  47. narrator
    someone who tells a story
    narrators can be reliable or unreliable; an unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised.The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction.[2] This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually to deceive the reader or audience. Most often unreliable narrators are first-person narrators, but sometimes third-person narrators can also be unreliable.
  48. novel
    an extended fictional work in prose
    TYPES: bildungsroman - from the German meaning novel (roman) of educational development (bildungs); kunstlerroman - novel of artistic awakening; epistolary - a novel written in the form of letters which was very popular in the late 18th c with the emergence of the novel; novel of manners - the novels of the early 19th c in which people are expected to follow guidelines for behavior (or think of Downtown Abbey, if you are a fan); novella - a short novel, longer than a short story; gothic novel -
  49. ode
    a lyric poem with complex stanza forms
  50. omniscient
    knowing, seeing, or understanding everything
    in literature, omniscient refers to a type of narrator who is all knowing (or wise). The omniscient narrator knows what each character is doing and thinking.
  51. onomatopoeia
    using words that imitate the sound they denote
  52. parable
    a short moral story
  53. paradox
    a statement that contradicts itself
    ... and might actually be true
  54. parallelism
    similarity by virtue of corresponding
  55. parody
    a composition that imitates or misrepresents a style
    in class, we read a parody of a high school essay about Moby Dick
  56. pathos
    a quality that arouses emotions, especially pity or sorrow
  57. pentameter
    a verse line having five metrical feet
  58. personification
    attributing human characteristics to abstract ideas
    and giving humanlike qualities or human form to objects. Personification can be a form of metaphor.
  59. picaresque
    (of fiction) involving clever rogues or adventurers
  60. proverb
    a condensed but memorable saying embodying an important fact
  61. quatrain
    a stanza of four lines
  62. refrain
    part of a song or poem that recurs at regular intervals
    While the above definition is not entirely accurate for our purposes, it does most closely approximate our literary definition. A refrain is a group of words repeated at key intervals in a poem, such as Dylan Thomas' villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."
  63. Romanticism
    a movement in literature and art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that celebrated nature rather than civilization
    In literature, a movement that championed imagination and emotions as more powerful than reason and systematic thinking. “What I feel about a person or thing,” a romantic poet might have said, “is more important than what scientific investigation, observation, andexperience would say about that person or thing.” Intuition–that voice within that makes judgments and decisions without the aid of reason–was a guiding force to the romantic poet. So was nature. Romanticism began in the mid-1700's as a
  64. Romanticism
    a movement in literature and art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that celebrated nature rather than civilization
  65. satire
    witty language used to convey insults or scorn
    Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon.A common feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm—"in satire, irony is militant"[2]—but parody, burlesque, exaggeration,[3] juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing.
  66. sibilant
    of speech sounds forcing air through a constricted passage
    essentially the repetition of the "s" sound
  67. simile
    a figure of speech expressing a resemblance between things
    A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two things through some connective, usually "like", "as", "than", or a verb such as "resembles".[1] A simile differs from a metaphor in that the latter compares two unlike things by saying that the one thing is the other thing.
  68. soliloquy
    a dramatic speech giving the illusion of unspoken reflection
  69. sonnet
    a verse form of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme
  70. speaker
    someone who expresses in language
    Poems have speakers; other forms of literature have narrators.
  71. stream of consciousness
    the continuous flow of ideas and feelings in one's mind
  72. symbol
    something visible that represents something invisible
  73. synecdoche
    using part of something to refer to the whole thing
    examples: Etthan bought a new set of wheels. ("Wheels" stands for a car.) or the law pursued the bank robbers from Maine to Florida. ("Law" stands for police.)
  74. syntax
    the study of the rules for forming admissible sentences
  75. tetrameter
    a verse line having four stressed feet
  76. tone
    a quality that reveals the attitudes of the author
    prevailing mood or atmosphere in a literary work. The tone of a poem, a novel, a play, or an essay is most like the tone of the human voice as it projects the emotions of the speaker. Thus, the tone of a literary work may be joyful, sad, brooding, angry, playful, and so on. Remember our exercise when we repeated the sentence, "She got married." using a variety of tones.
  77. trochaic
    of or consisting of trochees
  78. trochee
    a metrical unit with stressed-unstressed syllables
    The trochee is the opposite of the iamb - the two syllable combination has a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Just as "iambic" is the adjective form of iamb, trochaic is the adjective form of trochee.
  79. utopian
    pertaining to or resembling an ideally perfect state
  80. verisimilitude
    the appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true
    In AP Lit terms, verisimilitude is the quality of approaching real life behavior, attitudes
  81. vernacular
    the everyday speech of the people
    used exclusively in both Twain and Dickens. Zora Neale Hurston was reviled by her contemporaries for her use of the vernacular.
Created on Fri Jul 05 09:12:02 EDT 2013 (updated Mon Mar 31 17:34:08 EDT 2014)

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