AP Literary Terms Flashcards
The false assignment of an event, a person, a scene, language—anything, to a time when that event or thing or person was not in existence.
Example: Albert Einstein had an iphone
Anachronism
In writing, its purpose is to explain the nature of an object, idea, or theme. In drama, it is another word for an introduction.
Example: “It’s a story about two star-crossed lovers from Verona that commit suicide because they can’t be together.”
Exposition
A figure of speech familiar to a specific group of people which cannot be translated or understood literally into a second language.
Example: “it’s raining cats and dogs”
Idiom
Anglo-Saxon figure of speech; two words put together to reference singular noun. (Can be “noun-noun” or “noun-verb”)
Example: Bookworm
Kenning
a lengthy, narrative work of poetry typically dealing with extraordinary feats and adventures of characters from a distant past.
Example: Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey
Epic Poem
One of the devices of repetition, in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences.
Example: “Go big or go home.”
Anaphora
the implied or inferred meaning of a word; it could be the same as the denotation (definition) but it could mean something else by its context or inference.
Example: blue is a color, but it is also a word used to describe a feeling of sadness
Connotation
a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations upon death or another solemn theme.
Example: Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”
Elegy
The use of a character in opposition to another character which brings out the qualities of each in greater distinction.
Example: Harry Potter’s rival Draco Malfoy
Foil
A reliance on the intuition and the conscience. A movement in American literature represented by Emerson and Thoreau.
Example: “a man in debt is so far a slave” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Transcendentalism
the repetition of a similar vowel sound in a line of poetry (Type of Internal Rhyme)
Example: “Patience always pays.”
Assonance
a literary or dramatic work that seeks to ridicule by means of grotesque exaggeration or comic imitation
Example: works of Chaucer and Shakespeare and to the Graeco-Roman classics.
Burlesque
The philosophical or theological teaching which interprets all ultimate control of man’s actions to God (Opposite of Free Will.) (Named for Swiss Reformer John Calvin)
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistibly of grace
Perseverance of the saints
Calvinism
The name of a person who is so commonly associated with some widely recognized attribute that the name comes to stand for the attribute.
Example: Fahrenheit-Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit is the physicist for whom this temperature measurement is named.
Eponym
The use at the END of verses of words in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables agree but the vowels that precede them differ. It is also called “half-rhyme”
Example: Mike likes his new bike.
Consonance
Most often used to describe domain-specific language. It might appear to be gibberish to someone outside that field.
Example: AWOL: Short for “absent without leave,” AWOL
Jargon
an illustrative story answering a question or pointing to a moral or lesson
Example: “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” by Aesop
Parable
referring to an original model or pattern from which something develops.
Example: mother figure in disney movies like the Fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty.
Archetype
Repetition of words which appear at the beginning of a clause or sentence at the end of that same clause or sentence.
Example: mankind must put an end to war-or war will put an end to mankind.
Epanalepsis
A light-hearted nonsense poem
Example: There was an Old Man in a Tree By: Edward Lear
Limerick
a distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition. (A motif can be a recurring situation or action. It can be a sound or smell, a temperature, even a color. The key aspect is that a motif repeats.)
Example: Repeated images of hand washing, mopping floors, and refreshing rain.
Motif
The restraint or lack of emotion
Example: Focusing on the present moment and avoid emotional suffering for the past or the future.
Stoicism
doubt of a generally accepted standard.
Example: when you always think the worst and have a hard time seeing the good in anyone.
Cynicism
One who follows an art for the love of it rather than as a serious profession (i.e. “an amateur”) (The term can be used a derogatory remark, when putting someone down for not being “serious”)
Example: Home Cook
Dilettante
