AP Vocab 121-150 Flashcards
Lyrical Poetry
Poetry which expresses an emotion.
Meter
The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.
Meter, Hexameter
Six feet per line of poetry.
Meter, Pentameter
Five feet per line of poetry; the most common meter in English poetry.
Meter, Scansion
The marking of meter in a poem.
Metonymy
A figure of speech where a word or phrase is used to represent something related to it.
Mock Heroic
A type of satire using elevated style out of proportion to its trivial subject.
Mood
The overall atmosphere of a work established through the description of setting and the choice of objects being described.
Motif
Recurring image.
Myth
Traditional tale of unknown authorship involving gods and goddesses or other supernatural beings, often explaining aspects of nature.
Narrator
The person telling the story.
Naturalism
19th Century literary movement in which characters are doomed by heredity and/or environment.
Novel of Manners
Narrative which defines social customs of a specific group, usually the upper-middle class.
Octave
An eight-line poem OR the first eight lines of an Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet.
Ode
A long lyrical poem, formal in style and complex in form, often written in commemoration or celebration of a special person, quality, object, or occasion.
Onomatopoeia
Use of words whose sounds imitate their meaning.
Oxymoron
Figure of speech that combines contradictory terms.
Pacing
Rate of movement (tempo) in a work; may be slower with exposition and description and faster with dramatic incidence.
Parable
Story with an implied or stated moral.
Paradigm
A model, ideal, or standard.
Parallel Structures
The use of components in a sentence that are grammatically the same; or similar in their construction, sound, meaning, or meter.
Paradox
A statement or situation that appears contradictory, but isn’t.
Parody
A rewording of a popularly recognized work to make fun of something.
Pastoral Poem
Poem which often depicts an imaginary life in the country filled with happy characters such as shepherds and nymphs; Events and dialogues are idealized, not realistic.
Periodic Sentence
A sentence which does not complete its thought until the very end due to introductory modifiers, interrupting modifiers, etc.
Persona
The mask or voice of the author in a work.
Personification
A specific type of metaphor in which inanimate objects are given human qualities.
Picaresque
Novel which usually presents the life story of quick-witted rogues and their adventures, often in episodic style.
Plot
Sequence of events.
Plot, Climax
The decisive or turning point in a story or play when the action changes course and begins to move towards resolution.
