AP_lit_review_flash-cards Flashcards
Arcane
known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure; esoteric:
Assonance
The use of matching vowels in consecutive words. These may be used with or against different consonants.
Antihero
A protagonist who has the qualities opposite of those of a hero; he or she may be insecure, ineffective, cowardly, sometimes dishonest or dishonorable, most often a failure
Connotation
Emotional response evoked by a word, in contrast to its denotation (literal meaning)
Allegory
The presentation of abstract idea through more concrete means. The typical allegory is a narrative?whether in prose, verse, or drama?that has at least two levels of meaning.
Allusion
An indirect reference to a person, event, statement, or theme found in literature, the other arts, history, myths, religion, or popular culture.
Satire
A literary work that ridicules its subject through the use of techniques such as exaggeration, reversal, incongruity, and/or parody in order to make a comment or criticism about it.
Stock Character
A type of character who regularly appears in certain literary forms. Stock characters are often, but not always, stereotyped or flat types or caricatures drawn simply and defined by a single idea or quality.
Suspension of Disbelief
A phrase used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to point out that readers will, in the interest of what Coleridge called “poetic faith,” forgo the temptation to doubt the veracity or likelihood of what is expressed in a literary work.
Chiasmus
a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases
Analogy
a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based:
Conceit
An elaborate, usually intellectually ingenious poetic comparison or image, such as an analogy or metaphor in which, say a beloved is compared to a ship, planet, etc. The comparison may be brief or extended
Colloquial
characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal.
Quixotic
- (sometimes initial capital letter ) resembling or befitting Don Quixote. 2.extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable. 3.impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.
Catch 22
- a frustrating situation in which one is trapped by contradictory regulations or conditions.
Epithet
- any word or phrase applied to a person or thing to describe an actual or attributed quality: 2. a characterizing word or phrase firmly associated with a person or thing and often used in place of an actual name, title, or the like, as “man’s best friend” for “dog.” 3. a word, phrase, or expression used invectively as a term of abuse or contempt, to express hostility, etc.
Monologue
- a prolonged talk or discourse by a single speaker, especially one dominating or monopolizing a conversation. 2. any composition, as a poem, in which a single person speaks alone. 3. a part of a drama in which a single actor speaks alone
Soliloquy
- an utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or herself or is disregardful of or oblivious to any hearers present (often used as a device in drama to disclose a character’s innermost thoughts): Hamlet’s soliloquy begins with “To be or not to be.” 2. the act of talking while or as if alone.
Aside
a part of an actor’s lines supposedly not heard by others on the stage and intended only for the audience.
Malapropism
an act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, especially by the confusion of words that are similar in sound.
Idioms
an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements
Bombast
speech too pompous for an occasion; pretentious words.
Pun
the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words.
Tone vs. Mood
Mood is the feeling a reader has while reading. It is synonymous with atmosphere and ambiance. Tone is the author’s attitude about the subject matter and characters. The tone might be sarcastic, straightforward, pessimistic, optimistic, etc.
Theatre of the Absurd
Drama using the abandonment of conventional dramatic form to portray the futility of human struggle in a senseless world.
Ambiguity
deliberately suggesting two or more different, and sometimes conflicting,meanings in a work. An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way– this is done on purpose by the author when it is not done on purpose, it is vagueness,and detracts from the work.
Farce
a type of comedy in which ridiculous and often stereotyped characters are involved in silly, far-fetched situations.
Synecdoche
a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole.
Syntactic Fluency
Ability to create a variety of sentence structures, appropriately complex and/or simple and varied in length.
Anecdote
Brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something, often shows character of an individual
Antithesis
Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure
Tragedy
In general, a story in which a heroic character either dies or comes to some other unhappy end.
Tragic Hero
- Inevitable outcome 2. Tragic/fatal flaw 3. Noble/honorable 4. Selfless
Litotes
Form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form
Anthropomorphism
Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object
Colloquialism
A word or phrase in everyday use in conversation and informal writing but is inappropriate for formal situations
Epigraph
A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme
Foil
A character who acts as a contrast to another character
Motif
A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout the work, unifying the work by tying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to the theme.
Cacophony
harsh discordance of sound; dissonance: 2. a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds: 3. Music . frequent use of discords of a harshness and relationship difficult to understand.
Macabre
- gruesome and horrifying; ghastly; horrible. 2. of pertaining to, dealing with, or representing death, especially its grimmer or uglier aspect. 3. of or suggestive of the allegorical dance of death.
Anachronism
- something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, especially a thing or person that belongs to an earlier time: The sword is an anachronism in modern warfare. 2. an error in chronology in which a person, object, event, etc., is assigned a date or period other than the correct one: To assign Michelangelo to the 14th century is an anachronism.
Oxymoron
a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect
Didactic
Form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking.
Elegy
A poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died.
Enjambment
A line which does not end with a grammatical break, that is, where the line cannot stand alone, cannot make sense without the following line, is enjambed. “Enjambment” comes from a French word meaning to put one’s leg across, or to step over, just as the sense of the line steps over the end of the line.
Tricolon
Sentence of three parts of equal importance and length, usually three independent clauses
Rhetoric
Art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse
Parallelism/Parallel structure
The repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical or syntactic structures
Inversion
The reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase
Explication
Act of interpreting or discovering the meaning of a text, usually involves close reading and special attention to figurative language
Aphorism
Brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life, or of a principle or accepted general truth. (maxim, epigram)
Implied Metaphor
Does not state explicitly the two terms of the comparison
Extended Metaphor
Extended or developed as far as the writer wants to take it (aka?conceit)
Dead metaphor
Metaphor used so often that the comparison is no longer vivid
Mixed metaphor
Metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms so that they are visually or imaginatively incompatible
First Person
One of the characters tells a story
Third Person
An unknown narrator tells the story but this narrator zooms in to focus on thoughts and feelings of only one character
Omniscient Point of View
All knowing narrator tells the story also using the third person. Instead of focusing on one character, this narrator often tells us everything about many characters
Objective Point of View
A totally impersonal and objective narrator tells the story with no comment on any characters or events
Quatrain
Poem consisting of four lines or four lines of a poem that can be considered a unit
Refrain
A word, phrase, line or group of lines that is repeated several times in the poem for effect
Antihero
Central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes?courage, grace, intelligence, moral scruples etc.
Direct Characterization
The author tells us directly what the character is like: sneaky, generous, mean to pets, etc.
Indirect Characterization
Author reveals to the reader what the character is like by describing how the character looks and dresses, by letting the reader hear what the character says, by revealing the character’s private thoughts and feelings, by revealing the characters effect on other people or by showing the character in action
Dynamic Character
A character that changes in some important way as the result of the story’s action
Static Character
A character who does not change much in the course of the story.
