AP_lit_review_flash-cards

Question 1

Arcane

Answer 1

known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure; esoteric:

Question 2

Assonance

Answer 2

The use of matching vowels in consecutive words. These may be used with or against different consonants.

Question 3

Antihero

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Connotation

Answer 4

Emotional response evoked by a word, in contrast to its denotation (literal meaning)

Question 5

Allegory

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Allusion

Answer 6

An indirect reference to a person, event, statement, or theme found in literature, the other arts, history, myths, religion, or popular culture.

Question 7

Satire

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

Stock Character

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

Suspension of Disbelief

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

Chiasmus

Answer 10

a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases

Question 11

Analogy

Answer 11

a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based:

Question 12

Conceit

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Colloquial

Answer 13

characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal.

Question 14

Quixotic

Answer 14

1. (sometimes initial capital letter ) resembling or befitting Don Quixote. 2.extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable. 3.impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.

Question 15

Catch 22

Answer 15

1. a frustrating situation in which one is trapped by contradictory regulations or conditions.

Question 16

Epithet

Answer 16

1. 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.

Question 17

Monologue

Answer 17

1. 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

Question 18

Soliloquy

Answer 18

1. 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.

Question 19

Aside

Answer 19

a part of an actor’s lines supposedly not heard by others on the stage and intended only for the audience.

Question 20

Malapropism

Answer 20

an act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, especially by the confusion of words that are similar in sound.

Question 21

Idioms

Answer 21

an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements

Question 22

Bombast

Answer 22

speech too pompous for an occasion; pretentious words.

Question 23

Pun

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Tone vs. Mood

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

Theatre of the Absurd

Answer 25

Drama using the abandonment of conventional dramatic form to portray the futility of human struggle in a senseless world.

Question 26

Ambiguity

Answer 26

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.

Question 27

Farce

Answer 27

a type of comedy in which ridiculous and often stereotyped characters are involved in silly, far-fetched situations.

Question 28

Synecdoche

Answer 28

a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole.

Question 29

Syntactic Fluency

Answer 29

Ability to create a variety of sentence structures, appropriately complex and/or simple and varied in length.

Question 30

Anecdote

Answer 30

Brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something, often shows character of an individual

Question 31

Antithesis

Answer 31

Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure

Question 32

Tragedy

Answer 32

In general, a story in which a heroic character either dies or comes to some other unhappy end.

Question 33

Tragic Hero

Answer 33

1. Inevitable outcome 2. Tragic/fatal flaw 3. Noble/honorable 4. Selfless

Question 34

Litotes

Answer 34

Form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form

Question 35

Anthropomorphism

Answer 35

Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object

Question 36

Colloquialism

Answer 36

A word or phrase in everyday use in conversation and informal writing but is inappropriate for formal situations

Question 37

Epigraph

Answer 37

A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme

Question 38

Foil

Answer 38

A character who acts as a contrast to another character

Question 39

Motif

Answer 39

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.

Question 40

Cacophony

Answer 40

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.

Question 41

Macabre

Answer 41

1. 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.

Question 42

Anachronism

Answer 42

1. 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.

Question 43

Oxymoron

Answer 43

a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect

Question 44

Didactic

Answer 44

Form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking.

Question 45

Elegy

Answer 45

A poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died.

Question 46

Enjambment

Answer 46

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.

Question 47

Tricolon

Answer 47

Sentence of three parts of equal importance and length, usually three independent clauses

Question 48

Rhetoric

Answer 48

Art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse

Question 49

Parallelism/Parallel structure

Answer 49

The repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical or syntactic structures

Question 50

Inversion

Answer 50

The reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase

Question 51

Explication

Answer 51

Act of interpreting or discovering the meaning of a text, usually involves close reading and special attention to figurative language

Question 52

Aphorism

Answer 52

Brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life, or of a principle or accepted general truth. (maxim, epigram)

Question 53

Implied Metaphor

Answer 53

Does not state explicitly the two terms of the comparison

Question 54

Extended Metaphor

Answer 54

Extended or developed as far as the writer wants to take it (aka?conceit)

Question 55

Dead metaphor

Answer 55

Metaphor used so often that the comparison is no longer vivid

Question 56

Mixed metaphor

Answer 56

Metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms so that they are visually or imaginatively incompatible

Question 57

First Person

Answer 57

One of the characters tells a story

Question 58

Third Person

Answer 58

An unknown narrator tells the story but this narrator zooms in to focus on thoughts and feelings of only one character

Question 59

Omniscient Point of View

Answer 59

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

Question 60

Objective Point of View

Answer 60

A totally impersonal and objective narrator tells the story with no comment on any characters or events

Question 61

Quatrain

Answer 61

Poem consisting of four lines or four lines of a poem that can be considered a unit

Question 62

Refrain

Answer 62

A word, phrase, line or group of lines that is repeated several times in the poem for effect

Question 63

Antihero

Answer 63

Central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes?courage, grace, intelligence, moral scruples etc.

Question 64

Direct Characterization

Answer 64

The author tells us directly what the character is like: sneaky, generous, mean to pets, etc.

Question 65

Indirect Characterization

Answer 65

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

Question 66

Dynamic Character

Answer 66

A character that changes in some important way as the result of the story’s action

Question 67

Static Character

Answer 67

A character who does not change much in the course of the story.