AP Literature and Composition Vocabulary
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Created by:
bpetroski on August 11, 2008
Subjects:
ap english 11, ap english vocabulary
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134 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 abstract | a style in writing that is typically complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, and seldom uses examples to support its points |
| academic | an adjective describing style; dry and theoretical writing; piece of writing seems to be sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis |
| accent | in poetry, the stressed portion of a word; sometimes set, often a matter of opinion |
| aesthetic | adj.: "appealing to the senses"; noun: coherent (logically connected) sense of taste |
| aesthetics | the study of beauty; "What is beauty?" "Is the beautiful always good?" |
| allegory | a story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself; many fables have this quality; true ones are even more hard and fast; example: Orwell's Animal Farm |
| alliteration | the repetition of INITIAL consonant sounds; consonant clusters coming closely cramped and compressed |
| allusion | a reference to another work or famous figures; can be classical (refers to Greek and Roman mythology or literature), topical (refers to current event), or popular (refers to something from pop culture--TV show or hit movie) |
| anachronism | Greek for "misplaced in time"; something or someone that isn't in its correct historical or chronological time--i.e., Brutus wearing a watch |
| analogy | a comparison usually involving two or more symbolic parts; employed to clarify an action or relationship |
| anecdote | a short narrative |
| antecedent | the word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to |
| anthropomorphism | when inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behaviour, or motivation--"In the forest, the darkness waited for me, I could hear its patient breathing." |
| anticlimax | occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect; frequently comic |
| antihero | a protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities |
| aphorism | a short and usually witty saying; astute observation--"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Lord Acton) |
| apostrophe | a figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman, absent, or dead |
| archaism | the use of deliberately old-fashioned language, used to create a feeling of antiquity |
| aside | a speech (usually just a short comment) made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping outside of the action on stage |
| aspect | a trait or characteristic |
| assonance | the repeated use of vowel sounds--"Old king Cole was a merry old soul." |
| atmosphere | the emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene |
| ballad | a long, narrative poem, usually in regular meter and rhyme; typically has a naive folksy quality that sets it apart from epic poetry |
| bathos | when the writing of a scene strains for grandeur it can't support and tries to jerk tears from every little hiccup; intends to be dramatic but goes to the extreme of becoming ridiculous |
| pathos | when the writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy |
| black humor | the use of disturbing themes in comedy; morbid humor used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox, and cruelty of the modern world, ordinary characters or situations exaggerated beyond normal limits of satire or irony |
| bombast | pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language; one tries to be eloquent by using the largest, most uncommon words |
| burlesque | broad parody, one that takes a style or form, such as tragic drama, and exaggerates it into ridiculousness; achieves its effects through caricature, ridicule, and distortion, devoid of any ethical element; interchangeable with parody |
| cacophony | using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds--the sound of midday traffic |
| cadence | the beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense e.g., iambic pentameter; can be gentle and pulsing, conversational, and even vigorous, marching |
| canto | the name for a section division in a long work of poetry; divides a long poem into parts the way chapters divide a novel--like in Dante's Inferno |
| caricature | a portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality |
| catharsis | drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy; refers to the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences, having lived (vicariously) through the experiences presented on stage; purging of emotions through a form of art, in this case, literature |
| chorus | the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it |
| classic | typical; an accepted masterpiece |
| classical | refers to the arts of ancient Greece and Rome and the qualities of those arts |
| coinage (tech. term: neologism) | a new word, usually one invented on the spot |
| colloquialism | a word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "schoolbook" English; slang words, informal English |
| complex, dense | two terms carrying the similar meaning of suggesting that there is more than one posibilty in the meaning of words (image, idea, opposition); there are subtleties and variations; there are multiple layers of interpretation; the meaning is both explicit and implicit |
| conceit | refers to a startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon over several lines |
| controlling image | when the image of conceit dominates and shapes the entire work |
| connotation | what a word suggests or implies, not its literal meaning--i.e., dark meaning dangerous instead lacking of light |
| denotation | the literal meaning of a word |
| consonance | the repetition of consonant sounds WITHIN words--"A flock of sick, black-checkered ducks." |
| couplet | a pair of lines that end in rhyme |
| decorum | in order to observe, a character's speech must be styled according to his or her social station, and in accordance with the occasion--bum speaks like a bum about bumly things |
| diction | author's choice of words, choice of specific words |
| syntax | author's choice of words; refers to the ordering and structuring of the words |
| dirge | a song for the dead, tone is typically slow, heavy, and melancholy |
| dissonance | the grating of incompatible sounds |
| doggerel | crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme--i.e., limericks |
| dramatic irony | when the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not |
| dramatic monologue | when a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience |
| elegy | a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner; often use the recent death of a noted or loved person as a starting point; also memorialize specific dead people |
| elements | the basic techniques of each genre of literature |
| enjambment | the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause--i.e., |
| epic | a very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter--i.e., great war, heroic journey, battle with supernatural, etc. |
| mock-epic | parody form that deals with mundane events and ironically treats them as worthy of epic poetry |
| epitaph | lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place; usually a line or a handful of lines, often serious or religious, but sometimes witty and even irreverent |
| euphemism | a word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality--i.e., passed away for died, let go for fired |
| euphony | when sounds blend harmoniously |
| explicit | to say or write something directly and clearly |
| farce | today it's used to refer to extremely broad humor; in earlier times, it was used to mean a simply funny play; a comedy (generic term for play then, btw, no implication of humor) |
| feminine rhyme | lines rhymed by their final two syllables--running, gunning; properly, the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed |
| foil | a secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast |
| foot | the basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by a combination of two or three syllables, either stressed or unstressed |
| foreshadowing | an event or statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later |
| free verse | poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern |
| genre | a subcategory of literature--i.e., scientific fiction, detective stories->types of fiction |
| Gothic, Gothic novel | form first showed up in the middle of the 1700s, heyday of popularity for sixty years; sensibility: mysterious, gloomy, sinister |
| hubris | the excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall--like Caesar |
| hyperbole | exaggeration or deliberate overstatement: He has a watermelon head. |
| implicit | to say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly; reading between the lines |
| in medias res | Latin for "in the midst of things;" one of the conventions of epic poetry |
| interior monologue | a term for novels and poetry, not dramatic literature; refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; related, but not identical to the stream of consciousness; tends to be coherent, as though the character is actually talking |
| inversion | switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase--Yoda speech! |
| *irony | comes in a variety of forms; a statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean, deeper than sarcasm though; an undertow of meaning |
| lament | a poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss |
| lampoon | a satire |
| loose sentence | sentence is clear in the beginning, begins with main clause, followed by subordinates and modifiers |
| periodic sentence | leaves the completion of its main clause to the end, often produces effect of suspense |
| lyric | a type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world; when used to describe a tone, refers to a sweet, emotional melodiousness |
| masculine rhyme | a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable--spent, went |
| means, meaning | literal meaning-concrete and explicit; emotional meaning |
| melodrama | a form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very, very good, the villain mean and rotten, and the heroine oh-so-pure |
| metaphor | a comparison, or analogy that states one thing IS another--His eyes were burning coals. |
| metonym | a word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with---"the crown" referring to the king, "The pen is mightier than the sword." (pen reps writers and ideas, sword reps war) |
| nemesis | the protagonist's archenemy or supreme and persistent difficulty |
| objectivity | treatment of a matter as impersonal or as an outside view of events |
| subjectivity | treatment of a matter using the interior personal view of a single observer and is typically coloured with that observer's emotional responses |
| onomatopoeia | words that sound how they're spelled--boom, splat |
| opposition | a pair of elements that contrast sharply, not necessarily "conflict," rather a pairing of images, each becomes more striking and informative because it's placed in contrast to the other one; creates mystery and tension, can be obvious or lead to irony, not always though |
| oxymoron | a phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction |
| parable | a story that instructs like a fable or an allegory |
| paradox | a situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, it does not---"It's raining, but I don't believe that it is." |
| parallelism | repeated syntactical similarities used for effect--He likes playing the piano, eating cookies, and reading lengthy novels. |
| paraphrase | to restate phrases and sentences in your own words, to rephrase; not an analysis or interpretation |
| parenthetical phrase | a phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail |
| parody | when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness |
| pastoral | a poem set in a tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds |
| persona | the narrator in a non-first-person novel. in third person, get an idea of author's personality, but isn't really the author's personality; shadow-author |
| personification | giving an inanimate object human qualities or form--The darkness of the forest became the figure of a beautiful, pake-skinned woman in night-black clothes. |
| plaint | a poem or speech expressing sorrow |
| point of view | the perspective from which the action of a novel (or narrative poem) is presented |
| omniscient narrator | third-person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action that's going on |
| limited omniscient narrator | third-person narrator who generally reports only what one character (usually main character) sees, reports only thoughts of that one character |
| objective/camera-eye narrator | third-person narrator who only reports on what would be visible to a camera, doesn't know what the character is thinking unless character speaks of it |
| first-person narrator | narrator who is a character in the story and tells the story from his or her point of view; when crazy, a liar, or very young, narrator is unreliable |
| stream of consciousness technique | method is like first-person, but instead of the character telling the story, the author puts the reader in the character's head |
| prelude | an intro poem to a longer work or verse |
| protagonist | the main character of a novel or play |
| pun | usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings |
| refrain | a line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem |
| requiem | a song or prayer for the dead |
| rhapsody | an intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise |
| rhetorical question | a question that suggests an answer |
| satire | exposes common character flaws to humor; attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behaviours will become less common--hypocrisy, vanity, greed |
| simile | like a metaphor but softens the full-out equation of things, often, but not always, by using like or as |
| soliloquy | a speech spoken by a character alone on stage; meant to convey the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thoughts; not meant to imply that the actor acknowledges the audience is listening |
| stanza | a group of lines roughly analogues in function in verse to the paragraph's function in prose |
| stock characters | standard or cliched character types: the drunk, the miser, the foolish girl, etc. |
| subjunctive mood | a mood that represents an act or state (not as a fact but) as contingent or possible; wishful thinking--if I were you, if he were honest |
| suggest | to imply, infer, indicate; you have to pull out the meaning yourself |
| summary | a simple retelling of what you've just read; covers more material than paraphrase, more general, includes all the facts |
| suspension of disbelief | demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with imagination |
| symbolism | a device in literature where an object reps an idea |
| technique | the methods, the tools, "how-you-do-it" ways of the author |
| theme | the main idea of the overall work; the central idea; topic of discourse or discussion |
| thesis | the main position of an argument; the central contention that will be supported |
| tragic flaw | in tragedy, weakness of character in an other wise good/great individual that leads to his demise |
| travesty | a grotesque parody |
| truism | a way-too-obvious truth |
| utopia | an idealized place; paradise |
| zeugma | the use of a word to modify two or more words, but used for different meanings--On the fishing trip, he caught three trout and a cold. |
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