ap lit

EPITAPH:

EPITAPH: A short comment or description marking someone's death. Also, a short, witty, and often satiric poem about death.

FABLE:

A brief story illustrating a moral truth, most often associated with the ancient Greek writer Aesop. The "Uncle Remus Stories" by Joel Chandler Harris are cultural fables, and Animal Farm, by George Orwell is a political fable. (Contrast with PARABLE.) 67. FARCE (from Latin farsus, "stuffed"): Outlandish, physical comedy overflowing

FOIL:

A character, usually minor, that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. For instance, in the film Chasing Amy, the character Silent Bob is a foil for his partner, Jake, who is loquacious and foul-mouthed. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Laertes the unthinking man of action is a foil to the intelligent but reluctant Hamlet. The angry hothead Hotspur in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I, is the foil to the cool and calculating Prince Hal. In the TV show, House, the kind and gregarious Dr. Wilson is a foil to the hot-tempered Dr. House.

LAMPOON:

A coarse or crude satire ridiculing the appearance or character of another person.

METAPHOR:

A comparison or analogy stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking. When we speak of "the ladder of success," we imply that being successful is much like climbing a ladder to a higher and better position. Another example comes from an old television add from the 1980s urging teenagers not to try drugs. The camera would focus on a close-up of a pair of eggs and a voice would state "This is your brain." In the next sequence, the eggs would be cracked and thrown onto a hot skillet, where the eggs would bubble, burn, and seethe. The voice would state, "This is your brain on drugs." The point of the comparison is fairly clear. Another example is how Martin Luther wrote, "A mighty fortress is our God, / A bulwark never failing." (Mighty fortress and bulwark are the two metaphors for God in these lines.) Often, a metaphor suggests something symbolic in its imagery. For instance, Wordsworth uses a metaphor when he states of England, "she is a fen of stagnant waters," which implies something about the state of political affairs in England as well as the island's biomes. Sometimes, the metaphor can be emotionally powerful, such as John Donne's use of metaphor in "Twickenham Garden," where he writes, "And take my tears, which are love's wine" (line 20). The subject of a metaphor is called the TENOR. For instance, if a writer claimed, "Mrs. Higgins is a witch," the tenor of the metaphor witch is Mrs. Higgins. When Shakespeare claims that "all the world's a stage," the entire world is the tenor for the metaphor of a stage. A particularly unusual metaphor that requires some explanation on the writer's part is often called a METAPHYSICAL CONCEIT. The combination of two different metaphors into a single, awkward image is called a "mixed metaphor."

HYMN:

A hymn is a religious song, consisting of one and usually many more replicating rhythmical stanzas, designed for religious services. Compare with LYRIC. 83. HYPERBOLE: the trope of exaggeration or overstatement. For example,

EUPHONY:

("Good sound") Word groups containing consonants and vowels together that encourage speakers to utter an easy and pleasant flow of spoken sound. To describe a passage as euphonious is highly subjective - more so, probably, than to declare something cacophonous. When sounds blend harmoniously, the result is euphony. Contrast with CACOPHONY.

HAMARTIA:

(Greek "error or frailty") The word indicating the tragic flaw that brings about the downfall or suffering of a protagonist in a tragedy. In the New Testament of the Bible, the word is often translated as "sin."

ZEUGMA

(Greek "yoking" or "bonding"): Artfully using a single word (verb or noun) to refer to two different objects grammatically, or artfully using an adjective to refer to two separate nouns, even though the adjective would logically only be appropriate for one of the two. For instance, in Shakespeare's Henry V, Fluellen cries, "Kill the boys and the luggage." The verb kill normally wouldn't be applied to luggage. If the resulting grammatical construction changes the verb's initial meaning, the zeugma is called SYLLEPSIS.

Pathos

(Greek, "emotion"): The "scene of suffering" in tragedy, which Aristotle defines as "a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like." Pathos is a writer or speaker's attempt to inspire an emotional reaction in an audience--usually a deep feeling of suffering, but sometimes joy, pride, anger, humor, patriotism, or any of a dozen other emotions. Contrast with BATHOS.

Pastoral

(Latin pastor, "shepherd"): A traditional poetic form with topic material drawn from the usually idealized vocabulary of rural and shepherd life. It usually idealized shepherds' lives in order to create an image of peaceful and uncorrupted existence. More generally, pastoral describes the simplicity, charm, and serenity attributed to country life, or any literary convention that places kindly, rural people in nature-centered activities. The Greek Theocritus (316-260 BCE) first used the convention in his Idylls, though pastoral compositions also appear in Roman literature, in Shakespeare's plays, and in the writings of the Romantic poets. Typically, pastoral liturgy depicts beautiful scenery, carefree shepherds, seductive nymphs, and rural songs and dances

MOTIF:

(Literally, "something that moves.") Typically used in reference to a main idea or theme in a single work or in many works. A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula, which appears frequently in works of literature. The theme of carpe diem is a motif. Also, the "loathly lady" who turns out to be a beautiful princess is a common motif in folklore, and the man fatally bewitched by a fairy lady is a common folkloric motif appearing in Keat's "La Belle Dame sans Merci." Compare with ARCHETYPE.

Persona

(Plural, personae or personas; Latin, "mask"): An external representation of oneself which might or might not accurately reflect one's inner self, or an external representation of oneself that might be largely accurate, but involves exaggerating certain characteristics and minimizing others. One of the most famous personae is that of the speaker in Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." Here, the Irish author Swift, outraged over Britain's economic exploitation of Ireland, creates a speaker who is a well-to-do English intellectual, getting on in years, who advocates raising and eating Irish children as a means of economic advancement. Another famous persona is Geoffrey Chaucer's narrator in The Canterbury Tales, who presents himself as poetically inept and somewhat dull. Contrast with NARRATOR.

HUMORS

(also known as BODILY HUMORS): In ancient Greece, Hippocrates postulated that four bodily humors or liquids existed in the body corresponding to the four elements existing in matter. These four liquids determined a human's health and psychology. An imbalance among the humors- -blood, phlegm, black bile (or tears), and yellow bile (or choler)--resulted in pain and disease, and good health resulted through a balance of the four humors. Unhealthy imbalances might be caused by an unbalanced diet, too much heat or cold, or even by "putrescence," in which one or more of these bodily liquids soured and began to rot. Medical theory held this imbalance could cause both physical ailments and mental disorders in the victim. Furthermore, the liquids were thought to be somewhat flammable. The ajust, or "burning" of gases and vapors coming from humors like blood, caused fevers in sick people. To cure illness, one of the most common methods to restore a balance was for a barber to "bleed" excess blood from a sick person using lances or knives (yes, barbers once were licensed to perform particular acts of medicine), or for a doctor to use leeches for the same purpose. If excessive yellow bile were the problem, an emetic or vomit-inducing agent would help the patient expel the extra choler from the body. If the patient were depressed or melancholic, the cure was to prescribe a laxative to purge black bile from the body. If a phlegmatic disorder was suspected, the doctor might suggest applying various irritants to the nose and mouth to induce violent sneezing, which eliminated the phlegm in a spectacular manner. Unfortunately, many of the powders and ointments used in the latter treatments were virulently toxic. Untold thousands of patients suffering from diseases no more severe than the flu probably died at the hands of various doctors. The neoclassic playwright Moliere ridicules this dilemma in his play, L'Amour Médecin (Love is the Doctor), but earlier Renaissance writers like Shakespeare take the theory seriously.

SYNESTHESIA

(also spelled synaesthesia, from Grk. "perceiving together"): A rhetorical TROPE involving shifts in IMAGERY. It involves taking one type of sensory input (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) and comingling it with another separate sense in an impossible way. In the resulting FIGURE OF SPEECH, we end up talking about how a color sounds, or how a smell looks. When we say a musician hits a "blue note" while playing a sad song, we engage in synesthesia. When we talk about a certain shade of color as a "cool green," we mix tactile or thermal imagery with visual imagery the same way. When we talk about a "heavy silence," we also use synesthesia. Examples abound: "The scent of the rose rang like a bell through the garden." "I caressed the darkness with cool fingers."

MOOD

(from Anglo-Saxon, mod "heart" or "spirit"): In literature, a feeling, emotional state, or disposition of mind--especially the predominating atmosphere or tone of a literary work. Most pieces of literature have a prevailing mood, but shifts in this prevailing mood may function as a counterpoint, provide comic relief, or echo the changing events in the plot. The term mood is often used synonymously with ATMOSPHERE. Students and critics who wish to discuss mood in their essays should be able to point to specific diction, description, setting, and characterization to illustrate what sets the mood.

LYRIC

(from Greek lyra "song"): The lyric form is as old as Egypt (surviving examples date back to 2600 BC), and examples exist in early Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and other sources. If literature from every culture through the ages were lumped into a single stack, it is likely that the largest number of writings would be these short verse poems. There are three general meanings for lyric: A. A short poem (usually no more than 50-60 lines, and often only a dozen lines long) written in a repeating stanzaic form, often designed to be set to music. Usually meditative, often personal, and sometimes philosophical. Unlike a BALLAD, the lyric usually does not have a plot (that is, it might not tell a complete story), but it rather expresses the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts of a single poetic speaker in an intensely personal, emotional, or subjective manner. Often, there is no chronology of events in the lyrics, but rather objects, situations, or the subject is written about in a "lyric moment." Sometimes, the reader can infer an implicit narrative element in lyrics, but it is rare for the lyric to proceed in the straightforward, chronological "telling" common in fictional prose. For instance, in William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper," the reader can guess from the speaker's words that the speaker has come unexpectedly upon a girl reaping and singing in the Scottish Highlands, and that he stops, listens, and thinks awhile before continuing on his way. However, this chain of events is not explicitly a center of plot or extended conflict between protagonist and antagonist. Instead it triggers a moment of contemplation and appreciation. Thus it is not a plot in the normal sense of the word. B. Any poem having the form and musical quality of a song. C. As an adjective, lyric can also be applied to any prose or verse characterized by direct, spontaneous outpouring of intense feeling. Often, the lyric is subdivided into various genres, including the DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE, the ELEGY, the HYMN, the ODE, and the SONNET.

RHYTHM:

(from Greek, "flowing") The varying speed, loudness, pitch, elevation, intensity, and expressiveness of speech, especially poetry. In verse the rhythm is normally regular; in prose it may or may not be regular.

MELODRAMA:

A dramatic form characterized by excessive sentiment, exaggerated emotion, sensational and thrilling action, and an artificially happy ending. Melodramas originally referred to romantic plays featuring music, singing, and dancing, but by the 18th Century they connoted simplified and coincidental plots, bathos, and happy endings. These melodramatic traits are present in much of literature and film, from Gothic novels, western stories, popular films, and television crime shows, to name a few.

METONYMY/METONYM:

A figure of speech in which one thing is used as a substitute for another with which it is closely identified, such as when a speaker says "dear hearts" to refer to an audience. Using a vaguely suggestive, physical object to embody a more general idea. The term metonym also applies to the object itself used to suggest that more general idea. Some examples of metonymy are using the metonym "crown" in reference to royalty or the entire royal family, or stating "the pen is mightier than the sword" to suggest that the power of education and writing is more potent for changing the world than military force. One student wrote in an argumentative essay, "If we cannot strike offenders in the heart, let us strike them in the wallet," implying by her metonym that if we cannot make criminals regret their actions out of their guilty consciences, we can make them regret their actions through financial punishment. We use metonymy in everyday speech when we refer to the entire movie-making industry as "Hollywood" or the advertising industry as the street "Madison Avenue" (and when we refer to businessmen working there as "suits.") Journalists use metonymy to refer to the collective decisions of the United States government as "Washington" or when they use the term "the White House" as a shorthand reference for the executive bureaucracy in American government. Popular writer Thomas Friedman coined a recent metonym, "the Arab Street," as a shorthand reference for the entire population of Muslim individuals in Saudi Arabia, Yeman, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the surrounding areas. When students talk about studying "Shakespeare," they mean metonymically all his collected works of drama and poetry, rather than the historical writer's life alone, and so on. Contrast with SYNECDOCHE.

LIMERICK:

A five-line closed-form poem in which the first two lines consist of anapestic trimeter, which in turn are followed by lines of anapestic dimeter, and a final line in trimeter. They rhyme in an AABBA pattern. Typically, they are used in comic or bawdy verse, making extensive use of DOUBLE ENTENDRE.

LITOTES:

A form of MEIOSIS using a negative statement. Understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary, as in "she was not a bad singer," or "he was not unhappy." Compare with MEIOSIS.

KENNING:

A form of compounding in Old English poetry. In this poetic device, the poet creates a new compound word or phrase to describe (metaphorically) an object or activity. Specifically, this compound uses mixed imagery to describe the properties of the object in indirect, imaginative, or AP Lit 2017-18 AP Lit 2017-18 Page 23 enigmatic ways. The resulting word is somewhat like a riddle since the reader must stop and think for a minute to determine what the object is. Kennings may involve conjoining two types of dissimilar imagery, extended metaphor, or mixed metaphor. Kennings were particularly common in Old English literature and Viking poetry. The most famous example is hron-rade ("whale-road") as a poetic reference to the sea. Other examples include "Thor-Weapon" as a reference to a blacksmith's hammer, "battle-flame" as a reference to the way light shines on swords, "gore-bed" for a battlefield filled with motionless bodies, and "battle-dew" for a battlefield covered in blood. Kennings are less common in Modern English than in earlier centuries, but some common modern examples include "beer-goggles" (to describe the way one's judgment of appearances becomes hazy while intoxicated) and "web-surfing" (which mixes the imagery of skillful motion through large amounts of liquid, amorphous material with the imagery of an interconnected net linked by strands or cables).

VILLANELLE:

A genre of poetry consisting of nineteen lines: five TERCETS and a concluding QUATRAIN. The form requires that whole lines be repeated in a specific order, and that only two rhyming sounds occur in the course of the poem.

Phrase

A group of related words that is missing a subject, verb, or both. For example, "leaving the dog behind," "before the first test," and "smashing into a fence." Contrast with CLAUSE.

Periodic Sentence

A long sentence that is not grammatically complete (and hence not intelligible to the reader) until the reader reaches the final portion of the sentence. An example is this sentence by Bret Harte: "And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat." The most common type of periodic sentence involves a long phrase in which the verb falls at the very end of the sentence after the direct object, indirect object and other grammatical necessities. For example, "For the queen, the lover, pleading always at the heart's door, patiently waits." Contrast this with a LOOSE SENTENCE, in which we would normally write, "Always pleading at the heart's door, the lover waits patiently for the queen." The loose sentence is clearer in English. It tends to follow the subject-verb-object pattern we are accustomed to. The periodic sentence is more exotic and arguably more poetic, but initially confusing.

MONOLOGUE:

A long speech spoken by a single character to himself, to the audience, or to an off-stage character. In a novel, a monologue does not necessarily represent words spoken out loud, but rather the internal or emotional thoughts or feelings of an individual. In drama, a monologue can also be used to refer to a character speaking aloud to himself, or narrating an account to an audience with no other character on stage. Contrast with SOLILOQUY and INTERIOR MONOLOGUE.

SOLILOQUY:

A monologue spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character believes himself to be alone. The technique frequently reveals a character's innermost thoughts, including his feelings, state of mind, motives or intentions. The soliloquy often provides necessary but otherwise inaccessible information to the audience. The dramatic convention is that whatever a character says in a soliloquy to the audience must be true, or at least true in the eyes of the character speaking (i.e., the character may tell lies to mislead other characters in the play, but whatever he states in a soliloquy is a true reflection of what the speaker believes or feels). The soliloquy was rare in Classical drama, but Elizabethan playwrights used it extensively, especially for their villains. Well-known examples include speeches by the title characters of Macbeth, Richard III, and Hamlet and also Iago in Othello. Unlike the ASIDE, a soliloquy is not usually indicated by specific stage directions. Compare with MONOLOGUE.

Pun

A play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning. For example, Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, puns upon Romeo's vile death (vile=vial, the vial of poison Romeo consumed). Shakespeare's poetic speaker also puns upon his first name (Will) and his lover's desire (her will) in the sonnets. Originally, puns were a common literary trope in serious literature, but after the eighteenth century, puns have been primarily considered a low form of humor. Puns can occur in dialogue as well. For example, in Shakespeare's Cymbeline (II, i), Cloten exclaims, "Would he had been one of my rank!" A lord retorts, "To have smell'd like a fool," twisting the meaning of rank from a noun referring to "noble status" to an adjective connoting "a foul smell." Another form of pun involves altering one or more letters in a word, as in, "What's homicidal and lives in the sea? Answer: Jack the Kipper." In spite of the pun's current low reputation, some of the best writers in English have been notoriously addicted to puns: notably Shakespeare, Chaucer, and James Joyce.

SONNET:

A poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a single, complete idea or thought with a reversal, twist, or change of direction in the concluding lines. There are three common forms: A. The PETRARCHAN SONNET (sometimes called the ITALIAN SONNET) has an eight line stanza (called an octave) followed by a six line STANZA (called a sestet). The octave has two quatrains rhyming ABBA, ABBA, the first of which presents the theme, the second further develops it. In the sestet, the first three lines reflect on or exemplify the theme, while the last three bring the poem to a unified end. The sestet may be arranged CDECDE, CDCDCD, or CDEDCE. B. The SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET (sometimes called the ELIZABETHAN SONNET or the ENGLISH SONNET) uses three QUATRAINS; each rhymed differently, with a final, independently rhymed COUPLET that makes an effective, unifying climax to the whole. Its rhyme scheme is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. Typically, the final two lines follow a "turn" or a "volta," because they reverse, undercut, or turn from the original line of thought to take the idea in a new direction. C. The MILTONIC SONNET is similar to the Petrarchan sonnet, but it does not divide its thought between the octave and the sestet--the sense or line of thinking runs straight from AP Lit 2017-18 AP Lit 2017-18 Page 39 the eighth to ninth line. Also, Milton expands the sonnet's repertoire to deal not only with love as the earlier sonnets did, but also to include politics, religion, and personal matters. With the advent of FREE VERSE, the sonnet came to be somewhat old-fashioned and fell out of use for a time. However, a number of 20th century poets rose to the challenge of reinventing the MODERN SONNET, and there are many sonnets now appearing in print and on the Internet. The modern sonnet will still be fourteen lines, but often varies in its other aspects.

RHETORICAL QUESTION:

A question that suggests an answer. In theory, the effect of a rhetorical question is that it causes the listener to feel she has come up with the answer herself.

METER:

A recognizable though varying pattern of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress. The number of feet within a line of traditional verse, so compositions written in meter are said to be in VERSE. There are many possible patterns of verse. Each unit of stress and unstressed syllables is called a "foot." The following types are most common (although not exhaustive): A. Iambic (the noun is "iamb" or "iambus"): a lightly stressed syllable followed by a heavily stressed syllable. Example: "The cúrfew tólls the knéll of párting dáy." (Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.") B. Anapestic (the noun is "anapest") two light syllables followed by a stressed syllable: "The Assyrian came dówn like a wólf on the fóld." (Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennacherib.") C. Trochaic (the noun is "trochee") a stressed followed by a light syllable: "Thére they áre, my fífty men and wómen." D. Dactylic (the noun is "dactyl"): a stressed syllable followed by two light syllables: "Éve, with her básket, was / Déep in the bélls and grass." Iambs and anapests, since the strong stress is at the end, are called "rising meter"; trochees and dactyls, with the strong stress at the beginning with lower stress at the end, are called "falling meter." Additionally, if a line ends in a standard iamb, with a final stressed syllable, it is said to have a masculine ending. If a line ends in a lightly stressed syllable, it is said to be feminine. To hear the difference, read the following examples aloud and listen to the final stress: AP Lit 2017-18 AP Lit 2017-18 Page 28 MASCULINE ENDING: "'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." FEMININE ENDING: "'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the housing, Not a creature was stirring, not even a mousing." We name a metric line according to the number of "feet" in it. If a line has four feet, it is tetrameter. If a line has five feet, it is pentameter. Six feet, hexameter, and so on. English verse tends to be pentameter, French verse tetrameter, and Greek verse, hexameter. When SCANNING a line, we might, for instance, describe the line as "iambic pentameter" (having five feet, with each foot tending to be a light syllable followed by heavy syllable), or "trochaic tetrameter" (having four feet, with each foot tending to be a long syllable followed by a short syllable). Here is a list of some of the various verse structures: MONOMETER: one foot DIMETER: two feet TRIMETER: three feet TETRAMETER: four feet PENTAMETER: five feet HEXAMETER: six feet HEPTAMETER: seven feet OCTAMETER: eight feet NONAMETER: nine feet

SYNECDOCHE:

A rhetorical TROPE involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part. For instance, a writer might state, "Twenty eyes watched our every move." Rather than implying that twenty disembodied eyes are swiveling to follow him as he walks by, he means that ten people watched the group's every move. When a captain calls out, "All hands on deck," he wants the whole sailors, not just their hands. When a cowboy talks about owning "forty head of cattle," he isn't talking about stuffed cow skulls hanging in his trophy room, but rather forty live cows and their bovine bodies. Synecdoche is a form of METONYMY (as a simile is a form of metaphor), and so it is occasionally similar to and overlaps with metonymy. When La Fontaine states, "A hungry stomach has no ears," he uses synecdoche and metonymy simultaneously to refer to the way that starving people do not want to listen to arguments.

TRAGEDY:

A serious play in which the chief character, by some peculiarity of psychology, passes through a series of misfortunes leading to a final, devastating catastrophe. According to Aristotle, CATHARSIS is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragedy. Traditionally, a tragedy is divided into five acts. The first act introduces the characters in a state of happiness, or at the height of their power, influence, or fame. The second act typically introduces a problem or dilemma, which reaches a point of crisis in the third act, but which can still be successfully averted. In the fourth act, the main characters fail to avert or avoid the impending crisis or catastrophe, and this disaster occurs. The fifth act traditionally reveals the grim consequences of that failure.

VIGNETTE

A short composition showing considerable skill, especially such a composition designed with little or no plot or larger narrative structure. Often vignettes are descriptive or evocative in their nature. An example would be the brief narratives appearing in Sandra Cisneros's short-stories. More loosely, vignettes might be descriptive passages within a larger work, such as Virginia Woolf's "Kew Gardens," or Faulkner's descriptions of horses and landscapes in The Hamlet. The term vignette originally comes from a decorative device appearing on a title page or at the beginnings and ends of chapters. Conventionally, 19th century printers depicted small looping vines here loosely reminiscent of the vine-work in medieval manuscripts.

EPITHET:

A short, poetic nickname in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase attached to the normal name. Frequently, this technique allows a poet to extend a line by a few syllables in a poetic manner that characterizes an individual or a setting within an epic poem. The Homeric epithet in classical literature often includes compounds of two words such as, "fleet-footed Achilles," "Cow- eyed Hera," "Grey-eyed Athena," or "the wine-dark sea." In other cases, it appears as a phrase, such as "Odysseus the man-of-many-wiles," or whatnot. The historical epithet is a descriptive phrase attached to a ruler's name. For instance, King Alfred the Great, Duke Lorenzo the Magnificent, Robert the Devil, Richard the Lionheart, and so on. Not to be confused with EPITAPH or EPIGRAM.

SESTET:

A six-line STANZA or unit of poetry. Also, the last six lines of a PETRARCHAN SONNET.

SYLLEPSIS:

A specialized type of ZEUGMA in which the meaning of a verb cleverly changes halfway through a sentence. Grammatica Rhetorica defines it thusly: "When a single word that governs or modifies two or more others must be understood differently with respect to each of those words." In the following examples, the verb governs both objects, but the first usage is different than the second: "Rend your heart, and not your garments." (Joel 2:13) "You held your breath and the door for me." (Alanis Morissette)

EXISTENTIALISM:

A twentieth-century philosophy arguing that ethical human beings are in a sense cursed with absolute free will in a purposeless universe. Therefore, individuals must fashion their own sense of meaning in life instead of relying thoughtlessly on religious, political, and social conventions. These merely provide a façade of meaning according to existential philosophy. Those who rely on such conventions without thinking through them deny their own ethical responsibilities. The basic principles of existentialism are (1) a concern with man's essential being and nature, (2) an idea that existential "angst" or "anguish" is the common lot of all thinking humans who see the essential meaninglessness of transitory human life, (3) the belief that thought and logic are insufficient to cope with existence, and (4) the conviction that a true sense of morality can only come from honestly facing the dilemma of existential freedom and participating in life actively and positively. The ethical idea is that, if the universe is essentially meaningless, and human existence does not matter in the long run, then the only thing that can provide a moral backdrop is humanity itself, and neglecting to do this is neglecting our duty to ourselves and to each other.

INTERIOR MONOLOGUE:

A type of STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS in which the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single individual in the same order these thoughts occur inside that character's head. The author does not attempt to provide (or provides minimally) any commentary, description, or guiding discussion to help the reader untangle the complex web of thoughts, nor does the writer clean up the vague surge of thoughts into grammatically correct sentences or a logical order. Indeed, it is as if the authorial voice ceases to exist, and the reader directly "overhears" the thought pouring forth randomly from a character's mind. M. H. Abrams notes that an example of an interior monologue can be found in the "Lestrygonian" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses. Here, Leopold Bloom wanders past a candy shop in Dublin, and his thoughts wander back and forth: "Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugar-sticky girl shoveling scoopfuls of creams for a Christian brother. Some school great. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white."

GENRE:

A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions. The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres and subgenres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc. Many bookstores and video stores divide their books or films into genres for the convenience of shoppers seeking a specific category of literature.

EPONYM:

A word that is derived from the proper name of a person or place. For instance, the sandwich gained its name from its inventor, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. The word lynch comes from Captain William Lynch, who led bands of vigilantes to hang hoboes and bums residing near Pittsylvania County. The verb shanghai, meaning to kidnap or press into forced labor, comes from the practices of conscription common in the city of Shanghai at the time. The word stentorian comes from the loud-mouthed Stentor in Greek legend, and herculean comes from the muscle- bound Hercules, and so on.

SYMBOL:

A word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level. For instance, consider the stop sign. It is literally a metal octagon painted red with a white border. However, everyone on American roads will be safer if we understand that this object also represents the act of coming to a complete stop--an idea hard to encompass briefly without some AP Lit 2017-18 AP Lit 2017-18 Page 40 sort of symbolic substitute. In literature, symbols can be cultural, contextual, or personal. An object, a setting, or even a character can represent another more general idea. ALLEGORIES are narratives read in such a way that nearly every element serves as an interrelated symbol, and the narrative's meaning can be read either literally or as a symbolic statement about a political, spiritual, or psychological truth.

VOLTA:

Also called a turn, a volta is a sudden change in thought, direction, or emotion near the conclusion of a SONNET. This invisible volta is then followed by a COUPLET (in English Sonnets) or a SESTET (in Italian Sonnets). Typically, the first section of the sonnet states a premise, asks a question, or suggests a theme. The concluding lines after the volta resolve the problem by suggesting an answer, offering a conclusion, or shifting the thematic concerns in a new direction.

Quatrain

Also sometimes used interchangeably with "stave," a quatrain is a stanza of four lines, often rhyming in an ABAB pattern. Three quatrains form the main body of a Shakespearean or English SONNET along with a final COUPLET.

SIMILE:

An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as, in contrast with a METAPHOR which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing. This figure of speech is quite ancient and is common in both prose and verse works.

STANZA:

An arrangement of lines of verse in a pattern usually repeated throughout the poem or song. Typically, each stanza has a fixed number of verses or lines, a prevailing meter, and a consistent RHYME SCHEME. A stanza may be a subdivision of a poem or song, or it may constitute the entire piece. Early English terms for a stanza were batch, stave, and fit, so you may see it occasionally referred to as such.

SATIRE:

An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards. Satire became an especially popular technique used during the ENLIGHTENMENT, in which it was believed that an artist could correct folly by using art as a mirror to reflect society. When people viewed the satire and saw their faults magnified in a distorted reflection, they could see how ridiculous their behavior was and then correct that tendency in themselves. The tradition of satire continues today. Popular cartoons such as The Simpsons and televised comedies like The Daily Show make use of it in modern media. Conventionally, formal satire involves a direct, first-person- address, either to the audience or to a listener mentioned within the work. An example of standard satire is Alexander Pope's Moral Essays. INDIRECT SATIRE conventionally employs the form of a fictional narrative--such as Byron's Don Juan or Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and similar tools are almost always used in satire. HORATIAN SATIRE tends to focus lightly on laughter and ridicule, but it maintains a playful tone. Generally, the tone is sympathetic and good humored, somewhat tolerant of imperfection and folly even while expressing amusement at it. The name comes from the Roman poet Horace (65-8 BCE), who preferred to ridicule human folly in general rather than condemn specific persons. In contrast, JUVENALIAN SATIRE also uses withering invective, insults, and a slashing attack. The name comes from the Roman poet Juvenal (60-140 CE), who frequently employed the device, but the label is applied to British writers such as Swift and Pope as well.

MEME:

An idea or pattern of thought that "replicates" like a virus by being passed along from one thinker to another. A meme might be a song or advertising jingle that gets stuck in one's head, a particularly amusing joke or entertaining story one feels compelled to pass on, a memorable phrase that gets quoted repeatedly in public speeches or in published books, a political ideology, an invention, a teacher's lesson plan, or even a religious belief.

MACHIAVELLIAN:

As an adjective, the word refers generally to sneaky, ruthless, and deceitful behavior, especially in regard to a ruler obsessed with power who puts on a surface veneer of honor and trustworthy behavior in order to achieve evil ends. The term originates in a treatise known as The Prince. This work was written by Niccoló Machiavelli, an early sixteenth-century political advisor who worked for the Borgia family in Italy. In contrast to the medieval ideal of the ruler as God's holy deputy and dispenser of justice, Machiavelli stressed that effective rulers often must engage in evil (or at least immoral) activities to ensure the stability of their rule. He suggests that, based on the evidence of history and his own personal observations, the rulers that have remained in power have not been kindly, benevolent men concerned with justice and fairness, but rather ruthless individuals willing to do anything to ensure the security of their state and their own personal power.

HEROIC COUPLET:

COUPLET: Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. The second line is usually end-stopped. It was common practice to string long sequences of heroic couplets together in a pattern of aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff (and so on). Because this practice was especially popular in the Neoclassic Period between 1660 and 1790, the heroic couplet is often called the neoclassic couplet if the poem originates during this time period. Note that "heroic" in this case has nothing to do with subject-matter. By all means, do not follow in the footsteps of one confused student who mistakenly listed Romeo and Juliet as an example of a "heroic couplet."

ROMANCE:

Classically, this term refers to lengthy Spanish and French stories of the 16th and 17th centuries; involved tales of courtly love and chivalry. In the Renaissance, the term came to refer to the tragicomedies - a romance including both tragic and comic elements, such as Shakespeare's play The Tempest. (It bears noting, though, that "comic" in this sense doesn't mean "funny.") In AP Lit 2017-18 AP Lit 2017-18 Page 37 modern usage, the term refers to formulaic stories describing the growth of an impulsive, passionate, and powerful relationship.

METADRAMA:

Drama in which the subject of the play is dramatic art itself, especially when such material breaks up the illusion of watching reality. When Macbeth cries out, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / and then is heard no more," his references to "shadows" and "players" (Renaissance jargon for actors) and his discussion of the stage serve to remind the audience forcefully that they are watching a dramatic pretense, not a real historical event. The references break down VERISIMILITUDE to call attention to the fact that viewers are watching a staged performance. Likewise, the opening to Taming of the Shrew forcefully emphasizes that the events we see are a fiction, as does Hamlet's plan to use The Mouse- Trap as an ethical litmus test for Claudius: "The play's the thing / wherin I'll catch the conscience of the king."

HIGH COMEDY:

Elegant comedies characterized by witty banter and sophisticated dialogue rather than the slapstick physicality and blundering common to LOW COMEDY. In high comedy, the complications grow not out of situations, but rather out of characters. Compare with COMEDY OF MANNERS.

METAFICTION:

Fiction in which the subject of the story is the act or art of storytelling of itself, especially when such material breaks up the illusion of "reality" in a work. An example is John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, in which the author interrupts his own narrative to insert himself as a character in the work. Claiming not to like the ending to the tale, the author sets his watch back ten minutes, and the storyline backs up ten minutes so an alternative ending can unfold. The act reminds us that the passionate love affair we are so involved in as readers is a fictional creation of an author at that point when we are most likely to have forgotten that artificiality because of our involvement. Other examples include Chaucer's narrator in The Canterbury Tales, in which the pilgrim on the journey to Canterbury tells the reader to "turn the leaf [page] and choose another tale" if the audience doesn't like naughty stories like the Miller's Tale. This command breaks the illusion that Chaucer is a real person on pilgrimage, calling attention to the fictional qualities of The Canterbury Tales as a physical artifact--a book held in the readers' hands.

IMAGERY:

IMAGERY: A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures," or "images" that readers experience with a passage of literature. It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a work, whether by literal or figurative description, and it is not limited to visual imagery; it also includes auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic sensation (movement). Typically, "image" refers to a single mental creation, while "imagery" refers to images throughout a work or works of a writer or group of writers.

IMAGISM:

IMAGISM: Not to be confused with imagery, imagism was an early twentieth-century artistic movement in the United States and Britain. Imagists believed poets should use common, everyday vocabulary, experiment with new rhythm, and use clear, precise, concentrated imagery. Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, and T. E. Hulme are all poets who were adherents of imagism and were known as imagists. Carl Sandburg's "Fog" is an example of an imagist poem, and T. E. Hulme's "Above the Dock."

LOW COMEDY:

In contrast with HIGH COMEDY, low comedy consists of crude, boisterous, and physical comedies and farces, characterized by silly, slapstick physicality, crude pratfalls, violence, scatology, and bodily humor rather than clever dialogue or banter.

MOCK EPIC:

In contrast with an EPIC, a mock epic is a long, heroicomical poem that merely imitates features of the classical epic. The poet often takes an elevated style of language, but incongruously applies that language to mundane or ridiculous objects and situations. The mockepic focuses frequently on the exploits of an antihero whose activities illustrate the stupidity of the class or group he represents. Various other attributes common to the classical epic, such as the invocation of the muse or the intervention of the gods, or the long catalogs of characters, appear in the mock epic as well, only to be spoofed. For instance, Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock gives in hyperbolic language a lengthy account of how a 17th century lord cuts a lady's hair in order to steal a lock of it as a keepsake, leading to all sorts of social backlash when the woman is unhappy with her new hairdo. Lord Byron's Don Juan gives a lengthy list of the sexual conquests and catastrophes associated with a precocious young lord, Don Juan. Both are fine examples of the mock epic.

TMESIS:

Intentionally breaking a word into two parts for emphasis. Goldwyn once wrote, "I have but two words to say to your request: Im Possible." In the movie True Lies, one character states, "I have two words to describe that idea. In Sane." Milton writes, "Which way soever man refer to it." The poet W. H. Auden makes emotionally laden use of tmesis in "Two Songs for Hedli Anderson," where he stretches out the word forever by writing: "I thought that love would last For Ever. I was wrong." In English, this rhetorical scheme is fairly rare, since only the compounds of "ever" readily lend themselves to it, but it is much more common in Greek and Latin. An exception to this generalization is the American poet e. e. cummings (the lack of capitalization in his name is a rhetorical affectation). Critics note that cummings makes particularly potent use of tmesis in poems like "she being Brand / -new", in which words like "brand-new" and "O. K" are artificially divided across separate lines of text to create an unusual, broken reading experience. Particularly clever poets may use a sort of insertion of other words of phrases between the two parts that have been split apart. For instance, a southerner might say, "I live in West--by God--Virginia, thank you very much!" Shakespeare, in Troilus and Cressida, writes the phrase, "how dearly ever parted" (III.iii), when we would expect to find the phrase written as "however dearly parted" in normal grammatical usage. You're using tmesis when a friend asks you how your huge vocabulary test went and you reply, "It was fan-flippin-tastic!"

picaresque novel

L (from Spanish picaro, a rogue or thief): A humorous novel in which the plot consists of a young knave's misadventures and escapades narrated in comic or satiric scenes. This roguish protagonist--called a picaro--makes his (or sometimes her) way through cunning and trickery rather than through virtue or industry. The picaro frequently travels from place to place engaging in a variety of jobs for several masters and getting into mischief. The picaresque novel is usually episodic in nature and realistic in its presentation of the seamier aspects of society. The genre first emerged in 1553 in the anonymous Spanish work Lazarillo de Tormes, and later Spanish authors like Mateo Aleman and Fracisco Quevedo produced other similar works. The first English specimen was Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594). Other examples include Defoe's Moll Flanders, Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild, and Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March. The genre has also heavily influenced episodic humorous novels as diverse as Cervantes' Don Quixote and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

JARGON:

Language exclusively used by particular groups, such as doctors, lawyers, astronauts, scientists, computer operators, football players, etc. It is the specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group. The computer industry, for example, has introduced much jargon into our vocabulary. Words such as geek, crash, and interface are all examples of jargon. (Contrast with DIALECT.)

MYTHOLOGY:

MYTHOLOGY: This term refers collectively to all the stories and beliefs, either of a single group or number of groups, but which may no longer be believed as literally true by their descendants. Like religions everywhere, mythology often provided etiological and eschatological narratives (see above) to help explain why the world works the way it does, to provide a rationale for customs andobservances, to establish set rituals for sacred ceremonies, and to predict what happens to individuals after death. If the protagonist is a normal human rather than a supernatural being, the traditional story is usually called a legend rather than a myth. If the story concerns supernatural beings who are not deities, but rather spirits, ghosts, fairies, and other creatures, it is usually called a folktale or fairy tale rather than a myth. A system of beliefs and religious or historical doctrines is called a MYTHOS, not a mythology.

SCATOLOGY:

Not to be confused with eschatology, scatology refers to so-called "potty-humor"-- jokes or stories dealing with feces designed to elicit either laughter or disgust. Anthropologists have noted that scatological humor occurs in nearly every human culture. In some cultures and time periods, scatology is treated as vulgar or low-brow (for instance, the Victorian period in England). At other times, scatological elements appear in stories that are not necessarily meant to be low- brow. Chaucer relies heavily on scatological humor in "The Summoner's Tale."

ROMANTICISM:

Not to be confused with romance, this term refers to the artistic philosophy prevalent during the first third of the 19th century (about 1800-1830). Romanticism rejected the earlier philosophy of the Enlightenment, which stressed that logic and reason were the best response humans had in the face of cruelty, stupidity, superstition, and barbarism. Instead, the Romantics asserted that reliance upon emotion and natural passions provided a valid and powerful means of knowing and a reliable guide to ethics and living. The Romantic movement typically asserts the unique nature of the individual, the privileged status of imagination and fancy, the value of spontaneity over "artifice" and "convention," the human need for emotional outlets, the rejection of civilized corruption, and a desire to return to natural primitivism and escape the spiritual destruction of urban life. Their writings often are set in rural, pastoral or Gothic settings and they show an obsessive concern with "innocent" characters--children, young lovers, and animals. The major Romantic poets included William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Gordon Byron.

Personification

Personification is a TROPE in which abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are given human character traits or abilities. Personification is particularly common in poetry, but it appears in nearly all types of artful writing. Examples include Keat's treatment of the vase in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," in which the urn is treated as a "sylvan historian, who canst thus express / A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme," or Sylvia Plath's "The Moon and the Yew Tree," in which the moon "is a face in its own right, / White as a knuckle and terribly upset. / It drags the sea after it like a dark crime." ANTHROPOMORPHISM is a type of personification in which the aim is to make the non-human animals or objects behave and appear like they are actual humans. George Orwell's Animal Farm is one of the most obvious examples of anthropomorphism in literature.

METAPOETRY:

Poetry about poetry, especially self-conscious poems that pun on objects or items associated with writing or creating poetry. Among the Romantic and Enlightenment poets, we find puns on leaves (referring on one hand to the leaves of plants, and on another to the leaves or pages of a book of poetry), feet (referring on one level to the body part, and on another to the metrical feet of a poem), and so on. Other types of metapoetry involve self-conscious commentary on the poem's own genre or on the process of creating the poem. A fine example of this type of metapoetry is Billy Collins' "Sonnet": All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, And after this next one just a dozen To launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas, then only ten more left like rows of beans.How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan and insist the iambic bongos must be played and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines, one for every station of the cross. But hang on here while we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed. Here, we can clearly see the self-reflective tendencies, in which the poet discusses how many more lines he needs to finish a traditional sonnet (lines 1-4), he directly comments on the traditional subject-matter of the sonnet, the rejected love of the speaker (alluded to in line 3), he adds an amusing allusion to the normal requirements of rhyme, meter and iambic pentameter, which the poet rejects (lines 5-8), and he adds a direct reference to the turn or VOLTA, in the exact moment when the volta is required in an Italian sonnet. Finally the poet alludes to Laura (the woman to whom Petrarch dedicated his sonnets) and to Petrarch, the inventor of the sonnet-structure that Collins mimics and alters simultaneously. The subject-matter of this sonnet is the conventional SONNET itself; thus, it is metapoetry.

FREE VERSE:

Poetry based on the natural rhythms of phrases and normal pauses rather than the artificial constraints of metrical feet. Commonly called vers libre in French (the English term didn't appear in print until 1908), this poetry often involves the counterpoint of stressed and unstressed syllables in unpredictable but clever ways. Its origins are obscure. Early poetry that is similar to free verse includes the Authorized Bible translations of the Psalms and the Song of Songs; Milton clearly experimented with something like free verse in Lycidas and Samson Agonistes as well. However the Enlightenment's later emphasis on perfect meter during the 1700s prevented this experimentation from developing much further during the 18th century. The American poet Walt Whitman first made extended successful use of free verse in the 19th century, and he in turn influenced Baudelaire, who developed the technique in French poetry. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we find several poets using some variant of free verse--including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, and e. e. cummings. Do note that, within individual sections of a free verse poem, a specific line or lines may fall into metrical regularity. The distinction is that this meter is not sustained through the bulk of the poem.

GOTHIC LITERATURE:

Poetry, short stories, or novels designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural. As J. A. Cuddon suggests, the conventions of gothic literature include wild and desolate landscapes, ancient buildings such as ruined monasteries; cathedrals; castles with dungeons, torture chambers, secret doors, and winding stairways; apparitions, phantoms, demons, and necromancers; an atmosphere of brooding gloom; and youthful, handsome heroes and fainting (or screaming!) heroines who face off against corrupt aristocrats, wicked witches, and hideous monsters. Conventionally, female characters are threatened by powerful or impetuous male figures, and description functions through a metonymy of fear by presenting details designed to evoke horror, disgust, or terror. The term became associated with ghost stories and horror novels because early Gothic novels were often associated with the Middle Ages and with things "wild, bloody, and barbarous of long ago" as J. A. Cuddon puts it in his Dictionary of Literary Terms (381). Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula are examples of Gothic novels.

REFRAIN:

REFRAIN: A line or set of lines at the end of a stanza or section of a longer poem or song--these lines repeat at regular intervals in other stanzas or sections of the same work. Sometimes the repetition involves minor changes in wording. A refrain might consist of a nonsense word (such as Shakespeare's "With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino" in the song from As You Like It), a single word (such as "Nevermore" in Poe's "The Raven"), or even an entire separate stanza that is AP Lit 2017-18 AP Lit 2017-18 Page 36 repeated alternating with each stanza in the poem. If the refrain is meant to be sung by all the auditors listening, such as in Burns' "Auld Lang Syne," the refrain is often called a chorus. The refrain is an ancient device; examples are found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Bible, Greek, Latin, and Provençal verse, and in many, many ballads.

148. SCANSION (also SCAN, SCANNING):

SCANNING): The act of determining the prevailing RHYTHM and poetic characteristics of a poem. To perform scansion, the student breaks down each line into individual metrical feet and determines which syllables have heavy stress and which have lighter stress. Contrast with PROSODY.

FOLKLORE:

Sayings, verbal compositions, stories, and social rituals passed along by word of mouth rather than written down in a text. Folklore includes superstitions; modern "urban legends"; proverbs; riddles; spells; nursery rhymes; songs; legends or lore about the weather, animals, and plants; jokes and anecdotes; rituals at births, deaths, marriages, and yearly celebrations; and traditional dance and plays performed during holidays or at communal gatherings. Many works of literature originated in folktales before the narratives were written down. Examples in American culture include the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree; George Washington throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac river; Paul Bunyan cutting lumber with his blue ox, Babe; Pecos Bill roping a twister; and Johnny Appleseed planting apples across the west over a 120-year period. Many fairy tales in Europe originate in folklore, such as "Snow White" and "Jack and the Beanstalk." In modern days, much academic work with folklore focuses on reports of UFO abductions, the Chupacabra legends of Mexico, urban legends, and

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE:

Sometimes called FIGURES OF SPEECH. An organized pattern of comparison that deepens, broadens, extends, illuminates, and emphasizes meaning, and also that conforms to particular patterns or forms. A deviation from what speakers of a language understand as the ordinary or standard use of words in order to achieve some special meaning or effect. Perhaps the two most common figurative devices are the SIMILE--a comparison between two distinctly different things using "like" or "as" ("My love's like a red, red rose")--and the METAPHOR--a figure of speech in which two unlike objects are implicitly compared without the use of "like" or "as." These are both examples of TROPES. Any figure of speech that results in a change of meaning is called a trope. Any figure of speech that creates its effect in patterns of words or letters in a sentence, rather than twisting the meaning of words, is called a SCHEME. Perhaps the most common scheme is PARALLELISM.

TONE:

TONE: The means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude or MOOD. By looking carefully at the choices an author makes (in characters, incidents, setting; in the work's stylistic choices and diction, etc.), careful readers often can isolate the tone of a work and sometimes infer from it the underlying attitudes that control and color the story or poem as a whole. The tone might be formal or informal, playful, ironic, optimistic, pessimistic, or sensual, for example. To illustrate the difference, two different novelists might write stories about capitalism. Author #1 creates a tale in which an impoverished but hard-working young lad pulls himself out of the slums when he applies himself to his education, and he becomes a wealthy, contented middle-class citizen who leaves his past behind him, never looking back at that awful human cesspool from which he rose. Author #2 creates a tale in which a dirty street-rat skulks his way out of the slums by abandoning his family and going off to college, and he greedily hoards his money in a gated AP Lit 2017-18 AP Lit 2017-18 Page 42 community and ignores the suffering of his former "equals," whom he leaves behind in his selfish desire to get ahead. Note that both author #1 and author #2 basically present the same plotline. While the first author's writing creates a tale of optimism and hope, the second author shapes the same tale into a story of bitterness and cynicism. The difference is in their respective tones--the way they convey their attitudes about particular characters and subject-matter. Note that in poetry, tone is often called voice.

HUBRIS

The Greek term hubris is difficult to translate directly into English. It is a negative term implying both arrogant, excessive self-pride or self-confidence, and also a lack of some important perception or insight due to pride in one's abilities. It is the pride and attitudes that lead tragic figures to commit their mistakes or offenses. Hubris is the opposite of the Greek term arête, which implies a humble and constant striving for perfection and self- improvement combined with a realistic awareness that such perfection cannot be reached. As long as an individual strives to do and be the best, that individual has arête. As soon as the individual believes he has actually achieved arête, however, he or she has lost that exalted state and fallen into hubris, unable to recognize personal limitations or the humble need to improve constantly. This leads to overwhelming pride, and this in turn leads to a downfall. Hubris is a noun; its adjective form in English is hubristic, and its adverb form is hubristically.

JUXTAPOSITION:

The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development.

RHETORIC:

The art of persuasive argument through writing or speech--the art of eloquence and charismatic language.

STYLE:

The characteristic way that an author uses language to achieve certain effects. An important part of interpreting and understanding fiction is being attentive to the way the author uses words. What effects, for instance, do word choice and sentence structure have on a story and its meaning? How does the author use imagery, figurative devices, repetition, or allusion? In what ways does the style seem appropriate or discordant with the work's subject and theme? Some common styles might be labeled ornate, plain, emotive, scientific, etc. Most writers have their own particular styles, thus we may speak of the "Hemingway style" or "Dickensian style."

IN MEDIAS RES

The classical tradition of opening an EPIC not in the chronological point at which the sequence of events would start, but rather at the midway point of the story. Later on in the narrative, the hero will recount verbally to others what events took place earlier. Usually in medias res is a technique used to heighten dramatic tension or to create a sense of mystery. This term is the opposite of the phrase ab ovo, when a story begins in the beginning and then proceeds in a strictly chronological manner without using the characters' dialogue, flashbacks, or memories.

MALAPROPISM:

The comic use of an improperly pronounced word, so that what comes out is a real but also incorrect word. Misusing words to create a comic effect or characterize the speaker as being too confused, ignorant, or flustered to use correct diction. Typically, the malapropism involves the confusion of two polysyllabic words that sound somewhat similar but have different meanings. For instance, a stereotyped maid in Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes series cries out as she falls into the jungle river, "I don't want to be eaten by no river allegories, no sir!" Dogberry the Watchman in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing says, "Comparisons are odorous," when he means odious. In one of Sheridan's plays, we find pineapple instead of pinnacle, and we read in Twain's Huckleberry Finn how one character declares, "I was most putrified with astonishment" instead of "petrified," and so on. The best malapropisms sound sufficiently similar to the correct word to let the audience recognize the intended meaning and laugh at the incongruous result.

RHYME:

The repetition of identical or closely related sounds in the syllables of different words, almost always - but not necessarily - in concluding syllables at the ends of lines. The most types of exact rhymes are: END RHYME: in which the last word at the end of each verse is the word that rhymes. INTERNAL RHYME: in which a word in the middle of each line of verse rhymes HEAD RHYME: in which the beginning consonant in a word alliterates with another beginning consonant in a different word. Rhymes may be created out of words with similar but not identical sounds - these are called INEXACT RHYMES. In most inexact rhymes, either the vowel segments are different while the consonants are the same, or vice versa. This type of rhyme goes by many names: most commonly SLANT RHYME, but also near rhyme, half rhyme, and off rhyme. Emily Dickinson uses slant rhyme extensively in "To Hear and Oriole Sing": in the second stanza she rhymes bird, unheard, and crowd. Bird and unheard form an exact rhyme, but the vowel and consonant shift in crowd produces a slant rhyme. Most of the time, rhymes are sound devices, but there is a variation is called the EYE RHYME (or sight rhyme). In eye rhyme, the sounds to be eye-rhymed are identical in spelling but different in pronunciation. Entire words may be eye-rhymed, so that the word wind (noun) may be rhymed with wind (verb), but in most eye rhymes it is only the relevant parts of the word that must be spelled identically. Thus stove may rhyme with prove and above, and bough may rhyme with cough, dough, enough, and through, despite all the differing pronunciations.

Frame Narrative

The result of inserting one or more small stories within the body of a larger story that encompasses the smaller ones. Often this term is used interchangeably with both the literary technique and the larger story itself that contains the smaller ones, which are called pericopes (puh-rik-uh-pees), "framed narratives" or "embedded narratives." The most famous example is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in which the overarching frame narrative is the story of a band of pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Thomas á Becket in Canterbury. The band passes the time in a storytelling contest. The pericopes are the individual stories told by the pilgrims who participate. Another example is Boccaccio's Decameron, in which the frame narrative consists of a group of Italian noblemen and women fleeing the plague, and the pericopes consist of the tales they tell each other to pass the time while they await the disease's passing.

VERSE:

There are three general meanings for verse: 1) a line of metrical writing, 2) a stanza, or 3) any composition written in meter (i.e., poetry generally). Remember that RHYME is not the identifying mark of poetry, but rather METER is.

VERISIMILITUDE:

The sense that what one reads is "real," or at least realistic and believable. For instance, the reader possesses a sense of verisimilitude when reading a story in which a character cuts his finger, and the finger bleeds. If the character's cut finger had produced sparks of fire rather than blood, the story would not possess verisimilitude. Note that even fantasy novels and science fiction stories that discuss impossible events can have verisimilitude if the reader is able to read them with suspended disbelief. Sometimes called realism.

METAPHYSICAL POETS/METAPHYSICAL POETRY:

The term metaphysical implies the poetry is abstract and highly complex. In his 1693 work, Discourse of Satire, John Dryden used the term metaphysical to describe the style of certain poets earlier in the 17th century. Later, Samuel Johnson popularized the term in 1779. The chief metaphysical poets include John Donne, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, and Henry Vaughan. The group shares certain traits, but their themes, structures, and assorted tones in their poetry vary widely. (1) The group as a whole rejects the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry, especially the Petrarchan conceits that, by 1600, had become clichés. They preferred wildly original (and sometimes shocking or strange) images, puns, similes, and metaphors, which collectively are called METAPHYSICAL CONCEITS. (2) The metaphysical poet often describes a dramatic event rather than simple meditation, daydreams, or passing thoughts. (3) The metaphysical poets employed inconsistent or striking verse--often imitating the rhythmic patterns of everyday speech, rather than attempting to create perfect meter in the manner later favored by neoclassical poets. Basically, the metaphysical poets would not let metrical form interfere with the development of a line of thought. (4) The poem often expresses an argument--often using wild flights of logic and unusual comparisons. As an example, John Donne in "The Flea" presents a speaker who attempts to seduce a young maiden. The basis of his argument is the comparison between sex and a flea-bite. In "Holy Sonnet 14," Donne fashions a prayer in which he compares himself to a besieged city.

HAIKU:

The traditional Japanese haiku consists of three lines, usually treating a topic derived from nature. The first line contains five syllables, the second line contains seven, and the last line five. In Japanese, the syllables are further restricted in that each syllable must have three sound units (sound-components formed of a consonant, a vowel, and another consonant). The three unit-rule is usually ignored in English haiku, since English syllables vary in size much more than in Japanese. Furthermore, in English translation, this 5/7/5 syllable count is occasionally modified to three lines containing 6/7/6 syllables respectively, since English is not as "compact" as Japanese.

GOTHIC:

The word Gothic originally only referred to the Goths, one of the Germanic tribes that helped destroy Rome. Their now-extinct language, also called Gothic, died out completely. The term later came to signify "Germanic," then "medieval," especially in reference to the medieval architecture and art used in western Europe between 1100 and 1500. (The earlier art and architecture of medieval Europe between 700-1100 is known as "Romanesque.") The term gothic has come to be used much more loosely to refer to gloomy or frightening literature.

point of view

This term identifies the way a story gets told and who tells it. It is the method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision, from which the story unfolds. Point of view governs the reader's access to the story. Many narratives appear in the FIRST PERSON (the narrator speaks as "I" and the narrator is a character in the story who may or may not influence events within it). Another common type of narrative is the THIRD-PERSON narrative (the narrator seems to be someone standing outside the story who refers to all the characters by name or as he, she, they, and so on). When the narrator reports speech and action, but never comments on the thoughts of other characters, it is the DRAMATIC THIRD PERSON point of view or OBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW. The third-person narrator can be OMNISCIENT--a narrator who knows everything that needs to be known about the agents and events in the story, and is free to move at will in time and place, and who has privileged access to a character's thoughts, feelings, and motives. The narrator can also be LIMITED--a narrator who is confined to what is experienced, thought, or felt by a single character, or at most a limited number of characters. Finally, there is the UNRELIABLE NARRATOR (a narrator who describes events in the story, but seems to make obvious mistakes or misinterpretations that may be apparent to a careful reader). Unreliable narration often serves to characterize the narrator as someone foolish or unobservant. Compare with NARRATOR.

SCHEME:

This term refers to figures of speech that deal with word order, syntax, letters, and sounds, rather than the meaning of words. Contrast with TROPE.

MEIOSIS:

Understatement, the opposite of exaggeration: "I was somewhat worried when the psychopath ran toward me with a chainsaw." (i.e., I was terrified). LITOTES (especially popular in Old English poetry) is a type of meiosis in which the writer uses a statement in the negative to create the effect: "You know, Einstein was not a bad mathematician." (i.e., Einstein was a good mathematician.)

IDIOM:

Usage that produces unique words and phrases within regions, classes, or groups. Also, the habits and structures of particular languages. For example, is it a pail or a bucket? Soda, or pop? Do you stand in line or on a line? In its loosest sense, the word idiom is also sometimes used as a synonym for DIALECT. In its more scholarly and narrow sense, an idiom or idiomatic expression refers to a construction or expression in one language that cannot be matched or directly translated word-for-word in another language. For instance, the English expression, "She has a bee in her bonnet," meaning "she is obsessed," cannot be literally translated into another language word for word. It's a non-literal idiomatic expression, akin to "She is green with envy."

THEME:

Used broadly in the following ways: 1) the major or central idea of a work; 2) an essay, a short composition developing an interpretation or advancing an argument; or 3) the main point or idea that a writer of an essay asserts and illustrates.

EUPHEMISM:

Using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt, embarrassing, or painful one. For instance, saying "Grandfather has gone to a better place" is a euphemism for "Grandfather has died." The idea is to put something bad, disturbing, or embarrassing in an inoffensive or neutral light. Frequently, words referring directly to death, unpopular politics, blasphemy, crime, and sexual or excremental activities are replaced by euphemisms.

Polysyndeton

Using many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect in a sentence. For example, "This semester, I am taking biology and English and history and math and music and physics and sociology." All those ands make the student sound like she is completely overwhelmed. It is the opposite of ASYNDETON.

MYTH:

While common English usage often equates "myth" with "falsehood," scholars use the term slightly differently. A myth is a traditional tale of deep cultural significance to a people in terms of etiology, eschatology, ritual practice, or models of appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Professor Thomas Foster calls it "a body of stories that matters." The myth often (but not always) deals with gods, supernatural beings, or ancestral heroes. The culture creating or retelling the myth may or may not belief that myth to refer to literal or factual events, but it values the mythic narrative regardless of its historical authenticity for its (conscious or unconscious) insights into the human condition.

SYNTAX:

Word order and sentence structure, as opposed to DICTION (word choice) or content (the meaning of individual words). Standard English syntax prefers a Subject-Verb-Object pattern, but poets may tweak syntax to achieve rhetorical or poetic effects, such as when a poet uses ANASTROPHE. An important mark of STYLE is a writer's SYNTACTICAL PATTERNING (regular patterns and variations) depending on the needs of the literary work. Note that syntax is what allows us to produce sequential grammatical units such as phrases, clauses, and sentences.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS:

Writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. Often such writing makes no distinction between various levels of reality-- such as dreams, memories, imaginative thoughts or real sensory perception. The technique has been used by several authors and poets: Katherine Anne Porter, Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner. Some critics treat the INTERIOR MONOLOGUE as a subset of the stream of consciousness. Perhaps the most famous example is the stream of consciousness section in James Joyce's Ulysses, which climaxes in a forty- odd page interior monologue of Molly Bloom, an extended passage with only one punctuation mark!

TROPE:

a rhetorical device or FIGURE OF SPEECH involving shifts in the meaning of words. In the early Middle Ages, a trope was also a short dramatic dialogue inserted into the church mass; however that usage is less common. Compare with SCHEME.

TERCET:

a three-line unit or STANZA of poetry, usually rhyming AAA, BBB, CCC, etc.

TERZA RIMA

rhyme"): A three-line stanza form with interlocking RHYMES that move from one STANZA to the next. The typical pattern is ABA, BCB, CDC, DED, and so on. Dante chose terza rima's tripartite structure as the basic poetic unit of his trilogy, The Divine Comedy. An English example is found in Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind."

Prosody

the mechanics of verse poetry--its sounds, rhythms, scansion and meter, stanzaic form, alliteration, assonance, euphony, onomatopoeia, and rhyme. It refers to the technical and practical aspect of making poems as opposed to purely theoretical and aesthetic poetic concerns Prosody is also called VERSIFICATION (literally, "the making of verse"). Prosody can also refer to the study or analysis of these mechanics of verse poetry.